Aurora Borealis

My Mothers Day celebration started Saturday evening, when for date night Mr. Tldz made a lovely dinner — moussaka and lemon oven potatoes, neither of which we’ve had in a while; and then he made baklava!  Yummy!  (Holy cow – do all those items actually go together?!?  We’re usually famous for weird combinations of ethnic foods.)  It was fabulous — especially when followed by a nice back massage!

For breakfast Sunday we had freshly made blueberry scones and steel cut oatmeal.  Agent Murphy was  good during Mass.  (We didn’t have to make a break for the narthex at any point during Mass, so that counts as good.)  I got my presents when we got home — God and the World, a written interview with Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), a John Michael Talbot CD, and from Agent Murphy Dr. Laura’s new book, In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms.  Looks like both books will be good reads.  As Mr. Tldz said, the interview format with Ratzinger is probably the best way for me to read his stuff these days since it can easily been done in tiny chunks.

During Agent Murphy’s nap, I went out and picked up an umbrella stroller for our upcoming trip to Chicago.  We’re looking forward to that!  We actually really like our full-size stroller.  It’s nicely light weight, but we were looking for something with a smaller profile when folded so it doesn’t take up so much room in the trunk, and we found an umbrella one that doesn’t seem to be built for midgets to push.  After Agent Murphy’s nap, we called the grandmothers.  I had a nice chat with my mom, and Mr. Tldz left a message for his.

We got all of our cooking (including a couple of pies) and laundry done for the week.  (Ours, anyway.  Agent Murphy always has more!)  And we still managed to retire at a normal hour.  A very good weekend.  I hope all my mom friends out there had good Mothers Days, too.

Now my boy is clamoring for help with his puzzles and for story time, so I must go be Mommy.

Mr. Tldz and I woke up yesterday morning inexplicably exhausted.  We don’t know why.  We hadn’t gone to bed late.  But anyway, we were thrown off our normal schedule and didn’t get to Mass.   So we had a more leisurely breakfast than normal, and then swung into high gear getting the house cleaned up for the open house before we left for our “exile.”

First, we delivered a meal to a couple from church who just had a baby girl a couple of weeks ago.  They happened to be one of the presenting couples on our Engaged Encounter weekend.  Then we went and visited J^3, an older couple from our church.  He, Dr. J., was a longtime biology professor at UK-Lexington, an anomaly in that environment as a staunch pro-lifer.  They moved here a few years ago because one of their daughters lives here, and her oldest of 3 children has pretty significant special needs; so they moved down in retirement in order to be able to help.  Mrs. J. has been involved with the pro-life committee a little bit, but Dr. J. is in rather poor health, and I think it has declined rather precipitously since they’ve moved here.  He’s now confined to a wheel chair, so they don’t get out very much, and hadn’t really been here long enough before his health took a turn to establish a big social network.  (Unfortunately, our parish is not very good at welcoming in these sorts of situations.) So they feel some sense of isolation.  Finally, in February, we managed to take a meal over to share with them.  And it has worked out nicely, because we’ve been able to go over there both times we’ve had Sunday afternoon open houses.  Those are scheduled from 2-4 — prime Agent Murphy nap time.  Fortunately, J^3 have a nursery set up for their grandkids.  (One of the three here in town is just a few months older than Agent Murphy.)  So Agent Murphy has a place to nap during the open house and we have a chance to visit.

They are neat folks who’ve lived an interesting life.  They are devout Catholics and have experienced a number of parishes, including helping to grow a Newman Center.  Dr. J., because of his field of study and experiences trying to convey information about human life to students over a long number of years, has noteworthy insights into the pro-life movement.  He survived great evil and tragedy (as in concentration camp) as a child and came to the U.S. at the age of 11 or 12 to be raised by, I believe, a great-uncle.  I guess one sentence from yesterday’s conversation sums up: “When we were returning from Switzerland in the ’70s with a suitcase full of cloned frogs…”  My response to that: “Now not many people can say that!”  We enjoy their company, and I believe they enjoy ours.  We’ll need to make a point, sometime in the next few weeks, of going over to visit “just because” at a time when Agent Murphy can be up and about and get to know them better.

