LET'S SHOP!

IF YOU PLAN CAREFULLY, you don't have to leave the Manor to go shopping. The Manor store is open 2 mornings a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays from 9:30 until 11. The stock is interesting and understandably geared to the geriatric set. I'm much more drawn to the snacks in the lower right than in the assortment of incontinence products at the upper left. I've taken advantage of the instant coffee and peanut butter and am a big consumer of Kleenex products. 

 Martha and Irene were volunteering the day we used our camera. 35 years ago we met Martha on a European cruise arranged by our church, so she's known Tim from the time he was 14 and now enjoys seeing him when he visits at age 49.

They have an efficient system, whereby one writes up the purchases and the other takes the money and bags the items. 

 The selection of cards is good and amazingly reasonable in price. When I started my retail career, greeting cards averaged 25¢ and 35¢ in price and nowadays $2.99 isn't shocking to most folks. The Manor's cards are mostly $1 which makes it affordable to slip one under the door when a resident has a birthday, which is the custom here. Come to think of it, that's a good form of exercise, bending and retrieving on one day of the year.

 I think I cornered the market on one of their selections recently. The front showed a drawing of a cowboy holding a gun and the words "ANOTHER YEAR" and on the inside were the words, "SHOT TO HELL". It struck my funny bone and was good for men to boot.


"We know we're getting old when the only thing we want for our birthday is not to be reminded of it."  ~Author Unknown

TO MARKET, TO MARKET

TWO THINGS about me........I'm lazy and I'm acquisitive. When I saunter out on my own, by the time I arrive back home I have to telephone Mr. Bob to come help me carry stuff up to our room. Having to use a cane makes it all the harder, just getting everything juggled into the right hand and proper grip. Truly, it requires a talent I've yet to develop. 


Yesterday morning was one of those ventures....Mr. Bob went off to his radiation appointment and I headed for a doctor's appointment. In my weakened state, it's a marvel I got parked and managed to maneuver the tortuous path from the car to the waiting room. When I was through I felt so pleased with myself that I drove into Trader Joe's parking lot feeling that if God wanted me to test my weakened wings further there'd be a Disabled parking space and there it was, right next to the front door to the market. I sat and watched customers come and go for a bit and then planned my attack. If I hobbled into the store and kept going to the far wall, I'd be in front of the tangerine juice which was my reason for being there. Carefully, carefully, slowly but surely......mind my step......made it! They only had half gallons so that filled one hand, the other being needed for the cane. Then, shopper that I am, I let my eye survey the area in which I found myself. Oh, look! The cereal we've not had for a while........Maple Nut Clusters. Shamble across the aisle, put down the jug of juice, reach high for the box, tuck it under my elbow, reach down for the juice and wend my way to the nearest register.


Waiting my turn, I spied a perfect greeting card in a display just ahead of the register and I managed to hook one between thumb and forefinger without dropping the cereal or the liquid sunshine that I consider tangerine juice to be.


Quite a feat, really and it took two telephone calls, leaving a message and a text before I reached Mr. Bob to ask him to meet me in the parking lot for help. I'll not be good widow material if and when the time comes. 


As I sit and wait for Mr. Bob's radiation treatment each morning, I see lots of people who have been to the market which is several blocks down the road. 

I'm surprised at the number of people who carry bags (but rarely in combination with a cane).

A few people, very few, have discovered the joys of a market basket. 

Those are the folks I identify with. And I'd like to think they're not lazy, just smart.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness."  
                                                ~David Dunham

HAIKU

THE DISCOMFORT of the MRIs and the biopsies are behind me, but my smashed fingers remind me that I had an experience. It could have been worse had I not signaled that something was terribly wrong. As it is I got by with minor bruises, some scrapes and a diagonal cut reminiscent of how you'd make a plain radish into something decorative.

Tears flowed at the pain

Silent agony expressed

I won't press charges.

Remember the Q&A Journal I bought myself last August on one of Tim's Sunday Parents' Days? There's a question each day and places to answer for the next five years. Some of the questions this past week have been:

• What's the most valuable thing you own? (my grandmother's Regina music box)
• What famous living person would you like to meet for drinks? (still considering an answer to that one)
• What was your last credit card purchase? (Books for the Manor library)
• Who do you count on? (Before chemo, Bob; now, the kids.)
• What new word have you learned? (Our new neighbor across the hall is French and has the most delightful accent, even after living  in Glendale for 35 years. She told me her favorite red wine which is "like velvet on the tongue" and now my new word is "Chateauneuf du Pape".)

