Mom ... is not so fine

So, my mother was home from rehab for less than a week and she fell. She's back in the hospital, and the current thought is she'll be having surgery on it tomorrow, then presumably back to rehab to recover from it. I hope this time Medicare lets her stay in long enough to be able to come home safely! I really blame them for deciding that she wasn't making enough progress in rehab and sending her home when she still wasn't supposed to put weight on her leg--how did they think that would go?

Deeeeeep breath. Anyway! We are hanging in there and all that, but I'm a little busy with everything, so the blog silence may continue for a while. Or I may be back tomorrow. There's really no knowing.

I'm fine!

I got home late-late last night, and didn't take a vacation day today, and Mom's coming home tomorrow, so: I'm exhausted and a little frantic. But I'm home safely, I had a great time, and I took a million pictures to show you later. Well, here's one:

Back with more when I can.

Overpromising

I admit to being a little obsessive about tracking packages when I order something. I like to follow along and see that it's making progress toward me! But let me tell you, it makes me crazy when companies overpromise on the delivery date.

I ordered something last Sunday, September 3, and as soon as they had created the label, it said it would be delivered on September 10th. On a Sunday, that's weird, I thought; but it didn't waver all week (though the tracking didn't update between leaving California and arriving in Florida).

As late as Sunday morning, it was still saying delivery date "today"--though, as it had just arrived in Jacksonville, which is the whole height of Florida away from me, I was skeptical. Sure enough, later on Sunday it noted that there was a "delay" and the date would be changed when they knew more. Mmm hmm. So complicated to figure out the whole "put it on a truck and drive south" concept, isn't it.

So this morning, that's Monday, it said it would now be delivered on Wednesday. Wednesday! Jacksonville may not be close, but it's not THAT far away. Good grief. A package leaving Jacksonville Sunday night* should be delivered on Tuesday.

*The tracking said it left Sunday night at 10:27pm. But this afternoon, it said it also left today at 12:53pm, so I honestly have no idea what's going on.

Humph. We'll see when the damned thing shows up. It's such a first world problem, I know. But I sure wish they had said Wednesday originally; I would feel very differently about the process if they had.

Two (Short/Long) Weeks

The current plan is for my mother to come home from rehab in two weeks, on September 23rd. Which is crazy to me, since she still isn't allowed to put weight on that leg, but Medicare says they're not paying for more time there, for now anyway, and I guess we'll see (a) how she is by the 23rd, (b) how she does getting around at home, and (c) what the doctor says at her appointment on the 29th.

I'm sure the two weeks will feel long to Mom, who has already been there for so long and really wants to be home, but they're going to be busy ones for me. I'm going on a long-awaited girls trip to Key West from the 18th to the 21st, so I need to get ready for that, while getting home ready for Mom, on top of all the usual nonsense of life. It's a full plate! Good things, but a lot of things! I can see I will need to employ my strategy of Just One Thing a lot in the next two weeks.

Maggie says: relax.

Who's Confused?

I noticed this in an email from Audible, and thought they had me confused with someone else:

Sports & Outdoors? Me? But then I saw this in the app:

And I realized that, yes, hockey! I had been listening to The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL recently (subtitle: The World's Most Beautiful Sport, the World's Most Ridiculous League), and that is, of course, sports (though not outdoors, these days). It's also a great book if you are or know a hockey fan, and he reads the audio himself and does a great job.

Anyway, mystery solved. On to the next one, where I saw this in the small format that Feedly gives, and thought, wait, is the OUP blog writing about knitting? Because that looks like a shawl:

And even still when I clicked on it and it was a little larger.

Alas, no, though. Here's the full web page size:

Possibly a ceiling? I still think it looks like knitting, though.

But can you trust me? I glanced in the direction of this photo:

And then did a double-take as I checked that, no, the local Walgreens doesn't carry bear spray. Well, or if they do, they aren't advertising it.

And I also looked quickly at this headline from the Publishers Weekly email:

"Amazon and Madeline McIntosh Address AI, In Their Own Ways"

And I thought, wait, Madeline Tosh? Like the yarn? In PW?

A lot of confusion here lately, is what I'm saying. Anything confused you recently?

Yarn and More Yarn (and more, and more)

I mentioned a month ago that I had bought some yarn just before Mom fell, and how nice it was to have that cheerful thing amidst all the chaos. And I also mentioned, back in July, that Blue Barn Fiber was having a pre-moving sale, with really good prices.

The sale continued through August, and the yarn shopping continued---a lot of it from Blue Barn, some from other dyers or a yarn shop sale. Turns out that having something to look forward to, in the lovely-squishy-mail sense, has been a major coping strategy for me.

So. Here's some yarn. Well, first, a sticker:

Right? Now the yarn.

This one is a long gradient, by the way; it knits up like this:

I do have one more order on the way, so there's this, too:

We Need Maggie Pictures

Other than her vet visit, I haven't put up many Maggie pictures recently, and let me tell you, that is ironic, because I am taking more than ever. Every time I visit Mom, she wants to see pictures of the baby, because she misses her, so I am being sure to take a ton. And yet you wouldn't know it here, would you?

Well, have a long weekend's worth of photos, and then if I don't get back on here for a few days, you can look at them again. Sound like a plan? Good. Here are, trust me, just a small portion of the photos I've taken recently.