July 22, 2006 (Bet you thought we hadn’t survived the TLA experience. Well, we did. Barely. What follows has received little editing.)

I shot awake in the early morning, thinking I was hearing Gary screaming as he fell out of bed. Gee, I wonder where that dream came from. I got up to go to the bathroom – at least, that had been my intention. My back had stiffened up, and I could barely get out of the bed. I was very worried that I had really done something bad to my back, but in the morning I just found it very sore.

Gary’s Saturday therapy session didn’t begin until 11:30, so I stayed in the hotel room until close to then, icing my back and working on the blog until shortly before that time. The PT was one we’ve seen, but she has never led one of Gary’s sessions. She was an “old-timer,” having been at this job for fifteen years. Presently she works part-time because of her fifteen month old daughter. She said she’d work more – and her employers would like her to – but Shepherd didn’t have a day care program, said they couldn’t afford it. Wouldn’t it be nice if such programs were mandatory?

The PT started him off on the rickshaw. She asked him if he wanted to try five sets of twenty. I couldn’t help laughing, but Gary said “Okay, I’ll try.” She gave me a look indicating she was impressed with him, and then walked a short distance away to help another patient. A moment later, after he’d backed into the rickshaw, Gary looked at me, realization apparently having hit. “That’s a bit more than 3 sets of 10 (his usual amount), isn’t it?” I agreed it was. He churned them out, the last ones with effort. I made comments on his form. Helpful ones, of course ;-)

Next he got on the lat machine, which he hadn’t been on before (there isn’t one in the third floor gym where he does his therapy every day but Saturday). She had him do three sets of fifteen. Problem was, he couldn’t get the bar down himself, and after a set he couldn’t release it – well, he could, but they wouldn’t have liked the weights slamming down on the stack. So I helped with that, trying to use my whole body in the effort and not just my arms.

Next she put him on the hand cycle, telling him to do it for fifteen minutes to twenty minutes. I knew he would need his muscle juice ;-), so I went off, got it, came back. Minutes later, he let out a “whoo!” and stopped for a break. The therapist smiled at him from the other side of the room and said, “Was that noise for my benefit?” He told her yeah, that he’d wanted her to know how hard he was working – and that she was torturing him. He continued with the exercise, going about eighteen minutes, taking maybe three breaks. I reminded him how far he’d come – just weeks ago, he hadn’t been able to do more than a minute of the hand cycle without needing a break. (On Sunday, however, he said he regretted doing these exercises – his shoulder is now bothering him more than it had been, though the exercises had seemed fine at the time.)

It was then time for a weight shift, and as he did it, I reminded him to extend his scapula farther (as yesterday’s PT had told him to). Today’s PT walked over just as I said this, and Gary remarked to her, “She pushes me.” She laughed and said she knew that and thought it was great. Gary said he needed me to do that, because he was lazy.

I doubt they think that of him!

She then took us to the rec room for Gary to practice transferring on uneven surfaces – in this case, from his wheelchair to a low and soft chair. The downhill direction went well, but he couldn’t transfer in the upward direction, even with her help. She suggested he use his transfer board, got it out, and placed it so it went from his wheelchair down to sofa chair. The angle was very steep, and he looked at the board dubiously. But she told him not to worry, they’d be able to do it together. So he took one of his “hops.” She held him in place so he wouldn’t slide back down the board (dangerous for his flap, for one thing), and he took another hop and made it to his wheelchair. He told me afterward that if sometime he wanted to get into an SUV, he’d have to direct the person helping him to aid him in the way she had. The thought of that makes me nervous; at the least, I’d want to make sure the person helping him was strong!

Shortly after that session ended, I left for my appointment with a personal trainer. (Good thing I didn’t listen to Yahoo! because the supposedly seventeen minute trip took me thirty-five minutes – and this is without getting lost.) I can’t remember if I told you I was going to see one. I had told my massage therapist that even though I’d been to various doctors and physical therapists, I needed more guidance on what I should do to, first of all, help my back, and now, to be physically strong enough to help Gary. She had recommended her personal trainer. I had been reluctant to try that, but I finally made an appointment to see her.

