Monday
Oct, 29, 2001
|
Monday Oct, 29, 2001 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
bright Monday |
|
I wake up and FFP is saying it is six. I need to get up and relieve myself. I've been having dreams about elaborate diners with even more complex bathrooms. A sure sign that I need to get up. After I get up and come back to bed, I look at the clock and it is 2. Then we realize the clock has gone wild as if it is endlessly setting itself.
I get showered and dressed. I start on my business e-mail. I am tempted to respond to several things, I even start messages and delete them. It's going to be one of those days. I have started feeling reclusive. I don't really want to go out much and when I do I can't wait to go home. I don't want to go to meetings or talk to people at work. It's just a phase, I'm sure. Right? It was me who introduced myself to the person who turned out to be someone's mother. I really do like listening to people. Really. What is it with me lately?
I go to work. I listen to a phone in meeting with a couple of directors. I don't phone in a question although I have several. I talk a little to the two guys. Then I feel myself with something to say that I simply do not say. I've been looking out a window (I don't have one in my office). It's a beautiful day and people come and go on our campus. Some I recognize and haven't talked to in a long while. A window washing service is washing windows on the third floor across the way, using a long specialized ladder. I've been staring at some sour cream donuts that the owner of the office brought in. I don't have one. The longer I sit there, though, the harder it gets. I decide to take a half day of vacation. I have 13 days left for the year so I will still have plenty to fill in the week of Thanksgiving and take off around Christmas and all that. It is cool and sunny and stunningly beautiful outside.
Mom wants to shop. She is breathless when I arrive at her house. She is wearing some kind of dumb-looking pants and trying to put her shoes on. They have a stew and toast for lunch and I have some. Simple stew with potatoes and roast made from a roast and potato meal leftover. Good, though. Mom needs some reassurance about some of the clothes I bought her. She thinks they may be too big though she hasn't tried them on. When she does, they look great. Black velvet-looking skirt, pants, shell, jacket. But washable. Definitely she should keep them. I'm glad because returning things is my least favorite thing in the entire world. Well, not really, but I do hate it although I will do it. So Mom then puts on a nice pair of black pants and a colorful shirt to go out. I get her cane and handicapped shield out of the van. Off we go to Mervyn's. She bought a bra last time we were here. She likes it so she wants another like it. And we bought Dad two cheap, wash and wear shirts that he likes so we think we will get another color. This goes well. However, Mom wants a navy purse. I don't do purses (except I have an evening bag to carry my camera!). I patiently help her look but we don't find anything. Why can't she just carry black all the time, I wonder. Then she says if she had a gold one to match her gold shoes that would be cool. Well, um, yeah. Anyway, they don't have anything. She is talking about needing a Christmas present for her secret pal. It's a long time to Christmas (it isn't even Halloween!) but she is talking about something with angels and I remember all these gee-gaws at Steinmark with angels. They have purses, too, so I figure I'll let her paw through a few more purese, too. She doesn't end up with a purse but does end up with a present for her secret pal. I tell her that does the Christmas shopping because, after all, she doesn't need to buy anything else for anyone.
We stop at Melba's to pick up some pants they tailored for her. I try to dash in to get them but she wants to go and we end up with some blue jeans for her. They need hemming but she says she will do it herself. Then she says, "I need my purse after all to pay for them." I just give them a credit card. I want to sit in my yard in the cool with a cup of coffee. Time off is wasting. On the way to her house, my mom writes me the check they give us every month to pay their bills and offset the taxes and insurance we pay on the thing. She's trying to write while I'm driving but she gets it done. Dad isn't home when we get there. He's off getting the van a tune-up or something. Told me he'd worked out to get them to drop him back home and then he'd get there somehow tomorrow to get it. Either they'd come get him or he would let Mom drive the Buick that short distance. He got the Buick all cleaned up and checked, too, in case my brother-in-law wants to drive it. They have a house guest, someone they know from church. So they fill their days. And tell me the same stories over and over. Mom complains that she can't drive herself wherever she pleases and that in Mesquite she used to get to go places with a particular friend. I guess I'm too antsy a shopper and, of course, I'm not going to take her to club meetings and stuff. She has found friends for these things, however. It's going to be OK. And it is good that they are close. If for no other reason, I have all her drugs typed out and I have gotten the doctors to quit giving her an anti-depressant. She seems fine emotionally (at least in comparison) and skin problems have disappeared. This is the good part, too, with the older parents. Where they can all still take care of their own needs, more or less, most of the time. I get her and her purchases inside and take off for home. I want to sit outside with my paid time off. And I do. Not before FFP and the bookkeeper try to get me to 'listen to her PC' though. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to head off a hard drive crash by listening? So I don't. I tell them I will back up the important stuff a second time. If they will list it. Later I get an e-mail saying all the 'quick books and spreadsheet files.' What am I supposed to do? Look through all the directories for data files? Geez. I am a crochety IT department on my precious 1/2 day off. So I do sit in the yard. With cheese, chips and a cup of coffee. And the day's newspapers. Everyone needs to read about Saudi's threats and anthrax and stuff. But the day is beautiful and my little shady corner of the yard gives me a few minutes of contemplation. I ignore the 'things that need doing' in the yard and concentrate on the neatly trimmed green grass and other plants and the sun dappling part of the yard and the junk musicians I can see from here playing their hearts out.
I go inside and start to look at the files that the bookkeeper might need to save. FFP comes in and says he is going to Eckerd's to replace the clock. Fine, good, I say I'll go as well. We pick a clock with battery backup and digits three inches high so we can see them without our glasses. We buy some blank tape so FFP can tape Ali McBeal, Third Watch, and Boston Public so the bookkeeper and a friend can watch them on Thursday. And we buy a bunch of Halloween candy.
Home, I cook dinner. Yes, I repeat I cook dinner. It is a simple spaghetti squash casserole, nothing more. But it is amazing, isn't it? FFP opens a 1997 Rosenblum Zin that is stunning. Deep, rich red with lots of spicy interest. I cut the squash in half, remove the seeds, boil it until it's getting tender. Then I scoop out the meat (which comes out in strings hence the spaghetti name). I put it in a bowl with some grated cheese and Mom's Spaghetti sauce (a local product with big chunks of garlic and herbs). Then I mix it up and put it to the oven to bake for a few minutes. That's my culinary feat for the week, month, year. It tasted pretty good. FFP made sure to be complimentary. I washed the dishes.
Flags. They are everywhere. My parents gave me a small poster. It has a flag as a background with a New York skyline. Without the towers. It has four planes as little black graphics. And a little black graphic of the pentagon with a bite out of it. The Methodists produced this and are selling it to raise money for the survivors. I don't know where or if I'd display this. My mother says she wants to measure it to frame it. I'm sure I cringe visibly. No, it's OK, really. I guess. But you won't find it hung in my house, I don't think.
The rest of the evening I spend reading the paper and watching TV. Third Watch can't really capture the horror without killing off some major character. Even then. It comes up short of the impact of the daily news somehow. Before that Boston Public lost me with a mother with her hand cut off and a lawyer wanting to become a teacher. We finish the wine. I get into the Halloween Sweet Tarts. Yikes.
|
|
|
flags everywhere
"The greatest
timesaving device is not resisting temptation."
|
|||
|
Meta: |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
181
JUST
TYPING