Tag: Mom

Friday’s Theme Music

It’s up to 59 F outside. But the buttery morning sunshine delivered at 6:44 is now smoked over. Our lovely sky has rocketed relatively healthy lime green 48 on the air quality scale to 197. The high temperature today will be 103 F. Sunset, 7:31 PM.

Today is Friday, September 9, 2022. I’m waiting to begin my travel home. Tucker volunteered to inspect the bag and floofervise the process. On the other end of phones and texts, my youngest sister is reporting on Mom. Hospitalized for COVID complications and an appendix first thought ruptured but then found perforated, Mom has a lot of issues. A pacemaker was installed a few years ago. A diet of Kools and Salem cigarettes has left her with COPD and emphysema. The physicians discovered that she punctured one of her lung’s lobes. She’s also retaining fluid. Her O2 levels keep dropping to 70 or lower. Without much surprise to me, this 87-year-old woman has declared, “Enough. I’m tired. I’m done.”

My older sister has just arrived there from Atlanta. Another sister can’t attend because she’s COVID positive. The fourth sister is on her way back to the hospital. So is Mom’s partner. I won’t get there until tomorrow. The time, drama, and decisions give me a lot to think about.

The Neurons have a song by The Who circulating in the morning mental music stream. Released in 1971, “Gettin’ in Tune” has often been a standby song for me when I’m reflecting on choices and getting ready to travel. I understand why The Neurons have posted it.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, etc. I’ve had coffee. Might have more. Here is the music. Hope your Friday is a good one.

Cheers

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Thursday’s Wandering Thought

As news about his mother’s declining condition was received, he thought for a while and then, teary-eyed, told her with his mind across time and space, “Well, Mom, I’m good with whatever you decide to do. You’ve known pain and sickness for so many years. If you decide you’re done, I understand.”

She would be missed, though. Strong, intelligent, and vital, she was his favorite mother. Probably always would be.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

6:20 AM. It was about twenty-two minutes before sunrise. I was in front of my house, talking to Papi, the floof is who also hailed as the Ginger Prince and the Slender Blade. My house front faces west. Clouds were rolling in over the western horizon. They surprised me because they were contrary to expectations.

Rain began. Big, fat diamond drops. Wow, cool, I thought. 6:21, the rain stopped.

Although the day grew lighter with the sun’s presence, I couldn’t see it. It was already 22 C at that point heralding that the forecasts that we’ll strike 100 F today are probably right. Air is fresh and clean and in the green.

8:08 AM. The Slender Blade and I were in the backyard speaking with the other house floof, Tucker, the black and white fella also known as Your Lordship. Sunshine cracked in between spaces shaped by a roof and a tree. Rain showered down for ten furious seconds and then stopped. Seems like Wednesday, September 7. 2022, will be an interesting day.

Mom is in the hospital, taken in yesterday afternoon after falling at home, all COVID related. Word this morning is that she ruptured her appendix. She was also severely dehydrated. Fingers crossed that she and the medicos work their way through these issues.

While I was floof visiting and noting the weather this morning, I looked to the south and reflected, it’s been a long time since we’ve gone south, i.e., into California. Wildfires and COVID, of course. Plus, expensive.

But The Neurons heard me saying something about traveling south in my head. Right away, they plugged a song by Alice in Chains, “I Stay Away” (1993), into the morning mental music stream.

Here’s the music. I’ve had my coffee. Heading to an appointment to have a Ziopatch applied. Stay positive, test negative, and so on. Cheers

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The Room Dream

I arrived home as a young man. Mom gave me a room. I was happy to see her and happy to be there. We were living on a train, and the room she gave me was an entire train car. Long and narrow, I had a bed, desk, dresser, bookcase, chair, and wardrobe. I set them up to provide separate sleeping and living areas, using the bookcase and vanity as a makeshift wall. As I set it up, my young sisters came in and visited. Sometimes they brought young neighbor boys that they were watching. Mom would also occasionally come by.

I stacked my books and organized my desk, made my narrow bed, and slid against one wall. One side of the train had windows, and I set my desk up under them so I could look outside.

Young people in a sixties era Chevy Impala convertible (after the fins were dropped) began driving by. Whenever they did, some of my things would get shifted, annoying me. This worsened; even as I cleaned and organized again, they drove by, knocking things over. They never reached in or anything, but I knew it was them, as they were laughing about it.

I decided I’d put a stop to that and devised a way by changing the room around. The new arrangement was less satisfying, but it was staying neat and still workable. However, one of the little neighbor boys my sisters were watching kept sneaking into my room and tearing things up. He was fair and blonde, giggling often, but crying whenever he was stopped or reprimanded. I kept putting him out, warning him not to do that, and warning others to keep him out, and then cleaning up again, and again, but he kept getting in there. Mom came to me and told me to be more patient and tolerant because he was a small child and had mental and emotional health issues. I complained to her but took her point and promised I would try.

