The Last Cousins Day

Yes, you read that right.  I have just come from the last cousins day.  Of course, I didn't know it would be the last one when we planned it.   Bob had his stroke in November and our previous cousins day had been a month or more before that, so it was so wonderful being back around my mother's table again.

When this picture was taken, my mother didn't know what Peach and I already knew.  I had only found out an hour or so before.

My day started at 8:30, leaving to get Peach.  She lives 35 miles from our house (I clocked it) but she isn't a freeway person.  Before Kathy died, she did the driving.  The two of them picked me up and we left our car here for Walt.  After Kathy died, Bob would drive Peach to our house and I would take over from there, then he would meet us here when we got home and drive her home.  With Bob no longer able to drive, Peach could not get herself here, so I drove from here to her house, picked her up, then doubled back, past Davis again and on to my mother's

On the drive we caught up on all the news.  And she had a stunner for me.  The doctor says that Bob has progressed so well that he will be able to leave the care facility on May 15 and the doctor felt he would do better in a home setting than in the facility.  But that wasn't the stunner.  Right now their son lives here and has been a big help to her, but their two daughters live in Iowa and Peach has decided that she and Bob will move to Iowa on May 16.  She is flying there next week to pick out a house, which her son and his wife will buy and she will rent from them.   She feels that right now there is nobody that can give her the kind of emotional support she needs now and will definitely need after Bob comes home.  She is moving to a town of 2,000 people, which just got its first ATM machine this year.  Her daughters and their husband are there (and daughters are -- I'm sorry, Ned and Tom -- a much closer support for a mother than a son is). She already knows several other people in the town from their past visits there.  There is an active senior center and a place where Bob, a Navy man, can meet with other retired military men and talk about the old days.  (He already thinks he is living in "the barracks" and goes to "the mess" for meals).

My immediate  reaction  was very selfish.   "You're leaving me???"  It took us a long time to become this close and she is the nearest person who is the closest person to me and I started to tear up just thinking about her moving.  But as we talked and as she told me all the good points about all of this, it just seemed like all the pieces of a large puzzle were falling into place beautifully and I agreed that she must do this.  It will be wonderful for her and especially wonderful for Bob.

She said she didn't want to tell my mother until this morning, so we didn't say anything about it.  We just settled in to play 65, pleased that my mother remembered as much of how to play the game as she did.

At 4, Peach decided to mix the drinks she had brought.  I put hors d'oeuvres in the oven and she started mixing.

Most of the drinks that we make for Cousins Day are mixtures of liquors and juice or cream or something to cut the alcohol.  This was straight vodka mixed with straight melon liquor and the combinatin was lethal.

But it was very pretty looking...

...and it tasted, as my mother said, "like more."  In fact, my mother was getting downright frisky, munching on a spinach dip profiterole.

she posed for this picture!

We were giggling a lot and talking about bad words and why they are bad words and other topics that we don't rarely discuss when we are together.

Peach made refills and then more refills.  I somehow managed to get dinner on the table, but I was beginning to realize that I was feeing my martinis.   In fact, I couldn't even eat my dinner.  Peach and my mother were engaged in the kinds of deep philosophical discussions about Iowa and Springfield Place that you have when you are in your cups.  Unbeknownst to them, I was in the kitchen quietly retching into the sink.  I stopped drinking then, with my 4th martini untouched, but the other two finished off theirs.  I can't remember when in the last thirty years I have ever been that drunk...and I think maybe only once or twice before in my life.

My mother moved from the dining room table to the living room and a proof of exactly how drunk I was was that she looked like hell and I did not take her picture.  I don't think I could have focused.  I did, however, stagger across the room and instantly pass out on the couch.  It would have been fun to have had a sober person take our picture, 3 old bags, each passed out on a different chair or couch.

That was around 7:30.  At 10 p.m., I was wide awake, feeling sober, in a dark room.  My mother was gone.  I hoped we hadn't killed her.   Peach was sitting up on her couch and waved at me.  Then she came over and sat with me and we had maybe the best conversation we have ever had, professing our love for each other (OK, maybe I wasn't as sober as I felt) and recalling all the special moments in our lives, all the way back to my visiting her when she was in boarding school in San Francisco when she was probably 8 or so.  We talked about the move and how important it was and how we could still Skype and how I wanted to fly to Iowa and visit them after they are settled.

We noticed the condition of the room.  The window curtains were open (my mother NEVER leaves them open), the kitchen and the table were disasters, with dirty dishes, boxes, and empty bottles everywhere (yes, we finished BOTH bottles of liquors).

