Anne's pains

Baba up early, watering the garden from a distance - where the chair is...

The Cheerio Thief

all pink

check out this Ladybug

Anne was out today with back pain.  She’s been complaining of her back since we got to Kusadasi.  She has this love-hate relationship with Kusadasi.

Love: breakfast on the balcony, tea, the garden/flowers/trees, her kitchen, bowl and plates in a drawer where she can reach (rather than a shelf up high).

Hate: mosquitos, hot weather, taking care of Baba, electricity loss, the stairs

She works hard when she’s here.  She always does - because there is always the garden to weed and water, the house to clean, food to cook, Baba to wash, laundry to do, and so on.  Zuleyha as taken on the majority of work this time - but when we first came - Anne had her own projects to clean and organize.  By the end of the first day, she was holding the middle of her back.  It’s been about ten days since we came, and this morning she only got out of bed because Zuleyha encouraged her.  When I came downstairs she was laying on the terrace swing in the same outfit she had worn the night before.  Back pain.  

After breakfast, Zuleyha sent her to bed and then got her up for lunch.  Yesim and her kids had arrived and we all ate lunch together before Anne went back up to bed.  

In the evening, Hakan came to fix the electric water heater.  We had learned the day before our solar panels were broken, thus our water not heating, and now he was trying to reconnect our water heater.  Hakan worked on it for about an hour and we started eating dinner downstairs.  Zuleyha woke Anne again to have dinner but Anne refused to get up and said she wasn’t hungry.  Zuleyha brought her a tray of food and tea.  Hakan and Baba ended up in Anne’s room at the same time around 8:30pm.  Hakan offered to bring her to the hospital for a shot - a muscle relaxer and pain reliever.  Anne declined, telling Hakan he was tired, and so on - but relented in the end.  Anne came down smiling and walking ever so slow.  She bent over to kiss her grandson, but then slowly sat down - grunting and holding her breath in pain insisting Hakan finish his tea.

Hakan said they’d be quick, and even though its a twenty minute drive one way, everyone was surprised when it was an hour before he returned.  

I took the kids upstairs - in spite of the cousins still being over - Teoman and Tomris had skipped naps for two days now, and had three late nights and it was already after nine.  My battles always increase in Kusadasi - and the lack of sleep was quite predictably causing a lot of meltdowns. 

I showered them both with the return of our hotter.  It was 10pm -all but Teoman were sleeping.  Anne, Baba, Hakan, Yesim, Batuhan and Bartu were all downstairs laughing when I came down to check on them and I say goodnight.  Teoman was out by the time I returned up the stairs.