Short but Sweet

Well, Jeri was only here with us for a very short time, but what fun we had with her.  It's so nice when you like your children.

This morning she borrowed Walt's bike and went off riding around town to "run errands."  I found out later that one of the "errands" she ran was to stop at the 7-11 across from the cemetery, buy a tiny bottle of Jim Beam, go to the cemetery, stand over Paul and David's grave, call my mother and the two of them together "drank a toast" to the boys and she poured the rest on the grave marker.  I love that she did that.

She got all her stuff packed up as soon as she got home again and we were on the road to my mother's.  I had told her that we would be there for lunch.   There have been so many schedule changes since Jeri first left Boston that it has been very confusing for someone who already has memory problems.  She called me around 4 last night to ask if she was expecting anybody for dinner that night.   We told her again that we would see her today and would be there in time for lunch and stay for dinner.  I really didn't want to do anything else to confuse her further!

We had a nice lunch.  She had fixed clam chowder, stuff for sandwiches, and fixings for a salad, which seemed pretty good for someone who says she never cooks and has forgotten how.

After lunch, I gave out the last of the Christmas presents, set up my mother's Sentsy, which she will probably never use much because I forgot that one of her "now that I'm in my 90s I have these problems" problems is that she is losing her sense of smell, so she could barely smell it when she held the scented blocks to her nose and I don't think she smelled it at all when it was up and running.  Owell.   It's a nice decoration.

Of course we had to take the traditional Grandma/Jeri picture.

And we even took a 3-generation picture.

While we were at it, Jeri took a picture of Walt and me too.

In the middle of the afternoon, we went for a walk around the lagoon in the park where my mother lives.  Her doctor has suggested she do this every day, twice a day, if possible.  I can't remember how far around the lagoon it is but I think it's something like 1/2 to 3/4 mile.  With her back problems, my mother has to stop frequently to sit and rest for a bit but there are benches spaced all around the water so this is easy for her.  I loved watching her and Jeri walking along the water, deep in conversation.

There are several kinds of water birds that frequent the lagoon.   I loved this guy, who spent quite a long time drying out his wings.

There was also a large flock of American coots along the path, who all turned tail and waddled off when Jeri and my mother approached.

Then we had dinner.  If lunch had been "nice," dinner was a huge surprise.  The woman who has forgotten everything she ever knew about cooking, had made spaghetti sauce with meatballs and we had spaghetti and meatballs, a great salad and French bread for dinner.  She never ceases to amaze me.

After dinner we watched Huell Howser's program, "California Gold."  Howser, a California television legend for many years, had just died two days ago and neither Jeri nor my mother had heard of this unique broadcaster (who was a favorite of Walt's mother), so we had to show them an example.  In starting to write this journal entry, I did some Googling about Howser and found this link to an article that included a lot of reactions on Twitter.  You MUST scroll down far enough to see the video of the avocado-eating dog, which is classic Howser,

(Earlier in the day, Ned had put together a special tribute to Howser on his radio station and texted us what time it would be on, so we sat here and tuned in Jack-FM and listened to Huell Howser there.)

Having done our duty by the memory of Huell Howser, we bid the two others goodbye and headed home to feed the dogs, who were very happy to see us (Sheila had not eaten Polly after all).  

It was just a great, if brief, visit with Jeri.  She doesn't fly home until Friday, but will spend the next couple of days with Grandma, having dinner with Uncle Norm and Olivia, and visiting her friends in the East Bay.  She definitely makes the most of her time when she is in California.