5C's Que Pasa

Mommio became more unsettled as the evening wore on yesterday.  Colin stayed with her until the pain meds kicked in.  He said that they both spoke from their hearts to each other.  He was happily surprised to see her much more alert this morning.  Perhaps the antibiotics are helping plus the fact that she is getting a good deal of rest and that Colin is there, all working together in a positive way.

I had ordered greetings from the Queen, The Governor General of Canada, the Prime Minster, etc, in honour of her 105th birthday. and they had arrived early. Sorry this is fuzzy ( I didn’t take the photo  🙂 ) The Queen is wishing Mommio her warmest congratulations and good wishes for an enjoyable day as she celebrates her one hundred and fifth birthday which happens to be on October 28th.

From the Governor General of Canada.

These photos would only open in Photos and I am still using iPhoto so I have no idea how to make the photos brighter.  I truly prefer iPhoto and hope that it is here for a very long time. The past few days have been a learning curve for both of us.  Colin is learning how to take a photo with his iPhone and email it directly to me.  I am tyring to make the photo clearer but obviously am failing. Modern technology is amazing but you do have to know how to use it.

Last night after Colin left Mommio he headed to the Lobster House to get take out as he had not eaten all day.  The Lobster House is one of the restaurants that he has taken her to each time he visited.  He thought it fitting that he got his dinner from them.  How very special.

I am not clear on when  he purchased this wine. We don’t have time to talk details.  He chose it because it was a Pinot Grigio and because of the name.  Jean is Mommio’s first name. The wine was celebrating the family matriarch and her legacy.  Most apropos.

He also liked the look of the label.  It reminded him of Mommio.

This morning Mommio ate breakfast and later had lunch as well. Colin had a few good chats with her throughout the day.

At some point Colin and I got it together and we were able to FaceTime with Mommio. She doesn’t have much energy to respond verbally to every question, but she knew that it was me and smiled and told me that she loved me.

Love those smiles.  Notice how he is wearing the same shirt that is in the photo at her bedside.

Colin left the special phone there for Mommio to use and he did test it with the help of his brother.  She certainly can hear much better with it.  We also discussed FaceTime with Bill and hopefully over the winter he might be able to do it with Colin so that he can see his Mom.  It was wonderful that Mommio was well enough to spend some quality time with Colin today.

Colin is on his way back here. Looking forward to hugs later.  He lands about 9:30PM.  A chilly -6C/21F  here tonight.

Without going into too much detail it appears that Mommio has had a bladder infection likely for the past two weeks.  However it was serious enough to change her personality.  From here I diagnosed that she was in pain and perhaps had an infection.  This has happened before.  We insisted on a call to the facility doctor which was done.  In addition to antibiotics once they did a urine test, they were going to give her something for the pain.  She has been in bed since Colin arrived yesterday afternoon and mostly in a very deep sleep.

We aren’t sure that she recognized him yesterday but for certain she knew he was there today.  She continued to sleep for most of the day.  I believe that her body was exhausted from fighting this infection.  I was going to hire someone to come in today to do a full blood panel but apparently she had blood drawn on September 26th.  No where near perfect results but not bad at all considering.  They are coming in to do blood again Thursday and the doctor is coming to see her on Friday.

Mommio woke up for a few moments and took Colin’s hand and fell asleep again.

Colin spent the day sitting at her bedside talking to her a bit even as she slept and a few times she woke up and smiled when she saw him.   He also played his guitalele for her.  She appeared to be calmer and more relaxed.  In a few hours she will be getting her third dose of antibiotics.  Hopefully they will kick in sooner than later so that Colin can have some quality time with Mommio.

Later when she woke up she gave him a big smile and said to him “I love you. You’re the last one. Be happy”. She smiled for this photo and went back to sleep.

Such a change from when he saw her 4.5 months ago. She is not eating but did have a drink of the protein drink Resource.  I don’t know how much she drank.  Colin plans on staying with her till later in the evening, perhaps as long as they will let him.

This is not an easy time for either of them and most certainly not an easy visit for Colin.  Meanwhile I sit here waiting for a text, an email or a phone call.  I am doing the best I can to advise from here but it is not the same as being there.

Before posting I asked Colin to check this post.  He asked me to add the following photo, taken the end of August 2018, just before we left for Alburqueque.  What a difference a year makes.

…off to see Mommio.

Despite getting up at 5 am and arriving at the airport at 5:45AM it was a no go.  We were not told why the flight was delayed by two hours but at least he would still get to Winnipeg  by 3 PM, later than planned but at least there.

I am going to miss Colin so very much, even if it is only for a few days.

I found this phone after much online research.  It is supposed to enhance hearing by at least 50 decibels.  This would be a miracle for Colin.  He calls Mommio several times per week but for the past few years she does not hear him.  Very sad for Colin. He wants to have a conversation with his Mom. So I thought that this phone might be of help.  It is in his suitcase.

Sadly when he arrived in Winnipeg and got to where Mommio is living, something was not right.  Mommio was not herself.  It was not pleasant but much has been done since he arrived today to rectify the situation.  At this time that is all that I can say. Things are in motion to change the situation. We are hopeful.  It might be minor but prayers  are welcome.

I spent 5.5 hours yesterday driving around to five stores looking for a variety of items to bring to Mexico with me. I have been looking for new corn on the cob holders since one broke in my mouth mid August.  You can read about how I first thought it was a broken tooth by clicking here.

Bottom right shows the old set of holders. I had pretty much given up on finding new ones when I turned a corner at Superstore and there they were hanging right at face level on the end of an aisle.  I love them. The two ends fit together so nothing is sticking out in your drawer ready to poke your finger. They come four sets to a package, two yellow and two green, all for only $4.49CAD/$3.37USD.

