carbonel

So. My company scheduled an all-hands meeting outside of London for a week at the end of July. In early August, my nephew was getting married in Istanbul (her family is from Iran, but lives in Istanbul). It made no sense to go home in between.

So on July 23, I flew to London. I met up with other people from the company at Heathrow, and we got an Uber to the site, which is out in the country and has lots of outside space. This turned out to be very useful. The meetings went well until the third day, at which point two of the major contributors both tested positive for COVID-19. After that, we carried on (minus them) outside. There was one more case, but that was it.

After the conference, I headed to London on Friday. I met helenraven at Waterloo Station, where she lent me her spare Oyster card and Kew membership card, and pointed me to the correct bus to get to my hotel. I had a hotel reservation at the Crescent Hotel through Booking.com. The location was great and the price was right. Sadly but not unexpectedly, there was no air conditioning, though there was a fan in the room. The one difficult bit was that the shared bathroom and toilet -- which I knew about -- was a floor and a half away, so I really tried to not need to go there in the middle of the night. I had a very pleasant time walking around Bloomsbury and going to museums.

On Saturday, I spent the day at Kew Gardens.

On Sunday, I met helenraven for lunch, and then we went to the Globe to see The Tempest. It was a bonkers production, with Prospero as an entirely unsympathetic beach bum sort of wizard, but quite good. We were groundlings, which made for a great view but sore feet by the end.

On Monday, I went to the British Museum.

On Tuesday, I met a friend from Ravelry one day and we went to the V&A in the morning and the Science Museum in the afternoon -- and then spent a couple of hours in a pub drinking cider (me) and ale (her) and chatting.

Wednesday was a day of indulgence. I went to Harrod's for afternoon tea, and in the evening I went to the Shaftesbury theatre to see &Juliet, in which Anne Hathaway decides to do some revision on R&J. Very silly, but also some very good messaging.

On Thursday, I went to the Natural History Museum in the morning and the Wellcome Museum in the afternoon, where I saw Napoleon's toothbrush and Darwin's walking sticks, among other items. That evening, I had dinner at helenraven's (tomato galette) and dropped off some of my luggage that I didn't want to shlep to Turkey with me.

On Friday, I flew to Istanbul. I allowed four hours -- one hour to get to the airport and three hours at the airport. I needed it all. I lost about twenty minutes to security because the agents wanted a prescription for the bottled water for my CPAP. I ended up tossing that. I'd run out of actual distilled water by then, but it was purified water. The flight was uneventful, thankfully. Uber is hooked into the local Yellow Taxi system, and I was able to get a taxi from the airport to my hotel. For slightly complicated reasons, I made a hotel booking for my first night at close to the last minute, and just picked something from Booking.com that was cheap and in the right area. I lucked out. It was clean, modern, and had working air conditioning.

On Saturday, I left that hotel and went to a Marriott-affiliated one that I stayed at the rest of the time. It was also quite nice, but at about twice the price. I signed up for an all-day tour on Sunday, but there wasn't anything available that appealed for Saturday. I decided to go to the Grand Bazaar. Getting there via Uber/Yellow Taxi was no problem. I spent a couple of hours walking around. I bought a glass of orange juice that I saw squeezed in front of me -- delicious. I bought a few other things, but mostly just rambled and looked. Unfortunately, getting back wasn't so easy. The Yellow Taxi drivers kept canceling with Uber, and I eventually paid a comparatively exorbitant amount to an off-meter driver. After some recovery time, I finally managed to get an Uber driver to take me to the bride's apartment, where there was a gathering. I'd met some in person and some through Zoom, but a lot were new to me.

On Sunday, I took a group tour. In the morning, we went to the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophia. Lunch was included as part of the all-day tour. In the afternoon, I had a guide to myself because I was the only one who'd signed up for the tour of the Topkapi Palace. It's an amazing place and full of artifacts, though my major interest was its connection to Pawn in Frankincense, the fourth of the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. My step counter said I walked around 16K steps, and I was a bit sunburned.

Monday I mostly spent recovering from Sunday. I spent some time at local cafes, but didn't do any official touristing.

Tuesday evening was a night-before-the-wedding river cruise. It was four hours of loud music and dancing and hors d'ouevres and drinking. Once the sun set, it cooled down a bit and was quite pleasant. It was a couple of hours too long for me, but I'm not much of a party girl.

