Covering the interesting parts of today, I am at Big’s Chicken, recommended by a friend, and I had an expensive chicken dinner–it was OK, but I must have missed the good stuff. Next time.
Good Friday service is tonight, so I am in Beaverton until 7PM. I put on a dress shirt, no tie, and a sweater to make this work.
Before this, I was at Susie’s place, the hummingbird house in Portland (Tigard), at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116. Susie told me, at 4ish, that she did not want me to leave, so I agreed to stay a few more minutes after putting on Season 4 of M.A.S.H. for her (this is when BJ enters the show). I waited and watched the first twenty minutes of the show and then left with a kiss and a promise to return at 11ish on Saturday. Susie wants to watch a movie in her room on Saturday.
Next, I stopped by Target to get some Easter items and shopping for Susie. Jennifer gave me a list of things Susie needs (lotion, wash stuff, nail polish remover, and so on). I also found some Easter items for her and others. But, there were only three checkers, and the line took twenty minutes to reach a checker. Ugh! Then a huge truck parked me in, but at least the driver said, “I will be right there, and sorry there were no larger spots.” I will grant that Target parking spots seem non-standard (small), and he was at least polite while I waited for him to give me access to Air Volvo. But, f**k, talk about privileged people, yikes! The police drove by, but I decided not to wave them down; the nice policeperson from Tigard did not need this!
This a reminder that the rules only apply when they convenience the privileged.
Before this, I traveled from the house to Susie’s place without incident but in heavy traffic. However, I did witness some insane lane changes and interesting charging of intersections (those without cameras). I avoided unplanned contacts, and Air Volvo landed safely at the hummingbird house.
Susie was first in her chair, and we called her mother from the living room. They had a nice chat. Leta has a new issue; her hearing aid is no longer automatically switching to her phone. We managed and had a fun chat for twenty minutes or so. While Susie was talking to Leta, Jennifer gave me the shopping list for Susie (I used that for the aforementioned purchases at Target).
Jennifer then moved Susie to her room and bed, and I sat in a chair and connected to work. I followed along all afternoon and read about various crises of the moment. Our team was dealing with messy data from the sources, causing our processing to fail. Susie was happy to have me work in her room, but the screen on my laptops was too bright, and I had to turn them away from her so she could rest.
At about 3:30, I stopped and set up Susie so she could watch M.A.S.H. I watch with her for a while.
Moving back to the morning, starting even after 7AM, was hard. I am tired all day–I could close my eyes and sleep tired. The crushing sadness of yesterday has left me, at least. I am still sad and can cry easily, but I feel it has faded today.
Breakfast was liberal coffee, not too much coffee (literally not being too liberal with the ground coffee), yogurt, and a banana.
Next, I enjoyed hours of Zoom meetings on status and then had some ad hoc emergency Zoom meetings, unusual for a Friday. I was discussing how a program works and the issues we are facing while I was making Jambalaya for lunch. I had two bowls (no seafood is my style for this, just sausage, but cut length-wise, sliced into strips, and then into cubes), and put the rest away in the glassware from Glenda and Gene (thanks again).
After lunch, I headed over to Susie, as I said above.
So, sorry if the story today is not quite linear.
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