real-time post

Surprisingly hard to type well on an unfamiliar keyboard.

Anyway, my parents are out right now - a doctor's appointment, though not a planned one. A couple days before Christmas - almost 2 years to the day my mom fell on ice - my dad slipped on the tiled floor and we had to get the EMTs out to help him back up (Awkward location - the narrow bathroom, and also the BATHROOM, so I wasn't comfortable going in given that he was likely in a state of undress, and my mom is tiny compared to him, so...)

 Once he was up, his vital signs were fine and though he was hurting, he seemed pretty much fine. The EMTs suggested hospital, but winkingly so, in the sense of "we're required to recommend it but..." and things seemed to be OK until the PT person came, and flatly refused to do very much without him being medically checked out. It's almost certainly bruising and muscles - based on that he had been getting better, but what PT person wants, PT person gets, so.

Christmas itself was fine. Adult Christmases will never live up to the memories of my childhood Christmases (But then, there's a whole line of car ads based on that conceit, though they do suggest somehow a car will make you as happy as you were at 7 with a Care Bear or 10 with a 6 Million Dollar Man action figure...). I've been knitting a lot because there's not a whole heck of a lot to DO....retail has really melted down here in the past year. Pretty much Kohl's and Von Maur and a few smaller shops are all that's left selling clothes. (Eastland Mall must look crazy empty given that JC Penney, and Sears, and Macy, and Bergner's are all gone)

I did get out to spend my "Stocking Money" - because my dad really can't get out to shop, he gives each of us kids - his daughter-in-law, too - cash for their Christmas stocking. I found a dress I liked at Kohl's, and spent the residual (and a little of my own cash) on a second dress from "Loft" (Ann Taylor Loft, I presume, though it's not as upscale-priced as I'd imagine an Ann Taylor outfit to be).

I've been getting out to walk most days, though it's been depressingly overcast here and chilly but not cold enough for snow. A couple days it was nicer, nearly 50 and sunny-ish, but I can tell I'm feeling the darker days a lot more than I once did. Most days I walk for about 45 minutes, which feels like a reasonable workout and also gets me some fresh air.

I did finish "Miss Mackenzie" (will do a post on that later). It was a good novel and turned out with a satisfying conclusion to the story.

Yesterday we took down the tree and put away the decorations and while it was time, it does make me feel a little melancholy...now it's back (after a couple more days, really*) to Ordinary Time and there really isn't much in the way of holidays I observe in any kind of a big way until Easter.

(*Epiphany is Sunday. I plan on taking down my own tree and stuff on Saturday after I get home, and I will wind up - for once - helping out take down the stuff at church on Sunday; I am usually not home before Epiphany. Then again, it's said that it's bad luck if you don't take down your decorations before Epiphany so maybe 2019 will be a better year than past years were?)

I go back Friday. I guess I am ready to go home; I have things to attend to in the week before classes start (crash-review of stats - I have not done as much with that over break as maybe I should), and getting the stuff together for the first Soils lab on the 14th, and I plan to take one day and go to Sherman to stock up on things. There's some potentially worrisome weather moving in to that area of the world but hopefully it will be gone by Saturday (the 5th) when I have the drive back home. If it looks bad, I'll just hole up in a hotel - there are a number along the route I take and there's a pretty good one in Mineola - and I could just stay over until I was sure any ice had cleared out.

As I said in an earlier post, probably what I need to do is find some low-level fun I can do. And FUN fun, not "volunteer work that purports to be fun but really winds up being an additional worry for me" because I find I tend to do that, and then don't find it all that fun. (Hopefully, Bell Choir will start back up with rehearsals, because that's a fun-but-low-stress-on-me thing).

(Honestly, the best resolution for me would be "worry less," but short of taking on board some additional medication - with side-effects and dosage-dialing-in to mess with - I don't know that that's likely to happen.)