I'm Bringing her Home

God does work miracles. Tuesday I got a call from my mom's old caregiver, and she said a friend of hers had a client who had recently passed away and left her without work. She vouched for this lady's abilities, and said she would take care of my mom while I was work, and even stay overnight when she needed to, for only $8 an hour. I couldn't believe it.

When I called the lady and talked to her, I asked why she would take such a low amount of money, and she said she'd heard about the things that had happened to my mom, and truly believed she should not be in a nursing home, and wanted to be a blessing to someone.

I felt like screaming "You're hired!" right then and there with a bowlful of joyful tears, but I checked myself. I'm interviewing her Friday, and next week while James is here, I'll use his muscles to help make my mom's room more handicapped friendly. Then, I'll either bring my mom home after my search trip, or sometime next week, and have the new girl stay over night for the days I'll be gone. My mom has saved up a little nest egg that I can use to help with initial expenses, so everything is going to work out.

My heart has been so heavy since she's been in that rat's nest nursing home. It was dirty, and the CNA's were rude, and it was just a sad, sad place. My brother and his wife are not happy. It's like they think since she blew through almost a million dollars in five years all by herself, she automatically deserves to die in filth and terror and alone.

Nope. Not gonna happen.

And Judy, I'm praying for you and your family while your mom goes through surgery. You're a good daughter. We have a lot of older patients at our practice whose kids can't be bothered to take their parents home from surgery, and they live just around the block. I can't tell you how often me, my boss, and my daughter have offered to be a ride for patients having minor surgery.

Okay, now for some chase related news:

I believe I have it nailed down. Every clue.

My spot is easily accessible and not considered dangerous. It's family friendly nowadays, but probably not so much in the past. My area is under 10,200 feet, in a heart of the Rocky Mountains, and I can see it being special to F in a certain way.

Also, I'd like to say that if, by some miracle, it isn't where the clues lead me, I'll humbly eat some crow pie. I may be confident, but I'm never so arrogant to admit if and when I'm wrong. I think I've said that all along, and it's still true now.

And it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I'm taking another trip to the Rocky Mountains, to a place I've never been, with a person I love, and that's a treasure to be cherished in my memories forever, isn't it?

And if I can keep from getting cactus needles in my butt, prevent myself from clumsily stumbling over the edge of a cliff or a curb, or getting a bad case of the flu or food poisoning while I'm there, I'm nearly 100% sure we'll have fun. And that's what it's about for me, although, man, I sure could use the extra money right now.

And yes, I'm up at 4:00 am this morning, because I'm excited. I'm trying to prove my spot wrong, but there's just no seemingly possible way it's wrong.

Could it still be wrong? Yes. Of course. Despite the way the clues line up and everything absolutely makes sense to me, and the hidden pictures in the book correspond nearly exactly (some very exactly) to features in the area, there's still the problem of perspective. I believe I can go confidently, but my confidence may be shattered when I go BOTG to that area. However, there's a good chance that as I go confidently to that area, my confidence will prove justified. I won't know til I get there, no matter how inwardly confident and "100%" I may be.

Lots of people have been 100% and have been wrong, and I'd be a fool to say I'm definitely not one of them.

And although the area is easily accessible, you probably wouldn't want to go there in the winter, as that would up the risk very much. It does snow where we're going. And there will be a producer and I guess a film crew with us. So, by the end of the month, there's a good chance the chase will be done. But, realistically, there's always a chance that it won't. Sometimes fate, weather, timing, health, and Mother Nature seem to work against us, and I can't make predictions about those. I have first hand experience how different and VAST things look when you're physically in your search area.

And if my mom continues to decline after I bring her home, I may not be going anywhere.

There are a million scenarios, a million factors that could affect the outcome of the chase. And I know my area (in general) has been searched. But I can also very much see how people could walk (or drive, more likely) right past other clues because they didn't realize they were clues. They were looking at the surface of words, and not digging into them a little deeper. Some people have said etymologies are important, or that phonetics are important, but maybe it's a combination with the addition of a little fun.

I believe one way to verify a valid search area is to have a very good map (I personally like Mapcarta as a first resort when researching an area, then I check with Google Earth, and then try to locate older maps (which I did with this particular spot, and was happily surprised at the additional information this map provided), and then I research every single word (etymologies, word origins, and more recently and invaluable -- prefixes, root words and suffixes) associated within a ten mile area of my general spot. I've found that innocuous place names may not be so irrelevant after all. And the book I have recently found to be a very good map.

Who can find the word FEN in this pic?

Throughout this chase, I've never posted everything I've found. I've scoured every single state and been excited about a few locations, but never as excited as I am this morning. For those of you I've researched with, you know I'm relentless in my research. My mind is almost always whirring about possibilities, and I try to follow through with all of them.

But at the same time, there are many things more important than this chase, and I step away from it often. I don't spend much extra money on this, and the searches I've been on in the past have always had a dual purpose- with fun being the main priority.

And the cat just knocked a glass bowl off the counter and it shattered on the kitchen floor, so I'll stop boring you all here.

Good luck everyone...