Journey Mercies
2001-12-26 - 10:04 a.m.
So, I visited Mom for Christmas. I only stayed a few days, but I got to see Mom and my youngest sister and my high school friend & her husband.
Mom played a contata at church, and decided she's going to retire. Sis and I helped her write her retirement letter.
I cut more CDs for Mom, and made some inserts for them. She gave me some money. :)
My niece called to say hi on Christmas. I tried to visit her later, on the way home, but I think it was too late in the evening by the time I called. She somehow stumbled onto my diary here, and asked me about my cuddle-friend. :)
We saw Dad on Christmas. He didn't see us very much... he was staring off somewhere, but he ate the persimmons we brought eagerly enough. He has Alzheimer's Disease, and he's very hard of hearing, but he just loses hearing aids anyway, so we stopped getting them for him.
I remember he used to pray for people who were going somewhere, and would ask God to give them "journey mercies." I used to think that sounded funny, maybe because I hadn't heard it from anyone besides him.
Dad was still staring off, mostly downward, so I knelt down in front of him and said loudly, "journey mercies!" He looked right at me. I'd caught his attention for a bit. We tried to talk to him more, but we couldn't get more out of him. It was nice to catch his attention again. I kissed his forehead before I left, and held his hand.
My high school friend (we had journalism class 1986 to 1987) hired me for some tech support. I set up her screen resolution and her scanner, and got rid of some annoying start-up programs and a useless launch bar. I also showed her how to minimize Compuserve and just use a normal web broswer, and helped her set up a domain that I'm going to host for her.
She's going to hire me for a weekend soon, to assist in buying and installing some additions to her pc.
We didn't eat out much, and I actually made money! That's a first for a holiday trip for me...
