’22 January

From the viewing station at sunset, off in the distance above are the Channel Islands…

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Sharon, Dave, Chris, and I enjoyed a quick 2-nighter up at a property near Camarillo surrounded by groves of avocado trees. Oh yes, there is guacamole in our future.

Los Tres! Helpers in the home and with the animals, the five goats, two burros, various chickens, and cats, and more to come I’m sure.

Here come a couple pictures of the murals around town. There are many more.

Pictures from Karina below:

Chris and Dave are here from Kansas, staying at Sharon’s. Yesterday we had lunch together and today we went to La Louver and had a stroll around the Venice Boardwalk.

Lilly is getting ready for the auditions for her theater group’s next performance. They’re doing Bugsy Malone and Lilly is preparing “They Call Me Tallulah” to Darryl’s accompaniment. It’s a perfect song for Lilly, lively and dramatic (and Darryl is doing a wonderful job on piano.)

We missed a few weeks around the holidays and then in hopeful avoidance of The Sick we missed a few weeks again. So hey, let’s have a Happy Hour Zoom!

Marsha, me, Becky, Ann, Alicia (Maxine, Marija, Ljubica couldn’t make it)

Alex is holding my Alex-Please list which I keep updated as chores enter my life that I’m not up to doing – chores that involve electricity, or plumbing, or moving heavy objects, or ladders. If it’s critical, I’ll get someone around here to do it; Alex comes when I have a list.

It’s so beautiful, so many chores involve making things straight, or secure, or replaced. Lucky dog me, right! Look at how straight those blinds are. You can just imagine my mental and physical distress when they were crooked…

(Angela’s pictures above)

Built on the old May Company site, on the same block as LACMA we find the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Note the golf ball behind Levitated Mass (I love Levitated Mass!) which is part of the Academy Museum. I took all the high pictures from the deck under that sphere.

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Above is the LACMA and Academy Museum campus, how it looks now with the footprint of the new LACMA construction being the ameba shape drawn in grey. Notice how the new building is going to cross over Wilshire Blvd. Just above the new LACMA are the La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum. You can catch a view of downtown in the upper left.

Ben and Bonnie, Dan and Shelly, Richard and Emilia

It happened that Tuesday was my day to be with her and when I got to the hospital in the morning the doctor’s had already decided that she would go home that day!

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And then it was time to get ready for sleeping. Lona thinks she’s going to be more comfortable here than in the bed. She’s got this machine connected to a shoulder pad that keeps cold water running through the device, helpful and Fancy.

Pain: comes and goes from 4-6. The doctors are very happy with the shoulder replacement surgery.

Infection: still being treated, now with oral antibiotics

Nausea: I think they don’t know where this is coming from but medication helps.

Anemia: Numbers look good but continuing to treat with iron.

The most recent idea is that Lona will not be released on Monday but maybe/probably on Tuesday.

From Trevor, a recap: “…my mom was recovering very well until Thursday morning at which point she had a very severe setback and was uncommunicative and the only question she could answer barely and indistinctly was who is talking to her when it was me. She apparently got an infection in her lungs (from being intubated or extubation, is the doctor’s analysis) which resulted in low oxygen levels and multi system inflammatory response and sepsis. .. She went from being fully communicative to non-responsive in less than two hours. We were in ICU from Thursday to Friday.

“She appears to be getting first-rate care. And her prognosis at this time seems excellent.”

How did she end up at the small community Adventist White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights, so far from home? Good question. They chose the doctor because he is ‘the best in the country’ at shoulder replacement surgery and this is his hospital, the place, he says, where they buy him all the high-tech gear he asks for. It hasn’t been great resource-wise, presumably from supply chain and covid demands – food, supplies, attentiveness from nursing, all below par but they are very happy with the doctor and his immediate staff so good for that.

It’s true, there’s a place in the Malibu hills called The Old Place and it’s an old place. You can eat there or have a wine tasting. Is it worth a 40 minute drive? Sure, and especially if you’re on your way to Thousand Oaks, or coming back west.

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Lona had her shoulder replacement surgery on Tuesday and although delayed, it went well. The original plan was she’d come home on Wednesday but they decided to keep her Wednesday night. I got this text from Trevor around 8am Thursday morning: “102.7° fever and non-responsive. The head surgeon is here and they are doing a full court press with a neurologist.”

Not Good! I was in text-touch with Trevor throughout the day (the hospital had let him stay the whole time, even throughout the nights). They did a ton of tests to rule out stroke, heart attack, etc, then moved her to ICU. She had been regaining consciousness hour by hour.

At 6pm Windy and I met Trevor at the hospital cafeteria and learned how well Lona was doing. She was making jokes and complaining, so, that is to say, normal! They’re keeping her in the ICU for another day or two, for monitoring. Now she just has to recover from shoulder replacement surgery!

Today I went for walk and then into the grocery store. I found around my ears 1) a visor 2) my glasses 3) a head set 4) a mask. No wonder it was a scramble to get out of it all!

It’s time to go outside for a look.

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We’ve been reading The Conference of the Birds for more than a year now and THANKS to zoom we have a wide-ranging and always delightful group.

And what will I be doing? Watching shows and trying to dodge The Sick. My calendar gets cleared everyday from one day to the next due to cancellations due to everyone else also trying to dodge The Sick. It’s not a roller coaster I feel but rather that ride that whips you around and makes you puke.

Are we all just going to get covid now…

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So many oranges.

I thought these were Valencias but Valencias don’t fruit in January. Navels fruit in January so maybe I’ve got Navels and not Valencias.

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New Year’s Eve and New Years Day. A morning walk and lunch with Sharon and then a movie, dinner, a walk, and a sleepover with Marsha and Tom followed by a morning of breakfast and the Rose Parade on tv, and then a stroll through the San Fernando Mission. Nice start 2022.