Sunday, August 27, 2017

After breakfast, I did a load of washing and ironing and wrote that last blog, not in that order.  Elvon is a concern, as he has embraced the wheelchair and urinal.  I put a fair bit of juice into trying to turn that around, too.  We were having our “crew dinner” at Kathie and Peter’s place.  They just moved into The Cavendish, a month ago.  It’s on the West Island, where they have been living for over 25 years.  It has all the amenities we enjoy at Fountaingrove Lodge, but is much, much bigger, and doesn’t have Chef Adam, our architecture, nor our view.  Pretty nice, though and easy living. It was able to provide a wheelchair for Elvon, thus saving me the trouble of finding someone on each end to get the one I rented in and out of the car.

Their apartment is about the same size as ours, with a balcony and a view over the swimming pool, which will be a snow field in January.  We had wine and hors d’oeuvres, with our hosts and Theresa Benedek and Terri Azzaria.  We don’t always get to see Terri, and she is a real kick.  If you think I am no nonsense, you haven’t met Terri.  We remembered our time at the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club, and on our sailing trips.  Just scattered memories, nothing maudlin.  We talked a lot about our new lives.  Theresa is in assisted living, too.  It’s a good place to end up.  It’s the ending up, we mind.

At 6:30 pm, we set off for dinner, and we were late, because it was at least three buildings over.  Elvon would never have got there without the wheelchair.  It took all my small change to push it there, as there was a pretty long up slope between two of the buildings.  It’s all inside and carpeted, of course, just far.  Brunch is the big meal on Sunday, so we didn’t get much choice at dinner.  The potage parmentier, salmon with dill sauce, and dessert were acceptable, though, and I slept like a baby after that meal.

We went back to Kathie and Peter’s for more conversation and I played Elvon’s 80^th birthday slide show.  There were scenes to remember in it, too.  That slide show is still not complete.  I have another twenty albums or so to go through.  Some of our conversation leaned to the scatological, and Theresa, who has heard it all before, wanted to know where our “broughtupsi” was.  Asked for the origin of the world, she admitted it was from her Jamaican childhood.  I wonder why she never used it before.  It’s not like we had broughtupsi thirty years ago, either.

Monday morning, Elvon got to the bathroom on Winnie, which was a very good thing.  I didn’t see taking him out to dinner, though.  He’s still shaky, and not every place is an assisted living place.  Our dinner dates were Chris and Marge Mapp, and Jo-Ann.  I called Chris and volunteered to buy whatever take-out we would agree on, if they would pick it up.  They knew a great Indian place, near them, Shahi Palace.  I called it and ordered: 4 meat samosas, daal makani, two orders of shrimp masala, lamb balti, butter chicken, alou goabi, rice and lots of naan.  They didn’t have mango chutney, so Jo-Ann picked that up for me, along with 4 pastries from la Gascogne.  We washed that lot down with two bottles of white and a bottle of red.  I woke up around 2:20 am and never got back to sleep, for processing.  It was well worth it, though.  I go back more than 50 years with these dear friends.

Tuesday morning, Elvon wouldn’t get out of bed and transfer to Winnie.  After reasoning with him, begging and pleading, I threatened him with calling for help.  He let me do it.  I got two big burley guys from the hotel and even they could not get him to transfer to walker or wheelchair.  He wasn’t just dead weight, he was fighting us.  There’s not a lot of fight in me after three hours sleep and five hours of processing.  I decided to give up and get him back home, where he can exercise properly and get his strength and confidence back.  I got him off the bed by feeding him breakfast and then having him use the breakfast table as the transfer vehicle.  I bathed him on the toilet with its raised seat, and had him dress there, too.  That worked pretty well, and he could get into the wheelchair in the bath room, with its grab bars.

I went online to United to change our $3252 business class tickets.  To get business today would have been over $5200 for the two of us, one way, yet.  The $3252 had been for return.  I had authorization from our evacuation insurance for the change fee, but it was just a small portion of that total.  I put us in economy for an extra $591, which they will cover, and planned to throw myself on the mercy of Air Canada.  Jo-Ann, bless her heart, came over to help me pack and return the car and the wheel chair.  That’s a real friend.  We made it to the airport with the requisite three hours to spare and they weren’t busy.  I got a lot of sympathy, but no free upgrades.  The price of the upgrades was down to $2076 Canadian, though.  So, I called SkyMed to see if they would fund that.  They would not, and I still didn’t think it was worth it.  The nice Air Canada agent got us into the Maple Leaf Lounge, though, and the nice agent there got us great seats across the aisle from each other.  The middle seat on my side is empty and my seatmate is Zack Darling, who lives near us in Santa Rosa, and is positively delightful.  I am signing off to share the rest of our Gascogne goodies with him and Elvon.

Zack was trying for an upgrade to Business but now thinks he landed in First.  Our food is so much better than we got in Business on the way.  Photo credits to Zack. Here we are: