I cried the other day.
This weekend was a busy one -- as they all are, unfortunately. (Or fortunately?) I had planned to go to the Auto Show with Dad, but when I got there, he was downstairs watching a performance of the annual Channukah Show put on by residents and staff members.
No, the show wasn't so bad it made me cry.
The show was actually fairly good, and was even better if you knew some of the residents: One gent who sang did so standing up -- when Dad first arrived there, he was in a wheel chair. Another woman is normally unable to say anything other than "jojo jo jo jojo jo..." -- she was in the chorus and was actually singing the correct words. (I suspect it's a case of not being able to get the words out on her own, but being able to read them. It must give her a boost to be able to participate like that.)
After the show, Dad wanted to go to therapy since he hadn't been yet that week. We wandered over along with his physical therapist who had sang and played the guitar in the show. When we got to the therapy room, I sat down to watch the proceedings. Edwin brought out a device that was kind of a cross between what I call The Rack (a machine that helps people stand up) and a hoyer lift (basically a sterile engine hoist.)
Edwin put a plastic brace on Dad's right foot and lower leg, and put a loose strap around it, connected to a slider on the bottom of the device. Dad's right leg is the one that doesn't work much. Dad then put his forearms into supports and grasped handles on the upper part of the machine. Once he was set, Edwin cranked the handle and Dad slowly raised up, putting more and more of his weight on the machine, the way one might lean on a counter to look over it.
Once he was almost standing straight up, they started off -- walking around the room.
Dad made it all the way around and back to his wheelchair. I, meanwhile, was doing my best not to let my tears show. I didn't think I'd ever see Dad walk again, but there he was, on his own, tooling around like nobody's business.
After that, it was a little too late, and I think Dad was a little too tired, so we skipped the auto show. Instead, we went in search of candles for his minorah. We went up the street to the nearby Walgreens, which is definitely not ADA compliant. We found some birthday candles that looked like they would work, as well as a cup holder that could clamp on to Dad's wheelchair.
Dad wasn't interested in the cup holder, but I got it anyway. The next day I found he had taken it off and wanted me to take it home.
After we got back to the Jewish Home, Dad had to go to dinner and Shabbat, so I called Rachel and she picked me up on her way home. That evening, we were supposed to go to the NCRC holiday party, but we both completely forgot. We ended up getting burritos and hanging out at GrilleyVille instead. We had a good time, but I surely would have liked to have gone to the party.
Saturday morning, I worked on my Java homework a bit. I had figured out how to handle the advanced mode a couple of days before in the shower, and wanted to implement it. Later, Rachel and I went over to the Jewish home to hang out with Dad for a while.
When he went to lunch, we went to Safeway to get our groceries for the week and supplies for the holiday party at ABACUS. Because it was sort of a last minute thing, not too many people showed up, but we had a good time anyway. I brought my new laptop and got it working with my Ricochet modem under Win98.
Phil brought his Jaguar and showed off a new game for it called Protector -- a very challenging Defender clone. I also showed a few of the folks the eBay auction site and a new program I found called Auction Tamer. I'm thinking that online auctions might be a good topic for an upcoming meeting.
After ABACUS, I went home to work a bit, then Rachel and I headed off to her Mom's for dinner. Johnny, Gemma, and Cassie were also there, and we had a nice evening to ostensibly celebrate my birthday. Cassie gave me a package of Linux utilities, and Diane and John gave me a pair of Looney Toons lounging pants. Apparently they're all the rage now, perhaps because the rest of the world doesn't look as good as I do naked.
The previous weekend, Rachel and I had gone to Sears to look at entertainment centers for the living room. She wanted something nice to put a TV and stereo in and all that. Hey, what can I say -- she's mostly normal. She had spotted one on sale in their Sunday advert, but when we got there, it wasn't as nice as she'd thought. We did spot one, however, that she liked a lot. This one was considerably bigger, and, coincidentally, cost more. It was $350 on sale (as opposed to $200.) Still, it did have a lot of shelves and storage. In fact, it had enough space to accomodate my plans -- incorporating a PC with a CD/DVD drive to show movies, play CD's and MP3's, and provide access to sites like TV Guide, (which sucks, by the way,) Kozmo, (which is fantastic,) and the Internet Movie DataBase.
Rachel just wanted enough space to house her extensive collection of Disney video tapes.
So anyway, they didn't have any in stock, but the salesgirl said she could have one sent over from another store. She did, and it arrived mid-week. Of course, we didn't have a chance to pick it up until Sunday.
When we got there, it turned out to be two large, heavy, long, heavy boxes. Did I mention they were heavy? They were also large (and heavy) -- so large that we couldn't get both of them into Rachel's Intrigue at the same time. Yes, we put the seats down and all that. They just wouldn't fit.
So we made two trips.
It's almost exactly 9 miles each way from our house to Sears in Tanforan.
By the time we got back (the second time) it was too late to try and hit the antique show at the Cow Palace, so we just picked up Cassie and headed over to the Jewish Home to see the Channukah show. Diane had originally planned to go along, but she wasn't feeling well, so she skipped it. Cassie, however, definitely wanted to go.
I called Johnny en route to let him know we were on our way, and he told me that he and Cassie were arguing about what she was going to wear. Cassie is only 5; it seems a bit early for that! By the time we arrived, she was ready and we piled in the car to zip on over.
We got there just as it was starting and grabbed a couple of seats in the back. Cassie couldn't see, so I put her on my shoulders for the whole thing. Unfortunately, that wasn't so good for my back, and she managed to pull on my hair almost continuously. It was worth it, though, for her to be able to see the show.
Rachel, meanwhile, was feeling pretty sick.
She was coughing a lot, and looking miserable, but she toughed it out. After the show, we went up to Dad's room to visit a while. Shortly after we got there, a couple knocked on the door and came in. They were Helena and Pete, two of Dad's former clients.
They had seen the show, and stopped by to say hi before going to visit her uncle (who was also living in the Jewish home.) That was really nice of them, and was a testiment to what I've said before -- Dad didn't so much have clients as he had friends whose taxes he did.
After they left, Dad wanted to watch Quidam, the latest Cirque du Soleil video to come out. I had scored a pre-release copy from Long's and it had been making the rounds at the Jewish home for a while. We put it in and Rachel promptly fell asleep.
I think Dad was nodding off too, but I'm not sure. Meanwhile, I tried to explain to Cassie what was happening -- what all the symbolism was and so on. It's not easy to explain to a 5-year-old that the man walking along reading the paper while extraordinary things happen around him represents the way far too many people lead their lives.
She did enjoy the guy rolling around in the rings and stuff.
Cassie and I took Dad into the dining room where she met the folks he shares a table with -- Feisty Mr. M, Mrs. S, a real yenta, and quiet Mrs. J. Cassie is still a little shy when it comes to meeting seniors, but far less so than she might have been had the older members of her family not been so accepted.
John and Gemma are lucky -- Cassie will definitely take good care of them when they're older. Meanwhile, I sent an e-mail to my siblings nearly a week ago just to find out what they're up to so I could tell Dad (he asked), and have gotten nothing but silence.