Jeremy left for Houston on Monday and I went through the rest of the week with the kids. On Tuesday, Edda had a best buddies basketball game. I had totally forgotten about it, but we made it there on time! It was organized to be a fundraiser for the best buddies programs. I thought they would have pizza for sale because the ad said there would be food concessions, but there were only chips and oreos. Not a proper dinner. I made ravioli when I got home.
I was really quite touched by this basketball activity. About 4-5 special needs kids were there (Edda being the most physically limited basketball wise), but there were about 50-75 typical kids there and many, many (well, when I say many – I mean about 10) of the high school kids came up to me, Edda and Kitachi and introduced themselves and gently encouraged Edda to play basketball (mostly futile). I met a mom of Edda’s classmate who I’ve been meaning to meet since the beginning of the school year. We had a long discussion about trusts, social security, day programs, etc. I don’t like these conversations mainly because they make me anxious because I think I’ll f it up. All our legal things have to be redone. A lot of money things have to be redone. We have to become guardians of Edda. I have to meet with lawyers and visit the social security office many times.
On Wed, the day before I would fly to Austin to meet up with Jeremy, Edda suffered two distinct and bad seizures. One at school at about noon – the teacher called – and one at 6pm at dinner in front of me, Kitachi, Alice & Sofi (our neighbor and her daughter). Edda hasn’t had a seizure in about a decade so to see two six hours apart on the day before I was set to leave town on a jet plane was distressing. The one that I saw lasted about a minute while she was sitting in her chair at dinner with eyes twitching, head jerking, jaw clenched and then finally coming out of it with drool and a full sense of tiredness. We carefully moved her to the sofa after dinner and it did take her the rest of the evening to “recover” as she was still twitchy. I had contingency plans if Edda had gotten sick with a cold or flu or something (Ning was going to take off work and stay home with Edda), but I didn’t have a seizure plan. So I told Vince if the school had to call 911 to send her to the hospital with a seizure, that he would have to just get up from class and go to the hospital and meet up with my parents. My parents can be the “adults” but they can not move Edda at all, so that’s where Vince needs to be there to help. And Kitachi has worked with many kids with seizure disorders and she saw Edda’s seizure and was comfortable caring for her over the long weekend. So that’s how I left the family, with Edda having newly onset seizures and also a slight fever that her teacher texted me about on Thursday morning (but the fever did not persist it was just a fluke.)
Jeremy picked me up in a rental pickup (hilarious) and we made it to Scott and Sheila’s where we saw Josh who helped Jeremy with mending his bike.
In the morning, I went with Sheila to the Y for a yoga class and the desk person asked if I had ever been to an Austin Y before and I said that probably 20 years ago and she found me! I’m still in the Y’s computer system after all these years. I’m still a local (ok, not really). It seems rare for us to spend a full Valentine’s day together, but that’s what we did. We went to all our old favorite places like the Central Market.
We went with Sheila to the macrobiotic place Casa de Luz which is serving the exact same thing it always serves.
The Austin marathon is happening this weekend and if I had planned better, maybe I would have coordinated enough to train up to running at least the half marathon, but alas I did not. But it didn’t stop me from asking Jeremy – you think I can run a half marathon right now? How slowly do you think I’d need to run it at to not stop at all. What about a full marathon? Anyways, I ran 5 miles on the town lake trail in the afternoon and decided that 5 miles is enough enough. No need to like quintuple that distance. We went to the expo at Palmer auditorium and tried some new energy bars and walked back to the Stricker’s.
And the boys made Valentine’s Day dinner for the two of us. The boys are super cute in the kitchen.
It was a very nice dinner with the Strickers. Edda is doing well. I had two glasses of champagne – very unusual. Lots of fun.
