We left Friday morning, together, to take Frisco to boarding. On the way out I used the flash to take a picture of newly emerged buds (it's spring!). We got to the boarding place just before 8, but several "Dog of the Day" dogs were already waiting with the people for us.
After work we drove to the airport and took Delta Airlines flights through Memphis to Tallahassee. Stephanie and I last flew together back on the way back from Vegas.
We picked up a rental car and drove to Mom's retirement center. We'd only seen her new apartment when it was empty, before she was close to moving in. Either Friday night or Saturday morning Mom showed Stephanie her room.
This one walk-in closet - and a smaller one in her entry way - replaced Mom's four or five closets in her house.
While Mom went to an AAUW event, Stephanie and I then went to her house, where our friend Andrew was to meet us. We looked around at what was left after Mom and Penny and the movers and Penny's friend Lemae and her Coalition for the Homeless colleagues had gone through it (and after a burglar had apparently cleaned out some items in the garage).
This is the "blue bedroom" where Stephanie lived for two years and she and I for part of a year (and Serge and Penny at other times). It was originally a guest bedroom.
Across the hall was Penny's bedroom, where Vincent lived for two years and where Penny, Serge, and Jacob had all stayed during Christmas break 2 1/2 months before.
In the back of the house are Mom's bathroom and bedroom.
Also in the back is Mom's computer room, which was originally my bedroom (with the 1970s drapes originally paired with black and white dressers (now on our 2nd floor in Louisville), a black beanbag chair, and red carpet in the house we lived in Tallahassee before this house - where Stephanie first started vacuuming (baseboards, walls, and ceilings, too!).
Saturday morning - after walking on a retirement center trail and visiting with Mom - we stopped at the nearest local version of Tropical Smoothie Cafe, a small chain we disocvered back in December in Tallahassee.
While Mom went to an AAUW event, Stephanie and I then went to her house, where our friend Andrew was to meet us. We looked around at what was left after Mom and Penny and the movers and Penny's friend Lemae and her Coalition for the Homeless colleagues had gone through it (and after a burglar had apparently cleaned out some items in the garage).
This is the "blue bedroom" where Stephanie lived for two years and she and I for part of a year (and Serge and Penny at other times). It was originally a guest bedroom.
Across the hall was Penny's bedroom, where Vincent lived for two years and where Penny, Serge, and Jacob had all stayed during Christmas break 2 1/2 months before.
In the back of the house are Mom's bathroom and bedroom.
Also in the back is Mom's computer room, which was originally my bedroom (with the 1970s drapes originally paired with black and white dressers (now on our 2nd floor in Louisville), a black beanbag chair, and red carpet in the house we lived in Tallahassee before this house - where Stephanie first started vacuuming (baseboards, walls, and ceilings, too!).
This is the family room, with a pile of stuff to go to Goodwill at far left, looking into the kitchen. Before Mom moved her TV would have been in the middle of the picture.
Here's the little alcove part of the kitchen, with the door leading out to the side yard with trash and recycling, which Mom couldn't navigate a year or two ago - maybe an early sign of her challenges. The alcove was once full of plants and shelves with books. There is still one plant.
The realtor suggested we have all of these kitchen cabinets painted white and the handles replaced, but there ended up being a debate about this (now settled).
Here's the dining room/kitchen eating area, with the "new" ktichen table (as Mom statted to switch from 1970s green and brown, to white), which I've never liked, and the light fixture that one of my Mom's choirmates and her boyfirend installed a year and a half ago, which the realtor said to keep.
This is looking down the hallway past the bedroom doors into the bathroom. About a year ago the contractors who were about to start working on the house did some other things for Mom, including painting the halllway walls. Mom and they misconmmunicated and they took all of the family pictures that Mom had on both hallways walls down and did not put them back up. But then Mom held off on having us put them back up, which turned out to b e a good move. After I left - with some input from Stephanie - Mom had a few pictures - including some of these - put up around her new apartment.
This is the living room. Neither Penny and Serge nor the Coalition for the Homeless wanted either of Mom's couches or her brown corduroy chairs. Mom thought about taking the chairs but decided there would not be room. The chairs - again - were rather "new" additions to the house. The love seat once went with a bigger sofa, at our last house in Gainesville - where we got them from Scan Design. The sofa bed in the family room hasn't really showed up in a picture yet. Mom hasn't been able to sit in any of these for a good while, since she can't get up out of them.
