Three girls on the Willamette

Me, my mom, sister Sarah

 

My mom just turned 80!  My brothers and sister and their families met up on the bank of the Willamette River in Eugene for lunch and cake to celebrate. I gave my mom the quilt she taught me how to make as a tribute to her.  There’s a picture of her opening it below.

That's son Blaine on the right and sister-in-law Tammie in back.

And then my new camera ran out of memory (pretty sneaky the way the card that comes with the camera has essentially no room on it!)  So I have no more illustrations…

 

But it was so awesome to celebrate the day with my mom and that she has made it to 80! She had surgery for colon cancer when she was 47, so for a while I worried that I wouldn’t have a mom left when I reached my present age.  So glad she made it!  She is not without health challenges, but she is awesome and not a day goes by without her adding stitches to another quilt. They are works of art!

Happy Birthday MOM!  And many more….

So very much to think about today…

Twenty nine years ago today my sweet son was born. I’ve been thinking a lot about that day this morning. The fear, the not knowing what was happening, the not understanding what people were saying to me… then the short moment of magic looking into the eyes of my newborn son, already named after my beloved granddad. I saw all of eternity in those eyes. It was something I had never felt, or imagined feeling.

Then he was taken from me, to another hospital across town, to a neonatal intensive care unit. I’m not entirely sure I even knew NICUs existed. In many many ways, I entered a new world that day. Not just the world of motherhood. But the world of families with unforeseen children. The first time I heard the word spina bifida and myelomeningocele spoken aloud. In my heart of hearts I somehow knew this was my last chance at being a mother. Don’t tell a mother her only child might not make it. She will do anything to make it not so.

I still get to be in Blaine’s presence pretty much every day of my life. We still share a lot of ourselves with one another. What an honor for me. What a privilege. He is the sweetest soul I have ever known. The most empathetic human being I believe exists.

I have so very much to think about today…

The e-stable continues to grow

And I am even more embarrassed.  Our household now has a Wii.  Here’s how it happened:  Ric asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  (Uh, yeah, I’m in my last year of the 50s now!?)

So I’ve been trying to come up with a fitness plan for myself for some time now.  Without a lick of success.  Just can’t get started.  And of course every day of not starting is another day of falling further behind, which makes it even harder to start.  I feel like I need to land on an approach.  So far I’m still freefalling.  No landing strip in sight.

Maybe I’m going at this the wrong way.  I don’t want to pay a big gym membership.  Not really crazy about doing the gym thing anyway.  Guess I mostly want to exercise in private.  In the beginning at least.  I can’t hardly stand to watch my body move now, so don’t really want to subject anyone else to what I fear, to borrow a line from W.C. Fields, would scare horses and small children.

I tried the Curves thing, which is women only, and mostly women of a certain age and shape.  Didn’t work for me. First of all, the loud music made me want to go postal.  Exercise is painful enough when you are as out of shape as I am, so I don’t need the additional pain of earsplitting disco musak.  Or whatever it was they play.  Yuk.

Also, I just found the equipment so, oh, I don’t know, lame.  I mean, I couldn’t get my heart rate up high enough even when I worked it with all my might. I needed something more.  And I kept having this creepy feeling that I was part of some right wing nut case conspiracy.  Or something like that.  So I quit.  It took me so many months of having the fee automatically removed from my checking account before I remembered where the paperwork was so I could actually write the letter to resign.  They don’t make it easy.  I wonder why.

So basically, I don’t trust the membership places so much.  Just feels scammy.

When I started hearing about the Wii Fit, I thought that might be just the thing.  In the privacy of my own home.  Lots of people reported actually doing it and enjoying it.

Well, fuck me.  I overlooked the fact that to do Wii Fit, one must have a Wii.  (Somehow I got the idea it was self-contained or something.)  So guess what I got for my birthday?  A Wii.  And Ric had to really pull some magic to get his hands on one.

So far we haven’t managed to find a Wii fit anywhere.  We’re still working on it.  I’ll keep you posted.

And now I swear we will not be getting any more electronic devices.  Ever.  Well, except my laptop fan went out, and it’s more than 6 years old now and I guess it would cost too much to repair it so I’m thinking about going to the Macforce garage sale tomorrow morning to try to get a new used one.  But that doesn’t really count, does it?  It would be an even swap.

Ric still has in mind getting the new iPhone, and he’s pretty sure when I see his I’ll want one too. But that would come out even too.  I guess I can live with staying even.