Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2008. Mattie was home and recovering from his first surgery. You can't tell, but Mattie's right arm was in a cast and sling, and the jacket was wrapped around him. Given that it was almost Halloween, Mattie was into creating haunted houses. He had one at the hospital made out of cardboard boxes and this one at home was made out of tinker toys. Of course we embellished the house with some pumpkin cut outs and ghosts we made together. 

Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins. 

• Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 45,199,397
• Number of people who died from the virus: 730,209

I have seen these enormous spiders in the garden but the other night, one of them was crawling down our first floor hallway. It is a wolf spider, or so I am learning. It is not poisonous, despite it looking that way. To me the spider is super sized, it is about the size of a half dollar coin, but it has beady eyes and it appeared to be staring at me. NO THANK YOU!

This morning I had the plumbers over again! Sunny was disgusted with the plan and despite the fact that he isn't supposed to jump on anything, he did! 

The plumbers were with me for about 5 hours. They replaced the drain and pipe in Peter's bathroom office. The plumber said that the smell coming from the pipe was horrible. So we know it must have been bad, because he says he can't smell most things. Lucky him! I am hopeful that the mysterious smell has now been corrected. Needless to say I still did a baking soda and white vinegar treatment after they left. 

I wish this one bathroom was the only problem. But now we found a major problem in the bathroom my mom will be using. I have left that bathroom untouched because my goal was to renovate it. However, there were way too many expenditures with the infrastructure of the house, so I had to put a hold on renovations. Nonetheless, I found a leak in the sink my mom will be using. I thought it would be a simple fix. It is NOT! Naturally. Instead, it requires the installation of a brand new vanity! I am livid and disgusted at the same time. I feel like I am playing to beat to the clock and I am losing. 

In the midst of this, I got a call from one of our researchers today asking whether the Foundation would host and fund a symposium at a national conference. In addition, I was asked to speak and introduce the symposium. It is in March! Though it would be nice to do, I explained to her that I am managing a three ring circus and my traveling days are quickly coming to a halt. Despite that, I did approve the symposium and began reaching out to our research grant recipients to see if they would be willing to present their research on the implementation of the Psychosocial Standards of Care.