STAFF ISSUES

REPORT FROM BONNIE:

"Terri's schedule last night: 730 p.m. Odd changed/Resting; 7:50 p.m. Odd sitting up.  Agitated "waiting for them to come with the oil".  Sat and talked..repositioned.  8:15 p.m. Back to bed resting 9:40 p.m. coughing, sat up in bed, gave thick-it OJ...sat awhile. 10:15p.m. repositioned/rest; 11:30 p.m. coughing, repositioned; 1:45 a.m. Odd coughing gave PerTussin; 1:30 a.m. changed Odd and padding: 2:00 a.m. changed Odd again - wet while changing, repositioned; 2:30 a.m. cough persistent, gave Ativan 1 tab; 2:45 a.m. resting; 3:00 a.m. coughing, sitting up, wanted to stand - stood for whole minute, back to sitting/held hand; 3:15 a.m. cough, morphine given, back to bed, repositioned; 3:30 a.m. resting; 4:00 a.m. Coughing, 4:15 a.m. changed Odd, repositioned; 5:15 a.m. still coughing, Nebulizer treatment, sitting up, morphine given; and 7:15 a.m. coughing/distress, repositioned….Brooke just arrived and stated some of Odd's discomfort could be not having a bowel movement.  He hasn't had one when I have been here all this past week.  Terri stated the last one was about 4 days ago.  Brooke told me to put a call into the Nurse for possible suppositories or enema.  I will email Ellyn…..Also, Odd has been kicking the chair with the blanket over it (for weight, I suppose) that is placed at the end of his bed at times with his feet and when we go in his room, he is sitting up trying to get out of bed.  Brooke mentioned to talk to a Hospice Nurse for additional bedrails that go onto the bottom of the bed?  I will put in an email to Ellyn on this as well."
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Am clearly not paying Terri enough. (Or Bonnie.) The original job description was Terri gets $50 for overnighting, 8 PM to 8 AM., which in my mind involved sleeping upstairs, just spending the night, to satisfy Hospice that someone compos mentis was present. No nursing. Now she's sleeping in the same room as Daddy and leaping up and down all night like a yoyo, administering to his needs. And not complaining. Which I think I might, were it me. A lot. 
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Peg just rang. Distressed. She had words with Bonnie. Peg obsessing over getting to the dentist (to get her dentures cleaned, nothing urgent) down in Fairfield, CT next week because Bonnie wants to go the way Google Maps tells her, because she's nervous about going so far and doesn't believe Peg remembers the way and is afraid of getting lost, the way Peg did when Dawn drove her two years ago and they ended up "heading towards Iowa." It's a 2 hr drive and very simple. I have instructed Bonnie how to go (Merritt Pkwy, NOT Rt 8 to I-95, which Google Maps tells her) and told her that Peg DOES know the way (true), and that Bonnie to keep the peace should certainly act as though Peg does. There was then something mentioned about "picking up Laurie" (friend of family and major Peg fan) while they were down there but this I can make no sense of because Laurie lives in Ohio. I emailed her but she hasn't answered. Peg then said "Forget Bonnie! I'll cancel the dentist! Will YOU take me down when you come later this month?" I said yes. I've been saying yes for three years. I then called Peg back to say but what about Laurie?? Who Bonnie is supposedly picking up next week after the dentist. At which point Peg said Laurie's coming for Christmas--and I gave up.
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Peg also distressed because Outside Bob told her she "looked like hell" which, granted, wasn't very nice to say, but I know I don't have the full story and if I mention it to Bob he'll mention it to Peg and she'll launch into him and he'll quit.
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On My List For Today:
1. Emailing 2 possible home nursing helps.
2. See if Dominick, who is comfortable driving out of the state, can chauffeur Peg to the dentist.
3. Find out where the fuck Laurie is, beside sitting somewhere on the Boston Post Road waiting for a lift.

