What The...?

Food Porn if I ever did see it...

Mom claims those eggplant "appendages" are ~arms~... I beg to differ.
(my mom's creation and photograph)

~~~

xoabb

The Facts of Life...QUACK QUACK

I'm at work. My cell phone rings. It's my son, Bly, and he sounds more than a little worried.

Bly: "Mom! I'm on the deck and there are these two mallards on the pond. The male has just climbed on the back of the female, he's grabbed her neck with his beak and now is holding her head underwater! He's trying to kill her! He's not letting her up!"

Me: "Um, well, not really, that's just the way ducks make more duckies, Bly."

Bly, sounding relieved: "Wow! I really thought he was trying to murder her. Man, that's violent!"

Me: "Exactly what would you have done if this wasn't a case of mallard hanky-panky?"

Bly: "Thrown rocks at him until he stopped trying to kill her."

My son...such a gallant...even to girl duckies.

~~~

Happy 1st birthday to our very own
Little Miss Magic!xoxoxoauntie&unclegbxoxoxoxo

~~~

xoabb

WHEW!!!

~Mimi's very favorite flower~
(photo courtesy of my brother bbum - thanks, bro!)

Without belaboring the point too much, life as I (and my little ol' blog) know it hasn't been very normal since the beginning of March. I, my GB, and the rest of our family have been through the horribly beautiful journey of a loved one's death. No matter how old or whatever the loved one's life-stage is, it it NEVER easy to let them go.

I could go on and on with stories of Mimi's passing and her power - I swear she orchestrated the entire process - but for now I won't. I'm so very sad she's gone and on the other hand so very happy I'm home and things are returning to normal. No, nothing will EVER be the same, but as she told me, life always goes on, and it is always about those still living.

Miss her? I certainly always will, no question. Me back to normal? Absolutely...Mimi would accept nothing less of me. Bless her for that.

~~~

xoabb

She Lived Her Life to the VERY Fullest...

Our Mimi

March 6, 1918 - April 2, 2008
mom, sister, mom-in-law, aunt, grandma, friend

~~~

with much sadness,
but also with great joy,
because of a life well lived and well shared,
we salute you, dearest Mimi, with our never-ending love...
...may we learn to emulate your wonderful outlook on life...
~~~

xoabb

30 Years Ago, This Very Minute...

GB and I were getting hitched!
(I was a child bride. ;-)
The only April Fool's joke?
There wasn't even one itty bitty prank!
(We were kinda disappointed.)
It was a sunny, 78º, beautiful day.
The whole shebang was simply perfection!

So far it's been a very good ride...
I really haven't wanted to kill him too badly...yet.
Close at times, but not yet... :-)

Sure do love ya, GB!
xoxoyourannie

~~~

xoabb

When I Move to Chicago......

I've found where I want to live...

I'm sure MPMama and Jules will be frequent visitors....
Maybe they'll want to move here, too...so appropriate...

~~~
~Mimi~
We aren't giving up, but if it isn't one thing it's another for our Mimi.
Just can't seem to be able to get all systems working at the same time.
We get one thing fixed and something else goes screwy.
Say a prayer for the old girl. Please wish for her ~peace~.

~~~

xoabb

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Blogging......

To Bring you Springtime in Roselle, Illinois...

(above is Mimi's beloved home on 3/21/08)

Most of those who know me know I've been in Chicago since March 21 to be with GB's mom, Mimi. She fell and broke her arm on March 4th. To add insult quite literally to injury, on March 6th, she had the most pitiful 90th birthday anyone on the face of this earth has probably ever had. And things have not been great for her since - but - hope certainly springs eternal! Hopefully she'll be able to go to rehab in the next few days.

Happy 90th, Mimi!

(It wasn't March 6th, but celebrate we did!)
Mimi, the birthday girl with her favorite boy, GB
~~~

As you can tell, my blogging world has been pretty darn pitiful for me since I've been here. While there are 6 wireless connections my computer finds while at her home, every last one of them is password-protected. The nerve of her neighbors! Don't they realize I have important matters to blog about?? I do get complimentary wireless here at Alexian, but only spend time on my computer when Mimi is involved in her various "ablutions" (that's a Mental P. Mama word) she needs to have every day.

~~~
xoabb

Wistful Thinking & Thursday Cleanup

I miss my home state...ahh my Mizzourah...

We're going back in April and I can hardly wait!

The photo is the ~crick~ that's below my parent's home.
Over the last 20 years our three kiddos,
as well as GB and I,
have made many unforgettable memories
with mom & dad & the extended family, (aka my Dodgie)
in, around and beside that ~crick~...
~~~
My thoughts and prayers go out to all my fellow
Missourians who have been flooded out.
May the waters recede quickly and your damage be manageable. Blessings!
~~~

Our Mimi is still on an improving trend. She is finding it hard to walk as she gets so winded, but we're hoping with time and PT she'll regain the strength she lost. She has so many visitors it's just ridiculous - what a wonderful tribute to the friend she's been to so many over the years! If anyone cares to drop her a line, call her or visit her, just e* me and I'll give you the info. She's an incredible woman. As her doctor so eloquently put it:

"The old gal has a 90 year old body and a 21 year old mind!"

* annbumbly@mac.com

~~~~

WW update:
There isn't any. Gotta a problem with that?!?!

~~~

Snippets from the nurse's office:

1. 1:45pm: "I have a sore throat. I've had it since 6 after 10 this morning."
2. "I want to go home so what do I say to you so you'll call my mom?"
3. "I threw up a little in my mouth, but I swallowed it. What should I do now?"

