Timing is Everything

My unwritten rule of blogging here is that I can only say things in fun, not in anger. That’s been increasingly hard to do lately, so I’ve shut the hell up. But there’s funny and then there’s funny.  I have some kind of cardiac problem. I’m getting a test today and another in 2 weeks and maybe somebody will believe me. Meanwhile, here’s some stuff that’s funny, but not really funny funny.

I’ve been out in the yard in the 90 degree heat and I wrenched my lower back. I come inside, tell TCG that I’m going to take the tomatoes out of the oven, turn it up, make a complicated meatloaf recipe, and then take a shower. So I do all but the last step. The kitchen is as hot as outside, but smells delicious. So, then I repor to TCG again, because if I don’t check in every hour or so he worries that I’m getting too much quality time with me and insists I listen to him ignore me….

UCC:  Meatloaf in oven. Heading into take a show-

TCG:  Come here and let me take your blood pressure. I’ve figured this new cuff out.

WISIMN:   Yup. He’s on send. No point in trying to send a message about how hot and tired I am and how much I need that shower.

He puts on the cuff, explaining that the machine will do shit that takes a long time.

TCG:  So, it does three measurements and then displays the average. Takes about 5 minutes. Have you done it that way?

UCC:  No. But I’m not supposed to ta-

TCG:     Blah blah? Repeated several times and ending in an interrogatory.

UCC:   Talk later, not during measurement.

Fucker kept it up the entire 5 minutes, which did things to the final reading that made it high.

I hear DOB’s microwave when I step into the shower. I take long showers. It’s still humming. I know what this means: the dreaded discombobulation about setting the clock and setting a cooking time.

UCC:   (Trying not to show my degree of pissed off and save face)  I can hear a buzz in by the bathroom,  can you find it?

TCG:  Walking back and nodding.

Time passes. Lots of time. Setting the clock on the microwave is a 3-step process a monkey could learn. DOB can’t learn.

This morning. Same story.

TCG:    I have to make some signs for DOB

UCC:   Meaning, I have to get off the computer?

TCG:   When you can.

WISIMH:  She can only break instructions into tiny pieces and can’t sew them together again. Even if you write it on a sign with letters three inches tall. And think! We’re off to our weekly sushi/too much alcohol lunch. All three of us. In   and for  salvation for my potential victims.

A True American Hero

Every Wednesday we go to lunch and get sushi and 2 martinis for UCC. All attempts to maintain a volley of conversational exchanges with DOB bounce off her like a tennis ball tossed at a brick wall, but without leaving a tiny tennis-ball scuff. During a single lunch, she will ask what is on various plates 4 or 5 times for each item. She has a short term memory like a leaking boat and you can’t bale fast enough to keep from slowly melting into the surface of the placid lake, leaving no imprint except ephemeral expanding ripples, soon gone. Here’s a sample:
UCC: What’s that?
TCG: Jicima. Wanna taste?
(crickets)
UCC: What’s that?
TCG: Still jicima.
UCC: What’s that?
DOB: No. I don’t know.
UCC: Either Jicima or a copy of your resume, last updated in the middle of the previous century.
DOB: I don’t know. No.
WISIMH: Letting my hearing aid batteries die with dignity before we embarked for lunch, and thus softly suffocating the sounds of reality like a pillow on a sleeping face. That was an inspired decision.
UCC: Nobody knows. No.