The train with my room went on the move. That pleased me because I thought we’d moved away from the boy causing the problem. But he got in there again. I was bewildered. My sisters explained that he’d come with us. I felt that I had no choice but to close and lock my doors. After I did that, I discovered him sliding in under the door. It looked like he could completely flattened himself, becoming as pliable and flexible as a sheet of paper.

My exasperation and irritation spiked. How was I supposed to deal with that. I took hold of the boy to take him out of the room. He immediately screamed, writhing and crying in my grasp. Others came running in. I said that I hadn’t done anything to him, that he was overly sensitive, defending myself with the claim, I was just stopping him from ruining things again. My sisters took him out of my room.

Dream end.

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A Facilitating Dream

The commander, a colonel, was walking in, talking on his cell as he came. I knew he was speaking with his wife. I overheard him: “Seidel? Yes, he’s here. He’s always here. He’s everywhere.”

A blush of pride bloomed in me in the dream. That was toward the end. It’d been another military dream, a chaotic one. Whereas most of my military dreams after my service ended has been about my chosen career field, command and control, or about traveling, this one was about facilitating. I’d spent the last three years of my career facilitating special project teams. This dream took off from there.

People were arriving for the session. I knew them and was prepared for them — or so I thought. Things started going wrong. Like Mom showed up. What was Mom doing there? I saw her but then she wasn’t there, so maybe I’d imagined her.

It threw me off my game. A squadon commander, black and and light colonel, arrived. I was pleased to see him, greeting him by name, showing him in, asking him if he’d like something to drink. Coffee, water, juice, tea? “Tea,” he agreed. Excellent, we have multiple kinds. What would you like? He selected (can’t remember what it was) and I went off to get it.

But I couldn’t immediately find the tea. Interruptions hampered the search. Sisters are arrived. I didn’t know what they were doing there. The phone kept ringing. Other team members were arriving. Someone knocked over one of the white boards. And the cookies weren’t put out.

I was scrambling, racing back to the light colonel to tell him that I’d not forgotten his tea, that it would be right out. He was taking it well, smiling and nodding, relatively unconcerned. I was also trying to be a good host with other arrivals and trying to corner one of my sisters to inquire about why she was there.

Someone suggested we play a game. They found something sort of roundish and suggested volleyball. Cheers met the suggestion. Although I first resisted because I had an agenda, I acquiesced. Be flexible, right? “Okay, why not,” I agreed.

We went out. There were five on one side and one, a female, on the other. They were going to play volleyball but there wasn’t a net. The lumpy thing being used as a volleyball turned into an actual volleyball. I told the one woman that I’d be her teammate. We’d take on the rest. Some volleying was done. I was told to serve. Everyone tensed because they thought I’d have a power serve but I kept missing the ball completely.

I finally served the ball and a volley ensued, then we lost the ball. Someone came up with some misshaped black thing, smaller than a volleyball, to use. I argued against it, demonstrating that I couldn’t even hit it right. Nobody else had yet tried. They all encouraged me to keep trying. I did, and suddenly began hitting it spectacularly well.

Others arrived so we quit playing. I hurried back to facilitate because some were up asking about the talking points posted to a white board. I rushed to explain. That’s when the commander arrived talking on the phone, and the dream ended.

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Post Mother’s Day Post

I read an interview with Calvin Trillin today. He said, every family has a theme that runs through it.

I can dig that. I grew up with some very Catholic and Jewish friends. Lessons and classes were always interfering with plans. I went to Bible School every summer for a few weeks, for a couple years. Other than that, I think we were Presbyterians. We attended church on some Christmases.

Religion wasn’t my family’s theme. Neither was education. Mom and Dad took the attitude, don’t bring home a bad grade and we’ll be okay. Several other themes were possible. Mom married multiple times in a quest for happiness. She’d taken private vows not to be like her mother, cold, hard, distant. Mom would be friends with her children. We would play games together.

Man, did we play games. Card games, ball games in the backyard, board games, Mom was always up to playing a game with us. Tripoley, a card game Mom picked up from her in-laws, became the go-to game. There was a board, in our case, a green plastic sheet. On it were different card combinations, along with poker, and ‘out’. Everyone paid into some pots, usually two to three cents each hand. A dummy hand was dealt. The dealer had the choice to keep their hand and sell the second hand, or to pick up and use the second hand. When you evaluating a hand to see whether you would bid on the extra hand, you were looking for pay cards, like the King and Queen of Hearts, or the 8-9-10 combo, or if it was a good poker hand or one that would allow you to go out.