~~~~

Good Bye & God Bless

~~~

xoabb

7:20am, EDT - Fire at Dawn

Our house? Not dawn yet.
Our hilltop tree tops? Sun-drenched!
Soon, home will be too.

~~~

P. S. - Our Mimi continues to improve...what she will come back to is anyone's guess at this point, but she's been moved to a regular hospital bed and her rehab Dr. came to see her and told her she's not far away from being able to move back to the rehab facility...lovely! Miracles...they're so very unexpected...and so very good! Thank you everyone for your prayers and thoughts. They've worked! (Those prayers and thoughts? Please keep them coming!)

~~~
xoabb

I Believe in Miracles...Yes I DO!

Mimi, my most dear MIL, and I really do mean that most dear part, was looking forward to her 90th birthday on March 6th, living a good and for the most part trouble-free independent life, aside from a few aches and pains and her quite controllable emphysema (no, she didn't spend years and years smoking, actually only about 10 of her 90 years), when the most awful thing happened to her two days before her 90th birthday. She fell in her Chicago driveway on March 4th. After yelling as best as she could for 40 minutes, a neighbor, who happened to be returning home finally heard her when he stepped out of his car, (March in Chicago? Not a good thing to be lying outside in your driveway for 40 minutes...it's cold!). He called an ambulance and she was taken to the ER.

Turned out she broke both the lower bones in her left arm and sprained her left foot. Some birthday present! She was in the hospital for about a week and then moved to a rehab hospital last Monday. Last Friday morning GB gets a call from her doctor that things just weren't right and she was going to have to go back to the hospital. They kept her on some kind of special oxygen machine for most of the day, and of course, all the while she's cracking jokes and being her typical entertaining self. I talked to her at 4:40 that afternoon and aside from being hard to understand because of the oxygen mask she was wearing, all was ok - not great, but ok.

5:15 the hospital calls us and asks straight away, with no preamble, if Mimi has a living will and a DNR.....they then asked us if we wanted her intubated....OF COURSE we wanted her intubated, especially since she was together enough to say she wanted it. In that short period of time from 4:40pm to 5:15pm she had developed a life-threatening pneumonia. It was simply unbelievable. Needless to say this was devastating to GB, and eventually to all that love her, as it was so very sudden and truly unexpected. We scrambled and got GB to Chicago on the last flight out Friday, Mimi's sister, Micki, flew in from Florida yesterday and we all basically began a - awful phrase - ~death watch~ as her doctors finally told us they didn't see much hope and it could be at any time.

Yesterday evening I called those I needed to and sent out a mass email to all her people letting everyone know that she had taken a turn for the worse, it didn't look good in the least and to please remember Mimi in their thoughts and prayers.

Flash forward to 9:00am this Palm Sunday morning. Dreading it, I called the hospital to see how she did during the night. I then got the surprise of my life - the most wonderful surprise of my life. Her nurse told me that they noticed sometime between 7am and 8am that Mimi seemed to be trying to breath on her own though her ventilator was still going. So they decided to keep her intubated (so if her numbers started to drop she could quickly be put back on the ventilator), but turn off the ventilator machine. She did just beautifully. At 2:00pm this afternoon her tube was removed and she has continued to improve ever since. Of course, the next 48 hours are critical, but as the docs and nurses all say: "We are cautiously optimistic. Every good hour she has makes the outcome of this look brighter and brighter."

I called and emailed all her people once again letting them know that there, indeed, had been a miraculous change in her prognosis. As dear friend Dick B. said: "I knew it! Prayer works! It works!" It does indeed.

Our Mimi is a strong and stubborn, (don't tell her I told you that last part) woman. I really do believe that with all the prayers and good thoughts flying her way, she decided this wasn't the way she wanted to get out of here, that it wasn't her time yet.

We are all so very thankful. 90 is a very long time to live (unless you're a parrot or turtle, of course), and she's pretty much had a good good life....but I'm glad we have more time, even if it's not a lot of years in the grand scheme of things (she is 90), to be with her.

Bless you, Mimi, you are amazing and we love love love you!
And we're so glad you're still here!
Miracles, ya gotta believe in miracles!

If you folks don't mind, offer up a prayer
or a good thought for her, will you?
Thank you, thank you!

~~~

xoabb