Yesterday's directive was "write a haiku about your day.  5 syllables/7syllables/5 syllables". Mine is pathetic and has no graceful flow whatsoever but it sums up our Saturday:
           On Sundays Tim comes
           Painting in Pomona calls
           So today he's here.
                             
Certainly nothing to brag about. Tim's helping his friend paint the newly purchased condo this Sunday. He came with Tulip yesterday. and took my grocery lists, returning with every single item. Someone taught that boy how to shop! Could it have been his mother? While he was gone, Tulip missed him and most of the time sat against the door awaiting Tim's return.

The Master has gone

On a search for provisions

Why did he leave me?

    
            §§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§

Company coming?

                 And your house is a big mess?

Just put on lipstick.

DIDN'T IT RAIN?

MOST YEARS the weather turns hot once school starts, but so far this fall, it's been relatively cool and today water is steadily coming down from the sky. Wet water. And on the day that I  got up at 5 to have my hair washed and blown dry ahead of taking Mr. Bob for his chemotherapy session.


Last night, in anticipation of this morning's rain, I asked him if he knew where the umbrella was. "Oh, yes," he sez, sez he. (Thornton Burgess was an author of children's books and I once read that he was paid by the word, therefore there's a lot of "he sez, sez he")


Except that this morning there was no umbrella to be found."Well, it's in the car," he sez. It's quite a walk to the parking lot, some day I'll count the steps. Giving him the bag of unforgettables, I told him I'd come around and pick him up in front. I think he had in mind coming to the car to find the umbrella, but it seemed of little use to me since by then I'd be thoroughly wet and our destination was in a covered parking structure. So I think I kind of barked the instructions as I repeated them. I splashed my way through the puddles, finally, out of breath, reaching my destination, heaved myself into the van and backed up..........but the remote control had no effect on the gate. Over and over I tried. What to do? Mr. Bob had my cell phone, no one was in sight, time was racing and I was going nowhere.


Finally I dared to honk a couple of times, hoping to be heard and Roberto, one of the maintenance crew came running toward me in his yellow slicker and did something magical that allowed me to exit. Mr. Bob doesn't tolerate tardiness, but this time we were fifteen minutes late and he knew it was best not to challenge me on the point.


He did what he had to do......it was just an hour's session this morning.....and as we prepared to head home, a search of the car turned up nothing in the way of an umbrella. I'm ashamed to admit that I drove home with tight lips and hair growing increasingly limp. This is a long-standing issue for us with umbrellas.


I let His Nibs off in front of the Manor where he was just a matter of a few steps from home and seethed my way around a couple of blocks before I decided to go in search of an umbrella. Remember I didn't have the ability to get in the gate......no doubt it was a battery issue. And Mr. Bob frowns at the idea of my parking on the street in front of the Manor. He bristled when someone once left a card, "We buy junk cars".


CVS was the closest place I could think of and since I didn't want one of those modern, collapsible, fancy-schmancy umbrellas, I had a choice between two bumbershoots that were left over from the rush to buy them that the first rainstorm always brings.


I don't think we'll overlook this giant, redder-than-red one with
G.L.E.N.D.A.L.E  emblazoned on the side. Of course there's really nowhere either to store it or let it drip dry, but it was a perfect out-picturing of what I was feeling at the time.

And to top it off, I parked on the street.


Really, he shouldn't have commented on how prematurely I step on the brake in wet weather. He's a better driver than I, but one without  a license, more's the pity. And besides that, he's not the only one with cancer.

BEWARE! MAD WOMAN AT LARGE!

"When angry, count four; 

when very angry, swear."  

                                                             ~Mark Twain

THE LOCAL KID

IT FALLS TO the offspring who lives in Hollywood to keep an eye on his elderly parents. The one in Alaska wishes she lived closer, the one in Castro Valley makes arrangements to come down when he can, but it's Tim who's "on call", so to speak. Two sides to that coin, I'm sure, but I'll have to say this.......he never makes Manor visits appear to be an inconvenience for which I'm ever grateful. Duty calls are not my idea of a good time for anyone concerned.