I did the unforgivable -- I cleaned up the kitchen and actually loaded her dishwasher.  Then Peach and I decided it was tie to go to bed.  I managed to sleep until 3 a.m., but have been awake since then.  I lay there listening to my book, waiting for the other two to wake up.

When I saw the light go on in my mother's room, I was happy that (a) we had not killed her, and (b) that she didn't wake up yelling about how bad she felt.   I went in to sit with her and she was laughing a lot.  She had gone to bed in her clothes and said she had never slept in her clothes before

.

All things considered, she felt that the previous night had been great fun.  She does come from a long line of alcoholics and we felt that we had done them all proud.

We had two more games of 65 and a very light breakfast and then Peach and I packed up to come home.  I took the lamp with me, finally, and a couple of bowls that I think Tom can use.  I want to give my mother the sense that this is really happening.  She told Peach this morning that she knows it is going to happen and she's ready (that was right after she told me she wasn't going anywhere and was going to stay there.  Sigh!)

And then it was over.  Cousins Day has definitely gone out with a bang, not a whimper.  Peach will come back once more between her trip to Iowa and her moving there, so we can take her and show here where (I think) my mother will be moving and then...that's all she wrote, folks.

How incredibly fortunate we have been to have had this special thing in our lives for so long, but it is definitely time to turn the page to a new chapter for both Peach & Bob and my mother.

And I'm not going to drink anything stronger than water for a very. long. time!!!!!

The Changeling

How many times in the past two years have I looked at Polly's little head and wondered what is going on in there.  She is rarely relaxed.  She never gives that cute little doggie smile that you see in commercials and YouTube videos. She is the most vigilant dog I have ever seen.  She can go from what appears to be sound asleep to full attack mode, if Lizzie looks at her wrong, in a fraction of a second.

What happened to this little girl in her first year and a half to leave her like this? To make her so afraid of everything, even after 2+ years in this home where she has no threats whatsoever.

Lately things have been changing between us.  Once again, who knows what goes on in that little head.  She seems to be starting to prefer Walt to me, at least during the daytime and evening.  She is so excited when she sees him and she often sits in his lap rather than mine at night when we are watching TV.   But then something will spook her and she'll run over to my chair.

For the first year we had her, she would instantly leap into the chair with me..  Now she sits and whines and whines until I "invite" her up (that was all her idea, not mine!).  But instead of one big leap into the chair, she may try 5, 10 or even 20 times before that leap that does it.  She doesn't seem to be in pain or have any stiffness and when she does leap, it is effortless, but it's as if she's afraid something is going to hurt her if she does and she has to screw up her courage to make the full commitment to the leap.

Her favorite place also used to be curled into a ball under my armpit.  Now she doesn't seem comfortable there and often will curl up on the footrest instead, on the chair, but not with me as was so important to her for so long.

(and then, of course, just because I mentioned this change in habit to Walt, she decided to sleep next to me again!)

She still starts the night out by sleeping on my side while I am in sleeping position, but more often than not, now, she jumps down after 5-10 minutes and goes to sleep in a chair instead.  I am starting to feel rejected!

I would love for her to be a normal little dog, but I guess I have to accept that she never is going to be and just enjoy her for the odd creature that she is.

Tomorrow is Cousins Day, after more than six months.  Bob is finally "settled" enough in the rest home that Peach feels she can take a day off, and desperately needs it.  I am bringing dinner and tried to figure out the best way to make it easier on my mother -- just cooking dinner so she doesn't have to isn't enough any more.  You can't leave leftovers, and I feel guilty using too many pots and utensils because she won't let anybody clean up for her and I hate watching her struggle through her back pain trying to clean up my mess. 

So I finally decided on Trader Joe's frozen quiches (which I like very much).  Each is the right size for one person, they just go in the oven on a cookie sheet, which doesn't need to be washed because they don't dirty it, so clean up will be very easy.  To go with it, I got an all-in-one packaged spinach salad which again, will only dirty one bowl to mix it all in.  I think this meal may be a winner...it doesn't give me the chance to show off with some fancy dish I've created, but I will feel much better about it after the meal is over!

But anyway, tomorrow's entry will be posted late, after we return from Cousins Day (and it will be later than usual because I have to drive to the far side of Sacramento to take Peach home because she doesn't do freeways.)

