2008 all gone

Happy new year!

We stayed in last night. Well, not quite: niallm took Oisín to my sister's party for a while, but they were home by 9:15. By midnight I was just out of the bath, and Fiachra woke up a couple of minutes later, so I lay feeding him back to sleep and listening to faraway carousings. I could just hear the Christ Church bells.

2009 will be a good year, I've decided.

Grandmother update

My grandmother with the pneumonia is on the mend.

We sprang her from chokey on 23 December, in time for her long-booked hairdresser appointment, and she enjoyed the Christmas festivities, although she required a lot more care than usual. (High point: being carried down my parents' narrow, screechy basement stairs backwards in a wheelchair.) Her hands were very swollen from fluid retention, so she couldn't (e.g.) feed herself, and the drugs she was on were making her very woozy.

Christmas was really the only reason she came home so soon, of course. On the 27th she was readmitted, on the grounds that having oxygen and nurses to hand was better for her at that time. I saw her the day before yesterday, and she was immeasurably improved. Hands back to normal, reading, conversing clearly. She should be coming out this afternoon.

She'll be 89 in May. It's unclear whether this episode is a blip or part of an overall acceleration in her decline. But for the moment, we're all very relieved.

2008, Year-End Meme

2008 was a relatively tough year, all things considered. But most of the toughness happened inside my head, and I'm not sure how well it shows up from the outside. (Or how well I'd like it to, for that matter.) And in fairness, it doesn't compare with 2005.

[ 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 ]

( 2008: not as bad as 2005 )