Howdy Ya'll,So, this has been a rather bizarrely typical day. It seems the older I get, the more surreal life gets. Even something as benign as Googling "strange photos" to see if I could find pictures I'd like to accompany this post. The first and only picture I was drawn to is the one you see up top. Turns out it is the cover of the Strange Days album by the Doors. I'm a huge fan and was actually trying to think of the words to that song, just before I settled in to write this... That may not be the strangest thing in the world, but if you were in my head when it happened, you would think so. Like some invisible cosmic string attached to my brain, making manifest the exact thing I'm thinking about without too much effort. It just happened. Wish I could do that with money! Ha! Now THAT would be a trick!
Back to strangeness. First off, my mom is in the hospital. Which in and of itself, is not very strange. She is 86 and in poor health. She is in and out of the hospital a lot it seems. Just when we think she is leveling off, something else crashes. So I have to be ready to fly up north at a moment's notice. We are scheduled for a visit mid June, but we may need to go earlier if mom takes another bad turn. And with my mom's health, nothing is easy, rational or predictable. Even her doctors claim that she is a medical enigma! So there you go. This always puts my mind in the jiggly space. The space where nothing is defined really and everything is hanging.
Today was especially just slightly off and normally I get frustrated by such things when they add up, but today.... I wasn't. For some odd, out of character reason, for which I am unaware, I found it all slightly entertaining and humorous.
After what seems like months of misbehaving and becoming aggressive to his mommy, my son was a perfect angel from the moment his eyes opened. (Just last night the hub and I were having the serious "What are we going to do about THIS" talk) I was literally in tears over it, so I wasn't going to look this gift horse in the mouth! Alright then, off we go into our day. After eating ALL of his breakfast, incident free, I set Harley up with a video so that I can do my morning rituals and chores in peace. (Yea, I know, but at least they are cartoon characters who are well behaved and have a decent vocabulary...) Ok, so I find out that one of my good friends has just had a "procedure". This is always odd to me, because they used to be called surgery or operations... anyway, choose your word, she had one. Just a minor one, but still. So we decide to draw her a picture and make fun snacks and a yummy protein smoothie to take over. But after we do our "together chores", which include the post office and feeding the buns.
Before leaving for the post office/bun expedition, I look for the phone number of the post office to see how our post mistress takes her coffee. I thought I'd bring her a cup. She's a good friend and a great post mistress who was in need of a treat this week. I keep the number on a post it above my computer... It was gone. Mysteriously. This is very strange because I've kept it in the same spot forever, but ok. It's not far, we'll go get the mail, find out what she wants and come back. No biggie, just strange that the number wasn't there. To answer your question, the reason I didn't look it up is because our phone books are a million years old, and frankly, I don't see very well anymore. So we get to the post office and get the low down on the coffee and tell our friend that Harley has made some Applesauce cake and we will bring that to go with the coffee. When we get home, we find that daddy has eaten all the applesauce cake and neglected to mention it to the rest of us. Not to worry, we had some fine Ginger cookies to make up for it. So, off we go again to the post office. It was fun to bring treats to our friend. It felt really good, although, having to make the trip twice gave me a slightly instinctive feeling that the rest of the day was going to follow suit. Boy howdy.
So, flash forward to loading up the car with our home made drawings and snacks to take to our friend in town. We live a ways from town, so I give Harley a cereal bar for the ride over. . (btw, he's had a slight allergy cough the last few days, but nothing too bad). Harley is happily scarfing down his cereal bar in the back as we pull on to I 10. Suddenly, he begins coughing and then I hear nothing. I look in the mirror and his mouth is opened, but nothing is coming out... then after what seemed like forever, he begins to cough again. whew. I hand him some of my lemonade to clear his throat. That seemed to work, except that he wasted no time shoving half the bar into his mouth again triggering his ultra sensitive gag reflex. So now he is coughing and I can tell by the open mouth, nothing coming out, watery eyes thing that puke is definitely in our future. And honestly, that's all fine, except the thought of taking the damn car seat apart, washing it and putting it back together, not to mention riding around with the smell of vomit in my car was just not on the agenda for today. (Now normally, I don't leave the house without several things... most of which live in my car, but for some reason today I had none of those things! Those things being: A snack bag, butt wipes, a towel, a roll of paper towels and a change of clothes for Harley. It was only a quick trip today, so I did not bring the snack bag containing most of the other stuff, and the hub took the towel out when he borrowed the car and well, I ran out of paper towels at some point. ) Anyway, there I am going about 75 down the highway and groping for any kind of receptacle or paper product or just SOMETHING to catch the puke. Proceeding to rifle through my console, all I came up with was one lonely napkin. I then hold it under my son's mouth as we are whizzing down the highway. And I was thinking in that moment, how strange and absurd this was, but I was still doing it! Trucks zooming by, me driving and stretching my arm to the back seat with one stinking napkin. As IF! I just started cracking up and pulled over.
