Oh, what a beautiful day!

Today was beautiful here in LucyLand. Lucy#2 had a good day at work, was able to leave on time, and be home by 3:00. Lucy#1 ate a good lunch instead of half a sandwich. Then the Two Lucys got together and it was a hoot!

We both like NCIS. I’m always a season behind on watching because I am either not home or forget what day it airs, so I have to catch up when the whole season comes out on DVD. (Yay, Netflix!) Lucy#1 watches every Tuesday night, so she is always up-to-date. For Season 11, when I don’t have Pampered Chef parties, I may start being up-to-date because Lucy#1 will be on top of it and will remind me. Cool!

NCIS Season 10 DVDs came out on August 20, so today when I came home from work, we Lucys watched the first couple episodes.We enjoyed watching together and talking about Gibbs. (Woo, baby, Leroy Jethro Gibbs! J)

The Two Lucys had a glass of wine while I fixed supper, and Lucy#1 sat in the kitchen doorway and chatted with me while I cooked. We talked about people she worked with when she lived in Austin, and there were only a couple whose names she could not remember. We had some good laughs, rehashing some of the hilarious things that happened and the crazy things people did.

During supper, we talked and laughed more. Lucy#1 ate a pretty large meal (for her), but said she was done when she still had about three bites left on her plate. Thus, the following conversation, one that would have been so typical of us waaay back in the day:

Lucy#2:  Hey, you can’t stop eating now! You didn’t clean your plate.

Lucy#1:  I can’t hold another bite.

Lucy#2:  Ha! You know that’s B.S. because in a few minutes you are going to ask me if I want to eat some ice cream with you.

Lucy#1: No, I won’t! (Insert big grin here.) I’ll just go eat some without you!!

 

Then we laughed and laughed.
 
It was so much fun to laugh with Lucy#1! Of course, we have laughed together many, many times through the years, but these days we don’t so often have these goofy conversations where we just crack ourselves up and hoot with laughter.

Yes, today was a fabulous day!

 

 

By the way, the menu tonight was leftover chicken rejuvenated with barbeque sauce, turnip greens, and macaroni and cheese:

 

 

(Don't you just love it when the food matches the dishes?!)

I used the Pampered Chef Microwave Egg Cooker to make tonight’s macaroni and cheese in the microwave – in less than 10 minutes! I found this recipe on a Facebook page called something on the order of I Love my Pampered Chef Microwave Egg Cooker. Many intrepid cooks post interesting recipe ideas on that page, and I shall be trying more of their recipes!

 

 

The macaroni and cheese was very good. Here’s the recipe:

Place 1/2 cup elbow macaroni and 1/2 cup water in each well of the Egg Cooker. Cover with parchment paper and cook on high for 3 minutes. Remove and stir. Re-cover, return to microwave, and cook 2-3 minutes, or until the water is absorbed and the pasta is al dente.

Stir in 1/2 cup shredded cheese and 1/4 cup milk (in each well).

Cover and cook on high for 1 minute. Stir. Cook for 30 seconds, or until cheese is melted and milk is absorbed.

Easy, fast, delicious!
 

Time and Weather

Until the Two Lucys became roommates, this Lucy had no idea how important time and weather could be. I understand the concept of time and most rooms in the house have a clock I can check if I’m supposed to be somewhere at a certain time. I check the weather most mornings on my phone to see if I should wear rain boots. That is about it for me, as regards weather or time.

For Lucy#1, on the other hand, time and weather are urgent matters.

Lucy#1 keeps a pocket calendar next to her place at the table. She records appointments in this calendar, when she or I have appointments. She also records the outside temperature in the calendar – several times each day. She has at least three temperature entries per day on her calendar. Many days she turns the television on every couple hours just to see the temperature, and she watches every news program to learn both the current weather situation and the forecast for later. The weather seems to be her main focus at the moment. She doesn’t ask me how I enjoyed my day at work; she asks what the weather was like at my office. She appears to give very little thought to what a long-distance caller has to say about anything except the weather. Family members call her, and if she mentions the call to me at all, it is to tell me that it’s been in the 60s here or they have been getting a lot of rain there. Every day when I come home from work, she tells me the current temperature, what the temperature has been at various times during the day, and what weather is forecast for tomorrow. She rushes to watch the news at 5:30, 6:00, and 10:00 so she can see the weather. As soon as the weather segment is over, she turns the channel or turns the TV off.

