Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty.

On her way to work,

Amy messages me that Gnocchi is outside.

It is snowing like crazy.

Our biggest storm of the season.

Most schools started late as well as all state offices.

Dutifully, I go right downstairs to rescue poor Gnocchi.

He was on the deck begging and clawing to come in.

Last night, I locked the safety latch on the door,

which we normally don’t do except when we girls are home alone.

(DeRay & Ed flew to Vegas for a few days to cavort with Clare.)

I could not budge the lock.

It’s supposed to pop up when you touch it.

First I put my shoes on so I can push harder.

Still won’t budge.

Frustrating.

I get the butcher knife; I get the hammer.

Then I go to the front door and open it, calling “Here Kitty Kitty Kitty,”

thinking he would see and hear me and leap around to the front door.

I do that three times.

He just cries and claws at the back door.

Finally I remember the door in the dining room.

DeRay had just opened it to bring in the balance table.

It came open easier than usual so I don't plan on it being stuck.

I didn’t have the strength to budge it.

Still I tried it three times.

I was in hopes someone would come plow our driveway

and I would coax him to go get Gnocchi.

I wasn’t sure I could maneuver in the deep snow

to walk clear around the house and pick him up.

After an hour,

I decided I had no alternative but to put on hat, coat, gloves, and boots – 

except I couldn’t find my winter boots so I had to settle for lesser.

I also take my phone in case I fall.

I go out through the garage door,

thinking surely when Gnocchi hears the garage door open,

he will come bounding in.

Nope.

I carefully head out through the relatively deep snow

not knowing what hazards lay buried underneath.

Mercifully, I get to the deck without slipping or falling.

Gnocchi sees me.

I think he is running toward me so I don’t have to climb the steps.

(You know cats are thoughtful like that.)

Nope.

He jumps down and runs under the deck.

I’m not crawling under the deck for him.

He’s on his own.

I get half-way around the house when this black streak leaps past me.

He was waiting at the door in the garage to get in the house.

I’ve had my adventure for the day.

I message Amy that I’ll tell her about Gnocchi when she gets home.

She assumes he’s dead;

I never look at my phone again

so she didn’t know until she got home that all was well.

She went right over and pressed the lever with her finger

and it popped right up.

It must have been frozen.

I put all my tools away.

January 17, 2020

Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus

     This morning, I woke up for the final time when I heard “JEANETTE” again louder “JEANETTE!”  “What?” “I’m stuck.”

     He was on the floor between the bed and the wall. “What can I do?” “Pull the beds out.” So I pulled my bed and then his out so he had room to maneuver. Afterwards, I thought I missed my golden opportunity to get even. I should have told him that I’d help him when I get darn good and ready. Nobody's going to tell me what to do.

     DeRay routinely keeps Eddy waiting up to an hour and a half for lunch or dinner because “everything doesn’t happen right when he expects it. I’ll get up when I’m ready.”  Or to me when I ask him to do something (like get the cardboard boxes out of the front room) after he has been watching TV 6 to 15 hours, “Nobody tells me what to do.” “Quit bossing me around. You're not my mother. I’ll do it when I’m good and ready not when you order it.” I forget what I asked him to do before he gets out of the chair. Yesterday, Amy was getting dinner. I offered to help but it was hard for me to mash the potatoes with her new squeezer so I asked DeRay if he would come and do it. He kept watching TV, even when I asked him again. Finally Amy did it. She was cooking chicken, making a salad, biscuits, and everything else. I asked him to go downstairs and get some eggnog.  “You guys act like I’m not 85.”  So I hobble down.

     But I’m not a man so I helped him get unstuck this morning and I’m glad I did. (I whine sometimes too.)

The Errant Hearing Aids

I hate hearing aids.

I do.

You can hear every rattle and scratch,

crackle and crunch

but you can’t tell what people are saying

around the dinner table.

Sometimes they’re on and sometimes they’re off

for no apparent reason.

They hide from you and

get lost in the strangest places.

For example,

you’re not supposed to use hairspray

with hearing aids in

so I take them out.

If I don’t have pockets

I might wind them in the

stretchy waistband of my pants

so the hairspray doesn’t hit them.

Then if you’re, say around 83-years-old,

you forget about them completely.

An hour later as we’re zooming up the freeway,

I remember them.

WHERE ARE THEY?

Was I upstairs or down?

I feel in my waist band and find the hearing aid.

Whew.

It scares me too.

Where is the transmitter?

In the hallway, kitchen, garage, driveway?

Neither Amy nor I has our cell phone

so we borrow a cell phone and

call DeRay.

He looks for a good half-hour.

On the way home,

I’m rubbing my thighs and

 feel something. .

"Amy, I think I found my transmitter!”

I reach down my pantleg and

HALLALUJAH!

I’m always going to put them someplace safe.

They are not going to hide from me ever again.

I promise.

The very next morning,

as the water hits my head in the shower

and after Ed and I have been swimming

for an hour and ten minutes,

I touch the hearing aid in my left ear.

I am sick.

