The wonderful hospital sent my mom back home yesterday. Not home home, because she can’t go back to her apartment by herself. But home to the nursing home part of the retirement community where she lives.

She missed yesterday entirely. She missed everything about it, because she was someplace deep inside. She missed breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She missed the trip from the hospital to the nursing home. She missed going to bed in the nursing home. Slept right through it all.

We were all very concerned, including her doctor, who made a special trip in just to see her today.

But she woke up this morning.

And that’s not all!

She’s getting married, and she’s just waiting for her beau to show up with the ring.

Wherever she was, it was a happy place.

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My 92 year old mom is in the hospital.

She’s been there since Saturday and they haven’t done much. She had a very small stroke, and they were going to do a few tests to look for Other Things. But they already knew they wouldn’t treat her for the Other Things, so I asked them not to do the tests.

She’s been pretty confused–she thought she was on a ship. Now she’s not really waking up.

She’s at the Ohio State University Hospital. I’ve been there with her before, and I’ve been there with my sister when we were visiting my  mom. I’ve been in a lot of hospitals, and, if I lived closer, this would be my hospital of choice.

It’s a teaching hospital, which means that interns do all the patient care. This is early August. Medical school graduates become interns in early July, so her intern has been a doctor for about a month.

He is outstanding. He has the best communication skills of any intern I’ve ever talked to. Every time I’ve asked for something, he’s right on top of it. He answers his phone. He apologizes for things he thinks he could have done better, even though they’re inconsequential in this case. He says he completely understands my point of view, which is that she doesn’t need to be in the hospital or go to the hospital again.

I am so grateful to Ben Kaffenberger, MD. In our last conversation, I told him he had great communication skills and that I really appreciated them.

I am also grateful that my mom had the presence of mind to appoint a power of attorney for her health care. It happens to be me, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that somebody has the legal right to say, “Whoa, Nelly!”

I am grateful that the new social worker in the nursing home happens to be my mom’s old social worker from assisted living.

I am grateful that the social worker also knows that my mom wouldn’t want to go back to the hospital. I’m grateful that she’s going to talk to her doctor there about putting my mom on hospice so she doesn’t have to.

This sucks. But it could be so much worse.

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I wanted to like it. I wanted to like it really badly.

So did Dancing Fairy.

We decided it was….. amusing. Ish.

It was amusing-ish in a “Why the Russian accents?” way. And also a “I’d rather watch those little yellow critters” way.

And an “I keep waiting for Steve Carell to be really funny” way.
All of which just shows to go you that you can wait for this one to come out on Netflix for free.

Say, in about three years.

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Guess what?

I’ve done all the learning dives I need to get my A license.

Last weekend, I jumped seven times. The last two were called hop and pops, because they’re from “low” altitude: 5500 feet and 3500 feet. “Low” being a relative term, of course.

The purpose of these jumps is to practice evacuating a plane in a hurry. The drill is: jump out, look up at the plane, arch, and deploy the parachute.

Another student, Sergei, and I did these together. He went out first on the higher one, and I went out first on the lower one. I enjoyed jumping with another student again, which I haven’t done for many weeks.

These jumps are low enough that people on the ground, like, say, the instructor who taught you almost everything you know, can see every move you make. Unlike higher jumps, where you’re just a tiny little dot in the sky. The people on the ground make a point of stopping whatever they’re doing to come out and watch.

No pressure there. Nuh uh.

I’d been not really looking forward to these jumps because of the short time frame between exit and getting a parachute over my head. I had to accomplish that in five seconds. But they were really fun. All parachute and no work to fly my body around the sky, which is the tiring part.

So all that’s left between me and getting turned loose in the sky is a check dive. I have to accomplish a LOT in a minute of freefall, and I’m intimidated by the two people who evaluate check dives.

I figure I’ll need at least two attempts–and lots of animals on Old MacDonald’s farm.

Stay tuned.

But, in preparation for being turned loose, I’ve started to order my gear because I won’t be able to use the student stuff anymore. Here’s my helmet, but you have to picture it in glossy black paint, instead of red:

If you haven’t seen a lot of skydiving helmets, it probably looks pretty short bus. Especially in red.

But, trust me, it’s sweet.

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Mr. M returned from his trip to New Mexico and Colorado on Saturday night. He was gone for two weeks.

I was very happy to have him home again. You know how  when someone who’s really dear to you has been gone and then they come back, you keep looking at their face and thinking how good it looks to you?

It was just like that.

While Mr. M was gone, he went to the plaza in Santa Fe and had a Frito pie. He texted me while he was doing it. I texted him back and said that I had Frito pie envy–and also spork envy.

Here’s what he brought me from his trip, which is one of the many reasons why I love him:

Nothing says “I love you” like three sporks.

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There are actually only three seasons in Oregon: soup season, salad season, and fruit season.

Soup season occurs from late September until June. Or July. Whenever the furnace finally stops coming on in the morning. The hallmark characteristic of soup season is a deep human need for warm food because it’s so fricking cold and damp outside.

Salad season occurs from whenever the lettuces in the garden are big enough to eat until they bolt. So that’s about eight weeks or so. Salad season is just about over. Please note that salad season does not include ripe tomatoes. Tomatoes have their own season, which occurs whenever they damn well feel like it.

