note: Yahoo is not letting me into Funny the World. Working on the problem.
I received, I kid you not, 178 emails from
charitable organizations today (some more than once). Having made my
decisions about where charity dollars go, the constant influx of requests for
money to save children, elephants, dogs, and all sorts of worthy things that
need saving it all becomes a big irritant! The "please give us money so we
can save the world" messages compete with the "please give us money so we can
send you this piece of junk that you don't really need" and though my email box
has been overflowing all day long I have only received ONE personal email.
Today was the day to get my mother beautiful.
A few weeks ago, in one of her more lucid
moments, she glanced at herself in the mirror and commented on how bad her hair
looked, how long it was, and how much she needed a permanent. This was so
unusual because she has stopped caring about how she looks.
I called to make a hair appointment for her with
Lucy, who runs the beauty shop in the Atria complex, but it being right before
Thanksgiving, she was booked up. By that time my mother had stopped
commenting on her looks so I just made an appointment for her for the first
available slot, which happened to be yesterday.
I went to Atria early, fearing that she would
still be asleep and I would have to get her up and dressed (her appointment was
scheduled for 10:30), but to my surprise when I got there she was in the dining
room finishing her breakfast coffee.
She was sitting with a woman I had not seen
before, a tall, white haired woman who saw me before my mother and made some
indication that I was there, which showed that she knew who I was. After I
sat down and got a cup of coffee, I tried to chat with the new woman, but she
had no language capability....or at least no intelligible language capability.
Very sad.
We went upstairs, my mother not quite sure where
we were going, but she seemed glad to be in familiar surroundings. Lucy,
who has been cutting my mother's hair almost every time since she got to Atria
was not there and a woman named Liz was there in her place. I was
concerned because I remembered the last time Lucy did not do her hair, when she
came out looking like a q-tip. I didn't know if Lucy had done that or not,
but I wasn't going to chance it, so settled myself in to watch the progress.
Liz has lived in nearby Dixon her whole life and we had a good time talking about old Davis thing. Who else remembers Stan's Meat Market? Or Marge Wellings, the wonderful gossip columnist who would print anything related to Davis news. If you sneezed and wanted to tell the town, Marge would publish it for you. She was a publicist's dream.
Liz lives on a ranch where they grow almonds and
had packets of favored almonds sitting on the desk for sale, so I bought a
package of toffee flavored almonds to munch while I waited
At
some point Liz asked me about my mother's hair--longish or shortish, very curly
or loose? I pointed to a picture on the wall and said "like that" and s we
avoided the Q-tip. In fact she looked like the "old her." I wonder
how long it will look like this. The last time she had her hair done, by
the next morning you couldn't tell, but with this being a permanent maybe
it will last a bit longer.
It was noon when we left the beauty shop and so I
decided to stay for lunch. As soon as we sat down, she asked where her
glasses were. I assumed she had left them on her night stand, as she often
does, but checked the "before" photo above and saw that she had been wearing
them when we got to the beauty shop, so I went back upstairs and got them for
her.
I was pleased that lunch today was actually
delicious (toasted turkey and cheese sandwich). When we finished, she
looked around blankly and said "what now?" I told her I was going to my
house and she was going to her room, but she had no idea where her room was and
said I would have to wait until she figured out what was going on.
Fortunately about then an aide came by and took her by the arm and led her into
the living room where everyone else was, and I was able to leave. I came
home and slept for an hour, which seems to have become my standard "after-Atria"
activity!
Heartbroken ... Matt Lauer too? I've watched
him since his very first appearance on The Today Show. So very, very
disappointed and sad.
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