Another sunny and warm day yesterday, high of 81.

On Tuesdays, my Mom goes to yoga at the Council on Aging, about 5 minutes from my office. I usually take her, drop Ray off and then go to work. She has to be there at 8, which is pretty early for her to get somewhere. I usually make oatmeal on Tuesday mornings for the two of us (or 3, leaving some for my Dad to have when he gets up). Ray doesn't like oatmeal and has yogurt almost every morning. Yesterday I made the oatmeal, took the dogs out, got the newspaper, came back and ate breakfast. My Mom eats really slowly. Usually at dinner, I stay at the table until she is done. But not at breakfast. I was upstairs, getting my clothes, when I heard some bizarre stomping--like my father was pretending to be an elephant--running. Then there was a crash and breaking dishes. I ran downstairs and found my mother sitting on the floor in the kitchen. "Are you okay? What happened?" "I'm fun, I just stumbled. I was coughing and got a little dizzy." She was carrying the dishes to the sink and almost made it. She sat there for a minute and we cleaned up the broken bowl and cup. Ray wiped the floor. She has a terrible bruise on the end of her finger, where it was holding onto the cup, we think. I was very frightened, but it is really nothing. I was trying to tell her that if something like that happens, she should not ignore it and try to soldier on, but just sit down and let the dishes go. Hard to tell yourself, though. She insisted she was fine and went to yoga as usual. We were a little late, though.  Ray and I actually went to the Ramsey Center after we dropped her off and played a couple short games of racquetball. I was at work about 9:40, a little later than I intended, since there is a staff meeting every Tuesday at 9:30. I worked for a while, then I went to lunch and met Ray at Cozy Yum Yum. It was in a basement downstairs and a little grungy. The food was good, but I like the Thai restaurant at the Bottleworks better. Then I went to a training from 2-4:30 about communication. It was pretty good. The most surprising thing I learned is that you don't need a brochure. It's too vague. You should have materials for various target audiences--consumers, donors, volunteers, but they might not be brochures.

I was at Ray's office at 4:45. I knew he was listening to a thesis defense. It was hot; I rolled the windows down and listened to the news on NPR. There was nothing  he could do; you can't get up and leave when you are on someone's thesis committee and they are defending, not even long enough to call and tell me they were running late. It was 5:40 when he came out and we drove home. We had drink and snack and started supper. Jaron, the Americorps volunteer at the Shelter, and his girlfriend Amanda, who is a law student, came to see the house and garden and meet the dogs. I showed them all around. They will stay here while we are in France. She was so grateful. She said, "you don't even know me." I said, "I know Jaron." She will be doing some writing for the law school (write on) after classes get out and thinks this will be a great place to do it. I am glad to have someone in the house. They will take care of the dogs, maybe water the garden some, and harvest some of the produce. My Dad showed them some of the same things I did, like how to feed the dogs, but they never said, "Patty already told us." She has been to France, speaks French, Spanish and Malagasy. I didn't even know what that was. It's the language of Madagascar, where she was a Peace Corps volunteer.

Then we ate, watched TV, and went to bed.