Gritting My Teeth

I have nothing for you, really, except for a couple of pictures of my crown vetch:

It has a life of its own this year.

The weekend was spent working on a painting for Don. I threw one out. The second stab at this is not going well. Sometimes I think that the stretch where I painted all of the Roseville Pottery was a fluke. For that brief time, I had it. But since then, every time I’ve tried painting in oils, it’s been a struggle and I’ve usually tossed whatever I was working on.

I’m on hold with the dollhouse until I get the wallpaper and, you guessed it, she hasn’t shipped it yet. I painted the walls and ceilings in the hallways in preparation for wallpapering, but I have to find a pattern I like.

And, of course, the ongoing attempts to find out something about Joe’s status. Thank goodness for the two women that I am communicating with on a separate text chain. We share our frustration and can freely vent about the lack of communication. I wrote Carmel, who is our contact, yesterday asking for more information and tried to explain that having no updates since last Tuesday had become very upsetting for many of us. We just want basic info: is he conscious? is he still on the ECMO machine? how has the hospital classified his condition? I was very polite and expressed my gratitude that she is there for him, by the way.

Anyway, just after I wrote Carmel, we did have an update. He had surgery to remove the ECMO machine, but he’s still on breathing support and she promised to update us when he woke from the anesthesia. That was mid-day yesterday and…we have heard nothing since then.

Then we got chided by the other woman who is there for “bombarding” them with questions. Well, maybe if you communicated more often, that wouldn’t be an issue.

There’s a lot more I could say, but I’ll stop there.

Thank heavens for Don, who lets me talk all of this out, who cares about Joe, and agrees that the lack of communication has been maddening. I also called the hospital, but legally, all they could say was that he was in the critical cardiac care unit.

So that’s where we are.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.