Luckily, Harley's school bag was still in the car from Monday... (I know, Monday was Veterans Day, but that's another post) Anyway, his bag was still in the back and had a change of clothes! So I ended up taking his clothes off and wiping the puke up with them. Put on with the new clothes, a blanket on the car seat, a few more sips of lemonade, and we're off again!
"I puked Mommy!"
"Yes, I know. It's ok"
"Why did I puke mommy?"
"Because you were eating and coughing at the same time"
"But why?"
"I don't know, maybe you can ask the Great Spirit"
"ok"
We finally get to my friend's house with no further incident. Harley is all excited because he gets to play with his favorite cousin! Only nobody appears to be home. Not even the dogs... This is TOTALLY strange. I figured she must have passed out, and must need the rest. (Not strange) A house with 3 dogs who usually begin barking before you've gotten as far as the porch... not barking today. (Very strange). So we leave all the goodies ,save the smoothie, which seemed like a bad item to leave on a porch in summer. Then we turned around to come home.
I almost forgot to pick up my prescription yet again, but miraculously remembered before we past the Publix. There continued to be many more games of phone tag and poor timing all day, but I think I've gone on long enough.
Happy strange everyone.
Back to strangeness. First off, my mom is in the hospital. Which in and of itself, is not very strange. She is 86 and in poor health. She is in and out of the hospital a lot it seems. Just when we think she is leveling off, something else crashes. So I have to be ready to fly up north at a moment's notice. We are scheduled for a visit mid June, but we may need to go earlier if mom takes another bad turn. And with my mom's health, nothing is easy, rational or predictable. Even her doctors claim that she is a medical enigma! So there you go. This always puts my mind in the jiggly space. The space where nothing is defined really and everything is hanging.
Today was especially just slightly off and normally I get frustrated by such things when they add up, but today.... I wasn't. For some odd, out of character reason, for which I am unaware, I found it all slightly entertaining and humorous.
After what seems like months of misbehaving and becoming aggressive to his mommy, my son was a perfect angel from the moment his eyes opened. (Just last night the hub and I were having the serious "What are we going to do about THIS" talk) I was literally in tears over it, so I wasn't going to look this gift horse in the mouth! Alright then, off we go into our day. After eating ALL of his breakfast, incident free, I set Harley up with a video so that I can do my morning rituals and chores in peace. (Yea, I know, but at least they are cartoon characters who are well behaved and have a decent vocabulary...) Ok, so I find out that one of my good friends has just had a "procedure". This is always odd to me, because they used to be called surgery or operations... anyway, choose your word, she had one. Just a minor one, but still. So we decide to draw her a picture and make fun snacks and a yummy protein smoothie to take over. But after we do our "together chores", which include the post office and feeding the buns.
Before leaving for the post office/bun expedition, I look for the phone number of the post office to see how our post mistress takes her coffee. I thought I'd bring her a cup. She's a good friend and a great post mistress who was in need of a treat this week. I keep the number on a post it above my computer... It was gone. Mysteriously. This is very strange because I've kept it in the same spot forever, but ok. It's not far, we'll go get the mail, find out what she wants and come back. No biggie, just strange that the number wasn't there. To answer your question, the reason I didn't look it up is because our phone books are a million years old, and frankly, I don't see very well anymore. So we get to the post office and get the low down on the coffee and tell our friend that Harley has made some Applesauce cake and we will bring that to go with the coffee. When we get home, we find that daddy has eaten all the applesauce cake and neglected to mention it to the rest of us. Not to worry, we had some fine Ginger cookies to make up for it. So, off we go again to the post office. It was fun to bring treats to our friend. It felt really good, although, having to make the trip twice gave me a slightly instinctive feeling that the rest of the day was going to follow suit. Boy howdy.
So, flash forward to loading up the car with our home made drawings and snacks to take to our friend in town. We live a ways from town, so I give Harley a cereal bar for the ride over. . (btw, he's had a slight allergy cough the last few days, but nothing too bad). Harley is happily scarfing down his cereal bar in the back as we pull on to I 10. Suddenly, he begins coughing and then I hear nothing. I look in the mirror and his mouth is opened, but nothing is coming out... then after what seemed like forever, he begins to cough again. whew. I hand him some of my lemonade to clear his throat. That seemed to work, except that he wasted no time shoving half the bar into his mouth again triggering his ultra sensitive gag reflex. So now he is coughing and I can tell by the open mouth, nothing coming out, watery eyes thing that puke is definitely in our future. And honestly, that's all fine, except the thought of taking the damn car seat apart, washing it and putting it back together, not to mention riding around with the smell of vomit in my car was just not on the agenda for today. (Now normally, I don't leave the house without several things... most of which live in my car, but for some reason today I had none of those things! Those things being: A snack bag, butt wipes, a towel, a roll of paper towels and a change of clothes for Harley. It was only a quick trip today, so I did not bring the snack bag containing most of the other stuff, and the hub took the towel out when he borrowed the car and well, I ran out of paper towels at some point. ) Anyway, there I am going about 75 down the highway and groping for any kind of receptacle or paper product or just SOMETHING to catch the puke. Proceeding to rifle through my console, all I came up with was one lonely napkin. I then hold it under my son's mouth as we are whizzing down the highway. And I was thinking in that moment, how strange and absurd this was, but I was still doing it! Trucks zooming by, me driving and stretching my arm to the back seat with one stinking napkin. As IF! I just started cracking up and pulled over.