AND NOW GOWNS, THE HOSPITAL KIND

Bonnie says Odd is just too uncomfortable trying to wear clothes in bed, so she picked up some hospital gowns for him. She says that he is a fighter, keeps trying to stand, wants to walk again. She says she doubts though that that will happen. He somehow got past the bed rails last night and landed on the floor. 911 called. Policeman came and helped him up. Terri called me to apologise, saying she couldn't get over there in time. She is now sleeping in "Peg's" bed, ie in the livingroom, from where she can see Daddy. Peg is in the den on a couch or whatever she's moved back in there.

Odd had another attack or two yesterday and refused nebulizer treatment, but asked Terri to stay with him and hold his hand. This is after she "changed" him and his sheets.

Terri is a better daughter to my own father than I am.

Why is he getting so much morphine? 

Why am I delaying going over? How selfish is this.

DIAPERS

That's what he's in now, I just heard. Daddy. Can you bear it. A Viking in diapers. Doesn't follow, somehow. Apparently it's easier to change them--they just have tabs either side--than Depends, which pull on and off. 

I can't get the image out of my mind. 

Bonnie found him this morning sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to get up, but made him wait a few hours until Erika the Hospice Home Health Aide arrived, and then with Dominick's help they got him into a wheelchair and into the den. He seemed perky-ish. Asked for a Pecan Sandie, which he managed half of. Acts like it hurts to swallow, Bonnie reports. Not counting the cookie, Daddy's only got down a few sips of OJ yesterday with something gag-making called Thick-It in it, which I guess thickens it, not sure why but this is supposed to make it easier to swallow. 

Bonnie has mass-mailed The Staff--and copied me--the new meds routine, which doesn't strike me as too different from the old meds routine with the addition of cough medicine and of course the morphine but it pleases me she's so on the ball. She reports at the end of every day. Yesterday she included the full contents of the little booklet Hospice gave out when they came on board, part of their "packet", detailing The Final Countdown--my caps, not theirs. What to expect in the final 3 months, then weeks, then days, then hours, then minutes. I'd actually already read it, as it happens, and noted that some of the stuff expected at "hours" to live, Daddy has  been exhibiting since he first came home from the nursing home last October, like being vague and sleeping a lot. So it's all relative. And hard to judge. I would say almost impossible to judge. But I think it helps Bonnie to have it all out in black and white to refer to.

Emotions running high, for sure, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The good news is the French air traffic controllers have ended their strike early, so DK and I will be able to fly back to the UK tomorrow as planned. Even though we haven't finished editing and now will have to come back in ten days. It's only just over an hour from Nantes to London City Airport, and now have figured a way to get to City from Suffolk by train (British Rail then Docklands Light), thus eliminating the parking fees (££) and if we get picked up over here and returned to Nantes airport, no rental car fee either. We've used the rental exactly once in the whole five days here, tonight, to get lost driving to La Baule and back for dinner since out hosts had a party to go to. Not worth it (the car, dinner was good). The first time we'd actually felt like we were in France, having been cooped in Bruce's studio since Tuesday, seeing the sun only at breakfast and maybe ten minutes for lunch on the terrace. I eat more bread in an hour here than I normally do all month. It's SO GOOD.

So. Off to the US? Or can I wait until after France again. I wait for the call. Ooo la bleedin' la.

PS. Denis just discovered the rental car halfway down the stone drive, half up a steep bank, one wheel in the air. Apparently the emergency brake decided to not stick when I parked it earlier, facing in the other direction too. Jesus. Just missed the stone wall and the host's Mini.  Denis nearly went under in trying to get the uphill drivers door open so I could slide in and try and put it all right again. 

Am now weepy. Everything, I guess. Fucking rental Opal tipped the balance.

PRETTY SICK

My father not well at all. In fact worse.  Just the news I need to hear, hands tied, so far away. His cold has not turned into pneumonia, quite, but close to it. He's been prescribed strong doses of antibiotics but they don't seem to have done anything. He's not been out of bed since Saturday when Outside Bob and Terri managed to get him out to his chair in the den and got about 4 sips of Ensure down him. The only food or drink he's had. What with no nourishment to speak of plus morphine 4x a day (to open airways), he's too weak to stand, even with help. Hospice home health aides coming now every day instead of 3 times a week, since a) he can't get to the shower and b) he's having accidents, including tipping a full urinal over him and the bed. Terri has been doing the cleaning up. And Bonnie. Christ.

