Southern Indiana

After a gap, I'm back to provide some recaps of the holidays.

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Upon arrival in Louisville the second week of July, we were greeted by family. That’s always a good thing but in a period of pandemic recovery, it’s particularly sweet. Nothing like a good plague to get you to increase your appreciation for things.

The vacation will likely need to be broken up into several posts given that so much is going on. The purpose of this blog is primarily to archive some key life events and it seems that a lot is condensed within these six weeks or so.

After the very nice visit in Minnesota, we arrived to rather pleasant weather in southern Indiana/northern Kentucky. It’s usually particularly hot and humid this time of year but it actually wasn’t bad. By the end of the visit, that would change and the brutal heat would appear, but for most of the time that we were there, it was rather pleasant.

The visit began a bit inauspiciously. Even at the airport my mother-in-law began to feel ill. She had pain in her lower stomach/abdomen area which began increasing over time. After a couple of trips to the doctor, they determined that she needed to be hospitalized. It turned out to be a blockage in her colon that was causing the intense pain. They were going to put her on drip antibiotics in the hopes of avoiding the need for surgery. As such, she would remain in hospital over the next several days.

For her, it was tragic to be whisked off to hospital soon after her family had arrived (my sister-in-law arrived from Nepal the same day we did). Indeed, it wasn’t the welcome she had anticipated. Nonetheless, I think we were all grateful that we were there when it happened. We were able to get her to the doctor and support her over the course of these days that would prove to be invaluable for her.

The other worry she had was that she had planned a family trip to Nashville for her 80^th birthday (where the person celebrating the birthday provides the gift). There was concern that she would be stuck in the hospital and/or need surgery. She said she wanted us to carry on without her if she was unable to join us.

In the end, such speculation was unwarranted. The antibiotics cleared things up and she was released after four nights as the doctor initially predicted. In fact it was a blessing that she returned to almost normal from the moment she left, aside from the low-fiber dietary restrictions. The vacation would continue as planned.

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One of the things that we arranged while we were still in Kenya was for the girls to have some gymnastics lessons. Over the past couple of years they have developed interest and skills but they just don’t have the facilities or coaching. Not to say they haven’t had any instruction. They’ve had a Kenyan coach visiting our compound in Nairobi who works with kids in our building. It’s provided them a good foundation but the structure and facilities that you find mostly in developed countries takes things to another level.  

The option that was available to us was a half-hour lesson, once per week for three weeks. It’s not as much as we wanted but it was the best we could do. There is obviously high demand for such things during the US summer.

The girls had been to this facility before. We were quite amazed the first time we saw it given that we’d never been exposed to this sort of thing before. It’s likely that Americans take this sort of thing for granted but we were duly impressed. In the past the girls would go at open times there they sort of used it as a massive indoor play area. But now they are beginning to age out of such things. We are no longer choosing restaurants primarily because they have something to do for kids. In the evolution of parenting, this is sort of a watershed moment. The positive for us is that good food can now take priority.

The lesson went well and the coach was great. It was probably a bit humbling given that there were kids working with other coaches who had many more years of training. It happens to everyone at some point – you feel you’re pretty good at something only to realize that the perception of your skills was skewed due to your limited scope of comparison. But I think the thrill of getting this opportunity to be in a real gym with a real coach outweighed any of the down sides to the experience.

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Another activity that we don't normally do with my wife's family is watch sports on TV. We have been known to watch sports live. Over the years we've seen Louisville basketball, youth basketball, minor league baseball, etc. But TV viewing has been limited, at least compared to most American families. This year, however, we were in town as Wimbledon and the Euro Cup were winding up and as the Olympic Games were kicking off. With no TV in the living room, we set up a projector which provided a large screen and a surprising amount of enthusiasm from a family that generally doesn't do this sort of thing. 

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Cool visit to Marengo cave