Plus Snyder's Pretzels, Jarlsberg cheese slice, and 8 lemon and garlic olives from Whole Foods. Odd had boiled potatoes and shrimp and hot smoked salmon and cucumber. I was antisocial and let him eat in the den. Peg called in the middle of it. She keeps saying "See you tomorrow!" to him so all I hear is "Aw, I can't wait, Peggy! Marvelous! I will think about it all night!" and then I have to be the bad guy and say no, you're not going in tomorrow, I don't have the right car. Which of course he can't process, because what is a "right" or "wrong" car. Christ those olives are good, just had to go put them away.
So listen to this. Tractor Supply in Dalton. They carry cowboy boots. Who knew? My new favourite store. Spent half an hour trying on 4 different kinds, nearly bought all of them I was so excited. This is after surveying all the various thicknesses of black rubber horse matting they carry, equally exciting, don't get me wrong, and have my eye on a 4 x 6 foot piece of the 3/4 inch deep one for the area between the sink and counter. And which, like my father, does not fit into the borrowed Saab, so David Jenkins will collect it for me tomorrow morning in his truck. I think everyone should know someone who owns a truck. The mat costs $36. Ted, the manager at Tractor Supply, warned me that anyone walking over it could--not necessarily, but could--leave skid marks on the surrounding wood, much like cars in do in auto showrooms (the mat, Ted says, is in fact MADE of crushed tires). None of this has turned me off to the product, mind you, but it's early days yet. Check with me when the kitchen starts looking like Le Mans.
________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Bonny Bonnie being the best.
________________
John Fontaine from Fontaine's Auction House in Pittsfield popped by to value Peg and Odd's silver and see if anything in the house was suitable for flogging at Fontaine's, which is high end. Which Peg and Odd's stuff, for the most part, ain't. He left with a musket made in the Tower of London which has hung over every mantle in our houses since 1951 ($1500 tops), a French brass gilt fire screen ($600?) and two solid silver items, a bowl and a nut dish (25p?). Every other piece of silver turns out to be plate. I gave Bonnie a pair of candlesticks and a platter. Not sure what to do with the rest. Maybe distribute back home to all the gardener-grower types in the village to keep the birds away from their raspberries. Look nicer dangling than those old CDs they use.
Speaking of silver, I am reminded again of a number of pieces, real silver, which have been given as gifts, by a certain lady of a the house, to a certain Old Time Radio fan in Seattle, Tom. Along with about six thousand other things over the past eight years, both valuable and sentimental, at least to me. It seems all you have to do is write her and say you've been a fan since you were fourteen and suddenly she's giving you her father's watch. I like Tom, I do, very much, but I don't like him, say, having the silver Viking Ship from David Andersen's in Oslo which I could sell on eBay for at least $700, which is a good few weeks Staff Salary, and I don't like him having all the Norwegian wood carvings I grew up with and wanted. Apparently one box a week was going out of here to Tom--I'd get the heads up from Staff no longer working here (disagreed with Peg on you name it, such as YET ANOTHER FUCKING BOX TO TOM).
Look. On one hand, I get it. It's her stuff. She has the right to do with it what she likes. But on the other hand, if it were your stuff, and you had only one child, whom you loved and admired and appreciated, wouldn't you at least ASK HER before you spent almost what it cost to send her to Vassar on postage?
Never mind. Except now, last week, no, before she got sick--she made Bonnie take her to Staples to buy 12 more of everything she has already--paper clips, binders, tape and so on--and while she was there she spotted something she thought I'd like, and bought it. A watch, diamante face and leopard print strap that winds around your wrist three times before snapping shut. I actually like it. Plus it came from Mama, Mama who hasn't bought me anything in over ten years because she hardly goes anywhere and doesn't understand the internet. So. I love this watch. LOVE it. And my eyes fill up when I put it on.
Or did. Until yesterday, when I was under instructions to mail the 2 boxes to Tom which had been sitting in her office under her typewriter for I kid you not, a year and a half--plus a new box, packed only a few weeks ago and still needing taping shut. And in this new one, along with half a dozen unread NY Times Review of Books (which she subscribes to so she can MAIL TO TOM), a National Geographic with Eskimos on the cover, and a navy blue fitted jersey sheet--are two watches, like mine, for DONNA, Bonnie says, Tom's wife, and one for their daughter.
So. I'm not special after all. So. Now I'm pissed off but hiding it because Bonnie's helping seal the box and then helps lug them all into my car but I can tell she doesn't trust me--and off I go to the post office in Lee where I open the boot and with my car key slash into the already sealed Boxes 1 and 2 and find it's just more magazines and a book and another sheet and some battery candles. And for one brief moment, there at Lee Post Office, I was very very close to taking those three boxes and depositing them in the large green trash barrel by the front door BUT, I didn't. I mailed the suckers ($46) and then emailed Tom and told him to expect them.
If anyone would like a watch, it's very nice, honest. I know, Staples, but still. You'd like it.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
DUTIFUL DAUGHTER
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.
________________
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.
_______________
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.
_______________
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.
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.
________________
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.
_______________
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.
