Catching You UP and The best Chinese Dinner Ever

I recently returned from a 16 day trip to Florida during which all was not glorious vacation. My Sisters and I saw drastic changes in our mother’s ability to get in and out of her recliner. She even decided to sleep in her hospital bed. She has not slept in a bed for years. It was decided that we should admit her to the hospital and then be able to move her into rehab so there would be a chance to get back her lost mobility.
I flew down a couple of days before my planned visit and it was a good thing because my youngest sister, Mom’s care giver, also landed in the hospital.
All this started from a cold and they both were pretty sick.
Eventually Rae went home and Peggy and I moved Mom to a rehab skilled nursing center on the east side of Florida closer to where Peggy lives.
I don’t want to say I had no fun on this trip. Peggy and Steve have moved to a beautiful part of Florida and live in a stunning condo community. I got to meet a lot of their friends and we had some great walks on the beach.
Peggy and I drove to see Michael’s new house and then picked up Peggy’s grandsons and saw their house. We took the boys back to Peggy’s and I had some quality time with them. Nothing like small children to bring you back to what is important.
While Peggy and I were sitting for hours in the hospital, I had a call from a friend who asked me if I would help with setting up visits in Boston for some women from China who are in the blindness field. They wanted to learn about how blind people in the US are educated, and trained for employment. I was also asked to meet with them. I was supposed to show that a person who grew up blind could live a normal life. I have always thought that my life is better than normal.
I offered to have them to our house on Friday night for dinner. I was told that they would cook real Chinese food at our house.
Now I had to call Neal and break this to him. He had 5 work trips in the last 6 weeks. We had not seen each other for more than two days in a row for all that time. There were only 12 hours between him coming home and me leaving for Florida. I would not have blamed him if he hung up on me.
He did not; in fact he was fine with this from the first mention of the somewhat vague plan. I figured we had cleaners on that Friday morning and what else was there really to do?
I came home on Tuesday and we heard nothing until Thursday night, but indeed the 5 of them were coming along with food.
I will never be able to explain how much fun this turned out to be. My new kitchen worked perfectly for 5 people cooking 5 different things. They really did bring everything. They forgot ginger and almost cried when they saw I had some.
The food was amazing and we are still eating left overs.
We laughed and talked and learned about each other.
What a great way to get to know about someone. Not everyone spoke a lot of English but a couple of people were good translators.
I would do this again in a minute.