Weekend Visits & Looking Forward

Lauren's visit this weekend was really wonderful. She looks healthy and happy. As with all freshman, she has added new academic words to her vocabulary which appear liberally in her conversation. Since this was a 'good' weekend for me, we did numerous errands so that next weekend we don't have to. We found an academic version of Office which is clearly a college requirement, a bicycle helmet and reflective strips, tension curtain rods and the biggie: a winter coat.

Finding a winter coat is both essential and difficult. There are many coats out there, so why is it so hard to find one that you like? We were prepared to visit lots of shops, but started at the Burlington Coat Factory. Discounted clothing is always where you start. I walked through her size, held up coats and Lauren indicated yes/no. Once we had separated the coats this way, she began trying on. Any coat that didn't fit or that she didn't like on was returned to the rack immediately. The others we held onto tightly so that no one else grabbed them.

Lauren pared the coats down to two, and had a clear preference for a soft grey wool coat. On a lark, she tried the next size, same style, and it was perfect! SOLD!

Earlier, as Lauren looked at herself in one of the coats I had selected, she exclaimed, "Yes, it looks good, but I look like you!" I found that coat in my size and you know, it looked just like me, and it looked terrific! We managed to find two winter coats that we both really like in under an hour at the first store we visited. This may be a new record.

Sarah arrived at 4. We stopped by Capone Foods to buy three cheeses and she fell in love with this wonderful food shop. Capone's, as you might imagine, is an Italian specialty shop, though he also carries some cheeses, oil, vinegar and other ingrediants from other countries. The owner, Al [yes, this shop is owned by Al Capone,] has been very concerned about my health, and has offered to deliver his prepared foods to my house if I am unable to visit him.

Cheese in hand, we headed home. New England can have some of the most amazing weather in the world. Saturday was one of them. Crisp, clear, sunny and warm without being hot. We chose to sit in the garden and chat about this and that.

Sarah told me one story that I will share. She shares her house with D. D. is a mason who does surveying for developers, and spends his days tromping through the woods. He is strong and simply adores my sister. The house that they share is warm, while the woods outside their house are cold. Each Fall various creatures from the out of doors think they should move in to make it through the long and brutal Maine winters. This year the creatures were mice. D. set up some traps in the first floor rooms and in the morning, a trap had a mouse. Carefully, he took the mouse outside. Back inside he discovered a second trap also had a mouse.

"Oh no," he cried up to Sarah. "It was part of a couple; this is so much worse."

Leslie arrived home later, and made us a fabulous dinner. By this time, Sarah had switched to drinking wine. It turns out that at 1.5 bottles of white wine, Sarah gets very sentimental. At 2 bottles, she is teary. We didn't get farther than that though.

It was interesting. We are sitting eating dinner, and suddenly Sarah moved from her usual reserved self to this other person. What I learned is that this summer has been really hard on her. Both of her sisters have been sick; one of her sisters is on chemo. It is a lot of effort for her to come visit and I appreciate that she was willing to make the trip. In the morning, I returned her to the red line subway stop, and she was off. Less than 24 hours had expired.

Lauren packed up more slowly. She has taken Agnes to school since her October break begins on Thursday. This leaves me without a car, but for some reason I don't really need one this week. My Dad will take me to Costco to pick up my next round of drugs this morning. If I need to go anywhere else, I will either grab a zip car, taxi or bus.

Monday I was able to finish one of the long-outstanding development projects! Yea! What a huge load off of my mind. Today I will finish one more. Tonight I will send out bills, Leslie and I will go out to dinner in search of high-sodium entrees, and tomorrow I will sidle up to the Chemo Bar and do it all over again.