_______________
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.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
GOOSECHASES
One of those days that just plain doesn't work, on many levels, and would be good to call "Cut!", scrap the footage, re-write, re-cast, and shoot again tomorrow with a different prop girl. Or perhaps shoot THE prop girl. I get all the way in to Rite-Aid in Allendale, this is a pharmacy, to collect Odd's "Ativan"(tranquilizer) prescription which Hospice phoned in a week ago and which I've been putting off because he's not run out of it yet and because it's not on my way anymore to anywhere--and find they have no record of it. I am directed to the Rite-Aid on Elm Street, across town.
En route, I swing into UPS to find out how much the Encyclopedia of World Art, 15 volumes, would be to ship, in the unlikely event someone on eBay can't live without them even though some of the pages don't work and there's Velasquezes stuck to Vermeers and so on--and find out about $22 per volume. Forget it. Lugged in the big wooden casket of Royal Copenhagen silver service for twenty Peg wants me to take back to England, to see what it would cost to ship since you know Virgin's not going to let me on with knives and forks in my hand luggage--about $150 they said, and that's just the box, no silver. Forget it.
The Rite-Aid on Elm also has no record of my father's Ativan prescription, which is too bad, because I was looking forward to chewing on a handful and maybe stuffing a few up my nose.
I swung into a flooring place to look for something appealing for the parents' kitchen, being so far unable to reconcile myself to the idea of Stick-On lino tiles from Home Depot, as recommended by staff, but left without buying because I had to get to Peg in Lee at Laurel Lake nursing home by noon sharp, when they serve lunch, because as a surprise I was bringing her favorite sandwich, peanut butter (smooth) on white bread with iceberg (chopped) and Miracle Whip and didn't want her filling up on meat loaf and gravy.
I made it, even though at the intersection of Holmes Road and Rte 7, the gearshift knob on the borrowed Saab came off in my hand and somehow shot into the backseat. [NOTE TO OWNER: Tory, this is not a complaint, I love the car, but it has given a whole new meaning to the term "stick shift"]
__________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Bonnie, who did Amazing Bonnie stuff
Outside Bob, who did Amazing Bob stuff, particularly getting the 30 year old dishwasher pulled out to find a torn drainage hose, which explains the flood which ruined the floor which necessitated a trip to the linoleum store. He had to turn off the water for this operation, tried at three different points, all the valves leaked, so ended up having to turn if off up at the well, then had to race into L.P. Adams in Dalton to get couplings or hoses or whatever--and get the water back on before Erica the Hospice Home Health Aide arrived at 1:15 to shower and shave Daddy.
__________________
MOOD:
Low cloud cover that still hasn't lifted. Fuzzy head. Sneezing. Allergy? What's going on. Am also trying to figure out why my father laughs at stuff that isn't funny, and why it grates on me so, why I can't just accept it. Examples:
"Daddy? I'm just going to do mushroom omelettes for dinner, is that ok?
[LAUGHING] "Omelettes! Oh, you're so clever."
[PHONE RINGS. I ANSWER. IT'S DOMINICK, ASKING WHAT TIME TOMORROW]
"Who was on the phone?"
"Dominick, Daddy."
"Dominick! [VASTLY AMUSED]
"What's the plan for today then?"
"Not a lot, Daddy. I'm heading to the post office in a minute."
[CHUCKLES] "The post office!"
I'm not totally sure it's an age thing or a dementia-related thing, I think he might have done this for awhile and it's just gotten worse is all. Maybe he doesn't know how to react and figures laughing is better than, say, asking "Who's Dominick again?" (and have me jump down his throat). Maybe it's simply a nervous reaction to English being his second language. Maybe I'm a complete cow for even mentioning it because he means so well and is trying so hard. [NOT HARD ENOUGH, BUDDY, SHE SAYS, LAUGHING]
The other thing that annoys me is you know that ad that runs down the right hand side of your email on AOL and is intensely irritating and distracting whatever it's advertising? The last few days it's been for Depends, adult diapers. AOL has scanned my mail (they do this, honest), saw that I've mentioned Depends and now think I want to buy myself a few hundred pairs.
Well NOT YET, AOL, not yet. Soon though.
En route, I swing into UPS to find out how much the Encyclopedia of World Art, 15 volumes, would be to ship, in the unlikely event someone on eBay can't live without them even though some of the pages don't work and there's Velasquezes stuck to Vermeers and so on--and find out about $22 per volume. Forget it. Lugged in the big wooden casket of Royal Copenhagen silver service for twenty Peg wants me to take back to England, to see what it would cost to ship since you know Virgin's not going to let me on with knives and forks in my hand luggage--about $150 they said, and that's just the box, no silver. Forget it.
The Rite-Aid on Elm also has no record of my father's Ativan prescription, which is too bad, because I was looking forward to chewing on a handful and maybe stuffing a few up my nose.
I swung into a flooring place to look for something appealing for the parents' kitchen, being so far unable to reconcile myself to the idea of Stick-On lino tiles from Home Depot, as recommended by staff, but left without buying because I had to get to Peg in Lee at Laurel Lake nursing home by noon sharp, when they serve lunch, because as a surprise I was bringing her favorite sandwich, peanut butter (smooth) on white bread with iceberg (chopped) and Miracle Whip and didn't want her filling up on meat loaf and gravy.