I didn’t have the transmitter in

because I was listening to books on tape

while eating breakfast.

“I need Elder Care,”

I moan to DeRay & Amy when we walk in the door.

Amy put it in rice.

We’ll know in a few days.

Do you see why I hate hearing aids?

They are so naughty.

A Poignant Scene

Doing my stretches each morning, I open the blinds to do Tree and Sun Salutations. It has snowed each morning since Christmas and is so entrancing. On New Years Day when I opened the blinds, I noticed Ed Denny across the street getting out of his car and walking into the garage. Soon he came walking out slowly with his wife and carefully got her situated in the car. Then he went over and lowered his flag and gently walked it into the house. He came back out and they drove off. Why would they go on a snowy morning? I think I know. Their son in New Mexico is being treated for cancer. He has no family there. The whole scene made me so sad.  Kathi (her husband calls her Katy) was born and raised in Germany. Her father helped clean up Dresden after it was bombed out during World War II. Still they fly an American Flag each day they are here. They had three children; their little girl died at two years old. Both of their sons’ wives died young.  They only have one grandchild (whom they virtually raised. He went to school here and all because both of his parents worked) and he moved to Alabama with his family. Ed mowed our lawn last summer more than Karlton did. He’s always doing things for the neighbors. When we moved here, they were barely 50—just liked us—and now they are old and rickety—just like us. Kathi is very positive and always thinks the best will come to pass. She says she has good vibes about her son’s prognoses. Looking out my window was sort of like time passing by in slow motion. Thirty-two years of watching them grow old out my window and doing their best to alleviate the sorrow and suffering that comes into all our lives.

Kathi is as crippled up

as I am, having had both hips

and both knees replaced,

plus several back operations;

but she refuses to use a cane.

She doesn’t want to look old,

like me.

Daddy-Long-Legs

Amy, DeRay, and I watched the musical, "Daddy-Long-Legs" the other night.

Daddy-Long-Legs is a 1912 epistolary novel by the American writer Jean Webster. It follows the protagonist, Jerusha "Judy" Abbott, as she leaves an orphanage and is sent to college by a benefactor whom she has never seen.

Plot summary

     Jerusha Abbott was brought up at the John Grier Home, an old-fashioned orphanage. The children were completely dependent on charity and had to wear other people's cast-off clothes. Jerusha's unusual first name was selected by the matron from a gravestone (she hates it and uses "Judy" instead), while her surname was selected out of the phone book. At the age of 17, she finished her education and is at loose ends, still working in the dormitories at the institution where she was brought up.

     One day, after the asylum's trustees have made their monthly visit, Judy is informed by the asylum's dour matron that one of the trustees has offered to pay her way through college. He has spoken to her former teachers and thinks she has potential to become an excellent writer. He will pay her tuition and also give her a generous monthly allowance. Judy must write him a monthly letter, because he believes that letter-writing is important to the development of a writer. However, she will never know his identity; she must address the letters to Mr. John Smith, and he will never reply.

     Judy catches a glimpse of the shadow of her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. Because of this, she jokingly calls him Daddy-Long-Legs. She attends a "girls college" on the East Coast. She illustrates her letters with childlike line drawings, also created by Jean Webster.

     The book chronicles Judy's educational, personal, and social growth. One of the first things she does at college is to change her name to "Judy". She designs a rigorous reading program for herself and struggles to gain the basic cultural knowledge to which she, growing up in the bleak environment of the orphanage, was never exposed.

     During her stay, she befriends Sallie McBride (the most entertaining person in the world) and Julia Rutledge Pendleton (the least so) and sups with them and Leonora Fenton.

     At the end of the book, the identity of Daddy-Long-Legs is revealed as. . . . . . .guess you’ll have to read the book or see the musical  to find out the ending.

      We grew up being proud of Daddy for being Daddy-Long-Legs in that play. Didn't his teacher play the other lead? Can anyone remember her name?

Isn't that Daddy's handwriting?

