FE: Just a maintenance day, taking care of a few things. My one memorable activity of the day is when we took Mom shopping for groceries at her local Albertsons. Usually her cleaning lady does her shopping since Mom’s mobility is not great anymore. She was so happy to move through the store and some of the employees still recognized from her earlier shopping days and came over to greet her. Not really a big thing, but it touched my heart and I felt joy. Here are Mom and I.

RN: My mom wanted to just send us to the grocery store with a list of items she wanted, just like she does with my brother, sister, and her housekeeper. However, I thought it might be nice for her to get out of the house, and invited her for a ride in the Tesla and to walk with us around the store so she could look for items she wanted. She was worried she would slow us down, but I reassured her we were fine walking slow with her. It turns out she was fine pushing a grocery cart (instead of a walker) and super-thrilled at being in the store. When we first walked in, she said, “Everything is so colorful and wonderful!”. She delighted in seeing all the selections for every item she wanted. At the butcher counter, the butcher remembered her and told me she was a great customer. He hustled to get her just the right cuts of salmon. The cashier and bagger also recognized her to her great pleasure. That was terrific because it’s probably been more than a year she was in the store. We all left with big smiles our faces!

One last small pleasure for Mom: my sister bought her a tomato seedling that turned into a decent-sized tomato plant with 6-7 green tomatoes and, magically, while we were there, one turned red and no critter took a bite out of it! Mom harvested it and was very pleased and Felix was jealous because the chipmunks usually beat him to his tomatoes…