I made it, even though at the intersection of Holmes Road and Rte 7, the gearshift knob on the borrowed Saab came off in my hand and somehow shot into the backseat. [NOTE TO OWNER: Tory, this is not a complaint, I love the car, but it has given a whole new meaning to the term "stick shift"]
__________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Bonnie, who did Amazing Bonnie stuff
Outside Bob, who did Amazing Bob stuff, particularly getting the 30 year old dishwasher pulled out to find a torn drainage hose, which explains the flood which ruined the floor which necessitated a trip to the linoleum store. He had to turn off the water for this operation, tried at three different points, all the valves leaked, so ended up having to turn if off up at the well, then had to race into L.P. Adams in Dalton to get couplings or hoses or whatever--and get the water back on before Erica the Hospice Home Health Aide arrived at 1:15 to shower and shave Daddy.
__________________
MOOD:
Low cloud cover that still hasn't lifted. Fuzzy head. Sneezing. Allergy? What's going on. Am also trying to figure out why my father laughs at stuff that isn't funny, and why it grates on me so, why I can't just accept it. Examples:
"Daddy? I'm just going to do mushroom omelettes for dinner, is that ok?
[LAUGHING] "Omelettes! Oh, you're so clever."
[PHONE RINGS. I ANSWER. IT'S DOMINICK, ASKING WHAT TIME TOMORROW]
"Who was on the phone?"
"Dominick, Daddy."
"Dominick! [VASTLY AMUSED]
"What's the plan for today then?"
"Not a lot, Daddy. I'm heading to the post office in a minute."
[CHUCKLES] "The post office!"
I'm not totally sure it's an age thing or a dementia-related thing, I think he might have done this for awhile and it's just gotten worse is all. Maybe he doesn't know how to react and figures laughing is better than, say, asking "Who's Dominick again?" (and have me jump down his throat). Maybe it's simply a nervous reaction to English being his second language. Maybe I'm a complete cow for even mentioning it because he means so well and is trying so hard. [NOT HARD ENOUGH, BUDDY, SHE SAYS, LAUGHING]
The other thing that annoys me is you know that ad that runs down the right hand side of your email on AOL and is intensely irritating and distracting whatever it's advertising? The last few days it's been for Depends, adult diapers. AOL has scanned my mail (they do this, honest), saw that I've mentioned Depends and now think I want to buy myself a few hundred pairs.
Well NOT YET, AOL, not yet. Soon though.
Monday, April 21, 2014
SUNSHINE
We've had sunshine before in Becket but when I don't get to go out in it I don't count it. Come summer, you won't be able to see it from the house anyway, there are so many trees here. There are so many trees they obliterate the sky and yet Andrew, the six foot nine guy from Hilltown Timber who it's hard to talk to unless you're sitting down because you've got your head tipped so far back--has only offered me $8,000 to log these twenty five acres. I'm tempted to try and sell actress Nancy Kulp's rolex she left to my mother instead, had it valued for almost that and there won't be the mess of branches afterwards.
_________________
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Mrs. Barbara Becket from Becket but currently in the bed next to Peg LOVES HER BEDROOM SLIPPERS. She wasn't in the room when I got there today so I left them on her bed. I'd stopped at the Lee Outlets on the way to the nursing home this morning--absolutely jammed--it being Patriot's Day here in Massachusetts (put flags on Odd's walker and bunting on his urinal), and nipped into Haynes Socks or whatever it's called and the only Medium (size 7-8) they had was pink so got 'em. $9.99. Fully convinced she was going to hate them or too big but seems NO. I am now The Golden Girl of Room 105, beds 1 and 2, and can do no wrong.
- Odd spilled quite a bit of crab cakes onto the floor during dinner--he doesn't sit close enough to the table so there's this fairly mesmerizing fork-balancing act going on from plate to mouth. Plus ginger cake, plus half the bowl of taco chips which were intended as cocktail nibbles but which he went for as a sort of savoury apres dessert course and when he got up from the table to head into bed he crunched for a good four feet. I've been sitting over here thinking right, will go deal with that any second now but lo and behold, the Neurotic Collie has just entered the room and beautifully hoovered up every crumb.
- The area between the sink and the counter has always had floor issues but is now out of hand, the tongue and groove laminate buckling like frost heaves. My suspicion is the dishwasher is leaking so guess this has to be replaced, plus will have to rip up the flooring and replace with something, what, lino? Amtico? Cork tile? I love putting money into a house I don't like and will be selling one day...though clearly not any too soon since my parents are clearly going to outlive me.
- Clipping the euonymous and firethorn bushes at the front of the house which have been out of control for at least five years maybe ten. An extremely satisfying couple of hours. Now have three blood blisters and a huge pile of the prickly stuff to dispose of (must find some gloves) but loved the physical activity and the crunch of shears snapping though wood.
_________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Outside Bob, who swept nine million tons of salty grit from the snow plows off the drive, leaving mountains of the stuff everywhere, the size of slag heaps in Wales, because the wheel barrow has a flat tire and needs to be pumped up. I had no idea wheel barrows got flat tires. I had no idea we had a wheel barrow.
