Mom-Sequiturs

Mom: I don't understand how it got dark so early today. (It's going on 10 pm and been dark for almost three hours now.)

Me: The days are getting shorter. It's close to winter.

Mom: Winter?! We haven't even had summer yet!

Me: It's the end of October. (Mind you, she's been admiring all the Hallowe'en decorations and sampling the candy for the past week.)

Mom: Well, I don't know what they do with the weather around here!

Me: . . ..

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Mom has suffered from insomnia on and off over the past two weeks. normally she gets up a couple of times during the night to go to the bathroom but this is different. This weekend she got up both nights around midnight (she normally goes to bed between nine and ten), fully dressed and asking where the daylight was. Saturday night she went back when I convinced her it was still the middle of the night but she was back again an hour later and stayed up on the couch 'til three. Sunday was almost as bad except she knew it was nighttime and she had insomnia. She stayed up until three again and only went to bed because my brother got up and chased her off to her room.

Last night she promised me she would not come out again (except for the normal bathroom breaks) and she kept her word. I don't know if she actually slept (we'd had a busy day, with a doctor's appointment and everything and she was very tired) but she kept her word.

I intend to ask the doctor if the accumulated effects of the Exelon patch might be giving her too much nervous energy and disrupting her sleep cycles.

Random Civic Duties

Mom voted yesterday. She can't get to the polling station so she gets an absentee ballot which she can not read because of her eyesight and can not fill out because she can't put enough pressure on the pen to completely fill in the ovals. I read the ballot to her.

There were seven or eight candidates for US senator, Republican (Tea) (currently under investigation for improper use of party funds), Democrat (payoffs, cushy job for his mom, etc.) and half a dozen independents including the current governor (ex-R (not Tea)). There were four or five candidates for governor including Republican (billion dollar Medicare fraud under investigation again, pleading the fifth 75 times), Democrat (current state CFO with all the baggage from failing state investments, bank shenanigans, etc.), Tea and independents. After that it got messy with a bunch of non-partisan races for county commission, school boards, flood control districts, a bunch of local and county judges, and half a dozen proposed constitutional amendments.

I read the list for each race to Mom, usually several times, and she'd say "That one!" She only managed to pick one major party candidate*. I know she was faking it because she'd make some comment along the lines of "I've heard of him before," or "I like that one," when I know there had never been a single ad or flyer for that candidate. I suspect, in some of the lesser races, she could be the only vote some of these guys might get.

She got tired half way through so she never even voted for any of the judges which is just as well since she finally admitted to not knowing who any of them were.

*So now my vote for that office will be cancelled out by hers. It could've been worse.

False Alarms

Took Mom to the doctor yesterday. She had been complaining over the weekend of a specific physical condition and we agreed I would call first thing Monday and set an appointment. The doctor's office was kind enough (and the condition was concerning enough) to give us 3:15 the same afternoon.

When we got into the examination room, however, she insisted everything was fine, denied any knowledge of the problem and claimed she had complained only of her eyesight (for which we had seen the eye doctor less than a week earlier and received some drops for a dry cornea). They took some vitals and everything was normal. I apologized. They nodded knowingly. We went home.

Mom said nothing on the way home or sitting on the couch until after dinner.

All is well, for now.

Adventures in Fine Dining

So I'm just finishing my dinner and I look across to Mom just in time to see her sticking a forkful of Kleenex into her mouth. There were more bits of Kleenex spread across her plate and covering her food.

Mom got into the habit a while ago of covering her food and drinks to keep them hot and/or cold. She started by covering her coffee cup with a piece of paper and has slowly progressed to using cardboard, washcloths, even tissues. I have pointed out to her that (with the possible exception of cardboard on a coffee cup) none of these procedures will keep her food from going to room temperature, and most will just end up making a mess. She is not deterred.


I yelled, "Mom! Stop that! What're you doing?" She seemed genuinely surprised to realize she was eating Kleenex. I literally pulled the one piece from her mouth and carefully picked the others from her plate and she continued with her dinner. When I asked why she had done it, she couldn't explain. (I know why, I just wanted to know if she did.)

I don't want to take it personally, but I do kind of wonder if it's worth making chicken Alfredo from scratch if everything tastes like tissue paper to her.

The Horror! The Horror!

I suppose I should be thankful that it is, at least, October, not June or July, but the Hallowe'en decorations are starting to go up. Specifically, Neighbor Dan from across the street was out yesterday afternoon installing not one but two giant blow-up haunted castles on his front lawn along with a giant blow-up ghost and a couple of blow-up pumpkins. And this just the start.

This is, of course, my brother's fault. He gets all sappy when it comes to almost every holiday and confessed that Neighbor Dan never put up decorations at all until after he saw my brother's inflatable menagerie. Also, Neighbor Dan is not, technically, the first to install, even this year, since my brother bought two new inflatables and "tested" one to make sure it worked properly.

It's a fifteen foot tall black cat with six inch claws and a painted Cheshire cat grin on a head that swivels from side to side. It's lit from within, the tail sticks straight up and you can walk under the arched belly. He "tested" it in September. Mom came out and down the driveway to get a good look at it. Apparently, he also bought a blow-up hearse. Haven't seen that one, yet.

They're Baaack!, or, The Return of The Birds

Hah! Two movie refs in one title!

During the height of the Hot/Rainy Season most of the birds seemed to disappear. I haven't mentioned vultures or raptor tornadoes because they simply weren't there. No parrots, no mockingbirds. For a while (after a week of torrential downpours that raised the water table to about a foot below surface level) even the owls were nowhere to be found. Now the humidity has dropped, the temperature has dropped and the birds are back!

Including really ugly Muscovy ducks and . . .

. . .some sort of black duck, possibly female Gadwalls or maybe young Mallards and

the local neighborhood Red Shouldered Hawk . . .

. . .which I last saw sitting in a concrete faux-fountain birdbath on somebody's front lawn.

Best of all the owls are back (if they ever really left). Three different sites along my morning walking route have at last four different owls in them (total).

So all is right with (this little corner of) the world!

Mom-Sequiturs

Re: the Tampa Bay/Kansas City game last night as she was getting up to go to bed:

"Well, I hope whoever's playing wins."