CHRISTMAS FUN

There is something about Christmas that makes me realize my mortality. Unlike Thanksgiving I find that at ChristmasI am thinking more and more of people who are no longer with us. ( I guess the fact that The Man's daughter died 2 weeks ago might be the reason for this. ).  I am thinking more of Christmas' past and the joy that I remember as a child. When I was in my late teens and 20's Christmas lost its sparkle. I was no l longer a child and there weren't any children in my life. (Although I was teaching Kindergarten so that did help keep some of the spirit alive.)  Once I had my own children the magic returned full force. That was the BEST !  Even if I was totally exhausted preparing and wrapping, cooking and cleaning, decorating the yard and house, it was magical !!!  Christmas morning was as exciting to me as it was to the kids.  

Then the kids grew up and went away to college to start their own lives.  Suddenly Christmas fell flat once again.  That didn't last long before we entered into the greatest Christmas' of all.  Christmas with GRAND KIDS !!!!  I now have the best of all worlds.  Shopping WITH my grand kids is the best fun ever.  I have been blessed to have had the opportunity the last couple of years to shop with my 3 grand kids who live in Pompano. Sadly this year we didn't get to do this.  Time and age got in the way.  Not only my age but the kids are getting older and have so many things on their calendars. 

 This year I DID get to take my grandson, Finn shopping for gifts for his family. We were set to go last week but he came down with some sort of bug so we put it off till 2 days before Christmas.  The traffic was horrific but we weren't going far.  No driving on highways and no crazy parking lots.  Finn decided we would go to our local Walmart which I expected to be a circus. Luckily I think every one decided to shop at Target so Walmart wasn't too bad at all.   We got a great parking spot, a cart that had all 4 wheels working and checkout lines that weren't three miles long.   Finn brought his list and we hit the store with a mission . .. . I can not tell you how many times we walked from one end of the store to the other.  Every time we got to one end for something the next thing on his list was at the other end of the store.  I think I have qualified for running a half marathon. We bought everything on the list and then some.  As we were cutting across the store for the five thousandth time we cut through an aisle full of suitcases.  Finn came to a screeching halt and announced that a suitcase was the PERFECT gift for his mom.   (My daughter has apparently been using an old suitcase that embarrasses the entire family every time they travel. ) So we started looking at the selection before us.  Do you know HOW MUCH a freaking suitcase costs ?    Holy cow !!   But we found one that we both fell in love with because we knew his mom would love it.  Finn was concerned that he only had $20 so we agreed that he would give me his twenty and I would pay for the rest. (I definitely do not come out ahead on these shopping trips.)  We found gifts for the rest of the family, checked out in record time and headed back to my house with one stop at Mc Donalds to re fuel the boy so he would have the energy to wrap. 

Have you ever tried to wrap a suitcase ?   Finn and I decided that this was a job for a large garbage bag with a bow.  Only I didn't have any large garbage bags so I ended up sitting on the floor wrapping the suitcase while he wrapped all his other gifts. On the way home to his house his mom called to ask if I wanted her to stop at my house to pick up Finn on her way home.  We told her we were almost at her home and would meet her there.  Finn now was able to sneak his gifts into the house and hide them before anyone returned home.  

Christmas Day arrived and my daughter LOVED her gift from Finn.  As did his sister and his dad.  They hosted a Christmas feast for me and Uncle Kent and his kids.  It was a wonderful day!  I brought leftovers home to The Man and all was well with the world.  (The Man did not want to be around the kids for fear of picking up any germs.) 

As I crawled into bed Christmas night I tried to figure out why I was so tired.  Then I remembered all those Christmas' when I was a kid and my mom went all out cooking, wrapping gifts AND baking all sorts wonderful cookies. (This is the first year I did not bake cookies.)  I thought of when my family was growing up and Husband and I hosted Aunts, Uncles and cousins for the holidays.  Good times ! 

But today I am still tired.  Guess I'm getting old. 

LU LU "ISIMS"

 Do you happen to remember my cousin Lu Lu ?  She is my cross to bare but she also provides so many good laughs.  To refresh your memory, Lu Lu is 94 years old. She cannot remember that and asks me every time I see her, "How old am I?"  When I tell her she is 94 she either starts planning her 95th birthday party or she starts listing all her ailments. "I never had pain in my legs before! Why do I have it now?"  We then discuss the fact that being her age comes with a lot of aches and pains which are all normal.  She also wonders why she can't remember things. Again I explain that she has 94 years worth of "stuff" in her head. It is not surprising she can't remember much.   Of course the few memories that she does have are shared with me EVERY time I see her.  Things like "When I was a Girl Scout I walked all over the neighborhood knocking on doors.  Cookies were fifty cents a box . . .."  There are so many things that I have heard a thousand times but it makes her happy to talk about them.

