Buildings

Sometimes I'm surprised at what makes me think about sitting down and writing a journal entry at the end of the day.

Tonight it was the Final Jeopardy question category, which was "Buildings."

Oddly enough, Walt and I both thought of the same thing at the same minute.

It wasn't any Frank Lloyd Wright ediface, or any of the Bernard Maybeck homes so popular in Berkeley.  It wasn't any skyscraper like the World Trade Center or the Sears Tower.

No, when Alex Trebec said that the topic was going to be "buildings," Walt and I both thought of Bill Ding.

Bill Dings were these weird wooden guys...

...that we both had as kids.  Wikipedia says they were supposed to be clowns.  I guess I never noticed that part.  But they were cut in such a way that you could stack them in all sorts of weird configurations.

I was always jealous of my friend Stephen who had an erector set and Lincoln Logs.  I always wanted to try making stuff with those toys, but instead I had Bill Dings, 'cause I was a girl and Lincoln Logs were for boys.  I remember playing with Bill Dings a lot, actually, though you couldn't really make anything with them like with Lincoln Logs or an erector set, but it was a fun, if weird toy.

Strange memory to be evoked by a Jeopardy question about the Supreme Court building!

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My mother had a couple of checks to deposit, so we went to the bank today.   Walt asked why we didn't just use an ATM machine and I told him that she was set in her ways and liked doing her banking in the bank, but when we got there, she realized it wasn't the bank she was used to in her old house and said she guessed she could use the ATM machine.  Only she couldn't because, of course, she didn't have a clue what her PIN number was. For that we have to make an appointment and re-do her whole card. I may do that at some point in the future.  It's unlikely she will have any more checks (or many more checks) that need to be deposited anyway, so it may be an unnecessary step.

When I got to Atria and was signing in, my friend at the desk handed me a big pile of clothes my mother had brought to the  desk again, saying they weren't hers.   It was the ENTIRE load of laundry I had done for her last week, including her underwear.   I brought them to her apartment and she argued with me that she had NEVER had clothes that color before.  I don't know if I convinced her to keep them, whether they were hers or not.  I pointed out that she hasn't purchased anything new in decades, since she got all of her clothes at the thrift shop where she worked so even if they weren't hers, what difference did it make?

She said she didn't want to be walking around Atria and have someone accuse her of stealing their clothes.  I didn't point out that it was unlikely anybody would know if she was wearing someone else's underwear.

But I came home and decided that when I do her laundry next time, I will have to hang it all up myself and not leave it for her to do.  If I leave it on the bed, as I usually do, she can't recognize it and I'm tired of having this battle with her every time I do her laundry.  (She won't do her own laundry because she's afraid she will get lost going to the laundry room--which is at the end of the hall from her apartment--and won't remember how to work the machine.  She wouldn't even look at the laundry room when I tried to show it to her after she moved in, though she insisted we buy detergent and bleach.)