They hooked me up and plugged me in. . . .

September 4, 2010

We have upgraded our cable.

This is not a decision that was easy to make. Neither Stephen or I watch a lot of television. In fact, there have been times in my life when we didn't have any cable at all.

I was fine with this.

The kids were not.

My mother has great cable at the nursing home, much better than ours, and she pays $99.00 a year.

We still were not enticed to upgrade our cable.

Our cable is basic, no-boxes-needed analog cable.

Some stations, like TLC for example, are not part of our package, but some fluke of atmospheric trickery allows us to get this station.

But all the reds on the screen come out as an LSD-induced psychedelic pink that makes you wish for downers.

And don't get me started on the snowy screen.

Cake Boss never intended for his Valentine's Day cakes to look like you're in the throes of an acid flashback, I'm sure.

The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back was Meredyth.

Quel suprise!

With her snazzy Roger's Bundle, Mer has better cable than we do.

And her siblings have noticed this.

But this wasn't the only factor in making the decision to upgrade.

I grew up in Geary.

Stop snickering.

We moved there when I was 9, in 1976, and at that time there were three stations we could get: ATV, CBC, and the French channel.

In retrospect, not having cable didn't damage my brother or me. We spent lots of time outdoors, we were busy with school, and I read a lot.

In hindsight, though, perhaps cable would have prevented me from reading books I shouldn't have been reading when I was 9. . .

Cable arrived when I was 16.

Woo.Hoo!

But again, I was rarely home. By then, I had a part time job at a convenience store in Oromocto, I was in highschool, so there was homework, and I had a boyfriend.

When he got a car, there was definitely no tv watching.

This is all a round about way of saying we upgraded cable because I wanted it, and because in the winter, on the odd occasion, I'd like to watch the CSI marathons on Spike, and see Cake Boss without the psychedelic pinks.

And the kids aren't unhappy either.

And now we have cable like Mer's.

Because the other concern I had was that my children would mutiny and start watching tv at their sister's place.

And who would be here to watch Survivor and America's Next Top Model with me if Em was at Mer's????

Its all about me.



Every Sunday evening, I go to the nursing home to visit my mother. I go Saturday's too, and have dinner with her.

Saturday's dinner menu is usually home-made baked beans and home-made brown and white bread, so I am there.

Home made bread. . .candy. . .its just like candy.

I am powerless to resist.

But Sundays are special because Mum and I spend the evening watching Antique's Roadshow and then All Creatures Great and Small.

I LOVE Antiques Roadshow. People lining up with chachka they were given by relatives, or things they bought at yardsales, each blatantly hoping the $3.00 pair of yardsale vases are really Tiffany and worth lots.

They were, in fact worth $600.00.

Othertimes, they showcase some of the ugliest stuff I've ever seen and it turns out to be valued at $120,000.

And sometimes the yardsale chachka is simply yardsale chachka.

My mother watches Antique Roadshow because she wants to know how much all the chachka in her basement is worth.

And there is chachka there, believe me.

She also like All Creatures Great and Small on Maine PBS, which she fondly refers to as Creatures.

Its a BBC production from the 1980s, set in the 1930s, based on the books by James Herriot, a pseudonym for James Alfred Wight, who was an English veterinary surgeon.

I don't mind it, but most weeks I end up in tears because of the fate that befell some creature or other.

Between Antiques and Creatures, Mum engages in her nighttime ablutions: she puts her dentures in their cup, filled with effervescent Polident, so they'll be clean in the morning.

She dons her pjs on, very carefully, because she doesn't want to mess up her hair, which she has "done" every two weeks. I then help her change from her sandals and pressure stockings into her slip on, rubber soled, no-slip shoes.

She calls my Dad to say goodnight, because he won't answer the phone during Creatures.

And then she is ready.

The problem is that my mother never really watches an entire episode of Creatures.

Mum gets her medication at around 7.30. Creatures airs at 8.00.

By 8.15, her eyes become a bit blurry, her jaw becomes somewhat slack, and you can see that her medication, especially her sleeping pill, is starting to take effect.

Her chin falls to her chest, and by 8.25 she has dozed off.

But she isn't fully asleep.

One night she scared the bejeezus out of me when she raised her head, like something from a horror film, and fixed one eye on me only to say,

"Emily's gonna be really pissed."