I now need to find a Nurse's Aide to take some of the pressure off everyone there. That ought to be easy from St. Marc sur Mer in Brittany...

Where incidentally we are days behind in the studio through no fault of my own I hasten to add, having told everyone from the start when air tix were being booked that this editing session would take longer than four days, gentlemen, and sure enough here we are only about a third of the way through and due to leave in two days at noon. No way is this project going to be finished and no way am I leaving until it is, we've been trying to find a date agreeable to all do since October and if I'm soon off to the States now we'll never get together again I just know, and I want this audio book out for Christmas and--I am not in a good mood. Not at all. And we're wasting time on TEXT stuff, perfecting blips and levels and double cuts that all should have been done in the editing studio back in Suffolk--while I was away in the States, I also hasten to add, or we would not be in the position we find ourselves in today, I guarantee you, panicked and tempers frayed wondering if we should stay on and change plane reservations and extend rental car and airport parking and what about Mabel, who could look after her this weekend when Alex is working double shifts at the Anchor and sure wish Mike my brother in law who was supposed to be up there right now dog-sitting hadn't suddenly come down with shingles.

With Odd it seems at death's door in the States. 

And Peg, her cold better, worried about getting to the hairdresser. When she's not calling me at 2:30 in the morning French time to say Daddy's not very well, which I already knew.

And the bloody boundary dispute unresolved.

Outside Bob sent me photos of the rhododendrons in the lower garden, which are in bloom, and I wanted to see, because I never seem to be there at the right time. In more ways than one.

TIMING

Phone rings just as we're going out the door en route to Brittany via London: Bonnie. In charge of my parents. 

"Hey," she says, sounding perturbed.

I motion to DK out the window, just getting into the driver's seat, car loaded. "WAIT!"

"What's up?" I say, heart sinking, taking off my jacket, my sunglasses, sitting.

 "Glad I caught you. A lot's been going on here..."

Odd has a terrible cold, getting worse. Peg now has it. There followed a lengthy Nebulizer and Lasix and Blood Pressure discussion which involved endless citings of figures and numerical comparisons which even if I see on paper and have the whole afternoon to do the math, doesn't sink in, so you can imagine how much registers over a phone. Bonnie pauses here and there for reaction, which is awkward, because I'm never sure if I'm supposed to say "Fabulous!" or "Jesus Christ, I'm on a plane!" 

I remember being in the greengrocer's once in London, corner of Belsize Crescent, I'd been over here about four months and was politely standing in line waiting my turn, queuing beautifully like a real Brit, when the lady in front of me turned and, shaking her head, tutted and said, "Would you look at the price of cauliflower!" Whereupon I looked at the price, tried unsuccessfully to convert pounds and pence to dollars and cents without pencil and paper, marveled for a moment at the idea that someone thought I knew what anything cost--me being more of a If You Want Cauliflower, You Buy Cauliflower kind of girl--and said "Amazing!" not knowing if the price was too high or too low.  She didn't buy one in any event, so I went home thinking okay, 57p a pound (or whatever) must be high, on the cauliflower front, I can remember this and try the line myself tomorrow and really look like I belong here (wow, she knows her fruit and veg too, not just how to queue!) but then it occurred to me that maybe the lady didn't go out to buy any cauliflower to begin with.
Anyhow, I just say "Ah.." to Bonnie and sound like I'm mulling it over whenever she talks blood pressure and milligrams. 