__________________
David Jenkins kindly stopped by to deliver some Norwegian Fish Oil (enteric coated) he picked up for me from Whole Foods in Northampton, and stayed for dinner. I get so excited when someone comes, excited to see another face, another body here. Would wag it if I had a tail. Am expecting a delivery from a trashy clothing catalogue called Venus tomorrow (thongs for Odd, silver lame off the shoulder slit-up-to-here jumpsuits for Peg, oh and a sweatshirt for me) and am more looking forward to seeing the UPS man than my order.
__________________
I only managed 2 Nebulizer treatments on Odd today. He's supposed to have 4. Bonnie is good at it, diligent, precise, has the hours marked down when it's due, ticks it off when it's been done--so does Bob, and Dominick and Terri. Why can't I remember? He's MY father, not theirs. He choked again during dinner. Hoping this doesn't presage a breathing attack in the middle of the night. Hope I hear it, if it does. Hope I don't spend the rest of my life beating myself up for taking a pill and turning on the noise machine while my father dies a panicky agonizing death on the floor next to his bed with the collie licking taco crumbs off his shirt. I think of this terrible scenario every single night. (But take the pill.)
_________________
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Mrs. Barbara Becket from Becket but currently in the bed next to Peg LOVES HER BEDROOM SLIPPERS. She wasn't in the room when I got there today so I left them on her bed. I'd stopped at the Lee Outlets on the way to the nursing home this morning--absolutely jammed--it being Patriot's Day here in Massachusetts (put flags on Odd's walker and bunting on his urinal), and nipped into Haynes Socks or whatever it's called and the only Medium (size 7-8) they had was pink so got 'em. $9.99. Fully convinced she was going to hate them or too big but seems NO. I am now The Golden Girl of Room 105, beds 1 and 2, and can do no wrong.
- Odd spilled quite a bit of crab cakes onto the floor during dinner--he doesn't sit close enough to the table so there's this fairly mesmerizing fork-balancing act going on from plate to mouth. Plus ginger cake, plus half the bowl of taco chips which were intended as cocktail nibbles but which he went for as a sort of savoury apres dessert course and when he got up from the table to head into bed he crunched for a good four feet. I've been sitting over here thinking right, will go deal with that any second now but lo and behold, the Neurotic Collie has just entered the room and beautifully hoovered up every crumb.
- The area between the sink and the counter has always had floor issues but is now out of hand, the tongue and groove laminate buckling like frost heaves. My suspicion is the dishwasher is leaking so guess this has to be replaced, plus will have to rip up the flooring and replace with something, what, lino? Amtico? Cork tile? I love putting money into a house I don't like and will be selling one day...though clearly not any too soon since my parents are clearly going to outlive me.
- Clipping the euonymous and firethorn bushes at the front of the house which have been out of control for at least five years maybe ten. An extremely satisfying couple of hours. Now have three blood blisters and a huge pile of the prickly stuff to dispose of (must find some gloves) but loved the physical activity and the crunch of shears snapping though wood.
_________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Outside Bob, who swept nine million tons of salty grit from the snow plows off the drive, leaving mountains of the stuff everywhere, the size of slag heaps in Wales, because the wheel barrow has a flat tire and needs to be pumped up. I had no idea wheel barrows got flat tires. I had no idea we had a wheel barrow.
__________________
David Jenkins kindly stopped by to deliver some Norwegian Fish Oil (enteric coated) he picked up for me from Whole Foods in Northampton, and stayed for dinner. I get so excited when someone comes, excited to see another face, another body here. Would wag it if I had a tail. Am expecting a delivery from a trashy clothing catalogue called Venus tomorrow (thongs for Odd, silver lame off the shoulder slit-up-to-here jumpsuits for Peg, oh and a sweatshirt for me) and am more looking forward to seeing the UPS man than my order.
__________________
I only managed 2 Nebulizer treatments on Odd today. He's supposed to have 4. Bonnie is good at it, diligent, precise, has the hours marked down when it's due, ticks it off when it's been done--so does Bob, and Dominick and Terri. Why can't I remember? He's MY father, not theirs. He choked again during dinner. Hoping this doesn't presage a breathing attack in the middle of the night. Hope I hear it, if it does. Hope I don't spend the rest of my life beating myself up for taking a pill and turning on the noise machine while my father dies a panicky agonizing death on the floor next to his bed with the collie licking taco crumbs off his shirt. I think of this terrible scenario every single night. (But take the pill.)
Sunday, April 20, 2014
IN MY EASTER BONNET
Daddy on phone to Peg: "What day is it? It's Saturday."
Me yelling in from kitchen: "It's not Saturday, it's Sunday."
Daddy to Peg: "She says it's Sunday."
Daddy calling to me: "What holiday is it again?"
Me: "Easter!"
Daddy to Peg: "It's Easter."
Daddy to me: "Peggy says it's Easter."
_____________________
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Peg saying it's unfair I'm doing the Blue Books without her (3 more done today, yippee!) so will leave some for her to "augment", I'll do the basic filling. I guarantee you that within two days of her return she'll have this place awash in photocopies and duplicates again. Fortunately I won't be here to be annoyed. Though I will of course manage a soupçon of ill-disguised long distant pique, something I excel in. Funny, isn't it, how a week ago I thought I had lost my amazing Ma and would look at her little black shoe and cry, and in no time at all, here I am, back being able to be irritated by her. Talk about Easter Miracles.