I even managed to find the ever elusive Christmas cards at the second dollar store that I went to yesterday.  I have been looking for some for a few weeks now.  I found many other things there that I did not need but for some reason decided that I could not live without them 😉  The last store that I went into was Safeway, the only one we have here in Kelowna.  I don’t shop there much any longer as I find that their prices are high.  However they have items that I can only find there and that I need for certain recipes plus they have great prices on cheddar.  So image my shock when a sign on the door said that they were closing October 25th and many items were marked down.

The shelves were bare in spots and in others they were totally empty.

So I was unable to get my unique Asian curry paste that I use in my fish chowder nor the special tartar sauce that Colin likes and a few other items.  I got the very last package of frozen stuffing that the store had, which I use once per year for a special Christmas recipe.  It is the only one that I have I found that has no meat in it.

It truly was shocking to be walking through an empty store that I have shopped at since 2003.  Only four boxes of pizza remain in this section.  They have obviously have not been purchasing fresh merchandise as the best by dates were very close.

None of the staff at check out were familiar to me.  I asked and was told that the older staff who had been there for years and years were offered a buyout package.  A new store called FreshCo will be opening next summer in its place and the staff were all offered a job but they would all be starting at the bottom of the totem pole with no seniority.   How very sad for them, especially if they were not ready to retire but had close to 18 – 22 years invested with Safeway.

If you look ever so closely you will see moisture between the two pieces of glass.  Almost impossible to see so you will just have to trust me.

Towards the end of the summer we became aware of  a problem with a set of windows in what is called our add a room.  Except it is really not a separate room but part of our great room as we took out the wall between the two units. Our understanding is that we have a lifetime warranty with Gentek Windows.  Because I am not as sharp as usual and falling behind I asked Colin to contact Gentek and sort things out.  Long story short, he made many calls and kept getting shut down ” we are waiting for paperwork”.  So I took over last week, the very end of September.  I insisted on answers. Yes insisted.  Five phone calls later ( to the local company here in Canada ) and within four business days I had my answers.  I was not happy with the first answer.  Why did we have to wait close to five weeks  ( and at least five calls from Colin ) to be told that we needed to place a call to the warranty department in Ohio in order to get our issue resolved?  Why did she not tell me this just over four weeks ago?  She said that she was waiting for paperwork, it was a lie.

Last Friday I called and spoke to someone different who never called me back.  Monday I called and spoke to our main person who said she would call back within an hour.  Seven hours later I called her again and that is when I discovered that we had to contact the US company but only online 8-O.  First she could not find a number to call and eventually gave me a long distance number to call. Her excuse was that they never handle warranty issues.  Five minutes later ( on my own ) I had two 800 numbers to use.  The first number I called,  I discovered that by pressing  three, I got to the warranty department 😀  Then I discovered that I had to file my request online.  Perhaps it was because our address is Canadian that their system would not accept our address.  So I had to call back and again was on hold for about 15 minutes for the second time.  By now Colin had given up and said that we should just pay for the window to be replaced.

However it was not just the one window but also the one above that you can see that the seal was breaking.

We have three of these windows in a row.  We actually have about 25 windows from this company in our add a room.  No idea the exact cost but close to $30,000.

This is the second park model home that we have designed and built here in the park. Our homes have all been custom built.  The home that we are in now was completed the fall of 2012.  We moved in and lived here for less than two weeks before we headed south to Mexico for the winter. When we returned in the spring we discovered that the builder of our add a room had committed suicide shortly after we left Canada.  Basically that meant that we had no warranty for a very expensive add a room ( 10’x 44′).  However we were under the understanding that our windows had a lifetime warranty. What a struggle  the repair of this one window has been.  Fortunately once I became involved with the Ohio warranty department I was assured within one hour that  both widows would be built by the Seattle factory and shipped out on October 16th all at no charge ( the local gal that Colin had been chatting with said we would have to pay at least 50% ).  I then contacted the local company and the head guy was shocked at what I been through.  He was then surprised when I told him that we were leaving October 25th and needed this competed before then.  I made a point of explaining how disappointed we were with his employee who and had steered us wrong over and over. Why could she not have told us four weeks ago that we had to call the Ohio warranty department?  So he is going to do his best to be sure that our windows are actually shipped on the 16th of October and installed before we leave on the 25th. We can only hope that this will actually happen.  So much energy expended on something that I eventually resolved in an hour.

The flu shot poll, an update from my blog last night. As you can see 43.77% in our local area never get a flu shot.  The survey was based on 7187 people.  Interesting!

The following is very sad. There was a tropical storm this past Monday and as a result there was some damage in Mazatlan as well on the Isla, but even more along the coast further south.

Power was out in various parts of the Isla for close to 24 hours.

The basketball court had damage as well as other parts of the Isla including our friends Joyce and Ken’s home.

Thanks to our friends Brad & Jenny ( who made a special visit to the Isla ) as well as Joyce and Ken who both sent us photos today showing our site.

For the most part we appear to have been spared major damage.  In some of  the closer up photos we know that we need to do some palm frond replacements.  Thank you both for taking the time to check out our Isla home.  We can now rest easy.

But what truly upsets me are the turtles.  I have been involved in turtle rescue one way or another ( walking the beach and locating nests ) for about 20 years now since our Acapulco days. I was devastated to read this article about how this same storm destroyed more than 8 million turtle eggs.  That is a massive loss especially as 7 of the 8 turtle species in the world come ashore here to lay their eggs along these beaches.

A horrific loss.

Even more amazing is that one of those 7 species , the Olive Ridley Turtle, was found very recently here in our Canadian waters.  This screen capture was dated October 3rd.

Nature is amazing but it is up to us to keep it alive and of course our climate.