This is a remarkable machine. Click on the picture for a bit more information. Suffice it to say that this is how you get to the toilet when you have no strength in your legs.
While in Soda Springs today, mother and I went over to the Ireland Bank to check on some information. While we were waiting for the person to come over to help, I noticed a piece of paper on her desk titled You Know You’re In a Small Town When….
1. The airport runway is terraced.
2. The polka is more popular than disco on Saturday night.
3. Third street is on the edge of town.
4. Every sport is played on dirt.
5. The editor and publisher is also the reporter of the newspaper and carries a camera at all times.
6. You don’t use your turn signal because everyone knows where you are going.
7. You are born on June 13 and your family receives gifts from the local merchants because you are the first baby of the year.
8. You speak to each dog as you pass by name and he wags at you.
9. You dial a wrong number and talk for 15 minutes.
10. You are run off Main Street by a combine.
11. You can’t walk for exercise because every car that passes offers you a ride.
12. You get married and the local paper devotes a quarter page to the story.
13. You drive into a ditch five miles out of town and the word gets back into town before you do.
14. The pickups on Main Street outnumber the cars three to one.
15. You miss a Sunday at Church and receive four get-well cards.
16. Someone asks you how you feel, and then listens to what you say.
17. Everyone knows whose check is good and whose husband isn’t.
This sounds like a pretty good description of Soda Springs, Idaho. I grew up there and was mightly happy to get out of town. However, life was pretty good there and most things there were pretty good. I could never live there, though. It’s just too dang small!
Meanwhile, dad’s status is pretty much the same. He’s got a touch of pneumonia and is getting antibiotics. The nurse said his lungs sounded much better today. His blood sugar is still wacky and every time it gets too high he gets an insulin injection. His physical therapist was there today working with him. He gets along pretty well on his walker once he’s on his feet, but doesn’t have the strength to get himself up from a chair or his bed to his feet. Based on what we’ve seen over the past couple of days, dad might not be a candidate for assisted living and may need to go directly into the nursing home. I’ve started working with mother on the Medicaid application. The application itself can’t be filed until dad is actually admitted somewhere, but we’d like to have it completed and ready to be filed as soon as he’s admitted either to assisted living or to the nursing home.
And that’s the way it is in southeastern Idaho.
I miss living in a small town although I had the advantage of being near more events, university, etc. Big pluses. What I miss the most is knowing everyone. Going to vote and talking to the judges because they were my friends’ parents. Walking down the street waving at people in cars because you know you probably knew the people even if you can’t see exactly whose in the car. I know it has changed, but I’ll have to live here 20 years to even be a quarter of the way there.