Violets and Voting and Falling

This morning I met up with Sue from Mother Patchwork, who lives some way west of here but was in Ballarat for the day. Last week I admired her African violets and she offered me leaf cuttings so I could grow my own. But instead today she gave me this:

Thank you, Sue!

Afterward I went to visit this place:

Sorry it's not very clear. There was non-stop traffic on this road and I had to snap the photo between vehicles. The empty shop across the road is not quite empty at the moment. The posters along the fence are the clue; it is a pre-poll voting centre for the federal election. There are various criteria for being eligible to vote early, but for me the most relevant one is that I live more than 8km from a polling place. Despite the busy-ness of this voting centre (apparently 6000 people voted here yesterday), voting was a fairly quick process as they had many staff and many booths available. There was almost no waiting. It was much faster than the last federal election where I had to queue (in the cold, and with no sausage sizzle) for about an hour.

Not long after I arrived home my father rang to tell me that Mum had fallen this morning (while I was enjoying a coffee with Sue) and had been taken to the Emergency Dept. So I drove back into Ballarat and spent the afternoon sitting with Mum while the staff did tests and took x-rays and decided there was no damage other than bruising. She was discharged just before dark, so was able to go home and sleep in her own bed. This was her second fall in a few days (the previous one was on Saturday). Each time I wonder how many more days we will spend in Emergency before they refuse to send her home and she has to go into full-time care.