Monday, August 31, 2015

Don't Eat Those!

My friend Maloney told me that he and his wife recently went to see his mother-in-law at the nursing home where she now lives.
     She was asleep when he got there, so he sat in the chair next to her bed, picked up the AARP Bulletin that had apparently put her to sleep, and started helping himself to a bowl of peanuts she had close by.
     "Don't eat those," his wife told him.
     "Why not?" he wanted to know.
     "Because they're not yours," she answered.
     "If I'm paying for them," he said, talking about the peanuts but meaning the nursing home, "then they must be mine."
     "My logic was irrefutable," he told me later, although I'm pretty sure he doesn't know the meaning of the word "irrefutable." He must have heard it from Donald Trump.
     Unfortunately, his mother-in-law woke up just as Maloney had finished the entire bowl.
     "Hi," he greeted her. "I'm sorry, but it looks like I've eaten all of your peanuts."
     "That's okay," she answered. "I really don't like them after I've sucked all the chocolate off."
      
   
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Monday, August 24, 2015

My Wife Is Driving Me Crazy

My wife is trying to drive me crazy.
     She denies it, of course, but I have proof.
     Circumstantial proof, but proof nonetheless.
     You see, whenever I'm looking for something, it's never there. Even when I know it's there, it's not there. Not too long ago I was looking for something in the pantry, but couldn't find it.
     "It's in the pantry," my wife told me.
     "I'm looking in the pantry," I told her back.
     "It's there."
     "I don't see it."
     "On the right."
     "It's not there."
     "On the bottom shelf."
     "I'm looking on the bottom shelf."
     So, with an exaggerated display of irritation at having to have pulled herself away from The Bachelorette, she walked over to the pantry, reached in the far back, and pulled out what I was looking for.
     What was it? you ask. It doesn't matter. Try to stay with me.
     "You have to look around," she told me, swirling her finger around like she was stirring a cauldron of bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble.
     "Why didn't you say it was in the back?" I said, sheepishly.
     Trust me, I looked.
     It wasn't there.
     But somehow, whenever my wife shows up, so does whatever it is I'm looking for. I don't know how she does that. Maybe it's magic, but, even if it is, why does she insist on putting the stuff we use a lot in the back?
     "The things we use a lot," I've told her, "should go in the front, where it's easily accessible. And the stuff we don't use a lot should be the things you put in the back, because we only use them a little. I shouldn't have to dig through 50 items to get to the one I want."
     My wife will agree with me, and then continue to do things the way she wants.
     Take my yogurts. I don't mean take them literally. I mean, take them for example. I enjoy eating one of those little cups of yogurt they sell at your local grocery store. (Yes, I shop at YOUR local grocery store. Don't be shy, come up and say hello. I might need to borrow money. Anyway...) My wife, she buries them in the rear of the refrigerator.
     "Why don't you eat your yogurts?" she'll chastise me like a little kid.
     "We have yogurts?"
     "Yes, they're in the back."
     "Of the pantry?"
     "Of the fridge."
     "When I look in the fridge, I don't see them."
     "Well, they're there."
     "That's why I don't eat them. It's too much work."
      "You have to look around."
     Again with the swirling finger.
     I'll tell her, "Instead of clumping things together, why don't you just make a single row of my yogurts. Start in the back of the refrigerator and end in the front. You can even stack them. They stack very nicely."
     She says she will, but she never does.
     What my wife doesn't understand or refuses to understand or doesn't care to understand is if I don't see something, I'm going to assume it's not there. That's a reasonable assumption, I would suppose.
     But I think she does it on purpose.
     Hide things from me, I mean.
     Just when I learn where something is, she moves it. If I want to make an omelet* in the morning, I'll look for the omelet pan in the last place I found it, and magically... it's no longer there. I'll look in three different places before my wife will finally say, "What are you looking for?"
     "The omelet pan."
     "It's not there."
     "I know it's not there."
     "Don't you know where it is?"
     "I thought I knew where it is, but I guess I don't."
     "If you want to know where something is, just ask me."
     "I don't want to ask you where something is. I want to know where something is."
     So she'll tell me to look in a cabinet I've already searched.
     "It's not there, either," I'll inform her.
     With a smile on her face, she'll reach into the cabinet and triumphantly pull out the omelet pan. From the back.
     "Look around," she'll say.
 
