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Another short one today. I've been getting work done all morning, and I actually meant to! Also, there's not a hell of a lot to catch you up on anyway. I did run several errands with Shobhit as soon as I finished work yesterday; he had an earlier shift at Total Wine & More, getting off at 4:15, allowing him to get to the condo building right at 4:30 when I finished. I went downstairs to meet him. Then I had to go back upstairs again because I spaced that he was going to drive me to the office to swap out receiving paperwork. Then I went down yet again to get in the car.

First though, we went to the Central District PCC store, which had opened on Friday. We needed to buy some cat food and some tea, and we wound up getting three different things from the Deli section to eat as our dinner while we were driving around: a slice of pizza, a panini sandwich, and a tortilla wrap.

We drove from there to the Bartell Drugs on Union & Broadway, where I used my FSA card to pay for his new pair of reading glasses, as his other pair broke at work the previous day. Then we drove to the PCC Central Office. Shobhit wanted to go to the Trader Joe's in Ballard, just to get asparagus, which I thought was ridiculous. The Capitol Hill Trader Joe's is "closed indefinitely"—that being a long and complicated story, possibly tied to employee involvement in Black Lives Matter protests—so he chose the Ballard location right by that neighborhood's PCC instead. I suggested he do that on his own while I was in the office instead of just waiting for me, to be more efficient.

Apparently there's a Trader Joe's on Lower Queen Anne, so he wound up going to that one instead. He was back within ten minutes of my being done in the office, and I waited outside the building for him to pick me up.

Once we got home and put things away, I made chai, totally forgetting to put mint in it—dammit!—and then we watched three episodes of Ozark. Only one episode left!

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Also, heads up! There won't be another standard DLU after this until Wednesday next week. There may not be a post of any kind—well, I suppose in all likelihood I will post links to a photo set from our weekend trip after we get back on Tuesday evening. In any case, we leave for Long Beach, WA on Sunday. Two nights, and we'll stop by Dad and Sherri's for a little visit on our way there. We may also stop by Gabriel and Lea's new house on our way back on Tuesday, but that part really depends on how settled in they are in their brand new house in Federal Way. In either case it will have to be an outdoor visit behind the house, on a patio.

In any case, I am super looking forward to this. I only realized recently that it has been a long time since I last went to the Washington Coast in particular: not since 2009, when I was there for a family reunion. Shobhit didn't even go to that as he had play performances in Seattle that weekend. This means his last trip to the Washington Coast was when we took Nikki there in 2008.

Amazingly, even our anniversary trip to Lincoln City, on the Oregon Coast, was in 2015. Five years ago! Time goes by so fast it's stunning. In a way, that's one source of comfort, in that really before we know it, this mess of 2020 will be well behind us. Making way for new messes of course, but whatever.

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Oh. And I can't forget this part: Christopher called me yesterday. My brother and I have no real casual phone rapport and haven't for years—maybe ever, really—so if I see his name on the caller ID on my phone, I know it's not likely to be great news. So, he let me know Mom was in the hospital again. I guess she started slurring her speech again, and he kind of made it sound like Mary, her caregiver, got her to the ER before Christopher even woke up yesterday morning. Did she even try to wake him? I didn't think to ask him that.

She's now in the ICU at Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene, for how long I'm not sure. I may call them direct after work today to try and find out. All I know is that, according to Christopher, he is stable and okay, but because she has fluid in her lungs and her blood pressure and oxygen levels are too low, they are keeping her there for monitoring for now, just to make sure she’s okay.

Remember, she had a stroke in 2014 and has had several episodes like this, including hospitalizations, in the intervening time. It doesn’t sound like it’s a dire situation at present, so I’m not super worried just yet, aside from this episode being in the time of COVID. I just hate the idea of her being in a hospital right now in particular. Even without COVID, and the fact that Mom's stroke was six years ago now, I do get occasional bursts of anxiety whenever something like this happens. She will likely be fine and get sent back home like always, but there's no denying the fact that one of these times this happens, it won't be so okay. I kind of spend a lot of time actively not trying to think about that inevitability.

Hopefully they let her go back home soon.

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[posted 12:44 pm]