2:00 p.m. - 2007-08-01
Back Home Again in Indiana
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
I WAS A FIRST CLASS VIRGIN......
Ok, now that I have your attention, let me explain..... got home Sunday from my two weeks in Texas. I spent most of the time with my youngest sister, M. She was diagnosed with Mono in early July. Probably caught it from her students. She has had such a run of bad luck with health issues for the past year. She was put in the hospital in early December....I just happened to be there. She collapsed at home early on a Monday morning. We thought it was a back injury because she had hurt her back a few days before. But...it turned out that she had blood clots in her lungs! She was in the hospital for 5-1/2 days before they would release her.
They think it was from the birth control pills she had been taking for a few years and also possibly related to a rx she had been taking for panic attacks for about 15 years. She went off both of them and started taking Wellfarin (a type of Coumedin) to get the blood clots dissolved. A few weeks after that, she fell in the house and sprained her right arm from the wrist to the elbow. Because of all the medications for blood thinning; the bruising and soreness was extreme. She continued to work at school and then around the middle of January, she was home because of an ice storm. She walked on the grass to get her paper and fell, breaking her right ankle. She had surgery to put pins in it about 3 days later. She was home for almost a month, then went back to school using a wheelchair to avoid any further falls. During all that, she was still trying to get the various medication dosages adjusted for her needs. So, you can see she has had a bad time of it. Now she is finally getting some strength back from the Mono although she is so tired all the time.
She is teaching 1/2 days for the next two weeks in Math Camp to help students who need extra tutoring. Then she will be starting back to regular teaching by the end of the month. She is teaching "ESL" this year (English as a Second Language) for the Hispanic and other minorities who need special help. She is teaching English and History and is looking forward to this new challenge. Hopefully the smaller classes will make it easier on her and she will not be as stressed this year.
My other sister, B. didn't spend much time with us. She is working for the Humane Society but had taken a few days off. However, she felt sick with a cold and stayed home and didn't join us in many of the plans we made. We did have lunch and dinner together a couple of times while I was there.
M. and I did visit our "cousin" Gina one afternoon. Her grandmother was my grandmother's sister. Her grandmother saved pictures, letters, and other family memorabilia. It is a humongous treasure trove of information but it is so enormous that it will take years to categorize and work through. We looked at lots of old pictures and managed to identify a few more people by sharing our knowledge. I saw a couple of pictures of a small child with very curly blonde or red hair who went from about 1 year old to possibly 4 years. I was wondering if this child might have been the little boy that Uncle James Leonard and Aunt Cookie tried to adopt or had as a foster child? There was a picture of Mike and Billy with the little boy so I think it may have been when they lived on the farm. Was his name Timmy? There was also a picture of my mother with me as a baby and a child who looked like a girl about 8-10 years old. The back of the picture said Patricia with Terri and Kay..... who was Kay?
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I had good flights home. M.'s boyfriend got me to the airport in great time and waited with me until I got through Security. When I got to the gate to wait for about 45 minutes before boarding, I heard a pilot who was catching the flight asking whether the flight was full. The attendant said she had 21 overbooked but she was going to work her "magic".
Well, she did.
She approached me, asked for my boarding pass, took it back to the counter and changed my seat 17F to 4D....
Yes...that's right. I was put into First Class!!!.
I was a FIRST CLASS VIRGIN.....Never had that happen before! I got OJ 2x, and breakfast and could have had a diet Coke too if I wanted it. The seats provided more leg room. I was still by the window and the fly "boi" attendant shook my hand thanking me for flying with Northwest!
I had purchased a quick breakfast sandwich and diet Coke at Burger King when it opened - conveniently right across from my gate at 5 A.M. I am glad I did because the airline breakfast freebie was not very good. There was a beautiful tray with real silverware and a small goblet for my juice. My selection was a cheese omelet (ugh - had no flavor) hot potato chunks (yum) sausage links (didn't eat) a wonderful fruit bowl of strawberry, melon, blueberries, kiwi and pineapple and a bagel (dry) and cream cheese (yum). It was a nice flight. The passenger next to me was one of the pilots who was catching a ride to Detroit. Apparently he and the other pilots had a flight back about 3 P.M. because I heard them saying they would catch up later. He slept throughout the whole flight. (NOTE....listening to the recent news, I now realize how lucky I was that my flight was not canceled.) And the pilots who flew with me as passengers from Dallas to Detroit were apparently the pilots who had to flight the Northwest plane back to Dallas that night)
I got to Detroit on time and had to walk from Concourse A -Gate 6 to Concourse C, Gate 29....I figured I probably walked over a mile. I had plenty of time (just under 2 hours) to get another diet coke and a couple of cookies to hold me. Our flight had 48 seats and I was in the last row, next to the window. My seatmate was a young girl about 18 who was reading the last third of Harry Potter. She wasn't quite finished when we got to our destination. I finished one book and read about 15 pages of one of the half-price books I had purchased. Our flight took off about 20 minutes late and we got to SB about 15 minutes late, had to sit on the runway for another few minutes and then wait for our luggage.
YES, I was very lucky....... until yesterday...
Yesterday, I was early for my hair appointment and walked down the mall to the pet shop. Most of the stores open at 10 AM and it was just opening. I looked at the kittens and was crossing through the middle of the store to see the puppies. Suddenly I felt myself slip on the wet floor they had just mopped -leaving puddles (no warning signs) and...yes, I fell. I landed HARD on both knees and both elbows. It knocked the breath out of me. The manager and 2 employees rushed over and asked if I was alright. I had to lay there a few seconds to catch my breath and figure out if I was going to be able to get up. The manager helped me to my feet and I told him I needed to sit down for a minute. We went outside the store to sit on a bench in the mall. I told him there were puddles of water on the floor and looking at the knees of my capri slacks, you could see the wetness. I did determine I had no broken bones...
I was worried that I had fractured my elbows because they hurt so much but I could not feel any lumps or bone chips moving. Today I am sore all over. My left elbow area has a bruise and it is sore (kind of like when you hit your "crazy bone" except it HURTS! ) My right elbow is sore but not as bad. It hurts to move my arms up so I must have jammed them both when I fell. My right knee isn't as sore as yesterday although I have been limping a bit. I think I will recover but what a way to start the week. Even my upper back and shoulders and neck are sore. Thankfully, I didn't hit my head or face because those floors are the stone tile type.....so hard.
So, that's the latest news. I haven't started the next segment of OATMEAL AND KISSES. I will be working on that later this week. Just haven't been able to put myself back into 1950 to work on the next part of the story. There is a lot of story left to tell and I will be sorting it all out in my mind along with the poems and facts that I have.
