Vacation Countdown: 12 Days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I picked an alternative color for the living room.
A deep, rich chocolate brown.
Making you feel, when you're in the living room, that you're being enveloped by a 90% cocoa bar of Lindt chocolate.
The first coat was on the wall yesterday, done while I was napping in an attempt to recover some sanity from the morning's mayhem.
I. So. Wish. I. Had. My. Camera.
In fact, I think I'll call Black's right now and see if they can give me an update on my little camera's status.
Of course, it isn't ready yet.
It better be before we go on vacation.
My mother, the grocery store and my ever dwindling sense of sanity.
Like small children who need strollers and all sort of other paraphernalia when they leave their natural habitat, taking my mother out requires some advanced planning.
Which we usually do during our Saturday evening visits.
I was a bit nervous proposing the grocery store escapade, because as everyone knows, I detest the grocery store, and can't imagine how anyone would want to schlep through the aisles of their local cash cow willingly, knowingly, consciously if they didn't absolutely have to.
And I had to.
No milk, cereal, cheese, lunch meat, Em's gluten free lactose free vegan margarine. . . .
I either sucked up that a trip to the grocery store was necessary, or risk the kids chowing on dog food.
According to my mother, I was a regular dog food fiend when I was younger, which is why my teeth are good today.
Um.
As usual, I underestimated my mother's need to get out of home as often as possible until the cold weather finds her sitting in her room, heat blasting at 30 degrees Celsius, wrapped in flannel jammies, a heavy sweater and a warm blanket.
She was thrilled.
I'll go anywhere, she said.
I just want to get out.
So we picked her up at 1.30 pm, signed her out, loaded her into the car, her wheelchair into the trunk and off we went to the grocery store.
Mum sitting up front with Stephen, shrinking further and further into the seat every week, regaling us with tales of her shenanigans from the time I left last evening until we picked her up.
It was a short regaling.
At the grocery store we park illegally in the fire lane long enough to assist Mum with her disembarking from the car routine.
I move her legs from the car to the ground.
Stephen has the wheelchair at the ready, brakes on, and she grabbed the door handle, my hands underneath her arm, providing a bit of extra help.
But just a bit.
She grabs onto her well braked wheelchair, and sort of just falls into it.
Adjusting herself accordingly, she looks at me and says,
We can go now.
If my mother is in a wheelchair, logic would dictate that she have a handicapped parking pass.
Logic would be right.
She does have one.
In my father's car.
The one she's never been inside of and in all likelihood, never will be.
Leaving all sorts of room for a very pertinent question: How come the parking pass doesn't stay with Mum so we can use it when we, the only people who engage in taking her out, take her out?
Because my father claims he needs it.
For his back.
I argue that if this is the case, he should go to his own doctor and ask for his own parking pass.
In fact, I am going to insist on it.
Because one day, as logic would dictate, I am going to get a ticket for parking in a handicapped parking spot without the appropriate sticker.
And that doesn't even address the guilt I experience when I do have to park in a spot without the appropriate sticker.
Nor the fear of having someone with a sticker confront me, at which time I would probably thrust my mother's wheelchair in their face.
This actually happened once.
But at the time we had no wheelchair seated mother with us.
It was Christmas time.
The parking lot of the Canadian Tire plaza on Smythe Street was completely, utterly full.
Stephen just needed to run into the CIBC Bank for something or other that required his actual physical presence at the bank.
So he parked in the only available space.
A handicapped space.
Leaving me in the car, he gets out, and as he is walking around the front of the car, the man parked next to us gets Stephen's attention.
Stephen points at me and keeps on walking.
Deep in the pit of my being I knew this wasn't going to go well.
Immediately, for me.
Later for Stephen.
Sure enough, Stephen's backside isn't even in the bank and this man is rapping on the front passenger side window with his knuckles.
I lower the window to hear him state the obvious.
You're parked illegally in a handicapped spot. I sit here every Christmas time and watch for people like you and your husband who think that they're needs are more important that the needs of those people who actually require this space.
What did my husband say to you?
He said to talk to you.
I did the only thing I could do.
Moved the car to the fire lane in front of the bank and waited for Stephen to come out.
He did.
Tail between his legs because he knew I was NOT happy.
And he was right.
I wasn't.
Hence my fear of being confronted by people who legitimately need the handicapped parking spot.
Clearly my father doesn't have these worries.
But he soon will.
Because I am taking the pass from his car and asking him to please make an appointment with his doctor because if he really needs a handicapped parking dodaddy, he can get one of his own.
Until then, a sign perhaps?
I HAVE NO STICKER BUT MY MOTHER IS IN A WHEELCHAIR, LIVES IN A NURSING HOME AND THIS IS HER ONE AND ONLY OUTING OF THE WEEK. PLEASE TAKE PITY ON US.
And then post a picture of the two of us beside the sign.
Once inside the grocery store we wait for Stephen to meet us.
Because pushing a cart and my mother in her wheelchair requires far advanced motor skills.
Ones I simply do not possess.
And then we begin.
She refused to bring her wheelchair feet, so I worried the entire time we were there that her legs were getting tired.
Hence there was a lot of stopping for rests.
Initiated by me.
She had her own little agenda.
A list of things she wanted.
Two oranges, a red pepper and container of strawberries for my father.
