Big yellow thing in the sky

The sun came out this morning.  That’s noteworthy because we haven’t seen much of it for the last couple of months.  Actually we haven’t seen much of it since we left San Diego.  We’ve been hanging out east of Regina for over a week now.  Its really nice to be able to have the windows open again.

We visit father every day – some days a couple of times.  His mind comes and goes.  Yesterday we both thought he was pretty much on his game.  We had taken a bunch of laundry to a place close to Dove House.  Marilyn watched the washers while I visited and then I monitored the dryers while she visited.  Both of us had a good visit but when Marilyn got ready to leave father thought he should get up and drive her.  It was a nice gesture but he hasn’t had a drivers license for at least three years now.  One night earlier in the week he was convinced that mother was “upstairs” and was very concerned about whether we were going to go visit her after we left him.  We’re not sure whether its better to remind him that mother died a year and a half ago or just let him live in his fantasy world.

We like to switch the visit times every day because it gives us a better window into the kind of care father is getting from Dove House.  They are probably better than average for the type of facility they run but they are far from perfect.  I’m sure its a huge challenge to retain staff at that type of place, no different from most businesses.  Quality nursing staff is no doubt expensive and a lot of the time they simply don’t have enough staff on duty to do anything more than put out fires.  Unfortunately that leaves the less demanding inmates being treated like potted plants – watered regularly, turned occasionally and otherwise ignored.

A lot of the time we’re not sure what father is aware of or where he thinks he is at the moment.  On the other hand he is clearly aware of the situation in the US Gulf.  I periodically ask him open ended questions to attempt to figure out just how much of the world around him he is still aware of and last night he made an unaided reference to the oil spill.  He’s always been a news junkie and that part of his brain still seems to be at least a little bit active.

It snowed off and on all day Saturday and had the ground covered when we went to bed.  Fortunately all that has melted now and even more fortunately we haven’t sunk out of sight on this Regina gumbo.  Our landing pads are slowly disappearing into the ground but so far I think we could still move if we had to. 

George approves of this location.  He really likes the spots that have trees around them because trees bring birds and birds outside the window are cat TV.