When I was little, I used to wonder why Grandma Smith would start all her letters telling us about the weather, about the birds chirping, about going shopping … it was all boring and I didn’t know why she wrote that way. Now I do. It was her life. Now it’s mine.

Today is a dismal, dreary, rainy day, quite unusual for this part of the country, really, because it hardly ever rains here. The refrigerator is empty. The birds are quiet today. Baby is sleeping. It’s a Sunday morning, but I am in bed all warm and woozy.

Last Tuesday, I was supposed to be on a plane to Tokyo. On Monday, I woke up with a backache and a few hours later, I couldn’t move at all. I couldn’t walk. When Ben came home, we went to the ER. We waited almost 3 hours before the doctor came in for a few seconds. We waited some more, and finally, after hours and hours of crying, moaning, and trying not to cry, and crying some more, I got some painkiller.

After we got home, I spent an hour and a half on the phone, and due to the kindness of a travel agent who worked 40 minutes overtime for me, I was able to postpone the trip for a week.

It’s been a good few days, drifting in and out of sleep all day in a drug-induced stupor, church friends supplying food, and Ben doing the laundry and dishes. I am supposed to fly out tomorrow morning, registered as a handicapped passenger, so I get to ride those cool little car thingies all over the airport and be wheeled to my seat. Yay!! I hope I get to Tokyo OK. *sigh*

This sort of thing has happened a few years ago, last time I was living in America. Y’know one reason it happened? Because of cars!! If I had been walking around for the last year instead of sitting around in cars to get places, then my back wouldn’t have gotten so weak and this wouldn’t have happened.

I’ve been on painkiller on and off for almost a week now, taking half doses instead of full doses. It makes me sleepy but doesn’t seem to be affecting my milk supply at all because she’s been exceptionally active all week, reaching for things and grabbing things. She really likes playing with her green lion, cloth blocks, and rattling ball.

She sucked her thumb for the first time this week.

She is getting quite demanding, making her desires perfectly clear but in such a perfectly cute way. This is her Ralph Lauren dress that I found for her just before she was born.