So now that we’ve gotten all gratitudey … and eaten, I think it’s safe to possibly air out some annoyances. I was gonna do it yesterday but I didn’t want to step on all this gratituding going around, especially when it was so well called for, so necessary in such a sad, sad year as this one and not just for reasons of a pandemic alone. An Orange tinge hovers, blusters. Plus, it would have bothered my Mom as she was so enjoying my shirt and tie on our Thanksgiving Zoom call with her and my Sis. I told her that Zoom has a code of fashion conduct that you have to follow in order to sign up for their services, that you have to look presentable so thus the shirt and tie. But I also told her that that code didn’t include pants. She looked at me, with a wry smile, as if to say stuff it Stephen.
Gotta love getting a laugh out of Ma, who has such a genuine and infectious one, even as her days are different now, that they come with a slide. My sister and I, along with her had looked into assisted living places just before the pandemic, even found one that would just do. A just “would do” wasn’t enough though, I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the details. But then there was the lockdown and the stay at home and Beck took her to her house near Albany with my nephews and cats and a Razzy, the definition of sweetest of dogs.
Now I have written of this before but why not a bit of repeat? Heck, it is MY blog so why not? When Beck told me, as some pandemic time passed and while I wore the same pair of sweatpants to work every day for three months, maybe even four, my own way of trying to cope by being silly amid a scared crazy, even if no one noticed other than me, I just thought these sweatpants were funny (they were clean by the way, well, as clean as butt aired out every night on the back of one of my one or the other computer chairs and then thrown in the wash every Saturday can be) but when Beck called me on one Friday and told me that she was going have Ma stay with her instead of that facility I said “that’s great” we talked some more, I held in, said “Love You’s”, hung up the phone and then broke down. Hard. Puddle.
This shitty thing, this shitty ass time, this fearful adapting had actually brought some good and, in my world, our world, that was a huge good, the best of possible good. If not for it then Beck and the boys and the fur may never have had the opportunity to discover that having Granny around was a good thing and so much better for her than some place full of strangers, to help slow her slide with all the interaction and stimulation of a house with the non-stop action of a teenager, a 20 year old, cats who don’t always get along, sometimes never and with noise, a beyond loveable dog who adoringly sits on her hip and even a crazy kitten who garners a ton of “Bloody Hells!!!” from that English lady in the extra bedroom. She was finally away from the solitude of a little one bedroom place that, though she loved, was killing her.
Yeah, my gratitudeyness yesterday was that Zoom call, and seeing Mom in some fancy dangling earrings that she so loves to sport and laughing that laugh of hers and my Sis, in a Pittsburgh Pirates sweatshirt, in an our Pittsburgh Pirates sweatshirt, seeing the gang lounging Thanksgiving comfy in whatever spots I could see through Beck’s laptop cam. So, I held off on airing annoyances until today.
But gloves are off now Mr Gratitude you thankful baastaad! You had your day and your food coma now back the hell off!!
Ma, you looked good, proud look dangling earrings an’ all and though I held off. I think you and I could share some stories of annoyances, at least some you could remember in the moment of the telling.
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