It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like....

I've known that Christmas was going to be December 25 for quite some time. I know this on an intellectual level, but I can't get the rest of me to get with the program. I put up the dinky tree right after Thanksgiving on the one cold Saturday in November. I got out the Spode coffee mugs, a sure sign I have the holiday spirit, right? I'd rather drink my tea from my Target teacup...it holds more.
I have ordered exactly two Christmas gifts online. They were requests, so I didn't have to wrack my brain trying to think of the right something. But, now I do. The kids all have already bought whatever they think they might want, so there are no ideas there. Jeff and Jennifer said gift cards, when asked what they had on their wish lists. Bah Humbug. Gift cards are too easy and no fun to watch someone open.
I want to go back to the days when rosy cheeked kids scampered downstairs to find what Santa left under the tree. The excitement, the anticipation then was sheer delight. This just feels like an assignment.
I think I know what the problem is though. I don't get off work for the "winter break" until December 22. I still have to give and grade tests. Write a final exam and turn in textbooks. Not to mention all the make up work that needs to be given to kids who have been absent.
Today is my easy day. I only have two 90 minute classes and I'm finished right after lunch. As soon as I finish here, I'm bugging out for the mall. I'm going to put the carols on in the car and ratchet up my Christmas spirit, if it kills me! I'm going to buy something for everyone on my list that I think they will enjoy and that I will enjoy giving them. Then I'm going to stop at Starbuck's and get myself a gingerbread latte and head home to wrap up my packages.
School will take care of itself and my Dallas kids will be here on the 22nd. I have to get my priorities straight. HO, HO, HO!!!

If you don't have something nice to say, come sit by me...

Yesterday afternoon I got busy cleaning the entertainment center/bookcase. I took everything out and cleaned the pictures, books, and glass shelving. I dusted and cleaned glass and threw junk out of the cabinets in the bottom. I was feeling pretty motivated. Molly's birth announcement has been leaning up against a picture frame on one of the shelves for 15 or 16 months now, so I decided it could go into my desk with other mementos.
Mother Dear got up from her nap while I was working on this project and the absolute first thing she said when she came into the room was "where is Molly's birth announcement?" I explained to her that I put in in my desk, and she informed me that I could just go get it and put it right back where it was. She "likes to have it there to remind her when Molly's birthday is." I told her that there was a framed picture of Molly right where the birth announcement has been. What? that little round silver framed picture? that's just dinky (compared to all the gillions of pictures of Sloan and Tyler).
From my perspective, this is my home and they are my grandchildren, so naturally I'm going to have pictures of them. Molly on the other hand is my great niece and her grandfather can keep pictures of her all over his apartment!
I put the birth announcement back. Maybe we'll replace it when her high school graduation announcement comes.
This morning I had an appointment with the dermatologist. I'm having my sun damage lasered. Call me vain, call me a spendthrift, but I decided to do this one little thing because I don't like these brown spots on my cheeks. I don't get my nails done, I clean my own house. I'm driving a nine year old car. I have the money to pay for it. But, when I came home and Mother asked what I had done..."I knew you'd be down there having a face lift." Attitude!
I walked away. She's in one of those moods which come on more frequently these days. She gets really snippy (don't ask me to define it). You either know snippy or you don't. I envy you if you don't. All I know is that when she gets this way, 2400 square feet isn't enough room for the both of us.
Last night she called my brother to come and take her car to the gas station and air up the tires. She told him that one was practically flat;  it wasn't, but he came and took it at 8:30 last night. She doesn't drive anymore, but I think that she needed for me to see that her good son would come and do her bidding.
I took Mother for a drive and Starbuck's on Sunday. B and Tyler skyped with her yesterday. Jeffrey aired up her tires. She's been making doctor's appointments that I am faithfully putting on the calendar and committing to take her to. I fix her meals and her plate and serve her. She has a live in maid and chauffeur.
But she doesn't feel well and she's lost control of many aspects of her life, so I guess I can understand her anxiety and frustration.
There! I've vented. I told you, if you don't have anything nice to say....

The Preposterous Perry

You knew that this was coming...Rick Perry says that Texas will not implement the Medicaid provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act. He'll show the federal government a thing or two, by cutting off the noses of several million Texans to spite somebody. He doesn't seem to have a clue that it's his constituents he's hurting the most.
Do you think that his reader didn't tell him the part about the years that the feds will pick up the entire bill? Did he not get the part about the state cap of ten percent? Who does he think contributes those federal dollars that he's going to allow to go to other states, which  will continue to rank ahead of Texas in providing a high standard of health care for their citizens.
The state that boasts one of the nation's top health care facilities, ranks last in providing health care for its citizens, not just its poorest citizens. All of us. Under Governor Good Hair's guidance we will continue to send our uninsured to the ER for treatment and the cost will be passed along to those of us who have private insurance. That means that whatever pay raises we might have hoped for will only go to cover the rising cost of our private health insurance benefit.
Someone from the insurance lobby needs to tell Rick that the insurance companies want Obamacare; it will bring them lots of new customers. Maybe he's not getting big enough campaign contributions from the insurance companies, or maybe he isn't thinking about running again. Now that the Governor's Mansion is rebuilt, he and Anita probably aren't going to want to move back into government housing.

