I haven’t added to my blog since Saturday (the day before Easter) and here it is Thursday. Admittedly stuff has been piling up.

Let’s see — what has been happening?

I’ve spent a lot of time with Mom. She’s not doing very well. With my mother’s alzheimers, one of her major health issues had been loss of weight. For at least three or four years, getting her to eat had been a chore. She didn’t want anything except sweets. About six months ago, her doctor found the right appetite stimulant and suddenly she was hungry. She’d eat everything put in front of her. It was such a refreshing change that the staff just kept giving her more and she packed on more than 20 pounds.

Last month, the doctor felt she was gaining too much weight so he took her off the medication. Without the stimulant, she doesn’t seem to remember how to chew and swallow. Again it’s really work to get her to eat anything. After a few calls to her physician, we have her back on the medication. We hope she’ll respond to it again. She is developing other health issues (swelling of her legs and feet, fixed stares, etc.) It is possible that these symptoms are not related to the dietary issues, but it’s coincidental that this all happened at the same time. She seems to be slipping away.

After Busch Gardens on Friday (Good Friday), we had a cool and rainy Saturday, and cool Easter Sunday.

Lots of routine stuff took our time earlier this week: John had our vehicle and our golf cart serviced, golf cart inspected, I sold some instruments on my dulcimers.biz website, normal stuff like laundry and house cleaning. I also had to straighten out an error by our credit card company. They took a payment for the full balance of our credit card, which was a larger than our normal balance, out of both our credit union and our bank so they were double paid! As a result, we had a credit coming of over a thousand dollars!! Don’t know how you would feel about that, but I’d rather have the money in my account earning interest for me rather than in my credit card company’s hands. I had to get them to reverse the payment from the bank account. It’s all fixed now.

The cool weather continued through Monday and Tuesday, but yesterday (Wednesday) and today have been warm and wonderful. We were at the South Club pool both days. It looks like many families are together because of the Easter holiday. It’s been crowded, so finding a lounge chair on the pool deck has been difficult, but we managed.

Wednesday was especially busy. We spent a couple of hours at the pool and Wednesday night we went to the Elks Club in Ruskin and joined a big table-full of friends. Great spaghetti and friendships.

I also had a “wardrobe malfunction” at the pool. It seems my favorite swimsuit decided to deteriorate on me. Yup, it became see-through on the backside. Chlorine does that to some fabrics. I had been really careful too. I always hand wash my suits after I get home, but it still happened.. I was oblivious to the problem until a friend (Nancy) quietly mentioned to me that the rear of my suit was transparent and I was able to cover myself with a towel. It’s now in the trash. (And I realllllly liked that one too.) (Ladies, this is a warning. Hold them up to the light before you go out in public and make sure they haven’t become see-through.)

Tonight was karaoke night at Rockin’ Rendezvous. Kings Point has lots of talented folks. We enjoyed them. One singer did “Proud to be an American.” By the end, everyone was on their feet, singing in unison. It was really moving and felt good!

We have less than three weeks left before we’ll be heading back to Michigan. Days like today make us aware of why it’s so much fun down here! We had perfect pool temperatures, wonderful weather, a good time with friends tonight. Couldn’t have been any better.

Later I’ll post some photos of tonight.