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My friend, Michele, is Just the Best!

After 67 years, my parents had been split up, not by divorce, but by different aging conditions. 

While there was no question about the strength of our friendship, it was confirmed many times by Michele’s willingness to accompany me on my visits. 

There are two kinds of humans in this world: those who can deal with the elderly and those who cannot. Now a successful banker, Michele had CNA experience a couple of decades before this. 

CNAs must deal with the messiest of patients and there was nothing that could violate Michele! 

At this time of the year, I’ll never forget when my ninety year old mom was in the hospital one winter, three times in six weeks, for recurring pneumonia. Her diagnosis was, “pneumonia and failure to thrive.” Her prognosis read, “Poor”. She wouldn’t eat or drink and it felt like the beginning of the end. 

One Sunday morning, Michele offered to go with me to the hospital. Very few people assume the invitation is always open. I would never ask anyone if they wanted to go, except a family member. 

Mom had just had a bath and was ready for a breakfast that she wouldn’t eat. Her hair, thin from aging and wet from her bath, was plastered against her small head. It was unsettling. 

There were two basic things to do: get food and liquid in her and set that hair! Michele coaxed her kindly and fed her easily from the front, while I put her hair up in Velcro curlers, from the back. It was a two-pronged approach and quite a vision, I’m sure. 

Perhaps it was because of Michele’s kind, gentle easy nature with Mom, orr maybe it was the ever-present sparkle in her eyes, but it was the loveliest gesture a friend could offer Mom and me.

We see this aging parent scenario unfold hundreds and thousands of times. Let this be a positive lesson to us all that we, too, can dish up kindness and assistance with a spoon or a fork. And a little Dippity-Do! 

Thanks, Michele. LYLAS!

 

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Can’t You Just Sit There and Be Quiet?

 

 

GROCERY

Nurse White shops for Korey’s recovery. (Note: side pocket wine is for the nurse.)

 

Last week, Korey, needed a nurse for post- dental surgery in Washington D.C. Mom to the rescue! Does having four wisdom teeth pulled in eighteen minutes count as surgery? I don’t know, because:

  1. I never got wisdom teeth. (Hold the jokes.)
  2. If the dentist looks 12½ years old is it called, “Surgery or science class?”

In either case, me helping her was laughable. Neither of us likes blood. In seventh grade, Korey missed school the day after getting her ears pierced, because a blood droplet was on her earlobe. Me? I could never look at Nick’s, appendectomy incision. Not even once.

Preparation

During the morning, I made multiple trips to the grocery and CVS. Here’s the shopping list:

  • Hefty bags: gallon and quart
  • Dish soap
  • Charmin
  • Bounty paper towels
  • Glade
  • Hot pad

These were supplies for teeth extraction? Anyone who visits a child, sibling or parent shops like this for the host. I met friends along the way: Deli Shop Sammy and Young in the grocery. I purchased obligatory ice cream, pudding, Jell-O and Sprite too.

 

Appointment

I’m unsure which of us was more nervous. Friday @ 1:30p.m. Korey arrived from work. I walked from her apartment. I’d have been on time, except D.C., like many cities, has 2311 M Street, Northwest, Southwest and East-by-Northwest. Of our founding fathers’ brilliant ideas, street naming wasn’t one of them. My walk was supposedly .6 mile. Google said 6.7 miles! Guess who was going to be late and lost? Korey answered my S.O.S. and I recalculated.

 

Recovery

Korey was a good patient (ice, rest, fluids, “This Is Us”) and Saturday night we went out for pasta!

 

Normalcy

As scheduled, Korey conducted a 2-hour webinar Sunday, for associates. We silenced the T.V., phones and apparently everything but Bobbe. As the webinar commenced my throat tickled, forcing me to stifle coughing with a pillow. It wouldn’t stop. I considered available remedies, such as honey, Jack Daniels or peanut butter. Desperation. I landed on almond butter. It tasted weird, but worked.

 

I read for a while, then decided to nap on the couch, falling asleep fast. Before long, Korey was wiggling my big toe, “Shhhhhhh. They can hear you snoring!” I couldn’t do ANYTHING quiet. I got up and read again. Jeff texted us, “What’s for dinner?” I replied and Korey informed me that our family-wide text was crawling across the webinar screen. Jeesh.

 

Korey was beyond frustrated. We tried. We really tried, but Murphy’s Law of Silence ruled: the quieter you try to be, the noisier you will become. What can I say? This nurse was a helpful, but noisy one. And, yes Virginia, there IS a tooth fairy. Even at age 29.

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A Check….Seriously?

/Wtad.com/whitepages/9.14.17

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Bobbe White

It’s Thursday, September 14, 2017 and in today’s news, the Hurricane cleanup begins in Florida and continues in Houston. Kim Jong Un is still running loose with bad hair and fires in the west are clearing their own path of destruction. How do you stomach all of these disasters, when you look around your own sky and it’s blue and clear and perfect? Oh, nothing’s perfect, we know that, you silly goose. That would be like knocking on Mother Fate’s door.

I speak too soon as we Midwesterners don’t have it exactly perfect, even though our weather has been, in comparison to the south and the west. We, too, are being held captive by our computers to freeze our credit. Equifax, have you had a rough week? What I’d like to know is, who hasn’t been affected by this breach? Not many, I’d bet. If it’s not this, it’ll be another Target deal, WalMarket or God forbid, Hobby Lobby. If you shop with credit or debit, you’re in the game and sadly, this is our new normal.

The alternative? We return to cash or checks, but can you fathom the long lines at the grocery store? STORE RAGE! It’s bad enough that yesterday I forgot my wallet and had to painfully take time to write a check out for milk, cereal, dog food and chicken drummies – not all for the same meal, of course. I heard everyone in line rolling their eyes out loud at me. One dude said, loud enough for me to hear, “A check? Seriously?” I went fifty shades of red, because I’ve been that person in line, waiting behind a sweet, little, old lady as she digs her checkbook out, asks for a pen, writes most of the check and then asks the cashier, “How much was it again?” Then she screws up the amount, voids it and starts over. That was Yours Truly yesterday. No pen, just a check. I could feel the cart nudge me from behind, as if to say, “Geez you old bag, hurry up!” The icing on the impatient customers’ cake was when I asked for a cart to roll out my bags, since I’d overachieved with a hand basket. (I’ll probably go to hell in a hand basket if I ever do this maneuver again.) When our daughter worked at the grocery, she said they hated it when people like me shoved three weeks of food into a little red plastic basket.

After this, I’ll try to have patience with check writers in front of me. You don’t know what they’re going through in their life. They may have lost their debit card or had it stolen or breached.  Maybe they were on the Equifax list. You don’t know. (Remember when breach was only used in terms of our levees on the river system, or when a baby couldn’t be delivered that way?)  Let’s all cool our jets. If you’re in that big of a hurry, just send your grocery list in on-line, have it delivered and avoid the store all together. But don’t whine when you get pickles instead of shampoo. Your grocery list may have just been hacked! bw