Enrichment

      Brooke spent about 10 months doing all the paperwork and jumping through the hoops to get Eddy situated where he could enjoy a more fulfilling life.  We didn’t get involved until it was time to choose someone to be his advocate. We interviewed about six people. Brooke followed Eddy to his room to find out which one he wanted. Myself, I wanted the one that lives in Kaysville, in the ward we used to live in so we know many of the same people. She’s a nurse and her husband is a psychiatrist. We need both. Ed told Brooke he wanted Kayla. Kayla it became and she has been marvelous. We all love her. Then we had to interview people to come into the home, we had to visit places that Kayla found to see where he would go for day programs.
     The first day, Brooke and Elizabeth went with us. It was discouraging. We had spent all morning answering questions from the State guy and we were already tired.  (While the state guy was interviewing us, we kept talking about all Brent had done to help Ed while he was here. "Where is this Brent guy?" he wanted to know. "Let's get him out here.") Brooke sort of liked the one in Ogden and it was the best but we decided we hadn’t seen the right one yet. The next field trip we went to one in Layton that we loved because it was so close and then to PARC. Elizabeth chose this one because it was more professional and has both activities and work opportunities. We though maybe he could go to one 3 days and the other one 2 days. Brooke discouraged this because he has such a hard time adjusting. We finally all agreed that PARC would be the best fit for him. Currently it is being run by the Davis School District but that will change in July when it goes private. The government sets the guidelines and provides the funding but all the services are contracted out to private individuals and companies.  Eddy was approved for five days a week. We decided to start with two days to ease him into it.
     Since this is the field Amy got her Master’s Degree in, she has been extremely helpful and supportive all along, even posting about him on Facebook.
     Ed protested from the moment the decision was made even though we thought he helped make it.
     “I’m not going if it snows.”
     “I’m not leaving this neighborhood.”
     “Who will take care of the cats?”
     Brooke came over Sunday to help Dad give him a blessing. He was still insistent he wasn’t going no way no how. I couldn’t sleep all night worrying that we wouldn’t be able to get him to go. The van driver came right at 9:30. It was a cute girl, thank heavens.  Nevertheless, he was still adamant “I’m not leaving this neighborhood,” even as he climbed into the van in a blizzard. Monday November 25, 2019
      Elizabeth wrote: I’m so glad Ed enjoyed his first day!
     This morning Ed told his dad that he told the van driver: “Thank you for picking me up.” DeRay asked him what her name was. “She told you,” Ed reminded him. “I forgot,” Dad admitted. “You’ll find out next Monday,” Ed scolded, “now pay attention.”
     “I didn’t get to greet him at the door but he came in cussing that “They know I don’t like to be lonesome,” and “Now for the bad part” and “I hate it, hate it, hate it,” meaning coming home.
     To Brooke: After that we didn’t get much out of him. I asked him if he would be excited to go back next Monday and he informed me that he is not going back. He’s an enigma. I feel good about it.
     This morning, he chatted with me: “I love this house, Mom. And I also love PARC. It’s a long time until next Monday.” Nov. 26
      Today he came down the stairs chatting: “You know what I like about PARC, Mom?” “What?” “The restrooms and the good staff.”      
     This morning Eddy said, “I got something to look forward to on Sunday and Monday. Especially Monday.” (What? I never thought I’d see the day when anything trumped church.)
     “Know what I like about PARC, Mom? They go out into the community. Good thing I chose PARC, Mom.”
     “Good choice,” I added.
     “Really good choice,” he concluded.  November 29, 2019
     “I love PARC, Mom.”
     “Why do you love PARC?”
     “Because I chose it.”  (Maybe in his heart. Verbally he rejected it until he climbed into the van.)
     “Ed, now today I hope you will participate in the stretching exercises and follow the instructor,” I lecture.
     “She recognized me,” he said.
     Everybody recognizes Eddy. Every single place we visited while looking for a place, at least one person said “hello” to him, calling him by name.

A Quiet Thanksgiving

Ed’s two-bits

“You know what’s good about Thanksgiving, Mom?”

“We’ve got a lot to be grateful for.”

Today, maybe because it's just the four of us,

at home for Thanksgiving.

I’m thinking my favorite Thanksgiving

was the year we went to Orderville

and spent it with Mama,

the first Thanksgiving since her second husband passed away.

We’ve had much more exciting Thanksgivings –

All the years we spent with Grandma and Grandpa Pugh

and their kids and grandkids.

Lori, Jeanette, Clare, Danny, Norman, Karen, Grandpa and Grandpa Pugh, Brent

Or the year all our kids had the mumps so we couldn’t go anywhere.

because the Ogden kids had all had the mumps

they came for Thanksgiving dinner.

Or the year Jerry & Lana came and ReNee and Roland Palmer

with their oldest son Kevin who was just out of a coma

after a terrible car accident coming home after the deer hunt.

Brent, Todd, Lana, Jayson, DeRay, Jerry, Tim, Jeanette holding Jeanne, ReNee, Roland, Kevin

Or the year, we celebrated on Friday

because the doctors didn’t release Mama

from the hospital until Friday morning.

All of her children and most of her grandchildren

enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at our church.

Plus a mighty fine program.

Back: Jerry, Lynn, DeMoin, Charles M., Charles H., DeRay, DeLoy

Lana, Juanita, Lucy, Carol, Mama, Shirley, Jeanette, Grace

Verla, Parl

Effie, Melissa, Cindy, J. Lynn, Amy Jayne, Nellie holding Devin, Jayson,, Calvin, Karla, Todd, Tim holding Tamber,Stanley, Keenan, Middle: Boyd, Carl, Connie, Jeanne, Grandma holding Travis (Ed), Keri, Tena holding Brooke, Brent, David,  Lee, Bryan, Robert.

Or the years we have enjoyed Verla’s good food and games and laughter.

So why this year does this quiet time with just Mama stand out?

Brooke would turn 1 year old in a month; Jeanne was 6; and Brent was 9.

I was pregnant with Eddy.

Being pregnant was a precious gift to me.

It was a quiet, peaceful, even sacred Thanksgiving day.

We were so happy together.

Written Thanksgiving Day.