He's in charge of seeing that his mother gets beyond her city limits, thus preserving her sanity and it helps that our tastes are somewhat parallel in things to see and do. He sees the wisdom of driving surface streets rather than always taking the freeway. He likes food, interesting food........it's a fault we share. He keeps a list in his head of places to go and things to see. A few weeks ago he drove us to Fullerton, with a plan to visit our favorite jazz club. He'd called ahead to be sure the Golden Eagles were playing and even made reservations for three with a real person. When the day came and we drove the hour to get there, the only ones on hand to greet us were the servers. No music scheduled. Disappointment all around until Tim remembered a nearby restaurant he'd heard about and the day was saved. 

Mr. Bob usually opts to stay at home on the Sundays Tim appears. The three of us go to the dining room for dinner together and then the father waves us goodbye, looking forward to alone time for a couple of hours. Off we go, sometimes the outing is as simple as a visit to a couple of supermarkets for supplies, other times we explore. One Sunday, driving to Pasadena, Tim turned on a residential street, saying, "I think there's a lake somewhere back here" and sure enough, we found it, hidden away.

Another time we went in search of a gelato place I'd heard about. It was a beastly hot day, their location was nearly impossible to find,  tucked back in a largely vacated mall in Altadena.  But they have a following, as evidenced by the line that became no shorter as people continued to arrive.

 They are known for their pistachio gelato, using only nuts from Italy. Did you realize that most of the pistachios we buy come from Turkey and Iran and are handled in such a way that there's a chance they are moldy? Now I've wrecked that for all of us.

Last Sunday found us going to South Pasadena in search of a shop that was on my Bucket List. That town is a treasure. The residential streets are interesting, the trees are old, there's a main street full of unusual shops and restaurants. In a word, happiness.

For four years I've mourned the closing of a store which used to offer unorthodox clothing, offbeat greeting cards and objets d'art.

Recently I discovered that four of that store's employees moved around the corner and opened their own attached stores, carrying the same sort of exceptional merchandise. That was our destination on Sunday. Our visit didn't disappoint.

Admittedly, I'd outgrown the possibility of wearing their clothing (and I'm doing something concrete about that, starting today) but the books and other merchandise offered are still several cuts above the average gift shop, enough to make my head spin and my checkbook pulsate.

I tried, I really did, not to purchase a five year diary, the idea of which seemed a bit optimistic, all things considered, but this journal had an unusual format and my will-power crumpled. Consisting of a daily question and just 4 lines in which to answer it in each of the next five years, I found it too intriguing to pass up. It's a thought provoking tome and filling four lines hardly strikes me as a daunting task, so there's a chance I'll not abandon the project prematurely.

Maybe one of these days Mr. Bob will want to go with us on one of our "explores", as Pooh would have termed what we do. At the same time that I know he relishes his quiet Sunday afternoons, it feels somehow wrong to leave him behind, even though I do realize there's a tremendous difference in our urges for that sort of diversion. For me, those outings are life-savers. Maybe they are for him, too.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

NOW AND THEN

NOW:
We've been texting this morning. To give you an idea of our exchange....

Off to the shower....
                                                                Think of me.

All ways...I am still basking in
the afterglow of yesterday.
All nite w/o oxygen. 94%
this morning.
                                                               Good for you, Bob!
                                                               Susie & Bill visiting today.
                                                              Look your best!
Lookingforwardtoit...I miss
hitting the space bar so much
that it takes all my time going
back to correct. What time will
they arrive?
                                                                They haven't let me know
                                                                yet. Don't worry about the
                                                                space bar when you're
                                                                writing to me. I pretty much
                                                                understand you.
That brings a smile to my face
that can be seen and amuck bigger
one on my heart that only I can feel
and see.
                ¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

THEN:

BIG DECISIONS
Monday, June 25, 2007

"A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch
with his deepest emotions."
                                     ~John Kenneth Galbraith

A signal that my social life needs a boost is when I get excited at the prospect of going to the supermarket. Really, the range of possible buying choices is phenomenal. Have you ever stopped to consider how many products you've never tried or even thought about buying? I'm one who likes to get my recommendations from friends or other real people rather than by chance, and am not above asking other shoppers about their selections. I've discovered a lot that way. I'm a peeping Tom when it comes to other people's shopping carts.

