Merry Christmas in In the Meadow

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. It was positively balmy here in Upstate New York today. Not a snowy Christmas, that’s for sure.

It has been over a month since I have written here. There has been a lot going on. Kayla tried out for the musical this year. She will be one of the Hot Box Girls and Mission Band in the show. The show is Guys and Dolls. I wasn’t sure if she was going to try out. She did the musical last year but has some different interests this year. But she decided to go ahead and try out. This will be a good role for her. She is young for her age sometimes. This role will give her some more experience in the theater without being overwhelming.

Timmy and Aaron have been playing hockey. It is three days a week including practices and games. There are some ninth grade boys on Timmy’s team who also play for the school team. The high school team meets every day after school and sometimes on weekends. We will see if Timmy wants to make that much of a commitment in order to do high school hockey next year.

I am on the parent committee for the musical. A lot of the eighth grade parents are on it. We are making many of the sets and costumes. That has kept me busy along with hockey and work.

The kids had a school holiday concert this past week. They played as part of the school band. Timmy plays the trumpet and Kayla and Aaron play the saxophone.

My mom is doing okay. We have her staying in a nursing home near where we live. I was talking with my aunt yesterday about how she seemed to not do so well when she got to this facility. We were wondering if she could have had another stroke but no one has said anything about that. When my mom first arrived she was extremely agitated and kept saying she wanted to go home. She also had several falls from trying to get up unassisted. They have put her on some medication which has calmed her down. However, she is more confused and seems to do everything a lot slower. She had a problem about a month ago where her head started tipping to one side. The nursing home has her working with a pain management specialist. The physical therapy department doesn’t want her in a brace because they want to encourage her to move it herself. She has improved her range of motion with it quite a bit. She still leans to one side when she is tired but when we are there and talking to her she holds her head up. Her speech is also easier to understand. When this first happened you couldn’t understand her at all.

I rented a car for the holidays. It is the first time I have rented a car for non-work related reasons in a long time. It ended up being one of the worst customer service experiences I have had, although it all ended well. I was surprised because I had gone through this place many times when I was renting cars for work and always had a great experience. I rented a car on December 23rd for one week. The next morning I got a call from the rental car place saying that the car I rented had been sold and asking if I could bring it back so they could switch me to a newer car. I agreed to bring it back that afternoon. When I got there they tried to put me in another car that was filthy inside. I don’t know what happened to it but you could tell it hadn’t been cleaned. Also it was smaller than the other car I rented although they tried to tell me it wasn’t. It didn’t have cruise control when the other car did. I told them I wanted a different car because that one didn’t have cruise control. I didn’t even mention the other stuff that was wrong with it. They offered me a free upgrade to a bigger car than I originally had, but when we looked at the car they tried to convince me this one didn’t have cruise control even though it clearly did. I told them this car would be fine. So I ended up with a free upgrade to a really nice car. It all ended well.