Turn Off the Bubble Machine

"You missed all the excitement," I said to Jeri, when she emerged from the bathroom at my mother's, after taking her shower.

I had gone to my mother's in the middle afternoon and we had dinner together and settled in for the night watching a Criminal Minds marathon, bloody murder after bloody murder, until we took a break to watch NCIS -- another bloody murder, with a Naval twist.

All the while we were waiting for news of Jeri, who had left Boston that afternoon and was scheduled to fly into San Francisco around 11 p.m. The plan was that she would catch the shuttle and I would pick her up in downtown San Rafael around midnight.

Walt was tracking her progress on Jet Blue's web site and texting me, for example, to let me know that the plane had passed over Elko, Nevada. It was kind of like tracking Santa's travels from the North Pole.

It was sometime around 10 p.m. when I had a text message from Jeri saying their plane had been re-routed to San Jose and, since the last shuttle to Marin County left the airport at midnight, she wasn't sure she would make it.

I was confused about why their plane was re-routed to San Jose, which is about 30-40 miles (if that) from the San Francisco airport. If they could make it to San Jose, surely they could make the last few miles to San Francisco, but it turned out that because of the stormy weather they would have to be in a holding pattern over the airport and because of all the headwinds across the country, the plane didn't have enough fuel to go into a holding pattern.

I figured if she could text, she could receive phone calls and called to ask if she wanted me to pick her up at the San Francisco airport. But neither of us wanted me out in the storm, which was hammering Marin county at that moment. My mother and I could hear the winds howl and signs had been knocked down in the mobile home park. I wasn't really enthusiastic about driving over the Golden Gate bridge and about 20 miles south to the airport, but if she was going to be missing the shuttle, I was willing to do it.

It was sometime during the third episode of On-Demand's Two and a Half Men when we finally had the message that Jeri had arrived in Marin county and would soon be at the transit station in San Rafael.

My mother, who had been saying all evening that she wanted to go with me to meet her, loooked out the window at the storm and decided that while we were gone, she would get into her jammies and wait for us at home. This meant that I wasn't 100% sure where I was going, and did manage to get turned around, but I didn't make Jeri stand out in the rain too long.

By the time we got back to my mother's house it was 2 a.m. We had been through a flooded section of the freeway which scared the bejeezus out of me and I was very glad to be OFF the road for the night, but I was very glad that I had been driving at that hour and only had road conditions to contend with, and very few cars.

My mother passed out ice cream and then Jeri, who had been up since 5 a.m. Boston time (so nearly 24 hours by now), decided it was time for her to go to bed. We all collapsed on our various sleeping places and went to sleep. I read for awhile and then slept a couple of hours, waking at 5 and having difficulty getting back to sleep, but I finally did, until 8.

We let Jeri sleep until about 10 a.m., at which time my mother woke her up with the traditional glass of orange juice in bed. We visited over coffee and then my mother fixed eggs, bacon and heated up some store-bought banana muffins. It always amazes me how my mother seems almost angry if you leave any food on the table. She had fixed a big casserole for the two of us for dinner the night before. I had eaten my fill and she said "Now, I want you to FINISH this because I don't want to have any leftovers." The amount left over was more than I had eaten and I wan't hungry. And naturally with three people at the breakfast table, I, the fat one, was the one who was supposed to finish the huge leftover banana muffin (I didn't). I know she's a product of her time and that the choices I make today are mine alone, but I realize that the root of my weight problems started with that "I don't want to throw it away, so someone has to eat it" mentality!

Jeri sat down to play the piano for a bit. I love watching her play and marveled at how proud my father would have been of her. He always wanted me to follow in his footsteps musically, but I just didn't have the talent. Jeri does and the only times I miss my father are when Jeri is playing the piano because I really wish he had lived to see her become a professional musician.

After playing the piano, Jeri decided to take a shower so we could head home for her to attend Ned & Marta's Christmas party.

My mother had, by this time, cleaned everything up. That's something else. Things must be cleaned up immediately and it's a sense of pride with her that she do it all by herself. Surreptitiously, if possible.

And so I wasn't really aware of what was going on in the kitchen. She came into the living room and sat in her chair while Jeri was in the bathroom. We were talking when suddenly she leaped up and ran out into the kitchen.

Soap suds were pouring out the valve in the kitchen sink and onto the floor of the kitchen from the dishwasher. It seems that after she had filled the dishwasher, she realized she was out of dishwasher detergent and decided that just this once she'd use dish washing liquid which, of course, is a whole 'nothing formula altogether. She had no idea how many bubbles would be created.

It took many armloads of bubbles, many paper towels and about four different rinses before the water ran clean again. But I think it's fair to say that even with her increasing memory problems, she won't be trying that little substitution again!