I wish I had done this weeks ago – at least, based on this first session. I told her about what I was having to do for Gary that was physically difficult and causing some pain – helping with the transfers (in which I support some of his weight and have to twist with it to guide him to the next surface), pulling the draw sheet he lies on in order to move his body around the bed, pushing the pillows slightly under him while he’s lying on his side, lifting up various body parts to get pillows under them, helping him with his stretches by providing a little more force or supporting a body part (have you ever tried to hold someone’s leg straight up in the air for them while they’re lying on their back and they can’t give you a bit of help with it?), tugging those damn t.e.d. hose up his legs and pulling them down. (Come to think of it, I think Shepherd should expand their program and give PT and OT to the caretakers – teach us the ergonomic ways to move, give us programs to increase our strength, etc.)

The personal trainer said that based on what she was hearing, she thought we should work on the areas of muscular strength (she mentioned we’d do the traditional approach here – less reps and more weight, shooting for eight reps to exhaustion), endurance, posture, flexibility, and balance. (I admit I’m a little nervous about all this, afraid something is going to set of my CFS.)

We went through a mini-session. She said a warmup of at least 5 minutes was mandatory, and that it would be best if I got to the place early and did that on my own so it wouldn’t cut into our session. She put me on a recumbent bike, but it bothered my right leg, so we tried a “traditional” stationary bike, and that was better. She didn’t turn it on, though, because if the bike was on, it would “make” me pedal at a particular rate, and I am fearful of pushing myself (too many bad memories from these past fourteen years of trying to start an exercise program and crashing a short time after that).

She then had me do a type of squat – she placed a large exercise ball on my low back, and I leaned against it and and did the squats, rolling up and down along the ball. I did two sets of fifteen reps. (And this reminds me, because such a ball was in the package – did anyone come across a package containing my Gaia chair while they were putting our furniture back in place? It had arrived the day before the accident, and Gary was going to put it together for me over the weekend.) Next we went over to an inclined bench, and she handed me two ten-pound dumbbells and told me to do chest presses – two sets of eight – while she guided the weights. I looked at the dumbbells. “Ten pounds. Are you sure I should start with that? My shoulder has been bothering me.” (Such a wimp – at my best, fifteen years ago or so, I could bench press eighty-five pounds and squat one hundred and eighty-five pounds. But as I said, I now have these fears . . . ) She told me to try them, and to ice my shoulder afterwards. I got through them fine, but I still wasn’t sure that had been all that great for a problematic shoulder.

Next came one-armed rows on a seated pulley machine. She had it set on one pound, and that was quite enough, particularly for that shoulder (if I forget to mention in the journal entry for Sunday, my shoulder doesn’t seem any worse for this – no better, but no worse).

We finished with stretching of the shoulders and back, all of which she assisted me with. I am going to try to be more assertive next time and tell her I really don’t want her to assist me – people assisting me in stretches have wrecked up my leg more than once, and I am afraid of a similar result when she does my shoulders (and I’m sure it doesn’t help when I am tensing them in fear).

Anyway, I have signed up for ten forty-five minute sessions, going three times a week. I have time for this, right? ;-)

After that session, I attempted to return to Shepherd. I was dismayed to see Lenox Square go by on my right – I had gotten back to Peachtree all right, but was now going the wrong direction on it. (Note to self: always print out a copy of the directions for getting from point B to point A. It never seems to work to just try to reverse the directions for getting from point A to point B – there is always a wormhole in that direction. At least, I’m pretty sure that is the problem.) Then I made the mistake of actually turning into Lenox Square to try to turn around. If someone knows a simple way this can be done, please publish your findings – I’m sure all of Atlanta would want to know.

So now I was all stressed out because I was supposed to be back at Shepherd by four so we could be checked into the TLA. I made it just before four, but there turned out to be another hitch. In the morning, I had called Gary and said I really didn’t think my back could handle carrying all I would need to do my cooking at the apartment down to my car from the hotel room then from the parking garage to the apartment (on the second floor of the Marcus building). I didn’t know what to do – I asked him to ask if under the circumstances it would be all right if after we checked into the apartment I zipped back to the hotel and cooked my zukes for dinner, at the same time setting my rice cooker and crockpot to cook over night, and then zipped back to Shepherd with the finished zukes, then in the morning zipped back to the hotel to get my breakfast and lunch rice. He said he was sure that was okay, and I said I thought I wasn’t supposed to leave him alone at all. He said it was supposed to be a trial run of being at home and I wasn’t going to be with him every single minute of the day while at home.

