Somehow, Suzanne managed to wrangle a day off yesterday, so we drove to Delta-bama to visit our hero—Big Helen. Skitter was a sly mutt, cuz she gave Mom a bigly bag of candy, totally ignoring Mom’s glucose levels. Every time I looked in their direction, Skitter was handing Mom another Swedish Fish. I knew we would be in trouble the next time the nurses checked Mom’s sugar. And we were. The nurse told Mom there was an insulin shot coming her way. As we were leaving Millard Care and Rehab, we walked Mom to her lunch table—trying to hide her from any syringe-wielding nurses. But the staff at MCR doesn’t miss a thing. The nurse accosted Mom with a shot in the hall. All’s right with Mom’s blood sugar again. Hey, Mom’s 90. If she wants Swedish Fish, she’s getting Swedish Fish. Besides, it was Skitter who gave her the bag of candy anyway, so you can’t blame me.
BTW Here’s a factoid about Mom: Whenever a nurse prepares to test Mom’s blood, Mom ALWAYS gives them her middle finger to prick. It amuses the nurses, and it amuses Mom to sort of flip the bird at her situation. Everyone wins. I love Mom.
After a pandemic year of not doing our weekly brunching out, Suzanne made us brunch reservations at Cafe Niche. I was relieved to embark on some of our “old normal” events—sort of. We still had to wear masks in common areas of the restaurant, but I have to be honest and say that I like some of the “new normal” that I hope will not go back to pre-pandemic times. I like that there is now more space between the tables in restaurants. I like that hand sanitizer is strategically placed throughout the restaurant. I really like that I don’t have to touch a physical menu that has a battalion of other peoples’ sticky fingerprints on it. It was such heaven to use my phone to scan the code at the table, then read the menu right on my personal screen. I like that salt-and-pepper shakers—and condiment bottles—don’t sit out on the table to be pawed by forty customers per day. I’m not an OCD germaphobe, but it has always bugged me that every diner who sits at a given table throughout the day touches the stuff to be used there. I like that the server now brings me a personal portion of whatever seasoning or condiment I ask for. I so hope I find these changes in whatever dining establishment where we end up brunching this coming Sunday. I’ll keep y’all updated on things of such high import.
FYI If I ask her next month, Suzanne might not even remember what she ate at brunch yesterday. However, if I ask her in five years about the foliage outside Cafe Niche in May of 2021, she will remember exactly what was blooming there. Just sayin.’
There is “cool.” And then there is “Skitter-cool.” In her hat and Tie o’ the Day, Skitter exudes cool-osity from every fur follicle. This is how The Skit faces a Monday. Since she woke up, she’s been listening to nothing but Lucinda Williams cd’s. And just what is Skitter’s fave-rave Lucinda Williams song to sing along with? “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten,” of course. 💿🎙
The LDS Primary songs of my youth continue to make it impossible for me to wallow in tedious labor. “Saturday” is a song that has gone through my head every Saturday for more than fifty years now. I can’t help it. It’s just there, being the soundtrack of one entire day of every week. Some people work all week long just to get to the excitement of a wild Saturday night on the town, but that’s not how it works for me. Because of the aforementioned song, “Saturday,” from the official Primary songbook, being permanently stuck in my head, Saturday is tasks, chores, and to-do lists. But it’s oh-so fun because there’s a song to sing about it.
Like any good kid song, it is simple, and so it easily accommodates new lines about the real-life Saturday tasks I find myself engaged in. One of my best “true” lines came about because my dad—not too long before he passed away—had been on his back in the driveway, fixing something underneath his forklift. Later that Saturday afternoon, he was puzzled because he couldn’t find his lower dentures. Mom was poking around in every nook and cranny of their house to find them. I asked Dad where he had been working. I got the rake and headed for the forklift. Dad was yelling to me out the front window that he didn’t have his teeth at the forklift, so I didn’t need to look there; meanwhile, Mom came outside to give me a run-down of all the places where she hadn’t found his lowers; and just at that moment Suzanne called from Ogden, needing something. My dogs circled my feet, wanting me to throw the ball for them. My head was full of all these voices. I answered the phone and said to Suzanne, “Whatever it is, handle it. I can’t talk to you right now because I’m busy raking the gravel for Dad’s dentures. Click.” Thus, the following line was born, and I forever added it to “Saturday:” “We rake the gravel, and look for Dad’s teeth,/so we can be ready for Sunday.”