We always played for pennies, and had great old Maxwell House coffee cans filled with coins, because sometimes, those pennies started adding up. “Look at that King and Queen, is that silver in there? There must be eighty cents in there.” Such a large amount. No one counted it, though; counting a pot drew bad luck down on you.

My wife quickly learned about the game but most of the spouses stayed away from it. They didn’t understand how we could sit and play for several hours for a few pennies, coming away with a beam for winning almost three dollars. Woo hoo.

The theme also could be hiding. Mom taught us all to hide whenever someone came to the door. I never heard why we were hiding. Someone knocks, we freeze, falling silent, eyes wide, like it’s WW II and the Nazis have found us. “Who is that?” we’d mouth at one another. Someone would sneak to a window. Carefully peek out. We also did not answer the phone. Whoever was calling us needed to know the code: let it ring twice, hang up and call again. If you don’t use the code, we’re not answering your call.

Our family’s theme could be fragmentation. I left Mom to live with Dad when I was fourteen. The older sister moved out of state when she was nineteen. We lost contact with her. Mom moved many times in her quest to be a good single mother, work, and find joy in marriage. It just didn’t work out. Yet, whenever I returned home, it was like I’d never left. We picked up having good times, laughing at everything, playing games. My wife noticed it after a few visits.

Pressing myself for the truest answer, what is your family’s theme, I laugh and answer, “Food.” Of course. Many people probably say the same. Mom loved to cook. She loved making us happy with food, and she was a damn good cook. The sisters took it up. Holidays Fare always encumbered with too much food, too many munchies, too many desserts. Typically, there’s pies and cakes, because Mom and sisters didn’t want to overlook anyone’s favorite. There are salads as an homage to health, along with something Italian — spaghetti, ravioli, maybe, but usually lasagna — along with turkey or ham. Depends, you know? Thanksgiving always required turkey. Ham was on Easter. Burgers, bbq chicken, and hot dogs on Memorial, Labor, and Independence Days, along with the Italian entree. There is lots of food. Leftovers get divided for consumption. It was often enough to supply troops invading another country. Desserts are usually frozen for other occasions. It’s not weird in our extended family to offer someone dessert from the freezer. “I have some leftover birthday cake from Gina’s birthday.” That Gina’s birthday was two months ago didn’t matter. It was frozen; it’d still be good.

Mom loves a cook out. That’s what she calls it: cooking out. We call it grilling. While my wife and I grill vegetables, sometimes chicken, fish, or beef, Mom always grilled burgers and hot dogs. Both needed to be well done because Mom worried about food poisoning from undercooked food.

We have favorites, right? Mom’s potato salad and fried chicken are amazing. All say so, if I do say so myself. It ruined it for anyone else offering me those things. I’ve searched the world for Mom’s potato salad and fried chicken. Nowhere else comes close to her product. Mom’s Fried Chicken. It could be a thing, except we’d need to answer the door.

I guess we’ll set up a code.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Here it is, Friday, the first in the merry, merry, month of May. It’s Friday, May 7, 2021. It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday in the U.S. My card has been sent off, the notes prepared for the call on Sunday to Mom. I don’t think she’ll be doing anything special for Mom’s Day. Three of my sisters live in Mom’s region and generally celebrate holidays together. All of them are moms, and two are grand-moms, and Mom is a great-grandmother. But this is 2021, where COVID-19 continues its reign. They used to all go out to brunch somewhere together for this holiday. I suspect that Mom’s daughters, grand children, and great-grands, will bring food and flowers by for Mom and will visit with her a few at a time.

Clouds moved in yesterday, delivering chilly overnight temperatures but no rain. The sun’s first showing was at 5:59 AM, but did little to warm us, so far. We’ll see what happens between now and 8:17 PM, when Sol announces, “See you tomorrow,” but general consensus is that the highs will be in the low to mid-sixties.

Alarming news came out regarding rain and water for our area. We’re in an extreme drought. Weather conservation and curtailment actions have yet to be enacted locally. They always take a ‘wait and see’ approach until it’s a crises, which serves no one. The area depends heavily on the TID, and the city has been told it’s not getting as much TID as last year. Forty percent has been cut from one contract, while one hundred percent has been cut from the second. Local reservoirs and dams are at bleak levels. I’m breaking out my rain stick. It scares the hell out of the cats, but anything that can help must be done.

Of course, this might be the wrong way to go about it. “Wrong Way” is today’s music choice. At its core, the 1997 Sublime song is about a fourteen-year-old prostitute whose only family is ‘her seven horny brothers and drunk-ass Dad’. The is song is rife with references to doing things the wrong way as the singer rescues her but then mistreats her, himself.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. That seems to be the right way. Time for my coffee. Cheers

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