"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

Looking through journal entries from 2007, I see that I had planned a trip to Edinburgh just before my dad fell ill. I had totally forgotten that! I think that makes three trips to Scotland now that I've planned and then cancelled for one reason or another. That's almost as many as I've taken (five), a rather horrifying statistic.

I forgot to mention yesterday that when I came out the front door there was a pileated woodpecker in a tree outside the house, who flew across the street and the stream into the park on the other side. Handsome fellow! It was very springlike with the number of birds flitting about and singing.

It was not at all springlike today. It was snowing when I came out to go to work...

I talked to my sister this morning. She talked to the doctor late last night/early this morning, and his diagnosis is that he is fairly sure mum has congestive heart failure (he had been hoping it was "just" pneumonia on top of the bronchitis). He's emphasizing that if (*if*) he can get her stabilised in the next day or two, it's still a matter of weeks or months, maybe a year tops, rather than something to recover from.

N and I had a very nice time at my mother's. ( Read more... )

soccer_fox and I went to hear Ellis Paul on Friday night; he did a wonderful concert! Then we went down to my mum's on Saturday and came back yesterday. In between, we helped do a little more clearing of the mass of detritus that my dad left behind, did a few odds and ends of tasks for my mum, and took her out to dinner at her favourite restaurant. We also drove up to Williamsburg and spent an hour or two wandering around the British Army encampment that was the focus of their annual "Under the Red Coat" event. john_arundel has a great summary of the event in his journal!

I heard that my niece Sarah is off to graduate school in Wales, that my sister Victoria is thinking of moving out to New Mexico, and that my sister Cornelia and her partner have been taking their dachshund around to pet adoption fairs in hopes of finding a dog he will like to adopt so as to assuage his separation anxiety following the death of their other hound. Of course, since it's them, the one it sounds as if they have settled on has multiple chronic physical and mental health problems...

Traffic was awful going down, not too bad coming back. We talked a lot in the car, making plans and discussing all sorts of random topics: friends, public policy, books...

After we got home, we walked over to the county library (as opposed to the town library) and I got a card and we checked out books and CDs, then walked back through the park. The far end of the path runs past a number of migrant labor dormitories apartment blocks patronized by young Latino men, some of whom heckled us and shouted sexual innuendos at us as we walked past. Nice. Classy. We had dinner (NJS made a delicious salad with bacon and mushrooms and spring onions) and watched "Hear My Song", a movie I love that she had not seen before. The weather was lovely--cool and breezy evening following a warm but not humid day.

I'm feeling very out of sorts. The weekend was nice, and I was really happy most of the time. But at some point last night a great funk settled on me, and I don't quite know how to shift it. Work seems depressing and boring, nothing seems very happy and cheerful; I just feel like crawling into a hole and pulling it in after me. Not good. Hopefully I will snap out of it as suddenly and mysteriously as I snapped into it.

My mother's sister died Sunday. As my mum said, "It wasn't very much of a surprise; she'd made her mind up that that's what was going to happen." They hadn't been in touch for a fair while, I think, after my aunt got a bit hermity and then went into a nursing home. But it's got to feel a bit lonely to be without your parents, your partner, and your only sibling. I called and talked to mum right away; she seems to be OK, and some of her friends had her over for dinner just last night. But I will feel better after soccer_fox and I have a chance to go spend a weekend with her and see how she's getting on.