On her fifteenth day in her new home...

.....Mamaw sat in her new favorite spot yesterday afternoon eating the grilled cheese sandwich I made for her lunch. I had stopped cleaning up the house and tending to the critters long enough to keep her company while she ate.

About halfway through her meal, she said, "This is so rich, I doubt I can eat the whole thing. But it's so delicious, I hate to stop. Isn't that awful?"

I said it wasn't awful at all.

She took another bite and said, very thoughtfully, "It's not only the buttery taste, but the sound it makes when my teeth go through the crust is so wonderful."

And that perfectly reflects her attitude much of the time. She's adjusting very well. The main problems so far have been sleeping at night and feeling homesick. But for the last couple of days, both of those issues have improved quite a bit.

I started this blog as a way to document the details of bringing Mamaw into our home, hoping to leave a record for someone else who might be making the decision between home care and nursing home. But our first two weeks turned out to be too anomalous to be of a whole lot of help. Mamaw's transition has just about taken a backseat to other circumstances that have swallowed up enormous time and energy here - my own mother is gravely ill and has been in critical condition for the past eleven days, one of our horses has laminitis again and this time her bloodwork confirms that she has Cushing's disease, and our other horse tried to colic last Friday evening. Bad as all that sounds, we're hanging in there, getting stronger.

Anyway, I truly intend to carry through on this blog, if maybe a little intermittently for the time being.

We have pictures!

Here's Mamaw arriving at our place two Saturdays ago. In that carrier behind her seat is the other new member of our family, Mamaw's very elderly chihuahua, Sug (short for Sugar, so pronounced "shug"). Suggy really loves it here!



Here's Mamaw's new favorite sitting place. It only appears dark in this picture. It's actually a very bright spot. From here, she oversees our chores, the care of our 9 dogs, 11 cats and the two horses.



And we did get around to that first wheelbarrow ride last Saturday! I must have pushed that thing half a mile - to the woods to see the deer come in for breakfast, up and down the hill to the horse pasture, down to what's left of the garden, all around the house, and back and forth with the dogs. She was outside, really outside, for the first time in maybe five years and she thoroughly soaked up every minute. We were out there for hours. Here are Mamaw, Leroy and Doll taking a breather out back.