LifePundit

I Wish My Father Would Quit Firing His Driver

I've invited my father for Christmas dinner, but he wants to go to Non-Saintly Brother's house because Non-Saintly Brother's grown children and their betrotheds are to be there, and that sounded like more fun to him than coming to my house where my mother-in-law will be here possibly demanding demands. I really am absolutely okay with that. When you're 95, you ought to spend Christmas where you want to. Non-Saintly Brother is a good cook, too.

So, I won't be seeing him on Christmas. But, in thinking through the days ahead, it seems to me that he would enjoy going to his own church at least once before Christmas instead of the usual service they hold in the dining room in assisted living, so I told him if he could get Ike (his driver) to take him to church on Sunday, I'll pick him up from there, bring him to our house for Sunday dinner, then take him back to assisted living. He said yes.

Then yesterday he fired his driver, Ike, yet again. I haven't talked to him about it because I have other walls to beat my head against.

Saintly Brother re-hired Ike this morning and Ike has agreed to pick my father up from assisted living on Sunday morning and deliver him to church. (I'm a little disappointed that members of that church as well as family members who are members of that church never offer or arrange to pick him up and take him there. One non-saintly family member always thanks me profusely for bringing him there and tells me how much she enjoys seeing him when he makes it to church, which to my astonishment, no one else ever thinks to bring him, though they go every Sunday. It's all I can say -- or not say -- to keep in check the words, "What's the matter? Your car can't drive up the Interstate?" Yet another reason why I'm not a member of that church.)

Anyway. There's a lot going on at Christmas time, and if Ike can pick up my father on Sunday morning, that will save me over an hour's drive. If my father, who is not senile -- just ornery -- refuses to ride with Ike, well, he's made his choice.

I hope he comes. I've bought food he likes and it would be a great pleasure to be with him. Then I'll take him back and visit with Mama.

We'll also give him his Christmas present, which is an absolutely brilliant idea if I do say so myself. Saintly Brother and I have pitched in on a digital photo frame. Saintly Brother picked it up and is loading it with photos. He'd rather do that than wrap it (what a deal!). If it can withstand being knocked on the floor with my father's weekly fall, it's the perfect gift for his small, crowded room in assisted living.

Will he ride with Ike? Stay tuned. Why does Ike put up with this? He's just a really nice man.

Addiction to LOLcats Raises Many Questions

Does everybody in the world let their cats get on their tables and countertops? I'm beginning to wonder.

I don't have high standards. But feet that have been in the litter box do not belong on the table or the kitchen counter. I don't care how cute those feet are. Keep them away from my food!

Yet, when Lily and I feed our LOLcat addiction by checking in with icanhascheezburger (and we do LOL at the cats, sometimes even ROFL at the cats -- some of you Internets are really funny), I'm beginning to notice a trend.

About half of those cats are on some kind of human eating surface. That would be a table or countertop. I love cats. I also love cat-hair-free food.

moar funny pictures

I disapprove. At least in my house.

I even have an electrified Scat Mat. It's a flat mat that when an animal jumps on the table, they get a shock. This didn't work for Tiger. He just jumped to the part of the table where there was no mat and kept eating. Tiger now lives outside, where I think he is happy snuggling up with Parker, the dog, to sleep and catching wildlife. And he comes inside for supervised visits. We do have an indoor cat, Izzie, who is polite and would never dream of hopping on the table, clawing the furniture (she is not declawed but uses her cardboard clawing thingy we bought her), turning over the trashcan or waking me up to feed her. If her food bowl is empty, she comes to get me instead of turning over the open bag of food next to the bowl. We call her polite, but perhaps she is just stupid.

Here's a photo of Tiger on the outside and Izzie on the inside. She was not fully grown at that time. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Practicing to be a Teenager

The ground around here is shifting. Lily is practicing to be a teenager. What was safe ground is now beginning to show a few landmines.

For the first time in years, I've decided to send Christmas cards. I had some photos printed to stick in the cards. (Most of the photos have appeared on www.smellshorsey.com already.) Lily saw them -- and started tearing up.

