At the end of July, I wrote about how Mom and I were thankful to have a month full of important doctor appointments behind us, and were also feeling immensely blessed at the encouraging news and reports she received after each one of them.
Looking ahead to August, she pointed out to me that it was the first month in quite some time that, between the two of us, we didn't have a single doctor appointment scheduled.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and at that moment vowed to tackle, little by little throughout the course of the month, some of those pesky light-to-medium duty house projects that I'd kept putting off because I'd found more important things to do in my limited free time (like doze off in the recliner as I watched the birds square off over what was left in the bird feeders).
SEE ALSO (VIP) -->> Caregiver's Diary Part 42: Taking a Breath and Reflecting on a Challenging Month
So, I took a few days off and, for the most part, pulled the plug on online activities, telling myself that on the first day, I'd relax a little and that on the other two days, we'd dive into the "honey do" list to get a few project monkeys off my back.
I had zero issues with the "relaxing" part, but the problem is that the relaxing ended up extending into day two and day three. Now, I did get a few things done on my list, but not nearly what I'd set out to do in my planner. I blamed it on the cooler weather and days of softly falling raindrops.
The following week came, and it was back to work. As usual, there were hiccups on Monday, but that evening I brushed them off with a "life happens" shrug and pledged that Tuesday would be rebound day.
It started promising enough, with me having a mostly productive morning of work and making sure mom got through doing the bills without any technical issues. But then the noon came, along with reports of a nearby power outage. We heard about it via text message from the power company, which asked us to respond as to whether or not we had been impacted by it. We hadn't, so we let them know.
Two hours later, however, as I was doing some administrative stuff and was about to get on an important phone call, the Duke Energy truck showed up. Any time I see utility trucks or the Spectrum or AT&T trucks in the neighborhood, I groan because it usually means there's going to be a service interruption of some sort.
Sure enough, on the dot of 1:30 pm, the power went out. Mom immediately asked me to go talk to the linesman to see if he could tell us what was going on and if he had an estimate on when power would be back on. It was a First World Problem, to be sure, but the thought of being without AC was not very appealing. Plus, I need the Internet to be able to work.
But before I could do that, we had another big problem: Mom was reclined back in her power recliner, but she had to go to the bathroom. And she couldn't get the recliner to go down because the power was out.
Hoo boy.
So, with much pulling, tugging, and maneuvering (and a fair amount of grumbling) on her part and mine, we got her out of it in time for her to make it to the bathroom.
Crisis averted. Sort of. After that, I headed out the door in a blaze of glory to walk across the street to chat with the lineman -- except he was gone.
Knowing that having a senior citizen sit in a hot, humid house for presumably several hours was not a good idea, I told Mom I was going to jump in the car and see if he was anywhere else in the neighborhood. But as I got down the hill, it became clear why Duke Energy was here.
Tree limbs were covering the street. I didn't see any poles down, but I saw power lines down and workers working hard to get power working again. I assume they had to cut the power to the line right across from us as part of their plan to re-run the lines at the bottom of the hill. I was so thankful that the heavy rains we'd had earlier in the day had stopped so they could work safely.
Needless to say, I didn't bother getting out to ask about a timeframe for power restoration. So I returned home, with mom telling me she'd just gotten another text message alerting her that the estimate was 3:45 pm for power being back on. They later changed it to a 5 pm estimate.
Meanwhile, I got Mom in the car so we could grab a late lunch and enjoy the AC in the car. Keep in mind that while it hasn't been as hot here this week as it was a couple of weeks ago, it's still sweat weather here in the south, so my goal was to get her cool, comfortable, and enjoying lunch.
It ended up being a nice mini-trip, with us pulling over to a spot with a nice view to enjoy the sights and sounds, and then driving around for a few minutes as we ate our fast food and chit-chatted about things we'll probably forget about in a few days.
But one thing I won't forget about as long as the Lord blesses me with my memory is that, despite the day's challenges, these are the days I'll treasure with Mom perhaps more than any other. The ones where we're just living our lives and enjoying the simple mom and daughter moments, not worrying about health - at least for the time being, nor what the future holds.
It was a sort of blissfully normalish day despite the power outages, a normalish-like day that we frankly would love to get used to.
All of that said, my shoulder is feeling the impacts from the earlier pulling and tugging, and her foot was bothering her a little bit after she settled in from the car ride. I joked with her before bedtime about how I might file a workers' comp claim, and we both laughed.
It was a deeply heartwarming thing to hear and experience at the end of an eventful day. Another precious blessing. Thank you, Jesus.
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