"It's your grandmother's birthday," Matt told me.

"Is it?" I've never found a Mac calendar program that comes anywhere near to being as good as the Almanac program for PCs that I bought almost ten years ago. (I had high hopes for iCal, but even MS Outlook's calendar beats out iCal for versatility and ease of use. Alas.) Matt still uses it at work, and it contains more birthdays and anniversaries than I can manage to keep track of with my paper calendar. "I'll have to write her some e-mail."

Matt gave me a Look. "You could call her. Do you have any idea how thrilled she would be if you called her?"

He was right, of course. Grandmom was surprised and completely thrilled. We talked for about half an hour.

Though not entirely.

"I'm eighty-four years old," she said. "I've lived longer than anyone in my family."

"Really?"

"Yep. My next oldest brother died when he was 83. I thought, if I can just make it to 84, I'll have lived longer than him."

How the hell do I answer that??? "...Well, I hope you live a lot longer still."

...

"Have you tried Penny on bananas, yet? Your dad used to love bananas. He didn't want them mashed, though. He wanted the whole thing!"

...

"I wish I lived closer, so I could help spoil her!"

"I wish you lived closer, too. But Mom and Dad are doing a pretty good job of spoiling her already."

...

"I wish you could be here with me, to help celebrate my birthday. I don't even have a cake."

"No cake! How can you celebrate your birthday with no cake, Grandmom?"

"Well, it's probably for the best. Extra calories I shouldn't have..."

"It's your birthday! You should live a little! At least have some ice cream."

"Yes, I'll have some ice cream."

"Good. Put a candle on it, for me."

She must have thanked me about a dozen times for calling. Matt is smart.

I tried Penny on solid food again last night. I figured the worst that could happen would be that she would refuse it, and I'd wind up throwing out a forty-cent jar of baby food. No biggie.

But she took it - with some enthusiasm, even. Only half a jar, but that's about where she was back at the end of February before she got the stomach uck for the third time, so that's not too bad.

Now, if she'll just stay healthy for a few weeks, maybe we can work her up to eating enough to make actual meals.

She woke up not once but twice last night, though. I wish I could figure out her sleeping patterns. They're all over the place. At least we didn't have to dose her with codeine to get her to go to sleep in the first place, and she went back to bed without complaint after her bottles were done in the middle of the night. I'll take that as an improvement over her not conking out until 10, or waking up around 2 and screaming bloody murder for an hour and a half.

--Liz