Crickets

It's a calm, quiet, cool-to-warm late Saturday evening and we have just come home from the theater. Walt is sitting out on the patio listening to something he describes as sounding like crickets or bull frogs or something.  He asked me out to see what I thought and I can't hear it at all.  I decided it must be one of those sounds that is pitched in a range where my hearing can't get it.  It opens new possibilities for how to explain things I can't hear these days!

It's been  a low key day.  I went to Atria in the morning and suggested my mother and I walk the three gardens of the place, which we did.  Her patio opens onto the first garden and we stopped and sat under a huge shade tree in the second garden to talk for awhile and let her hips rest before moving on.  The third "garden" wasn't really a garden at all, just a walkway alongside a fence.  My mother had the opportunity to have an apartment in this part of the building and I'm so glad we didn't take it!

By the time we got to the third garden, she was starting to hurt and wanted to go back.  It was a struggle to get her back to her apartment because there were no more places to sit.  I tried to point out to her that a cane which would help relieve the pressure that was causing the pain, might make walking more possible, but she is adamant that she is not going to be "one of those people" who use a cane or a walker.  She'd rather just sit in her apartment and not go out.

Her decision, I guess!

   
Garden 1                                                Garden 2

I ordered two books about dementia the other day and am reading the first one.  This adamant attitude of my mother seems like textbook and the recommendation is to let her make her own decision, no matter how illogical it seems.   So for now, it's a non-issue.  If her pain gets worse, we will undoubtedly revisit that suggestion.

We saw two shows this week end.  Friday night we went to opening night of The Wizard of Oz at the Music Circus.  What a fabulous production.   This is a show for which, no surprise, I know the whole script by heart, so it was always jarring to hear a change from the original, but the spectacle of of the stage show was fabulous, The characters are all reminiscent of the movie,but not badly so.   Dorothy isn't Judy Garland, but she's definitely fine in the part.  The Scarecrow wasn't as limber as Ray Bolger but was a fine actor, as was the tin man.   The lion was the one who most emulated the movie character and did a fine Bert Lahr and yet still made the role his own.  Auntie Em later appeared as Glinda, and if you had your eyes closed you'd think it was Billie Burke.  But the whole production was just spectacular and with a show like that, the review practically writes itself.

This evening we went to see Cats at the local musical theater in Davis.  Truth to tell, Cats is not my favorite show.  I am a dog person after all!  But this production was considerably better than I feared and it will be fun to write the review because I really have only good things to talk about.

Tomorrow we are off to San Francisco to see a Giants game.  May the team live up to the quality of the performances we have seen the last two days!   Walt says he needs to stop by the bank first to take out enough money to have those ballpark hot dogs for lunch.