It's been a busy week and it continues to be busy.
My uncle Ted died after complications arising from several surgeries in a short space of time. He was laid to rest yesterday. We will miss him. Mom and I were talking about how quickly he slipped from our lives. We only found out 7 weeks ago that he had colon cancer and then we waited for his surgery. Sadly, he did not make it through the surgery even though initially it looked like he would. I think most of the family is still in shock about the speed of events. I am happy a brother and I made a point to visit him (well) before his surgery date because we had been told he might not make it. It was nice to see him smile and hear him laugh and see how much he was looking forward to getting back to normal.
The reason it's been a bit hectic here is I had to help mom put some words of remembrance together for her brother and we don't live in the same city. I also had to put my own remembrances together and look after my niece who is visiting at the same time.
Nothing seemed to be working right with the technology. My cousin who was trying to receiving the document the day before delivering the eulogy, couldn't open the document and kept missing me by phone to tell me. The next day, when she reached me I was asked to save the document in a different format. The problem/challenge was that the night before I'd splashed some iced tea on my computer keyboard which made it stop working. I wasn't even able to log onto the computer as some of the keys on the keyboard worked but others didn't.
I was feeling flustered and was under a time crunch. I had to remind myself several times to stay calm. I also had to pray for help and for everything to work as it should. My dinosaur laptop helped me. Even though it is extremely slow and needed updating, I was at last able to get it to work and reformat the document before sending it off.
I mentioned that I was so busy and flustered because my niece has been visiting for several weeks and we've been very busy. She is not functional on her own so that means I need to do everything for and with her and so the document and technology issues were happening while I was trying to get her groomed and fed before we left the apartment.
I had a lot of fun with my niece and I think she had fun too. I took a lot of photos and my brother printed some of them today so I could place them in a photo album. My brother also made a video for my niece of her birthday party (she loves to celebrate birthdays) and some of her other favourite things, Snowbird jets and helicopters. She loved the video and "begged" to see it again before bed time tonight!
While she was here we went to see "Mary Poppins", a live musical. I was surprised to see a lot of adults there without children. Even men attended the show. My niece said said she enjoyed it better than "Beauty and the Beast" which we saw years ago. I think she only said that because she is more "grown up" now and thinks "Beauty and the Beast" is for kids. As I remember, she LOVED "Beauty and the Beast", and so did I.
My niece's visit has come to an end but I may have another out of town visitor though he and his wife won't be staying at my guests. I do hope they have time to squeeze in a visit.
Just in case you don't hear from me for awhile, please know that I am catching up with work and appointments. But I will be by to visit you as soon as I can. Have a wonderful week.