Wednesday was the wedding. My nephew had arranged a shuttle for a bunch of us, including the bride's parents. This turned out to be convenient, because the half-hour trip took almost four times that. Partly it was the horrendous traffic, but partly it was that the driver went to the wrong place. It was a wrong place with the same name, so understandable, I guess. The wedding was lovely. It was secular, but incorporated some of the traditions of the two different cultures.

On Thursday, I flew back to London. I got to the airport way too early because I misread the departure time. I was feeling a bit off, but I assume it was due to being underslept and overheated. The flight was uneventful, and once we landed I made my way to heleraven's place where I was staying the night. I also collected the luggage I'd left there and recombined everything. I probably should have used my last COVID-19 test at this point, but I didn't think about it. If the US were still requiring a negative test before flying there, things would have been different.

On Friday, I flew back to the US. Tedious but uneventful. After I got home and rested for a while in the air conditioning, and rehydrated, I realized that it probably wasn't just heat and travel stress and potential dehydration that was making me feel off, and I used one of my home COVID-19 tests.

The pink line lit up very quickly, and I discovered I had a slight fever (100.2). After a couple of ibuprofen and some rest, I felt much better. I didn't sleep very well that first night, but that was probably jet lag.

Friday, I felt almost well (and spent the day working, in fact). And now, Saturday, I feel almost recovered, though I'm still testing positive. I'm somewhat congested and my throat is somewhat scratchy, but my temp is normal. I feel as if I'm in the recovery phase of a cold. So I decided to skip Paxlovid, because of the trade-off of side effects. I hope I don't regret that.

(I keep sniffing a bit of chocolate just to make sure my sense of smell is still working. That's one of the nonlethal symptoms that scares me the most.)

And that's how I spent my summer vacation.

My last post was back in August, when I had a bit of a flood in the basement. That led in a roundabout way to the discovery that my water heater was failing. So now I have less money and a new water heater.

A couple of weeks ago, the temperature in the house dropped down to the mid-60s, so I turned on the heat. Nothing happened. (It turned out the reason I couldn't get warm at that temperature even with lots of clothing was that I had a 100.8 F fever. Food poisoning, not COVID-19, and it passed off in a day.) I arranged for a HomeSmart service call, and a guy came and replaced the thermocouple and got it working again. However, he also yellow-tagged it and recommended replacing it. So that's going to be another major expense when I have time to cope with it.

In mid-September, my mother (who lives in Skokie, IL) got her COVID booster shot, and had a bad reaction to it. It didn't improve over a couple of days. Then it turned out that the booster wasn't the problem. She'd injured her leg back in June, and what with impaired circulation from other issues, it hadn't healed. And she wasn't eating and got dehydrated. She spent ten days in the hospital, and two weeks at a rehab place, and came home in the second week in October. She spent a week at home, then had a relapse (probably infection in the leg), and spent a few days in the hospital, then almost three weeks in a long-term acute care facility. During all of this, I have been spending most of my time in Skokie, with a few stints back in Minneapolis to do necessary life and job maintenance stuff.

I'm back in Minneapolis until Wednesday. My mother is supposed to come home on Tuesday, and my aunt and uncle are there for her now (which is why I could come home). My mother really really wants to go down to Florida, where she rented a house before all this started. She may need surgery, though. Or she may decide that current quality of life is more important, and forgo that. I'll support whatever decision she makes, but I've been living with this uncertainty for the last couple of months, and it's really hard.

In the meantime, spinning is my main stress relief -- thus the icon. Someday I will get my life back, but now is not the time.

Also, my cat (Morwen), probably in revenge for an insufficiently clean litter box, has peed all over a bunch of stuff around but not in the bathroom where the litter box is kept. So that's a thing to deal with. I've cleaned out the current cat box, but discovered I was just about out of litter. Heading to PetSmart now.

At least I got an extra hour today to deal with all of this.

As of today my mother's ship is safely docked in Singapore. They are letting people disembark without any checks other than the now-routine fever ones. She will be going from the ship directly to the Singapore airport on February 14 and flying nonstop from there to San Francisco (and thence to Chicago, which is home). Apparently whatever pressure the ship's owners brought to bear did its job.

She'll probably go somewhere warm for the next several weeks (she hates winter), but there are lots of warm places without the danger of coronavirus.

In early August, my mother had minimally invasive heart surgery to replace an aortic valve. I went down to Chicago to stay with her during and after. There were a few moments of unusual interest, but she survived and recovered -- though she's not walking as well as she did pre-surgery.

