Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Things happen in 3s

We've finally got a sunny day again, and we need it. Although things continue to go well in our cohousing community for the most part, we've had 3 recent incidents of sadness. Dexter, Barbara's dog, escaped from his back yard and was run over by a car in the rush hour traffic on the street going by the community. Dexter was one of the dogs that George and I would walk every morning (along with 4 others)--and we miss him.

The second incident was the loss of our beloved cat, Nina, whom we had to have put down because of kidney failure. She had lost about a 1/3 of her body weight and could no longer groom herself. She was still purring, though, and sleeping on our bed at night, but the vet said she was too far gone to try to keep. Nina would have been 15 years old in January. She was named after Nina Totenberg (and we named Nina's sister from the same litter Cokie, after Cokie Roberts).

The third incident occurred just yesterday, when Neil and George were doing some work on the laundry. George was cutting a board with his saw and asked Neil to help him stabilize it. As Neil walked around George (who was on his knees) to get to the other side of the saw, he tripped over George's feet, fell and couldn't get up. In less than 4 minutes, there were about 6 cohousing residents at Neil's side, with blankets, pillows and any other aid that could be useful, as we all waited for the ambulance to come. Neil's hip was broken, and he'll have his surgery on Wednesday. The hospital peeps have finally found a pain killer that works for him (morphine didn't), so he's dopey but more comfortable. Bev is a rock and doing well--but you can be a rock just so long! I'm glad we can be here for here--and Neil.

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