Saturday, November 1, 2008

Afternoon at my house



(Dad said, "Take a little off the top." Chris is learning new skills.)

I picked up Mom this afternoon and took her along with me so I could get a few things checked off my own "to-do" list. First was a quick trip to pick up a couple things at the mall. Mom was good to stay with me as I told her to, and I only had to go after her once. I took her into the dressing room with me, of course. She gave me two sighs, loud and long, so I see her opinion of shopping at the mall is the same as it always has been ---she hates it! We were in and out in 30 minutes, though, and rewarded ourselves with Frostys from Wendy's afterwards. Next we went to my house and took the dogs for a long walk. Mom walks Shasta who is very good to stay exactly two feet to the left of her walker's left side. She never pulls or steps in front of your feet or anything, so it was a good walk for Mom. There are no rocks to trip on or holes to step into, and the road has no traffic because I live on a dead end loop. The weather was perfect, so we enjoyed our walk, looking at the neighbors' displays of straw, mums, pumpkins, and scarecrows. Afterwards I threw some clothes in the washer, pulled a few weeds, and gathered stuff for dinner before we went home. Dad said Mom looked like "The last rose of summer" when we returned because she had missed her afternoon nap and was tired. Dad had gone to his friend Jay's house while we were gone. Jay's wife passed away a couple years ago after a long while with Alzheimers, so I imagine it was therapeutic for Dad. I noticed that instead of Dad being frustrated with Mom, he sat and laughed while she and I cooked dinner. He was laughing because it is so difficult to cook with her helping. I turned around just in time to watch her nearly crack an egg in the chili, then the next thing I knew she was putting whole bologna slices on top of the browning hamburger. She's pretty helpful. Dad said it was nice to watch her give somebody else trouble, instead of himself, and he continued to laugh, so I'm thinking he was feeling a whole lot better after a day of separation. We put her to bed soon after supper and I'm sure she'll sleep very well tonight. I am hoping that she will soon feel comfortable enough to take her nap at my house in the afternoons, so I can get some work done but still keep an eye on her. We'll work on it.

She didn't say much today, except she said, "Janice" on the way to Neosho. Janice is her sister. On the way home, she said "Humphrey Pennyworth" three times. I went home and asked Dad who in the world Humphrey Pennyworth was. He said he was a cartoon character in the 1940's. I don't know if she saw something that brought him to mind, but that was her word for the day.

2 comments:

mollypollyvelela said...

during the summer when me and mom were down. Grandpa asked Grandma to trim his hair with the buzzer. She was set to do some hair trimming. Just in the nik of time, we grabbed the trimmers out of her hand before grandpa had a missing eyebrow.

pathfinder027 said...

Humphrey Pennyworth was a character in the daily newspaper comic strip "Joe Palooka" (a nice-guy heavyweight prize fighter) from the mid-1940s thru 1984, when the comic strip ended. Ham Fisher originated the strip, and it was carried on for 30 years after his death by others.

Humphrey was a comical giant of a character, a rotund blacksmith with red hair and a three-wheeled, pedal-driven conveyance that looked like an outhouse on a tricycle. It was called the "Humphreymobile". Humphrey had a sister Prunella, whom he called "Pruney".

George Reynolds
Virginia Beach, VA
(and yes, I am an ancient 63 yrs old!)