by Phyllis McCrossin
It’s Monday and another day of Zoom learning for the twins. I’m home alone with the boys, as our daughter is working and King has decided to go to a friend’s home to work on a ramp for Cindy so she can get in and out of the truck.
Cindy is not doing well. Last night when it was time for us to head back to the campground I walked her one last time before loading her into the truck for the hour commute. (We now have to lift her 90-pound mass into the truck). She has always been one to spend a lot of time to look for the “perfect” spot to relieve herself, but last night she slid down a ditch and just lay there. There was no attempt to get up.
King and I had to pull her up (he pushed, I pulled). When one adopts a senior dog one knows ahead of time this day is coming sooner rather than later, but it does not make it any easier. She has aging joints and I know from experience how hard it can be to move.
We will work on finding her relief but we won’t go through any “heroic” efforts such as surgery. This is our choice and it is what we did for all our canine friends. This is a normal progression of aging.
But we are not ready to throw in the towel just yet. Hence, King is building the ramp. And yes, we have tried or will try all the recommended forms of relief.
In the meantime we are falling into a routine with schooling. There is a reason I never went into education (elementary, secondary or otherwise). I tend to want them to work as I would – get everything done and THEN take a break.
Seven-year-olds have other ideas and I have decided perhaps their own pace is the way I should allow them to proceed. (Hmmm, ya think?) I can’t decide if I should intervene when they seem to have the same answers to reading questions (as in identical synopsis to stories they have read). The editor in me has a difficult time with plagiarism, the grandmother in me says, “Close enough,” and the radical idea of “Grades don’t measure everything” that has been with me since high school battles it all.
It would also seem these little boys have become eating machines. All day long I hear, “Grandma I’m hungry.” I believe the translation is “Grandma I want a delicious cookie that we baked yesterday because our mother won’t let us have sugar and you are a ‘marshmallow Mom’ when it comes to monitoring sugar.”
Actually it would be much easier to monitor their sugar intake if it were not for King. He is the original “junk food junkie.” When he goes grocery shopping with me (which since retirement is every time I go) the grocery cart is filled with Little Debbie cakes, chips, candy, Mountain Dew and sugar coated cereal.
When we visit the grandchildren they can depend on Poppa to bring them junk to eat. I receive dirty looks from my daughter — as if I have control over him. And I’m certain my daughters-in-law complain bitterly to our sons after we leave.
Last night, our daughter came home after a long day of showing houses, to find the boys were hyped up on sugar. I’m pretty sure I heard King giggling maniacally as he headed down the stairs of her apartment.
I have to wonder if part of King’s penchant for “forbidden” foods is because his mother had a propensity to hide them. She once told me (after hiding a batch of cookies my sister had given me) that often after the Christmas holiday season she had to throw cookies out because they had gone stale.
“Did your mother have to do that?” My response was, “Not really, because after Christmas any leftovers were served to friends we had over after a day of sledding. “Oh,” she replied. “I always made fancy cookies.” The passive/aggressive comment was not lost on me.
Unfortunately, there is darn little snow in southern California and even if there were, with the pandemic, I don’t think many friends would be coming over for hot chocolate and cookies, which is a good thing because there are four cookies left from the batch we made yesterday.