There's the sofa bed on the far left of the picture below.
Here's the doggie staircase they had gotten for one of their Boston terriers who needs it to get up to the sofa in the family room.
Here is one of Andrew and Jan's "new" dogs. When we used to house sit for them, Tina and Tatum would sleep in the bed with us and Frisco. It got a little crowded. We can no longer tell these twins apart.
Below we're out in the backyard between the hot tub and the swimming pool.
We drove from Andrew and Jane's north up Thomasville Road to Water Oak Plantation Road, then drove on a bunch of dirt roads past a big old house overlooking a lake to the servants' quarters or boathouse or whatever it was, where the evening informal dinner - Day 2 of the Florida Flambeau reunion - The Flambeau was a five times a week paper with a press run of about 21,000. It was originally the student newspaper at Florida State University - which, importantly, had no journalism school - but was kicked off campus around 1970 for running abortion information and editorializing against the administration - or something like that. A fixture of the progressive community on campus and in the community, it fell victim to the downslide of hte newspaper industry, decades of right-wing attacks, and a few too many attacks on the cmapus Greek community, when it wass essentially bought out by a new competitor, after the mainstream corporate paper in town - which we always viewed as the competition - refused to print any more copies of the "Flam" unless it paid its bills. I worked at the "Flam" off and on between 1980 and 1989, and still have great friends from my years there. In 1986 I worked there from 9 in the morning until 11 at night - 5 1/2 days a week - and made $6,000 for the whole year. It was the best job I've ever had. Somehow it seemed apropos that it was quite an odyssey to get back to the reunion (which was essentially set up as a class reunion - featuring people who had been on the news or production staffs mainly in the 1970s and 1980s).
This one was particularly incongruous. We're still not back there yet. Guiding our way were large late 1980s cardboard cutouts of "Mr. Stupid, " a cartoon character who appeared in the "Flam" in the 1980s. Its creator, Bill Otersen, was actually in NYC part of the time I was there. Many hip or ambitious people in Taallahssee back then either wished Tallahassee would become Athends, Georgia, or Austin, Texas, or wanted to be in Atlanta or NYC. Some of them moved to one or the other. Indeed, Moni (who works for CNN), David (for whom Stephanie, Vincent, and I house-sat for in New Orleans before Katrina ran him out), and Eileen came from Atlanta for the reunion, and Moline came from NYC. Steve had just moved back to Tallahassee from NYC. While in NYC, Bill crafted designs for T-shirts (as he was unable to sell "Mr. Stupid" to publications there), but he chemicals he encountered in the garment district finally drove him home. As with any class reunion, you meet people you never knew (like the very nice Leon County commissioner Stepahnie and I spoke with - whose time on the commission has been recent eough that I never covered him) and talked with other people (without mentioning names) who you knew and liked but had completely forgotten about. I don't think I ran into any people who fall into the other class reunion category: As I said after my 10-year high class reunion: I had forgotten how much I hated some of these people. By the way: That's righit - that's Mr. Stupid, in a bikini, in front of some (real) sheep.
Stephanie and I finally arrived! Below is John Lowndes, who was the last "Flam" news editors I worked with. He's a county attorney in the Orlando area.
Here's Danni Vogt, who at one point was a lawyer in Tallahassee, Andrew and I had reminisced a few minutes about the time Danni tried frying a bar of soap at one of the four legendary parties we had at our rented, off-campus house in 1981-82 (during one of my two long "Flam" runs) - all four parties with diverse attendees and four broken up by the police. David asked Danni to leave. Several years later I turned down an offer of help from Danni - one of two mistakes I made writing one of the better - and personally scariest - "Flam" pieces I wrote - this one about conditions at the country jail.
Below - talking with Danni - is Diane Roberts (formerly "D.K.") - host of our Sunday morning event - another legendary "Flam" writer - now a Florida State University English professor and regular National Public radio commentator. Diane has written a book about Florida (as I have).
