I'm Here

I love staying with my parents. Life here and in their home is at it should be: slow and simple. This morning after sleeping in and reading a few chapters of "The Help" (I will NOT see the movie until I've read the book--thanks, Jen, for lending it to me!), I did the Jillian Michaels workout DVD that I brought along (Progresso soup for weights) while my mom was in the kitchen sauteing garlic and onion to start her own version of an Olive Garden soup. It's been a wonderful visit so far. 

I'm sitting outside the Panera at the Coralville Mall where I've been a thousand times with Brandon and the kids when we lived here in Iowa City. The familiar smell of this food court (coffee, stir-fry, and plastic) almost makes me feel like Brandon is still in med school and I should be pushing a double stroller over to the children's museum. My parents don't have wifi so I brought my computer here so I could get this picture 

off of my computer and over to Walgreens for pick up today before we go see Christina again. I've got her daughter and my niece, Suzanne, getting her hair done at Regis while I run my errands: a CD player for Christina to listen to her gospel music and the 80's CD I burned for her last night (.38 Special, Asia, Boston, Fleetwood Mac, among others) and a chocolate Butterfinger malt from Whitey's to take up in a cooler. She loves Whitey's. (Doesn't everyone in the QC area?)

We went to the nursing home for about 3 hours yesterday where I fed Christina taco pizza from Casey's (her request--another favorite) and assured her she was just preparing to be her children's guardian angels. I got her to respond to quite a few things, even slowly slapping my hand at one point when I kept trying to give her the hand massage she didn't want. (I'm laughing because that's a good thing.) I only broke down a little bit once when I was reading her the letters my kids sent with me. I had to bite my tongue really hard quite a few times as well as pinch my arm under the bed so I wouldn't break down. (I'm biting it again as I sit here in the middle of the crowded food court.) My parents and her kids were there with me, and I could tell this was an unusually upbeat visit so I kept up my happy chatter and felt it was my greatest mission in life not to cry and to get her to smile. She did, and I even got a few silent laughs out of her. (She called me a brat at one point too, but that's also a good thing.)

I probably won't get online again while I'm here, but it's nice for me to tell a little of this story. It's a big part of me that I don't talk about often enough.