4/20/24

 Saturday, April 20, 2024

Party Day

Lights out at 9:30, ps at 10:30, ps and lights on at 11:55, let Lilly out.  I read newspapers until 2:05 when I turned the lights off again and tried to sleep.  Slept on and off with bad pain in my right shoulder and my swollen right hand.  Plus I was cold, got under the heavy crocheted afghan for warmth. up and lights on at 3;35. off again at some point and back on and up at 4:50 with pain from right shoulder to right hand.  Off again at some point and up at about 6.

One Year Ago: In bed at 10:15, awake at 3:35, up at 4:05, unable to sleep, CPP spasms.  42℉ in a thunderstorm, one of many expected all day, high of 66℉, wind ESE at 11 mph, gusts up to 32 mph during the day, humidity at 88%, averaging 80% today.  Sunrise at 6:01, sunset at 7:40, 13+38.   

Pain, etc. had been pretty bad all day yesterday and as I went to bed chair.  Bedtime Tylenol and Lidocaine patches on both shoulders do not seem to do much good as I type this at 12:30 a.m., but who knows whether the pain and restricted ROM would be worse without them.  Rough day yesterday, rough night last night, maybe a long day ahead.

I'm grateful to be celebrating Geri's birthday today, with Steve, Nikki, David, Sharon, and Ellis.  Geri has done all the work preparing for it.  David drove her to Sendik's yesterday afternoon to pick up some beer and wine, chips, etc., and he will pick up the Italian beef, pasta salad, and green salad at Glorioso's this afternoon.  Later, Costco cheesecake.

Birthday Party tribute:

A few years back, I started keeping a list on my iPhone of 'what I love about Geri and it started with her laugh.  I was listening to her chatting on her phone with one of her friends and she was really enjoying whatever it was they were talking about and she was laughing, a wonderful, deep, exuberant laughter that was a pleasure to listen to, infectious since just hearing it made me smile just to hear it.  

Later I added "sharing her thoughts" and "sharing time" with me to the list, realizing how she has privileged me by that sharing.  I'm the only person in the world she shares so much of her life with.  I have often thanked her for agreeing to marry me.  It's a great and unique privilege married people confer on their partners, a privilege we too often lose sight of as we cope with the daily necessities and distractions of life.

Then I added her devotion to duty.  It sounds as if I were thinking of a soldier or a 'first responder' but in all of the roles she plays in her life, Geri has an innate sense of duty. 'Sense of duty' doesn't capture what I'm referring to.  As a child to her parents, as a parent to her children, as a life partner to me, as a sister to her brother Jim, and as a friend to her many friends, she is true, caring, trustworthy, attentive, and solicitous.  The people in her life can count on her for help, for advice, for an open ear and a ready hand, to respect confidences, to pitch in when some pitching in is needed, and to butt out when some butting out is needed.  When my twice-widowed father came to live with us, Geri became his best friend at a time in his life when he so badly needed a real friend.  When her older brother lost his wife and his children were spread out across the country, Geri encouraged him to move near us and she personally cared for him for several years.  We should all have these qualities but not all of us do and few have them as innately, as suffusely as Geri does.  This sense of duty carries into all her undertakings, e.g., as an employee, as a volunteer (ombudsman at a nursing home, child welfare investigator, poll worker), and even to our pets.  When our beloved cat Blanche needed to be hydrated by transfusion every day, Geri turned her ironing board into a gurney for her, hung the hydrating solution from a closet door, and served as her nurse.  And as fpr Lilly, . . . words fail me.

She is courageous.  She has faced some difficult challenges in her life and addressed all of them head-on.  Where many, including me, would have faltered, or backed off from a difficult challenge, she has put her shoulder to the wheel and addressed them.  She has guts, tough-mindedness, patience, and an admirable sense of self-respect and determination that lets her succeed at challenges that would defeat many of us.

My iPhone list is a lot longer and includes stuff like leading the way when there is tough, unpleasant, nasty work to be done.  She is the first to pick up the mop or the shovel, not waiting for others, including me, to get at it. But my list is inevitably incomplete.  She is who she is in all her uniqueness.  She is special in large part because she doesn't treat herself as special, as better than or not as good as anyone around her.  But she is very special to me, and she's very special to her family and to her many friends who count themselves privileged to have her in our lives.