A Veritable Smorgsboard

It's been so long since I've blogged that it's hard to know what to say! (Who, me? At a loss for words?) So I'm just going to bring you up-to-date on a few different things.

Footing the Bill- My acupuncture treatments are continuing to go very well. One of the benefits of my weekly sessions is that I've learned how to spell "acupuncture!" (I had always thought it had two "c's" in it. I hope I get that word in the next spelling bee I'm in!) Dr. Deborah Nixdorf (www.fghealthandfitness.com) has spent hours of non-session time researching what could be causing my peripheral neuropathy and how to treat it. We've become friends in this journey together. My foot pain is definitely lessening and I'm sleeping much better at night.

Ninety-one and Still Counting- My sweet mother-in-law, who lives in a Memory Care facility about 25 minutes from us, turned 91 this week. For her big 9-0 last year, her daughter had flown in from Wyoming and her other son from Texas. We'd had a big family celebration in the conference room of her facility. Christina and I had brought a tasty, celebratory meal from home. The room was festively decorated and we had a wonderful time together. I think my favorite part was after dinner and presents when we all continued to sit around the table and sang songs off the top of our heads. Our repertoire included songs like "Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah," to the old hymn "In the Garden" to lullabies Mother used to sing to her children. She joined right in with us and we had a precious time together. This year was different. She's still as sweet as ever, but the memory is no longer there. John and I brought in a little pastry for her to have after dinner, and we took her back to that same conference room and played part of the video tape we'd made last year. Showed her the section where we were all singing. There was no glimmer of recognition, no singing along. When I asked her who a certain person was on the tape, she thought it was her sister Ruth, when in actuality it was her daughter Judy. Her decline is very evident and we just treasure the remaining time we have with her, however long that is.

Writing Right- Christina and I have been working with great focus on the final edit of our coauthored book. For the past month we have spent hours a day going through it chapter by chapter. Editing is hard work, but fun as we do it together. By the time we quit yesterday, we had only 38 pages left to edit, and a new chapter to write. We hope to have that done by Tuesday. Then we'll spend a day or two going through and looking for words we've overused and replacing those. (Every author has pet words they rely on.) So by the end of the week we should be able to send it off to our agents, David and Sarah Van Diest, so they can send it to any editors that request the full manuscript. We've never been at that point before.