- Finding and catching the dog, which has no collar, no license, no sense of how to behave, and a long empty needle-nosed space where a brain should be--before it went any further into the 28 acres of Ronning woods towards the Kushi Center for Macrobiotic Cookery on Leland Road. This is a dog which, like all the other collies which have had the misfortune to be owned and fattened by Peg, is "not allowed out without a leash" but which for the past year has been trotting quite happily (vaguely) near me when I head out the drive to get the mail. My mistake was possibly in letting it come out into the back yard with me, an area it had never seen, but I needed air before I was again overcome by claustrophobia and started breaking glass to get out. And thought the dog might enjoy the outing. Closed my eyes for a moment in a plastic garden chair and when I opened them: no dog.
______________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Easter Bunny (me in disguise; don't tell Odd)
______________________
I feel flu-ey today. Chills. Aches. Sneezes. Nauseous. I keep taking aspirin then feel better for a bit and think I'm over it but--no. I don't know if it's real or simply a reaction to this past week coupled with being called "Peggy" all the time and, just now, when I called Odd to dinner (spare ribs and parslied potatoes), "Thank, you Mama!" Mama?? Do any of them ever grow up, I ask you.
_____________________
SPECIAL MENTION:
Today is Amy Price's wedding day. I am pleased for her, even though I hear she's marrying an actor, but then again, she was never the brightest spark, even though she sings nicely. DK can fill you in if you need more info, it would bore me to death to get into this right now.
______________________
Me yelling in from kitchen: "It's not Saturday, it's Sunday."
Daddy to Peg: "She says it's Sunday."
Daddy calling to me: "What holiday is it again?"
Me: "Easter!"
Daddy to Peg: "It's Easter."
Daddy to me: "Peggy says it's Easter."
_____________________
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Peg saying it's unfair I'm doing the Blue Books without her (3 more done today, yippee!) so will leave some for her to "augment", I'll do the basic filling. I guarantee you that within two days of her return she'll have this place awash in photocopies and duplicates again. Fortunately I won't be here to be annoyed. Though I will of course manage a soupçon of ill-disguised long distant pique, something I excel in. Funny, isn't it, how a week ago I thought I had lost my amazing Ma and would look at her little black shoe and cry, and in no time at all, here I am, back being able to be irritated by her. Talk about Easter Miracles.
- Finding and catching the dog, which has no collar, no license, no sense of how to behave, and a long empty needle-nosed space where a brain should be--before it went any further into the 28 acres of Ronning woods towards the Kushi Center for Macrobiotic Cookery on Leland Road. This is a dog which, like all the other collies which have had the misfortune to be owned and fattened by Peg, is "not allowed out without a leash" but which for the past year has been trotting quite happily (vaguely) near me when I head out the drive to get the mail. My mistake was possibly in letting it come out into the back yard with me, an area it had never seen, but I needed air before I was again overcome by claustrophobia and started breaking glass to get out. And thought the dog might enjoy the outing. Closed my eyes for a moment in a plastic garden chair and when I opened them: no dog.
______________________
STAFF ON CALL:
Easter Bunny (me in disguise; don't tell Odd)
______________________
I feel flu-ey today. Chills. Aches. Sneezes. Nauseous. I keep taking aspirin then feel better for a bit and think I'm over it but--no. I don't know if it's real or simply a reaction to this past week coupled with being called "Peggy" all the time and, just now, when I called Odd to dinner (spare ribs and parslied potatoes), "Thank, you Mama!" Mama?? Do any of them ever grow up, I ask you.
_____________________
SPECIAL MENTION:
Today is Amy Price's wedding day. I am pleased for her, even though I hear she's marrying an actor, but then again, she was never the brightest spark, even though she sings nicely. DK can fill you in if you need more info, it would bore me to death to get into this right now.
______________________
Saturday, April 19, 2014
NAUSEOUS
...and don't know why. I've eaten, and good stuff too. Made Odd crab cakes for dinner. He is still at the butcher block here, now watching "Laura" with Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb. It was a real effort tonight. I feel like such a washout daughter to him. He must be so lonely and it's all I can do not to sling a frozen waffle in front of him at his hospital table in the den, disappear and let him watch CNN on "mute" in peace. The thought of the next two weeks with us alone here is daunting. Not looking forward to it and I could get a sitter one night I suppose, make Terri come late and stay late, get Jenkins to take me out to The Dreamaway or Alta. I'll do that. Meanwhile have Easter to look forward to tomorrow. Am planning an egg hunt for Odd. Slightly different this year, going to do fried eggs, and if he finds one it can be breakfast.
_____________
Wendy has gone back to Vermont and I am bereft. She gave me four days out of her life and I will be forever beholden. Sadly, after she left I found three more piles in Peg's office--Blue Book fillers in plastic sleeves (fishers, Alex playing the drums at the Albert Hall age 10, Peg in a hat, others), and have been madly stuffing and adding to books I'd thought were done--and am missing Wendy madly, and Annie. The BB Team.