Kathy's Last Cousins Day

How odd...an entry written on the actual date it is posted!  I am exhausted, having driven just short of the distance to Santa Barbara today, without leaving northern California.  But that story will be for tomorrow's entry.  This one is about Kathy 's last cousin's day.

We had not had a Cousins Day since May and boy were we all needing one!  Also, the weather was not good in May and so while we had planned to sprinkle Kathy's ashes then, we decided to wait until later...we had no idea how much later it would actually be. (Actually Kathy's husband and kids had scattered half of her ashes; we had the other half.)

After our last get together, Peach was called to service helping her sister, Mandy, following a hip replacement surgery and then when Mandy was OK to be on her own, Peach's husband Bob went in for a knee replacement.  The knee replacement has turned out to be significantly more complicated than intended and Peach has been doing the "in sickness" part of her vows 24/7 for the past four months.

They finally decided that Bob was OK to get along without her for a day or so and he was even able to drive her to my house, though I noted that he did not get out of the car, as he usually did.  He looked like he has seen better days.

Peach and I drove to my mother's.  I think we talked nonstop all the way there, and probably for the better part of two days.  We had missed our conversations!

We never quite know what to expect with my mother, how bad her memory is going to be and whether or not she'll be up for a card game or 10.  She had lunch ready for us and we enjoyed our lunch and then she invited us to move to the "soft seats" to talk.  She went into her bedroom for a minute and Peach and I decided she wasn't up for cards, but as she came back in she said "Hey--aren't we going to play cards?"   So we sat down and she said that she wasn't sure she remembered how to play.   Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't.  This time I think she was conning us.  At our last game, we figured out I had won 3 games, Peach had won 2 games and my mother had also won 3 games.  Other than never remembering which card was wild in each hand (which we all have problems with), she played as well as she ever has, which was nice.

As usual, we played, we talked, we laughed.  When it was time to make cocktails, Peach brought out her $18 bottle of--I kid you not--cucumber flavored vodka.

(It was organic too).  She mixed it with ginger beer and soda water. and served it with cucumber slices and lime.  They liked it better than I did.  I didn't dislike it, but I'm not a big ginger beer fan (which is why I don't like a "dark and stormy," which Jeri, Phil and Walt love to drink).

We brought Kathy out for our last "toast" together a s 4-some and let her sit on the table through dinner.

It was my turn to make the dinner and I had found a weird recipe on the A Year of Slow Cooking web site that sounded in intriguing.

Lemon Jello Chicken3 to 4 pounds chicken parts (I used frozen legs and a few breast halves) 1 (6_ounce) box Lemon Jello powder 3 tablespoons melted butter 1 tablespoon prepared Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon dried minced onion flakes (or one tiny onion, finely diced) Use a 4 to 6 quart slow cooker. I used a 4_quart for this one, and didn't brown the legs beforehand. The color on the chicken you see up above came only from slow_cooking. If you prefer more of a brown color, or more texture, go ahead and brown beforehand. My chicken was frozen solid, too. If you have thawed chicken, shave about 90 minutes off of the cooking time. Place the chicken into your slow cooker. In a small mixing bowl, combine the jello powder, melted butter, Dijon mustard, and onion flakes. Stir together to make a paste. This isn't liquidy at all-- it's sort of a combo between paste and playdough. Smear this onto your chicken the best you can. Cover, and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours. I cooked our chicken on low for exactly 7 hours, then kept it on the warm setting for another 2 hours. Serve with mashed potatoes, or rice pilaf and something green. Sit back and watch your family go nuts.

We all admitted it sounded strange, but we all also agreed it was very tasty!  And there is enough left over for dinner tomorrow night (my mother hates to have us leave a scrap of food behind when we leave).

At the end of the day, it had been a good last time with Kathy and in the morning, we would finally take her home...

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!

Gooey Cheesy Stuff

It was my turn to cook the Cousins Day dinner (Peach brought hors d'oeuvres and drinks).  At first we thought we were going out to Drake's Bay (about an hour and a half away) to scatter ashes, and I figure I would just buy a pizza for dinner, since we would obviously get home late.

But then I decided we should just have our Day 1 of Cousins Day be as usual and go out to Drake's Bay on Day 2, which meant I would now have to figure out what to have for dinner.  I don't know why I had a hankering for Swiss fondu but I did, and  figure it would be easy to prepare.  It was.

