Back In Pennsylvania For ... A While

I am back in Pennsylvania. After driving overnight last Thursday, I reached my mother’s house in suburban Philadelphia in time for breakfast on Friday. I left Wisconsin with a list of projects I wanted to complete for Mom, all designed to make her home safer and easier to manage. Mom turned 90 last month, then broke her hip and had surgery from which she is still recovering. Her recovery is going very well and she’s back at home, but she now has caregivers who visit for four hours each day to help with meal preparation, household cleaning, and other common chores. My projects are beyond the scope of their work. I’m doing things like pruning dead tree limbs, fixing the fiberglass insulation in the garage, removing years of lint from the clothes dryer exhaust hose, changing the furnace filter, and installing a new shower head. I will work with an electrician this week to complete projects we began when I was here in April. This is great stuff with immediate, practical benefits. It’s the sort of work that appeals strongly to me when I do it at my own house, but at Mom’s house it rises to an expression of love, something at which I’m pretty clumsy otherwise.

As was true in April, I am working overnight for my employer, handling all of the responsibilities I have when I work from my home office. So, this isn’t a vacation by any reasonable definition. And there’s no pre-defined end date, which is something a real vacation probably would have. My kids will look after my house and yard until the end of summer if necessary, though I don’t expect to be here that long. I will run out of projects eventually. Mom will complete her courses of physical and occupational therapy. She likely will continue to need outside help for a handful of things, but she will return to a mostly independent life. At that point, I will return to Wisconsin.

With many projects already completed, I will devote more time to cycling soon. I have done only short rides so far: 21 miles last Friday, 25 on Sunday, another 25 today. Longer rides are coming. Fridays and Saturdays will be best for them. And I need them. I still haven’t gone beyond 40 miles this year.