Something this cute should have a name, I think.
Maybe its own room, too.

I haven't spent as much time on these journals recently as I would like to. I budget about thirty to forty-five minutes a day to do these; although I never need look far for something to write about (at admittedly varying levels of competence), other life events often intervene to steal this time. I'm also easily distracted by other journals and the lives they depict.

This week I blame two off-line distractions.

The dreaded flu returned to me last Friday, my second bout with these viral critters this season, despite my having had a flu shot. Another virus slipped through the web, I guess. By yesterday at noon, I felt much better.

The other matter distracting me from these pages involved my mother-in-law. Monday, while ascending her front porch stairs after retrieving the evening newspaper, Shirley fell up the stairs, breaking her arm just below the shoulder.

She is left-handed, so naturally the break is on her left arm, the one she extended to break the fall. Life's like that.

The doctor has advised her that if he simply sets the bone, she will not recover a full range of motion. With a surgery, however, and the placement of a rod and some pins, she will probably return to a nearly normal condition. She has chosen to undergo the surgery, which is scheduled for tomorrow morning.

Shirley will turn seventy soon, and remains a healthy and active woman. This injury will reduce the help she gives us with the boys, and will increase the help she needs around her house from us while she recovers. That's a burden we will gladly assume.

She has always been generous with her labor and her time. When the boys were younger, we never paid a baby-sitter to stay with them because she was always available and willing to take on the chore. And even nowadays, we might arrive home from work to find that she has broken into the house and prepared dinner for us. After she has healed and no longer needs our help, we will still be in arrears to her for all she's done.

So we tolerate her unannounced entries into the house (she didn't really break in -- she had a key made) which invariably occur when the boys or I have stepped naked and dripping out of the shower in search of a clean towel. And we tolerate the fact that when she parks her car at our house, she blocks the driveway, preventing our escape.

One of her beef briskets -- beef that melts like cotton candy in a warm breath -- offsets several blocked driveways.