Here's Michael Moline - who had helped us move stuff into Mom's storage space back in December - my boss/editor twice - at the "Flam" and then briefly during my post-"Flam" Tallahassee stint with the now defunct United Press Internatoinal. I've visited him twice in San Francisco - but last time it turned out that he'd moved to NYC (and I didn't know he was there when I was last in NYC - Facebook has cleared all of this up). He edits a national legal newspaper and lives in (Brooklyn's) Park Slope (until recently with Dollar) - not too far from where I lived with Tony. A runner before I knew him, he was a chain smoker when I worked with him - and once irritated then Senate candidate Jim Crews by lighting up during a candidate interview in the old "Flam" office - but then quit (but apparently has gone back).
Louis worked in the "Flam" production office during the 1980s.
The Saturfday night event was set in this old servants' quarters house off the lake - with plenty of pictures of "Flam" people from the 1970s and 1980s - mainly in black and white - and a video of other still pictures - like a wedding anniversary or funeral video - many from former "Flam" photographer Bob O'Lary. There was also a great buffet dinner, a fireplace, and music from a Jimmy Buffett-like folk singer, Dell Suggs, who chaired the "Flam" board for several years. We talked with but did not get a picture of some of the people who cooked and served the food - including a Presbyterian pastor from nearby Havana, FL, and one of his parishioners, whom he had married. Below are several former "Flam" greats posing: Eileen from Atlanta, Mark (a longtime feature writer for Tallahassee's mainstream paper), Steve (whose wife helped organize the event), Diane, and Jack, a former "Flam" production director who is now good friends with Andrew.
We went home pretty early (some folks stayed out until 1 a.m. and then headed to a bar near my Mom's retirement center). For the second night in a row, we drovce into Mom's by night gated commnity but managed to get through there when the gate was not down (there's a shift change around 11 p.m. and the gate is apparently open for about half an hour). In the morning we got up early enough to join our old Sunday school class (First Presbyterian's Faith and Families). We're always late, and this time we were almost on time - and we were the first tog et there!
We skipped worship to go to the third and final reunion event - brunch - with mimosas! - at Diane's cute (but cold) 1920s house, one house away from the old Leon High School (my alma mater) gym!
Here's a mediocre picture of Moni, my former editor, who has done tours as a journalist in Iraq and Haiti. She was slated to head back to Haiti soon and then on to Afghanistan. This is one of the "Flam" Atlanta people I may see if I go to the sociology meetings there in August. - if they're in town! Long ago I visited Moni there.
Here's the brunch buffet table - we ate everything up fast - with Diane's mother in the background. Diane is from an Old Tallahassee familiy - the law school building is named for her grandfather I believe - and she was a radical!
Away we go at the food. There were more people at this event whom I didn't really remember - until I thought about it.
Likewise Christine. Chrsitine and Gary are one of the couples I know where I knew both of them before they got married or even dated. Both are essentially free-lance writers. I talked with Gary about their kids, who went to preschool at the same private school where Vicnent went to grade school, but are now in school at the Catholic school just down the street from Diane's house.
Monday we went back to the house to meet Goodwill staff. Here's a head-on picture of the sofe bed, with some other Goodwill items on and around it.
You're heard of the last supper (we just celebrated it Thursday night). This is the last lunch, with food and drink (although we were one short) (of course) from Tropical Smoothie - on the white table, which even if I hated it was nice to have there.
I took a picture from the street of the front of the house. Love all of those tall pine trees and all of that green!
In the middle of that picture above are Mom's prized azalea bushes (Stephanie noticed just one was dead). Below is a close-up of one of them.
Here's the little alcove part of the kitchen, with the door leading out to the side yard with trash and recycling, which Mom couldn't navigate a year or two ago - maybe an early sign of her challenges. The alcove was once full of plants and shelves with books. There is still one plant.
The realtor suggested we have all of these kitchen cabinets painted white and the handles replaced, but there ended up being a debate about this (now settled).
Here's the dining room/kitchen eating area, with the "new" ktichen table (as Mom statted to switch from 1970s green and brown, to white), which I've never liked, and the light fixture that one of my Mom's choirmates and her boyfirend installed a year and a half ago, which the realtor said to keep.
In the family room looking out the sliding glass doors to the back yard. You might recall that the realtor also suggested getting rid of all of the draperies and curtian rods, opening up the house to more natural light, and installing faux wood blinds.