About what, I have never figured out.

Another night, she does the same thing, but instead asks me,

"How many shifts are you working this week?"

I answered her honestly,

"All of them!"

It can't be easy living in a nursing home. I mean, the staff are wonderful, she is getting excellent care and she's in a private room.

But she longs to go back home. And the reality is that she never will, because she needs so much care, and my father just can't do it on his own.

There was a period in the two years my mother was hospitalized, pre-nursing home, where she did go home for two weeks.

Neither of my parents were happy. My dad, after years of working nights, cannot get to sleep before 5.00 am.

My mother is getting up at 5.00 am, and couldn't really be left on her own in the house. She couldn't make a meal, get herself dressed, anything.

So my dad wasn't getting any sleep.

Mum wasn't getting the care she needed.

And the tempers were flaring.

Frequently.

I went out one Friday afternoon to give my mother a bath, and spent the non-bath time doing an intervention between the two of them.

The next morning I was at DECH.

Mum fell and broke her hip. Surgery immediately required.

The nursing home process began the following Monday.

Some days she is okay about being in the nursing home, and other days she most definitely is not.

Visiting on those days can sometimes be difficult.

Mum, during those days can sometimes be difficult.

For example, and had I not witnessed this with my own eyes I would have never believed it, she got into kicking brawl with another resident.

Both of them were in wheelchairs.

If I didn't laugh at it, I would have cried.

Laughing seems healthier.

Keith mentioned this morning, after reading several blog enteries, that he was rather pleased I had not been saying much about him.

This is not to say that I haven't been planning a Keith focused blog entry. There is so much to say about Keith.

Its just that his sisters supply more day-to-day opportunities.

A lot more.

Its the result of being competing drama queens.

About Keith. . . .

I rarely call him Keith. When he was born, he was actually Keith Van Every III.

This is not what I wanted to name him. . .I wanted to name him Alexander or Zachary.

But his father insisted. I just tell everyone he is named after my Uncle Keith, who passed away shortly before Keith was born.

Since I couldn't call him Alexander or Zachary, I did what any frustrated mother would do.

I gave him a nickname.

Pookie.

After Garfield's teddy bear.

I call him Pookie pretty much everywhere, not because of any sadistic leanings on my part.

Really!

Its because when you've called someone Pookie for almost 20 years it becomes rather difficult to stop.

Unlike the girls, Pookie is mellow. Calm, serene, he oozes vibe that says, "Hey, its all alright, man. No worries. Its all good.

He's channeling the vibes of some by-gone hippy.

I'm sure of it.

Not to say that he's always been so mellow.

When he was younger, he was also called "Captain Cautious." Why?

He was terrified of the SARS scare in Toronto.

He abjectly refused to go and visit his grandmother until I assured him that under no circumstances would he contract SARS.

He was first in line for the H1N1 vaccine.

And then he contracted H1N1.

Last evening, he comes into my room, in his THC induced head space, to ask me if we were going to survive Hurricane Earl.

Or should we relocate to the basement, buy candles and bottles of water, and take the can opener downstairs so we can survive on canned soup, beans and croutons.

When he was about 5 years old, we were at Wilmot Park, happily soaking up the sun and enjoying the pool.

Dark clouds rapidly emerged out of nowhere. The sun was obliterated. A rain storm was quickly approaching.

Everyone got their kids out of the pool.

I got Emily out of the pool.

Mer refused to get out of the pool (surprised?) and Keith, in a brief bout of non-cautious solidarity, also refused to get out of the pool.

Until I mentioned that thunder and lightening often accompany these storms.

And water conducts lightening.

And Keith jumped out of the pool like a scalded cat.

Eventually Mer came out, but not until she saw me starting to walk away.

She also once, at the age of four and a half, frolicked naked in the same pool.

Not one other child in the pool.

Just Mer. Naked as the day she was born.

Where were the rest of us, you ask?

At the park. Where Mer was supposed to be.

I was two seconds away from calling the police when I saw her bare butt wiggling at the cars driving by on the Woodstock Road.

Keith is the rock, the rational one, the one who eschews drama for common sense reasoning.

The reason.

Age, a job, social friends, pot.

I used to call him Pookie Pot Pie with Bum Dumplings.

Now I just think of him as Pot Pookie.

Title Lyrics: Cable TV by Weird Al Yankovic