Revisiting and Revising

This morning while we were reading the newspaper, Great-gram, told me about the day that she and Daddy were walking on the greenbelt and encountered a rooster. She had been up for awhile when I joined her and she was telling me about hearing this bird and she thought at first it might be a rooster. "You can hear roosters from here...they are over on the Porter road." Uh huh. This is when she filled me in on the rooster she and Daddy saw on their walk, he was headed back that way when they ran into him.
I don't think my Mother has ever told a lie in her life...too firm a believer in Hell fire for that. But, she has embarked on a new phase that relies heavily on fiction or this is the prevarication phase of dementia.
These tales started only recently, but I'm noticing them more and more. They always come up as examples of something that proves a point she is making.
For example, her Johnson relations have always given a passing nod to a distant connection to the late LBJ. With their noses and ears, there's little doubt that this connection does indeed exist. But the other day when I was reading a biography of Johnson, she began to tell me in some detail about when the brothers parted company and one went to Polk County and the other to the Perdenales. I don't know, but I'm pretty certain that this is the first time she ever told all these particulars and I think they came right off the top of her head.
Another development happened earlier this week. I stayed up late watching a movie and she suddenly appeared in the room and asked me who had been in the room. I told her no one had been in the room, she heard the television. No, she had seen a woman and some boxes, one round and one square stacked in the middle of the room. I assured her that it was just a very vivid dream and that she could go back to bed, but she insisted that someone had been there. That's the new part...the insistence.
I know that I can't keep her here and keep her well forever, but it isn't easy to watch her decline. She's not as tall as she was and she is in almost constant pain in her back and hip, but her appetite is good. I made her some potato salad at lunch time the day before yesterday and she ate like a little pig. You just have to find the thing that she is hungry for.
She talks  about things that happened when she was a child more than she ever has. She is remembering and wants us to know things about her that we may not have known. But she is still very much engaged with what's going on today. She lives for pictures of her great grandchildren. Thank You Lord for the Internet and text messages and Skype. One thing for sure, she is intensely anti-Romney. I'm betting on her to be around to vote against him. 

Going for the Record

The news today is the record heat. Triple digits and the hot wind blowing. The electric company is suggesting conserving between 3:00 and 7:00 p.m. I raised the thermostat to 76, turned on the fans and turned off the lights. I'll do whatever it takes to keep from having brown outs...we would all be in dire straits without any electricity.
There also seems to be a record amount of important rulings coming down this week from the Supreme Court as the session ends. Arizona's 1070 was found to be unconstitutional on all provisions EXCEPT the "papers please" provision. Pretty big victory for the administration. Scalia came across as purely political in excoriating the President. But Chief Justice Roberts sided with the liberals on Arizona. Still ahead...the ruling on health care reform and the stolen valor case.
This morning, while it was still possible for humans to survive outdoors, I high-tailed it over to see Good Old Gail and get my teeth cleaned. Gail can talk more than anyone else I know and all I have to say is "uhhhh, huh." She is a great conversationalist and one night when Jean and I met her for dinner, I learned that you don't have to talk even if you don't have both her hands and a suction instrument in your mouth.
On my way home, I stopped to visit the marketing genius at Chico's who sends me a $10 off coupon as a birthday greeting every year. They were having the orange bag sale, so combined with my coupons, I picked up some bargains. Now that I don't want to wear shorts, I find that Chico's cropped pants are a good substitute. They had the ones you can wash and wear marked down. I bought two pairs which should take me through the rest of the summer. There was also an animal print long skirt I've looked at before, that was marked down...it will make the basis of a good back to work outfit. Mission accomplished.
This afternoon I got two texts from B. In the first one she sent a picture of Tyler getting his first haircut. He's sitting in the chair with no shirt on, looking like a little pudgy doll and gnawing on a comb, but still as a mouse as the stylist works. The next text had a video of him crawling! He must have just started today, but he looked like he has it down. He's eight months old and has stayed a "baby" for a good long time. Once they get mobility of any description, your baby starts growing up on you. He'll be into everything now! Sloan probably won't like it when he starts to interfere with her things.
I feel so much better today than I have for almost a week. Yesterday evening and last night I had fever. I was chilled and achy and just felt baaad. I was awake off and on all night, but about 3:00 the fever broke and when I got up this morning I could breath better than I have for days. I still spent the entire afternoon on the sofa. I just ventured out to water the potted plants and I know I'm not 100% yet. I'm consuming record amounts of peach tea and there is half a cold watermelon in the fridge. It may feel like 106, but we'll survive.

