Helen had her knee replaced on Wednesday so I headed to St. E’s on Thursday after work to visit. She was in a lot of pain and had been on morphine earlier in the day so it was a bit scary. Her oxygen levels kept dropping, which sent an alarm blaring, but she seemed to get better as I stayed longer (nothing to do with me, I’m sure, but rather with the morphine leaving her system) so I left after a couple of hours knowing she’d be more normal the next time I saw her, which would be when she was home because I was headed to Wichita the next day.
Lorri and I were finally making the trip to Wichita for the garden show – something we’d talked about doing last year but didn’t. I was taking my half Obama day (the extra half day of vacation we accrued from Obama giving federal employees a half day off on Christmas Eve) and Lorri was meeting me in Lincoln for lunch, after which we’d leave for Kansas. We were staying with her cousin Friday night, would do the show Saturday morning and then drive to Manhattan to see our friend Susan, who had moved there last summer. After dinner we’d finish the drive home. It would be a long 2 days but fun.
The ride down was uneventful and we met her cousin and her family plus a couple of their friends at a restaurant for supper. We then went home and visited before heading to bed in the guest room that time forgot, complete with Holly Hobbie wallpaper, all pink, yellow and orange with rick rack. Loved it! After a bit of a snafu meeting up at the convention center, we spent the morning at the show. It was not as good as Rhode Island’s show, mostly because they interspersed the exhibits with the vendors, which totally cheapened it, in my humble opinion. Regardless, it was still fun to see all the flowers in bloom and I even bought a tangerine geranium to bring home. After grabbing lunch at a fun restaurant, we said goodbye to Lorri’s cousins and headed to Manhattan via a scenic byway route through tall grass prairie country. It was a gorgeous ride.
It was good to see Susan and we got a tour of her new house, which she still has a lot of work to do on the inside but the yard was looking nice. Kansas is way ahead of Nebraska weather wise so she had snowdrops in bloom and daffodils and tulips starting to come up. We had supper at a local steak house, got all caught up and then Lorri and I headed home. Highway 77 is lonely road with just a single lane in each direction. We saw lots of deer and it was pitch black out but we made it home just before 11:00. I was happy to be sleeping in my own bed.
Sunday was going to just be a catch up day of chores and cooking with some quaility vegging mixed in. Until the phone rang in the early afternoon - it was Helen calling from the hospital. They were releasing her that afternoon and she was going to the hotel in Wahoo rather than home. Between the mud, stairs to get in and all the dogs, they had wanted her to go to a care center so a ground floor room in the Heritage Inn was the compromise. Since that’s right at the end of the street, I said I would bring dinner over so got busy cooking. I already had meatloaf made so whipped up some mashed potatoes, asparagus and brown gravy, packed it all up hot off the stove and delivered it to the hotel along with 2 1950’s tray tables to eat off of. Charliie had left to feed the horses so Helen and I ate then talked for a couple of hours until he got back. It was a nice end to the weekend and it looks like I’ll be bringing more dinners to the hotel this week and even taking Tuesday offto spend with helen because Charlie has to travel that day. It’s hard to see Helen in pain but she was SO much better than when I’d seen her in the hospital and it’s clear she’d going to be much better off once she heals. In the meantime, I’ll look forward to spending Tuesday, laughing and yacking all day long to be sure.
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