 
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*I make a pretty good omelet.
     "This omelet is delicious," my father will tell my wife.
     "I didn't make it," my wife will tell my father.
     "Who did?" he'll ask.
     "I did," I'll answer.
     I'll wait for the compliment that never comes.
     "So..." I'll say, "it's good?"
     "It's okay."
 
  

Monday, August 17, 2015

Time Is Relative

Last night my wife reminded my father that he had a doctor's appointment at 9:30 today.
     "I know, I know," he told her and waved her off.
     This morning he was up and ready at 6 am.
     SIX AM!
     When I went downstairs to fix myself a cup of coffee, he told me, "I'm ready."
     "For what?" I asked him.
     "My doctor's appointment," he told me. "You forget everything... hee, hee."
     There's no exchange of information my Dad takes part in that he can't turn into ridicule.
     Meanwhile, my wife is busy getting breakfast ready, if a bit earlier than usual. Her back is to me, but I can see she's laughing to herself. The only time interaction with my Dad is amusing, is when he's interacting with someone else.
     "I thought your appointment was at 9:30," I told him.
     This stops my Dad's laughter. He turns to my busy wife.
     "What time is my appointment?" he asks her.
     If you want something done, ask a busy person. That's what I've always heard. It's good advice, too. Good for me, because it keeps people from asking me to do something they want done.
     Not so good for my wife.
     "Your appointment is at 9:30," she tells him.
     "That's what I was thinking."
     Five minutes later:
     "What time is the appointment?"
     "Not until 9:30."
     "Yeah, I thought so." 
     Five minutes after that:
     "What time did you say my appointment was?"
     "9:30."
     "I was just wondering."
     Another five minutes:
     "What time is my appointment?"
     "9:30."
     "I just wanted to make sure."
     This went on for twenty minutes longer than I cared to listen to, so I knew it was time for me to go upstairs. When 9:30 came and went, I figured it was safe for me to come back downstairs. The house was quiet. Another person might say too quiet, but that person doesn't live with my Dad,
     If you're wondering how my wife got stuck taking my father to his doctor appointment, it's because she volunteered. I was never in the Army, but do you know what I learned watching Army movies? Never volunteer.
     When my father got home from seeing the doctor, he immediately started complaining about doctors in general. He was complaining to no one in particular (since no one in particular was listening), and he kept up his complaints all the way to his--my--favorite chair in the great room, where he sat down to conserve his energy so that he could focus it into even more complaints.
     "Those gosh-durn doctors don't know what they're doing," he said, only he didn't say "gosh-durn."
     "Those gosh-durn doctors talk nothing but crap," he said, only he didn't say "crap."
     "Those gosh-durn doctors blah, blah, blah."
     Yes, he said, "Blah, blah, blah."
     At least, that's what I heard.
     And then, suddenly, there was silence.
    I looked up.
     My father's mouth was open, his head tilted back, eyes only halfway shut. He had fallen asleep mid-complaint. Hmm... at least I think he was asleep.
     I checked.
     "Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..."
     He was breathing.
     I didn't have to call the president after all.
     One of these days I know I'm going to find him in a deeper sleep than I want, but today's not the day.
 
 
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Friday, August 7, 2015

Bagel Bites (Part Two)

Earlier today, my grandson had been outside playing for hours.
     When he finally came inside, he was very thirsty, so I served him a glass of orange juice. I have to buy two kinds of orange juice because my grandson likes it with pulp and my father likes it without. I can drink it either way, but that's neither here nor there. Well, maybe it's more there than it is here.
     Later, he tells me: "Lito," which is what he calls me "when I placed my glass of orange juice on the counter, Jaja" which is what he calls my father (I think it has something to do with Star Wars) "kept looking at it. I think he was going to drink it, so I kept my eye on him."
     It was funny coming from a very serious five-year-old.
    
