Preparing

Things are busy at our house!  We are getting ready for Thanksgiving and Tate’s next treatment phase, Delayed Intensification.  We are looking forward to spending time with family from California, Idaho, Florida, and Alabama!  Tate really struggles with even the shortest car rides, so we need to stay home but plan to meet with everyone as often as possible over the next few days.

Tate is looking pretty good!  This week he only has physical and occupational therapy sessions.  Scheduled weeks without treatment are crucial; his energy and weight increase, he is awake more, his spirits are higher.  Somehow Tate’s sleep schedule got turned upside down again, so he has been waking up in the late evening and coming to the living room to hang out with Greg and Violet.

Tate has also been organizing his Magic cards.  He has thousands, so it’s a big job.  If anyone out there likes to play MTG, please come over!  It’s Tate’s favorite game.

I have been working to get our house ready for company and safer for a person with a depleted immune system.  I am really not good at it though.  I am always cleaning, but I never get anywhere.  My sweet cousin, whose house is immaculate, put a lot of work into finding a reputable house cleaning company and scheduled an appointment for me.  She told the owner all about our situation:  we have a sick child, only our cleaning products, rags, etc. can be used, and so on.  There is so much for a new person coming into our house to know, and she laid it all out for them.  Just as the ladies were about to get started, I heard one of them cough.  It turns out she had a cold and was trying to hide it.  Saying I was upset does not begin to describe it.  We agreed they needed to leave immediately.  I understand her hustle; you don’t get paid if you don’t work.  I would have happily re-scheduled had she told me she was sick when I met her at the front door and asked if she was healthy.  I spent the next hour spraying everything with hospital-grade disinfectant.

This is the picture I texted Greg when he asked me how my day was going.  I sent the same picture to my sister, and she told me, “Cleaning can be therapeutic.”  My response was, “No.  Photography can be therapeutic.  It’s like you don’t know me at all.”

A different cleaning company came later in the week.  Having an already clean house freed me up to get some other stuff done over the weekend.

Wheelchair repair.

Faucet repair.

Tate’s Gramps is on a mission to pack some pounds on him before DI starts and had four grocery bags of snack items delivered yesterday.  Tate grabbed a box of crackers and zoomed away in his wheelchair.  Gramps said he sent enough sugar to have Tate driving that wheelchair like it’s a race car.  Tate has stowed all of it except the ice cream in his room, as he feels his snacks are not safe in the kitchen.  He is not wrong about that; there is a lot of emotional eating going on over here.  A lot.