Saturday: Food with Alicia, Jodi puzzle, trivia with Alex, Lily, Liam

DECEMBER 23, 2023

Ok, 10 pages of notes today, and 23 photos. It started with meds at 6:45am with the last package of Ritz crackers and cheese that have like 12g fat. I took them early, so I could go to Methodist for their once-a-month Saturday morning food distribution. I ended up having a great time there, mainly because of one girl I worked with. She was also a volunteer who spoke Spanish, and she said she'd done a Saturday or two before, but she always works at her job during the Tuesday morning sessions. Her job is working as a nurse, and she's actually a nurse for Hennepin Health Care, though she said that she doesn't personally work in HCMC, where I spent SO MUCH of my time. She certainly understood my story of the car crash though, and I even showed her the picture I took with the two EMTs who picked me up in the ambulance. She was actually at the church with both of her parents, neither of whom spoke Spanish. She did though, and was quite good and definitely said that she had been to Ecuador at one point. Also, since she's a nurse, I asked if she ever used "medical Spanish." My conclusion from talking to her was that we are sort of similar in the amount of Spanish we know, but there is NO doubt she's better with medical Spanish than I am because sometimes she uses it in her job. Some other words I sorta learned today were hervir (to boil), trigo (wheat) and fécula (starch). 

Ok, I wrote this all without notes, except for the meds at 6:45am and the list of the words I learned. I'll take a peek now, though. The girl who I was talking to was named Alicia, and I literally wrote it down and showed it to her to make sure I spelled it right. She also taught me that one way to say "cornstarch" in Spanish is "Maizena," which I think is also a brand. Ah well, I also showed Alicia my back scar where I'd gotten my staples taken out yesterday, and definitely told my cancer story as well. I wasn't quite clear if she has a specialty she usually deals with as a nurse, and I don't think she even mentioned one tbh.

The other very cool conversation I had this morning was with the church's pastor, whose name is Becky. The three of us decided the "mini-harvest" may have been there longer than the food shelf. Becky said it was like 10 years old when she got there, and she's stayed 20 years so far. So, it's definitely been happening for 30 years. 

At the end, I decided to just walk home, since I can walk with no problem, it's just very, very slow. I had a touch of a miscommunication with mom where she thought she was picking me up, but I went to my house. Once I was there, we called and decided that due to what the doctors all said yesterday, I could just drive my car back to Papa's house. I also wrote down: "Not having a car made me feel like I was asking permission every time I went anywhere." Also, the ability to leave an event at the instant when I want to go, is a HUGE piece of freedom for me. 

I have more notes that I'm not gonna summarize here lol. Ran over to Jodi's house for a bit and saw her neighbor and Bill's daughter Evie, if that's how you spell it.  We talked and put together a U.S. states puzzle. Then, Evie/Evvie took a business card and she picked a theatre photo, about which I said, "I think it's Eurydice, but it's definitely Theatre in the Round." 

For tonight, we decided that Liam would pick me up for trivia, and drive me home afterwards as well. So, we did trivia! And tonight, I did not stay over. He picked me up to go to trivia at like 6:15pm, after the ex-Strib photo editor, and my mom's friend, Deb, stopped by our house for a few minutes and we chatted.

On the way to trivia, I had an EXCELLENT conversation with Liam. I told him about how one time recently a doctor had asked me how I was doing, and I answered how I was doing emotionally, which is great, but really the doctor was asking about physically/medically, so I was NOT doing "the best I've been doing in years." Honesty, I'm a bit of a mess physically/medically now. Going back to the Liam conversation, we talked about how the TBI has given me time to think, possibly for the first time in six years. Another positive effect could be that the TBI has MADE me need to take notes, partly to manage my extremely complicated cancer situation. So in that way, the TBI and the cancer are working together to better me. I didn't say that to Liam, but it occurred to me right now, writing this. Liam and I also decided that I had always been a big note taker, and now I use those skills "really heavily" because of the TBI. We also briefly mentioned that doing a good job of managing the medication can be seen as a way of taking the control of my life back from the cancer. 

Anyways, then we went to trivia. One cool thing at trivia is that my BeReal went off at 6:53 pm, and I got the right-middle picture of Alex in it. The two on the far right are the two extra posts I earned. They show that we WON THE CHEESEBALLS TONIGHT!!! At the end, Liam asked me what I thought he should do with the cheeseballs, and I definitely suggested he bring them into the church he works at tomorrow, possibly for some kids. 

After trivia, Liam pretty much immediately drove me home, which actually felt a bit better than staying over at his house and having to worry about bringing my car back home eventually.