Well, I was right – I wasn’t supposed to leave him. Gary tried reasoning with the nurse, but she said it was official policy. So I went back to the hotel to get some supplies. Since there was no way I was going to carry all the stuff I would normally use in twenty-four hours (rice cooker, crockpot, steamer, zukes, rice, etc.), I just brought the rice cooker, some rice, a package of poha (flattened rice, kind of cooks up like oatmeal), and forewent any vegetables until the next evening. I had already packed my jammies, pillow, nightmask, earplugs, comforter, and two fans for white noise. Did I mention I am high maintenance?

To get us moved into the apartment, two nurses rolled Gary’s hospital bed, on which lay his clothing and supplies – for ICs and bowel program, etc. (Now he has become high maintenance.) (Since he would be sleeping on a hospital bed at home, they had decided it was best he sleep on one in the apartment instead of him using the queen bed there.) Gary pushed along his rolling bed table with his feet while I pulled it on the other end – we were both trying to save my back a little (that table doesn’t roll easily; it was needed to keep his supplies within his reach). So we formed a little caravan, going down the hall from the Shepherd building to the Marcus building, into the elevators (we needed two – the bed and a wheelchair could not fit in the same one), down to the second floor, over to the entry to the ABI (Aquired Brain Injury) unit, through that entry after a nurse buzzed us in, then into the TLA.

After getting the nurses to bring me some more blankets and to bring Gary more washclothes, they left and I “unpacked” the bed (taking the stuff of it and organizing it on the tables in the room). It was then that Gary realized he’d forgotten stuff like his grooming items and, more importantly, his plastic pan for his bed bath. So we made another trip back to his room. Then I needed to get all the stuff from my car. I was paranoid about him not accompanying me every step of the way (in case that got reported to the nurse), but he said he was going to stay in the hall on the first floor by the security desk, and I told him if we got in trouble, it was his fault! So then I made four trips out to my car, leaving the items near him each time. Then I carried them into the elevator while he prevented the elevator from closing. Then I carried them out of the elevator to the entrance to the ABI unit while he prevented the elevator from taking off with the remaining items. Then I got them inside the door to the unit while he prevented the door from closing (the door locks each time it closes, and you have to be buzzed in by a nurse at the desk). Then I finally got them into the room.

By this time – 7:30 – I was pooped, and he was tired too. So we got him transferred into the bed, we did his stretching (which first involves getting him in a straight position on his back), I changed his bandage (which first involves getting him into a prone position – and if you haven’t picked this up by now, this turning business isn’t easy for either of us), we got him undressed (first I pull off the long sleeve shirt over his head while he lifts up from his prone, then he turns from side to side so I could pull off his pants and those damned tight t.e.d. hose), then we got him turned onto his side. Now it was almost 9 pm. I got my bed ready, got into my jammies, set the alarm on my clock for 10 pm, set the clock on his bed table, and got in with him for a while. At 9:59 the nurse came in with his pills. At 10, the alarm went off, and he couldn’t hear the buzzing. So after he took his pills I set the alarm on my cell phone. He could hear that, so I set it for 4am (ychh) and put it on a bed table.

At 10, he did an IC, and I lay in my bed waiting for him to finish. In previous weeks, the OT had worked with him on his trying to get into a prone position, and the conclusion was that I was going to have to help him prone at the “beginning” of every night at least until his flap restrictions are removed. So after he finished the IC, I helped him prone, stuffing three pillows under his chest while he rose up on his arms and putting pillows above and below his knees. I couldn’t seem to get it right and I got frustrated. It was now 11pm. “I’m sorry you have to do all this for me,” he said. He had tears in his voice, which melted my frustration. I told him I was sorry that I wasn’t sure I was doing this right.

I slept pretty good – surprisingly so, under the circumstances – until that 4am alarm went off. I had been sleeping rather light at the time, so at least I wasn’t jarred awake. I heard Gary move, and the alarm stopped. But then it went off again about a minute later (I can’t figure out that stupid cell phone alarm – sometimes it turns off, sometimes it goes on snooze and sounds again one minute later, or ten minutes later, or seemingly whenever the hell it wants to). So I got up, took the cell phone out of Gary’s hand, and shut the phone off. I didn’t say anything, as I was hoping not to wake up too much. I was feeling sick, actually – I have learned from Dr. Rea at the Environmental Health Center that around four in the morning is the time when the body is cleaning itself, dumping all its toxins into the bloodstream, and so on, and that that is the time people with allergies of all sorts tend to feel their worst. No doubt making things worse was the fact that my body clock was saying this was not the time to be awake.