Fruit season starts whenever Oregon strawberries show up in the market and lasts until after the local peaches are gone.

We’re in the midst of fruit season now. Of all the seasons, fruit season is my favorite.

Of course, I say that about salad season, too; I love foraging for green things in the garden, slapping them on a plate, and adding dressing. I especially love tangy green things, which includes arugula and that lettuce-y thing with little yellow flowers, which is like arugula on steroids. Yum. But I have a short memory and lots of fruit in the refrigerator.

I would take pictures of my fruits, but Mr. M has the camera in Santa Fe right now, so I can’t. I stole these pictures from the internets, because, if you can’t have a taste of fruit season around here, you should definitely have a gander.

In addition to the fruits I personally possess, there are also local raspberries and marionberries (think enormous blackberries), dark red cherries, and a few remaining strawberries.

Unlike the other seasons, fruit season includes a game. Dancing Fairy and I played it just this week.

You sit on the front steps and eat a cherry, keeping the pit in your mouth. Then you use a combination of body mechanics, tongue calisthenics, and forced exhalation to spit it as far as you can. [Note: When two people play, it's a game. When one person plays, she's just a redneck.]

DF won. She spit a pit clear across the sidewalk, 20 feet or so. She’s an overachiever in the making.

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Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last. Here’s the letter I received this afternoon from:

The Circuit Court of the State of Oregon

For the Twelfth Judicial District

I like how Alice is on a first name basis with me. I think she wants to be friends.

How do you suppose she feels about Renegade Naked Kayaking?

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I’ve never played this hard in my entire life. It’s SO much fun. On Friday, I passed three coaching levels in two jumps. Yesterday, I passed another three levels in three jumps.

The clouds didn’t burn off until about 2, and I was on my way home by 5. For me, that’s a lot of jumps in not much time. I slept like a big old cedar log last night.

The coaching program takes the skills I painstakingly acquired in the AFF program and refines them. I’m learning to:

• fall faster so I can keep up with heavier jumpers. I’m also learning how to fall more slowly so I can stay up with lighter jumpers, but, since I’m the “floatiest” person around the dropzone right now, I’m not likely to use the falling more slowly part all that often.
• move horizontally really quickly while I’m falling, so I can get close to other jumpers and, more importantly, get far away from other jumpers fast. “Really quickly” means about 100 yards in five seconds.
• “dock” with another jumper, which means holding on to each other’s arms in the sky.
• stick my head out of the plane and look down to see where we are, relative to where we want to land, before we jump out. (It’s amazing what you can get used to. Not too long ago, I couldn’t even stand sitting next to the door.) Also, use the speed of the plane in the air to figure out when I should jump.
• land a smaller, faster parachute. My bruised knees can tell you all about how much more learning I have to do.
• do different kinds of turns. In addition to regular, spiraling turns, I’m learning how to do flat turns, where I change direction without losing any altitude. This both takes more concentration and is a very important survival skill.

I’ve done about 32 jumps now. I probably have to do about six more before I get my license.

This is the most fun summer I have ever had.

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We dried off in the sun, got dressed, and moseyed on down the lazy river.

Just before we got to the pea pod town, the Polk County Sheriff patrol boat headed in our direction. Two polite, firm sheriffs intercepted us.

When a cop pulls you over while you’re driving, you run through all the possible reasons in your mind. Were you speeding? Not wearing a seatbelt? Is one of your tail lights out? Is your registration expired?

I was running through reasons in my mind, right there on the river. And the only thing I could come up with was that, about an hour before, I’d been flashing my lady bits in broad daylight. I was positive that nobody had come down the river while we were skinnydipping.

But maybe somebody had somehow seen us.

And called the sheriff.

Who promptly sent out a patrol boat to intercept three no-longer-naked kayakers.

You can see that the day had done wonders for my powers of cogitation.

Then one of the sheriffs said, “Do you all have permits?”

Permits?

They pulled us over on the river. We paddled to the shore and got out.

Where we each got a citation for not having the permit that was enacted in January for which they had been given warnings until the 4th of July. The “protect the river against invasive aquatic species’ permit that, since it was five days past the end of the warning period and we didn’t have one, we all got citations for.

The permit costs $5.

The citation was $142.

Each.

For some reason, probably the combination of excellent potlunch and the airplane buzzing and the blue, blue sky, and the naked swimming, Amy and I thought this was hilarious. Cherry didn’t find it quite as amusing as we did.

While the Polk County boys were filling out their paperwork, we laughed at how funny it was that we were getting citations for something we’d never heard of, instead of indecent exposure. I made a joke about having to call our husbands and tell them we were going to be late because we got pulled over, and one of the sheriffs said, “Tell them you tried to elude us.”

That made us laugh harder. Props to the sheriff for having a sense of humor. Plus for the visual of us trying to elude a powerboat in our kayaks. Paddle like hell, mama!

We bought our permits and wrote letters and sent checks. Amy wrote hers that night and mailed it on Monday morning. In yesterday’s mail, she received a notice of charges dismissed and her returned check.

If we all get our checks back, that’ll be icing on the cake.

Because Renegade Naked Kayaking was totally worth $426.

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