Later that same generation…
UCC and TCG have just come from the butcher and I’ve loaded the groceries but am still rooting around in the tailgate, going through the recyclable grocery bags to find the one I take out at our next stop at the Farmer’s Market because it has pouches to separate vegetables. I can’t find it. TCG is standing there watching me, clearly waiting to get my attention so he can speak.
UCC: I can’t find the canvas sack with the separate partitions. I want it to--
TCG: No. Did you get the receipt?
UCC: --take to the farmer’s market. And yes. I’m going to write the debit amount in my check---
TCG: No. The point is, did she give you the amount to write in your checkbook?
UCC: (waving receipt and checkbook) No, the point actually is that I was looking for the grocery sack. And didn’t find it. And yes, I have the debit amount on the receipt she gave me: $94.15.
TCG: Then what did she give me?
WISIMH: A rash? A one-way ticket to Crazytown? An enigma wrapped in a mystery, stuffed into a small canvas sack full of rocks, and tossed over a bridge into torrential waters? The latest excuse for failing the test of time?
UCC: I don’t know, dear.
TCG: (Looking at the copy of the receipt he retrieved from the grocery bag.) Did you write down $94.15?
UCC: (waving receipt and checkbook, where I’ve been doing just that as he could see if only he wasn’t intent on putting the car into reverse and leaving it there while we have this discussion, so the entire conversation is accompanied by the beep-beep of backup) Yes, dear.
TCG: Look! A squirrel! (or, that’s what I think I hear when he’s busy interrupting his own interruptions, but it may be that when he makes my ears bleed everything sounds like that.)
WISIMH: Your attention spans are as long as a red wool scarf sliced into femtometers and boiled, and don’t ask me why the scarf is red. It’s about concealing the bleeding from my ears. Lucille Ball once said: I’m not funny. What I am is brave. What she said.

Joy Riding Around

DOB and TCG are going out. For her to do some banking. She just had her visit from the home healthcare giver and had bath, and her wet hair is plastered to her almost bald scalp.

UCC Are you ok to go out with your head wet? It’s cold out.

DOB: Feeling her head, finding it wet, acting like a sleepwalker abruptly awoken. Saying, in surprise: I’d forgotten about that.

WISIMH: Of course you have, bless your little heart. It happened more than 2 minutes ago.

UCC: And do you want a hat?

DOB: Feeling her head, finding it wet, acting like a sleepwalker abruptly awoken. Saying, in surprise: I’d forgotten about that, or words to that effect.

WISIMH: And had you forgotten that the popularity of Jell-O peaked in the mid 1960s, and was often made by incorporating real and artificial dairy products. Had you forgotten that these days, gastronomic experts consider Jell-O déclassé. , the war on poverty, financial meltdown, the GWOT, or the madwoman screaming in the attic?

UCC: Blah, blah, hat?

And, accompanied by the sound of crickets from both DOB and TCG, I got my gardening hat and handed it to her, but finding her too dumbfounded to take it, putting it on her fucking head.

UCC: … there ya go.

Much huffing ensues as the party departs from the front door.

Two minutes pass.

My cell phone rings.

UCC: Yellow.

Pause, sound of fumbling, hang up.

Cell phone rings.

UCC: YELLOW!

TCG: …know if you could you go into Mother’s room....

WISIMH: Blah, blah, could YOU provide a bit more information? For example: relating the funny story about, say, WHY the fuck I should I go into DOB’s room? Is there an Improvised Explosive Device waiting to send me to Allah?
Sadly, I understand, you are incapable of using too many words at once. You are running out of your words. Increasingly, you are relying on me to supply the fucking context you no longer can muster. What happens when you begin to run out of thoughts, in addition to running out of words to express them?

UCC: In breathless anticipation: Ok, I’m there.

TCG: Can you get her phone on the table?

WISIMH: I’ll buy a clue, Alex. Which of the three tables in DOB’s room?

(Crickets)

UCC: Got it! (on the third table, honestly.)

TCG: Can you bring it to us?

UCC: OK, I’ll wait ‘til I hear the driveway alarm bell.

TCG: We’re here. We haven’t left yet.

WISIMH – although I may have said aloud: What the fuck?

Sushi Wednesday

Our weekly outing as a family. Here's a sample of the conversation driving to the restaurant.