And then there are the REALLY crazy things that she comes up with.  Two weeks ago I got a phone call from her at 2:48 in the morning.  Thankfully I had my phone turned off. When I did get up I called her to see if everything was OK.  She had no idea that she had called me. She often mistakes the phone for the TV remote so anything can happen.  When she does call me I can expect the same introduction to the call.           My phone rings, having caller ID I know who it is,  I answer by saying, "Hello Lucile, how are you doing?"   And the answer EVERY time is, " Cathie ??? Did you call me?"   I play along and say, "Sure".  (It's just easier).  And then we get down to the reason for the call.  The call from 2 weeks ago was to tell me she is having an operation to take the bone out of her hip.  She has a lot of pain so the doctor is going to take out her hip bone because it is pressing on her bladder.  My response is, "Really!"  We continue to discuss her up coming surgery. As soon as I can get off the phone I call Lu Lu's aide to ask what is going on?  After the aide stopped laughing she told me she had taken Lu to the DENTIST because she wanted him to pull a tooth that was bothering her. Somehow or other a pulled tooth became the removal of her hip bone.   

Then today I got a call . . . "Cathie ???  Did. you call me?"     That call was to tell me she is having her toe cut off.  The doctor said it was no good so he was going to cut it off !!!  OK,  we entertain the toe surgery for a while and then she hangs up.   Once again I call the aide who is now rolling on the floor.  Lucille has a hang nail on her big toe.  The doctor told her he will fix the toe nail as soon as the infection is taken care of. He prescribed an antibiotic and will see her again next week.  

I swear to you I am not making any of this stuff up.  Every phone call is an adventure and I never know what the crisis of the day will be.  I do keep laughing and PRAYING that I do not become a cousin LuLu  when I get really old.  At this rate I'll probably die before Lu. 

I NEED TO BUY A RAKE. !

 Of all the things I hated about owning a house the thing at the top of the list was raking leaves.  I HATED to rake all those miserable leaves each autumn.  Our yard was full of big, tall oak trees so each year, come September the acorns and leaves started to fall.  Add to that the pine trees dropping needles and you can only imagine what a chore it was to clean up the front yard.  (I never raked the back yard because the leaves would cover the dirt so the yard looked better with leaves on it.)  The reason we had bought our house back in 1970 was because it had all those wonderful trees on the property.  Little did we think about raking leaves.  Having been raised in NYC neither husband nor I gave a thought to the work that would await us each fall.  

Once we moved to Florida I said good bye to raking leaves and shoveling snow. Shoveling snow was probably the second thing I hated about owning a home.  Now in Florida we have landscapers to rake and blow palm fronds and any leaves that might be found.  The closest I ever came to raking was when we had our Florida house with a pool in the back yard.  The pool was not covered so anything that fell from the sky landed in the pool and I had to skim it off each day.  NO Problem !  A very small price to pay for living in Paradise.  Husband's nemesis was the palm tree just outside our back yard fence.  Every year it would grow these huge bunches of seeds. (Think of a bunch of tiny grapes on their vine.) That's what would grow from the palm tree. We would watch these pods grow bigger and bigger until they would explode and drop into the pool.  It was a daily chore to get them off the surface of the pool.   Because I had done 90 % of the leaf raking in NY because husband worked 2 jobs the pod collecting fell to him. He would curse that damn tree every day!

But now husband and the big house are gone and so is the chore of raking.  Or so I thought.  We have LOTS of trees around our condo but they are all taken care of by the landscapers.  We are responsible for anything inside our screened in lanai, the gardeners take care of everything outside the lanai.  I do happen to have 2 plants in the lanai that drop their flowers all year round.  If I leave those flowers on the ground they stain the floor of the lanai so each week I wash them off with my hose.  That's it for my gardening!

Life is good.  I live in Florida and don't have any fights with Mother Nature.  

Except . . .    Our community is filled with oak trees.  All the streets are named after different oak trees. These oak trees do not have the leaves and acorns like the oak trees up north.  These oak trees have small slender leaves that fall ALL YEAR LONG !!! I'm serious . . .  there is no season with these trees. They don't loose all their leaves at once but instead they shed and grow at the same time.  It is the strangest thing I have ever seen.  The trees aren't tall and slender but rather shorter and fuller than a normal oak.  Thankfully we do have a great landscaping service in the community and they keep the grass trimmed and the leaves swept.  

