Life After Windbird, Day 16: Shopping Day—Bad Idea
Date: Sunday, August 28, 2016
Weather: Another Perfect Summer Day, High Temp 80+ degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio #8, Falmouth, MA
When Mark got up for his first breakfast of the day, he announced that he was feeling good and would like to go on the shopping spree we have talking about for a couple of weeks. The short story is that we did and it was a really bad idea. We bought the things we needed, but the trip was just too much for Mark. He ended up with increased pain, terrible edema in his feet and legs, and worse nausea than he has had to date. But the one thing he really wanted was a new toilet for the master bathroom and he got that.
Living on the Cape is wonderful, but shopping possibilities here are really limited. Falmouth has a downtown with a great hardware store, a decent but expensive shoe store, a nice children’s book store, and the rest of the stores are just for tourists. Then we have a ‘mall’ with a grocery store, Michael’s, and a Walmart that never has anything you need. With summer traffic, you can drive to Hyannis in about 45 minutes and get most things you need, or you can drive off the Cape toward Boston for about 60 minutes to a Home Depot, a Costco, and an IKEA all in one spot. We wanted more bookshelves from IKEA, the new toilet from Home Depot, and some stock supplies that I am out of from Costco. Mark’s goal was the new toilet because he swears that he is going to fall using the current one. It is a low profile toilet which means it is a few inches shorter than a normal toilet. I have fought this idea because the one that we have is gray which matches the bathtub and the tile. But now we will have a nice, big, bright white one. Not beautiful, but I certainly don’t want Mark to fall. The thing is so heavy that I could barely get it into the car, so it will stay right there until Heather and Jed get home mid-week and help me carry it in. We left Home Depot and headed to IKEA for the bookshelves. But Mark was really unsteady on his feet, so we headed straight to the in-house restaurant to get him something to eat. He then sat in one of the comfy chairs in a display area and waited for me to do the shopping. There were more people in IKEA today than I have ever seen there before. I had to wait in a line for over 20 minutes just to get a cart and I have never had to wait before. But we now have more bookshelves. Mark stayed in the car while I shopped at Costco. One of the things I wanted to buy there was a Vitamix for making smoothies for Mark. I got that and a few other staples and headed home as fast as I could. Mark has been asleep ever since we got home except when I woke him up for dinner. So I think we’ll turn in early and hope that he can recuperate overnight. But there will be no more major shopping trips for Mark. Going for short walks to keep the circulation going, sipping yummy smoothies made in the new Vitamix, getting lymphatic leg massages, and sitting at zero gravity in his recliner are the things this ‘doctor’ orders.