This is looking down the hallway past the bedroom doors into the bathroom. About a year ago the contractors who were about to start working on the house did some other things for Mom, including painting the halllway walls. Mom and they misconmmunicated and they took all of the family pictures that Mom had on both hallways walls down and did not put them back up. But then Mom held off on having us put them back up, which turned out to b e a good move. After I left - with some input from Stephanie - Mom had a few pictures - including some of these - put up around her new apartment.
This is the living room. Neither Penny and Serge nor the Coalition for the Homeless wanted either of Mom's couches or her brown corduroy chairs. Mom thought about taking the chairs but decided there would not be room. The chairs - again - were rather "new" additions to the house. The love seat once went with a bigger sofa, at our last house in Gainesville - where we got them from Scan Design. The sofa bed in the family room hasn't really showed up in a picture yet. Mom hasn't been able to sit in any of these for a good while, since she can't get up out of them.
There's the sofa bed on the far left of the picture below.
Andrew turned up at the house, and we packed reclycing into his truck. We stopped at the storage space and switched Mom's winter clothes (which we had in the rented car) with some spring and summer clothes, and then went out to the land fill to recycle hazardous materials and cardboard recycling. For the second time in a few months, I failed to take any pictures of the person who helped us at storage (last time it was Michael Moline). Thankfully, I've got both Andrew and Moline pictures coming up in a little while. After Andrew and we subdivided, Stephanie went to a favorite Tallahassee resturant, San Miguel's.
A few hours later - on the way to the Saturday night phase of the Flambeau reunion - we stopped at Andrew and Jan's. Here's Jan in their family room.
Here's the doggie staircase they had gotten for one of their Boston terriers who needs it to get up to the sofa in the family room.
Here is one of Andrew and Jan's "new" dogs. When we used to house sit for them, Tina and Tatum would sleep in the bed with us and Frisco. It got a little crowded. We can no longer tell these twins apart.
Below we're out in the backyard between the hot tub and the swimming pool.
We drove from Andrew and Jane's north up Thomasville Road to Water Oak Plantation Road, then drove on a bunch of dirt roads past a big old house overlooking a lake to the servants' quarters or boathouse or whatever it was, where the evening informal dinner - Day 2 of the Florida Flambeau reunion - The Flambeau was a five times a week paper with a press run of about 21,000. It was originally the student newspaper at Florida State University - which, importantly, had no journalism school - but was kicked off campus around 1970 for running abortion information and editorializing against the administration - or something like that. A fixture of the progressive community on campus and in the community, it fell victim to the downslide of hte newspaper industry, decades of right-wing attacks, and a few too many attacks on the cmapus Greek community, when it wass essentially bought out by a new competitor, after the mainstream corporate paper in town - which we always viewed as the competition - refused to print any more copies of the "Flam" unless it paid its bills. I worked at the "Flam" off and on between 1980 and 1989, and still have great friends from my years there. In 1986 I worked there from 9 in the morning until 11 at night - 5 1/2 days a week - and made $6,000 for the whole year. It was the best job I've ever had. Somehow it seemed apropos that it was quite an odyssey to get back to the reunion (which was essentially set up as a class reunion - featuring people who had been on the news or production staffs mainly in the 1970s and 1980s).
This one was particularly incongruous. We're still not back there yet. Guiding our way were large late 1980s cardboard cutouts of "Mr. Stupid, " a cartoon character who appeared in the "Flam" in the 1980s. Its creator, Bill Otersen, was actually in NYC part of the time I was there. Many hip or ambitious people in Taallahssee back then either wished Tallahassee would become Athends, Georgia, or Austin, Texas, or wanted to be in Atlanta or NYC. Some of them moved to one or the other. Indeed, Moni (who works for CNN), David (for whom Stephanie, Vincent, and I house-sat for in New Orleans before Katrina ran him out), and Eileen came from Atlanta for the reunion, and Moline came from NYC. Steve had just moved back to Tallahassee from NYC. While in NYC, Bill crafted designs for T-shirts (as he was unable to sell "Mr. Stupid" to publications there), but he chemicals he encountered in the garment district finally drove him home. As with any class reunion, you meet people you never knew (like the very nice Leon County commissioner Stepahnie and I spoke with - whose time on the commission has been recent eough that I never covered him) and talked with other people (without mentioning names) who you knew and liked but had completely forgotten about. I don't think I ran into any people who fall into the other class reunion category: As I said after my 10-year high class reunion: I had forgotten how much I hated some of these people. By the way: That's righit - that's Mr. Stupid, in a bikini, in front of some (real) sheep.