She felt the oranges in the display box with such vigour I thought she was trying to make juice.
Not a red pepper was free from her taloned grip as she tested several, leading to a queue of customers waiting for their opportunity to molest the produce.
After the veggies and deli we headed into the bread section.
You would think that getting bread is a simple process of selecting a couple of loaves and off you go.
Not in our house.
All the loaves and loaves of glorious egg bread brought back from Montreal in May are now gone.
And Em is very, very fussy.
She only likes D'Italiano white or wholewheat bread.
If I am buying, it's wholewheat.
Stephen and I only eat multigrain wholewheat breads, or black breads.
So we end up going through the checkout looking as if we're carb starved with all the bread we have to buy.
Now, the only part of the grocery store experience I enjoy, other than leaving, is slicing the bread.
There is an automated bread slicer at the bakery and every time we need bread, I get unsliced bread so I can slice it.
As thinly as possible.
They have a range of slice thickness, from 1/2 to 1.5 inches.
I ALWAYS get the 1/2.
Stephen ALWAYS wants the 1.5 inches.
I am never swayed.
Ever.
My mother was quite taken with this automatic bread slicer.
Although her primary concern was the loss of fingers.
And of course, because my mother was with us, the grocery store had increased its air conditioning.
Resulting in my mother remarking the entire trip throughout the store that it was REALLY cold.
Actually, it was.
In fact, I wish I had taken a sweater with me.
Something I rarely think of in August when the temperature is 29 degrees BEFORE humidity.
As we were wandering through the store, my mother was, with her eagle eyes, taking in the prices labelled on the shelves.
My mother hasn't been responsible for grocery shopping in at least seven years.
The prices of groceries have gone up considerably since the time she last passed her debit card through a grocery store checkout.
She was certainly not impressed with the fact that a normal, non-club pack size box of cereal was over six dollars.
Not that we purchase anything considered normal sized.
It's all about the club packs in this house.
The bigger the box, the better.
The more cereal we can bring home, the happier Keith is.
And as we were perusing the pickles, because Stephen has finally accepted that it is not likely that we'll be making pickles this month and he so wanted a bottle of Vlasic kosher dills, my brother arrived.
I knew he was coming.
He called earlier in the morning to assess what Clan Clarke-Pidwysocky had on the docket for the day and when he heard we were heading to the grocery store with Mum, he just couldn't resist
Mum was not aware her one and only son would be making an appearance.
Surprise!
You really can find anything at the Superstore.
At least according to my mother.
My mother doesn't see my brother as much as she would like.
Meaning she sees her visits with him as akin to the second coming of Christ.
She was so happy to see him, ecstatic really.
He took over pushing her chair through the grocery store, leaving me free to toss our needed items into the cart.
While we laid out our booty on the conveyor belt, my brother sat with Mum on a bench in front of the cashier.
Because knowing what we get and realizing how much it costs was more than I thought my mother could handle.
I know for a fact it's more than I can handle.
Having my brother in attendance was actually serendipitous.
Because in the excitement of taking Mum to the grocery store, wheelchair in the back of the car, I inadvertently forgot that trips to the grocery store usually lead to several bags being stored in said back of car.
Alas, there was no room.
But my brother rescued us by putting Mum's wheelchair in the back of his car.
Me with Mum in our little red Focus, her eagle eye trained on my brother to ensure that he was treating her wheelchair with the dignity and reverence it deserves.
Stephen with my brother in his Subaru.
A tough experience for him as he loves Subarus and is always remarking about how he'd like his next vehicle to be a Subaru.
In fact, during our drive up the hill to Starbucks, where we were heading for a much need caffeine boost, my mother remarked that she was concerned that when we traded in our car we would get something she wouldn't be able to get into or out of.
I reassured her that such a thing would never happen.
One, the likelihood of our trading in the car anytime soon is completely nil.
Not a chance.
I love that car, and right now, we have more outflow than incoming so another car is just not in the cards.
Two, I had already taken into consideration that whatever vehicle we have, in addition to having the capacity to cart around canines, it needs to be able to chauffeur my mother in the style and comfort to which she has become accustomed.
Or at least that I can afford with soon-to-be-three university tuition's plus all the other expenses incurred around here.
As we were departing the Superstore on a rainy, humid Sunday afternoon, when the traffic is heavy and the drivers idiots, I had a little encounter with another driver.
One of my numerous pet peeves regarding other drivers is when they see you waiting to make a left hand turn at a busy spot and they choose to not use their signal to let you know that, in this case, they, too, are headed to the Superstore, not continuing along the street, so it's okay for you to make the left hand turn provided that there is no oncoming traffic in the left hand lane.
We waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And just when it was clear on my right, I looked over to see a silver something or other headed in my direction, so there was no way I was going to be able to go.
And then that silver car turned into the Superstore.
I could have gone.
And me being me, with my window down, and seeing that the female driver of the other car had her window down, I took the opportunity to "thank" her for her courtesy and consideration.
She flipped me the bird.
The only reason that finger remains on her finger to flip someone else off is because my mother was in the car beside me and I didn't want her to be an accessory to anything that would have happened had I turned around and followed that woman to share with her my interpretation of her response.
Not to mention how Stephen would have reacted had his normally mild mannered wife engaged in some road rage retribution.
Title Lyric: Criminal by Eminem
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