Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Lots of water under the bridge since my last post.

Next week, for the 15th year, we’re headed to Ashland, Oregon for a week of vacation. As before, the week will include attending plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, hiking in the Siskiyou Mountains on and around the Pacific Crest Trail and general R&R.

For the last 3 years, my mom has been accompanying us, and that was the plan this year as well. However, last week she came down with some form of pneumonia and ended up in a hospital over the weekend. She’d been feeling a little punk earlier in the week, but she says she was trying to nurse herself along and be well enough to make her flight to Seattle, which would have left today (Wednesday).

She was playing bridge on Thursday morning and getting worse, though, and her friends finally ended the game and insisted on taking her to a doctor. She said, “It must have been because they were concerned about me - my cards were really crummy all morning.” Tests came back Friday, and the doc urged her to go to the emergency room.

Meanwhile, my brother, who calls her just about every day, hadn’t been able to reach her on Friday, and on Saturday called me to see if I’d spoken to her.  She hadn’t returned my call from Thursday, so we stewed a bit about what to do.  We couldn’t reach either of her neighbors.  Finally, my brother called the police to go and look.  A neighbor who had a key happened to meet them there, and they looked through the house with my brother on the phone just sure they were on a body hunt.  Later, when we found out the details, my mom was mortified that the police were in the house “when it was such a mess, with dirty dishes in the sink and everything.”

I spoke with her several times while she was in the joint, and she was getting progressively perturbed at the confinement and not being able to sleep well. By Monday, she’d had it and insisted on being released. A friend picked her up, and she’s glad to be home and feeling better, despite some discomfort working her way through a couple of drug series. I called her this afternoon, and she said, “Why aren’t you picking me up at the airport right now?”

I waited until yesterday to cancel her plane reservations, thinking that if she got stronger in a hurry, I didn’t want to foreclose the opportunity. I’ll miss her enthusiasm - she’s always thrilled at the performances and the atmosphere of the theaters and the town.

So, we now have a capacious house for the week, and we’ll need to sell or exchange her play tickets. Shouldn’t be too hard - I bought our tickets last November in the member’s presale, and they just rock, they’re all in the first 3 rows.

Here are the plays we’ll see:

• Our Town (Thornton Wilder) - will be the first 20th-century play they’ve stage in the outdoor Elizabethan theater.
• The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler (Jeff Whitty) - begins where Ibsen’s play ends, resurrecting Hedda so she can see about getting a re-write.
• Othello
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream - “What happens in the forest stays in the forest”
• Fences (August Wilson) - They’ve been doing Wilson plays from the Pittsburgh Cycle for the last 3 - 4 years, although not chronologically.
• Coriolanus
• The Clay Cart - a 2,000-year-old (east) Indian play.

We’ll fly into Medford Monday and return the 30th.

Right now, I’m hurtling through the work week trying to ensure that nothing seeps over into next week, so I can relax and use my laptop for repairing this dysfunctional project.

Update: - check out the blog threads from our previous trips in the sidebar.