Defrost chicken tenders for dog, look at Chicken with Red Lentils recipe to see what I need to buy for later, make Peg a sandwich to take to nursing home, find clothes for Odd that don't have food and flaky skin all over them in which to visit Peg, tell Bob where to hang pics in office that we took down to paint the room, get Odd's breakfast, pills crushed, Spiriva and nebulizer treatment done and no coffee so he doesn't pee in his Depends like last time we took him, pack a bag to take with fresh clothes for him and a waterproof cover for Dominick's car seat in case he does--all this is going through my mind as I'm lying in bed thinking you'd better get up, better get up and get at it, Dominick is coming at 9, GO. And I sling back the duvet, collect my watch and chapstick and unplug my phone and stagger off with my props saying "Shit." I say this every morning, I realize, when I'm here.
All went fine, Today's Trip To Laurel Lake, all according to plan, Peg was fine, perky, Daddy was happy to see her I should do it more often but it's such a mission getting him in and out of a car, his arms don't bend the way you want them to to get his jacket on, nor do his legs, you never think they're actually going to fit up and into the car unless you break them, he can't see very well anymore and can't grab the pull handle to hike his butt up higher on the seat unless you place his hand ON it (handle, not butt), he's forever grabbing something for support that won't offer any, like the door lock button or a tassel on Dominick's coat. Anyway. We made it, there and back, with Tory at the helm for the return journey after a lightning stop at the Lee Price Chopper--tiny and not a patch on the Dalton one but close and you don't have to hike seventeen miles of aisles for milk. Or chicken. Or lentils.
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STAFF ON CALL:
Dominick, on chauffeur duty, then stayed to entertain Peg after we left with tales of his sister's terrible cooking, hope she's not reading this.
Outside Bob, who hung pictures and swept more of the drive (it's 1/4 of a mile long) and lugged the pile of brush I'd created the day before clipping the euonymous and pyracantha (firethorn) along the front. I asked him to please show me how to use the long shears correctly, I'd clearly been doing something wrong because I seemed to catch my thumb between the handles with every snip, my thumb being still black and blue from yesterday, and bleeding. Bob said "Those long green cutters?" I said yes. "There's no stopper thing, broke off last summer." So it's not me being klutzy after all.
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Tory and I finished 4 Blue Books, the last four, we then re-foldered all the remaining xeroxes and photos (well, not all, threw out a few hundred "Fishers"--which incidentally I think are multiplying in there--and "A Young Kate Smith Does the Charleston"), labeled and stacked them in the order of insertion, and put the box back into Peg's room. Done and dusted. Just need to mail them now, if I can figure out where they go and if the recipients are still alive. God forbid any of these suckers gets returned. And Peg see's I failed to mention "The man in the hat is Sidney Greenstreet" on one of the Gramercy Park pictures and I'll have to deal with her disappointed in me for the rest of my life.
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HIGHLIGHTS:
- It's Barbara Becket of Becket's birthday. I didn't know. She's the woman in bed next to Peg's who asked me to buy her bedroom slippers. Had I known, I would not have accepted her $9.99 for the slippers, they could have been my gift. Now, tomorrow, while I'm out looking for flooring for the sink area here, and I have in mind thick rubber matting like they use for horse stalls--I'll have to buy her something else. Hope she wants something from Tractor Supply in Allendale.
- My mother's Royal Danish Sterling she told me to take back to England--actually, now I'm wondering if it was my idea, not hers--anyhow, it's service for 20, "plate" setting size, which is marginally smaller than "dinner". Tory and I checked it out on silver sites on the net. Guess how much a set of 60 pieces is selling for thesedays (and mine's--ok, Peg's--is 80 piece)? $12, 850. Sort of stopped me in my tracks, because hey, that could be a car, which I'll need here very soon, certainly this summer. Of course, that is what they sell it at, it turns out they buy it at $100 a 4 piece place setting. So. For one very brief moment here this afternoon I had a secondhand Toyota Rav4 and happily eating with plastic picnic cutlery or those wooden theatre-interval ice cream shovels. But then we went back to wrapping them in Baggies with elastics and I will bury them in my luggage amongst socks and parkas and the two large throw pillows with red crabs on them I got at Marshalls which I now regard with some puzzlement but delighted me in March.
Not a bad day, all in all. And painted my nails. All three of them.
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