A minute later, I realized I was hearing absolutely no noise from Gary’s bed. I got up again, went over to him, and whispered, “Gary?” He replied, “Yes?” “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something? I don’t hear anything.” He then said he was thinking about what he was going to do next, how he was going to get out of the prone position to do his IC. I admit, I got unhappy – he was supposed to have been practicing this with the nurses. 4am is not the time to be thinking this through. I hope I didn’t let my feelings show – I guess I didn’t, as later, when I asked him about it, he said he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. Of course, it was probably hard to register anything at 4am!

He couldn’t figure out how to get out of the prone while he had the covers on, and it seemed the extra pillows under his feet were going to be a problem too. So I took the covers off him and also removed a pillow from under one ankle. Before I had a chance to get at the pillow under the other ankle, he got onto his side in a pretty good position, so it could possibly work with those extra pillows. He now definitely knows this is something he needs to work on, and he needs to add in the additional complication of covers. We also decided this would be a reason to have a mirror over his bed, so he could see what position his legs were in and if he was okay (at one point, one of his legs would have gone off the bed if I hadn’t been there to catch it).

He then did an IC, and I laid in my bed. After a while, I checked on him – his last two ICs had been unusually low, and I was afraid this one would be way too large, maybe even too large for the bag. But it was going fine. He finished and put the bag on the table to be disposed of in the morning. Next task for him (and me) – go back to sleep. Only, his covers were off and he wanted them on. I almost put them back on him, but then stopped. Feeling a bit guilty – and sorely tempted to just put the covers on him so I could go back to sleep – I asked if he could put them back on if he used his grabber – which I handed to him. If he’d told me he didn’t want to practice now, I would have put the covers on for him, but he didn’t say anything, merely attempted it. He did pretty good, but we decided this was another reason to have a mirror put over the bed, so he could see where the covers were and how to move them.

So now he settled back onto the bed for some sleep. But he had a stiff look on his face. “Are you okay?” I asked him, standing at the head of his bed. “Yeah,” came the quiet reply. The way he said it didn’t convince me. “Are you a little frustrated?” I asked. “It’s hard,” he said, his voice breaking. I leaned down, gave him a kiss, and caressed his head, saying, “I know.” His voice changed. “But I’ll get it,” he said resolutely. “Yes, you will,” I told him, adding, “it’s just not fun practicing at 4am.” “No, it isn’t,” he agreed. I told him I loved him, even if I made him use his grabber on his covers at 4 in the morning. He said, “(It was) Good for me. Tough love.” (‘Tough love’ is the term the therapists use for how the caretakers should treat their family members – not doing for them what they should be doing (or learning to do) for themselves.)

Now it was 4:50. I got into bed. Sleep didn’t come, so I meditated, then finally fell back asleep around sixish. At seven, I tore awake from a nightmare. In the dream, I had left Gary in the TLA, gone down the hall, found a bed, and gone to sleep. An hour later (in the dream), I woke up and went back to the TLA. The room was now longer and there were two beds in it. The man in the first bed wasn’t Gary, and neither was the man in the second bed. Panicked, I asked where Gary was. The nurses told me he’d called out in delirium and they’d discovered he had a horrible infection and was going to die, and no, I couldn’t see him ever again.

Do you think this could possibly have been a guilt dream related to my almost leaving him for a couple of hours to cook my zukes?

At eight, I heard Gary call my name. “Yes?” I answered, no doubt more sweetly than I would have had I not had that dream ;-). “I need to turn,” he told me. “So, turn,” I said. I don’t know if he appreciated my humor. Anyway, I got up and went over to his bed, and forty-five minutes later, he was turned onto his other side – again, I helped only when he gave up on some maneuver.

Over the intercom (which fortunately hadn’t gone off during the night) they announced breakfast trays were on the floor. I got Gary’s, then thought about trying to catch a little more sleep, but felt that was hopeless after about fifteen minutes.

So I set up his breakfast tray and started cooking myself some poha. Gary’s nurse for the day shift (from the third floor of Shepherd) came about nine-thirty with his morning pills and asked how things had gone. He said he’d discovered there were more things he needed to practice. He mentioned about the 4am IC problems in turning from prone position to side position, and so forth. She suggested that this week they try to put him on a different IC schedule, one where he extends the IC time overnight to about eight hours (his levels would have to stay low enough for this to be “allowed”), and that he stay in that prone position for those eight hours. So the idea would be he would do an IC about 11 pm, then prone until 6 or 7 am before doing the next one. If he can’t get into the proper position immediately before or after that IC, or he can’t get the covers off or on, or some other problem arises, at least it would be easier on me to help him at 6 or 7 am than 4am. Gary isn’t absolutely sure he can always take being in a prone position that long (so far, after about six hours, he has an urge to turn), so he still wants to work with the OT on that even if he is able to extend his IC time to eight hours.

