Laramie writes:

Tuesday, April 16: I found Terry sitting with a group of residents in the activity area near her room, where a Catholic priest was performing a mass. Terry smiled in greeting, and moved toward me. Her chair was blocked in by some others and Ajibola came up to help clear a path for us. I immediately apologized to her (whispering) and she had to be reminded of my 'Mercedes Benz' prayer — apparently never having given it a second thought. She accompanied us as I brought Terry to a nearby table, and told me she'd taken no offense, and had enjoyed the levity.

I did not have Terry's new pad with me.  I hadn't realized the battery would be drained even though it hadn't been in use at all since our last visit. I brought my own Nitro pad along. At least it has Facebook installed, and I encouraged Terry to hold it and scroll through the Facebook entries. We discovered a gorgeous blue bird on Eleanor's page and a video of a long-legged bird rising from its nest and stalking away from the nestlings. We watched some more cat videos, and I told her about my weekend. (I worked on my taxes, didn't finish, and applied successfully for an extension.) I hope Terry's taxes don't represent too much of an issue for Jim!

Eventually Terry and I moved down the hall to sit near the dining room. A nurse noticed that one of her feet was bare inside its bootie. She had socks and a tennis shoe on the other foot.) The observant lady went and got a nice warm comfy sock for Terry and put it on for her. One of the other residents was seated nearby. I keep forgetting his name – he's someone prone to babble at the top of his voice, probably considered too disruptive to sit with the larger group. The Beatles were playing on the sound system and I sang softly along with 'Let it Be,' encouraging Terry to join in. When the song changed to 'woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head,' I was glad to hear the babbler echo the actual words.

Terry ate most of her lunch (tender pork loin with sweet potatoes and a veggie medley). I continued showing her items from Facebook and read her a poem about cats. Afterward we proceeded as usual to the Bistro. Terry started on an apple while I made a quick stop in the rest room. When it was time to toss the apple core, she remembered where the trash hole was! (And I confirmed it again by opening the cupboard door to show her where the bin was located under the counter. We'd hardly finished our coffee when Terry complained of some pain. We stopped first at the front desk to see if she had mail (no) but then returned upstairs to the nurse's office area. I let them know she was ready to lie down (as soon as they finished helping others with lunch). I was experiencing health issues myself and took off a bit earlier, driving home through a pouring rain.

Friday, April 19: On my way to the elevators, I picked out an apple from the bistro and brought it up with me for Terry (she always expresses hunger before it's quite lunch time). I found her as she was just being brought out of her room for the day, and we went to a table not far from the activity area where others were gathered. I gave her the apple, and brought out her Galaxy pad, now fully charged. I had to fiddle a bit to hit on the correct button to show her how to activate it (the top one on the side). She enjoyed the apple while I got things going. Then we played with the maze game. I selected the easiest setting and she chose the Bunny avatar (from among a dozen choices). The bunny had to make its way through the maze to reach a carrot. I showed Terry how to move the bunny by putting her finger on it and dragging it along the path. She managed to do that pretty well, but didn't get to the point of connecting it to the carrot.

As we neared lunch time we moved to the tables outside the dining room and enjoyed some cat videos we found on YouTube.  A nice aide came along and volunteered to go back to Terry's room for the shoe for her left foot. (Sorry, Karen, I forgot about going to her room to look for the sandals.)

We went in for lunch (battered pollock filets, baked potato and coleslaw). They served Terry her fish in sandwich form. It looked like the coleslaw was made more with cucumbers than cabbage. She ate most of it. We escaped to the bistro before a pudding dessert was served.

Terry had a banana in the bistro. I told her about the snow on my drive down from Fridley. The oddest thing: tiny snow crystals pelted the car audibly, and formed drifting white veils across the road, but were never visible on the windshield before I came to the slower surface roads where they had time to melt against the glass before bouncing off again. After enjoying our coffee we stopped by the front desk and there was a post card for Terry: from Giovanna in North Cyprus. Terry secreted it about her person and didn't bring it out again for me to read to her until we were back upstairs in the area outside the nurse's office. By that point she was complaining of pain, but couldn't specify its location: back, legs, feet? We distracted ourselves by trying to turn the babbling fellow's outbursts into harmonic bits of song. He did seem to be going for song, if nothing I recognized. I stayed around until making sure the nurses knew Terry was ready for a lie down.