Friday - 11/12/2021 — I just returned from a long visit with my sister in Colorado. I didn’t tell you I was headed there, simply because I don’t like advertising the fact that I’m going to be gone from my house. But over the next few weeks I’ll share with you some of the adventures I had on the trip.
One of the frustrating things about the trip was the number of people who weren’t wearing masks at all the rest stops, restaurants, and motels along the way. The other area of frustration was that my sister, who has always been one of the brightest, most creative stars in my universe, has begun to develop dementia. She hasn’t used her computer for more than a year now. She doesn’t remember the password to get into it, and the password isn’t written down anywhere—or at least nowhere we looked. On top of that, the WiFi password is missing, too. Before you tell me I could have looked on the side of the router, let me explain that I did—on the sides, the top, the bottom. It wasn’t there. And I quickly exceeded the personal hotspot limit on my phone. So I spent most of that long visit without emails and with no access to the Internet.
It was incredibly relaxing.
The only trouble with all this was that the book Diana begin writing a number of years ago—a memoir of her time as a farm wife—is somewhere in that computer, unreachable. Luckily, she had printed out the stories as she wrote them, so I now have a binder chock full of pages that I’m transcribing with the goal of publishing Farm Wife Stories: A Memoir by Diana Alishouse. Hopefully I’ll get it out while Diana still can appreciate reading them. I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s available.
My other project is to get her other book, Depression Visible: The Ragged Edge, formatted and published as an e-book. Again, an ongoing project for the long hours of winter ahead of us.
I love having goals to reach—and if they’re goals to help my sister, they become even more important. Thank all the gods that be for her wonderful husband who is sticking with her through this difficult time and helping her with all the day-to-day items that need to be addressed. I’ve gained a new appreciation of him.
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