Tuesday Day's End

Mary had to roust herself out of bed this AM, I left at 6AM for a 7AM meeting. She told me she got up about 8AM, fixed herself breakfast, fed the dogs, read the paper, did the crossword puzzle, showered, did email and facebook, and watched a bit of TV. At noon, she fixed herself lunch of some frozen thingy she bought at Lunardi's last weekend. She then curled up for an after lunch nap and that took her to almost 6PM--much to her surprise. My meeting ended just before 8PM so she fixed herself dinner from some of our left overs before I got home--our girl was hungry.

She just put herself to bed at 10:30PM. This chemo doesn't seem to cause nausea and her appetite is good. It just fatigues her and makes her want to sleep. As I noted last week, I expect Wednesday won't be a good day but then Thursday she'll start to climb out of it again. I hope.

I managed to spend my morning in the jurors' waiting room. Finally, the judge came down and thanked us all for participating. The case settled so we had fulfilled our jury duty requirement just by hanging around for hours and hours and hours. I am off the hook for at least another year. Not bad, not bad.

I was well equipped with laptop, iPhone, Blackberry, and iPod. And, I managed to score a seat next to a wall outlet so I knew I could recharge if I drained any of them. The courthouse runs a guest WiFi network so that was really beneficial. Email (work and personal) was handled in a timely fashion and I got to listen to some of my podcasts: Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers; Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me; and my absolute personal favorite, Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor. In the last case, Garrison keeps telling stories about Minnesota Lutherans' thought processes, behaviors and culture. I must admit, I don't find many differences between what he describes and my Minnesota Roman Catholic upbringing...I think its less about religion and more a Minnesota thing. Mary is of the same opinion.

For example, yesterday Mary told me this story of her relatives attempting to learn how to drink wine. At some family event with her parents, aunts and uncles, a bottle was purchased and wine glasses were recovered from some dusty cabinet and carefully washed so that all the adults could enjoy this bottle of wine during the meal. Mary reported there were long discussions on how to hold wine glasses, and how to taste wine and how to take a sip of wine between each bite of food to savor the flavors. Wine was not to be 'drunk' but gently sipped. And they all taught each other the meaning of wine words like nose and bouquet and legs. Mary, who has a great memory, distinctly remembers this meal because they were discussing and tasting and commenting about the wonderfulness of a two dollar bottle of Tawny Port.

This experiment with wine did not end there! Oh, no, there was a 2nd meal sometime later that Mary recalled. Her aunt poured the wine in the kitchen and served the wine in glasses to the adults. They continued their cultural learning and refinement with this second bottle of the fruit of the grape. Tasting, commenting and all in all enjoying their moment being sophisticated adults because their meal benefited from the glorious wine selection. Mary's aunt then took the empty glasses back to the kitchen for refills (having not fully mastered the refinement of pouring wine at the table) and made a wondrous discovery! The wine bottle sitting on the counter was still full! This bottle that she had just served to her family was still full. Clearly a miracle, a true miracle! The energy among the relatives was electric with this possibility of a true miracle right in her aunt's kitchen in Minnesota. The energy caused by the miracle stayed with them for a while until someone noticed the brand new bottle of scotch sitting on the counter next to the full wine bottle was empty.

Apparently, Mary's aunt had done a bit of tasting before serving the spirits and managed to get herself a little confused. She had served the scotch in the wine glasses which explained a lot of things. And, as Mary noted, no one at the table, no one drinking the odd colored, strong tasting wine said a word...

And the women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are all above average!