New topic

This is completely different than earlier posts but this is a story that bears telling. I was waiting to meet a friend the other day and it was drizzling outside. Not any quantity of rain that would cause you to consider your plans, but enough to make walking any distance not fun.
A car pulled up and a woman stepped out. She walked into the restaurant and I barely took note of her. What I did notice was that when she emerged again from the place with her bag full of take out food the car once again returned. But wait! He just drove past her. What the?! So then I took note. My nose was a little out of joint for this woman with a significant other that rude. Before I could finish my thought though, he pulled back around the corner from whence he had disappeared. This time driving in the opposite direction! That's when I realized, he had pulled the car away to make a u-turn! He turned the car around so that his wife wouldn't have to walk to the far side of the car in the misty weather! My heart just melted and I had to say something to the woman! "Did he just turn around so you don't have to walk in the rain?!?" she turned and smiled and said "Yeah, he's pretty great like that. That's why I married him."
I was just blown away by the effortless thoughtfulness of that moment. A simple little thing seemed grander than a hundred flowers, more meaningful than soliloquy. I decided to take a lesson from that moment. Our love can be found in the moments we aren't paying attention. When you do for the person you love, because it seems the only thing and you wouldn't think to do otherwise.

Toenails are deeeeesgusting!!!

"How's your psyche doing?" Grandma asks. I sense a hidden question. I look inquiringly in response, should I answer? What am I walking into here? Then in the wake comes the real question; "Are you in the mood to trim my toenails?" My stomach lurches and I feel a little faint. My psyche screams noooooooooo! I am not, nor will I ever be in a toenail trimming mood! What kind of question is that?!? Can I get out of this? Excuses, excuses, damnit I need an excuse! My brain fails me and I acquiesce. "Where are the clippers?" The final words of a dying psyche.

Fresh beer, not that fresh!

Listening to grandma explain the concept of growlers. She has about a half a dozen jugs in the garage that I had offered to take back. No, she says, if we just take them back then we loose the money we originally paid to buy the jugs with the beer in them. If we exchange them for new jugs with beer in them then we don't have to pay again, you see. Yes, this is the concept...but right now you have a whole box full of jugs taking up space in your garage, can I get them out of here? She want to call the neighbor and see if, well 20 minutes later after going through a whole saga about it, she is on the phone with the neighbor and goes through the whole story again with the neighbor. The part of the story that almost makes me snarf coffee is this line of the explanation, "I think when you get beer in those bottles that beer is fresh, like they made it this morning or this week."
I know beer from the local microbrew is fresh, I doubt that it is that fresh. That's just bread water....

Fathers day that wasn't

Father's day is this weekend and grandma and I were discussing this upcoming event. I had thought there was going to be a motorcycle rally here in Morgantown, so I called home to invite the parents up here for a visit and a bit of biker world looky-loo.Turns out that that isn't happening until next month, but now I've put the suggestion in the air that my parents might be able to come for a visit. Grandma is on that like a rotty with a bone! Sh emails them both the next day to suggest that either they can come for a father's day visit or we could meet them half way. Which I admit would be nice, I've been away from home for the bulk of the past 2 months and I wouldn't mind at all seeing them, however I know there is no way to visit with them over the noise of grandma complaining about how no one in her HUGE family comes to visit or calls or writes or sends carrier pigeons. When this topic comes up I have to swallow blood for all of the tongue biting I do to hold back comments about how she spends her time when people do visit (namely, she complains about all of the people not present).

I made the mistake earlier in the week of talking to her a bit about some news a family member had shared earlier in the year. It wasn't huge news like a wedding or a birth, but you'd have thought I told her one of our cousins had been elected to the white house for all the shock that she had NEVER heard of this until now. "I sometimes feel like the ugly duckling," she says, "I'm just not anyone's favorite grandma." My heart sinks just before my blood pressure shoots through the roof. Aw, how sad this is that she feels so rejected... Wait a second! This is another guilt trip! And it's not even my guilt!!!

Camera parts

So grandma told me weeks ago that her camera was broken. She hasn't taken a single photo since her first hospital stay (early January). Now anyone who knows my grandma knows that this just is not conceivable. She once took a photo of the bloody nose she got on vacation. I mean, she photographs everything! She said that something went wrong with it so someone offered to take a look at it and then dropped it on the floor. After that another person was removing the "chip" and broke the door on the bottom of the camera off, but they just clipped it back in place instead of telling her that it was broken.
Cut to last Friday she pulls a Best Buy ad out of her purse with an advertised price of $249 (after rebate) for an Olympus Tough something or other. A camera waterproof to 33ft and built to withstand drops of 5'. It was one of 3 cameras in the flyer. Of those three it was the most affordable, so I thought maybe the damage done to the last camera made her want to buy a bulletproof camera. We get to talking about the features and she says that she liked that one because it is impossible to buy a camera these days without it doing a million other things like going on the internet and making phone calls. What? I guess she is referring to my phone which is the only camera I brought with me on this trip. So I inform her that there are plenty of "plain" digital cameras out there that are less expensive than the one she was looking at and I'd be happy to show her some if she wants. Well, ok, she says. So I show her a few options from Fujifilm and Olympus, all under $100, and she asks again if it does all of the other things? I say no, and she seems surprised by that.
I didn't want to force a decision out of her, so I let it drop. On Sunday she mentions that she might want to buy that camera I showed her, so I pull it up again and leave her to read the user reviews which I had already skimmed through. I said if she wants to look at another model, let me know and I'll find something else for her to consider.
After reading the reviews, she was pleased with that and asked if it will use the same "chip" as her old camera. She said her son-in-law bought her 2 chips last time she went to visit and she wanted to be sure to use them up. I let slide that obvious misconception. Well, I can take a look. So I fetched her old camera and gently slide out the panel where her memory card was. Surprise, the door wasn't broken. I show that to grandma and she shrugs with no explanation. I inform her of the bad news that the xD cards won't work in this new camera but they are incredibly cheap to buy! I show her a $5 SD that will hold 1600 photos. Sounds good. She tells me to order the camera and just one chip. So I do.
At lunch, she tells me that she will probably just keep using her old camera until she uses up those old chips and then switch to the new camera. Wait. Wha....what?!? It works?? I am sooo confused!

Epiphany

I realized today that when she thinks about her family, grandma laments all the things we are not instead of loving all that we are. That is hard to feel good about.

Gerbil theory of decision making

Grandma is trying to decide how and when to go back to South Carolina for a visit. One uncle is driving down there on the 16th, another uncle is flying in around the 21st and I've offered to help any way I can. I'll drive part of the way or all the way or caravan behind her or take her to Baltimore to ride along with an uncle or she could fly and rent a car. The options are numbered and many. Which brings to mind a story.
When my sister and I were young, we had a dog named Abby (short for Abricadabera) two cats named Hocus and Pocus and a gerbil named Midnight (?). One day the gerbil got out of his cage and the cats were having a gay ol' time chasing that poor gerbil in circles around the den. Dad walks in to find the situation and decides to put a stop to it before the cats catch the exhausted rodent. So he watches them go round and round to judge speed and likely trajectory and just as he's figured it out, he puts his foot out to stop the gerbil so it can be scooped up and safely returned to it's cedar lined cage. Unfortunately the gerbil zigged when he should  have zagged and dad put his foot right down on top of that darned gerbil! So now, when my mind is running in circles weighing options, my mind always replays the cartoon of that scene in my head and I think to myself, "If I choose this option, am I putting my foot down in front of the gerbil or on the gerbil?"

I'm not exactly Machiavelli, but it works for me.