Luckily, Harley's school bag was still in the car from Monday... (I know, Monday was Veterans Day, but that's another post) Anyway, his bag was still in the back and had a change of clothes! So I ended up taking his clothes off and wiping the puke up with them. Put on with the new clothes, a blanket on the car seat, a few more sips of lemonade, and we're off again!
"I puked Mommy!"
"Yes, I know. It's ok"
"Why did I puke mommy?"
"Because you were eating and coughing at the same time"
"But why?"
"I don't know, maybe you can ask the Great Spirit"
"ok"
We finally get to my friend's house with no further incident. Harley is all excited because he gets to play with his favorite cousin! Only nobody appears to be home. Not even the dogs... This is TOTALLY strange. I figured she must have passed out, and must need the rest. (Not strange) A house with 3 dogs who usually begin barking before you've gotten as far as the porch... not barking today. (Very strange). So we leave all the goodies ,save the smoothie, which seemed like a bad item to leave on a porch in summer. Then we turned around to come home.
I almost forgot to pick up my prescription yet again, but miraculously remembered before we past the Publix. There continued to be many more games of phone tag and poor timing all day, but I think I've gone on long enough.
Happy strange everyone.
9 comments:
I have those days. Nothing, nothing goes as planned or expected.
I hope the Great Spirit tells Harley to start eating more slowly and chewing and swallowing more carefully.
Oh, yes, the cough/puking. I am VERY familiar with THAT.
The thought of you driving down I-10 with one hand and trying to catch puke in the back seat with the other is too funny. Strange day indeed.
Oh- I forgot to say that I hope your mama gets better. As I go through things with my mother and her health, I am more and more convinced that really, we are not supposed to live into our eighties. Mostly.
Hi all,
Thanks for visiting! It was one wacky day.
MM-- I do hope the Great Spirit imparts this cosmic message to ole Harley. BTW, he is no longer Harley, he is Moolkey kitty. He has renamed himself. Thanks for thinking of my mom. I hope she gets better too.
Steph-- Yea, it's the gift that keeps on giving. Just when you think you've got it all clean...ick! Hey, I've been visiting your blog also, but have trouble leaving comments... is there a trick? (I'm technically challenged)
LL-- Yea, it was a pisser alright! I'm glad there weren't any troopers about or I'd have been in deep shit. At one point I was so focused on staying on the road and tending to Harley that I didn't realize I was doing over 80. So in all my misadventuring, I did have some luck. :-)
buddha is laughing.
you, too, that day.
Sweet.
You Zany Zenny!
You know I love the haikus.
Thanks. I love you too.
xo urpf
I hope your mum is ok..mine is 88 and so far not and to go into hospital since her stroke. I look after her here in her house and live with her..my siblings are older and ALL live in NZ. So I have just the dog as a companion, dont do relationships any more, too painful.
She is getting over the infection ( bladder) but has been really odd and obsessive about things..which to be honest has had me floored the last few days and with all the stupid cyber stuff as well... Anyway I hope to get out and about ..I am blog confused these days having three in three different sites..I try and keep up, but I think the UK one may get left for a while, I vented there and told people exactly what she had done ..maybe here is better..less intense and incestuous, LOL..
Thank you so much for your visits and support, very appreciated.. Do you write your friends stuff? Or does he send it to you ??I am so interested in his story and his views..it was as buzz to find you and him connected. THAT is what I blog for to make connections that inspire me and pass things on..and to write..
((hugs))) hope this finds you well and happy XXXX
Hey SD,
Thanks for asking about my ma. She is very old too, about 86 (but not a healthy 86.) She is ok for the moment. Like your mom, she is also real obsessive and particular and has a lot of anxiety if things aren't a certain way. My theory is that as people loose control of their lives physically, they try to control as much of the environment around them as they can. It's very hard to live with, and may not go away... hard to say. I hope it does!
My friend, whom I like to call Little Bear, writes all of his own stuff. I do some editing and on his first one, I had to do some clean up because he was spewing! It was his first letter to "the world" and he was all over the map... and that is totally understandable. I've also had to name his entries as he forgets to do that! Other than that, it is all him. He is one of the most amazing people I've ever ever met. If you'd like to contact him directly, you have to do it through snail mail. If you like, I can ask him what he thinks of that idea.
Thanks for coming by. I hope to chat with you some more.
Peace,
pf
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