TCG: There’s one of those trees from the south… you know… marigold?
UCC: Magnol-
TCG: Magnolia! Is this the street where we turn?
UCC: No, I think it’s past that light ahea-
TCG: And there’s more of that funny orange bougainvillea that Mother loves.
DOB: Ugh! Look at that car. What a horrible shade of blue.

Something about bright car colors aggravates her, but it’s usually taxicab-yellow.

TCG: Is this the turn?

Time passes like cold molasses dripping down a tree in Vermont, in February. When I regain consciousness, we’re at the restaurant.

DOB: What’s that?
UCC: Crunchy tuna roll
DOB: What’s this?
UCC: That’s the teriyaki chicken bowl you ordered. Is it good?
DOB: Yes. No. Not the broccoli. Or the carrots. Are you using that?

Pointing to my tiny saucer I’m using for dipping sushi in soy sauce and ignoring her empty saucer adjacent. Not waiting for my answer, she begins stacking her broccoli on it. Not uneaten broccoli, mind you. She can’t see what she’s eating, so she shovels amazingly large bites into her mouth and begins to pre-chew – pre gum actually – things. Then she is able to remove things too al dente (being nolo dente herself) by rummaging around inside her mouth with a finger, pinching lumpy things dripping in saliva daintily out, and placing them carefully on the reject pile in my soy sauce saucer. Carrots, she can mostly see, so they’re stacked, mostly unmasticated, among the broccoli.

DOB: What is that?
UCC: It’s my crunchy tuna roll.
DOB: What’s in it.
UCC: Crunchy tuna mostly.
WISIMH: But it also has a bit of wasabi and sesame seeds, and the barest hint of bitter regret at the breakdown in social discourse. When I eat it, the crunch makes a barely audible cri de coeur that sounds like faint mourning for all the lost opportunities for assisted suicide.

DOB: Oh, more broccoli. I can’t chew broccoli, even though I’m getting a new tooth. Right here, see?
WISIMH: Jesus Christ cosigning on a foreclosed mortgage, we don’t need to fucking see it every time you eat.
UCC: Yes, I see your new tooth. What is that? (pointing at her teriyaki bowl)

Blank look. Like the expression on the face of a dishrag crumpled in a corner of the sink. In fact, with miscellaneous peices of chicken and rice stuck to her chin and the front of her shirt, very much like a dishrag.

UCC: It’s your teriyaki chicken bowl. Is it good?
WISIMH: You’ve got some stupid on your face, right there, in the corner of your mouth. No other side.

Time Travel

DOB: Time keeps going backward!

UCC: On you microwave. Yes. That's how it works when you're cooking something in the microwave, right? Wait. There's nothing in the microwave.

DOB: I have spent 30 minutes trying to set the time, but the time keeps going backwards.

WISIMH: Jesus Christ in a spaceship! Do you have more than 2 brain cells that You could rub together to make any heat?

UCC: So. Umm, do you have the directions for setting the microwave clock?

DOB: Yep, but they don't work.

WISIMH: That's ok, neither do my superpowers in special education, my ability to see in the dark, or my ability to make time run backwards, but what the he'll.

UCC: (Following the seemingly idiot-proof 3-step instructions. Sucessfully!)
Well, wadda ya know, time has stopped running backwards. And the microwave is not cooking air.

DOB: Fine, but now it is standing still. It says 10:44. If it stays that way, so be it.

UCC: Well. It will stay that way for a minute. Most working clocks will advance about a minute per minute.

WISIMH: Except when I converse with you. Time slows to a glacial creep when one attempts to communicate with you.

There follows about a hundred years of profound silence as we watch the microwave digital display intently. Then, eureka! 10.45!

DOB: Looks like it may be working. For now.

UCC: Glad I could help.

Deja What Now?

Someday we'll look back on this and laugh, and burst into tears, and choke up, and break down into hysterical, uncontrolable maniacal laughter.

Solitude

Women are expected to create the entire domestic space. When men are left alone, they fall apart. Cats wonder the halls mournfully