Jodi and Papa at Sea Salt, Rosie with Holden and Mike at Open Door

May 4, 2023: Well today I’m successfully starting it before the day is over. Basically first thing in the morning I took my meds at 6:11am with a ton of oat milk and a little bit of cereal. I also sorted through a lot of my photos and wrote yesterday’s photo of the day by 8am. Mom also asked me to retweet something about me and the cancer treatment, and the article said that I was working and living independently. I don’t feel like those things are true. I know I was working at the time she was interviewed for that article, but now I’m not and I don’t feel like I’m living independently really. I told both mom and papa that. I also messaged Hannah about the pedicure tomorrow and she said that I might have to drive myself there because she’s doing dinner with her family. So I can do that. She also messaged me a screenshot from Duolingo that said “bye” was “adiós” and I also told her about how I’d been talking to some guy from Argentina yesterday and that he said that in Argentina, they say “chao” more often than “adiós,” and “adiós” is more formal. I also told Hannah about trying to decide what scrunchies I’d bring to Florida, and she said she had just bought new hair clips too and was very excited for the trip. I also made a list of things I wanted to talk to her about when she calls me later today. Then I went over to Papa’s, where we backed up my computer and I exported the 2(d) version of my yearbook and put it in the archivos folder on my phone. I also had another bubly blueberry pomegranate sparkling water. Then we decided to get lunch with Jodi. We walked over to Sea Salt from Jodi’s house, the restaurant that Eleanor and I tried and failed to go to yesterday. Very interestingly we ran into one of our dog Rosie’s siblings there, a mutt named Holden. We talked to the people who owned him, and I learned that my dad had actually met with that family before and had the dogs play in a dog park. We also talked to the people who owned the dog, and it was a woman named Cindy who actually said she worked at Abbot Northwestern as a neurological surgery nurse. So then I told her about my accident and my experiences with the cancer and the TBI at Abbott Northwestern. After talking to the two of them, who were Cindy and her daughter Bucky, who I have a photo of with the dogs, we ate our lunch. I had the Mahi Mahi tacos from Sea Salt and they were quite good. I also wrote down that I last ate at 12:16pm, just so I can know for my meds. So now I’ve decided that even though I had my morning meds at 6:11am I’m not gonna wait til 6:11pm to have them tonight because I’ll be volunteering at Open Door. So I’ve just talked to Papa about this and I’ll we decided that I’ll wait til around 4pm to run back to my house and grab my camera and have a 9-14g fat meal with my meds. Now I’m just gonna work on the yearbook a bit more. Alright, I did that and I also organized my computer. Then when I was going home to drop off my computer and pick up my camera for Open Door, Hannah finally called me. We talked about a lot of our plans for the trip. Answered some questions for me for sure. Well Papa and I had decided for me to have my meds shortly after I got home with a hot pocket, which is what I did. I had my meds at 4:15pm with a hot pocket with 9g fat. Now that I had my meds and sorted out some packing stuff I’m good to leave in like five minutes. I’ll change into other shoes too, because today I wore some that I’d bought in Colorado like a month before my accident, that aren’t exactly sandals but they’re more open. Maybe I should bring them to Florida. Wearing instead the cuter slip resistant shoes tonight. Ok I went to Open Door and it was great. Basically I translated a ton, at first I did it for two different families, including getting one of them registered. Then I helped one family actually take their food out to their car, which is the first time I’ve done that. A little kid in the family asked me how I knew Spanish, and I said it was a boyfriend from Ecuador, and they said they’re from Ecuador actually, and had only recently arrived a few weeks ago. I told them I’d been to Quito too. Funny enough it was like three families that came in all sharing one car. So they absolutely crammed the car full, and I’m not even sure the back of the car was sealed closed actually. They said they lived 35 minutes away too, which is farther than most of the clients who come in. Apparently they all had to share one car because it was the only one they had. Then I went back in and had some amazing talks with some volunteers. Turns out today there were actually like four people from Rotary coming to volunteer, and I told them all about my connections with Rotary, and Tom Gump, who one of them called “the Gumpster.” I also mentioned that in January I’d given a talk to Rotary, and none of them had gotten to see that event. I did get one guy’s contact info though, the one in the photo, and I told him that I’d be very interested in giving some more talks to Rotary. Their shirts said Eagan Kick Start Rotary, which is why I asked them about it in the first place. I also told Mike all about the TBI and the reason I write stuff down, which I was doing at the time. Part of the reason I asked their last names was actually because I was thinking about messaging Tom and asking him if he knew them. Already done that now. Tom said that he thought Mike was some kind of politician, and now I've googled Mike, and he’s an Eagan city council member. At the end of the night after everyone had left, I talked to Owen a little bit and he said he liked the photos I’d been taking for Open Door, and that he hadn’t seen my Empty Bowls photos yet. So then I showed him the Empty Bowls photos on my phone just from the Flickr upload. I also told him that the Empty Bowls shoot really had felt like the first time I was doing professional photography again. Thank god I’m finishing this on the day of today, even though I’m totally out of space.