Peg asked me today to ring relatives to let them know the state of play. These are relatives whose names are familiar, vaguely, but I wouldn't know if I tripped over them. Was happy to do this until confronted by Peg's address book, which has about 30 entries for every name, all different, all on different pages, in pen, ink, typed, taped in--the idea of alphabetizing clearly long ago dispensed with---and unfortunately the most recent or current address or number has not been ticked or circled or delineated in any way helpful. I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to today all over the States who have never heard of me or Peg, though are very sorry to hear she's been in the ICU and now the nursing home.
One of them, Joan, pronounced Jo-Ann, who I finally found in Missouri, and Peg's first cousin, is profoundly deaf. I was shouting so loudly into the phone, first trying to get her to understand who I was, then with Peg's phone number, that Odd clumped out with his walker in a panic thinking something awful had happened.
_______________
STAFF ON CALL:
BONNIE, who vacuumed, did laundry, did 101 other things that needed doing (she is better than I am at multi-tasking, or Annie, and that's saying something), Bonnie who did all this while Wendy and I got Odd in Wendy's SUV over to Lee to see Peg in Laurel Lake, David Jenkins following us in his pickup with a tank of gas because we drove back to Becket yesterday on "EMPTY" with lights flashing and dinging the whole way over October Mt. And there are no gas stations in Becket and Jenkins, bless him, was our fail safe so we weren't sitting on the mountain with Odd for the rest of the morning singing Norwegian songs until Triple A arrived.
_______________
Peg and Odd, both in wheelchairs, enjoyed an hour together, not counting an embarrassing ten minutes when Peg wouldn't take her pills for the nurse and demanded a whole chocolate pudding, not just a pill-cup full. The nurse ground them up at my suggestion, like we do for Odd, because Peg has this thing about pills. She says her throat is smaller than everyone else's. It's not. I've measured.
Odd wet his Depends and the chair in the den. Hope to Christ Wendy's car is OK.
_______________
HIGHLIGHTS:
Mrs. Barbara Beckett from Becket who shares Peg's room, asking if I would buy her some bedroom slippers next time I'm out shopping. "Like these," she says, waggling her fuzzy feet. "Size 7." So Monday I will go buy bedroom slippers for Mrs. Beckett. Because I have nothing else to do. She'll pay, she says.
Giving Bonnie Odd's old maroon naugahyde easy chair and footstool that's been on the porch here for two years and that he can't get out of anymore, for her son, Jake--without Odd seeing. Although he caught us sneaking the bookcase down from my room that held The Great Books of the Western World. Sound asleep he was, we were tiptoeing. It's a second sense, clearly. Like when he materialized in the driveway years ago, out of nowhere, to retrieve the broken African Violet grow lamp from the pile for the dump (and is still in the attic).
______________
PLANS:
So I now fly home Saturday May 3 because having cancelled my Apr 23 one ($120 cancellation fee), it seems there is nothing available until then, short of a 7AM Newark one the day before and I don't do day flights when you have to get up at 3 AM to get to the stupid airport.
The IDEA--now, see how this strikes you--is the day I leave here, Carol Ann from Wellsmere Collies comes to collect my mother's (and Carol Ann's) dog Honeybear-Angel-Spurn-Me -Not or whatever in hell she's going by these days, and Odd--this is the brainwave part of the plan--goes into Laurel Lake Nursing Home in a "respite care" category, and stays there, seeing Peg every day all day, until she is deemed fighting fit to come home.
And then they will come home together. But not before May 20, which is the date that Terri (staff) is done with her nieces's wedding in New Jersey and packed her son off to Alabama and is free to move in here with her dog. And here she will stay ($50 per night 8 PM to 8 AM) until Alex, the grandson, arrives in June. In theory.
Odd can have 5 days "respite care" gratis at Laurel Lake courtesy of Hospice, and they will organize his installation, as it were, and after that I will pay per day. They've cut me a deal, less than half price. Full price is $500 per day. I'll be paying $210. Not sure if this is normal or because the Ronnings are such good customers there. Am thinking of booking in myself.
So. Then I fly home. And. Well. SEE WHAT HAPPENS. And also on the day now that Denis has band call in London for this new musical of his and Richard Harris', and which is already driving DK mad because there are four non singers in the cast, meaning they can't sing if they tried (so why were they hired??) and one is so bad Denis has had to take his lines away and wants him to mouth the lyrics.
________________
I felt like shit when I sat down here but now better. Writing this is like someone sucking the poison out.
_____________
Wendy has gone back to Vermont and I am bereft. She gave me four days out of her life and I will be forever beholden. Sadly, after she left I found three more piles in Peg's office--Blue Book fillers in plastic sleeves (fishers, Alex playing the drums at the Albert Hall age 10, Peg in a hat, others), and have been madly stuffing and adding to books I'd thought were done--and am missing Wendy madly, and Annie. The BB Team.
Peg asked me today to ring relatives to let them know the state of play. These are relatives whose names are familiar, vaguely, but I wouldn't know if I tripped over them. Was happy to do this until confronted by Peg's address book, which has about 30 entries for every name, all different, all on different pages, in pen, ink, typed, taped in--the idea of alphabetizing clearly long ago dispensed with---and unfortunately the most recent or current address or number has not been ticked or circled or delineated in any way helpful. I can't tell you the number of people I've talked to today all over the States who have never heard of me or Peg, though are very sorry to hear she's been in the ICU and now the nursing home.
