Keeping Up Daily.

Today is my mother's birthday. She's 83. Yesterday was a dark and stormy day with torrential rain and it was a hunker down inside day where I turned on the fairy lights, lit a candle and just snuggled down under a nice warm blanket  cuddling with my dog and listened to music and enjoyed my fave. mango Mexican soda. Later I also took my mother out for an early birthday dinner and God was looking out for us because we got in-between the heavy downpours and it might even possibly end up being her last birthday and our last outing out together and it's always such a hassle getting her out,too, getting the walker or wheelchair collapsed into the car trunk and getting her into the car; she grunts and groans and won't co-operate getting in  and takes so long and we're in a prohibited parking spot and have to hurry up and her pants also kept falling down and I had to go behind her and keep pulling them up(in public, which was beyond embarrassing and I hate it when people look at me and stare; I get very self-conscious) and she's such a sloppy, messy eater now,too, and spills food all down the front of her shirt and it falls out of her mouth and she crassly shovels it back in with her hands and it's just so gross! 

As we were seated and these people walked by I also noticed one of them look at me on the way(at my dreads I presume) by and I heard her say....a Rastafarian and we ordered French Onion soup, cheesy spinach dip,garlic bread, Penne chicken al forno, and shared a  piece of decadent chocolate mousse cake drizzled in chocolate syrup, caramel and dollops of cream. As I was paying the bill( and I'm just soooo glad now the credit card thingy automatically calculates the tip so I don't have to try and figure it out because I can't do math for the life of me) she said Oh, I was going to put a 20% tip....(I only did 15%)...even though she wasn't even the one paying; I was, so I found that sort of rude but it had already gone thru, and besides, I didn't really like the waiter anyway; I thought he was kind of abrupt and he just kind of "rubbed" me the "wrong way" so he's lucky he even got anything at all. My mother also said she goes to all the religious services they have at the LTC home as well, eg. Methodist, Salvation Army, etc. and she says she likes the Salvation Army the best. I had a relative(Babushka's nephew actually) who belonged to that church once for decades(he used to be Catholic) and you'd think they're so charitable too but he left, disillusioned because when they get clothing donations, for example, he said he was disgusted how they'd always pick over them first and take all the good stuff for themselves  before they'd donate the rest to the needy.

Here are the left-overs and I still have enough for 2 more meals! Today I'm also going to an ethnic/multicultural festival where they have food from 14 different countries, vendors, and music, and and I burned my arm on the oven the other day,too; I was taking the lasagne out and even though I did have oven mitts on they don't go all the way up my arm and I'd just smoked weed shortly before so at first I didn't even feel it(luckily) I just felt it really hot on my arm and then heard the flesh starting to sizzle and realized but then a few hours later boy, oh boy, did that sucker ever hurt! It was really stinging and went all red and blistery, and the 29 YR old also has his driver's test in a couple of weeks and when I mentioned I think I'll go back to Cuba probably in Sept/Oct. my hubby groused that I've "always just taken off whenever I wanted for the past 25 YRS" and now it's "his turn" (he wants to go to another chess tournament in NY in August) which I have no problem with, and I'm STILL going to continue,too, just as long as we're both not away at the same time, and last night a plane was flying so low barely scraping our roof  as I lay in bed it  was so roaring loud and it shook the whole house and I even wondered if it was going to crash into our house!

Nothing here but darkness No reason to stay.-Robbie Robertson