¡Buenos días a todos from the Old Pueblo! It is 8am and 66F (18.9C) with an expected high of 89F (41.7C) and sunny skies in Tucson, Arizona.
My son-in-law, Curtis was discharged from hospital early this week following open-heart surgery and is doing well. Originally, he was to have a pacemaker and defibrillator placed; however, the cardiologist did not insert the defibrillator. Curtis and Jennifer do not know why, but they will find out when Curtis has his next cardiology visit in two weeks. My daughter has not gotten much sleep because she has to escort Curtis to the bathroom during the night to prevent falls. He is disoriented from the pain medication and fell his second night home. Jennifer is back in the classroom teaching 8th grade history in addition to caregiving her husband, and keeping up with her son, Seth, who has returned to the Georgia Academy for the Blind this past Monday following surgery for a bowel obstruction. Jennifer posted a photo of candy treats that her students left on her desk as a ‘welcome back’ to the classroom. Curtis sent her a beautiful bouquet of flowers to her classroom to thank her openly for taking such good care of him.
I thought I was going to be lucky earlier this week when I got a notice from my insurance company sent to let me know that they refused to cover brain imaging scheduled for today. I called the radiology department to tell them about cancelling the appointment and they told me that the nurse practitioner for the neuro-radiologist sent additional information in support of this particular scan, so...I have to go in at noon today for yet another brain imaging. The only good thing about going in yet again this year is that the people at radiology are so nice.
I heard from my colleagues in Mexico this week as well. The certified diabetes educator training will still be video-mediated this semester and I am now slated to teach 1) sleep disorders and sleep health promotion and 2) complementary, alternative and holistic practices next Friday, November 5th. This will be a marathon from 2pm until 8pm Arizona time because we do these courses back-to-back. I have been practicing my PowerPoint presentations in Spanish every day this week because I have not really spoken with very many people this year in Spanish or English. I am excited, though, because these colleagues are the family of my heart in Mexico. I am hoping to hear that we will be back in the classroom in Mexico next semester.
Pipster, a bit of Tucson Celtic Festival and Highland Games news for you! I spoke to a nice person who is organizing the volunteers for this festival, which occurs the weekend of November 5-8 (naturally the Friday that I have to teach). I am doing 4 hours of volunteering next Thursday, the 4th, Saturday, the 6th and Monday the 8th (clean up) for which I get one free ticket and a T-shirt (totally unexpected). I decided to do it just to get out of the house and find out about this festival. I’ll take photos and send a few to you.
Nope, I have not heard back from Walgreen’s regarding my 1978 UK travel-a-thon photos. I was told that it would likely be about three weeks and they will send me an email. I can only hope they will be able to develop even half of them. I found that I have a $38 credit from Costco and will apply that to getting the photos developed once I get the USB drive with photos.
Today is my mum’s 97th birthday. My sister and nieces will be going to the memory center to celebrate her birthday and take cupcakes for the staff. People ask me how I could have ever worked in hospice dealing with death. I now tell them to spend a couple of hours at a memory center, then come and ask me that same question. I have no idea how the staff do such wonderful work that takes miles of patience and are still able to maintain their sanity. I told my sister and the girls to give the staff a case of tequila instead of cupcakes, for medicinal purposes of course. After all, tequila is distilled from the blue agave. I have seen miles of the plant outside of Guadalajara on ‘road trips’ to Guanajuato. Vicente Fernandez (the Frank Sinatra of ranchera music) has his own brand. Maybe the other Vicente (Fox) has his own distillery. On the other hand, maybe he just drinks tequila, adds it to Coca Cola, or drinks it as a side to his reefer.
Genealogically, I mentioned last week that I was going to work on Curtis’ family tree on WikiTree as a get-well gift. I started back with the Johns family, for whom Mags Gaulden is PM (and a nice piece of blueberry pie image to you, Mags). I managed to do his mum’s family from Benjamin and Mary (Allis) Johns (ca. 1704) right up to his mum. I did a lot of clean up on the Find-A-Grave aisle along the way, but so far, no one has really incorporated profiles I left for him or her. Now I am adding information about Curtis’ paternal side, which are predominantly from Sweden...Lindblom, Peterson, Anderson, Johnson, ya, shure, you betcha!
I wish every one of you a wonderful weekend full of fun, health and harmony. I am off to the radiology lab, then maybe a Starbucks (I call it Starcrack because my sister is addicted), then back to work on a global health syllabus for the university.