Before the surgery, she'd asked me if I was interested in a repositioning cruise from Copenhagen to New York. I've always wanted to do one an Atlantic crossing, so I said yes, but that perhaps we should wait and see how she recovered. She agreed. (There was also the issue of getting two weeks off from work with virtually no notice.)

After a few days at home, she brought up the cruise again. I checked with my boss, and we agreed that I could do it as a working vacation, doing a few hours every day. With that approval, we bought our cruise tickets and I bought tickets for the flights. The flights cost about the same as the cruise itself. Repositioning cruises are usually a bargain because of all the days at sea, and this one especially because be bought tickets so close to departure. (Other people got much better deals for flights, and I now know a few other things to try if I do this again.)

On September 6, I flew to Copenhagen (via Amsterdam), arriving the next morning. My mother and I met at the airport. Cell phones make things so much simpler. We went to our hotel, stashed our bags, and lingered over tea until our room was ready. After a brief rest, we went to Tivoli Gardens, which I'd been wanting to do since at least 1979 -- I was in Copenhagen then, but only a few days after the park closed for the winter. It really is a garden -- the grounds are beautiful, and everything was very colorful. I went on one ride, but mostly we walked around, then had lunch. I managed to fall off the curb while hailing a taxi, and got an impressive soft tissue injury. It's mostly better now, but still slightly painful.

We had dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants along the canal. The weather was a little chilly, but the patios had heaters. I had mussels (moules) and fries (frites), and a tiny can of Diet Coke.

The next morning, we wanted to go to a museum before we headed to the ship. We were interested in the Danish Jewish Museum, but it didn't open early enough. Instead we went to the Glyptotek, starting at their exhibition of 19th-century French masterpieces. We wandered around at a few other exihibitions, then went back to the hotel and then to the ship.

Here's where Big Brother comes in. This was a cruise on the Princess line. As soon as we bought our tickets, Princess started sending us emails about the exciting new medallion system. The descriptions were vague and confusing, so it took us a while to figure out what the medallions were good for. Turns out they're a replacement for the "cruise cards" that normally let you on and off the ship and act as an on-ship credit card. They're RFID devices (or some such) that can be read by scanners placed all over the ship. The good part of this is that you can use it to locate friends and family all over the ship. (It's a 3,000-person ship, so just wandering around is a losing proposition.) In theory, the medallion can also be used to buy items, but the actual infrastructure for that was incomplete, so it only worked at fixed locations, and everything else you had to sign for. The bad part, of course, is the creepiness feature.

Having the medallion did expedite boarding the ship. From getting onto the gangplank to being in our stateroom was 20 minutes or less, and a good chunk of that was just the walking the length of the ship, since our stateroom was near the very front of the ship. Normally it's at least twice that, with one memorable (not in a good way) cruise taking almost two hours, with most of that spent standing in line under a hot sun.

The next day was Kristiansand, a small town in Norway. It was raining, and no one had much to say about the place, so we stayed on the ship. That was convenient for me, because I was able to get some work done. In addition to my regular job, I needed to complete a freelance project. That one was supposed to have come to me in August, but it fell behind schedule sufficiently that I had to do it all while on the ship -- or tell them I couldn't. In the end I got it done; it helped that they decided what they really wanted was a light edit, not a thorough line edit for consistency among all the contributors.

After Norway, we sailed to Scotland, with a day at sea in-between.

In Scotland, our port Greenock, which is the port nearest to Glasgow. We shared a taxi into Glasgow, and after a pub lunch, rode a Hop On Hop Off bus around the city. Those buses worked very well for us, because I hadn't been there before and it was good to see the highlights. Also, my mother's mobility is limited, so a bus is better than any walking tour. We stopped at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and admired the stuffed critters. We didn't have enough time to do much more before we had to take a taxi back to the ship to be back in time for departure.

The next day was Dublin. The day was cloudy, and it often looked as if it was about to rain, but I only had to pull the poncho out once for a few minutes. We had lunch at a pub and though I'm not much of a beer drinker, I did have a half-pint of Guinness, because I've been told that it's never quite the same is it is right near the Liffey. It was very good, but a half was enough for me. I did try writing my initials in the foam, and it worked (or at least the B worked; there wasn't room for more in my half-pint glass). After that, we took the Hop On Hop Off bus around the city, but didn't stop anywhere.

