Sue and Aunt Joyce: Week 1 of the Quarantine Edition

I came over to my aunt and uncle's house in San Diego last Wednesday. A heart attack landed my uncle in the hospital (now he's in skilled nursing) and my aunt with dementia was home alone so ..... here I am. On my first night I tried to have us both wear masks. For someone with dementia, it's near to impossible to do. So I've given up. I know I was quarantined at home for the two and a half weeks before I got here and  that's the best I can do. Desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.

Our days always start with a walk, which has been Aunt Joyce's habit for many many years. She knows her way around the neighborhood quite well, but once I leave here and they are in the care of a full-time caregiving agency, we decided there needed to be more safety precautions in place. So I've set her up with a GPS watch, the idea being that the caregiver can track her walk on a digital map in real time.

This handsome and healthy looking guy has a standing date on Skype once per week. He already looks miles better than he did last Tuesday!

I don't need to tell you who his standing date is with!

There is no shortage of a supporting cast for video calls. We had a chat with the Harrison kids last week.

And we got my mom and sister Kelle on the phone too.

So what else have we been doing, you might be wondering. About once every day we take something over to the skilled nursing place where my uncle is rehabbing. It's about a 7 minute drive from their house. Whatever he asks for, we take over. Of course, we don't (can't) go inside, so we venture about two steps into the building and hand off our items to the friendly person who's manning the table they have set up to prevent visitors from entering. Sometimes they take our temps, even though we're in there for less than 30 seconds.

Another thing I've been doing: cleaning! I'm very proud of the transformation of their refrigerator.

Another thing I've been doing is a bit of rearranging. While rearranging I came across this, which I assume is my uncle's high school graduation picture. I've never seen it before and I love it. The photo is superimposed onto the frame.

And finally, this is one of the prettiest cactus flowers I've ever seen. We found it on our walk this morning.