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1. Rachel is kicking rear-end in junior kindergarten. (That's my G-rated version.) She's listening during carpet time. We've had three good days this week. Keep your fingers crossed.
2. Heaven help us, I'm doing the Valentine's Day craft at school in the morning for 19 little ones. We're decorating flower pots and in lieu of a flower we're sticking a giant lollipop in the middle with a picture of the kids. I'm not very crafty. But they're only 4 and 5 years old so maybe they won't catch on that they're actually craftier than me. One more level than one.
3. The flu bug has hit our house. Oh, I kid you not. So far it's me and Jake. And my poor mom, who came back when she thought the coast was clear and wasn't prepared for another barrage of sickness. Rachel seems unscathed thus far.
4. We celebrated Rachel's 4 1/2 birthday today. We even made her a cake with 4 1/2 candles. She asked for a pink cake, and she got it. With sprinkles to boot. I did refuse to make her my last package of Sprinkles cupcakes, though. I'm saving those for Monday when I have some of the girls over.
5. A couple of other women from the Patient Advisory Committee at the Vince and I had a meeting at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center today. We proposed a host of activities and they were very open to our ideas. I am absolutely soaring from it. We could have a bona fide cancer survivors program complete with healing art classes and performance art. I love it. Plus I got to hand out five of my new calling cards. Yes, I got calling cards. Of course I needed them. For just such an occasion.
6. It's still snowing in Wisconsin. I know it's always sunny. I said it myself. And heaven knows I can last a long, long time being chipper in the winter. But this is bordering on insanity. See my sick note above. I'm sick of being sick.
7. As one of my "fix up the house" goals, I ordered a picture for over our mantle. I haven't done anything with the mantle since we put the addition on. Nothing seems quite right up there. So I'm trying something new.
8. I thought of a few more things that Jim used to do that I thought we should preserve:
- When he was sick, he used to wrap a blanket over his head like a cloak and shuffle around moaning. He swore by Comtrex and Alka Seltzer Cold.
- His all time favorite ice cream was chocolate chip. NOT mint chocolate chip. Just regular chocolate chip. It was near impossible to find. Bryers makes a good one (and the only one I could ever find), but he had to resort to Heathbar Crunch for a specialty ice cream like Ben&Jerry's.
- Jim would absolutely bury himself under the bed covers. Sometimes he'd be so far under there it would be near impossible to find him or figure out which end was up.
- Jim had a goldfish as a kid that apparently somehow jumped out of it's fishbowl. Jim found the offending fish under his bed, covered in dust but still alive. Apparently he just dumped it back in the bowl and the fish made it. At least, I think that's right. Judi - can you expound on that story? I told Rachel you might know more...
Happy Valentine's Day. Jim and I really didn't celebrate Valentine's Day. (Or our anniversary for that matter.) I always felt that we sort of lived it. Not that every day was rose petals and diamond necklaces, but that we always took care in telling the other one that we loved them or did small things for each other. I bought him chocolate chip ice cream. He put up with crazy. Okay, one of us did more for the other. Boy that ice cream was hard to find. Hee hee.
posted by Kate at 12:16 AM
1 Comments:
Kate - that's fantastic news about the Patient Advisory project! You remember when you could actually get Jim to go to Tai Chi? He felt so much better and human again when he came home. What an awesome gift to patients and their families to have a whole series of healing and wellness activities.
Ah the fish...It wasn't like it jumped out of the bowl and a day later Jim wandered into his room and found it under the bed. I believe he liked to fill the bowl with enough water to make the jumps above the rim possible, then he'd sit and watch. (He always liked the Dr. Seuss book "The Cat in the Hat" where the fish was pretty acrobatic.) From my faint memories of that event, he watched the fish jump out, flop around under the bed, and then scrambled to find him before Mom found out and hollered at him. He then watched the fish a few days to make sure it lived before telling the story. And then it was truly a "fish story," as only Jimmy could tell - that twinkle in his eyes, just enough facts and fiction to make it interesting and believable. I'm sure as the years went by the fish did sixteen flips, landed on his tail with a curtsy, and then disappeared under his bed for a week.
Alka-Seltzer Cold is THE best cold medicine. It used to have real aspirin in it (not sure if it still does) and that was the key. Our Grandmother Swayne always told us if we felt a cold coming on to take aspirin - real aspirin, not Tylenol or other products. She swore it would prevent the cold from latching on. The key being catching it before you're in a full-blown cold. But I always felt it worked and then actually read an article where they proved it.
To add to the memory preservation - When Jim was a kid he used to bury himself in the covers so his head was where his feet should be and his feet on his pillow. I'm assuming he stopped that by the time he met you! ;-)
Rachel told me on the phone Grandmommy was going to stay for 3 years. Are you planning on getting her so ill and weak, she can't leave you?! I think pretty soon Grandmommy's going to go start visiting your brothers instead!
Love - Jude
9:32 AM
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