The hospice nurse, Wendy, then got on the phone and asked if I wanted my father to have a chest x-ray. (Do I want him to?? I'm the one saying "Ah" a lot three thousand miles away. You're the nurse standing next to him.) It seems, because it's Hospice, and Hospice is "palliative" care, and I'm the Primary CareGiver, it has to be my decision whether to quick quick oh yes please chest X-ray, let's see if he has pneumonia and if so get him some antibiotics or....do nothing and let nature take it's course. As if I'm not already stressed out making decisions about fucking stone walls there, now they're throwing my father's life into my court. And just when we're heading to France for a week--working, I hasten to add, not all sun 'n fun n'croissants (or "kroysince", as my Aunt Elise pronounced them). 

I told the Nurse Wendy to wait with the chest X-ray, see how he is in a few days...but yes, to go ahead and see if his doctor will prescribe some antibiotics. Just well. Cuz. He's my dad.

BIRTHDAY BLUES

Breaking News: my mother rang to say Happy Birthday, without being reminded, and actually ON my birthday. This hasn't happened in awhile. We used to amuse ourselves over here by, not having heard boo, seeing how many days could go by before I couldn't stand it any longer and have to slip something like "Oh, and we had a wonderful night out on my birthday last week.." into a phone conversation with her. Anyhow I wasn't home to get the call, wouldn't you know, but there it was on the answerphone, so I called her back, all aglow, whereupon all she talked about was her nasal polyps and how she's getting no sleep listening out for Daddy and how there was no "woman" there today to help cook so she had to get Outside Bob to help her make curried chicken salad. "I got your message!" I shout, just as she's hanging up, after which there was a pause. "Thank you for wishing me happy birthday, Mama!" I added, helpfully, meaning once again it's me bringing it to her attention. Oh never mind, am starting to sound obsessed over this. (Starting??) 

My favourite name-day felicitations however was an email from Outside Bob and Dominick, sent from the house: "Happy Birthday. HAVING A GREAT TIME WISH YOU WERE HERE!!!!! love Bob and Dom".
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And another thing, if I live to my parents' age I hope someone just leads me down to the water's edge and gently sets me adrift. In fact, if I live until next week, this is sounding pretty good: I am going completely mad over this disputed boundary issue between my parents' land and some developer named Sanders. It has escalated, and continues to do so by the second. I don't know how many plans and drawings and deeds and tax maps and God knows I've downloaded, all starting to look the same, and most of them illegible, like you're writing in pencil with your left hand and lost your eraser (or rubber, as they say over here). I now have a friend in Middelfield pacing the land out for me, a clever lawyer friend in Hartford sort of holding my hand long distance, a property-developer friend in Concord, MA, related (sort of) by marriage, holding the other hand, and Henry, another hero, a local realtor and in fact lawyer, about to roll up his sleeves and dig deeper into documents and hopefully find out the skinny and meet with this buyer guy, this "Personal Developer" he calls himself, this Sanders. The staff have been alerted to keep Sanders from speaking to Peg, who might naively reveal something important or, worse, invite Sanders for Christmas.
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HEALTH REPORTS NOT COUNTING ABOVE-MENTIONED POLYPS:

Odd has a cold, and Peg thinks she's catching it now. It could be an allergy, it could be pollen, which I have been told is incredibly bad up there this year, outside, everywhere you look is a carpet of yellow, Bonnie has had to take her car to the car wash three times in a week. I don't ever remember there being pollen up there but who knows, maybe Sanders dropping poison chemicals (but the collie is GONE, doesn't he KNOW???)

Odd also starts trembling at times. Blood sugar high, then low. Then normal. Feels ill. Then fine. Peg says he's definitely got a cold and not some allergy because for their entire marriage whenever she accuses him of having a cold,  my father, for reasons best known to himself, suddenly makes a point of kissing her a lot, as if to demonstrate "SEE?? It's NOT a cold, I don't have a COLD, if I had a COLD why would I KISS you??" whereupon within 24 hrs my mother comes down with the worst cold of her life.