In our community we also have assigned parking spots.  As fate would have it The Man has the spot on one side of a large "oak" tree and I have the spot on the other side of the tree.  Our cars a constantly covered in leaves and bird droppings.  We spend a lot of money at the car wash.  

This week The Man was in the hospital for 4 days because his lungs were filling with Co2, (A normal person breathes in air and the our body takes the oxygen out of the air to fuel our blood and organs. We then breathe out the Co2 so that we don'e asphyxiate ourselves. The Man has terrible COPD so his lungs don't work well at getting rid of the Co2.  Instead it collects inches lungs and slowly asphyxiates him.)  Luckily I realized something was very wrong and got him to the ER on Saturday.  He got great care and came home on Wednesday afternoon like a new man.  (He was put on a non-invasive ventilator for 2 days so his lungs got cleaned out.).  

Anyway . . .  It was a busy couple of days running back and forth to the hospital so when I got home on Thursday from running some chores I parked my car, locked it up and didn't get into it again until this afternoon when I went out to go to 4:00 mass.  I opened my car door and out blew and ton of leaves. There were leaves on the seats, floor and dashboard. I stood there looking at the mess and thought to myself someone must be playing a prank on me.  But who?  And how would they get into my car which was locked?  And then I looked UP .   Dumb ass me had left the sun roof OPEN.   I had been such a beautiful day on Thursday I had opened the windows and sun roof open to enjoy the balmy breezes.  When I got home I shut the windows but never thought about the sun roof.   So there my car sat for 2 days, UNDER THE TREE that happily dropped leaves right down into my car.  

Freaking tree !!!  I need to buy a rake.  

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

 Newspapers . . .  I enjoy reading the newspaper.  In Michigan it is the Escanaba Daily Press, in Florida we have the Palm Beach Post.  These 2 papers are at total opposite ends of the political spectrum but they never fail to entertain me.  I love reading the headlines. "Telescope reveals growth of primordial black hole"! How can you resist reading that article?  It makes me think of "Jurassic Park", "Planet of the Apes" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" all rolled into one.  I think it's the word "primordial" that catches my interest. 

Then we have the totally idiotic headlines that catch my eye because they sound so dumb. "Snow predictions vary from latitude, altitude" . . .  well DUH !!  I don't expect much snow in South Florida but I would expect Nome, Alaska to be covered in snow this winter.  Likewise this intelligent article would explain why there is usually snow on the tops of tall mountains but not so much in the desert.  I really have yet to figure out how that article got into the paper. Do they really think we are all THAT stupid?  I guess that particular news worthy story was included in the paper because they had nothing else to print. (The election is over so there is nothing to talk about?)

Today as I sat reading the paper an article on the front page of the "Local" section of the newspaper caught my eye.  " 81-year-old woman dies in wrong-way crash on road near Boca Raton Airport".  The headline was in large, bold print so you really couldn't miss it.  The "81-year-old WOMAN" was what caught my eye. Being just a few months shy of 80 I am very conscious of news stories about "Elderly" folks and the crazy things they do.  I often wonder if I am too old to be driving so when I see a story like this one I have to read it to see if I see myself in any part of it.  

I ABSOLUTELY DID !!

Let me explain . . .   The headline gave me the impression that the woman was driving.  This was not the case at all. The article goes on to say that the crash killed the woman and left her 80-year-old husband with life-threatening injuries.  It also said that the husband was driving. Let me repeat that incase you missed my point . . .  THE HUSBAND WAS DRIVING !!!!!   Now that makes much more sense. I can now picture what really happened.

It is 2:30 in the afternoon and Mr. & Mrs. XYZ are driving home from making a Costco run. There is only the 2 of them but they still shop at Costco because that is their weekly day out where they will wander aimlessly through the store while blocking the aisles with their shopping cart.  Once they finish shopping they get a hot dog and soda, (all for a dollar twenty five) and then pack the car and head home.  Wife lets husband drive because, even though he can't see well and really doesn't focus on the task at hand, he needs to feel like a man and be "in-charge".  It's the middle of the day, the sun is out, the traffic is light, what could go wrong.  As they approach the turn onto the busier road up ahead husband is distracted and makes the left turn into the north bound lanes of traffic. Unfortunately he is driving south !  It is at this point that I see myself.  I am yelling, "Stop, stop, you're going the wrong way." Being the rocket scientist that he is, husband responds with, "No I'm not !  I'm going the right way!" , completely missing the point that even though he is indeed traveling the correct direction he is doing so in the wrong lanes.  Wife is now panicked by the oncoming traffic and is screaming at husband who is still oblivious that he is doing something WRONG !  

I know The Wife went directly to Heaven for putting up with The Man for all those years.  Her final thoughts probably were, "You dumb ass, mother jumping @#$^&%#$%&#$%^$# !  I knew you were going to get me killed some day!"

