Yesterday was Dad's 62nd birthday. Dad ♥s sweets. I do, too. My girls used to ask me which tooth was my "sweet tooth." Like Dad, I am also a morning person, rising when the sun is up, sometimes before.
One of my sisters gave him a beautiful painted ceramic bowl that her girls made.
She also got him a t-shirt which 7 of the grandchildren have put a painted hand-print on...and she will take it to Canada this week for Elizabeth's hand-print (who is a month old now and will be baptized next week), then, Dad can wear it.
Another sister gave Dad a box of sweet pastries from
Bon Bonerie, a Cincinnati shop. I remember having their scrumptious scones with clotted cream at the Celtic festival about 15 years ago. It reminded me of when my grandma (my dad's mom) took my sister and I to Scotland when we were kids, for a month in the summer.
We got Brooklyn style pizzas to eat for dinner with Dad and Mom. Then the my girls wanted to play "Cincinnati" the local version of Monopoly, they have
Aglamesis ice cream as one of the properties you can buy, Kroger's grocery or the Cincinnati Red's baseball team, for example. I sat in Dad's walker as a chair.
I went with Dad and Mom to an awesome
Parkinson's Symposium on Saturday, we listened to Dad's doctor, Alberto Espay, talk about the myths of Parkinson's (one was "stem cell research will help those with Parkinson's"...and I am pro-life, do not think it is morally right for anyone to use a fetus to do research). There was one doctor who talked about caffeine and how it makes the levadopa (medication used to maintain the Parkinson's disease) more effective! Dad had 2 cups of coffee right then at the Oasis.
Linda Armstrong is a woman who has Parkinson's disease and makes jewelry. She spoke about my dad's first doctor, Fred Revilla, who is down in Bolivia climbing to the summit of a mountain in honor of his patients. She said "We are all on a climb, looking for a cure." I love her frosted glass pieces with little beads around them.
Cammy Dierking biked (although she doesn't have Parkinson's) the 40k, I ended up not
doing it, but next year, I WILL. She is the local evening news anchor
for channel 12 (CBS) and what a wonderful, warm and inspiring person!
She called up a young boy, Benji who is perhaps 10 years old, who also
biked, he has had numerous back surgeries and his father has Parkinson's
disease. We applauded him. It brought a tear to my eye, seeing this
young boy.
Davis Phinney is a professional cyclist. He was diagnosed as having Parkinson's disease at age 40. He is now 53. He wrote a book,
The Happiness of Pursuit, about how he is reaching back to what
made him so successful on the bike and adjusting his perspective on what
counts as a win. He said a smile brightens his day and that is a victory!
