Thankful Thursday - Hanging Out with the Steel Magnolia

I'm here in Hayesville, North Carolina, spending time with my Steel Magnolia. She is not as much of an early riser as I am but (being the perfect Southern Lady) she got up when she heard me stirring to show me where the tea and cereal and fruit are. I rushed her back to bed and told her to rest, I can find what I need. (I need Starbucks which is an hour over the mountain. No, I won't go get it.)

Yesterday went better than I expected. Uncle Bruce had an itinerary and reviewed it with Daddy and Aunt Claire while Grandma was getting ready. We sat around the kitchen table and the three siblings expressed their limitations at being able to be with her from hours away... they expressed that they felt like she needed someone with her or at least fairly close... and they discussed the options they had put together. Mainly, the plan is to move her to a Senior Living facility where she can have a private apartment, hopefully a little kitchenette, but have more social activities available and be closer to better health care and closer to Claire, who is a nurse and the only daughter. There were tears... but Grandma understood and appreciated the concern about her well-being and is willing.

Afterwards, we went out for lunch - at Rib Country - and had a nice time. I didn't spent a lot of time with my dad's family growing up and it's a real treat to be around them. I worked for Bruce, of course, but even then, that was a very different capacity. He was my boss and he wasn't in the office much.

We weren't able to connect my laptop with the mobile broadband thing-a-ma-jig, it needed an install disc which Bruce didn't have with him... so he just left me his laptop to use and it's been handy. Grandma and I spent the afternoon and evening looking at old - very old, a century old- photos and documents and her little archives. I checked her information against what I had found via ancestry.com and *SCORE* my research was exactly right! Going through her stacks of information, however, prompted some anxiety as she has...so...much...stuff... and she began to worry about what she could take with her and what she should just get rid of.

I went through the same thing a month ago as I began to think about how much storage I could afford to pay for... and as much as I loved going back through every Christmas card I've ever received, what was the practicality in that? She asked if I'd help her with that and, of course, I agreed. I've also agreed to come back as needed... and once we get her moved... to help her get around to the places she'd like to go.

Anyways... she fixed ham sandwiches and chips for dinner...which she, ever the Atlanta native, washed down with a co-cola. We started watching Yankee Doodle Dandy on TCM but I was getting sleepy about twenty minutes into it and went to bed. I can't afford to be sleep deprived, know what I mean?

Today we're going to the bank and to the Verizon store to see if they can install this thing-a-ma-jig to my laptop, or maybe I'll wait to do that on Saturday when Bruce comes back up. It's too hot to leave grandma in the car and I don't want to make her stand and wait. I'm going to work on scanning in the photos to my laptop... which means I won't be able to share them until I get back to mom and dad's on Saturday. Trust me, if you like the old photos, these are worth the wait.

It's Thankful Thursday... I'm thankful that my Steel Magnolia is gracefully accepting this next season of life.