Day 27

This is Day 27 of journalling 🙂  I’ve written every day now for 27 straight days.  Not all of those entries have made their way over to opendiary, but they’re all on ldsjournal.  I’ve noticed that journalling definitely helps me see the hand of the Lord in my life.    If I’d gotten all the matches this week before I really started journalling, I’m not sure I’d have seen them as blessings from the Lord.  But you could argue that they’re blessings as a result of finally putting my life back where it belongs.  That reminds me…another 6 matches this morning, bringing up the week’s total to 30.  I’ve had a few close the matches already but I’m sitting on something like 48 matches right now, most of them coming in August. 

On a more sobering subject, there’s my grandfather.  My dad and I went down last Friday night. I wrote about it a little bit, but not all that much because on a lot of levels, it was pretty depressing.  My grandmother’s doing pretty good, but my grandfather’s memory is starting to take a sharper downhill spiral.  It was really bad last week…asking the same question two and three times in a 20 minute span, forgetting that I’m the oldest of me and my brothers, asking if Stephen’s still with the same girlfriend (with my grandmother reminding him that he met her in March) and then asking 15 minutes later if Stephen had a girlfriend.  I remember as my dad and I left their house, I asked him if it was me, or if my grandfather’s memory was worse than usual.  It wasn’t just me.  Well, my parents went alone tonight to see them (I really needed a night to myself after this week at work!) and apparently his memory was even worse than last week.  As I type this, I’m wondering if this is the change I’ve been feeling coming on for the last few weeks.  There’s more talk between my parents about my grandfather ending up in a nursing home, but I’m not sure how much of that has gone on between my parents and the rest of my dad’s siblings.  One thing’s for sure, if my grandmother goes first, my grandfather will not be able to live on his own.  He’s diabetic and right now my grandmother functions as his memory in that arena…but if she goes first he’ll likely end up either in a nursing home or living with one of his kids and their family.

So with Clarine in the hospital, my singing a song in Sacrament meeting pre-surgery got thrown out the window.  No big deal.  It sounds like we’ll get a Christmas one started before surgery and then finish it up post-surgery.  We don’t have enough time to do one completely post-surgery, even with the easy one I’ve picked. And I did pick a rather easy one, in terms of the melody anyway.  We’ll see what happens when we put the vocals and accompaniment together.  The last song Sister G. and I did together drove us nuts initially as the accompaniment and vocals didn’t really fit together – there were times when she would play 5 notes and not a one of them was the one I was singing. 

Speaking of Clarine, she’s doing much better 🙂  She’s been home since August 3rd and is hungry on her own finally! For awhile after she got home, her mom had to make her eat and drink (thanks to the meds she’s still on and the results of being on a feeding tube for…two weeks I think).  But she’s doing very well these days 🙂

"Life is measured not by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."