Changes

For awhile, I was doing the household cooking.  I enjoyed meeting the challenge of finding things all three of us would eat.  It was good to bond over food.  I started to burn out on cooking (no pun intended) about the same time I started eating Ensure for three of my meals.  That sounds funny if you don’t realize I eat six meals a day, to maintain my weight. Carol is a good sport about doing the cooking.  It helps that Lena will occasionally cook pasta or something, if she is the only one hungry, especially since she has decided to be vegetarian.

Carol was doing the Costco runs, and I was going to the grocery store on the bus pulling the food in a small suitcase on wheels.  I can’t do that any more because of my walker.  Carol remembered we could order food online from Safeway, so we are doing that now.

I was doing the laundry.  The washer and dryer are in the basement.  I can get down the stairs but not carrying a bin.  The compromise is Carol doing her and Lena’s laundry, and me changing clothes downstairs and keeping the dirty ones there and washing them there.

I can still vacuum except our vacuum is on the fritz.  It is taking us awhile to find one at the thrift store, because Carol prefers the canister style being more manageable.  I can also clean the bathroom.

The latest about my sister is that she plans to take the train from San Francisco to Boulder.  She convinced me briefly that she would be all right traveling by herself, even though she wanders mentally, because her foot hurts so she can’t get far from the station.  Then I remembered if she had an anger outburst she might wind up being put off the train in the middle of nowhere. 

My dad asked if I could go with her.  I huddled with Carol and my support group, torn between the facts that I love train trips and that being with my sister is stressful.  I said I handled her pretty well on the way home from Nicaragua.  Carol reminded me the only reason that worked was because there were three of us.  I decided my compromise would be I would go if my brother Tom also went, and Joan agreed to take something for the anxiety of travel.  My dad, who is paying for the trip, said he thought that was overkill, and that my brother agreed to go thinking he could handle it.

The present moment is cold sunshine.