Writing letters to friends. Mom. And (dis) organization.

My friend Tami is a letter writer. 

Paper and ink and decorated envelopes and pen pals all over the known universe. And possibly parts of the universe that are unknown. She sends and receives hundreds. I can't imagine, but it brings her joy and her joy makes ME smile, so there's that.

I like reading letters of the handwritten variety, but I don't write them. So I've never tried being a pen pal as an adult. Tried a few times as a kid and teen, but it didn't last.

However, I do correspond with a few friends via email. 
Turns out I have a lot to say now and then.

Today, for example, I wrote to an old friend I knew when we lived in Southern California. I've known her since 1983. We worked together, then became close friends. She's one of the very few people in my past that I work to stay in touch with. It's not that I don't care about others, there's just a special bond.

Her second baby and my first baby were due three days apart, but her daughter was a couple weeks early and Matt was a couple weeks late, so there's a month between them in age.

We lost contact for a bit, she sent me a card every year during the holidays and I failed to answer that mail every year. A couple years ago she sent one and included her phone number. So I texted her and we exchanged email addresses and now we're corresponding every once in awhile.

Also sent email to a friend whose daughter was in my second Girl Scout troop. We always got along well, although we're very different individuals. She's a decent person of integrity and her daughter was one of the coolest kids I've ever met. All grown up now, of course. She's married and living in Prague with her husband. 

My friend is currently living in Mexico but is planning to relocate to Portugal in the near future. 

I can't imagine making one international move. Forget two. They sold and gave away almost everything they owned to make the move, so at least they don't have to do that part again. But wow.

She explained some of the reasons they want to be in Europe, and they all made sense to me. Not that it matters, I'm not making their decisions and it's very unlikely that I'd ever go visit them. But yeah, that.

I sat down to answer those emails and ended up spending almost two hours doing so. Guess I had a lot to say.

Speaking of lots to say. I've been texting/messaging with my mom almost daily since Dad died. It's a lot easier for me, I don't like talking to anyone on the phone anyway. And when I call her or she calls me, her television is on so loud it rattles the fillings in my teeth. Then I have to scream myself almost into a hemorrhage to get her to turn the fucking thing down.

"What?? What??" she says, over and over.
"The television is too loud, Mom, can you turn it down, please?"
"What? What?"
"Please turn the TV down!!"
"What? What???"
"TURN. THE. TELEVISION. DOWN!!"
Jesus.

So she has her phone with her in her rehab place. Steve brought her a charger because she left hers in Boise when she left the hospital. But texting isn't going very well.
Tonight at 9:45 I asked her how she is feeling.
Her answer?
"Kit finished lunch awlholr ago"

I have NO clue what that means. Her responses, when she actually does respond, are very odd. Not coherent, not necessarily relevant to our conversation, and mostly she will start a chat and then say nothing.

Last night she said, "Hi."

I responded immediately. And nothing.

So I'm guessing that the anesthesia did not help with her dementia. It's also possible that she's had another 'small stroke' as they called it after the first one. I don't know. I did talk to her on the phone the other night, but she just repeated herself incessantly. I doubt she even remembers that we spoke.

Poor Mom. I don't think she's going to be able to go back home.

My sleep patterns are off again. My fault. Stay up late. Makes me too tired to get up early. Sometimes I have to get up early anyway. Then I feel like crap and need a nap. So I take a nap, then I can't go to sleep at 10 like a normal person, I stay up until midnight, then I can't get up early and I feel like crap and need a nap and them I can't go to sleep at 10.... well, that.

But this afternoon while I was trying to wake up from my nap (I don't set an alarm, I know I will have to pee within two hours of lying down, you can probably set your watch by it) I was suddenly thinking of cardboard weaving looms (image lifted from here). 

One can make a small pouch for a cell phone, pencils/erasers/crayons, little toys, whatever, with a cardboard loom. It's not a complicated process, once they learn the over under pattern most of them can do it. So I woke up thinking about cardboard, where to find the string I need etc, and realized that school starts in a month.

I've been mostly off all summer long, going in once a week to package and sort items for the following week of summer camp at two locations. Each project is bagged, labeled and sent to camp so the staff can just pull a bag out and do the project. I understand that some of the projects aren't so simple, that items our programming specialist says are 'already on site' sometimes are not on site, leaving staff to scramble a bit. But I'm doing the best I can.

It's also given me ideas about my own project prep here at home. I have big 2 gallon bags, it's an easy-ish matter to pull the items I need from my own warehouse-type environment, bag them up according to project and just haul the bag in.

But to do that, I need to finish the organization here. I have been working on it, and can actually see a small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, but I have to admit that until last week, I really haven't done much around the house.

So I'm now in 'get things done' mode and hoping that attitude lasts.
Since there's just me to do it.

What are you doing? Please tell me you're doing something fun.