Unfortunately, we had no activity at the open house.  Will have to discuss ideas with our realtor this week, because we’ve had absolutely no activity since the last open house 2 weeks ago.  But we had a lovely afternoon.  We stayed with J^3 longer than we planned, so we didn’t keep to our cooking schedule and ended up going to JR’s for barbecue last night.  Another lovely touch to the day.  But Mommy forgot to bring Agent Murphy’s sippy cup, and I’m not sure how to go about teaching him how to drink from a straw.  We tried last night, but he ended up having to wait until we got home to drink his milk.

Mr. Tldz and I read more of Miss Betsy: A Memoir of Marriage last night, and then again this morning, as we decided to be a little bit lazy.  We had breakfast.  I went to the grocery store.  (Normally a Friday night task, but yesterday’s normal schedule, as you know, was interrupted.  On that note…  My lips aren’t really tingling.  I’ve been using a lot of lip gloss, because I think what I’m feeling now is the burning/stinging of chapped lips.  I suspect yesterday when they were a little bit numb, I kept biting or licking at them to make sure they were still there.  Shoulder is sore, but very bearable.  Pain killers a couple of times a day it seems will suffice.)  We unloaded groceries, had lunch, put Agent Murphy down for his nap, I did a little cleaning around the house.

I headed out to check our local children’s consignment store.  I got Agent Murphy a number of spring/summer items there last weekend, but the stuff for boys is always pretty slim pickings.  They said they were getting more stuff ready to put out, so I thought I’d check back today.  Hooray – several more cute items, including one I’d meant to pick up last week that we’ll hopefully be able to use for 18-month portraits.

Since I’ve returned, I’ve made most of the meal we’re delivering tomorrow to church friends who recently had a little girl.  Mr. Tldz has dessert for them (blueberry cobbler) in the oven and is working on a blueberry pie for us.  (Time to finish off our blueberries from last summer before blueberry season rolls around again.  July will be here before we know it!)

Agent Murphy is awake now, so I must go tend to him and help Mr. Tldz in the kitchen.  And there is much more cleaning to do tonight and in the morning, as our realtor is holding another open house tomorrow afternoon.

A package arrived for us from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute yesterday.  Hmm.  We hadn’t ordered anything and were perplexed as to what it might be.  It’s the newest book by our friend, Dr. Gene Genovese – Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage – sent to us “compliments of the author.”  He had mentioned a while ago that it would be coming out in the spring and that he’d get us a copy.  What a delight to receive it!  We read just a few introductory pages last night, and I think we shall enjoy it a great deal.  We miss Betsey…

Because I had absolutely nothing to do today, I spent a few hours in the ER at St. Joseph’s.  It all seems a little silly now, but…

I had some sudden onset pain around my right shoulder blade this morning.  I thought maybe I’d slept funny.  Then it moved around to hurting also in the upper right part of my chest and under my arm – muscular type pain.  And I was just feeling not quite right – a little flushed or something – just not quite right.  And then a while later my lips started tingling.  That pretty much pushed me over the edge.  I called our friend R. to see if he might be available to watch Agent Murphy if I had to go to the doctor or something.  He had his wife, C. call me to hear about my symptoms.  (She’s a pharmacist by training, so she has some medical background.)  She decided St. Joseph’s would be the best place to go.  She came over and watched Agent Murphy while R. took me to the hospital.

So I had bloodwork, IV painkiller, an EKG, and chest x-rays.  Everything came back normal, so they’re treating it as some sort of skeletal-muscular injury and prescribed pain medications.  They don’t know why my lips are tingling, but say that’s a classic symptom of hyperventilating. so it may be that because of the pain I’m breathing rather shallowly and not exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide normally.  I sure don’t feel like I’m breathing abnormally, but whatever.  My lips aren’t back to normal, but they are a little less tingly now.  The IV pain medication worked so well, that initially I thought I wouldn’t need the prescriptions.  Yeah.  On the way home I changed my mind and filled both prescriptions.  Mostly I just feel it in my shoulder now.  All very strange.  And rather scary.  I’m glad it wasn’t anything serious, like some sort of cardiac incident.  And I’m glad we have such good friends who will step up for something like this.

Mr. Tldz was able to relieve C. of Agent Murphy duty a little before 2:00 because his new boss offered to drive him home, so he didn’t have to wait until 3:00 to catch the first bus.

I’m glad to be home with my family!