One of them, Joan, pronounced Jo-Ann, who I finally found in Missouri, and Peg's first cousin, is profoundly deaf. I was shouting so loudly into the phone, first trying to get her to understand who I was, then with Peg's phone number, that Odd clumped out with his walker in a panic thinking something awful had happened.
_______________
STAFF ON CALL:
BONNIE, who vacuumed, did laundry, did 101 other things that needed doing (she is better than I am at multi-tasking, or Annie, and that's saying something), Bonnie who did all this while Wendy and I got Odd in Wendy's SUV over to Lee to see Peg in Laurel Lake, David Jenkins following us in his pickup with a tank of gas because we drove back to Becket yesterday on "EMPTY" with lights flashing and dinging the whole way over October Mt. And there are no gas stations in Becket and Jenkins, bless him, was our fail safe so we weren't sitting on the mountain with Odd for the rest of the morning singing Norwegian songs until Triple A arrived.
_______________
Peg and Odd, both in wheelchairs, enjoyed an hour together, not counting an embarrassing ten minutes when Peg wouldn't take her pills for the nurse and demanded a whole chocolate pudding, not just a pill-cup full. The nurse ground them up at my suggestion, like we do for Odd, because Peg has this thing about pills. She says her throat is smaller than everyone else's. It's not. I've measured.
Odd wet his Depends and the chair in the den. Hope to Christ Wendy's car is OK.
_______________
HIGHLIGHTS:
Mrs. Barbara Beckett from Becket who shares Peg's room, asking if I would buy her some bedroom slippers next time I'm out shopping. "Like these," she says, waggling her fuzzy feet. "Size 7." So Monday I will go buy bedroom slippers for Mrs. Beckett. Because I have nothing else to do. She'll pay, she says.
Giving Bonnie Odd's old maroon naugahyde easy chair and footstool that's been on the porch here for two years and that he can't get out of anymore, for her son, Jake--without Odd seeing. Although he caught us sneaking the bookcase down from my room that held The Great Books of the Western World. Sound asleep he was, we were tiptoeing. It's a second sense, clearly. Like when he materialized in the driveway years ago, out of nowhere, to retrieve the broken African Violet grow lamp from the pile for the dump (and is still in the attic).
______________
PLANS:
So I now fly home Saturday May 3 because having cancelled my Apr 23 one ($120 cancellation fee), it seems there is nothing available until then, short of a 7AM Newark one the day before and I don't do day flights when you have to get up at 3 AM to get to the stupid airport.
The IDEA--now, see how this strikes you--is the day I leave here, Carol Ann from Wellsmere Collies comes to collect my mother's (and Carol Ann's) dog Honeybear-Angel-Spurn-Me -Not or whatever in hell she's going by these days, and Odd--this is the brainwave part of the plan--goes into Laurel Lake Nursing Home in a "respite care" category, and stays there, seeing Peg every day all day, until she is deemed fighting fit to come home.
And then they will come home together. But not before May 20, which is the date that Terri (staff) is done with her nieces's wedding in New Jersey and packed her son off to Alabama and is free to move in here with her dog. And here she will stay ($50 per night 8 PM to 8 AM) until Alex, the grandson, arrives in June. In theory.
Odd can have 5 days "respite care" gratis at Laurel Lake courtesy of Hospice, and they will organize his installation, as it were, and after that I will pay per day. They've cut me a deal, less than half price. Full price is $500 per day. I'll be paying $210. Not sure if this is normal or because the Ronnings are such good customers there. Am thinking of booking in myself.
So. Then I fly home. And. Well. SEE WHAT HAPPENS. And also on the day now that Denis has band call in London for this new musical of his and Richard Harris', and which is already driving DK mad because there are four non singers in the cast, meaning they can't sing if they tried (so why were they hired??) and one is so bad Denis has had to take his lines away and wants him to mouth the lyrics.
________________
I felt like shit when I sat down here but now better. Writing this is like someone sucking the poison out.
Friday, April 18, 2014
GLIMMER OF HOPE
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Lunchtime cheese veggie burrito at Baja's in Lee with Tory and Wendy (and leftovers for supper).
- Learning that the woman in the bed next to Peg's is a Mrs. Becket, who lives in Becket.
- Finishing 2 more Blue Books
- Only having to tell Odd that Peg is at Laurel Lake Nursing Home seventeen times instead of thirty.
_______________
STAFF ON CALL:
Terri, who looked after Odd so I could go eat burritos and hit the post office with twelve tons of Great Books of the Western World, plus Volume IV of "Hütte: Des Ingeniuers Taschenbuch", am sure you're familiar with it. Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1935-36? The 26th edition of a German engineering handbook belonging to my father, Odd Knut Ronning, which sold, somewhat miraculously I thought, on eBay last week, but which I for some reason neglected to include in my carefully wrapped package consisting of Volumes I, IV and the Index, so have taken a hit, yet again, on postage.
Terri reported that when Daddy got up from his nap and asked where I was and she said at the nursing home seeing Peg he yelled "Shit!" and banged his walker, then apologized and she gave him 2 Pecan Sandies and some orange juice and he was fine.
