RAIN

Rain turning to snow tonight they say, 2 -3 inches. Lest you imagine I have begun taking an unseemly interest in the Weather Channel, understand that my only concern is the direction in which to point Outside Bob now that he's finished all the winter inside jobs. The drive needs sweeping desperately--all the grit the snow plows have sprayed down since October, and this is a good week's work because it's a ten-minute walk out to the road--but no going outside today. So I have him back scanning Ethel and Albert scripts. We're down to the last box. A week ago I would have considered this the best possible news ever but now all I want to hear is that Peg is coming home. 

I walk around her room, picking stuff up, looking at it (pitching it), tidying, straightening--thinking maybe somehow if I rearrange everything and sort and get rid of all the crap, maybe this will guarantee that she will make it, she will come home again, if only to get mad at me for rearranging her stuff. At the moment she is obsessing over losing or being unable to lay her hands on something that Tom, a fan, once wrote her, and although I reassure her that it is definitely here somewhere, I am not 100 % sure I didn't pitch it in a pique one night, since she tends to listen to Tom or her other fan Steve more than she does me. Which on occasion annoys me. Such as when she calls Steve, say, in Florida, when the water pump breaks, instead of the plumber.

Anyhow I get in there today (hospital) and as I'm walking into Room 432  a male nurse says "I bet you're excited she's coming home today!" and I think, ah, I must have the wrong room, but no, seems that's the plan. Well, not for me it isn't. I mean, yes, I want her home, but please, internal bleeding and major heart attack? Having her sitting at the butcher block with just me in attendance making her peanut butter and mayo sandwiches with the crusts cut off is not exactly how I see it, not just yet. I'm too scared. All the tubes are out of her now and they removed the Central Line while I was sitting there  (and the Northern and the Bakerloo) but the idea of sole responsibility is daunting. Only two days ago this woman was  grey in the face, eyes rolling back, fighting for breath, and now she's tucking into beef and barley soup and a plate of disgusting turkey with gravy that looked like that Mucillage glue we had in kindergarten, followed by a large piece of salted almond Easter bunny chocolate. My mother looks and sounds absolutely like her old self. Incredible. But I want them to get her up and walking again before they give her to me. 

I put in a call to her primary care doctor, Paula Aucoin, to get the whole picture, and she's not called me back yet but how I read it is this: they're just going to send her home and cross their fingers and hope she's ok. Which I do get, because what else can they do. So far no more bleeding. But, has it stopped forever or just temporary?  Heart rhythms normal, all vitals back to normal. For the moment. BUT. No heart surgery on the cards or anything up the jacksy (quaint Brit term) again because they can't chance knocking her out or nicking an interior wall. 

So it seems, after some rehab either in the hospital or Laurel Lake Nursing Home, Odd's old haunt, she's coming home. Which is indeed a result, and the one we want, to be sure. It does mean also that I have to go around de-Astrid-ing the place (funny how fast you can put your stamp on things when you think your mother's never coming home again), putting things back to the way she likes them, like the lingonberries and strawberry jam out of the fridge and back on the shelf near the island where she can reach them (even with mold on them) and--oh God I don't know. I'm on such an emotional roller coaster. Really really loving the fact that the counter top microwave died (as opposed to the in-built stove one) so I have room over there to prep meals, but already annoyed knowing that Peg, once home, when my back is turned, is going to buy another microwave the size of a Honda to fuck up the counterspace. The mother-daughter relationship is indeed complicated.
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STAFF ON CALL:

Bonnie, doing the usual million things including cleaning the laundry room carpet where the dog peed about 10 gallons worth because it won't go out in the rain. Plus she's a notary (Bonnie, not the dog), how convenient is this, so we were able to stamp and send Odd's Life certificate back to Norway to prove he's still on this planet (more or less) so they don't stop his pension like they did last year because none of us realized that if we'd turned over the their letter we would have seen the English translation, instead of just pitching the letter in the garbage thinking "this can't be important, it's in Norwegian!"

Outside Bob, as I said, scanning and sweeping and Odd duty.
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HIGHS:
PriceChopper, and getting via UPS a big box from J Crew from Karen Solloway in England in which I found a fantastic big chunky trendy necklace and also some earrings. JUST FOR ME. Love them. Love her. Not that Price Chopper wasn't fun, too. 

David Jenkins, stage designer old friend who conveniently lives up the road, bringing over pizza and salad for dinner.  Odd ate his pizza but left his kale salad, possibly thinking it was crepe paper.
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LOWS:
I have a throbbing and occasionally stabbing pain on that bone behind your ear (skull?), my left one (ear not skull), and have had it since yesterday, bad enough to keep me awake  all night, and am convinced I have a brain tumor.