Catheter Bag News: apparently some new kind has been fitted that just has a snap-on / snap-off mechanism so is very easy to change now, Peg can do it herself and doesn't need Bonnie. Bless her heart Bonnie who is for sure going to heaven.
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Peg called me last night. Sounded low. Tearful. Missed me, she said. And Alex. Said Alex had such a gentle, sentimental streak just like she has (she who has a hard time remembering her only child's birthday, that kind of sentimental). Then said she didn't know why Denis was "so mad at her". I told her he wasn't anymore, not to dwell on the past, to move on, and that if he were mad at her he wouldn't be coming over with me next month. She was SO excited to hear this. Plus today she should be in a good mood, because a tribute came in from journalist James Lileks, who asked if I could put it on her (happening soon, honest) upcoming website, and I had Bonnie print it out for her.

Sometimes I get so tired of being nice. 

[Tribute from James Lileks for www.peglynch.com]

It took me a while. Four, five episodes. I can’t remember how I first found “The Couple Next Door”  - one entry the long list of shows that start with C on an old-time radio site. Loved the jaunty fifties theme, something that sounded like it would play in the supermarket when I went shopping with my Mom. The characters weren’t like anything else I’d heard on old radio shows; they sounded like actual adults, not gag machines or archetypes. In the first episode the actors behaved as if they’d been doing this for a long while, too - the rapport was easy and familiar, with a history built into their reactions, like a real married couple. I’d listened to a lot of old radio, but nothing sounded like this. Fresh, brisk, smart, paced and plotted with an effortless command of the medium. 

So I downloaded a few more. Like I said, it took me a while:

Starring Peg Lynch and Alan Bunce, the man said. But it was the other line.

Written by Peg Lynch.

Light bulb: so the comedienne who’s doing this marvelous character wrote the show as well? Aside from The Goldbergs, which I never really listened to, women didn’t write shows. A few dozen episodes into the run I realized that you didn’t know what was better: the writer’s acting, or the actress’ writing. 

Let’s take the first one. Peg Lynch is a delightful actress. In outrage and surprise you can plot her voice on music staves; when she’s angry she can clip off the syllables and bore in with a tone that could drill a hole through the wall. When she’s giddy you can hear the delight take over her brain and push aside the very things that might just need attention later on; in panic, you can hear her mind race like a Waring blender processing a handful of sand. When she is certain about something her voice has the authority every husband knows full well, the equivalent of a decision from a court that will brook no further appeal. When she laughs, you smile - because that’s usually at the end of the show, and things turned out all right. 

They usually do. Which brings us to the writer. Peg Lynch is simply this: one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. The fact that she worked in dialogue makes people think it’s not Thurber or Perelman, but let those guys write 750 self-contained but intimately connected scenes, and we can talk. The fact that she never strived for a ha-ha line, one of those things set on fire and rolled out on a cart with a sign that said JOKE, makes one think that “humorist” is an inexact description, but her speciality was the humorous situation, one that arises naturally from the characters. It’s not funny because of this line or that; it’s funny because of what it is. Like a story you tell to friends later. 

Again, think of radio: the predecessors were the ensemble shows that trotted out characters to bark catch phrases and conform to a narrow set of attributes. Jack Benny is cheap, Phil Harris is vain, Fred Allen’s sarcastic, Mrs. Nussbaum’s broadly Jewish, Digger the Undertaker is mordant, and so on. Formula. It worked; people loved it; much of it still holds up. But Peg’s work rests in the domestic adventures of two absolutely normal, decent, middle-class people with aspirations and optimism - and an abiding, unquestioned affection. 

It was the only thing on radio that seemed familiar to the listener. A slight exaggeration of their own lives. The show provided a vicarious experience when it came to a new house or a trip abroad, but otherwise, yes: recognizable. These were people you’d like to know, because you sensed they’d like to know you too.

She didn’t just write for herself and Bunce, though. (Her ability to plot opportunities for his slow-burn and blow-up bluster is worthy of another article.) Several comic characters come to mind: the laconic contractor, Mr. Dibble. (To this day when a house project goes awry I find myself saying “that’s the way it gooooes.”) Charlie and Madge Beamis, a wonderful look at some post-war archetypes - the loud-mouthed braying glad-hander and his “artistic” wife whose casual attitude towards life and rules and housekeeping must have struck a loud tuning fork for the audience; every neighborhood had one. (It was one of Peg’s clever ideas to make Charlie not just annoying, but supremely competent in everything he did.) Betsy is a delightful little girl any parent recognizes. (Francie Myers was wonderful as Betsy, poised nd earnest and sweet – unlike all the wise-cracking juveniles who populated TV and radio.)