My Aching Head

I may have mentioned that I caught a cold from precious Tyler. When I took Sloan home, I spent one night and slept in Tyler's room in the grandmother bed. Tyler has had the Corner Cottage cold since his childcare career started...viruses love those places. I knew when I was kissing on his snotty face and breathing in his sneezes where it would lead, but he is irresistible to me regardless of any messy or smelly concerns.
A week later, I thought I was having terrible allergies after a rain. Wrong. I was coming down with a good old fashioned head cold. My first reaction was to play through. I went to bridge, I went to mah jongg, I went to jury duty, I went to lunch with old friends. I took my Advil, filled my purse with tissues and pressed on.
Not very thoughtful of others, going around knowing that I'm basically forcing people to decide verdicts and eat a salad with Typhoid Mary. But heck I wasn't burning with fever or coughing. People probably didn't notice that I could only breathe through my mouth, that I constantly held a tissue. They for sure didn't know that my head felt like an over-inflated tire.
During the three hours before the Advil needed to be retaken, I actually didn't feel that bad. So, Friday evening I made plans with old friend Sharon to go to Spring to the Brookwood Community shop and buy plants. Saturday morning 9:30, it's a plan. Off we went and of course we had to park and walk. We dropped in the Wild Goose, Crossroads and the Painted Pig picking up silver bracelets, Sharon's Madagascar Vanilla tea and little candles that look like flames...must have items for sure. Then we headed to the Brookwood shop and that's where it hit me for the first time. A stroll in the heat and sun of a June morning in Texas will bring out the worst in you, whatever it might be. I was trying to choose some tall plants that attract butterflies and I felt like I might faint! I fully confessed to myself that I am sick.
But, after choosing my tree-formed lantana, I agreed that I would probably feel better if we had a bite of something at Ellen's and some peach tea. Wrong, again.
After lunch trying to get back to the car, pull around and load plants and drive home, was a herculean task. By this time it is afternoon and the only thing hotter than a Texas summer morning is the following afternoon.
The sad ending of the story is that I had to regret to a 65th birthday party and miss out on seeing a lot of people I hardly ever see. But there was no going on any longer.
I can't take a decongestant because of my blood pressure, so the pharmacist suggested steam and saline spray or a netti pot (not even if my head explodes!). I spent the rest of the evening watching baseball and old movies, my head hurts too badly to read. Crumby way to spend vacation days, but right now Mentholatum, Kleenex and Advil are my only friends. Excuse me now, I'm going to lie down for awhile.

Friday Lunch

Can you believe I drove into Houston two days in succession? Sometimes I don't go into town twice a year. The occasion was a  chance to have lunch with some of my favorite old friends from childhood. I started going to school with George and RoseMary when we were fifth graders in Mrs. Bigby's class. I remember vividly the first time I saw both of them and we've been friends ever since.
The other two members of our party were our favorite teachers from high school Miss Acree (back then) and Mr. Cullinan. Although they have long since given us permission to address them by their first names, we tend to still call them, as we did back then when talking about them, as "Acree and Cullinan."
Everyone looks remarkably well, especially Eloise who is 72, but looks younger than we do. She is still teaching! She tried retirement in 2004, but was called back into service because she is a nationally recognized debate coach and some principal needed one. I'm sure she wrote her own ticket, but he probably didn't have to twist her arm too hard to get her back on board.
She was our junior English teacher and we absolutely adored her. She was single, funny, fashionable, and, we thought, the smartest person in the world. She teamed up with Mr. Cullinan to teach a course they created and called simply, Humanities, when we were seniors. We know now that they created a curriculum to ready us for college by exposing us to literature, art and history we would have missed out on otherwise. They also taught us to write. If there are punctuation errors here, it isn't because Mr. Cullinan shirked his responsibility. He firmly believed that everyone had to memorize the rules. But, memory fails me.
He is 78 now, but still the best storyteller ever. His family were founders of the Texas Company and he grew up in Laredo in circumstances that made Spanish his first language. He is opinionated, out-spoken to a fault and side-splitting funny.
We met at Palazzo for our lunch. In the Upper Kirby area, it's small, quiet and reasonably priced with excellent service. The tomato basil soup and chopped salad with bleu cheese were perfect. We sat over lunch and coffee for almost three hours and were never rushed or bothered by the staff.
We had a great time catching up and reminiscing. George is in real estate and RoseMary is a college administrator. I'm glad I'm not the only person our age still working. He markets luxury homes and meets tons of fascinating people. She has such a grasp of the problems in education and great enthusiasm for fixing the broken system. Wonderful visit...hope we do it again soon. Thanks for the flowers George!