But first there was the rest of the day.  Peach arrived right on time, around 9:30 and we got to my mother's around 11.  We sat over coffee and everybody got caught up on what everybody else was doing.  I have to say that we were thrilled that this was a "good" day for my mother.  The topics on which she can have a real conversation have become more limited, but if you stay within those topics, you'd hardly know there was any memory loss at all.  It was a very good day.

At noon, we had lunch, soup and sandwiches, and then when all the dishes had been cleared away, the cards came out, of course. 

Kathy's place

It was a great card-playing Cousins Day because Peach and I each won 4 games and my mother won 3, so everybody came out a winner.  My mother was obsessed with keeping track of who had won how many games, and pouted when she had won "only" three, but it was much better than the months when she won no games.

Around 4, Peach brought out her Cinco de Mayo hors d'oeuvres  - taquitos and some Margarita flavored wine concoction which was tasty, and not strong enough to have much of an effect (she bought the packets at WalMart).  The cocktail/hors d'oeuvre hour always makes for more interesting card-playing!

(We haven't done posed toasts since Kathy died)

Around 6 p.m., I started making the fondu.  It turned out so well and everyone seemed to like it a lot.

We watched Jeopardy and then Wheel of Fortune and then Survivor and then had to decide between Criminal Minds and more cards, so we chose more cards and played two more games before the poop-outs decided to go to bed.  I stayed up and watched Smash (On-Demand) and The Daily Show and then I was off to sleep too.

Tomorrow we are taking Kathy "home," where we scattered her mother's ashes.  Peach has half of her ashes, the other half having been scattered by her husband and kids.

The Luck of the Draw

It's strange about cards.  We've been playing 65 for so long that I can tell within the first couple of hands whether this is going to be a good day for me, or a bad day.

We were on round 5, which meant that in addition to the joker, 5s were wild.  This was the hand I was dealt.  The previous two hands had been good, but this one was amazing.  I knew it was going to be a good day for me!

And it was.  Actually, it wasn't a bad day for any of us.   My mother won 5 games, I won 4 and Peach won 2.  My mother was particularly happy, as you can tell from this picture of her looking at her growing pile of coins.

At the end of the day, she collected all of her winnings in the little flower pot where she keeps the coins and was happy that the level had finally started to rise.

Actually, what she doesn't know is that I've been feeding her pot for awhile now.  Winning and having that pot full of coins is very important to her.  It really doesn't matter to me, so when I see the level of coins is starting to look low, I slip a handful of coins in there--enough that it makes her feel good about having "enough" but not enough so that she would know that I was giving her money.  It makes me happy to see that she is happy about the level of coins in her little pot.

It was a very nice cousins day.  I had made some cheese crackers and found a recipe for a vodka martini that used Kirschwasser (cherry brandy) in a book I'd bought at the book store, and that was my contribution.

I also brought lunch, since Jeri had clued me in before she left to return to Boston that my mother was fretting about what she was going to serve us for lunch.  Peach brought a delicious Chinese chicken casserole for dinner.

And we filled the time with endless games of 65.  We took a break after dinner to watch Survivor and Criminal Minds, have an ice cream, and then head off to bed.  When the others went to sleep, I sat in the dark and listened to my audio book until I was starting to feel sleepy, so as not to wake the others.

I haven't felt right about taking our traditional "toast" picture ever since Kathy died, but I did take this picture of Peach and my mother before we left this morning.

As I said, it was a good cousins day.  We all felt good about our wins, my mother's memory was better than it was over the weekend, and a good time was had by all!

The Curse of Adestapledes

I was doing just fine, thank you, playing 65 well and winning all the money, when someone, who is related to me, but who is not my mother decided to put a curse on me. She tried several hex words, like BALDAZAR!, complete with ominous voice and wiggly fingers aimed in my direction, but she finally made points with the card gods with her curse of ADESTAPLEDES!!! said over and over again.

(Audio File)

Oh it wasn't evident immediately, I still won the game we were playing, but the curse of adestapledes hung in the air overnight as I slept on the couch and this morning the gods of cards had left me hanging, twisting in the wind. I could not get good cards to save my soul. Through all of our games the previous day, I had never scored more than 40 points (remember at in 65 it's the lowest score that wins) while my mother bemoaned (as only she can bemoan) that her score was at least double either Peach's or mine.

This morning my score was 150.

Apparently Peach had made some great sacrifice to the god of cards and the curse of adestapledes had affected my ability to win anything. And I was even being a good guy. My mother had run out of money, and I was giving her money so she could continue playing. Out of the kindness of my heart (and my very, very heavy coin bag).

Harumph.