And of course: Aunt Effie. Margaret Hamilton’s thin-lipped censorious judgmental spinster. Peg wrote for her cadence and tone with intuitive precision; she knew the way Hamilton would lance the second word in a line with a half-octave jump. (Listen for the number of times her lines begin with “Well, I think” or “Well, I’ won’t” or some such variant.) It would have been tempting to give Hamilton a Miss Gulch character. Peg wrote her not as a counterweight to the wife, but an ally. Brilliant move: if she created tension it would amuse the audience but discomfit the characters, and this was not a show about domestic abrasion. Minor friction, sure. Squabbles and disputes, of course. But Aunt Effie, for all her dry archaic certainties, was someone we loved. When you realize that, you realize something else about the show:

You like everyone.  

Not to say she didn’t drop in a villain now and then; that’s another essay. Point is, the conflict - and the humor - came from misunderstanding more often than ill will, and misunderstanding can be fixed. 

This is what her stories do: they fix things. Over the course of hundreds and hundreds of stories, you see the same reassuring theme. The little things in life, which seem so large at the time, work out - but only if events play out, or someone speaks up, or someone finds the thing that was lost, or someone puts two and two together. (Not zero plus zero, though. Don’t get her started on that.) Fate, chance, personality, coincidence, kindness -   these will set things right.

As I write this, I haven’t finished “The Couple Next Door.” About 200 episodes to go. I have no idea what will happen when they get back from Europe, and I almost hate to think of Peg setting up the next great plot arc only to have it felled by the axe, when CBS nixed fiction in ’60. I’ve seen some of the TV shows, and they’re quite different: seeing the plays makes them laugh-out-loud funny, and you watch them with a big stupid grin as you see Peg and Alan work. (There’s the matter of her physical self-possession as a TV actress, but that’s another essay.) I know I’ll listen to the syndicated run of “The Little Things in Life” and relish how she did it again, but it’s like Father’s Day at your Mom’s house after she remarried.

 Don’t get me wrong: the TV stuff is so good it should put Peg up there with Sid and Lucy and Jack and all the rest. The earlier “Ethel and Albert” shows are delightful, and the path she took to get the story from a small-town radio station to the networks is a story that ought to be the subject of a lavishly reviewed biography. Because it has it all. Small-town girl wants to tell stories. She sits at the typewriter. Scrolls the paper. Starts to type.

Ink on pulp; script in hands; voices into mikes; radio waves to boxes all across the nation. People sat down and lit a Lark and settled in for 15 minutes. My friends have dropped by. You know. The couple next door.

—-

PS. After I discovered her work I found her phone number and called her up. (That’s another essay.)  A few months later I drove up to her house to meet her, and I had a phrase in my head I wanted to say, just to let her know that her work survives and people who were mewling infants when she cracked the mike find her just as funny and delightful as listeners a half century ago. “My favorite genius,” I said when we met. Three true words. 

Oh, the look on her face. The thing you have to love about Peg: she knows she’s good. She knows she did something remarkable. But I’m not sure she really knows how remarkable she is. That’s where we come in.  We listen to her work. We spread the word. We let her know: there’s no point talking about humor and theater in 20th century American culture if you don’t talk about Peg. The best actress who ever wrote for radio and TV; the best writer who ever acted on TV and radio. It may take you a while to decide which you prefer.

But you don’t have to choose. It’s both, right? Right. 

