Labor Day, with crutches
Tuesday was the Italian Labor Day national holiday. We kept the Institute closed and stayed mostly at home. In the morning I drove over to the mission office to pick up my new mission credit card; BofA apparently decided to get out of the Europe credit card business, so our new cards are HSBC Mastercards. While there, I picked up some mail and docs to give to various young missionaries that we will see soon, and I also worked on a couple of small IT support issues.
As I was leaving, Anziano Balzotti gave me three stand fans, two for the Anziani in Ladispoli and one for us. Our apartment inspections happen next week, so we will take the fans up to them then. We now have one each for our living room and back bedroom, which we often use to help dry laundry. The fans were used and rather dirty, so I took them apart, dusted the covers, and washed the blades, so they look quite nice now.
It was sprinkling when I got back from the office, and I called Dee to come down to help me carry all the stuff up from the car. She said she was in the elevator coming down, but then it took her forever to arrive. I stood by the car under my umbrella for probably ten minutes, wondering where she was and if I had made it clear where I had parked. Finally she arrived, limping like crazy. She had missed the final step coming down to our outside door and possibly broke a bone in her foot, not to mention hitting the (very soft ;-) marble floor pretty hard. Dee writes: I lay there on the floor for quite awhile, waiting for the pain to subside enough for me to get up. I heard a crack as a went down, and since my foot hurt so much, I was pretty sure something was broken. We made it back upstairs, and she sat down, not to move too much the rest of the day. Sorella Knies, the mission nurse, came over to see it. At first it didn't swell much, but after a few hours it started getting a little discolored and swollen, not enough to indicate a break definitively, but very painful to walk around. She gave us the contact info for a clinic where Dee could go the next day, as everything was closed for the holiday. Dee took a bunch of ibuprofen and iced it a few times.
Because of her injury, we missed the ward party. Our ward is just a partying group. As Ugo says, if there is a holiday, we have a party. But we did see some photos of the event.
Later in the afternoon, Dee called the pharmacy down the street which seems to be open on holidays, and they confirmed that they had crutches for sale. So I walked down there, about ten minutes each way, and bought a pair for her for 35 euro. They were a lot cheaper on Amazon, but she needed them immediately. It helped alleviate her pain from walking quite a bit, though it is always a nuisance to use them. They are different from US crutches, and we really like the design, more like canes with an arm brace:
In the evening, Sorella Johnson below us was sick and asked for a blessing. In the afternoon she came down with a bad headache and nausea, so Anziano Balzotti and I gave her a blessing, promising her that she could rest and feel better the next day. Afterwards I was able to unload a bunch of home repair supplies on Anziano Balzotti; we don't use them much at all, and he needs them for his apartment assignments, so now we have more storage space and he has more supplies. It was win-win.
I spent the day at my desk. As you know, I talked about Steven Covey's important-not important-urgent-not urgent matrix at family home evening. So, I practiced what I preached and did a lot of important but not urgent things. It was wonderful to do so much in a day.
We also found out that Sergio's brother, Frank Saccomanno in Edmonton, Canada died on April 24. He had pancreatic cancer. He was well known for his wonderful restaurant/store. Not only did he have a great trattoria-style restaurant, but he also supplied personal pizzas by the hundreds for school lunches. He came from Grimaldi, Italy to Edmonton as a young man, as did many of his relatives. A wonderful guy. I'm glad I got to meet him several years ago.
