did it again (and other news)

Dad and I took Mom out for a walk today, after my brother Sean had left. Mom didn't walk yesterday, but she succeeded in covering the same distance today that she had walked two days ago. We may have avoided her knee-buckling problem by putting her on a hard/easy exercise schedule; we'll take her out again on Sunday to see how she does.

In other news: Sean was happy to report that Mom asked him a question in a complete sentence-- something she hasn't done in a long while. She also seemed more verbal later in the day, as we were driving home from the park: David called, and Mom spoke with him for a bit.

Mom remains physically weak; she needed our help to walk up the five steps of our deck to reach our house's back door. But as Dad noted, she's determined to keep trying.

I'm still sick, but Dad seems to think my eyelid infection looks better today than it did yesterday. I looked in a mirror and thought it looked about the same. Mom looked into my eyes while we were at the park and wordlessly expressed her dismay at how I look.

Perhaps because I'm sick, I overslept today, waking up around 2PM after going to sleep around 5AM. My sleep was interrupted sometime this morning (8? 9?) when my Korean relatives called us back again; Dad knocked on my bedroom door and handed the phone to me when I was barely coherent, and I'm not really sure what I told Ajumma and Ajeoshi (her husband, my mother's third-oldest cousin). I vaguely remember that Ajumma told me she had wired about a thousand dollars into my Korean account; this is money for Mom. I can't access it directly from here in the States; I'll need to coordinate with one of my friends in Seoul. One way or another, we'll get the money here.

Mom helped out in the kitchen today, as she's done a few times before. She brought out the dishes and utensils that had been sitting inside the dishwasher. I had made her lunch around 2:15PM, before the walk. After the walk, I made her a fruit plate, which she is slowly munching on right now (roughly 5:45PM).

We're doing what we can to stuff Mom full of protein-- chocolate protein bars, extra tofu (and/or meat, or eggs, or soybean sprouts) in her soup, etc. We're also giving her more Vitamin D to counter the shortage that the doctors had told us about. I continue to wash my hands regularly and am wearing another N95 mask-- a new one that Dad had bought yesterday-- basically doing whatever it takes to keep my pestilence away from Mom and her ravaged immune system.

Dad's out at the moment, running some shopping errands, which includes a swing into Koreatown to pick up some Chuseok ingredients. The official Chuseok day is October 3, which is tomorrow (Saturday). We'll be chowing down on Koreatown song-pyeon (filled rice cakes), and even though it's more often associated with the lunar new year, I'll be making one of Dad's favorite Korean soups, ddeok mandu-guk, tomorrow.

Happy Chuseok. It may be premature to sa that today, but in Korea, it's already officially Chuseok. Haengbok-han il man gadeuk! Be filled only with happiness.


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