The Care and Feeding of Parents

My parents came up for a visit last week. Naturally, things didn’t go quite to plan.

“So,” Mom asks. “What time should be aim for to avoid rush hour traffic?”

“Four,” I say. “Which means you need to leave by around 12:30 or so. Call me when you’re on the road, and then call Erin [my sister] when you get to Macon.” (So she’d know to leave work and head home to meet them.)

“Okay!”

I held out until 1:30 before I called.

“Yesssss?” Dad answers.

“Um, are you on the way?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re just leaving Ashburn [three hours away]. We stopped for lunch. Hang on.” He hands the phone to Mom.

“You were supposed to call me when you left,” I remind her.

“Well, I called Erin!”

I refrain from headdesking, but barely. “You were supposed to call me when you left home, Mom. And then call Erin from Macon.”

Insert long, convoluted rambling about the route they plan to take to get from Atlanta to Kansas (where they were headed to visit friends), while I try to interrupt because, hey, at work here, and you pretty much have a microcosm of my parents.

Gotta love ’em. Because it’s either that or shoot ’em. Or myself.

Movin' Out

Once again I've fallen down on the updating job. Ah well, better late than never, right?

I spent the weekend with Mom and Dad, getting the first big stack of boxes packed. Takeaway lesson: Mom has a lot of dolls and doll-related stuff, and a LOT of packing remains to be done.

In happy news, they may have found a place to live. Details to follow once it's a done deal.

E and I watched the premiere of Castle last night and loved it. Not perfect, but lots of fun. Plus, an hour a week of Nathan Fillion? Where's the bad in that?

Movin' On Up

Photograph from the 2008 Chicago Air & Water Show by kudzuplanet

Dad is retiring from the ministry in June, which means he and Mom will be moving. Oh joy, oh rapture: more packing/unpacking. My family has become as nomads, each of us moving every couple of years. My sister and I moved to a new apartment in August; my grandmother followed suit in December. Once again, all of us will have moved within a year. (And that's not even counting my office's move back in June.) Thankfully, these will likely be the last moves for my parents and grandmother, unless they get to the point that they need more assistance.


This week also marks my parents' birthdays (today and Thursday), plus Valentine's Day, which this year is balanced out for us singles by Friday the 13th the day before. Maybe I'll host a wake Friday night, or at least dress all in black.

Life is a Highway

Shuttling back and forth between hospitals: not highly recommended. My mother is one, and my grandmother spent last night in another an hour away. Commuter Daughter, that's me.

Thank goodness for laptops and remote network access. I don't have the leave time for this!

Livin' La Vida Loca

Original plan: Parents come to visit for Thanksgiving, order turkey dinner (and cake) premade to save time, have relaxing few days at home.

Intervening event: Mom falls, breaks hip, has surgery.

New plan: Spend Thanksgiving week at parents' house, taking care of Dad and getting Mom home from hospital safely. No clue about Thanksgiving dinner plans.

The fun never stops at Casa de Shannon.