I haven’t slept well lately. Mostly because I have had not-so-decent interactions with Mike and Salinda right before bed. I don’t even want to go into details because it’s long and exhausting to relive them, and for the most part I visibly kept my cool. With Salinda a lot of it I feel is typical teenage girl testing and attitude, but last night it included her slamming a door in my face after turning out the light when I followed her out of her room. My adrenaline gets to pumping at 10 p.m. and it’s hard for me to settle down.
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Yesterday afternoon I talked to my Dad. He’s the greatest. He’s 84 and still as hilarious as he has ever been. His body is slowly wearing out, but his mind is as alert as ever. While he can’t remember if he got the crossword puzzle done this morning, he can remember things he learned in 1930 in grade school. Last night he shared this with me:
“Girls Chewing Gum
and Cows Chewing Cud
are alike, but different somehow
O, yes, I know now,
it’s the contented look on the face of the cow.”
We then had a conversation like this:
Me: Sorry I haven’t called for a while, my life is a blur.“
Dad: Well at least it’s not a boa constrictor.
Silence.
Me: Uh,,, OK. You know, they tell us that when the elderly start to lose it, you’re supposed to just go along and pretend like you understand what they are saying. How am I doing?
Dad: (laughs) Well, you said your life was a bore.
Me: No, I said it was a blur.
Dad: Well, I thought you said bore.
Me: (Finally figuring it out): Oh, it’s that Maine accent of yours (he hasn’t lived in the northeast for probably 60 years).
Better a boa constrictor than a bo-ah.
Dad: Yeah (obviously perking up).
Me: Well, dad, the rest of us don’t say bo-ah when we mean bore, so I didn’t get it. Wow, for a minute I thought you were going senile.
Dad: Hey, now, that’s something I’ve always wanted to do -- go to Egypt and see Nile.
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Last night we had Wednesday night supper at the church. Dominyk was really wild yesterday and so he was having a rough time settling down. We were sitting with the Chair of the Staff-Parish Relations Committee and his wife, who are retired and in their late sixtees, maybe early seventies. All the sudden Dominyk asked them if they had a toenail clipper and I immediately knew I was headed straight for utter and complete humiliation and there was very little I was going to be able to do to stop him.
Sure enough, right there in the fellowship, all of us adults in the middle of a bite of lasagna, the shoe comes off, the sock comes off, and Dominyk’s prize toenail that he is growing out (left foot, 4th toe) was being held up for them to see.
I was way too tired to be that embarrassed, but they handled it well. They are awesome people. The guy, who spent his younger years in the military simply smiled at me and said, ”I“ve seen worse.”
This morning I get to start my day by emailing Dominyk’s teacher to find out why she had to “call law enforcement” Tuesday. First I heard about it was last night....
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