Today, I was in the office for the whole day for the first time since last Thursday. The workday was a living hell: I had multiple open issues, and I had to act like a customer support chat, replying to multiple people simultaneously. Plus, scheduling a couple of mom’s follow-ups, a CT scan, etc. Working on multiple issues was the worst, though.
Still, it’s a first step toward returning to normal. I stayed at work a little bit late, but then I went straight home and talked to my mom only over the phone. And I actually browsed the internet for the first time in several days. I am not 100% sure what I did, but I didn’t have to go/do/watch, and for the first time in a week, I started to think about what I would be doing after work.
I have several posts that have been in drafts since my trip two weeks ago, so maybe I will finish them over the weekend.
A side note: I credit myself for two responsible actions. First, when I got a call that my mom fell and was taken to the hospital, I ate before rushing there. And second, when she was already home on Saturday, I asked Igor to stay with her for an extra hour and went to the beach because I knew it was my last opportunity of the season. I said thank you to the lake, to the warm clean water, and to that amazing summer.
Those were the last two responsible actions on my part. Although the second CT scan didn’t show any negative dynamics, the doctor still didn’t want to let my mom go back home. All the doctors kept telling me about horrible things that could happen if my mom fell one more time and insisted she had to be supervised 24/7 if we wanted to take her home. Mom didn’t want to be supervised, she didn’t want to make any changes in her routine, and she repeatedly said that she better die than like “like that.”
It was great that Anna could come over and stay until Tuesday afternoon. Mom was thrilled to see her, and I could take breaks and even do some work. However, we still struggled to make mom use assistive devices and exercise caution.
Taking a shower using the bench was the hardest, and I almost yelled at her. She kept saying that she was not used to washing herself sitting, and it was inconvenient. But then, I came up with a great strategic idea. Mom often states that I don’t remember how it is to live without a shower at home while she lived like this and had to go to the public baths once a week. In fact, I do remember: I had to go to public baths when I was in summer camps and when we stayed in the countryside in summer. So when she repeated that “she never washed herself in a sitting position, I said: Wait, what about the public baths? Didn’t you sit on a bench then? And this was a trigger. She said yes, and you had to wash the bench before sitting on it!
Then she got into the shower as I instructed her, and then I saw through the door crack that she was washing herself while sitting, and then she got out of the bathtub in a safe way. I said: good job, mom! You learned a new skill! For that she replied: there is nothing new in it!
By some miracle which I am not going to question, he got at-home physical therapy twice a week and the nurse’s visits once a week. She already had one PT session and did the exercises once on her own, so the progress is outstanding.
I am planning to go to the office for tomorrow afternoon.
I finally watched The Atomic Cafe, which was on my watchlist for the past two months recommended by Michael Roman. As usual, when the movie is the one I want to pay close attention to, I watch it one small piece at a time.
To summarize my reaction in one sentence: what a horror story! I had no idea that that’s how the US propaganda worked, and I am not even sure I should use a past tense here. The scariest part for me was not even the actual propaganda films with “no worries, the hair will grow back” and “it’s safe to get out after an explosion,” but the background country songs jokingly mentioning an atomic bomb, punishing Japan and all things related. Gives you a new perspective on the “Oppenheimer” movie and life in general. It’s worth noting that there is no narration and no commentary, just interviews, tv shows, and propaganda movies clips.
There are many ways to decide when the summer ends. I have already posted more than one “End of Summer” blog. Before I left for London I thought that my swimming season was over (having that I would miss the next weekend and one after) so I washed and stored away my swimsuit and beach towels, but I was happy to pull them out again last week.
I want to say explicitly that although we have an ongoing situation now, and my weekend plans had to be canceled, I can’t say it was a bad week. In fact, it was a gorgeous summer week, filled with all these bitter-sweet “last” gelato, “last” balm evenings, an incredibly warm lake, and fun in the sun. Also, I want to see ‘Harry Potter” and the opening of the season of the Chicago Symphony with a violin virtuoso Benjamin Beilman.
I have nothing but thanks to the Universe for this gift.
I always encourage people to go to plays, concerts, or restaurants by themselves if they do not have company but want to go, and I always thought that it was just a personal decision. However, according to this Time Magazine article, the restaurants do not like solo diners. It was interesting to read about why there are more solo diners these days than before, why restaurants often do not like them, and why they should 🙂
I think that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century there were more people dining out on a regular basis and solo, and it was absolutely normal back then. However, back then, these solo diners were male only, so possibly the issues which the article lists concern women more often than men.
…for friends because the family already knows. Mom fell during her Friday morning walk and hurt her head really badly. She was taken to the ER, and since I had my phone in her phone as an emergency contact, somebody called me, so I went there right away. Fortunately, that was this once-a-month thing when I worked from home (I had a seasonal furnace tune-up).
We thought it would not be a big deal because although there was a lot of blood, they didn’t even need to stitch her, just glue the wound. However, the CT scan showed brain bleeding, so she was left in an ICU overnight. I spent eight hours there yesterday and came there in the morning. They released her home with 24/7 supervision, so now we are figuring out how to make things work.
This show just opened last weekend, and I saw it yesterday. I have just one word – FANTASTIC! Everything they write about this show, and better! Everything you can see in this promotional video, but better because it’s had to capture the fire on stage – it is way cooler than it looks!
The only flight that was on time for this trip was my flight back from Amsterdam to London. As for the final leg, I saw the announcement that my flight was going to be three hours delayed a day before, and I was only hoping it wouldn’t be another overnight delay.
That time, I had no option of going for a stroll in the city because I had my carry-on with me. Actually, if I had acted a little bit faster, I could have jumped on the previous flight to Chicago, but by the time I checked in with customer service, they were already boarding, so I decided – whatever!
It ended up spending another six hours staying in the lounge because there was already almost an hour gap between flights, but at least I was able to catch up on reading and blogging:)
The flight landed in Chicago at about 9 PM, and the good part of such a late arrival was that there were no lines at the border control, and also, there was no traffic on Sunday night, so I was at home at 10-20. I am proud of myself that I didn’t unpack but went to bed right away 😀
I planned to spend an extra day in Amsterdam just to wander around without any particular plan. It would have been a great idea, except that this extra day was Saturday, and the streets were crowded beyond any imagination. Still, it was a nice and relatively warm day, and the city looked gorgeous. Boris wanted to take a boat tour “if it will work,” so we took the one which departed “in three minutes” from when we reached the boarding place.
Friday, September 13 – the Pg Day Lowlands team was brave enough to have their first event scheduled on that day :). And it went really well! I liked a lot of things about it, and I definitely want to use some of them for PG Day Chicago, including the rule that Boriss Mejias mentioned about always leaving a space for a fith person to join a group of four. I also loved the idae of Sponsor Passports, which encoraged the participants to visit all sponsor tables.
I started this post three days ago, but never had time to finish because the moment I returned to work, I had no time for anything else. But now, I have pictures taken by a professional photographer, so instead of posting whatever pictures I took, I can post really high-quality ones. So now, there just a couple of mine left :).
Here are some of them (of cause, I am shamelessly posting the pictures of myself:))
Speakers giftsSponsorsIt was a different photographer than two years ago, and Boris was not even in the front row, but still 🙂 Sponsor passports ready for drawing
Hettie's Reflections 