Nice guys apparently finish last.

We have routinely had cousins days since it was no longer possible for Kathy to make the trip down to my mother's, but this was the first cousins day after Kathy's death and while there was nothing morose about it, it still was very sad that she wasn't there.

As I had promised at her funeral, "the boob" has now become Kathy and so when we had our mojitos and bruchetta, we included Kathy as well.

We arrived at my mother's around 11:30, had our coffee-and-catch up session before lunch (clam chowder, crackers, applesauce) and then started the marathon 65 session.

We were delighted that this was a great time for my mother. Very, very little sign of that worrisome short term memory loss. At one point she forgot how to play the game and needed careful instructions, but it was like hitting a slick spot in a file and then catching her footing again. Peach and I both agreed it was the best we have seen her in months.

After dinner we played another couple of games, then retired to the living room for cheessecake and The Mentalist. Then two more games, and the adestapledes curse, then off to bed.

My mother woke up with a stiff middle finger that she had to work at to loosen up. We had some interesting suggestions as to what had caused it...but, you know, what happens at cousins day.... It did, however, open up an interesting discussion.

Three more games this morning before we packed up to leave. Another good Cousins Day, even if it is a smaller group. We won't get together again, now, until January and Peach may bring her sister, Mandy with us this time. We'll see if she wants to come.

But it will never be the same again without Kathy. Sigh.

Going on 93

My mother was tickled when she turned 91 last year because it meant that she could start telling everybody she would be 92 on her next birthday. She loves doing that because nobody ever believes she's that old and it is a great ego-booster when people look shock and express disbelief.

During the celebration of her 92nd birthday last night she was tickled because now she can tell everybody that she will be 93 on her next birthday! This is a lady who has never lied about her age and wears every grey hair and wrinkle proudly.

So yeah, it was the New Cousins Day, only 3 of us now, still ready to enjoy each other. But Kathy's absence was felt keenly and tears were shed. And when we did our usual "toast" picture, it was with Kathy in mind. We will print and frame this picture to take to her at the care facility.

Bob had driven Peach to my house and we loaded up the car with all the food and stuff to take to my mother's.

In addition to gifts and those bright happy looking sunflowers, we had also brought about 20 jigsaw puzzles. My mother and Kathy are both avid puzzle workers and one of the things that always happened at some point during Cousins Day was Kathy disappearing into the family room to work a puzzle.

Often, when she couldn't sleep at night,she would spend the whole night hunched over whatever puzzle my mother was working at the time. If my mother had just finished a puzzle, she would start another one before we got to her house, just so Kath would have something to work on.

So it was kind of sad when Kath's husband gave Peach all of Kathy's puzzles to bring down to my mother, who will work each one and then take them down to the Hospice thrift store where she volunteers, to resell. Since Kathy sometimes took puzzles home with her that my mother already worked, it's entirely possible that some of the 20 we brought were given to her by my mother already!

After lunch, we had a job to do before we could start playing cards. My mother's doctor had called to chide her for not getting her lab tests done. I thought we had everything done, but apparently there were more, so we went off to the lab....only the doctor hadn't told her she should be fasting, so they couldn't do everything, but did what they could.

Then we went back to the house and the games began.

We had a situation arise that in 4 years of playing has never happened before. At the end of one game the three of us were tied.

We decided to play the last hand again and it took us four tries before we finally found a winner! [LATER: I didn't discover until this very minute that the first column was added wrong--it should be 67, not 77. Owell!]

We did "birthday." Peach had cross stitched a bookmark for her and I had found an edible bird house, which I hope will be a success, since she love watching the birds feeding on her front porch.

During cocktails and dinner she answered one phone call after another from well wishers from my kids (including Brianna, who sang "happy birthday" to her) to Walt's sister to friends. This is one loved lady.

After dinner there was a small cake. I had forgotten to bring candles and my mother didn't have any, so we improvised and found a candle anyway.

This morning we took her back to Kaiser to get the fasting blood work done, then had a fabulous breakfast at Panera, and then went back home again to play 2 more games of 65. My mother and I tied in the last game, so we split the pot.

I'll tell ya, it was very sad that Kathy wasn't there, but maybe because she wasn't we really worked hard on having a good time. I can't remember the last time we laughed as much. My mother said over and over again that we made this a beautiful birthday for her. She's already planning another big celebration for her 95th. I'd better start saving my pennies now.

