Appreciate the Help, Dude
11/05/20 07:06
And a fine Mother's Day it was. Forget for a moment that Nancy was not able to see her own mother due to the coronavirus scourge. Sure, Nancy, Evan, and I popped over to bring her a few treats but we never got further than the guard station where we were forced to do a U-Turn after dropping off the bag for her mom with the attendant. Nancy, her sister Debbie, and her mom caught up later last evening on a three way call with well wishes all around.
Our only regret, if there was one, was that we didn't opt to pick up a cupcake or two to throw in the bag for her mom as we drove through the center of Exeter on the way to her facility. There is a cupcake business in town that runs a satellite operation out of a van and the van was parked in the center of Exeter just the other side of the bandstand heading up the hill towards Mrs G's independent living facility.
We rounded the corner near the bandstand, parked for a minute or two until Nancy decided that getting out of the car and making the purchase was more risk than she was wiling to assume. That was that. Nancy wasn't buying any cupcakes. I wasn't getting out of the car if she wasn't getting out of the car and Evan stayed largely silent as we all came to the inescapable conclusion that cupcakes were simply not in the cards.
As much as we thought Mrs G might enjoy the frosting and frivolity of what were probably the world's greatest cupcakes, it was not to be. She would never be the wiser because we had no intention of telling her what we had decided that we wouldn't bring. She would have to settle for the delicious organic strawberries that I had purchased earlier in the day at Trader Joes, an insulated and ornate cup that Nancy purchased online and one that we picked up curbside later that day, and I think that might be it. All of that angst about what to get for her mother and for what? Mission accomplished?
I was hoping for more of a fine dining take-out kind of experience for Nancy's Mother's Day experience but we deferred to the Ev man as we usually do so we settled for take-out from Buffalo Wild Wings in Portsmouth. I suppose we could have sold him on a more high falutin dish but time was running short to arrange for all of that by the time he arrived on the scene. And I have to say, getting take-out has been a nice alternative to dining in in any one or more of our favorite restaurants but I think the quality all around has not been up to snuff. That's a story for another day.
Evan was in good spirits and when he is in good spirits his mother and I are in good spirits. At one point in the afternoon, Nancy could be heard going from room to room singing this song or that song and seemingly feeling quite chipper as it were about life itself. There is no doubt that the caffeine helped but the main source of her inspiration came from having her son home for the holiday. I don't know that there was ever a question about his not being home for the holiday but until he shows up on our doorstep we're never quite sure.
You would think that after all these years I might have a better sense as to what Nancy might like for a present on any of the many holidays during the year Mother's Day aside. We watched a show later last evening after Evan left for home where the husbands in an Italian household all presented their lovely wives with necklaces while seated at a dinner gathering.
The women, one by one, held their long cascading hair to the side while seated allowing their husbands to place the necklaces around their necks. The camera panned in to capture their adoring smiles while their husbands returned to their seats at the table seemingly triumphant and satisfied that they had lived up to the unexpected and expected whims of their darling wives. It was a concocted scene to be sure but one whose sentiment wasn't lost on me.
Will the Casper pillow that I had ordered for Nancy's Mother's Day gift fill the bill in the same way? It was something that she has long wanted to order but for whatever reason has never taken the time to do so. Maybe it''s one of those things that you just don't buy for yourself. But there will be no sapphire pendants, no necklaces, no jewelry of any kind to celebrate this occassion. Truth be told, I wouldn't know where to begin if I had to buy a piece of jewelry for my darling wife. If I thought it might fetch me an adoring smile I might consider it. Until then, I'll be buying her things that she will never buy for herself.
I sliced up an orange yesterday to put out to see if it might attract hummingbirds given the sweetness and bright colors of the fresh fruit. I already have a couple of hummingbird feeders out so the birds are around and they've have been using the feeders periodically throughout the day. What I wasn't expecting to see were the Orioles that are now coming around to eat the halved oranges I have spiked out on our deck. They can't get enough of the oranges! I'll have to buy a few more when I do a little food shopping later in the day. What a treat!
I have to laugh. Nancy and her mom got into a discussion yesterday about Mrs G needing a chair to have on the deck outside her first floor unit at the independent living facility. I don't know if Mrs G said that she thought other residents might be annoyed by the fact that she was using a bench already in place in the common area outside her unit when they thought she shouldn't be taking up a seat on the bench that maybe a resident who didn't have a ground floor unit could better utilize.
In other words, Mrs G wants Nancy to pick her up a chair at the local Home Depot so she can place it out on her deck and use it instead of using the bench in the common area. I don't know if this is all in Mrs G's heads or maybe she's getting some weird vibes or stares from residents occupying the second and third floor units. As genteel and cultivated as her neighbors are, if there is something they don't care for they probably let you know straight away one way or another. And real or imagined, it doesn't matter. If this gives Mrs G peace of mind then a chair she shall have.
We have pair of cowbirds hanging around as of late. They've found my suet feeder and they have no compunction whatsoever about taking their share of what seems to be a very popular suet that I've settled on after convincing myself that some suets are better than other. In other words, birds can be discerning creatures too when it comes to their diets. I haven't watched the two species closely enough to know which is the dominant animal when it comes to occupying the limited real estate the feeder offers but I can say with certainty that the cowbirds are not shy about being as pesky as they need to be in order to get what they want.