The day after was Cobh, which is an island port with access to Cork, about half an hour away. Also Waterford, about two hours away. We didn't go to either place. Instead, we took a local tour around the town (no Hop On Hop Off; the town was too small). It's a pretty little town, with an impressive cathedral for its size. The other claim to fame is that the bodies from the Lusitania are buried there. The first 20 or so were buried in individual graves, then the workers realized that there wasn't enough time, and the remaining 100 or so are buried in three mass graves. Originally many of the bodies were unidentified, but names were added as they became known. We had lunch at a nice sunshine-y bistro, but apparently we were some of the last customers -- the owner said the place was shutting down in a few days. I couldn't tell if it was permanently or just at the end of the tourist season.

After that came five days at sea. I had hoped that I would get a lot of spinning during that time, but between my regular job done long-distance, plus that freelance copyediting job, and two trivia games a day (my mother, a woman we met who'd been on Jeopardy and formed a core team, with others joining us ad hoc), I was lucky if I got in an hour a day. My electric spinner was a definite conversation starter, though. Our trivia team did quite well. We didn't win all our games (maybe a quarter of them), but we were almost always in the top five or so. Most of the prizes were (as the cruise crew running the games cheerfully admitted) exceedingly mediocre (coasters, notebooks, bags, and wine corks), but the games were fun.

One standout was a "name that tune and artist" game, where we played with a roadie (for AC/DC, IIRC) who knew all the songs but one. Instead of a mediocre prize, we ended up with two bottles of decent champagne, and the bunch of us spent a pleasant hour knocking off the contents.

The last couple of days at sea, the Internet became exceedingly slow. Apparently our semi-Great-Circle route took us far enough north that we couldn't connect to the good satellites for Internet and had to use the not-so-good ones. Or so our captain explained over the intercom. I assume it's somewhat more complicated than that. I did manage to get the freelance job done by the last sea day, which was a relief.

The next day was Halifax, Nova Scotia. There's a large port complex there, but we decided to save that for after we'd done our main touristing. Since Halifax has a Hop On Hop Off bus, we took that. One of the stops (an unofficial one) was at a glassblowing and glass cutting facility. I would have liked to stop there, but my mother (I thought) wasn't interested. It later turned out that she'd dozed off and missed hearing the commentary, but we didn't have the time to go back to it later. We did stop at the Maritime Museum and spent an hour or so there. There were exhibits (with memorabilia) about both the Titanic and the Halifax Explosion of 1917, when two ships (one laden with munitions) collided, exploding and killing around 2,000 people.

After that, we went back to the port complex and had lunch. I had a wonderful lobster roll, consisting (best I could tell) solely of fresh lobster, a bit of mayonnaise, and a toasted bun. Then we walked around and looked at the tat. One stall was selling maple sugar in the shape of leaves -- three for a dollar (CAD) or five for three dollars. I didn't query his math, just gave him the dollar.

And then back to the ship. It was the second formal night, and there was supposed to be the final production show, which I'd really been looking forward to from the description. Unfortunately, they had technical difficulties, and after we'd been sitting there for about 20 minutes, they regretfully canceled.

The next night was our final day at sea, and including packing up. At least packing in that direction is a finite task, as opposed to packing for embarking on a trip.

And on Saturday, September 21, we landed in Brooklyn. Disembarkation was slow, but I got to my shuttle and thence to my plane back to Minneapolis in decent time.

And a few days ago, I received notification that my status on Princess Cruises has been upgraded from Ruby to Platinum. I've paid a $100 deposit for a future cruise -- if I don't use it in two years, I'll get the money back -- because there are some serious perks for doing so. (What actually happened was that my mother paid the $100 deposit twice, intending them to be for two future cruises, and one of them was accidentally credited to me instead. But I'd been thinking I should do the $100, so we decided I should keep it. Which means I need to send her a check for $100.) I'd be happy to another repositioning cruise, but ideally with a different route next time.

I'm back from my trip to Skokie, IL for a very family weekend. I took the train this time, which worked out amazingly well. The price was a bit less than flying would have been, and I was able to get about three ounces of lace weight spinning done on my miniSpinner during the two trips. Because the return train gets in at 10 pm, I came back on the Saturday train, giving me an entire Sunday to myself. Also a win.

On Wednesday, I took the train in, and was met by my mother at the station. After a couple of hours at her place, we went to a local Chinese restaurant for dinner and then to see a play: The Book of Will. It's about the people behind the creation of the Shakespeare First Folio, and it was excellent.