One thing really good about this Cousins Day is that I just read what I wrote a year ago today, "And So It Begins." This entry caused a lot of controversy with one cousin I don't know very well. But I read it today and realize how much better my mother is today than she was a year ago. This memory thing, I'm discovering waxes and wanes significantly. She beat the pants off of Peach in Canasta recently, where a few months back when I tried to play with her she couldn't remember a thing about the game. So if anything, it's really comforting to discover that she is no worse today than she was a year ago, and today, September 8, 2011, she is significantly better than she was on this day a year ago. Will she be better tomorrow? Will she be worse tomorrow? Who knows. But at least this is not a steady decline. It zigs and zags. And that is nice to know.

The New Look of Cousins Day

I'm so glad that we've had as long as we have with our Cousins Days, because we are now entering a new phase, due to the physical problems of both my mother and Kathy. My mother doesn't really like to travel long distances, for many reasons, so bringing her to the Sacramento area for a Cousins Day is out of the question. At the same time, Kathy's oxygen needs for her COPD have made it pretty much impossible to transport her to and from my mother's. The equipment won't fit in my car (and weighs a ton anyway), and we all decided that the old Cousins Days just weren't going to happen again.

HOWEVER, undaunted, Peach and I have worked this all to our advantage and we get two cousins day out of it. She and I go to my mother's, as we always have. We play 65, we drink, we talk, we laugh, we eat, we sleep and then we get up and play, talk and laugh again before Peach and I return home.

But at the same time, we also want to include Kathy, so we have decided to have a second Cousins Day at her house. The only problem is that we have to kick her husband out for the day, we can't drink because of having to drive home afterwards, but we can still play 65, talk, laugh, and eat. There are no overnights at Kathy's house (because her husband has to come home sooner or later!) but we still have a few hours to laugh and bitch and cry and do all the stuff that we have always done when it was the four of us who were together.

So today we had the Sacramento area Cousins Day. Kathy's sister has just moved back into the area and wanted to come and we voted no, at least not this time. We all had things to talk about that she would need too much background to understand and we just wanted it to be the three of us.

Peach said she would bring fruit salad and I was on for the main lunch course. I decided to make a quiche. I got up early to get it done and as I was putting it into the oven, I was uncomfortable because it just didn't look like enough liquid. I decided to re-check the recipe, to make sure I had measured the cream and milk right and that's when I realized I'd left out the eggs! Fortunately, I was able to pour out the milk mixture, add the eggs, pour it back in and it was a great looking (and tasting) quiche.

I took an hour's nap because I'd gotten up at 3 to do the quiche (the dogs think I'm nuts) and at the appointed hour, I packed up all the China gifts and the quiche and headed off to Peach's.

I was very glad of the long drive because I was just about an hour from the end of my audio book, "Tears of the Giraffe," an Alexander McCall Smith book about the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency and the drive to Peach's house (driving slow and stopping a block away to finish the last 5 minutes) brought me to the end of the book.

We got to Kathy's shortly before noon and did our usual "what's new in your life" recap, and I passed out the stuff I'd bought for them while we were in China--a nice tea set for Kathy (who collects them and had asked me to get one for her), which I bought in the gift shop at the Great Wall. Hers cost the most, so she only got that and a butterfly scarf.

I had butterfly scarves for all three of them, purple for my mother, blue for Kathy and green for Peach. When our cousin Shirley died several years ago, she said something about whenever we saw a butterfly we would know she was around. Since that time butterflies have taken on a big importance, especially for Peach who had a special bond with Shirl, and who has butterflies visit her frequently. I also bought her a little beaded butterfly coin purse and a couple of little costumed figures. I usually get her salt and pepper shakers when I travel, since she collects them, but I didn't see a single set (other than what was on the tables wherever we ate) and then realized, that Chinese salt their food with soy sauce. Duhhh. But I saw the little figures and thought they were cute, so I got those for her instead.

By then we were ready for lunch and enjoyed it before breaking out the cards. Kathy informed us that she was going to be the big winner today, but alas, I won 2 games and Peach won one. Playing the sympathy card didn't work on us and we cut her no slack just because she's not feeling well.

It was 4 by the time we left. Kathy was ready for a nap and I was hoping to avoid rush hour traffic (which, miraculously, I did, by using my favorite back roads)

I don't like Cousins-Day-For-Three as well as for four, but we are determined to keep the good thing going, however we have to do it.

Take a Walk

We did something amazing today. We went for a walk. Now this may not seem amazing to you, but trust me, it was amazing.