May she finally rest in peace.  I hope to meet her if and when I get to Heaven.  We will have A LOT of stories to share. 

MUFFLED, MUMBLING, MASKED MAN

I am SO tired !  When I am tired it takes all my energy to remain calm when dealing with "4M" (aka The Man). On a good day he drains my strength but this past month I have been exhausted for some unknown reason so I am always dragging my butt.  I am probably so tired because of all the "happy drugs" I am taking to remain calm.  Calm is good, catatonic is something else.  But that's a blog for another day.

Back to "4M".   I have mentioned in previous blogs that The Man and I are both blessed with having to wear sleep apnea head gear.  It drives me NUTS !!!!!  I hate the damn mask and hose. I wake up multiple times a night with the mask half off and/or the hose wrapped around my neck. Sleep apnea will not be the cause of my death but the mask and hose will!  It is a royal pain in the arse !

The Man on the other hand has no trouble at all sleeping with his mask and hose.  His machine is actually a BiPap machine.  It forces air into his lungs to push the excess Co2 out. According to The Man it makes him fall asleep instantly and deeply as soon as he puts it on.  This is a wonderful thing for him and I am very happy that it helps him to feel so good.  Unfortunately once he puts his mask on he thinks he can still carry on a conversation with me. 

Let me set the stage for you . . . It's 11 PM at night and I am now totally wiped out from a long day of doing nothing.  "4M" and I have had dinner, moved to the couch to watch some TV, taken showers and gotten ready for bed.  I drag my butt into the bedroom, brush my teeth, set up my machine, take my pills, turn on the fan, turn down the AC so I can sleep and then crawl into bed.  "4M" and I have spent the ENTIRE day together but it is NOW when The Man decides he wants to chat!  

This happens EVERY night so I stall getting into bed by sitting on the bed to put on lotion, make small talk, whatever, to see if he has anything he wants to chat about.  I get NOTHING because his focus is still on the TV.  As soon as I crawl into the bed and take out my hearing aids . . . THAT . . . is when he decides he has to tell me something crucial to the future of the universe.  I take off my mask, put in my ears and ask, "WHAT?"  He then tells me it's not important, we can talk about it in the morning.  I take out my hearing aids, put my mask back on, lie down and attempt to get comfortable.  It is at this point that "4M" decides to put on his mask and turn off the TV.   I think Ahhhhhhhh, sleep at last.   NOT !!!!!

The room is dark, my ears are out and my mask is on so I can hear virtually nothing . . .  except somewhere in the distance I hear mumbling coming from the other side of the bed. If I don't respond I get a poke and a question which I assume is saying, "Did you hear me?"    

Now in the past I have been very patient with this nightly routine but I have reached the limit of my patience.  The response "4M" now gets is me pulling off my mask and shouting, "I CAN'T HEAR YOU WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR MASK ON !!!!!!!!!"  Which naturally sends him into a snit because I am pissed.  

So much for a good nights sleep when my blood pressure is now up to on thousand !

And yet I guarantee that tonight and every night until I murder him the game will continue.  

HELP ! I AM STUCK !

 I kid you not,   I am quite, literally STUCK !  The Man is at rehab and I am alone in the house and stuck in my electric recliner.  (I'll give you a moment to stop laughing)

I guess it all started last night when I could NOT fall asleep. I tossed and turned and flopped around in the bed like a beached whale.  I finally gave up at around 2 AM and came out to the living room where I made a cup of tea, got out my iPad and flopped down in my recliner. ( My recliner happens to be my favorite spot in the Florida condo. I have the lovely parlor up in Michigan where I can escape and I have my electric recliner here in Florida.)  Life is good.  

I spent the next three hours sitting the dark playing games on the iPad until I thought I might finally be able to sleep, which I did until 9 AM. Since then I have been doing laundry, changing sheets on the bed, puttering in the kitchen and just cleaning up the place.  The Man left for rehab a little after 10, (for his 11 o'clock session that is less than 5 minutes away. I don't ask.)  After he left I made some breakfast and headed to my recliner with coffee in hand and the newspaper to read.  I got sidetracked half way to the chair when I saw my computer and decided to check my mail. THAT WAS A HUGE MISTAKE. Why is it that just as I get comfortable with the structure of a website they up and change everything.  All I wanted to do was see if any of the 57 e-mails were anything important.  Low and behold Outlook had changed EVERYTHING since I last checked my mail and I now had to log in which meant I had to get up to get my password book. (The chair was functioning fine. It vibrated, produced heat on my back and went up and down just like it is supposed to.)  Naturally I had no idea where I left my password book so that took some searching but I. finally found it and went back to my chair to continue fighting the computer. That was a total bust so I closed up the computer and decided to read the paper. What could go wrong !?  I had my coffee, a piece of banana bread that I had baked last night, (that refused to cook in the middle), and the news paper. Ahhhhhhhhhh comfy at last!    WRONG !!!  I didn't have my glasses so I couldn't see. 

