Tuesday Today
It's school vacation week here in VT. Last year we took that fabulous trip to Maine where we stayed at the lovely Billowhouse Inn. This year we're staying home. Well, I'm staying home. My parents came up to take care of Max, and Mitch is leaving tomorrow for a mini music tour to Chicago. Actually, I'm going to work. I think Max has strep, so I'm hoping it doesn't strike all of us. Just what my increasingly frail parents need.
I'm alarmed every time I see my parents now. They are no longer the spry new retirees of recent memory. My dad looks like my grandfather. People tell him he looks like HIS grandfather. My mom will be 71 next week. They've both been undergoing stress tests to make sure their hearts are working well. I'm wondering if I'm asking too much of them, watching over an active 10-year-old grandson. They have a subdued grandson today... my little man was curled up on the couch when I left this morning.
We took my folks to a friend's Passover seder last night. I wasn't sure how it would go, for it was a big crowd of people and my dad is a self-proclaimed disdainer of crowds. Turns out they were wonderfully entertained. With six children, two dogs and 13 adults, it was controlled chaos. Someone would be reading from the Haggadah, and someone across the room would shout at a dog to BE QUIET! We skipped parts of the service. People kept arriving and leaving. We stumbled over the Yiddish words. The kids squealed over the Manishevitz. And no event can go too wrong when folks are drinking copious amounts of red wine.
I expect the good people of Bradford County, PA, will be reading about the seder in my dad's newspaper column next week.
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The scent of slightly burnt popcorn wafts through our little hospice house this morning. Our Muslim resident likes popcorn for breakfast. It took us awhile to figure this out. I was working in the kitchen last week when he came in asking for cooked corn. The house manager and I pulled out a bag of frozen corn kernels to show him, and he nodded. So I cooked some up in the microwave and served it to him with some butter and salt. He came back with a 1970's era cookbook and showed me a photo of what looked like a casserole dish with potatoes and corn. He mimed cooking in a pan and said, "Oil! Oil!" So I took the corn kernels, added them to a frying pan with some oil, and fried it. ?? He seemed to like it, so for the next couple of mornings I asked the breakfast folks to fry up frozen corn kernels in oil, until the kernels were turning brown. Over the weekend, one of the staff made some microwave popcorn. When our Muslim friend smelled it, he came running over. "Corn in oil! Corn in oil!" Sure enough, he had been asking for popcorn all along. And we had been frying him corn in oil.
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Average lifespan for a discount store bookcase: 20 years.
We have a four-shelf wooden bookcase in the living room at our little hospice house. Today I tried to squeeze one more book on the top shelf. The shelf slipped off its plastic holder, fell on top of the shelf below, which caused the top to cave in and both the sides to split. Four shelves of books and jigsaw puzzles fell on my feet. No one was hurt (although my pride is a bit tender). I had to laugh. What else can you do? Now all the books and jigsaw puzzles are in piles on the living roon floor.
You can't plan this sort of thing. It just happens.
I'm alarmed every time I see my parents now. They are no longer the spry new retirees of recent memory. My dad looks like my grandfather. People tell him he looks like HIS grandfather. My mom will be 71 next week. They've both been undergoing stress tests to make sure their hearts are working well. I'm wondering if I'm asking too much of them, watching over an active 10-year-old grandson. They have a subdued grandson today... my little man was curled up on the couch when I left this morning.
We took my folks to a friend's Passover seder last night. I wasn't sure how it would go, for it was a big crowd of people and my dad is a self-proclaimed disdainer of crowds. Turns out they were wonderfully entertained. With six children, two dogs and 13 adults, it was controlled chaos. Someone would be reading from the Haggadah, and someone across the room would shout at a dog to BE QUIET! We skipped parts of the service. People kept arriving and leaving. We stumbled over the Yiddish words. The kids squealed over the Manishevitz. And no event can go too wrong when folks are drinking copious amounts of red wine.
I expect the good people of Bradford County, PA, will be reading about the seder in my dad's newspaper column next week.
************
The scent of slightly burnt popcorn wafts through our little hospice house this morning. Our Muslim resident likes popcorn for breakfast. It took us awhile to figure this out. I was working in the kitchen last week when he came in asking for cooked corn. The house manager and I pulled out a bag of frozen corn kernels to show him, and he nodded. So I cooked some up in the microwave and served it to him with some butter and salt. He came back with a 1970's era cookbook and showed me a photo of what looked like a casserole dish with potatoes and corn. He mimed cooking in a pan and said, "Oil! Oil!" So I took the corn kernels, added them to a frying pan with some oil, and fried it. ?? He seemed to like it, so for the next couple of mornings I asked the breakfast folks to fry up frozen corn kernels in oil, until the kernels were turning brown. Over the weekend, one of the staff made some microwave popcorn. When our Muslim friend smelled it, he came running over. "Corn in oil! Corn in oil!" Sure enough, he had been asking for popcorn all along. And we had been frying him corn in oil.
************
Average lifespan for a discount store bookcase: 20 years.
We have a four-shelf wooden bookcase in the living room at our little hospice house. Today I tried to squeeze one more book on the top shelf. The shelf slipped off its plastic holder, fell on top of the shelf below, which caused the top to cave in and both the sides to split. Four shelves of books and jigsaw puzzles fell on my feet. No one was hurt (although my pride is a bit tender). I had to laugh. What else can you do? Now all the books and jigsaw puzzles are in piles on the living roon floor.
You can't plan this sort of thing. It just happens.