Symbolic Sunflowers.

I visited my mother again yesterday and I was finally able to buy the sunflower painting and even got to meet the artist,too! She was a Chinese woman who said her parents always discouraged her love of art and art talent telling her to "Get a 'real' job" but once she retired she was free to paint all she wants! In the photo here are both sunflower paintings I bought; the one of the right I got on the way to the Kingston hospital 6 years ago to visit the then 14 YR old when she was inpatient for her eating disorders and self-harm. So now I have a sunflower painting from her hospital stay and from my mother's, sort of symbolic, or at least remembrance. Now I just have to get frames for them. I also have other paintings that still need to get framed. It made me feel good getting it,too, and even more so since the $$$ goes to charity and this is the first time in over a week I was able to feel anything other than anxiety, worry,and stress I almost feel "guilty" but I'm "allowed" to get excited about something and be happy about something.I also have this "optimistic" feeling too, like things are going to be ok in the end, like I did when the now 25 YR old had leukemia when he was 7; like a reassuring comfort from God.

As for my mother, she's slowly improving each day, and yesterday they even got her up and sitting in an actual chair for an hour and they're taking the catheter out today and the past 2 nights she ate ALL her dinner and last night she had either meatloaf or Salisbury steak(I couldn't tell, and it is hospital food, remember) and I had to cut it up in little pieces for her like I used to do for the kids when they were little and it's like a role reversal now; like she's the child and I'm the mother, and she wants us to bring her an iced vanilla coffee when we come see her today, and she raved how the other night she even got her fave. supper; turkey with mixed veg, mashed potatoes with gravy and even her beloved cranberries, and she's on the antibiotics for 10-14 days as well but her shits are now "formed" (turds) and no longer" explosive" diarrhrea so the bacteria is clearing up, and she had hand and leg pain( likely either muscle pain from low potassium or diabetic neuropathy) and her glucose level's been really good; around 7, likely since she can't cheat on her diet! The foul smell at home is also finally all gone now,too.She's also tired, likely from the infection and/or meds and mad they take her food away and won't let her  keep it and "save" it and hoard it.

This is also me wearing one of my sunflower shirts( I had this one custom-made years ago) so the artist would recognize me. I told her I was a "bald, fat woman wearing a sunflower shirt" so it would be easy to recognize me, so not too hard to miss, and yesterday and today it's so hazy out due to smoke from the wildfires( over 400 of them in 5 provinces which is half the country and the worst yet, but the Bible did say increased natural disasters in the Last Days) it's overcast and blocks the sun and looks cloudy I even saw a raccoon in our yard yesterday morning; they normally don't come out until night when it's dark but it must have been confused and thought it was dusk, and today I can even smell the smoke,too, reminding me of our fire 27 YRS ago, and one of them is just about an hour away from the 24 YR old in Ottawa and at the campsite I went to with my YMCA group decades ago! I also heard on the radio they're filming the TV show Murdoch Mysteries (one of my mother's fave. shows) in a nearby town for a week and my cousin's ex-wife( even though they're divorced we still keep in touch and she divorced him, not me; I have nothing against her) said about my mother It's in the Lord's Hands which,of course, is true, but for some reason it actually annoyed me to hear that, and this morning putting lotion on after my bath I also felt a hard  loonie-sized lump at the back of my upper left leg but it doesn't hurt, and the sad thing is when my mother dies everyone will be sad and upset and miss her but when I die no one will even care except for my dog.

I tell you to enjoy life I wish I could, but it's too late.-Black Sabbath