Author: Susie (Page 37 of 48)

My mom died about 25 years ago, which surprised me as I typed it.  It seems, somehow, longer than that and shorter than that.  I loved my mom.  During my childhood, she was my best friend – sometimes my only friend.  Something happened during my adolescence and we began to fight a lot.  Her behavior drove me crazy and I was embarrassed often by her actions.  Some of that spilled into adulthood, sadly.

               One of the things she did that drove me nuts was making me wear yellow.  She would buy me dresses for events (things like eighth-grade graduation) that were yellow.  The problem?  I hate yellow – always have.  Plus, I do not look good in yellow – it’s not in my color wheel.  I usually wear purple, green, blue and black.  Sometimes pink or turquoise, maybe even peach, but never, ever yellow.

               Despite my protestations, she would always “surprise” me with a new dress or sweater or once (shudder) a pair of pants in bright yellow.  This continued into my college years and beyond.  I could not convince her to pick another color, or to not surprise me, or to let me pick my own clothes.  You can imagine the petty squabbles we had over that.

               There were other issues, of course, and many more significant than the hideous yellow outfits.  But sometimes it takes years to gain wisdom, or at least perspective, and this week, I gained a new perspective on my mom’s choices of yellow garb for me.

               When she passed away, I sold a piece of property that my parents had owned.  It had a cabin on it that a caretaker had lived in.  We went to clean it out and in the attic we found a few items that belonged to my parents.  I was very excited about my dad’s jadeite coffee mugs – four of them! – and my mom’s potato salad bowl.  We packed all the items into a box and left the cabin for the last time.

               I’ve used her potato salad bowl – for the designated purpose – for the past two decades since then, remembering her and her great food with fondness. It didn’t occur to me during any of those times that the bowl is a pale yellow.

               She also had a pitcher that she used to make lemonade.  We don’t drink a lot of that, and when we do, we typically take a plastic pitcher outside, so I just put the pitcher on a shelf in my kitchen to hold up one end of my cookbook collection.  I didn’t notice until today that it’s bright yellow.

               What happened today?  Today I pulled out the potato masher I’ve used ever since we cleaned out the cabin.  It was hers.  I don’t make a lot of mashed potatoes, so it’s in a cupboard in the back.  I was making guacamole and the avocado I bought was still a little firm.  Rather than food process it, I thought I would just mash it with mom’s potato masher.  I pulled it out from the cupboard and noticed the bright yellow handle.

               That’s when I figured it all out.  Yellow is my least favorite color.  But it was my mom’s favorite.  So naturally she wanted to dress her favorite daughter (okay, her only daughter, but that’s beside the point) in her favorite color.

               It took me 25 years, but I finally understand.  I sure do wish I had one more opportunity to gripe to her about her taste in clothing for me.  After which, I’d put on that awful yellow dress and take her out to dinner. Because I just wasn’t done fighting with her yet.

Now that I’ve reached what could be considered the very top end of “middle age,” I have occasionally experienced memory problems.  Mind you, I’ve had memory problems before I even reached the bottom level of middle age.  Once, when I was just a young gal of 35, we had our brand new pastor and his wife come to our place for dinner.  I was honored to be hosting them, and I put baked beans in the oven that afternoon. 

                We were cooking out hamburgers (it was June) and it should have been a wonderful meal.  As it turned out, my memory was shorting out all over the place.  First of all, I forgot to add the appropriate liquid – including sauce – to the beans before putting them in the oven.  Then we got busy watching our children play, playing card games, and swimming and I forgot the beans entirely – until Matt starting grilling the hamburgers.

               That’s when I went in, turned off the oven, and carried out all the condiments, plates, buns, silverware, etc. for our picnic.  When the burgers were done, I went into the get the baked beans.  There may have actually been beans in that dish, who would know?  They were a solid brick of hardened, fossilized rock.  Matt couldn’t chisel out a portion with his spatula, a hammer, and a knife.  So…we just had burgers and cole slaw.

