I saw a Great Blue Heron flying overhead when Chelsea and I walked yesterday morning. With my afterthought blog of yesterday, I forgot to mention that. I heard the cardinal this morning again too. These are signs of spring in this coldest and snowiest winter in ages. Where is this global warming. Send the polar bears down to Wisconsin in January. (Keep them in a relatively unpopulated area.)

With temperatures up into the upper 30s, we are feeling quite balmy here. Bret sniffed at that thought. The temperatures are in the 80s in Norwalk.

Now for the events of the day. It started with a bang. Almost literally. I woke up with a start at about 5AM to find Dick sinking to the floor off of the bed. The klunk of the wheelchair as it canted forward is what woke me. Fortunately, he was on the slide board and pretty much just sunk to the ground. No bumps, no damage to the wounds on the foot. Lots of damage to his dignity and to my peace of mind.

First, we determined -no injury. Then came the problem of getting him back up to either the bed or the wheel chair. The bed was a bigger target so we worked on that. We brought in two stools of different heights. First, with the gate belt, lots of arm work on his part and using the heel of the right foot, we "butt thumped" him up to the bed. Once there, we transferred to the wheelchair on the slide board as he is supposed to.

We just can't figure out what happened. He has been transferring during the nights without any problems all week. Somehow, he must have gotten the board in a bad position.

I told him we could always call 911 but we managed.

Later this afternoon when I took Chelsea out, our neighbor was driving home and stopped to ask how everything was going. When I told her about the above incident, she reminded me that Carson, her husband, is an EMT and she is also trained. She said that if something happens, we should call. If they are home, they will come over and help. That makes me feel much more secure. They could determine if we need more equipment too.

After that, the rest of the day was a snap. We have accomplished almost everything that we are supposed to. We were unable to get the prosthesis on all the way again. We will try again this evening. I hope that Lori can come up with some suggestions at therapy tomorrow.

I baked two batches of cookies today to take over to the care staff at Plymouth Care for a thank you. Of course we hold some of the workers in a special spot in out hearts but everybody was kind and helped Dick to the best of their ability. One can't give individual gifts but I wanted to do something. I am taking a few of them to Mother tomorrow too.

We had pizza today in honor of the Super Bowl. We will probably watch the game as it is always exciting, if nothing else for the commercials.

I talked to my Bret today. He is fine. He went jeeping last week and is going at least twice before summer. I told him to say hi to all of my friends. Someday I will go ut there to visit him and visit Tony's grave. I think I will ask my friend Janet and Bret to go with me. It would be good for me to have someone and Janet knew him. Bret never went to his brother's grave. I just couldn't go then. Now I long to. I need to tell him some things. I have never stopped loving him. I can still remember the smell fo the top of his little head.

I don't mean to be depressing. So lets move on. Tomorrow is a very busy day again. I am going to Bible Study and to visit Mother. Then at 1:00 Dick has therapy. Then in the evening, I will go to the Rhine for the meeting. I need to bring a couple of bottles or wine to Tom Lawonn who let me pick the currants for the wine. Dick and I shared a bottle a couple of weeks ago and it is quite good.

So be good to yourself tomorrow and think of me. I know it will give us strengh.

Love

Mary