I did, in fact, find Dad’s lowers in the gravel under the forklift. My instincts were correct. He had put them in the chest pocket of his overalls while he worked, and they had slid out of the pocket as he tinkered. Suzanne later told me she thought I was drunk on the phone, because it didn’t make any sense to her why I would be raking gravel to find Dad’s teeth. Like any really good story, it didn’t make any sense at all. Of course it didn’t make sense: It was true!
I’ve been wearing my COVID-19 model Mask o’ the Day quite a bit lately, as my way of acknowledging the wind-down of the pandemic. I think it pairs nicely with purple/lavender Bow Tie o’ the Day.
I got a FaceTime call from Gracie and her parents last night, during which Skitter and I got to watch Gracie open the birthday gifts we left for her earlier in the day. Among the books and sweets and star-shaped sunglasses we thought she’d like, we gave her some balls and a tee-ball mitt—clearly her first mitt, cuz she had no idea what to do with it. Like the whip-smart gal she is, though, she immediately figured out how to make dandy use of the mitt. She decided it was a hat and wore it on her head. I like that girl’s style! She looked smokin’ in the tee-ball mitt hat. I see bigly things for her in her fashion-forward future.
Skitter’s sad, sad, sad face at Gracie’s front door.Here’s Gracie a few months ago.
Today is The Divine Miss Gracie’s 2nd Birthday. I cannot believe it. It seems like she just barely showed up in our family. On the other hand, Grace has taken over like none of us even existed before she was born into this world. She’s a blessing, a spit-fire, and a tornado all in one. She is also wise beyond her years, according to anyone who has ever spent time with her. When she and Skitter finally met last Christmas, I don’t know which of them was more taken with the other.
This morning, Skitter and I threw Gracie’s gifts in the car and headed to Provo. We had hoped to surprise her with our good tidings. We miscalculated and found no one at home. See how forlorn Skitter’s expression was as we discovered at the front door that our Grace Anne was nowhere to be found at her house. We should have known better. We should have assumed her little birthday dance card was full. Clearly, it was.
Skitter and I left Grace’s gifts at the front door and headed back north to our turf. Skitter was beside herself about not seeing Gracie on her birthday. I told Skitter that not being able to see Gracie might turn out to be a favorable thing for us in the end. I said, “Travis and Collette will feel so bad about missing our visit that we could probably ask them if Gracie can stay with us for a whole sleepover at our place soon.” Skitter looked at me with deep concentration as I then went on to explain the concepts of “guilt” and “manipulation”—and how to use them to your advantage, to get things like playdates, sleepovers, and extra treats. 🤡
Remember how my phone inadvertently and repeatedly called 9-1-1 yesterday? It shaped up for a while—until I decided to play another game of solitaire on it. An ad came across the screen again, and the dang thing froze up again, and it dialed 9-1-1 again as I attempted to shut it down. The solitaire app had to go. I dumped it and my iPhone hasn’t frozen up for at least 24 hours. I’m no fool, though. No phone lasts forever—although they are tougher than they used to be. I always prepare for the worst, and hope for the best—like the cliche says to do. This is why I always have a Phone Fund slowly building up in a piggy bank. It’s right there by the Fun Fund For Travel; the Mom Fund, in case she needs something; three College Funds For Family Who Can’t Afford It; and the Gambling Fund for when we go to Las Vegas again. Oh, and there is also the Bee Piggy Bank Date Night Fund for nights out on the town, which we have not used for over a year. I tell you about these savings stashes so you can see that my spare change already has lots of places to go. My Phone Fund is not quite bigly enough for me to need a new phone right now. I hope keeping solitaire apps off my phone will make it possible for my phone to live a much longer life—at least until my Phone Fund is equal to the cost of a new iPhone.
Interestingly, I have recently realized I’ve been using a terrific investment strategy for decades, which I wasn’t even aware of until now. I’ll let you in on it, in case you want a sure bet as you follow your road to prosperity and obscene wealth. Three words: wood bow ties. Do you know what lumber is worth right now? It’s worth exactly… a lot of money. It’s certainly worth more than it was worth a few weeks ago. I could build—and sell—a wood cabin with the bulk of my wood neckwear, or I could just sell the bow tie wood outright and move to Ireland right this minute. But you know me. I’ll hang on to my wood neckwear collection because it makes me happy. However, with wood prices what they are today, I’m buying a gargantuan gun safe to house all the wood critters in my neckwear collection. I must remember to leave room in the gun safe for my gun.
