Yesterday I was working toward two deadlines — one during the regular workday, another after I got home — and I didn’t have a chance to post my happy birthday wishes for Colleen. She turned 32 yesterday, so be sure to stop by her journal and give her your condolences congratulations! 
I’m back in Tucson, and have been since the seventeenth. It turns out that my mother, Angela, will get to come home sooner than expected.
Phone consultations with my mom’s Wichita-based allergist, and with the interior environment specialist who examined our house, revealed some stark disagreements with “Dr. Erickson’s” assertion that the house would never be habitable for her again. According to the allergist, Erickson’s is an extremist viewpoint that leaves her with virtually no options; according to the environment specialist, all that remained to be done was replacement of the carpet in the formerly-leaky loft.
When I returned to Kansas in late September, Angela was healthier than I’d seen her in years. Over the three and a half weeks that she was on her own, however, the burden of doing all her own shopping and errands — along with searching for an apartment1, buying a car to save money over renting one2, and getting exposed to pesticide when the bushes outside the hospitality house were sprayed — had caused her to deteriorate almost to her previous level of ill health.
Shortly after I came back, she started taking oil of oregano and olive leaf extract. Both were recommended by a Tucsonite she’d befriended who knows a great deal about natural medicine. She started to cough up a lot of the remaining crap in her lungs, which turned out to be a mixed blessing. This was apparently one of those “it gets worse before it gets better” things, and there were a couple of very scary episodes. Now, however, she’s breathing much better. I’m hopeful that this will continue to be the case.
The current plan is to take the new car (a 5-door Chevy Aveo) back to Kansas on Thursday. We’ll be heading north to Flagstaff, then taking I-40 east through Albuquerque and Arlington to Oklahoma City. At Oklahoma City, we take I-35 north back to Kansas. It’s a two-day trip; we’re currently looking for hotels in Albuquerque with Evergreen rooms, where my mom can stay the night without setting off her allergies. (more…)
Who knew Dean Allen was such a romantic?
“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.”
— Comte de Bussy-Rabnutin
Not necessarily related to anything in particular. Just something I saw and liked.
Life-changing events abound. I just wish I had time to post about them. For my friends who read this blog as a way to keep in touch with me, please be assured that I’m alive and well. I’ll have more information about current events Real Soon Now.