I once knew a man, a poet, who loved making a daily trip to the supermarket, reveling in the idea that he could afford any item on the shelves. Mr. Bob often tries to convince me that we should go to the store every day rather than shopping ahead and his point is well taken when I have to discard things that I purchased and didn't use before the expiration date. I'm bad about that. On a shopping trip, I always manage to see something out of the corner of my eye that we really should have and the cart does fill up quickly and expensively.

Time was, Mr. Bob did the marketing because he could be relied upon to buy exactly what was on my list.......no creative shopping for that man! Grocery shopping was much less costly if didn't go.



Of late, I hear from him such statements as, "Von's doesn't carry pickled beets" or "Ralph's has discontinued pinto beans", none of which is the case, so generally we make it a joint outing. Mr. B. insists on being the one to push the shopping cart.........I finally figured out that he's using it as a sort of walker and when I get my own cart to push, for the same reason, I keep wandering off and forgetting it, so that plan doesn't work out very well.

Almost any time we go to a local market, there's the added bonus of crossing paths with people we knew as customers when we had the bookstore and then a few minutes of happy catching up. Recently I ran into a woman who had first come to our shop as an adolescent. She said she was just back from taking her second child to visit college campuses........where did the time go?

Now there's talk of another supermarket strike. The last time the picket lines marched for months before a solution was found. If this comes to pass, our social life will take a turn as we seek out alternative shopping options, but we'll rise to the challenge and who knows? A blog entry might come out of it.

"You've got bad eating habits if you use a grocery cart in 7-Eleven."
                                                          ~Dennis Miller

AFTERWORD:

Fast forward four years to the present and the "too much food" argument continues. It's because of our differing philosophies; one of us living to eat, the other eating to live, so nothing much has changed there. Tim, under protest for he doesn't like warehouse stores, takes me to Costco once in a while where I load up on some staples. The other evening, my electric cart stalled midway through shopping and Tim came up with a solution.

This makes a terribly long entry. Whaddya think? Should I continue a while with this "now and then" approach? Otherwise, some days there's just not a whole lot about which to write.

PARENTS' DAY

Every other Sunday, on Tim's calendar, is marked as "Parents' Day", meaning that he comes to the Manor and willingly helps with whatever I've come up with, usually mundane tasks. Often he joins us for dinner in the dining room and usually Mr. Bob opts to stay home rather than joining us on errands.

Last Sunday, however, we all set out to go to 2 stores I've long had on my unending list of places I want to go. That's the same list that Mr. Bob thinks we're shortening, every time we cross an item off; he still hasn't grasped the idea that I keep adding to the bottom of the checklist.

Our destination was the Silverlake District, rather an alternative, artsy area, with an ambience that borders on the carnival. It's peopled largely by a young crowd that parted to make way for us old folks with our canes. Tap, tap, tap, we made our way to the doorway of a store called The Reform School.

I'd nearly forgotten the thrill of shopping in an independently owned store where the merchandise is carefully chosen without the repetition that gets so tiresome. We browsed, I practiced restraint and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but Mr. Bob making a purchase! Who'da thunk it? He chose a moon calendar for 2011.

Leaving that emporium, we headed for the Cheese Store of Silverlake. Years and years ago, I'd jotted down the name as a place that carried a breakfast cheese that struck me as being something I'd like. I don't partake of stinky cheeses, and this was described as mild and creamy, just right for my taste. When I requested it, the first reaction was a puzzled look and a negative answer. The clerk disappeared for a bit........long enough for Mr. Bob to purchase a small wedge of Challerhocker Swiss cheese for himself.......and reappeared with the information of where I could get it, written on a piece of butcher paper.  Such good customer service pleased me and we happily traded places with Tim so he could go in and look around while we sat with Tulip, who wasn't the only pup out for a Sunday walk on a leash.........all were friendly, no barking; just a lot of sniffing.

As we went back to the car, I gathered as many sights as possible, sometimes remembering to use the camera.

Our last stop was at Sumi's in Silverlake. 

There I found a Christmas present which solved a previous dilemma. 

It was a soul satisfying outing, made all the more pleasurable by the presence of Mr. Bob in a good mood. Tim never acts as though these Parents' Days are a burden. Bless his heart.