Not a particularly amusing day — and while productive in some ways, not so much in others!

My hairdresser par excellence, Chelsea, helped me pick a pair of cool readers today.  Is that an oxymoron? “Cool readers?” I choose to think I’m just hip — and I don’t mean of the broken variety.  As we always do, we discussed my next color, and how we will go about achieving it.  I like my bright blue Muppet look for sure, but I am thinking something more sophisticated for my trip to Paris (mais oui!) in April.  Gonna go berry wine.  She’s intrigued…

Hit the library, where I checked out far too many books to read on this schedule, but oh well.  I’m reading a great one right now: Goodbye Vitamin, by Rachel Khong. It’s a sad, funny novel about a gal who moves back home on mom’s request — just for a year — as dad has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  My dad has Alzheimer’s and so many of the stories she tells remind me of when mine started declining.  My Dad always got busted for stealing silverware.  We’d be out to brunch and he’d be slipping a knife up his sleeve — and he usually had multiple watches on under that sleeve.  Mom was forever bringing me ziploc baggies filled with stuff he had taken from my house.  Anyway: so yeah, it’s a horrid disease, but if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.  Which does seem to be how I make it through my days no matter what.

Next it was the CAR WASH.  Why the caps? You must not be from a winter state.  We just finished three days of melt after two weeks of temps so cold my nipples could cut glass.  So that first car wash is like taking off your bra at the end of the day. It shouldn’t thrill you to the tips of your toes, but it does. For me, the car wash was also a quiet place.  I read for about 10 minutes, while someone else was cleaning.  That is a bit of heaven right there, my friend.

HWSNBN does not feel the same about car washes.  See, he is wicked afraid of clowns (not teasing him; we all have our things.  For me? Escalators. No I am not kidding.  Hate the things.  And my kids know it: they love to walk backwards on them, pretend to trip, whatever.  They joke that someday they are gonna fill escalators with clowns and wet themselves watching their parents try to climb over each other to see who can get out of the way first.  They are hilarious, my offspring.). Anyway: back to car washes and clowns. Yes, there is a connection: HWSNBN feels that car washes are where baby clowns are made.  He points out the multi-colored foam.  Yeah…I got nothing.

Car all sparkly, I pick up three Old English sheepdog puppies and drive to an elementary school in St Paul (about 40 minutes away) for a party of sorts.  The puppies were fluffy, the kids squealed, the grown ups smiled, the puppies peed and pooped.  I cleaned it up.  It’s what I do.  My partner got excellent video footage of me — from behind (thank goodness for her wide angle lens) –cleaning up pee.  That’s a lovely piece of video floating around the rescue page right now, lemme tell ya.

Rushed pups back to foster and me to my house, where I picked up Sailor Boy and we sat in traffic for an hour to go see Dad/Grandpa.  It was actually a good visit; the last ones haven’t been as happy as he hasn’t been super responsive.  But this time he actually chatted, and even cracked a joke.  No one knows what was so funny, but in the middle of eating he looked across the table accusingly at the aide, and said: “You! You’re a liar!” We were shocked — then noticed he had the biggest grin and was even laughing.  Sometimes the best jokes don’t have a punchline.

We all laughed out loud a few minutes later, when he decided that he liked his dessert a bit too much.  Sailor Boy had been helping him with his eclair, and Dadpa decided he’d had enough.  Speared the whole thing with his fork and tried to shove it all in.  Wiping tears from our eyes, we promised we weren’t gonna try to steal it from him, and helped him with a piece that actually fit.  It was a good visit, and I am glad Sailor Boy got to see him like this before he heads back to his duty station.

Now I am dying of hunger.  There’s a new restaurant in town that I am dying to try.  But we are waiting on Singer Girl.  I guess I should be proud of her, as she is supporting Drummer Boy as he does his Major Presentation.  So as a parent I am pleased.  As a tired woman who just wants to eat pasta and drink wine, I am annoyed. I am ready to take off my bra.