Food and Snow, 2014

I skipped a few days posting because nothing much happened during this period in 2014. On January 21st I wrote that mom had a great two days without oxygen, with receding edemna and a good appetite. She had returned to the oxygen and was sleeping on this day, and I noted I hated to wake her up, but she needed to eat lunch.

I don't know what she had for lunch, but I made tortellini with porcini sauce for dinner, along with a healthy salad filled with lettuce, English cucumber, tomatoes, celery, and yellow pepper plus one roll, that dinner came to 1 gram of sodium. That 1 gram represented 1/3 of my mother's mandated daily intake, and it was the most she'd had in one meal since she left the hospital about a week prior.

That said, the portions were small. "10 Tortellini, 1/4 cup of sauce, one roll with one pat of olive oil butter, and a tablespoon of dressing on the salad." I had purchased much of the food the day before at a Fresh Market, not far from where my parents lived. I was at that market mainly because they carried probiotics and elderberry--two items I needed for myself. That store had been open for only six months, and I swore I would shop there more because of their organic options, but as time went on, my time was limited. I think I only shopped there twice, as Food Lion was much closer, and--according to my friends--a much less expensive option. I didn't see that. Fresh Market was competitive with Kroger, at least.

Other than shopping for food, we concentrated on a winter storm that was sweeping east from Kentucky. My husband sent a photo of his car outside the local coffee shop in Kentucky at the time (shown here), and that photo showed much more snow than we had at the time. A few hours later, though, we caught up. The conversation about snow was a long, ongoing reminiscence about snowfalls in the past. One guy mentioned 16" of snow in the late '70s or early '80s in Virginia Beach and the best I could find was 12" in 1980. The largest snowfall ever recorded in Virginia was the Jefferson-Washington snowfall where both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington recorded snowfall of around 3 feet in their diaries, occurring on January 28, 1772, making it one of the most significant snowstorms in Virginia history. Essentially, the storm dropped approximately 3 feet of snow in the areas where Jefferson and Washington resided. 

Anyone from Virginia might know where Thomas Jefferson resided in 1772. He had just married Martha Wayles on January 1, and they were residing in a one-room brick house on his Virginia plantation as enslaved laborers were building his Monticello plantation home. That location is about halfway between Richmond and today's Interstate 81 along I-64. Washington? He was residing with Martha and his two children at Ferry Farm, located near Fredericksburg, Virginia. That must have been some storm!

In the meantime, in 2014, my mother wasn't that interested in the snow. While she said she enjoyed my dinner, she had much to do about the mess I left on her stove. I honestly did not believe I left a mess, and I distinctly remember clearning up after myself, washing all dishes and wiping down everything. My father just shrugged. 

That was life with my mother, sick or not. I guess she was feeling fine that evening.