Home for the holiday

We hadn't really planned to travel for Thanksgiving; at least I hadn't. Some time last week, Linda suggested going to see her folks. It's about the same distance as my sister's house, and we had done fine with that.

It does mark the first time that we have stayed overnight somewhere without the handicap support that we have at home. No grab bars in the shower, next to the toilet, etc. At least the house is all on one floor. Linda hadn't really thought of it. I mentioned it to her a day or two before we left, and she had a moment of thought but decided things would be fine.

She did well. The trickiest thing was the shower. She can get by adequately without her shower bench now, but our shower still has at least one solid place to hold on to. The shower at her parents doesn't have anything like that (there are handles on the sliding door, but they ... slide). She didn't fall, but I'm glad we're not there every day.

She did a pretty good job of keeping up her energy. After the accessibility stuff, that's the most challenging part of visiting. I did pretty well too. It was a bit more tiring for me than usual, because in the past we divided the driving. Ellie, at least, attached herself to her grandparents so there was some respite from dealing with her.

Wet manuscript

Last night Ellie spilled water on the short story that Linda is writing. Unfortunately it was still in her laptop computer. Right now, the Esc, G, H, and Up keys don't work, and I think one of the Alt keys too. That was pretty frustrating to Linda who was really looking forward to working on it. She went to bed crying (mostly from being too tired).

It still isn't working this morning, so I copied her file to my computer (without using any broken keys) and told her to work there. This afternoon, I removed all of the keycaps and propped her laptop upside down behind the dehumidifier. I figure that is the driest place in the house. Usually water won't hurt a keyboard permanently, but you do have to get it dry.

If you are curious about what she is writing, she took a break from her book (although there is a think printout of it laying next to the couch). She is writing Zorro stories at the moment. It's just junk fiction. She writes it for fun. You can find some (old) examples at http://vh224401.truman.edu/~lbindner/zorro/. I haven't converted all of her stories for the web yet, just these few. I think she'll have around 8 stories when I get them all up.