                                                                        - James Lileks 2014

CHUGGING ALONG

Behind me, as I sit here typing,  the US Open Golf something is being watched, soon to be followed by football in twenty minutes at 11:00 PM: England's first game in the world cup. Seems to be a big deal, to some. It's not quite as distracting as trying to think while in the same room as Turner Classic Movies at top volume, or the Weather Channel but it's right up there. Why do I have so little interest, in fact I think I can safely say no interest whatsoever in anything to do with SPORTS (can I blame my parents? I'd like to). I hate crowds, I hate the sounds of crowds roaring, I hate the sound of sportscasters' voices, all of them, and how they speak to one another like this is a very interesting subject and they are discussing very important points, I especially hate during golf commentary how they suddenly sort of whisper, which almost makes me turn around to see what everyone's holding their breath over--but deep down, I suppose what's really at the root of this gross intolerance is that I don't rate sport, at all, in general, and never have, except possibly ice dancing or giant slalom if Norwegians are in the lead--in the great scheme of things, as a way to make a living, or as an achievement. Fine, okay, as a way to kill time at recess maybe on the playground or in retirement but I look at these people leaping around and after two minutes of whatever all I really want to do is say oh for fuck's sake, grow up, it's a ball, you're going to spend your life messing around with a stupid ball? Go get a real job. 

Okay done. And what about the salaries?? (oops, not quite done) Obscene. And PS if you are playing for Middlesex or Chicago or Rio, you ought to be FROM there. In my opinion.

Okay. So. Now that I've managed to no doubt alienate most everyone--things are relatively calm, I hear, over in Becket. I have had a few calls from Bonnie as of late, asking me to explain something while Peg is on the phone so she can hear it from my mouth. For example. Re this recent property developer I mentioned who's bought land next to us and can't figure out one of the boundaries. I emailed Bonnie saying my friend David Jenkins would be walking the property for me at some point this week, acting as my eyes, since I'm not there, except I used the work "proxy", not "eyes" and this led Peg, in tears, to believe I was selling the house without her knowledge and that Jenkins would be doing the deal. So I had to clear that up and about twelve other things she hadn't quite got straight.

ME: How's Daddy?

PEG: I'm not getting any sleep.

ME: What's wrong?

PEG: He looks dead, but then suddenly he perks up again. That man has absolutely no interest in anything. I don't know what I'm going to do with him.

ME: Listen, Mike Sacks, the guy from Vanity Fair you don't remember who interviewed you for that book of his that's coming out next week on comedy writers, wants to do a radio interview with you for I think NPR. Are you up for that? 

PEG: I'm going just crazy with these nasal polyps. (VOICE SUDDENLY HOARSE) Don't I sound awful??

ME: You sound fine. Shall I tell him yes?

PEG: Of course!

She then launched into how she needs help with dinner, then how she doesn't want help with dinner.

It's all worrying.

But--I am here. They are there. If I pray, when I pray, all I ask is that please please let her, and Daddy too, stay alive and vaguely "with it" until I get her website launched. Okay, true, I also pray for them not to be in pain and when they "go", to let them go quickly--but my main prayer, the big one, the everpresent one--is about hanging in please please until the website's up. I tell myself it's so she can bask in all her glory again, in the thrill of being rediscovered at the age of 97 by a whole new audience  (and, trust me, she needs an audience), so she can re-live her days of fame, but what I'm really doing is setting myself up for disappointment. I don't mean she won't get the attention or accolades, she will, but what I'm angling for here, basically, is gratitude. In my mind my mother is throwing herself at my feet in appreciation of all my hard efforts. Which she won't. Of course. Even if she could get up again. She just won't, and then I'll be annoyed, because--that's what daughters are for. 

Although, get this: on the phone today she said "Your birthday present might be a little late". Birthday present. She hasn't remembered it in about ten years, probably more. Fifteen. So maybe, justy maybe, I'm thinking, I should cut her a little slack, this woman, my mother, who once said "I don't remember your birthday, I only remember things that are important!" 

I hope it's not a multi coloured sweater with knitted balls on it. Again. Let you know on Wednesday. About the same time I'm annoyed at my husband for not having planned anything except a baked potato. Speaking of setting oneself up for disappointment.