Stephanie and I finally arrived! Below is John Lowndes, who was the last "Flam" news editors I worked with. He's a county attorney in the Orlando area.
Here's Danni Vogt, who at one point was a lawyer in Tallahassee, Andrew and I had reminisced a few minutes about the time Danni tried frying a bar of soap at one of the four legendary parties we had at our rented, off-campus house in 1981-82 (during one of my two long "Flam" runs) - all four parties with diverse attendees and four broken up by the police. David asked Danni to leave. Several years later I turned down an offer of help from Danni - one of two mistakes I made writing one of the better - and personally scariest - "Flam" pieces I wrote - this one about conditions at the country jail.
Below - talking with Danni - is Diane Roberts (formerly "D.K.") - host of our Sunday morning event - another legendary "Flam" writer - now a Florida State University English professor and regular National Public radio commentator. Diane has written a book about Florida (as I have).
Here's Michael Moline - who had helped us move stuff into Mom's storage space back in December - my boss/editor twice - at the "Flam" and then briefly during my post-"Flam" Tallahassee stint with the now defunct United Press Internatoinal. I've visited him twice in San Francisco - but last time it turned out that he'd moved to NYC (and I didn't know he was there when I was last in NYC - Facebook has cleared all of this up). He edits a national legal newspaper and lives in (Brooklyn's) Park Slope (until recently with Dollar) - not too far from where I lived with Tony. A runner before I knew him, he was a chain smoker when I worked with him - and once irritated then Senate candidate Jim Crews by lighting up during a candidate interview in the old "Flam" office - but then quit (but apparently has gone back).
Louis worked in the "Flam" production office during the 1980s.
The Saturfday night event was set in this old servants' quarters house off the lake - with plenty of pictures of "Flam" people from the 1970s and 1980s - mainly in black and white - and a video of other still pictures - like a wedding anniversary or funeral video - many from former "Flam" photographer Bob O'Lary. There was also a great buffet dinner, a fireplace, and music from a Jimmy Buffett-like folk singer, Dell Suggs, who chaired the "Flam" board for several years. We talked with but did not get a picture of some of the people who cooked and served the food - including a Presbyterian pastor from nearby Havana, FL, and one of his parishioners, whom he had married. Below are several former "Flam" greats posing: Eileen from Atlanta, Mark (a longtime feature writer for Tallahassee's mainstream paper), Steve (whose wife helped organize the event), Diane, and Jack, a former "Flam" production director who is now good friends with Andrew.
We went home pretty early (some folks stayed out until 1 a.m. and then headed to a bar near my Mom's retirement center). For the second night in a row, we drovce into Mom's by night gated commnity but managed to get through there when the gate was not down (there's a shift change around 11 p.m. and the gate is apparently open for about half an hour). In the morning we got up early enough to join our old Sunday school class (First Presbyterian's Faith and Families). We're always late, and this time we were almost on time - and we were the first tog et there!
We skipped worship to go to the third and final reunion event - brunch - with mimosas! - at Diane's cute (but cold) 1920s house, one house away from the old Leon High School (my alma mater) gym!
Here's a mediocre picture of Moni, my former editor, who has done tours as a journalist in Iraq and Haiti. She was slated to head back to Haiti soon and then on to Afghanistan. This is one of the "Flam" Atlanta people I may see if I go to the sociology meetings there in August. - if they're in town! Long ago I visited Moni there.
Here's the brunch buffet table - we ate everything up fast - with Diane's mother in the background. Diane is from an Old Tallahassee familiy - the law school building is named for her grandfather I believe - and she was a radical!
Away we go at the food. There were more people at this event whom I didn't really remember - until I thought about it.
Jack I do remember.