 
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Monday, August 3, 2015

Who Doesn't Like Bagel Bites? (Part One)

When I retired I didn't think that I'd be spending the last few good years of my life taking care of a baby.
     The baby I'm referring to, of course, is my father.
     Of all my dependents and grand-dependents, my father is the one who's been the most work. There's not one thing we can give him that he won't complain about. There's not one thing we can offer to do for him that he won't take for granted. There's not one good deed that doesn't go unpunished when it comes to my Dad.
     Today, my wife offered to make my father Bagel Bites for lunch. He refused.
     "I don't like them," he told her.
     "Sure, you like them," my wife told him.
     "No, I don't."
     "They're like mini pizzas."
     "I know what they are."
     "And you like pizza."
     "I like pizza, but I don't like Bagel Bites."
     "But you like pizza."
     "But I don't like Bagel Bites."
     My wife decided to take a different tack.
     "You've eaten them before," she reminded him.
     "Just because I've eaten them, doesn't mean I liked them."
     My father's logic was irrefutable. 
     "I just didn't want to hurt your feelings," he told her. "You know me, I don't like to be any trouble."
     Eventually, even my wife knows when to give up, so she gave him a choice of five--five!--different meals that she could cook for him instead.
     Do you know how many choices I get?
     Two.
     I can eat...
     ...or I can not eat.
     Those are my choices.
     Fortunately, my wife is an excellent cook, so two choices are one more than I actually need.
     After a lot of hemming and hawing, he finally decided on what he wanted. I'll spare you the conversation that lead up to his decision, mainly because the human brain is an amazing organ and forgets painful things like childbirth or an accident or one of my Dad's conversations.
     After looking at me with one of her your-father-drives-me-nuts look, she then cooked him a five-star lunch that Wolfgang Puck would be jealous of.
     The rest of us got Bagel Bites.
     By the rest of us, I mean me and my grandson. My grandson is an amazing kid. I take him hiking, camping, traveling and he doesn't complain one bit. My father complains if one of his bacon strips is shorter than the other.
     But that's okay, I love Bagel Bites and so does my grandson. They are just like little pizzas, and I love pizza. This is the funny thing about my wife, under normal circumstances she doesn't allow me to eat pizza per my doctor's orders. He didn't really tell me I couldn't eat pizza, but "that's what he meant," my wife says.
     I don't know what my doctor means, I only know what he says, and he said I could have pizza in moderation.
     "Once a week is fine," he said.
     "Never," is what my wife heard.
     Somehow, Bagel Bites seem to get a pass.
     As she baked us our Bagel Bites, my father sat down to eat. When my father eats, he takes no prisoners, so he was done before the Bagel Bites were ready.
     "Was it good?" I asked him, knowing that he wouldn't bother to thank my lovely wife for his special meal.
     "It was okay," he said.
     "Better than Bagel Bites?"
     "What?" he asked, his hearing suddenly and suspiciously faulty.
     But my wife gave me The Look, so I didn't repeat myself.
     "Isn't The Price Is Right on?" I asked him instead.
     This is a mean trick I play on him when he starts to get upset for no reason. When I want to distract him I'll ask him if The Price Is Right is on so he'll spend the next few minutes looking for it on the television set.
     When the Bagel Bites were done, they were so hot that I told my grandson, "Let's go upstairs until they cool down."
     "Okay, Lito," he told me. He calls me Lito which is short for abuelito, which is Spanish for grandfather.
     So we went upstairs to dilly and dally until our lunch cooled down. Meanwhile, my father was still occupied looking for The Price Is Right.
     When we returned downstairs a short while later, who do we find eating our Bagel Bites?
     If you guessed my Dad, you guessed right.
     We walked into the kitchen and stopped in surprise just as my Dad was stuffing one of the last Bagel Bites into his mouth.
     My grandson looks at the cooking pan and then looks up at me. With sad eyes, he whispers, "Lito, he ate our Bagel Bites."
     When my father finally notices us, he gives us his cat-caught-with-the-canary smile.
     "Hey, these are good," he tells us. "Did you want some?"
    
 
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