Rainy Cleveland

I'm in a coffee shop, using a WiFi system that is a bit overloaded and so won't let me send out email. But I think I can post.

I'm in Cleveland where, at this moment, I believe it is actually warmer than Austin. Bob says there is ice on my car (which is parked on the driveway in Texas.) In Cleveland, it is raining, but above freezing. But they'll switch places this afternoon as the temp in Cleveland drops.

I went to see my mom today and took her to Bob Evans, her favorite place for lunch. I was worried that after two months it would take her awhile to figure out who I was, or that she might have even forgotten me. But when she saw me, her face lit up with recognition and she stood up and said, "I guess I'm going out?"

They told me that a couple of weeks after we moved she seemed to go into a bit of slump and started napping during the day. She rarely does that. But that she seemed to come out of that.
They are talking, though, that she may have to be moved from the assisted living building to the nursing home building. I worry about that. When they changed the carpeting in the hall outside her room she lost functional use of language for a week and I think that moving her into a new building will be like sending her to the moon. But I also understand that she no longer changes clothes and takes more care than technically the assissted living is supposed to provide. So far they say they want to try to put it off, for which I am grateful.

I'm sitting in an Arabica (coffee shop) wearing my favorite winter sweater that I'll only be able to wear a couple of times a year in Austin, and outside it's gray and drizzling. It all feels so familiar that I forget I don't live here.