Celebrating Hannukah

I was mixed up when I thought that our Hannukah party was going to be last night, but in fact it was tonight. Yesterday, when I still thought we were having the party then, it was getting later and later and no one was showing up, so I eventually realized I had gotten the day wrong. Marty and Donna spent a few hours yesterday making a practice bunch of latkes, since Marty had always used his mother's method of using a blender, but he had to adapt that to use my Cuisinart instead.

I've been very weak today and didn't want to get out of bed. I did go to the bathroom mid-morning, and needed Ann to help me get back to bed, so getting into the living room seemed too daunting a task. In addition to feeling weak, I also felt incredibly blue today, qualitatively different from the sadness I've been feeling all week.

Marty kept trying to persuade me to get out of bed, but I just wanted to be left alone, and read or dozed most of the day. But after the company arrived, I decided I did want to join in, and Marty helped me to get into my chair, from which I could hear and participate in the conversation, and now I do feel a big improvement in my mood. I still didn't feel up to eating latkes, but I did have some challah and some applesauce, and even though I'm still feeling that my stomach is delicate, the trend is definitely upward.

One positive thing that has happened is that I got a call from the Boston Globe yesterday that they were going to publish a letter I had sent them probably two weeks ago, and it was in today's paper. The topic was a tragic case--two elderly women (one was 98, and the other 100) shared a room in a nursing home, had some sort of disagreement, and one killed the other by putting a plastic bag over her head. It got me to thinking about how awful it is to share a room with a stranger (which happens not just in nursing homes, but also in halfway houses, community residences, and the like). To read the letter, go to www.boston.com, scroll down to "Editorials and Opinion," and click on "Letters to the Editor."