Here's to a great Boxing Day

It was a very good day for Mary. The British have a name for the Feast of St. Stephen on December 26th. They call it Boxing Day and you can click here for a wikipedia definition. And, of course, you know the Feast of Stephen from that great, almost 200 year old Christmas carol, Good King Wenceslas.

As for Mary, today progressed from marginal to much better by the end of the day--far better than yesterday which was a total bummer for Mary. Today, Mary woke up about 10am because she had difficulty sleeping and reported that the last time she looked at the clock was 4am. However, when she woke at 10 she immediately said she felt better than yesterday.

I fixed her a fried egg, over easy, toast and tea for breakfast. She came to the table to eat--a big improvement over yesterday. However, after breakfast she went back to her lounge chair and slept for almost two hours. At some point she ate lunch of fruit, cheese and luncheon meat and then read the Friday and Saturday New York Times (we have it delivered Fri-Sat-Sun) followed by a shower. She then took her afternoon nap.

Dinner was shrimp salad. I prepped all the fixings and then Mary came out to the kitchen and tossed the salad and plated the meal. It was so very good to see her in the kitchen preparing a meal and sitting at the dining room table eating dinner. Yesterday, she never left the bedroom and I served all of her meals there.

The back pain comes and goes, mostly it was gone today. Her stomach today was very good and she ate well all day long with no retention problems like yesterday.

Mary even wondered if she had a mild flu bug given her difficulty of yesterday. Who can say?

The bummer in all of this is that Maurice and Ingrid had made plans for a wonderful Christmas dinner for us at Ingrid's new place. Unfortunately, yesterday was totally out of the question and today Mary didn't get up to speed until very late in the day and at that point Ingrid was back to work.

All in all, a much better day than yesterday...but still a long, long way from "normal."