And if he can’t extend his time to eight hours, I guess for a while I may have to get up with those cows that probably still live out on Gold Hill.

After he finished his breakfast, it was time to start his morning routine. First came the bowel program. He finds it easier to lie on one side than the other for that (because of his flap restrictions, he can’t sit on a cut-out toilet seat to do the program), and he was the “wrong” side. So he turned from that side, onto his stomach, over to the other side (the advantage of a hospital bed is that it has rails for him to grab; the disadvantage is there is not much room to maneuver). “There, that was easy,” he joked as he finally got into the correct position himself. He looked at the clock. “Good thing Debra isn’t coming until 12:30. I should be ready by then.” (He thought he was joking, but it turned out he wasn’t.) He then pretended he was having a conversation with her. “How did I spend my morning? Doing bowel program, then bathing, then dressing. . . . And putting on these damn gloves,” he added as he struggled to put on a second pair of latex gloves over the first pair. We laughed, and he remarked, “Good thing we can laugh about it.” I then reminded him that we also had his skin check and his stretching routine to add to that list of things we had to do this morning.

He then started in on the bowel program. Happily for both of us ;-), for just the second time ever he was able to do it all by himself, with a final “all’s clear” check by me (you really wanted to know that, didn’t you?). The only thing we took note of that we hadn’t realized before is that he may need more than one bed table to put all his stuff on.

It was already time for another IC, so I got all the washcloths ready (three soapy, three moist) and handed him all his equipment. (He had thought he’d be up by the time for the next IC, so hadn’t had his stuff prepared for it.)

Next it was time for a bed bath, so I brought a ton of washcloths and towels to bedside, and filled up his plastic pan with warm water and brought over the liquid soap. He did all but his back and legs, which I did for him. He had checked the parts of his skin that he could see during his bath, and I checked the rest.

Next came getting dressed (we were supposed to put lotion on him after the bath, but we forgot). He got his shirt on, I got the t.e.d. hose and the pants on him. He had planned on wearing the Dockers for when we went out to eat with Debra, but I asked him to please wear the stretchy pants, which he agreed to. This reminded me that I needed to see if I’d heard from Debra by email – I wanted to make sure she knew where we were. I realized I hadn’t turned my cell phone back on, and thinking she may have called, I did so. She had called and left a message to say that she was sick and wouldn’t be able to make it. I was very sorry to hear that, of course, but delaying her coming to another weekend worked out better for us too.

We next went through his stretching routine. Then, at last, it was time for him to get up. And it was almost 12:30. He joked, “Only seventeen hours in bed!” and that his work day would have to be from 2 to 4. He turned serious and said that only now did he realize that he’d been relying on the nurses a lot more than he had thought he had been – he’d thought they were only doing things for him that he would find easy to do himself, but this experience showed him this was not the case. I fear I was rather shell-shocked from experiencing how much help he had needed from me (being tired from the disrupted sleep didn’t help matters) – we’d done the parts, but never before put them into the whole. I tried to keep in mind that it would get better in time, for both of us. But in considering the immediate future, we wondered how were we going to do this on our own when he has to be at Day Program at 9am?

He joked I’d have a lot to write up about this experience for the blog, saying I should put, “We discovered we weren’t quite as ready as we thought.” Actually, that should be as he thought, since I’d approached this experience with much more trepidation about our preparation than he had.

We now had a few hours “free” but neither of us felt like going out anywhere or doing anything. I stayed in the TLA and worked on the blog, Gary watched some golf (I’m sure the golfers are groaning – it was some big tournament, a very emotional one for Tiger Woods), then he went on the one computer on the floor that was available for patients. He discovered we were front page news on the online version of the city newspaper (here’s the link, for however long it works – it’s long, so you may have to do a little copying and pasting: http://www.oanow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=OAN/MGArticle/OAN_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149189327559

