Karen and I flew into Burlington, Iowa today – not a bad flight at all really. We had to get up at a rather unholy hour, but the trip was smooth (bounce through St. Louis with a few hour layover) and uneventful. Unfortunately for us, the majority of the US was covered with clouds today, so there wasn’t really much to see. Karen sometimes gets great photos from the plane. While breaking beneath the clouds on the decent into Burlington, we did get a lovely view of the Mississippi river. Its currently awash in ice flows that have largely broken up. We found out on the ground that the river had been heavily iced up here this winter after a really cold snap earlier this month. And aside from the clouds, today has actually been the nicest Burlington has seen in a while. No snow, rain, nasty cold, etc.
My grandmother (Lela) is doing well – she was sitting up and watching TV in the living room when we arrived. Yesterday she was so tired she didn’t really make it much out of bed. The docs have her on medication to keep her blood pressure really low, but the combination of that and having spent nearly a week in ICU at Iowa City have left her really weak. We had some takeout chinese (from Great Wall) for dinner, and chatted with her sister Louise and their friend Ed.
Tomorrow we plan to chase her around the house some – the doctors want us to get her up and moving around, walking as much as she can. A nurse is going to be stopping by tomorrow morning to check up on things too.
Rhonabwy 