"You can't send that one of me," she sniffs. It's a picture of her with a big smile on her face, holding her trophies and standing next to Buddy. She's taking her riding hat off and she has hat head. She's also wearing the required hairnet she has to wear at horse shows. "I look terrible. Can you cut my picture out?"

"It's a great photo. You're smiling."

"I have acne and I'm wearing a hairnet."

"Horse people won't care. They'll know"

"I care," she says. "You may as send out a picture of my butt."

"You have a cute butt," I say. It deteriorated from there.

So I've agreed to send them only to a few people, like the very elderly blind folks on our list.

Suggestions for Folks with Christmas Tree Fatigue

When time starts to pass quickly, it can feel like you just took your Christmas tree down and now it's time to put it up again. (In our case, that could be true as we are slow to decorate and slow to undecorate.) I think when you get much older (much older being defined as your age and about 20-30 years), time goes even faster and putting up a Christmas tree must seem like an event for every weekend.

Old people are also wise. I know a retired couple who had a closet built in their house where they could store the fully decorated tree in there and just roll it out in December. After Christmas, they'd roll it back in.

My grandmother would put up dormant dogwood trees (which died) and decorate them. She would leave them up in her living room for three years or more. I don't know why she occasionally switched them out -- maybe they had bugs or were starting to split. How's one dead dogwood tree different from the next? I always loved showing my friends my grandmother's tree in July because nobody believed me.

She could have had 60 cats (my plan), but no, she had to have a dead dogwood Christmas tree year-round. Who knows. Maybe I'll have both. The cats will love it!

Merry Christmas Makes Some People Grumpy

Some people are kind of grumpy about some of us (that would be me) preferring Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays.

Come join the fight -- I mean, the discussion -- over at saucygrrl. I'm in there by myself.  I've got too much to do to keep "discussing" things over there, so y'all go have fun. It's a real SlapFest.

Update: Saucygrrl has closed comments.  But I haven't, if you have anything to say.

Another update: Thanks to JAE at GoodEnoughMom for suggesting the link to this good post.

New Word for Dying: Transition

The good news: the hospice people said that Mama is in no pain and will be in no pain. They see her on-coming death as a natural process, which it is. But they have a new word for it: she's transitioning.

For people who are otherwise straightforward and truthful, I was having a little trouble following their conversation when they would mention Mama's "transition," until they used it in the context of her transition from this world to the next. That's a good way to look at it and it does make it easier on the family to think about Mama not dying but transitioning to the next, better world. Heaven.

I thought I'd heard all the euphemisms for death. This is a new one.

There was even some ambiguity. Maybe the transition was from the real world to the one in her head. They said she sleeps so much in part to block out what's going on around here. That sounds like depression to me, but I'm sure whatever she can do to escape the reality of Alzheimer's, such as sleeping so much, has to be a good place to go, whether it's a transition or a nap.

She's lost five pounds this month. She is still able to eat and swallow and engage in the sorry world around her. She needs to get out of bed once a day and sit up in order to keep her lungs clear and reduce the risk of blood clots.

After the meeting my father wanted to go to a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant he loves, so that's what we did. Then Saintly Brother took him out to the garden. My father has recently had 100 cabbage plants planted and other stuff I've lost count of. He's not transitioning nowhere.

No Time for Meetings

Lily's having exams, I'm trying to finish up two projects, and we're meeting again with hospice today to discuss Mama's descent into the later stages of Alzheimer's.

My father called this morning at 6:30. (When the phone rings early or late, you know it's him. He's always up.) "We've got that meeting to go to today," he said. "Always a meeting."

"I want to go to hear about how Mama is doing," I said.

"I know how Mama is doing. I don't need to go to a meeting," he said. "I don't have time for all these meetings." He has blueberry bushes to plant.

"Then don't go."

"Of course I'm going," he said. He also told me that he's sending out some men to get my manure. It's an awfully cold morning to be shoveling manure.