On Thursday morning, we went bowling. This is a tradition going back over 50 years that apparently started with mothers shoving husbands and kids out of the house so they could get all the cooking done. Now that things are easier, we get entire families. It's also a cold potluck brunch, with bagels and coffee and bakery items.We took up 14 lanes at the bowling alley.

When I got back, I watched the Vikings beat the Lions, which was very satisfactory.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was at my brother's and sister-in-law's in Skokie, IL. My SIL is a so-so cook and apparently cares more about no-fat and no-salt than she does about taste. The turkey was okay, but the baked sweet potatoes were not quite done and the cut-up oven-baked regular potatoes were leathery and she didn't have any salt on the table to put on them. The stuffing she put in the turkey was just barely moist enough to eat; the out-of-the-turkey stuffing was chunks of bread and celery, literally. There were also three kinds of quick bread, all dry. My guess is that she just left out whatever fat the recipe called for and didn't substitute. (I'd kept all of this to myself, of course, but the day after, my mother said something about SIL being a terrible cook, and that the no-fat thing probably had a lot to do with it.)

There was plenty to eat, though. My mother brought her wonderful ratatouille and cranberry sauce, my cousin brought raw veggies and homemade hummus for appetizers, and for dessert one person brought cut-up fruit, I brought oatmeal ginger bars based on an Australian flapjack recipe, and my mother brought apple and pumpkin pie from Costco.

There were nine of us there, family and friends. It was supposed to be eleven, but the two Chinese students my SIL invited via the Northwestern foreign student office never showed. SIL was disappointed, but the rest of us weren't. It's really hard to have nine people who've known each other for years have to try to make conversation with total strangers. I've been the total stranger, and I'm not fond of being on that end of things, either. I'd much rather be at a "widows and orphans" dinner where everyone is a total stranger to each other. There was also a certain amount of elephant-in-the-room about the fact that my oldest nephew wasn't there. He was married last year, and this year he spent Thanksgiving with his wife's family. My SIL was very gracious about it, but with a certain edge in her voice.

(Lest anyone misconstrue things: I like my SIL a lot, but we have different views about many things (not politics, thankfully). And she and my brother raised three wonderful sons, so mostly I just roll my eyes and keep my mouth shut.)

On Friday, I made my annual Black Friday pilgrimage to Lands' End when they opened at 8 a.m. and bought two turtleneck tops, a fuzzy half-zip top, and two chamois shirts (to replace the one that wore out). Unfortunately, they didn't have any black shirts, so I settled for navy and charcoal. I mostly wear them as layering overshirts, so neutral colors are good. I also bought four more turtlenecks at the online site. Everything was 50% off, and the total damage was around $150.

Then we had lunch at a local deli with my mother's Hadassah group. We were a little early, and my mother suggested we stop at a game store and asked if I recommended anything that the family could play. I suggested Apples to Apples. The store was sold out of the full version, but they had the smaller "to go" one, and she bought that. The clerk tried to sell her on Cards Against Humanity instead, but I decided that that would definitely be pushing things. Lunch for me was soup (mushroom barley) and a half sandwich (corned beef), and chocolate phosphate -- all things I don't get in Minneapolis. My innards rebelled a bit about them later, but it was worth it.

In the evening, we had my brother's family over for Shabbat dinner (including the missing nephew and his wife), and played Apples to Apples, which went well.

On Saturday, my mother and I puttered around a bit, then she took me to the train station in the early afternoon. The train trip was properly uneventful, and my car was in the parking lot where I left it. I got home shortly before 11 pm.

All in all, a very pleasant weekend, but a bit stressful with all the socializing involved for the introvert I am.

As usual, it was a very family Thanksgiving. I live in Minneapolis, but the rest of my family lives in Skokie, one of the north suburbs of Chicago. I was ambivalent enough about traveling there that I was late in buying my plane tickets, but I did find a decent price. My compromise was to head home on Saturday, giving me one day to myself. If I could, I would have made it Saturday afternoon for the return, but the schedules and prices meant that the 7:30 pm flight was the best option.

I flew in on Wednesday afternoon and was met at the airport by my mother. Everything was crowded but moving steadily at both ends.

Wednesday night was dinner with my mother and the local brother's family -- two of the nephews are staying with my mother because their own house has some sort of mold or fungus that makes them sick every time they're BIS (back in Skokie). After dinner, my mother and I watched Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. It had its moments, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped.

Thursday morning was bowling with family and a bunch of people that have been doing this for over 60 years, though of course there's been a lot of turnover. Also brunch, because people bring bagels and other food.