               It turned out our new pastor and his wife had a great sense of humor.  We decided that beans needed to be put in an atomic oven and baked at least three weeks before serving. We laughed hard and have been friends ever since – over 30 years now! 

               I was reminded of the baked bean fiasco last week, when I was creating a care package for an old friend who is in a rehab center.  She had asked for some particular items, including cheese sticks, pretzel rods, and puff popcorn.  I had added some books, magazines, and lotion to the tote bag.  Meanwhile, our friends (the pastor and his wife) were coming for dinner two days later, so while I was buying the care kit items, I purchased potatoes and a couple packages of cooked shrimp to grill.

               So that morning, I packed up all the items to go to the rehab center, reached into the fridge, pulled out the bag with the cheese sticks and tossed it on top.  Then I went on my merry way.

               You know where this is going, don’t you?

               About an hour after I delivered the tote bag, I received a text from my friend, thanking me for all the goodies and especially for the SHRIMP! 

               Heavens above.  When I returned home, I looked in the fridge and there in the meat keeper was the bag of cheese sticks.  What was I supposed to serve the next night?  Grilled cheese sticks??

               Back to the store I went, and bought some more shrimp.  Plus, now I have to return to the rehab center at some future point to deliver the requested cheese sticks. Maybe it really isn’t a memory loss, it’s just general confusion.

               That must explain my shopping trip when Matt had two teeth pulled.  He was supposed to eat soft foods for a day, maybe two.  So I bought him three packages of macaroni and cheese, six pints of ice cream, ten tubs of yogurt, three 4-packs of pudding, four individual mashed potatoes, and eight individual pots of jello.  That’s probably enough for one or two days, don’t you think?  I mean, it is if he and every other person in the county who had teeth pulled are coming to our house.

               Oh, well, if it weren’t for my confusion, I wouldn’t have so many adventures, would I?

There’s a bit of dialogue in an episode of “Everybody Loves Raymond” that I really enjoy.  Raymond (or maybe Debra) refers to Frank as “bald and gassy.”  To which a friend of Frank’s responds, “I knew him when he was just gassy.”

The other day, I referred to myself as “old and crotchety,” and my husband quickly responded, “I knew you when you were just crotchety.”  Of course, he was teasing, because I have never really been a grumpy person (well, okay, there’s an occasional burst of irritability now and again, but I’m only human).

 My remark was actually brought on by watching our pooch one morning.  He’s over 13 years old, and as a Labrador/Great Dane mix, he’s a big guy.  In the last couple of years, Forest has developed severe arthritis and his back legs are quite stiff.  This doesn’t prevent him from insisting on a daily walk and continuing to bring us toys to play, but it does create more difficulty in those pursuits. 

I was watching him as he came inside on a damp day.  We make him lay down so we can wipe off his feet before he goes onto our carpet and the poor old boy has such a hard time getting all the way down, and then getting back on his feet.  Then, he didn’t want to come over to get his pills.  We finally enticed him over near us and instead of snatching the pills out of the air (which he’s done for years, now), he would watch them as they bounced on the floor near him.  Then he’d look up at us, as if to say, “what, no bacon?” Then I have to go find a piece of cheese to hide them in and trick him into taking his pills.

Then he wouldn’t eat.  We tried adding a bit of hot dog, some cheese, and finally some cooked carrots.  These are all his favorites.  The food sat in the dish.  He didn’t appear upset, or ill, he simply didn’t want to eat that day.  (The next day, he gobbled food as if we starved him as a hobby!)  We never starve him of course, he’s just getting grumpy in his old age.

So, we were eating breakfast and watching him and I realized that I’m getting older, too.  And honestly, now that I’ve lived a few decades (plus a few more), I understand about getting crotchety. My body is telling me things I don’t want to hear, and the older I get, the less tolerance I have for “stuff.”

There are days my knees complain if I have to get up or down too many times.  I used to be able to garden all day and get five yards of mulch spread.  Now, after two hours, my body says, “hey, tomorrow’s another day.”

I used to devour food whenever I could.  Now, I find that I’m not always hungry for lunch, so I skip it.  And I don’t really notice missing the meal.  I’m not angry or upset, I’m simply not hungry.