A couple of times a year, Skitter and I get pet-hungry. We sit around on the deck with our popsicles, wondering if it’s time to add a little critter of some kind to the household. I think Skitter needs a kitten. I think she would do well with a baby feline who would curl up with her for naps and nighttime, but otherwise demand absolutely nothing from her. Cats are so good about living their own lives as independent royalty—so separate and above us peons who feed them, change their kitty litter, and keep them supplied with catnip. Cats don’t even pretend to care about anybody but themselves—even though we know they secretly tolerate us. Skitter needs a pet like that: a pet with no needs, except to curl up and snuggle for warmth.
Skitter is usually the one who brings up the possibility of adopting more exotic types of pets, like maybe a chimpanzee or a kangaroo. I suspect Skitter watches National Geographic animal shows when I’m not around, because today she asked if we could get a meerkat. I will give Skitter just about anything she asks for, but I don’t think Centerville is a place a meerkat wold want to live—even with us. We probably could have made that work in Delta, but we don’t own a tumbleweed ranch there anymore.
Skitter and I will talk about pet options for another day or so, and then we’ll move on to another subject. My Bow Tie o’ the Day and Shirt o’ the Day in this photo scream out the kind of pet I’m always angling for. I’m a card-carrying mutt gal. Skitter doesn’t know it yet, but that means she’s a mutt gal too.
Skitter is capable of surprising us with a lot of odd skills. Honestly, dialing 9-1-1 isn’t one of them. I’m really the one who called 9-1-1 this morning—by accident somehow—three times. Seriously, after today, I am practically on a first-name basis with the 9-1-1 operators of Davis County.
It started out innocently enough when I played a game of solitaire on my iphone while waiting for my popcorn to finish popping in the microwave. (Yes, I had popcorn for breakfast again. So sue me.) When an ad came flying across my phone screen, the screen froze up. I touched every spot on the screen, but there was no budging the frozen ad, and there was no continuing the stoopid game. And my phone wouldn’t even turn off. I finally put it down, figuring the problem would resolve itself. I was sure I’d come back to my phone in a few minutes, and it would magically be healed. Nope.
Twenty minutes later, the screen remained frozen on the stoopid ad. I pressed the buttons to “power off” the phone, and a WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP came screaming out. The phone didn’t shut off. The screen was the same frozen ad, but a little green phone showed up in the corner of it. I touched it and answered. It was a 9-1-1 operator. “What’s your emergency?” I didn’t know what to say, so I told the truth. “I’m just trying to shut off my frozen-screened phone, and it started WHOOP-ing at me, and then you called me.” Boy, that sounded suspicious. I might as well have told them I was a technotard and couldn’t be trusted with anything more complicated than a stapler. This was especially true when I tried to shut off my phone two more times and the same scenario happened each time.
I still have no idea how it happened. All I know is that after the third 9-1-1 call to my new emergency friends, my screen finally wasn’t frozen anymore. And I could turn off my phone without WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP calling 9-1-1. I bet the operators miss me already. I can’t wait to see what other new experiences my day will offer.
When I woke up this morning, I fully intended to throw Skitter in the car and drive to Delta to see Mom. I put Skitter’s diaper bag in the car, then waited for Suzanne to get off safely to work, at which time I would head for the west desert. I waited and waited, but Suzanne didn’t come downstairs at her usual time. I figured she knew what she was doing, schedule-wise. About 30 minutes past when she was supposed to actually be at work, I finally went upstairs to see if she was okay. She must have slept through her alarm, because she was still sleeping. I woke her up to verify she wasn’t dead or comatose, and then I told her how late she was. She was up in a flash, and out the door in another flash. If I hadn’t been home, she’d still be in bed snoozing this afternoon. This is why I like to wait for her to leave before I do.
Meanwhile, I had noticed that I kept nodding off from the moment I got out of bed. I didn’t feel tired, then all off a sudden, my eyelids would close and my head would fall back against the couch—and ZIP, I was wide awake again, until the next time I dozed. I can take a hint. I made the bigly, unilateral decision that taking a long drive was probably not the smartest plan today. If you drive on Utah freeways frequently, or at all, you have likely come to the conclusion that many drivers surely seem to be driving in their sleep. It might work for them, but I ain’t up for driving like that. Nodding off is not how I roll—especially with a Skitter on board.
BTW Yes, I am! I am wearing the same Bow Tie o’ the Day I wore yesterday, just because I can.