Likewise Christine. Chrsitine and Gary are one of the couples I know where I knew both of them before they got married or even dated. Both are essentially free-lance writers. I talked with Gary about their kids, who went to preschool at the same private school where Vicnent went to grade school, but are now in school at the Catholic school just down the street from Diane's house.
That's it for reunion photos! As we talked with Mom about whether to make any changes in teh way her apartment was laid out, Monday visited our friend Dee, who lives a couple of floors above Mom at the retirement center. Dee has a studio apartment.
Monday we went back to the house to meet Goodwill staff. Here's a head-on picture of the sofe bed, with some other Goodwill items on and around it.
You're heard of the last supper (we just celebrated it Thursday night). This is the last lunch, with food and drink (although we were one short) (of course) from Tropical Smoothie - on the white table, which even if I hated it was nice to have there.
I took a picture from the street of the front of the house. Love all of those tall pine trees and all of that green!
In the middle of that picture above are Mom's prized azalea bushes (Stephanie noticed just one was dead). Below is a close-up of one of them.
The Goodwill staff took a bunch of small stuff and then the big furniture that was still there (like the two sofas).
Gary and Christine weren't able to see us, becuase one of their children was sick. So we walked around Lake Ella, Tallahassee's midtown pond. (Below is one of the houses that line the street that circles the lake - Love those tall like oak trees!)
We stopped at the Black Dog Cafe, along the lake (which I'd never been to), and our friend Brant ended up meeting us there and we talked for a couple of hours. 
Tuesday we were back at Mom's house, meeting her former and now again contractors, who were going to be followig through on the realtor's suggestions. The contractors were Cindy, who grew up in an Amish family, and Scott, and their two sons whom they and one of the grandmothers home school. Below - standing on Mom's relatively new asphalt driveway - are Stephanie and Cindy.
Scott stood in the front yard.
Back at the retirement center for Mom's therapy appointments and dinner, we took a picture of a picture of Mom posted along with pictures of other new residents, along with a little bio.
She also did various leg lifts.
This is an exercise she started doing with an earlier specialist, trying to keep her back straight standing against the wall.
An interesting exercise Mom did with the physical therapist, with whom she spent another hour, was bouncing a ball/balloon back and forth. Stephanie remembered Mom doing something similar with Vincent, back when Stephanie and he lived with her, when it was easier for her. I've got this on video too. I imagine this is for both balance and agility.
Mom ended up in PT with her leg being warmed. This reminded me more of some of the things I've done in PT. I was in therapy for some 15-18 months in NYC and Albany, after I got hit in the knee by a car in Manhattan, and then off and on twice in Louisville after I sustained a back/shoulder/neck energy in Michigan. (Back in Tallahassee) the therapist finally got annoyed at me for taking pictures. We'd BEEN annoying Mom, who said she'd prefer that we sit near the door, so we wouldn't embarrass her. The therapists are the ones who first diagnosed Mom's Parkinson's, and hinted to the doctor that's what she might have. They also have more influence over the retirement center's overall policies, and first recommended Mom use a more flimsy (and easier to use) walker than she wanted to. Now that they relented and recommended her for a more heavy duty one, they've ask that she not use until they train her in its use (and - implicitly - until they decide whether it's safe for her to use).
Gary and Christine weren't able to see us, becuase one of their children was sick. So we walked around Lake Ella, Tallahassee's midtown pond. (Below is one of the houses that line the street that circles the lake - Love those tall like oak trees!)
We stopped at the Black Dog Cafe, along the lake (which I'd never been to), and our friend Brant ended up meeting us there and we talked for a couple of hours.
Brant is one of two or three high school friends I've kept in best touch with. He lives on the south side of town, near the airportk, with several companion animals. Back at the retirement center, here's a look inside Mom's front door
.
Tuesday we were back at Mom's house, meeting her former and now again contractors, who were going to be followig through on the realtor's suggestions. The contractors were Cindy, who grew up in an Amish family, and Scott, and their two sons whom they and one of the grandmothers home school. Below - standing on Mom's relatively new asphalt driveway - are Stephanie and Cindy.
Scott stood in the front yard.
Before we left, I took one more walk through and around the house - there was a remote chance Mom will somehow sell the house before I get back there. On my way through the back yard I greeted Sawyer - who ran away there in November 1999 - and paid tribute to one of our frogs, buried back there. I also took a picture of the magnolia tree whose tree fort we tore down long before Vincent moved there.
