Jeri has just left, on her way to the Bay Area with Ned to visit friends and do some recording over the next couple of days, before she flies back to Boston next week. According to weather reports, the snow from storms in Boston will have been washed away by rain by then.
It's been a good few days. Jeri is a unique person and her infectious positivism floods everything she does and everybody she visits. She was able to have two good visits with her grandmother while here and got her smiling and laughing both times, a talent I don't possess.
The first time they visited, Jeri said that the new "Mildred memories" book I had made was not there, which made me very upset. But when we went yesterday, we found it buried in a drawer and she went through the book with my mother a couple of times and both seemed to enjoy it.
When we arrived at Atria, we found her in the dining room, and I wish I had taken a photo. She and her "boyfriend" (must find out that guy's name!) were sitting at a table for two, both asleep, both "bookend" pictures leaning forward their heads down.
She was happy to see Jeri and thrilled to see me ("Where have you been," she always asks, no matter how brief a time I have been gone...that's when I think she thinks I'm one of her sisters. She will act the same way if she goes to the bathroom and returns, and finds me sitting where she left me.)
Before we went to Atria, we went to Target to buy her a new lamp. Jeri discovered that her bedside lamp looked like it had been knocked over and the bulb hung at a rakish angle, which looked dangerous.
We quickly returned from Atria and packed up to go to Ned & Marta's for dinner. Ned needed Jeri to participate in a video that he is making for Brianna's upcoming 10th birthday. He has made a video for her for the past 9 years and this is the last one he is going to make.
It took forever to get there because the night before there was a Sacramento shooting of an unarmed Black man in his mother's back yard, trying to enter by the back door. There had been reports of someone breaking into cars and the police tried to stop him. He was carrying a cell phone, which they mistook for a gun and shot him 20 times, killing this father of two young children. (I already know they are going to get off because "experts" looking at videotape said that it was a "reasonable killing.") There were protesters marching, stopping traffic on the freeway and blocking entrance to the Golden One stadium, delaying the start of a Kings basketball game.
It was gridlock all over downtown Sacramento, which we had to drive through, with police cars, sirens beeping (if not blaring) on every block. I texted Ned to say that we had been delayed by the protest and he texted back "Watching it on tv. See you when you figure it out."
He made a nice dinner for all of us and then the videotaping took place. There was a lot of laughter but I am sworn to secrecy until the video is released, so I won't write about it until the end of the month, but it's a good, funny story, with lots of photos.
I can say that while the videotaping was going on, Marta amused herself with her iPod,
while the dog went to sleep and didn't pay any attention to the shenanigans. But it was definitely fun.
Then home and I collapsed because I had missed my afternoon nap and was exhausted.
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