Thursday afternoon my mother and I watched the DVR'd Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, fast-forwarding through all the commercials and a lot of the commentary.

Thursday evening was Thanksgiving dinner at my SIL's. Small crowd this year, with only 10 people.

Friday morning, I went to Lands' End as the doors opened, which is my one Black Friday tradition. I've gained some weight in the past couple of years, having decided that I'm done with dieting. I seem to have stabilized where I am now, and I bought three pairs of slacks, a nice dress, and a bunch of tops, all for $187. The receipt said I saved over $400 over the original prices.

Friday afternoon, most of my brother's family was over to hang out, and then the oldest nephew and his fiancé came with their two small dogs for Shabbat dinner. They used to have just one well-behaved dog, but the new dog is yappy and not so well-behaved. My mother had told him it was okay to bring the one dog originally, and now feels she can't rescind the invitation when there are two. The second dog pooped on the carpet, and barked through most of dinner. The fiancé explained that they're training the dog by ignoring her when she barks, which is all very well, but means the rest of us have to live with it. Other than that, it was a nice family dinner, but when I retreated to my room for a few minutes of introverted decompression, I should have locked the door, because my SIL walked in on my twice. The first time, fine, but the second time she should have had a clue.

Early Saturday morning, I went with my two nephews to deliver my mother's and a friend's cars to a transport place. They put the cars on a carrier to take them down to Florida. My mother became a snowbird a few years ago, and will be flying south for the winter on Tuesday. After that, we took an Uber to my brother and SIL's synagogue, where they were having a service and oneg (after-service food and chat) in honor of my mother's 80th birthday. We ended up reporting the Uber driver for taking us the wrong way and (much more scary) cutting off a driver to exit the highway, almost causing an accident. First time I've ever had problems with Uber.

Saturday morning services were somewhat interesting. This is a Reconstructionist congregation that has been functioning without a rabbi for over a year, though they're searching for a new one. Lots of politics, I gather. It's not the prayerbook I'm used to (I grew up in a Reform congregation), and only knew about half the music. Instead of a sermon, the leader asked people to talk about people who are influences on them. I hate public speaking, but with this being in honor of my mother, I managed to say something about my parents' involvement in community and how that inspired me to volunteer for things I wouldn't have otherwise.

Saturday evening, everyone else went off to the housewarming for oldest nephew and fiancé -- they've bought a house in Buffalo Grove. Instead of driving out there and then having to take a long Uber to the airport shortly after arriving, I stayed in Skokie and took the shorter Uber to the airport in good time for my flight.

Finally got home around 9:30, and decided I was too tired to go to a friend's party, even though it would probably still be going strong.

On Sunday, I got to hang out with my cat, my spinning wheel, and the Vikings game. And the Vikings won (now 8-3), which was a relief after the disaster that was last week.

My father died this afternoon. As I'd said earlier, he had been in poor health for years, and took a very bad turn a week ago last Monday. He'd been declining a little more every day since then, and I was with him for this last week.

We'd been able to take care of him at the apartment in Boca Raton until last night, but this morning (Thursday), we decided that an in-hospital hospice unit was the best option. The hospice people were wonderful. The visiting nurse arranged the transfer within an hour, the ambulance came and took him there, and the volunteer took us to the family room while his primary care nurse got him settled in.

At that point, we were proceeding on the assumption that while he was definitely dying, it would take a while. My mother talked about bringing a needlepoint tomorrow to work on. I was going to fly back to Minneapolis, and my brother was going to fly in Boca to keep my mother company.

The last post (which was f-locked) ended rather abruptly, because as I was typing it, his breathing changed. He started having periods where he wasn't breathing. Gradually those got longer, and after about 10 minutes, he stopped breathing altogether. My mother and I were at his bedside, and it was very peaceful. Even though he was only at the hospice unit for just over two hours, I'm glad we transferred him there. They took care of everything.

Tomorrow, my mother and I are flying back to Chicago. (We managed to catch my brother on his way to the airport, just in time to change plans. Sometimes I love cell phones.) The funeral will be on Monday at 2 pm, and there will be three days of shiva (yes, I have enough Hebrew to know that's a contradiction in terms). I'll be flying back to Minneapolis on Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.

My thanks to everyone who posted messages of support during this time.

(possible trigger warnings for somewhat-yucky family stuff)

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If anyone else has thoughts about family relationships that they're willing to talk about, I'd be interested in reading what you have to say. I've enabled anonymous posting without screening for this post.