Been There--Done That--Too Many T-Shirts: Has Anything Really Changed?

I don't know quite where 2022 went. We've stayed busy, but I am not sure how much we accomplished, but we made it to the holiday season reasonably intact.

Daniel, Paul, Claire, Jamie, Sarah

Jamie is our "adopted" daughter (she moved to Virginia in 2019 and has been part of our family since then. She and Sarah were online friends for years before that.

Just before the pandemic, we had an appointment for Daniel at the spasticity clinic at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. They recommended a baclofen pump, which could help reduce the tightness of his legs and arms. But the pandemic! A year and some later, he had the test dose of the baclofen, which was successful. But then the Delta variant arose, so no surgeries again. Finally, in February 2022, they said they could schedule the surgery.

Daniel in an occupational therapy session

So in late March, we went to Baltimore after Covid testing and spent the next two weeks there with the surgery at Johns Hopkins and a period of rehab at Kennedy Krieger to start adjusting the dose. Daniel was a trooper, and the staff at the hospital and rehab were great. He has done well with this and we've been back three times now to refill the pump. The benefits will continue to increase as he has more PT and chances to do more things.

Mealtime in Daniel's room

Sarah spent the 2021-2022 school year in State College, PA. In the fall semester, she was taking classes on campus, but switched back to online classes for the spring (really winter in that location; there's generally no sign of spring until close to final exams!) semester. She enjoyed spending the weekends playing games with other students on campus (board games and Dungeons and Dragons). She had quite a nice setup, with a studio apartment, a grocery store a short walk away, a nearby bagel shop where the staff got to know her regular order, and lots of good places to eat in the area. I loved visiting her and walking around the town and campus and getting my Penn State Creamery ice cream fix.

"This"was my first off campus place.
It was a real dump when I lived there!

I checked out two of the places I lived. The first place I lived, which was a run-down house beside an Italian restaurant, is now a large apartment building that takes up the half-block.

The other is still a house, but the room I had, which was all windows, now is almost completely covered with siding. (It was very drafty when I lived there.)

She moved back to Virginia in July, in time to greet a friend who came from Italy to spend a couple of months with Sarah and Jamie. They spent time visiting the museums, the zoo, going on day trips to Luray Caverns, etc. Sarah and Jamie caught Covid around the end of July, just when they were planning to go visit another friend in South Carolina. Fortunately, their friend had had Covid shortly before coming to the U.S., so she was able to help take care of them. Jamie had some issues due to her asthma, but Sarah had a mild case.

Typical dish in Morocco

Sarah got to spend some time in Morocco helping a friend who was going to stay there for awhile. She and her friend discovered Moroccan food and loved it!

Sarah also loved the cats and really wanted to bring this one home.

Paul joined them for a couple of weeks to help get things settled, then he and Sarah came home in mid-November. Paul had picked up the coronavirus at the end of the trip, and tested positive when he got here. We confined Paul to the spare bedroom, and I managed to stay sufficiently protected and did not catch it. Nor did Daniel or his aide, fortunately. Paul's illness was mild, fortunately.

Morocco is known for beautifully decorated doors.

An amazing dessert at one dinner in Morocco.

Claire is still managing the Craft Gallery of Artisans United. We now have 22 artists, having added two new artists this year. She spends time applying for grants, making social media posts, solving problems, and so on. Check us out on Facebook (@artisansunitedcraftgallery) or Instagram (@augallery1). One interesting thing Claire did this summer was to work with two students from Penn State on projects to analyze information from our social media accounts and gather information about sources of grants and other fundraising opportunities for organizations such as ours.

Paul continues to work on genealogy projects. He has a huge database of family information based on a book that was created back in the 1920s for one branch of his family. He has corrected, updated, and expanded the information over many years. He also is working on research for a friend who is interested in learning more about the results identifying possible family members from her DNA test. And visiting cemeteries to document gravestones is a continuing activity.

This gravestone
is by the tree
in the other photo.

Some places he visits
look like this! (Above)

He spent some time trying to sort out three overlapping cemeteries on two trips to Pennsylvania this year, one of which coincided with his 50th high school reunion.

The high school reunion turned out to be fun. He went on a tour of the high school, which has grown and changed quite a bit since Paul went there. It was good to reconnect with some old friends. He also enjoyed the chance to visit family this year.

The high school has an extensive
and impressive art collection.

A student lounge at the school.

Claire has been retired five years as of the end of August. She has enjoyed recent chances to get together with friends from work. It is great to see how well people she hired and worked with have done.

Since we have not been traveling much this year, we have continued the project to get rid of things we don't need. Claire joined a Buy Nothing group, which has been a good addition to the Freecycle groups she had been using. One nice thing about this group is there is more of a focus on getting to know people to whom you are giving items. It's sometimes surprising what people want, such as some large pieces of foam, the frame of a papasan chair, and a small travel alarm clock.

So onto 2023. I am looking forward to watching the animals in our backyard: lots of foxes and deer, typically. We had a family of foxes that spent some time under the shed on our neighbor's property, which gave us some great views when they were playing on nice days. The deer eat many of the plants in our yard, so we don't get to have much of a vegetable garden and have to spray stinky deer repellent on plants we want to keep from being deer snacks. My desk, which we moved to the basement when the first household covid cases hit three years ago, is perfectly positioned to see what's enjoying the yard.