Spurn-Me-Not Angel Honeybear, aka The Great Stainer of Carpets aka The Collie Who Never Wanted To Come to Becket To Begin With, I am pleased to report is still loving every second of being back with her friends at the breeder's, the breeder who is in fact trying to breed her, which my mother had refused to allow even though it was part of the original contract, an event which would in fact please me no end, if it takes, because we are entitled, again according to the contract, to the proceeds from one of her pups, which would be $1000, which would cover five days of my father being at Laurel Lake nursing home.
However, I imagine the first thing Peg and probably Odd will ask as soon as they are released next week to come home is "Where's the dog?" so, Honeybear will have to be wrenched away from Pine Plains NY and transported back to Becket where, after saturating the rug on the porch, it will make a beeline for the one in my bedroom then get busy barking when you turn on the kitchen tap, leaping 12 feet in a panic when you get up from your chair too quickly, before finally setlling itself in front of the freezer in the back panrty by the dog door, through which it can scarper with roadrunner speed when you come at it with anything terrible, like dinner. What a find, was this dog, an absolute treasure and, I think you'll agree, well worth the $3,000 Peg shelled out for it.
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The thing about re-habs, I notice, is that while they'll tell you they want you, the patient, to recover, they don't add "as slowly as possible", and that what they really really want is for you to stay there and pay them $500 a day for as long as possible. See, you're only given an hour a day, max, of physical therapy. It would be good, yes, preferable even, if you were allowed to practice a little by yourself in your own time but that's frowned upon, indeed not allowed, because if they think you are the least bit unsteady on your pins you are prevented from going anywhere on your own, even to the bathroom. They put alarms on you that go off if you try to get out of bed or your chair; in my mother's case, she's also tied to wherever she is by her velcroed catheter bag. The problem here--and I'd like to think that If I Ran The Nursing Home (new Dr. Seuss book) I would not be so greedy as to let this basic notion escape me: you do not get stronger by lying in bed searching for the call button or Turner Movie Classics. Really. As Ian McShane's wife once said, in all seriousness, and I know this because I asked her twice to repeat it: "Honey, what can I say, it's just a real Catch 23 siutation".
There is not one iota of doubt in my mind that as soon as Peg gets home she will get stronger. On the other hand, I'm sure Odd will have regressed since he's hardly been working up a sweat clunking about in his walker. Not sure how fabulous an idea it was putting him there, even for a few weeks to be near Peg. Apparently they have new curtains in their room which are very attractive. Just passing this on.
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STAFF NEWS:
Bonnie and Outside Bob arranged for a Sirius XM radio hookup so Peg and Odd and I imagine the entire staff of Laurel Lake and anyone visiting their grandmother that day was able to listen to The Couple Next Door, Peg's comedy series from the late 50s, when it was relaunched last Sunday.
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Peg has a Cherokee Indian fan, Gary, from Oklahoma, arriving with his wife and daughter about 5 days after The Return From Laurel Lake (new Nancy Drew book). I put two family size dinners (chicken and leek pie; pot roast) into the freezer before I left and sorted out what sheets for what beds. This is an ongoing thing despite the fact that I thought I simplified matters ten years ago by keeping only the sheets for that room in the bureau in that particular room. Nevertheless. I arrive back there, each time, to find all awry in the bed linen department. Last visit, for example, one tulip duvet cover, which clearly goes in the room with the tulips on the wallpaper, indeed a room referred to by one and all as The Tulip Bedroom--was in a drawer in the Leopard Room, so named due to the animal print fabric of the drapes and upholstered chair--and the other matching tulip duvet cover was missing entirely. Who steals a twenty year old twin tulip duvet cover? And I don't know how any of this happens. It couldn't be simpler: tulip with tulip, moss green and ecru with leopard, lace-edged and brown stripe with Early American floralprint wallpaper back room, red paisley single and 2 matching cases in what was Odd's office, now Alex's room, and white eyelet on my bed in the summer and wedgewoody blue and white flannels with the heavy duvet in the winter. By around Iceland now I start worrying about what sheets I'm going to find on my bed in Becket when I arrive. And of course, the more insane I get over it all, the more insane I look, so have learned to obsess more quietly, which doesn't stop me from disappearing upstairs for great lengths of time, scurrying from bureau to bureau like Mrs. Tittlemouse, tutting and harumphing at the ineptitude of housguests or staff who can't tell a tulip from a leopard spot.
Well, we'll just see how well this Gary & Co do, won't we.
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Speaking of fans, I became an instant David Sedaris one on April 11th, the day Peg was rushed off to the ER by ambulance and I thought we'd lost her. I came home, shattered, dealt with Odd's breathing issues, got into bed, took a pill, reached for my book, realized I'd finished it the night before, so hauled myself out of bed, annoyed, and headed downstairs to the former livingroom now parents' living quarters, with flashlight, tiptoeing so as not to wake my father and god forbid need to feed him--looking for something to read, which sounded easy, Peg's whole life, not counting needlenosed pea-brain collies, being devoted to not only amassing books but also Staples bookcases in which to hold them. However, I found myself, at one o'clock in the morning, somewhat overwhelmed by choice. My eyes lit on my friend Shep Nuland's book of about twenty years ago, How We Die, which I've read--grim, but fascinating--and next to it I saw a title, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by a David Sedaris, who I am ashamed to say I had never heard of, but which I quickly bypassed with a shudder as, being right next to How We Die, I assumed it was about cremation. But then, after twenty minutes being crouched in a nightshirt with glasses and torch and only coming up with Sir Osbert Sitwell or New Yorker Book of Dog Cartoons or a book on eels, the Sedaris' toppled over and I glimpsed the word "humorist"on the cover or something indicating it might be a lighter read than I'd first imagined, so I yanked it out and scared the dog and crept off upstairs saying "Funny, are you? OK. It's been a pretty crap day, mister. Amuse me, asshole." And the next thing you know I was in bed laughing out loud, really laughing, which is a rarity, at least when I'm reading.
I stayed up being amused by his world until at least 3:00 AM, another rarity, considering I'd taken an entire Zopiclone at midnight. I was even smiling when I turned out the light. The next morning I downloaded four more books by David Sedaris on my Kindle and he got me through not only an awful night but three more weeks then across the Atlantic. I am now enjoying him in Suffolk. What gets me is everyone seems to know him except me. How could I have gotten this old and not have heard of him??
These, and other important questions, such as where the fuck is that other tulip duvet cover, to be answered, hopefully, in time.
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