My mother broke her ankle three years ago and what with the recovery period and then other physical problems that have come up, she has had difficulty even walking across the parking lot without pain. This has been very disappointing for her because her mobile home park has a lagoon with a 3/4 mile path around it, lots of greenery, ducks, geese, etc., as well as other people living in the park, and she has not been able to walk around it in all this time.

This has been particularly disappointing because she's such a nature person. She loves getting out and watching the ducks, especially in the spring when there are new families, and seeing all the new flowers blooming.

Well, last week she decided to try walking around the lake. She only made it across the parking lot, sat down for a rest and then went home, but she was encouraged so the next day she went a little farther, stopping for rests along the way.

Yesterday she made it all around the lake again and today the three of us went together around the lake.

It was a beautiful day, warm, but with a slight breeze. The flowers were blooming....

...and the ducks were relaxing around the shore.

We took our time, stopped once for a bit, and then made it back home again for more card playing.

I don't know how many games we played, but lots. The games go faster when there are only 3, not 4 people playing. And we were all making ridiculous mistakes that caused us the dishonor of receiving the boob. I swear, that latex boob got more action than a dancer in a topless bar. I was sorry it wasn't wearing a tassle.

Peach made drinks and I brought lasagna (which I figured would last us two nights). We watched the Dancing with the Stars elimination show and now the others are sleeping and I seem to have an internet connection, so I'm going to get this posted quickly before I lose it. (Though I get cut off whenever I attempt to upload and I may not be successful after all!)

But all in all, a very nice day.

The Tablecloth

Peach, Kathy and I had high tea today.

Kathy's health has not been great thru the cold winter weather and she has not felt able to come to cousins day at my mother's. You may have noticed that the last cousins day we had was just the three of us, without Kathy.

Peach and I decided she needed some cheering up, so I suggested that we bring high tea to her. We could still play 65 and I'd make a fancy tea for our lunch.

It took some coordination. I had to find a fancy 3-tiered tray (which I bought in Santa Barbara when we were there for Bri's birthday) and then I decided to make finger sandwiches, plus scones with, if not clotted cream, at least cream and jam) and I ordered petit fours from the coffee shop/bakery, Ciocolat, here in town. I asked Peach to bring tea and fruit and I knew that Kathy had tea pots, because she collects them.

I set the alarm for 6 a.m. to get the scones made.

Can a day that begins like this go well...?

I store the flour on top of the refrigerator and in lifting it down, the whole thing bobbled in my hand, the lid came off, and it ended up on the floor like this.

Not to worry. I salvaged enough to make the scones and I had helpers who were eager to get to the clean up.

I wish I could have gotten a picture of Lizzie, her tongue coated with now-pasty flour and her "beard" looking all snowy white.

But in spite of this little mishap, the scones came out all right.

I didn't have the traditional clotted cream, but I did make whipping cream and brought strawberry jam to get as close to a traditional English scone as I could.

I also made the finger sandwiches.

These are cucumber sandwiches, but I also made egg salad and salmon, both in more "finger" shapes than round.

When all was ready, I drove to Ciocolat to pick up the petit fours, then to Peach's house to get her and we presented ourselves to Kathy's house. Peach's husband Bob came to take Fred away so we could have the house to ourselves. (The men did complain a lot about being left out; Walt had rented a car for the day so he could go to see an opera in a movie theater in Sacramento, so he had his own day of fun.)

Before eating, we played a game of 65. Kathy had asked Peach to bring a table cloth for her table and she had brought one that her mother had painted a long time ago. It was lovely. We joked about how the spirit of Marge was going to help Peach win the game.

And she did.

Kathy decided that wasn't fair, so she brought out a table cloth which had belonged to her mother and put it on the table. She won the first two hands of our next game and I complained that I was going to go home and get one of my mother's table cloths (but ultimately I won the next two games, so that was OK).

After our first game, we had our "high tea."

Peach poured tea from one of Kathy's antique tea pots.

After our third game, Kathy was getting tired and it was getting late (and I still had a long drive home), so we called it a day. But we really had such a good day and it was great that this was a good day for Kathy too!

Oh Poop

Ned would be so proud. The thing we talked about more than almost anything else this Cousins Day was poop.

It started on the ride down when we were discussing the new Oprah Winfrey Network. Kathy happened to mention that Dr. Oz said that a normal person should be pooping 6-9 times a day. We were all shocked.

Things went downhill from there.