Back at the retirement center for Mom's therapy appointments and dinner, we took a picture of a picture of Mom posted along with pictures of other new residents, along with a little bio.
Starting on Tuesday with an hour of occupational therapy first, Mom worked on a kind of silly putty to strengthen her hands and fingers, affected by arthritis.
She also did various leg lifts.
This is an exercise she started doing with an earlier specialist, trying to keep her back straight standing against the wall.
An interesting exercise Mom did with the physical therapist, with whom she spent another hour, was bouncing a ball/balloon back and forth. Stephanie remembered Mom doing something similar with Vincent, back when Stephanie and he lived with her, when it was easier for her. I've got this on video too. I imagine this is for both balance and agility.
Mom ended up in PT with her leg being warmed. This reminded me more of some of the things I've done in PT. I was in therapy for some 15-18 months in NYC and Albany, after I got hit in the knee by a car in Manhattan, and then off and on twice in Louisville after I sustained a back/shoulder/neck energy in Michigan. (Back in Tallahassee) the therapist finally got annoyed at me for taking pictures. We'd BEEN annoying Mom, who said she'd prefer that we sit near the door, so we wouldn't embarrass her. The therapists are the ones who first diagnosed Mom's Parkinson's, and hinted to the doctor that's what she might have. They also have more influence over the retirement center's overall policies, and first recommended Mom use a more flimsy (and easier to use) walker than she wanted to. Now that they relented and recommended her for a more heavy duty one, they've ask that she not use until they train her in its use (and - implicitly - until they decide whether it's safe for her to use).
Next we went straight to the dining room, where we to meet a couple that helped Mom get into the retirement center, when the marketing peopel were taking forever to get back with her. Dinner has been a bit of a challenge for Mom. She was unsure about dining from the start. Many of her friends from before either eat their one meal at the dining hall per day at lunch, or live in a house or villa and cook for themselves. Mom somtimes goes to dinner late and eats by herself. Many dinner people go very early - even at 4:30 - a time that Mom - all the more so when she's working - finds too early. It's not easy to break into long-time groupings of diners, and some of them Mom finds more interesting than others. A couple she enjoyed meeting a couple of weeks before we were there weren't there one day - It turns out the man had died, and now the woman has fallen. It reminds me a little of me trying to break into the lunchroom in high school. Mom also isn't necessarily inclined to sit and talk for hours, all the more so when she figures she has stuff home she can do. Mom has started to go to a Monday evening music program that a woman from our church organizes.
Here's a view of Stephanie on Mom's computer in Mom's living room - most of which is a home office.
Instead of getting a new but much smaller dining room table, Mom has found it more convenient to eat at a little tray table that she can move around easily. She gets up by leaning on the chair, that doesn't move so easily.
I left late Wednesday morning, met Stephanie and Mom at the storage space where they picked up some more spring clothes (not as many there as she thought there would be, because she has Goodwill-ed so many), then picked up lunch at (you guessed it) Tropical Smoothie. My flight got to Louisville a couple of minutes early, and I needed every minute I could get. I drove across town to the boarding place, and got there with 15 minues to spare to pick up Frisco. We walked around the hotel where we have exercise. swimming privileges.
I dropped Frisco off at home and then got to a church board (session) meeting just five minutes late.
Here's a view of Stephanie on Mom's computer in Mom's living room - most of which is a home office.
Instead of getting a new but much smaller dining room table, Mom has found it more convenient to eat at a little tray table that she can move around easily. She gets up by leaning on the chair, that doesn't move so easily.
I left late Wednesday morning, met Stephanie and Mom at the storage space where they picked up some more spring clothes (not as many there as she thought there would be, because she has Goodwill-ed so many), then picked up lunch at (you guessed it) Tropical Smoothie. My flight got to Louisville a couple of minutes early, and I needed every minute I could get. I drove across town to the boarding place, and got there with 15 minues to spare to pick up Frisco. We walked around the hotel where we have exercise. swimming privileges.
I dropped Frisco off at home and then got to a church board (session) meeting just five minutes late.
-- Perry