I’m not wild about the incredible number of pills I have to take, either.  Granted, mine don’t – for the most part – taste like some kind of treat.  I just swallow the vitamins and minerals down with water.  But I have fantasized about just leaving them on the table.  If I didn’t think my joints would be even stiffer, and my muscles would cramp at night, and my doctor would grouse at me, I’d probably let them sit there, too.  Unless, of course, someone hid them in a piece of chocolate or cinnamon toast.  Then I could probably get them down.

I get that our dog is likely tired of all the stiffness in his joints, not to mention the confusion of life.  People telling you what to do all day long, making you work rather than playing a fun game, and refusing to take a walk just because it’s raining (or snowing).

Sometimes I’m weary of all the “noise,” too. Noise like people raving that it’s going to snow (it is April in Ohio, so it shouldn’t be such a surprise). Noise like people acting like they can’t wear a mask to prevent the spread of a deadly virus because it’s “hot.”  Noise like scam calls on our phones and incessant requests for money from bogus organizations.  So I guess I’m getting old and crotchety, too, just like our dog. 

Once you reach a certain age, getting grumpy just comes with the territory, I guess.  At least I have my daily walks and play time to look forward to!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not take a lot of medication.  I’ve been blessed to not have many illnesses or chronic health conditions in my life which is a significant factor, but the other big factor is that I can’t take pills. I mean, obviously I can, but it’s not easy and certainly not a pretty sight.  For some reason, my throat closes up, I lose my breath, I gag…it’s pretty awful. Of course, as one ages, certain things do require attention.

               Over the years, I’ve added a fiber chewy to my daily regime.  This is such a blessing because they are little gummies and I can pretend they are candy! 

               So gummy fiber chews were an easy addition.  Then came the Vitamin D deficiency my doctor noted.  I was fearful at first, but those pills are ridiculously tiny.  So tiny, in fact, that it’s impossible to shake just one out of the bottle.  I usually get a handful and it takes many minutes to get them all back into the bottle, with just one left outside. Not only are they small, they’re slippery and they roll around on the counter and onto the floor – where they may be found at some future unspecified point.  But, easy to swallow, once you’ve finally gotten just one out of the bottle. 

               Then came the magnesium.  These are for my muscle issues and work very well.  They are small tablets, but not coated.  Five out of six days, I can swallow them without incident.  But on that 6^th day, the edge hits the side or back of my throat and I gag a little.  Unpleasant, but doable.

               I was doing fine  until I found out that I needed to add glucosamine-chondroitin to my diet every day.  I cheerfully went out and bought a bottle, because anything that helps reduce my joint pain is a-ok by me.  Until I opened the bottle and discovered these “pills” are the size of my big toe! 

               My husband, my soul mate, and my chief supporter said things that really didn’t help, as he threw back his head and consumed three similarly sized vitamin pills himself.  First there was, “oh you can do it,” then he said, “just relax,” and added (my personal favorite), “it’s all in your head.”

               Maybe so, but there is no way I’m going to get that down without major trauma and possibly death.  So, I did the smart thing and cut it in half.  While I was doing this, my husband got very serious and said, “Honey, I think it’s psychosomatic.  Your throat is easily big enough for that pill.”

               Pah.  Shows what he knows!  It’s clearly esophageal-somatic.  I’m telling you, I can choke and gag on a milkshake or thick soup. I’ve been known to have my throat close up just by drinking water!  So I know this particular issue is all in my throat, and not my head.

               Now there are two halves of the immense pill on my napkin, just staring back at me.  Honestly, they are still bigger than the magnesium tablet.  I began to wonder if I should cut it in thirds, but too late.  I bravely grabbed the first half, relaxed as much as I could, and tossed it back.  It went down okay.  I tried the second one, and of course, it stuck a little in the back of my throat, one rough edge scraping the side.  But after several sips of water, it did go down.

               Tomorrow?  I’ll try cutting it in thirds.  And all I can say is, my knees better improve – a lot!