The drive is uneventful otherwise. We talk some but mostly we listen to Steve’s CD’s. He has them in a metal case and he’s very good about changing them. He has a variety of music and I don’t get bored. We stop for gas, a Coke for me. We polish…
We head back to Illinois on Monday, which is Memorial Day. Steve has suggested at least once that perhaps I didn’t plan this trip very well. Did I realize it was Memorial Day weekend when I was planning it? I don’t think I did, but it hasn’t made much difference…
We return to what I’ve come to think of as The House of Dust. Two years unoccupied. We opened the windows to air the house out when we arrived on Friday. I vacuumed on Saturday. Why does the house smell even worse? Steve says it’s that vacuum cleaner. He’s certain…
We go into the living room to chat some more. Of course Mom can’t hear anything even when someone shouts. No one is sitting close to her to repeat everything so she just misses most of it. She’s gone to the bathroom three or four times. She’s sat down and…
Sunday, May 26, 2012 Scrub and I have decided to go to church “out on the prairie” which is where my parents always went to church. If we go we might run into some of our cousins and maybe our aunt and uncle, my father’s brother and his wife. We…
Mom launches into a reminiscence about her own parents. Her mother had to get up every morning and make biscuits from scratch on an old wood cook stove. My grandfather would sit on a straight-backed chair next to the stove and rock back and forth on the back legs…
I haven’t seen Scrub or my mother in two years, not since Kevin’s funeral. We’ve never been particularly close, but we tend to come together during family crises, like when my dad was sick and then died, and when my brother passed away. Each evening Scrub and I sit out…
This morning in an effort to get my diabetic husband to make better food choices I decided to make a blueberry muffin recipe I found on the internet. This is how it went: First of all, a couple of days ago I bought what I thought was a butternut squash…
When you’re looking at downsizing your living quarters you have to make some tough decisions about what you’ll be getting rid of. In a far back corner of my closet there is a box of stuff I’ve saved for over fifteen years. Things I kept when we moved to our…
Earlier this week as I drove along through the shopping plaza parking lot on my way to work I passed a woman and a little girl holding a cardboard sign. I was almost past them when I glimpsed them and I couldn’t see what their sign said. It’s unusual to…
