Because Paper Is Too Ephemeral

I glanced over at Mom sitting on the couch this morning and she had a pen in one hand and the other hand held up close to her face. She was writing something but I couldn't see any paper.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Writing," she said.

"On what? Are you writing on your finger?"

"NO!" She held up her left index finger which was tattooed with black ink.

"Well, what's that then?" I asked.

She examined her finger and said, "On further consideration, yes, I am." She tossed the pen aside and said, "Never mind."

The Sharper Side of Mom

I fear I sometimes give the impression that Mom isn't "there" as much as she is. True, she isn't anywhere near as sharp as she used to be, but two incidents over the weekend show the ol' girl's still got it hidden away somewhere.

I noticed her going into the kitchen and asked her what she wanted. "Just a cup of coffee," she said. Once again, she had left her walker at the kitchen entrance and was slowly crabbing her way along the counter. "Well," said I, "You go back to your walker and head on into the living room. I'll get your coffee and bring it out to you. And I bet I'll get there before you do." She looked at me and said, "I'm sure you will. Nowadays everything happens faster than I do."

This morning she received a catalog addressed to her in the mail. She studied it for a minute and said, "Oh look. It has my name on it." I started to say, yes it does but she continued: "Current Occupant."

Under the Onion Tree

Mom's eyesight is not what it used to be despite daily applications of drops for macular degeneration and retinal problems. (I apply the drops ever since I discovered she was not hitting her eyes when she tried to administer them herself. She wasn't tilting her head back far enough and was just dribbling the drops down her cheeks. Not surprisingly, her check-ups have shown stabilization since I took over.)

Anyway, yesterday morning she looked out the large window through the lanai and said, "Well, there's absolutely nothing going on out there today." Meaning there's no significant gale blasting through. Normal breezes are too subtle for her to detect. She can also see the occasional bird if it's sitting on a wire and contrasted against the sky, but she frequently thinks a dark blue sky is clouds and vice versa, a light gray overcast becomes clear sky. "Yep," she said. "Nothing going on at all . . . except those three onions."

Onions?

So I tried to see where she was looking. The lemon tree has three almost ripe lemons clustered together like a pawn shop sign.

So now we have an onion tree.

When Murphy Sleeps

I think I set a personal best for platelet donations this afternoon. Didn't set off the beeping machine due to low pull even once and finished the entire donation in about an hour, not counting paperwork. That's twice in a row now without setting off the machine. Maybe my body's finally figured out the system.

We'll just see what happens next month.

Lazy, Hazy Daze

So, it was a perfect summer day yesterday, sunny, scattered clouds, warm (but not excessively like the rest of the country), no humidity (that's always the killer this time of year) and I talked Mom into going outside for a while, something she just does not do anymore. She sat out front in the shade at the edge of the grass in a cushioned lawn chair and I brought her her book and a drink and joined her with one of each of my own and we watched my brother mow the lawn.

She offered me some of her juice assuring me, "I haven't tasted it, yet." I showed her I had my own.

She said it was too hot out and her juice was going to get warm. I said that was why I had put an ice cube in it.

She said it was too hot and the ice cube was going to melt before she could finish her drink. I said it was still better than no ice cube. (I didn't mention that she normally doesn't want ice in her drinks at all.) She said, "That's true," and offered to share with me. I showed her my drink. We both sat and read for a while.

After about forty minutes she said, "My seat's getting sore and it's too hot out here," so we packed everything back up and moved inside where the thermostat is set at 79. She put on her sweater, sat on the couch and read her book.

Saunamobile

I foolishly left my car windows open last night. In my defense, it hasn't rained directly here in several days (although we could see the rain coming down all around us) and the humidity was way down and there were no clouds of consequence nearby. So I took the chance.

Somewhere around 11 p.m. I realized the sound I was hearing was not the air conditioner fan but rain pounding on the roof. I could see the full moon through the clouds even though it was pouring. So I ran out and put the windows up even though the interior was already wet. (I think I must have gotten out there fairly early in the storm because the seats were damp but not soaked through.)

When I went out to retrieve the mail at noon today I opened the driver's door and was stunned by a blast of intense humidity. I could hardly breathe as I sat down to insert the key to activate the windows. The buttons were so hot I couldn't maintain contact and had to press them intermittently. Even an hour later the car is noticeably more humid than the surrounding air.

On the bright side, a few minutes in the car makes the rest of the Florida day seem very comfortable.

Necrophages in the Shade

We had a rough weekend in terms of system collapses and infrastructure breakdowns. People are all O.K. but the air conditioning quit on Sunday and my brother's truck has developed an out-of-alignment condition that led on Saturday to a shredded front tire which was rust welded to the wheel so he was vehicleless until today when he could take it into the shop. He got back just as the HVAC guy was crawling into the attic.

So it was no real surprise to me to find four turkey vultures on the front lawn standing in a circle under a large shade tree. One had the red head of an adult but the other three were black-headed juveniles. They stood a little over two feet tall with three to three-and-a-half foot wingspans. They circled the tree and each other occasionally rising up into the lower branches although they would descend again almost immediately.

I don't think they eat air conditioners or pickup trucks but apparently they can sense the entropy around here and are hanging out in hopes something carbon-based is next.

The Fifth of July

Mom didn't get up until almost 1 p.m. today. This is because she stayed up to watch fireworks on TV last night.

First was Washington, D.C. which was marred by the prominent display of celebrity and some really lousy camera work on the fireworks themselves. The shot which was supposed to be primary was obscured by gun smoke from the cannon used fir the truncated 1812 Overture but that didn't stop the director from using it so we got to see the back scatter form fireworks going off on the other side of the cloud. Other cameras kept missing shots by focusing in on boats in the river or marching bands or just close-ups that were so close up the screen turned a uniform red.

Next was New York which was fine (although some of the fireworks were lost in the lights of the city itself) except for the decision by some idiot producer to accept the idea of some moron artistic designer to include an endless sparkler effect in the upper right corner drawing attention to the fact that this was "Live." Seriously?

The last was Boston, which really pushed Mom's endurance. Before it started, she went out front where we could hear, but not see, the city fireworks going off. The commercialism during the concert part was crass, but once the fireworks started Boston didn't do too bad.

Neighbors were shooting off small stuff all evening and Mom got as much out of that as she did from all the TV hoopla. Anyway, it was close to midnight by the time she went to bed. The good thing is, her exhaustion trumped her insomnia, at least for last night, and she stayed in bed.