Visiting, release, purging, power, running

Mama took a few hours to herself yesterday and drove an hour south of where she is staying during her vigil over Grandma, Grandpa and Norman to meet up with Jake and Melissa. We have not seen Jake for a couple years, so it was a great visit for all in attendance. It would have been a shame had Mama not taken the time to make the visit since she happened to be so close. They had sushi – which Jake loves even though for his entire childhood he refused to eat fish of any kind. In our time going to the restaurant owned by our Chinese family, Mama has come to appreciate different types of sushi. She had a Mexican sushi. Talk about cultural appropriation. I do not think Mama has had the opportunity to stand on a beach since she has been in Florida, but that may come during the next couple days as everyone continues to improve.

Mama had thought about making the drive to the beach after her visit with Jake, but Grandma was being released from the hospital and there was a deadline to signing her out of their care. So, Mama drove the two hours from her rendezvous with Jake to the hospital to retrieve Grandma then the hour back from the hospital to their RV park. Grandma was in her own bed by late afternoon yesterday. Clean sheets and pillowcases had been paced on the bed thanks to Mama. Home health care will start this week sometime. The focus of that care will be the administration of oxygen and breathing treatments to ensure Grandma is fully recovered from the COVID infection.

All in all, we have arrived at the expected outcome – all the patients are well on the road to a full recovery. Now the hard part comes as Mama has to spend the next five days with her family without the need for urgent intervention on their behalf or an overarching focus on their health. Things are returning to normal in their lives. These may turn out to be a long five days for Mama especially because of the very limited space Grandma and Grandpa have to offer in the camper. Mama tells me there is not even a place for her to sit other than in a chair at the “kitchen table.” Oh, well, perhaps there is a beach near enough for her to visit. She is, after all, in Florida.

I took care of the last of the six roosters that needed to be removed from the flock. Three I dressed out Monday evening and three I dispatched last night and put the carcasses in the creek bed for the local varmints to eat because they were too small to make the effort to clean and dress them. Mama and I do not like to have to do the killing often required to purge the roosters from the flock, but no one wanted the little roosters, and we could not keep them in the flock because of the way they cumulatively torment the hens as well as fighting with each other. I do not enjoy that part of raising chickens, but it is a requirement of the undertaking and a benefit to our food supply – if Mama and Victoria will actually eat the prepared birds.

My class of two participant yesterday was my only class for the week. I had to rush through the afternoon portion of the class because one of the participants was in Tennessee and over the lunch hour power was lost to the area of town where he was working. Remnants of Hurricane Ida were passing through his area so there was little hope that power would be quickly restored. Without power to keep his laptop charged, he was running through the battery at a pretty fast pace and since he had already gone through the morning portion of the class, I wanted to ensure he could complete the class and take the test to prove that completion. We made it with less than only 30 minutes of battery life remaining on his computer. Since the time the tests are completed is recorded in the record of the test, it will show a short duration to that class, but I have a valid reason for getting done early. Whether or not I remember that reason a few months from now if I am asked for an explanation remains a question.

I will need to use my lunch hour today to run to Muenster to get feed. I am completely out of chicken feed so, I cannot wait until tomorrow, which is when I had originally planned to make the run. Besides, I have a dental appointment tomorrow at 10 am so that limits my availability tomorrow even if I could wait that long.

It should be a full day today.