You Can't Go Home Again in the Rain

The plan had been to take Kathy out to Drake's Bay, where we scattered her mother's ashes several years ago, scatter Kathy's ashes, have lunch at the nice cafe there, and come back to my mother's to pack up and go home.

That was the plan.

As people have told me many times "if you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."

It was grey when we got up, but we had every expectation that the sun would eventually burn through the fog, since it had been such a beautiful day yesterday, and we were sure we would have sun for our journey.  It's only an hour and a bit to get there, so we had breakfast and broke out the cards again while waiting until time to leave.  We figured we didn't have to leave until about 11 a.m.

There were two or three more games.  The tally for the two days was 4 wins each for Peach and me, 3 wins for my mother, which of course did not please her.  She grumbles, but good-naturedly.  Sort of.

We were sitting at the dining room table. I was facing the back window and noticed that they grey didn't seem to be burning off.  My mother and Peach who were facing the larger front window pointed out that not only was the fog not burning off, but it was raining.  A lot.  Not heavy randrops, but more the sheeting kind of rain between drizzle and real rain, but it was coming down hard.  We discussed whether we should still go to the beach or not and decided that Kathy isn't going anywhere and it would be nicer to scatter her ashes on a sunny day.

So, the ashes now reside in my mother's house and Peach and I packed up our stuff and came home.

My mother has been trying to get rid of her "stuff" for a long time, so each time I'm there, I pack up a bag of books to bring to Logs.  When I worked there on Tuesday, a guy came in looking for Nora Roberts books.  He found one but complained that we didn't have more.  I told him to come back in a week and that I would make sure there were more books there.  I knew my mother was a big Nora Roberts fan, and so I packed up all of her books, as well as all of her James Micheners and brought them home with me.  Of course now I'm curious about Nora Roberts and wonder if I should read one of her books...and I haven't read any of the Micheners I brought home, so who knows when they will actually get to Logos!

My mother is positively obsessive about our leaving food behind. She doesn't want ANY leftovers in her house, not even in the freezer.  It's not that her freezer is full.  The only things in it are frozen dinners and ice cream, but last time Peach left two packets of the drink mixes we were drinking and, oh lord, have I been hearing about it.  We HAVE to take "all that food" home because she doesn't want ANY food left behind.  She will never eat the 1/2 small can of mandarin oranges left over from the salad I made last night, so be sure to take it home.  And she can't remember how to reheat the fondu, so I should take it home for Walt.  And for GOD's sake, don't leave the sealed box of hors d'oeuvres behind.  (Of course when we pointed out that the hors d'oeuvres left in the freezer had been purchased by JERI and not by us, that was OK.  They could stay there.)  I did forget to take the wine left over from the fondu and I know I'm going to hear about that because the only time she drinks wine is when guests come and she doesn't want to have TWO, God forbid, open bottles of wine in her refrigerator.

Sigh.  I do love my mother and really I just kind of roll my eyes are her eccentricities.  Lord knows I have enough of my own.  (MY eccentricity is I pack up all of my mother's books to take to a book store and then bring them here instead!)

Peach and I had a very nice visit on the ride home, both of us expressing our delight at how good my mother's memory had been this time around.  I'm not sure what causes it to be bad or good -- I know sometimes if she is sick with something (even a minor cold) her memory is terrible.  But she is in good health right now and her memory was at what is now its best.  I also decided what to do for her for Mother's Day.  She obviously doesn't want "stuff" and bringing her flowers is like bringing Coals to Newcastle, so I decided to buy her 2 hours of house cleaning from Merry Maids.  I think she will be THRILLED with it.

We have no plans for our next Cousins Day, since Peach's sister is having hip replacement next week and her husband (Peach's husband) is having knee replacement after that.  Peach, bless her, is caregiver for both of them and is going to have her hands full for awhile.  But she's also going to desperately NEED a Cousins Day to regain her sanity, so she hopes that maybe between the hip surgery and the knee surgery she can fit in a day for herself!