This day has sneaked up on me before I knew it – it is supposed to be next week. Well, if the 1st comes on a Thursday then I shouldn’t be surprised.
First an update on the cake – it is lovely and tastes great, except for one small detail, it is in pieces now. I got it safely out of the pan and peels off the parchment paper on the bottom of the cake, but in putting it on the plate it cracked and broke into several large pieces. My bad. What a disappointment because we wanted to surprise Vickie with something different. I think we both felt deflated after that, especially since we worked together quite well making it. I can’t bring her a cake in pieces. I had wondered how it tasted but didn’t think it right to take a piece and have an empty space, so in the end I got my wish. We tasted it but now it is ours to eat. The one ingredient we had trouble getting was brandy – I’m sure we have a bottle downstairs in one of our boxes – somewhere. We didn’t want to buy a large bottle for some unreal price, so we ended up going to the liquor store. Eddie told the man what we wanted and he knew exactly – he came up with peach brandy that people use for cooking. It was more reasonable. Then we had all the ingredients. We will probably buy her some flowers to go with the bottle of wine.
I had another bout with technology on Sunday, a new phone. I wanted a simple phone with an answering machine – nothing simple any more. This has an extra cordless phone so I can take it around the house and not have to run for the phone. Too bad I forgot to take it to the kitchen while we were cooking – just another new habit to acquire. I hooked it up, followed the instructions and had most of it working, except that when one calls in, it has a message it is restricted and you have to do certain things for this one time only call. Then it was just a busy signal. I went through the menu and thought I had everything working – nope. After two hours I was done for the day – I had no idea what the problems was or how to fix it.
Monday I had some time in the morning and was still having trouble with it, so I plugged in the old phone I had been using and sudden;ly the little bugger worked. I have no idea what happened and since everything is now finally working, I am going to leave well enough alone. That leaves one more things on my list to have work – the fax part of my printer. It isn’t happy with the phone line and it has me buffaloed. I will NOT let it stay that way, I will find out what it takes to get it working as well.
We aren’t supposed to have rain until tonight – how nice to have a break from very heavy rain. Monday was the worst, I was coming back from Kent and it rained so hard I couldn’t really see the road. I was ready to pull off to the side and wait for it to end when it got better. I was wondering how it would be on the freeway, turned out well and by the time I got to Burien, it was sunny. I knew that wouldn’t last but I would enjoy it for as long as it lasted. I was meeting my Caregiver Counselor for the last time – this is the 6th visit since January. When I first saw her I was a wet, drippy mess at the end of my rope; Monday she was comparing how I am to then and is amazed I went from the bottom of the scale to the top, in some areas. We laughed about the time she came to see me in rehab – I was on Percocet at the time and was not really with it. I remember telling her that if I closed my eyes, it was as if I was on a little raft in a quiet pond and I was undulating backwards on the water, then at a certain point, I would go forward. I didn’t spend too much time with my eyes closed because I wasn’t quite comfortable with it. Guess I wasn’t sure what would happen. I also decided I did not want that for the rest of my life – I got off Percocet as soon as I could.
I really appreciate Kathryn so much, she is a tell it like it is person but also very understanding because she has such a wide experience with dementia and all its ramifications. She really helped me see that I was overdoing things, that I can’t make it better for Mom or for anyone else. I have been a perfectionist my whole life, yet I didn’t think so. I am harder on myself than anyone else and expect me to live up to the standards of perfect – it’s impossible! I learning that good is good enough. I do have to catch myself and be aware of when it is happening – so true of so many other old programs I have. Sometimes I think I need a scorecard to keep track. End of subject for now.
Tags: Cake, Cooking, determination, fax, phone set up, Thanksgiving
Gift of RA 
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