Lucy#1 also has what I, infinitely lackadaisical, would say is almost a time fetish. If I announce any plan, Lucy#1 wants to know the exact time of the appointment. Once recently, I didn’t have an exact time to give Lucy#1: A friend and I planned to meet for coffee Saturday afternoon. However, Christine had things to do on Saturday, so we agreed she would contact me when she was free and we’d figure out a time then. We made this plan early in the week, and I told Lucy#1 right away so she would understand I would not be home part of Saturday afternoon and so we could do her shopping and errands either one day after work on Saturday morning. She was not happy that I didn’t have a specific time for the coffee date. She asked me every day that week if Christine and I had set a time, and when I would say we were going to figure it out on Saturday, she would say, “Well, why don’t you tell her you need to know what time you’re meeting?” I could not make her believe that I was not worried about the meeting time. On Saturday morning, she was quite upset that I still didn’t have a specific time. When Christine called to finalize the plan and we decided on a time, Lucy#1 finally relaxed. She obviously did not care that I was leaving the house; she cared that I did not have an exact time of departure.

I know these fixations are brought on by dementia. Next time I see one, I will buy an outdoor thermometer and hang it where it can be seen from the living room windows to see if that helps her. Every time I leave the house, I tell her when I expect to return, and I call if I’m running late. These are easy things for me to do; they make Lucy#1 happy.

These things also make me keenly aware of how often I work late and how long (in general) it takes when I stop at the grocery store or the bank on my way home. I have a better grasp of time and its passage than ever before – maybe that’s the silver lining in the Two Lucys’s sometimes foggy world.

It's a big yard, and someone's gotta mow it.

I do not mow my own yard. There are many reasons for this, with the two most prominent being severe allergies and the fact that not sweating, sneezing, and itching is worth more to me than what it costs to hire the job out. If the Two Lucys are still living together next year, I may buy a lawnmower. For now, however, it’s more than worth it to me to fork over the bucks to have someone else sweat in our yard.

Sadly, this year has been one unfortunate event after another on the lawn-mowing front. The first half of the season, I had a charming young man who was a senior in high school and then a graduate of high school who did a great job for a reasonable price. Then, he had senior trips and mission trips which, combined with a crazy (but appreciated!) rainy summer, got us a little bit off track. The lawn was often a bit unsightly, and the hedges needed trimming. Lucy#1 fretted over it, and asked me every day when Travis was coming to do the lawn.Then, sigh, exit Travis to college. Travis’s brother was supposed to step into the mowing shoes.

The rain kept coming and the grass kept growing, but Cole never showed up. I got the occasional pinch-hitter to mow the yard, but it just wasn’t working out, and Lucy#1 was very anxious about state of the yard.

Soooo, about a week ago, I called someone who had cut my yard before Travis came on the scene. I asked if he could cut the yard this week and then every two weeks until the grass quit growing for the winter. He said he could and would! Yahoooo! The Two Lucys were ecstatic.

Well, at first, the Two Lucys were ecstatic.

Then Lucy#1 began to drive Lucy#2 crazy (and, as they say, it is short trip) day by sad day that the lawn was not mowed.

Long story short, Darrell never showed up. I gave him until Friday, since he said he would get to it at some point during the week. Friday afternoon at 3:30, I called Darrell’s business, and left a voice mail saying I wanted to confirm that I was still on the list because it was 3:30 Friday afternoon and my yard had not been mowed, and I would like someone to please call me to confirm.

No call back, and no one came to mow the yard.

By the time we walked our dinner guests out to their car Saturday evening, the grass was so high that the neighbor’s dog was having a hard time finding her tennis ball when her owner threw it. In some places, the grass was mid-calf high on me, practically up to Lucy#1’s knees. Lucy #1 was very unhappy. Really, bitterly unhappy about the state of the yard. She threatened to get a lawnmower and mow it herself. The dog’s owner offered to cut the grass. I said I would call Darrell again on Monday, and then I would borrow a lawnmower and cut it myself.