In the actual article, there is a picture of him in the wheelchair in front of the volleyball net; I am the unidentified woman in the background ;-). Jack Brown sent me a pdf file of the article – I’ll try to send it through to those who get this by email, but make no promises that Yahoo! will allow a mass mailing of such a file). Gary came to get me to come read the article. I first skimmed it and noted I wouldn’t have had to spend all the time I did in talking with her . I then read it more carefully. I thought it was nice, and pretty accurate. One thing she said that wasn’t true (but is minor) was that Gary had felt panicked after touching his leg in the emergency vehicle and realizing he was paralyzed. I know he never said that, and he never felt that way. He’s always just said that it was a weird experience, though he noted it would be a natural response to feel panicked, and the reporter must have assumed it had been for him. I told him that at the time it probably hadn’t really sunk in what being paralyzed meant, and he agreed it was a gradual realization – his first thought about it was that they’d patch him up in Birmingham and after a few weeks they’d send him home in a wheelchair. We laughed at that, and Gary remarked, “Yeah, we can laugh about that now.”

Anyway, this article came out just when I needed a little bucking up. Gary pointed out a couple of quotes of mine that he’d really liked. He asked me how I liked the last one of his: "I was never depressed about this situation," he said, attributing much of that to his wife. "It’s much, much harder to go through this alone."

I told him I liked it very much – but that I wasn’t sure it was true, as I’d thought he wasn’t the type to get depressed. He said the quote was true, and that he would be depressed. He got emotional, and I gave him a hug. He said it was a good thing the interview hadn’t taken place at 4am this morning, as he would have said, “Yes, I’m depressed – I can’t move my legs around in this bed.” I said I would have said, “The hell with this – I’m outta here.” We gave little laughs and exchanged another hug.

We were eager to move back to his room – he needed to do another IC, I had to get back to the hotel for my massage, so we packed up and called the nurse to come get the bed. Gary said we could tell her our stay went as follows: We came, we got unpacked, we went to bed, we got up, we packed, we left.

Well, it was definitely a good experience to see what needed work on. Also, to realize how much time this might take us in the beginning, tho with experience we’ll get faster at it – when we can just do it and not think about it. Gary says we ought to be able to cut at least half an hour off ;-).

I zoomed back to the hotel and threw myself on the massage table that had been set up by the person I’d arranged to have a massage from (okay, it didn’t happen exactly like that, but it felt like that). This person was very good, and it was an added bonus that he came to me instead of me having to go to his office. The only hitch in that regard was, I wanted to go back to the hospital right after the massage and he was in Mellow Massage Therapist mode. (When I told this to my chiropractor, he summed up my exact feelings: “Okay, I’m relaxed, now get out.”)

Just when I stepped into Gary’s room, about a half hour later than usual, my cell phone rang. I knew it was Joe, because he had called when I was on the massage table (I hadn’t picked up but had later gotten the message that he was going to call). Gary talked to Joe while I got the bed ready for Gary to get into it. Gary told Joe we were running late and still had all our evening routine to do, so the call was a short one (Gary apologizes to Joe if he seemed abrupt – we were very tired). Gary relayed the news to me that Joe and Dolores made it back to their home safely, and the dogs survived their absence. I could also hear that they talked about the house and the crew of math volunteers.

After Gary ended the call, we got him transferred into bed. Next was supposed to come the stretching, but Gary said we should skip it. “Duty” warred with fatigue, and I asked if he was sure we shouldn’t go ahead and do it. He said it would be all right to skip one night. Fatigue won, and I didn’t put up any more of an argument. I changed his dressing, got him proned, hoodled a short time, then we said our goodnights and I told him I’d see him tomorrow. “But thankfully not at 4am,” he said with an ironic smile.

Now to finish with some odds and ends. I got emails from Janet Rogers and Jo Heath about the furniture moving. They said they’d almost made a party of it, and Janet sent us a picture of the “movers.” I’ll insert it here in the blog.






Seated, left to right: Jack Brown, Wlodek Kuperberg, Jo Heath, Michel Smith, Jack Rogers, Donna Bennett. Standing, left to right: Bob Heath, Jane Brown, Piotr Minc.

Don’t get too comfortable, guys. (I hear you freaked poor Blackjack out, when he came into the room and suddenly realized he’d walked into a roomful of strangers. In Jo’s words, he bolted out faster than she would have thought a cat his size could move. (You should have seen him the time he took off so fast he couldn’t gain purchase on the kitchen floor, and though his legs were moving like mad, he stayed in place – just like what happens in the cartoons.))





Speaking of pictures, only two pictures were saved by the people who took the publicity shots of Gary for the news article. The one they put in the paper is one of those pictures, but the one they didn’t use I think is the better photo of him. Here it is, above. (Notice me in the background trying to skulk out of the picture ;-)).

All for now.