OK , , , one last time I'll get up, get my glasses, return to the chair and relax for an hour before The Man gets back and decides he needs me to help him do something.  I picked up the remote for the chair, pressed the button to lower my feet so I could get up and NOTHING . . . .    The chair wasn't moving so neither was I.  

Because I had tipped the chair as far back as it would go I was in a semi prone position with gravity working against me.  The chair and I were bonded together and I was going to be stuck here a while.  Fortunately I have pretty good upper body strength. Unfortunately the rest of my body sinks like a rock so that once it is in any position it takes an act of God and a 20 tone crane to get me to move. 

It only took me about 10 minutes to wiggle myself up and out of the chair. (I might as well have been climbing Mt. Everest), but I did finally make it out.  Sure enough when I looked under the chair, (that was another Herculean task) I saw that the power cord had pulled loose from the chair. 

So now I am back in the chair, vibrating and baking and I am NOT getting up for anything. 

 Please don't call because I left my. phone in the kitchen. 

MY TURN

You may have noticed that most of my blogs are written about the men in my life.  First there was Husband and all the dumb things he did.  Now there is "The Man" who provides me with an endless stream of material to write about.  But every now and then I do something so dumb that I need to be fair and let the world know what an idiot I can be.

It all started when I was still in MI wanting to send some goodies to my oldest grand daughter who is now in her second year of college.  She attends LSU and is doing an amazing job on her way to a career in engineering. (She is defiantly her parents child with none of her grandmother's stupidity in her.) ANYWAY . . .  I decided to go on Amazon to see what they had in the way of "Goodie Boxes". I found exactly what I was looking for, a whole box full of snacks.  It was the perfect gift to surprise the college student.   I quickly ordered it so it would get to her that week. 

Fast forward two and a half weeks and I still had not gotten a text from my grand daughter thanking me for her package.  This is unusual because she ALWAYS send a text when she hears from me.  I happened to be talking to her dad so I asked if his daughter had said anything about getting a package from me.  He didn't think so but then called her and asked.  She told him she had not received anything.  I couldn't understand what had happened because I had gotten a text from Amazon showing a picture of the package sitting outside her door. At least that's what I THOUGHT I saw. Upon closer scrutiny I realized the door in the picture was MY DOOR IN FLORIDA !  I had been in such a hurry to get the package sent that I didn't catch the address I was sending it to.  DUH!  DUH!  AND  DUH!    I was feeling quite stupid! 

But it gets even better !

I still wanted to get those snacks to my college girl so I went back on Amazon and re-ordered the same item but this time I was very careful of the address where it was being sent.  (Meanwhile the first box was sitting outside my FL condo for a couple of weeks getting rained on almost every day.  It was quite the mess when my daughter went over to pick it up.) Sure enough 2 days later I got a text from Louisiana thanking me for all the wonderful snacks.

But it doesn't end there.

About a week ago I put in an Amazon order for myself. I needed some pecans to snack on, a pair of Arthritis gloves, (my hands are very sore these days), and a bottle of special mouth wash. (I have a tooth that will be pulled in 3 weeks and the oxide mouth wash is keeping it from hurting.)  I sort of forgot about the things I ordered and vaguely remembered getting a note from Amazon saying the order was running late.   Fast forward to 2 days ago when I get a FACE TIME call from my college student. It is not unusual for her to call but a face time call is rare.  When I answered she was laughing, which is also not unusual. She went on to tell me that she had gotten a box that morning addressed to her. When she opened it she was confused by the contents.  There was a bag of pecans, a pair of arthritis gloves and a bottle of mouthwash.  Some how she knew right away what her goofy grandmother had done.   It seems that because she was the last person I had sent something from Amazon they had her LSU address in the "ship to" box on the order page.  Dummy me never checked on the address when I put in my order so instead of coming to me in FL it went to my grand daughter in LA.  

We both had an extremely good laugh and thoroughly enjoyed our face time chat. I promised her I would REALLY check all the information when I order anything from Amazon. I also told her to enjoy the pecans and just bring the other 2 items home with her at Christmas. She can wrap them up and give them to me as a gift.  

At this rate I probably won't remember any of this and will be totally surprised and delighted that my grand daughter knew EXACTLY what I needed.