When I came home from church on Sunday, someone was cutting the yard. Yay! Darrell’s partner, I guessed, because he was unfamiliar to me. I went over to shake his hand and say, “howdy.” Before I had time to find out his name, Lucy#1 came out of the house to tell the nice man that I am her daughter and to tell me that she told him he could mow the yard. His name is Curt.

It turns out, our next-door neighbor, Mark, told Curt that Lucy#1 is his aunt and needed her yard cut. Then Mark came over and told Lucy#1 what he had told Curt. Then Curt came over and Lucy#1 told him to mow the yard.

Then I came home and paid Curt.

I still don’t quite understand the exact story of how Curt ended up mowing our yard, except that Mark asked him to. At first Lucy#1 said Mark flagged Curt down, then she thought maybe Curt had cut Mark’s yard last week. Then she thought maybe Curt cut Mark’s yard today. Who knows? Who cares? The yard looks very, very nice. I have Curt’s business card. If I don’t hear back from Darrell (for whom I left another voicemail while Curt was finishing up the yard) on Monday, I’ll call Curt and see if he can put me on his regular route.

Oh, yeah, and Curt charged $10 less than anyone else who’s ever cut this yard. Yay, Lucy#1!!

She's Just Snarky

E lives across the street from Lucy#1’s house in Texas. She and her husband, K, are the nicest people in the world! They are in their 50s. They watched out for Lucy#1 from the time she moved in across the street from them until she moved out to come up here. By “watched out for” I mean they recommended workmen she needed, brought her a plate when they cooked a big meal, took her to Tyler to buy a new TV when hers died, checked her mail when she was out of town, and more and more and more, including watching every morning to make sure her lights turned on and she went out on the porch to smoke at the usual time. They threw her a going-away party and got a little teary saying goodbye. They love Lucy#1 and it’s obvious in every way.

This morning as I was leaving for work, the phone rang. Since I was walking right by it, I answered, and E was on the line. I mentioned her by name so Lucy#1 would know who was calling, told E I was on my way out the door so I was going to hand the phone off to Lucy#1, and handed Lucy#1 the phone. Her reaction was to say in her snarkiest voice (with the phone in her hand), “What does she want?” Then she put the phone to her ear and spoke to E in her most pleasant manner.

I was so horrified that I did not leave for work, but waited for the call to end. As it turns out, E was calling from her car on the way to Dallas where her husband had just been taken for emergency surgery after a serious injury at work. E wanted to let Lucy#1 know about the injury and the surgery because she thought Lucy#1 would want to know, as indeed E would want to know were the roles reversed.

When the call ended and the information about the surgery had been imparted to me I said, “You know, when you said, “What does she want?” E probably heard you. She has been very good to you, she loves you, and when you said that, it probably hurt her feelings.” Lucy#1 replied, “I didn’t say it that loud.” I reiterated the rudeness and hurtfulness of her question and her snarky voice. She just looked at me for a moment, then went on to give me more details of how K’s injury occurred.

Lucy#1 has always been this way. I pray the dementia is not making her behavior worse, but I do worry about that since she has always been snarky and dementia will often greatly magnify one’s core traits: nice people are even nicer and mean people are not nice at all.

Lucy#1 has usually been sneaky-snarky regarding others (talking behind their backs, or saying snarky things in a snarky tone when they can’t hear her), but she has always been snarky right to my sister’s and my faces, and it got worse after our dad died. Who can count the number of times I hung up from talking to her on the phone and cried for an hour? I thank my husband for insisting I remember that if my feelings were hurt, it was because I let her hurt them, and teaching me how to deal with her without ending every phone call in tears!

I don’t know if her snarkiness is a reaction to being frightened of the world (which she is, and I don’t care how many times she says, "If anyone messes with me, I will kick their ass.") or if she is simply turning into her own mother, who was one of the worst sneaky-snarks I’ve ever seen in action. Whatever the cause, the result is awful.

I hope E did not hear Lucy#1’s hurtful question. If she did, E knows Lucy#1 well enough that I’m pretty sure E will blow the snarkiness off, but it bothers me that she may even for a moment been hurt by my mother when she was already suffering because of K’s injury.

And so I wonder …… since I certainly cannot control the way Lucy#1 speaks to and treats others, is it now my responsibility to try to soothe the feelings hurt by my mother’s unkindness?

 

 

Lord Jesus, please help us! Amen.