We talked about the Oprah show that had been devoted to poop, and the pros and cons of colon cleansing. After that pretty much everything somehow all got back to poop.

We sat and chatted when we first arrived, as usual, getting caught up on each other's lives since our last Cousins Days.

My mother had fixed a salad and a huge roll for lunch and then we cleared the table and got down to business. The cards were weird this time, at least weird for me.

Kathy tried to appeal to our pity, pointing out how few games she has won this year but we told her that didn't cut it...65 is a cuthroat game. (I also haven't figured out how to cheat, even if I wanted to).

The language of 65 poured forth. My mother's favorite "oh for crying out soft," and Peach's "things are getting very seri-eye" I don't know that Kathy and I have favorite 65 saying that aren't 4-letter words.

We played two games (my mother won one and I won the other) and then Kathy and I each took a nap. When we woke up, it was time for hors d'oeuvres and drinks while we played more.

Kathy made fantastic stuffed mushrooms (only the sausage could have used a bit more maple flavoring...)

and I made something called an Apple Pie Martini, which blends vanilla liqueur, vodka, apple cider and cinnamon and really does taste something like an apple pie.

After another game (which Peach won), we had Peach's crock pot chicken dinner

There were more games after dinner, the last of which Kathy won. Kathy worked a puzzle while the rest of us watched the pilot espisode of Harry's Law, which, if you didn't see it, was excellent. I recommend it highly. But then I like anything Kathy Bates is in.

This morning over breakfast, Kathy won 2 more games, so I guess maybe the pity was kicking in after all. My mother was not happy that the level of coins in her little coin pot was way down.

We set a date for the February Cousins day, which will come between Kathy's birthday and mine and will include a trip to the Spinnaker restaurant in Sausalito to spend the fund we collect each month for just such a field trip.

Then the 3 cousins headed home into a beautiful sunny day (it had been very foggy on the ride home). When I got here, I found the dogs had found the stuffed dog I had saved for future puppies and had thoroughly enjoyed it.

All in all a very satisfactory Cousins Day (though none of us had 6 bowel movements, I don't believe)...and it was delightful to learn that three of the next generation, who all live in Marin County have decided to have their own cousins day. The torch is being passed!

I'm Back!

Santa lay in a flaccid lump this morning.

He was posted on the roof of the community center of my mother's mobile home park and would inflate and deflate seemingly at whim. It was pretty pathetic.

But I was happy anyway. I had received a text message from Walt that there was SUCCESS with the repair on our internet connection. Apparently there was a short in the telephone line outside the house (all the clean-up and locking up of the dogs turned out to be unnecessary). My first clue should have been the horrendous static we've been having on the line. But AT&T doesn't send repair people to repair something so simple as never being able to hear anybody on the other end of the line. What they do is give you a long list of things you have to do to fix it yourself.

Well, it was unfixable. So we've been putting up with the horrendous static...and it turns out that it was AT&T's fault. There still needs to be some digging up of the sidewalk to completely fix it, but that was the job of a different department, so I don't know when that will happen, but the man thing is that the internet is back. Yippee.

Cousins Day was the usual bunch of fun. To start with was Peach's new hair do

There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.

Only there were actually three curls in the middle of her forehead. She looks very cute, but it takes some getting used to.

(There were also comments made about the similarity to Mrs. Claus!)

We arrived at my mother's around 11 in the morning. She kept telling us that we were going to have to "work for your lunch." She didn't tell us what we were going to have to do, but when the time came for lunch, it was obvious:

Yummy Dungeness crab for our salad. The others cleaned a lot of crab legs and mixed the meat with lettuce, tomatoes, and avocado. I ate my crab separate from the salad I made. Either way it was delicious.

Then started the card games. Lessee. My mother won twice, Peach won twice and I won once. While Kathy took a nap, Peach, my mother and I played canasta, which my mother won (2 games). Actually, usually she slaughters us at canasta and the games were fairly even in score so nobody really had to feel overwhelmed. It was fun.

We get worse and worse in "65," though, never remembering whose turn it is to deal, what card is wild, who has the Boob, etc. But we laugh a lot and that is the best part, even though I outdid myself in doing klutzy things--I spilled water on Peach twice, for starters

We played two games this morning before heading home and have made plans for a 3-day Cousins day next month, so we can visit the land where my mother's family was living when she was born. Many years ago we went and visited the old house, but it has been torn down now and Peach wants to remember where it used to stand.

So now I'm going to post this and then get caught up on all the e-mail that accumulated during the Great Internet Blackout!