He sees Mama every day. He does know how she's doing. He may not know what's next and probably doesn't want to hear about it this morning. Neither do I, because we're not going to be told she's getting better. She's had shingles, she's got a catheter and they had to put mittens on her to keep her from pulling it out, and she quits eating from time to time. She stays in bed most of the time, but can make conversation that almost makes sense if you can get her to wake up.

It's all too real. But hospice is good at providing comfort to all of us, and I'm grateful for that.

Festooning the Void

This is a paid post but it fits right in with what I'm scheming to do. We got The Void painted and got rid of the Bowflex. I was hoping for blue-green but got blue. It's a blue I like so once we got it painted we quit and skipped the idea of the colorwash. It was hard enough to get it painted blue. (There's somebody in this house who would dispute the use of the word "we.")

I went to the library and got all of their books about sewing valences (sorry, other patrons). It's really hard to get excited about curtains, valances, or other stuff than can be frumpy or ostentatious. It's extra hard when the books you are looking at are all from the '70s and '80s. Not that you'd think valances would change all that much. Then, I found a book with some really attractive things in it. Not sure what was the difference. I'll write about that later and give you the book's title.

So I've picked out a simple design that uses two fabrics, which solves my problem of deciding between my two favorite fabrics. Now I need to measure for the fabric and find the curtain rods, or poles. I really don't like to sew, but how bad can this be?

That's why I'm writing this ad. I need curtain rods, window poles, whatever you want to call them. I'm going to start by browsing at http://www.terrysfabrics.co.uk/cat_curtain-poles.php. Terry's Fabrics has helpful advice, such as how to measure your window for poles, (they call them poles, and I can go along with that). They've got a nice inventory and some interesting designs to consider.

I haven't decided how fancy I'm going to get on this. I start out ambitious, and end up doing something like buying a placemat from Target and hanging it over a curtain rod. (I have seriously done that in one bathroom, and it looks fabulous, actually!)

I will post pictures when I'm finally finished. I'm sure you can't wait.

We actually have done some fun stuff around here. Well, it was fun when it was finished.

To read my advertising policy, click here.

Teacher Gift Idea

I thought this was a good teacher gift idea after I added up how much all those Target gift cards are going to cost (and accidentally mentioned it to Paul.)

Recipe for homemade Chai Tea Mix here at Pass the Torch.

My First Encounter with an Exhibitionist

Many of you were moved to, um, move along to some other blog by my confession of my second encounter with an exhibitionist, posted here.  That experience really made me mad, especially when I found out that the perpetrator/pervert got away to Australia (see the confession in the comments section).

What I didn't realize until later was that that encounter was my second "exposure" to an exhibitionist. The first time was much worse in many ways, except for the part where I didn't notice.

I had talked my mother into taking a friend and me to Myrtle Beach for a few days. This was about like getting her to take us to Mt. Everest, as she didn't much care for the beach, can't swim and never felt confident paying for hotel rooms and such since that was always my father's job. But I nagged long enough, so she complied. We stayed at one of those beachfront motels that looks like all the rest.

One day when we were coming back in from the beach Mama was walking pretty far ahead of my friend and me when the two of us passed a motel room door that was cocked open. We glanced in that direction and saw a naked man. To our surprise, he was staring at us, not making any attempt to cover up.

Golly gee! Can you think of a better way to make fifth-grade girls giggle than to have them accidentally see a naked man? So we giggled and giggled and didn't tell my mother why when we got to our room and couldn't quit giggling. We giggled some more and asked my mother if we could go back to the ice machine or somewhere. She didn't want to let us go, but we promised not to go far, so she let us go off on our little fake mission.

The door was shut. Were we ever disappointed. No show!

We thought we had seen something we weren't supposed to. We giggled for months about "that man." It didn't occur to me until more than a decade later that Hey! That guy was a pervert! You saw an exhibitionist.

Can you imagine someone seeing little girls coming, letting their mother pass, then going on display? Me neither. But I saw him. I hope that for the rest of his life whenever a female saw him naked, she did what we did: giggle and point.