Dominick, entertaining Peg for 4 hours at the nursing home.
______________
Mama was sitting up today for the first time since The Episode, and in a wheel chair. Bright and chatty. Said when she'd passed out in ER and thought she was dying she saw St. Peter at the Gates and bawled him out--"All these people you've got waiting here? They're just sitting here! Nothing to eat, nothing to do, no magazines--what's all the rush to get here if we're only just going to sit around?"
When Mrs. Becket groaned in the next bed, Peg--in her wheelchair, not yet able to walk, hooked up to oxygen--says "Can I get you anything?"
______________
LATE-ONSET BLUE BOOK PANIC:
Mama has asked me to bring in a box of stills from her TV show--little 2 inch square black and white contact sheet pics, about fifty pages of badly xeroxed blurry images on typewriter paper--so she can go through them and "mark them". She told me exactly where to find it, very specific directions to a particular bookcase in her room, next to so and so, under a pile of this, balanced on that--and I am now convinced she has CCTV installed in there, like parents have in baby's rooms now so you can see what your kid is up to when you're busy having a martini downstairs, because of all the piles of Blue Book crap in that room that we lugged out here to organize and "load", that is the one box I took one look at, said "Well! She'll never miss THESE things!" and pitched, immediately.
____________
Woke at 2 AM last night fretting and at 3:30 rang husband in England, just getting out of the shower. Called to whine and whinge and hear his reassuring Voice of Calm and Reason and ended up chewing him out for always asking questions about stuff here he should know, am always repeating myself nine hundred times and finally I said "It's in the blog! Do you not read it???" and turns out no, he doesn't. "I don't know where the link is," he says. So ended up having my feelings hurt as well as fretting and not being able to sleep but hey, am over it, besides which I got a lovely long email from him later. Which actually I only glanced at since I was rushing out to get to the burrito place--so had maybe better go read it properly, but it looked lovely at least from a distance.
____________
I have come up with a plan for Odd-Care that allows me to return to England. Will hold off talking about it so I don't jinx it.
- Lunchtime cheese veggie burrito at Baja's in Lee with Tory and Wendy (and leftovers for supper).
- Learning that the woman in the bed next to Peg's is a Mrs. Becket, who lives in Becket.
- Finishing 2 more Blue Books
- Only having to tell Odd that Peg is at Laurel Lake Nursing Home seventeen times instead of thirty.
_______________
STAFF ON CALL:
Terri, who looked after Odd so I could go eat burritos and hit the post office with twelve tons of Great Books of the Western World, plus Volume IV of "Hütte: Des Ingeniuers Taschenbuch", am sure you're familiar with it. Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1935-36? The 26th edition of a German engineering handbook belonging to my father, Odd Knut Ronning, which sold, somewhat miraculously I thought, on eBay last week, but which I for some reason neglected to include in my carefully wrapped package consisting of Volumes I, IV and the Index, so have taken a hit, yet again, on postage.
Terri reported that when Daddy got up from his nap and asked where I was and she said at the nursing home seeing Peg he yelled "Shit!" and banged his walker, then apologized and she gave him 2 Pecan Sandies and some orange juice and he was fine.
Dominick, entertaining Peg for 4 hours at the nursing home.
______________
Mama was sitting up today for the first time since The Episode, and in a wheel chair. Bright and chatty. Said when she'd passed out in ER and thought she was dying she saw St. Peter at the Gates and bawled him out--"All these people you've got waiting here? They're just sitting here! Nothing to eat, nothing to do, no magazines--what's all the rush to get here if we're only just going to sit around?"
When Mrs. Becket groaned in the next bed, Peg--in her wheelchair, not yet able to walk, hooked up to oxygen--says "Can I get you anything?"
______________
LATE-ONSET BLUE BOOK PANIC:
Mama has asked me to bring in a box of stills from her TV show--little 2 inch square black and white contact sheet pics, about fifty pages of badly xeroxed blurry images on typewriter paper--so she can go through them and "mark them". She told me exactly where to find it, very specific directions to a particular bookcase in her room, next to so and so, under a pile of this, balanced on that--and I am now convinced she has CCTV installed in there, like parents have in baby's rooms now so you can see what your kid is up to when you're busy having a martini downstairs, because of all the piles of Blue Book crap in that room that we lugged out here to organize and "load", that is the one box I took one look at, said "Well! She'll never miss THESE things!" and pitched, immediately.
____________
Woke at 2 AM last night fretting and at 3:30 rang husband in England, just getting out of the shower. Called to whine and whinge and hear his reassuring Voice of Calm and Reason and ended up chewing him out for always asking questions about stuff here he should know, am always repeating myself nine hundred times and finally I said "It's in the blog! Do you not read it???" and turns out no, he doesn't. "I don't know where the link is," he says. So ended up having my feelings hurt as well as fretting and not being able to sleep but hey, am over it, besides which I got a lovely long email from him later. Which actually I only glanced at since I was rushing out to get to the burrito place--so had maybe better go read it properly, but it looked lovely at least from a distance.
____________
I have come up with a plan for Odd-Care that allows me to return to England. Will hold off talking about it so I don't jinx it.
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