THE LADY AND THE CAT

My mother is 81 years old and has small vessel disease.  I had numerous phone conversations with her over the past few years as well as several communications with my father and sisters.  I was aware of her deteriorating condition but nothing prepared me for the echo of the shadow of the woman she had once been. Her quick, motivated gait had been replaced by an uncertain shuffle and her gaze would clear momentarily to express joy on recognition only to cloud over again with simple confusion. She repeated things as if sharing for the first time.  She constantly apologized for not remembering.  A moment later she has already forgotten again.

Oreo is a 17 years old island calico. In human years she would be 84. She has lived in my mother's house almost her entire life.  I don't remember her as a younger cat although I have been home a couple of times since Oreo moved in. She wears scars from a hard life but her fur is immaculately groomed which is impressive considering the staining red dirt of the region.  Each morning she sits in the kitchen, waiting patiently for Mother to feed her.  Sometimes it takes hours as Mother selects a can of food, places it first in one place and then another.  Then she will get a clean dish which she sets on the table or counter, and forgets.  Yet Oreo waits quietly and patiently, staring at the floor until Mother finally remembers and completes the task.


The burden of dealing with a patient who has short term memory loss is heavy and my father is exhausted.  My brother and his family just recently moved in to help ease the load.  I am eternally grateful for all of the sacrifice they have and continue to make.  My parents have worked so hard all of their lives and deserve to be able to relax and enjoy their retirement. This is their chance.


Tomorrow Oreo will wait patiently on the kitchen floor for Mother to decide which flavor of cat food to feed her. It may take an hour or so but she will be fed and she and Mother will enjoy yet another day in each other's company because time ceases to exist in the world in which they share.

A day with the Oompas~

"What's happening to me?  I'm all toasty inside.
And I'm leaking.  I love ya!

Today was spent Christmas shopping with Oompas Gabe, Zack, Art, Rocky, and Future Oompa-In-Law Steffi.  We made it to only one store, Michaels and spent 1 and 1/2 hours there. I got my stuff rung up and discovered that I didn't have my debit card.  I apologized and told the already holiday harried cashier that I was unable to pay and she would have to put the stuff back. The cashier said I was lucky she was on the other side of the counter then immediately said she was kidding.  I didn't believe her.  She looked and sounded like the kind of person who writes 'LOL' after every threat, insult and criticism she posts online but you know she's dead serious. The kind of person who says "Bless your heart" when what she really means is "Go to hell!"  She just stood there waiting for me to produce my debit card from my previously proven empty pockets like it might magically appear or that perhaps I too had been kidding, LOL and bless your heart!  
I had already told her once to cancel the transaction and was afraid to say it again.  Short of volunteering for a full body cavity search I didn't know what else to do when Art came to my rescue and swiped his debit card.  That was as close to a near death experience as I ever want to get.
My memory returned to me when the chilly December air hit my face outside the store.  Gabe had used my debit card when we gassed up the car earlier.  Phew, that was a relief! 
Dinner at Panda Express (their mushroom chicken is AWESOME, and the blonde Hispanic girl really packs the plates!) and then we finished the night with an encore presentation of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". For a second, underneath the green fur, I thought I saw the cashier from Michaels.

IT'S A HE!

My newest grandbaby is expected to arrive mid May, and it's a boy! I'm so excited but I have to remind myself to tone it down because it's not my baby... I have to share!  Hmmph!  We'll see about that!  Anyhow, Art and Steff are both positively glowing with pride and excitement. I guess we were kind of calculating on a summer arrival and while the young parents to be are a little frantic now that they have less time to prepare, I am excited because I don't have to wait as long to hold the tiniest Oompa~

EMERGENCY SUBSTITUTIONS: Thanksgiving Edition

* Chicken for turkey: 2 years is 2 years 2 long when storing a turkey in a cranky old freezer. If after thawing you are greeted by a less than pleasant smell coming from your Butterball but the local grocers are all sold out of turkeys of any kind because... hey, it's Thanksgiving day.. a whole chicken, or even cut up chicken pieces, make a delicious last minute substitution. You may even find yourself preferring it if you try deep frying them in peanut oil after injecting them with Creole Butter marinade.  Make sure to fry them with the skin on, that's the best part!

* Confectioners sugar for granulated sugar: This should be used as a last resort (I used all the colored sugar sprinkles the last time I made iced tea here).  Powdered sugar contains starch in it so it will cloud liquids and thicken if it gets cooked or baked.  My biscuits weren't as fluffy as I was used to but that may also have been because the yeast was one year out of date.

* Flour for corn starch.  Good thing Gabe ran me to the store to buy flour before he took off our we wouldn't have had biscuits OR gravy! I would have used the confectioner's sugar which contains starch, but that would have made my gravy too sweet.

* Baking powder for baking soda.  Another reason my biscuits may have been a little off in taste, but they weren't bad.  Of course I found 2 unopened boxes of baking soda AFTER I mixed the dough.

* Boxed wine instead of bottled wine.  And you don't have to worry about finding that forever missing cork screw!


4 of my kids were in the 4 directions of the compass so it was just my future ex, my 2nd oldest son Zachary and myself.  The table was cluttered so we cleared a spot for our plates and sat down.  No candles this year, no fancy glasses.  I even forgot to cook the yams but nobody seemed to notice.  Bing Crosby was singing 'White Christmas' in the background.  It wasn't a traditional Thanksgiving, but it was certainly a pleasant one.

Note to self:  I moved out of the house a year ago.  Since then my well stocked kitchen has dwindled.  The next time I have to cook or bake at the house I should bring my own ingredients cos it's a Man-Cave now~ they don't have sissy things there like sugar, just salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce.

Finally, GREAT NEWS!

I'm positively glowing.  Pregnancy does that to a woman.  No, I'm not pregnant, my son Arthur is~ or actually his girlfriend Stephanie is.  And I am positively glowing! Next year is going to be a great year.  I'm anticipating a visit from my first grandbaby, who is almost 7 now, and the arrival of my newest.  There's no stopping this smile on my face and in my heart!

NEWS FLASH~

Sometimes I wish people could read my mind so I wouldn't have to stress over how I should tell them~

PPTSD? (Parental Post Tramatic Stress Disorder)

As the mother of a soldier who was deployed in a war zone twice, I think I suffer from a different type of PTSD.  I never saw the horrors, and my son came back to me in one piece although he would never be the same~ but I myself had changed.  The months of staring at the computer screen, searching for the tiniest bit of information and yet hating to read it for fear of the worst.  Waiting for hours for the phone not to ring~ only to stare, frozen in my seat when it did.  Running to the window every time a car drove into the cul de sac, but not wanting to look in case it was a black government vehicle.  I can no longer watch war movies, not even my favorite Green Berets. And this video brought me to tears.  Loved it by the way, but I still cried.