I LOVE my family

This is the last week I will be with my mom... but I have the best mom ever!  It's so fun to be with her and she's doing so much better.  I really admire her.  She wants to be strong and independent.  So she's going to physical therapy and doing her exercises at home.  Her physical therapist says she's really strong for her age and when tested, was in the low fall risk area.

That said... she still didn't want Mom wandering around without her walker.  Mom takes her walker most places.  But around the house sometimes she'll leave it on one spot and move to the kitchen or office.  But she can move faster with the walker... and it carries lots of stuff... and she can sit on it when she gets tired.  So really, it's just a good tool for her to use.

Monday we ran errands and mom had physical therapy.  Tuesday I went to the temple and did two sessions. it was a delight to be in the temple.  The first session was filled to maximum capacity and I was not sure if I would be able to make it to the next session.  But I did.

Then I braved the freeways with only a map... not a GPS... and found Lumber Liquidators in Santa Ana.  The manager there was very helpful and informative and I was able to get some samples. Now to see if they work in the house we are buying.

I agreed to help a Kenyan charity with their website.  It looked like a simple rewrite... alas, looks were deceiving.  These last two weeks has been an onslaught of emails as I questioned them about their system, their goals and objectives, who they wanted to attract and why they were so focused on publicity with no focus at all on donations.  They wanted Initiate!RaHaSolutions to become a household name like Google or Uber.  I mentioned that Google and Uber were two syllable words and easy to remember.

And they kept explaining their model that : Z did Initiate!RahaSolutions for X-- the headline that would appear in the advertisement would let people know about their projects.   Z, of course is the advertiser and X is the community... not to mention Y being the person who originally initiated the project for the community...  And I'm asking: how are they to know this is a rainwater harvesting system?  What leads people to understand you're offering life-giving water? Where is funding coming from?

In writing RaHa's web pages, I went through some of my Kenya photos to see if any could be used on their site.  This one was very appealing.

 These are the tanks that hold the harvested rainwater and the taps for village use.

Just at the point I think we are beginning to see eye-to-eye and understand each other... some email comes along and I'm suddenly not sure again.  I think I'm down to working for about $.25/hour now.  I've got to do better on my pricing.

Wednesday Mom and I went to see The King and I.  This was the original Rogers & Hammerstein's version from 50 years ago.  I see why the British took over the world.  They were just so SURE they were right and the world should be organized into the patter they thought was best. I think it was that conviction! that just mowed over everything else.  And many times, I suppose they were right.

It was a fun movie.  We went out afterward to shop and then had a quick dinner.

Thursday we had a pretty full day of appointments and shopping. A lab test in the morning and vegetable shopping at Jordan's Market.  Then PT in the afternoon with a stop at Trader Joe's and Lenscrafters.  That evening, we invited dinner Cynthia and Jim over to dinner.  They had been away at San Clemente for the first part of the week.

Friday and Saturday I got a fair bit of work done.  Tom also called to say that the owner of the house had given us permission to renovate before closing.  So we have the keys to the house and can get the power into our names. Tom has been doing the lion's share of the work-- cleaning up the outside and coordinating things with bank and realtor.

We won't invest a lot of $$ before closing, but we can remove the carpet or paint or clean.  Then the bank said we could close by the 9th... but the realtor said it would take longer for them to do the paperwork.  So it looks like we will close on the 15th instead of the 30th. That will make the owner happy.  And that means we will have a lot of work to do shortly.

Today I went to the Aliso Creek Ward building.  I sat next to a friendly person and the discussions in Sunday school and Relief Society were very good.  The weather has cooled down to balmy breezes.  It's a lovely day!