aadler | Ireland/China 2025, continuing (16)

Sixth day in China – June 26 Thursday

Up early, showered and shaved, had a bit to eat. Same for Susan.

At 10:00AM, the promised maid came to do some light cleaning. (And took the trash that had collected in various bags, that being our main concern, since we hadn’t found anywhere to dispense with that.)

About 11:00, I went downstairs to do my morning walk … but right outside the door, Mei-li and her mother Laura were just coming up to the building, they’d come to help me with pharmacy shopping and I’d missed the messages. I went with them down the block, we looked over some possibilities — but couldn’t decide on most of them without further input from Susan — and finally just got some mentholatum cream for her back. I bought her a cup of coffee from the downstairs McDonalds before going back up to the room.

At noon I went out again, used my morning walk also as a scouting trip to see if there were shortcuts Susan could use with her powered chair. Nope; there’s a curbed street that bisects the block, and no ramps except at the far end, so we have to go the long way around unless she wants to get out of the chair (and back in) at three separate spots. Since she can go more quickly and easily under power, the long way doesn’t actually take any more time.

Relaxing and reading in the room, with Susan watching DVDs. Before 5:00PM I walked down to a small grocery store I remembered from our last trip here, got a couple of 2-liter bottles of cola and some instant coffee for Susan.

At 6:20, we sent a message to Mei-li that we were on our way, then set out to make the trip. I’d been right about the time, we got to the Yins’ apartment in roughly the same amount of time as before, and with much less effort on my part since I no longer had to push Susan’s chair.

Dinner and visiting with the Yins. Amber was studying for her term’s final exams; Mei-li visibly had the baby setting lower in her belly, meaning delivery could begin in anything from ten days to ten minutes. (Not while we were there tonight, though.)

After Kevin showed up from work — later than usual, again, his job is keeping him longer these days — he could see we were getting tired, and walked us back to our apartment.

I caught things up on my laptop — including getting this entry up to date — after which it was time for bed.