Back to being a nurse, for the time being

A couple of situations account for my recent silence. Physical incapacity in the form of lateral epicondylitis (good old tennis elbow) has curtailed my ability to type for the past 2.5 weeks. Intermittently quite painful. Effectively self-limiting. Typing LH only. Big bummer for the status of a manuscript I'd hoped to submit for a memoir essay contest, deadline March 20. Trying very hard to keep my right arm immobile so it can recover. So many things I can't do! Using my LH to handwrite notes--sometimes the letters remind me of my son Simon's writing. He was a lefty and struggled with writing.

Now Miriam is laid up in bed with heavy upper bronchial congestion, moderate fever, sore throat. Doing what I can for her, trying not to catch what she's got. Poor kid. She's been sick pretty often this year. I'm using my handy link from this blog to the Celsius/Fahrenheit converter. Latest data point: 38.8 C/101.8 F.

Good travels during March break (no school 3/7-3/11 for the week of Fasching/Karneval) to Austria for Miriam & Markus to ski (I walk, read, sleep) and to the Ruhrgebiet to the north in Germany for general tourism (fascinating old industrial cultural sites, e.g. Essen's Zollverein) and the Taylor Swift concert in Oberhausen on March 12 (only performance in Germany, and Miriam's a fan). On the way home, reconnected with hometown friend (and former baby-sittee of mine!) Jennifer (née) Zinn and her family near Bonn.

A glimpse of the Zollverein, where slick new escalators convey visitors into what once was a massive coal washing plant and now houses a cultural/natural history museum in and around the plant's equipment: