A Real Roller Coaster Ride

After yesterday's sleep-a-thon, I was pleasantly surprised to find Mary alert and very much awake all day today. So much so, she started dinner and helped me prepare it and serve it. Quite a difference from the low energy, barely able to move, full of pain lady of the last few days.

Her meals all stayed with her. Clearly, this is an up day.

On Wednesday at lunchtime while the Maids work on the house, Ingrid will pick up Mary and the dogs for a trip to Stanford so Mary can have her blood tests done before she sees the doctor on Thursday. Mary and Ingrid are also planning a lunch somewhere along the line. Normally, they also take the dogs for a walk at our local Oak Meadow Park, but given the heavy duty rain and thunderstorms we are having this week, they'll probably skip that part of the routine.

Oak Meadow is a favorite local park. Hours were spent there when my son Chris was growing up, including this picture used for a Christmas card in 1972. We now have a collection of pictures of the grandkids at Oak Meadow. Whenever they come visit from Pasadena, Tucson or Denver, we always manage a trip to Oak Meadow Park.

From 1970's Chris Baby Pics Scanned

Technically, this picture was taken at Lake Vasona Park, a county park adjacent to Oak Meadow. When Chris was this age, Chris, his mom and I lived in a rented house a block from Oak Meadow.
And here is a recent picture of Chris with my grandson, Danny, on the fire engine at Oak Meadow.

From 2007-06 Sarah, Danny & PUs arrive in SJ

Trivia bit: I recently read that before the orchards were planted in this valley, the earth was mostly grazing lands and wild grasses. Los Gatos could easily be seen and identified from a distance by the string of oak trees that lined Los Gatos Creek from the mountains down into the valley for a notable distance. When they built state highway 17 in the 1950s, they built concrete river beds and cut down all the trees to make room for the concrete river and new four lane freeway. Sometimes I wonder about the progress that was made in the 50s.