I finally got around to sorting out everything I needed to replace one of the poles I needed for the clothesline. I wasn't expecting Evan to be around when all the fixing was going to take place but he was so I put him to work. I had him paint the new and existing poles a nice Cape Cod grey with a couple of coats until you could no longer see the grain of the wood beneath the paint. I think he likes to paint and he may have made a comment to that effect. Or, maybe he just said that it was "relaxing." He was a big help and I think he felt very good about lending a hand when, quite honestly, I don't think he had much else on his agenda.
His mom is constantly after me to have him help with things around the house especially when I have a designated job as it were. From start to finish the clothesline job probably took us a good two hours. I'm not always open to having a helping hand and many jobs quite frankly don't lend themselves to having more than one person attending to matters. And as any dad will tell you, or any mom for that matter, it's sometimes just easier to do it yourself than to try and get your kids to participate. By the time you get them to help you can have done the job twice over.
Evan dropped off some of his "stimulus" money for safekeeping with his mom when he was over to help me with the clothesline. Maybe he knows himself too well and knows that he would just be spending it willy nilly until it was gone and he wasn't wanting that to happen. He wanted to savor the windfall for as long as possible and having some set aside gave him that opportunity.
I think he can be frugal and judicious with his money when he wants to be and he has so little money to begin with that he often has no other choice. But the old axiom about money burning a hole in your pocket applies to the Ev man like anyone else so when he asks his mom to hold on to a little of his money she is happy to oblige. This will make you laugh. He no sooner handed her a good $500 and not ten minutes later he was turning around and asking her for $100 back. "I'll take that in twenties if you have it", he asked politely.
Our only regret, if there was one, was that we didn't opt to pick up a cupcake or two to throw in the bag for her mom as we drove through the center of Exeter on the way to her facility. There is a cupcake business in town that runs a satellite operation out of a van and the van was parked in the center of Exeter just the other side of the bandstand heading up the hill towards Mrs G's independent living facility.
We rounded the corner near the bandstand, parked for a minute or two until Nancy decided that getting out of the car and making the purchase was more risk than she was wiling to assume. That was that. Nancy wasn't buying any cupcakes. I wasn't getting out of the car if she wasn't getting out of the car and Evan stayed largely silent as we all came to the inescapable conclusion that cupcakes were simply not in the cards.
As much as we thought Mrs G might enjoy the frosting and frivolity of what were probably the world's greatest cupcakes, it was not to be. She would never be the wiser because we had no intention of telling her what we had decided that we wouldn't bring. She would have to settle for the delicious organic strawberries that I had purchased earlier in the day at Trader Joes, an insulated and ornate cup that Nancy purchased online and one that we picked up curbside later that day, and I think that might be it. All of that angst about what to get for her mother and for what? Mission accomplished?
I was hoping for more of a fine dining take-out kind of experience for Nancy's Mother's Day experience but we deferred to the Ev man as we usually do so we settled for take-out from Buffalo Wild Wings in Portsmouth. I suppose we could have sold him on a more high falutin dish but time was running short to arrange for all of that by the time he arrived on the scene. And I have to say, getting take-out has been a nice alternative to dining in in any one or more of our favorite restaurants but I think the quality all around has not been up to snuff. That's a story for another day.
Evan was in good spirits and when he is in good spirits his mother and I are in good spirits. At one point in the afternoon, Nancy could be heard going from room to room singing this song or that song and seemingly feeling quite chipper as it were about life itself. There is no doubt that the caffeine helped but the main source of her inspiration came from having her son home for the holiday. I don't know that there was ever a question about his not being home for the holiday but until he shows up on our doorstep we're never quite sure.
You would think that after all these years I might have a better sense as to what Nancy might like for a present on any of the many holidays during the year Mother's Day aside. We watched a show later last evening after Evan left for home where the husbands in an Italian household all presented their lovely wives with necklaces while seated at a dinner gathering.
The women, one by one, held their long cascading hair to the side while seated allowing their husbands to place the necklaces around their necks. The camera panned in to capture their adoring smiles while their husbands returned to their seats at the table seemingly triumphant and satisfied that they had lived up to the unexpected and expected whims of their darling wives. It was a concocted scene to be sure but one whose sentiment wasn't lost on me.
Will the Casper pillow that I had ordered for Nancy's Mother's Day gift fill the bill in the same way? It was something that she has long wanted to order but for whatever reason has never taken the time to do so. Maybe it''s one of those things that you just don't buy for yourself. But there will be no sapphire pendants, no necklaces, no jewelry of any kind to celebrate this occassion. Truth be told, I wouldn't know where to begin if I had to buy a piece of jewelry for my darling wife. If I thought it might fetch me an adoring smile I might consider it. Until then, I'll be buying her things that she will never buy for herself.
I sliced up an orange yesterday to put out to see if it might attract hummingbirds given the sweetness and bright colors of the fresh fruit. I already have a couple of hummingbird feeders out so the birds are around and they've have been using the feeders periodically throughout the day. What I wasn't expecting to see were the Orioles that are now coming around to eat the halved oranges I have spiked out on our deck. They can't get enough of the oranges! I'll have to buy a few more when I do a little food shopping later in the day. What a treat!
I have to laugh. Nancy and her mom got into a discussion yesterday about Mrs G needing a chair to have on the deck outside her first floor unit at the independent living facility. I don't know if Mrs G said that she thought other residents might be annoyed by the fact that she was using a bench already in place in the common area outside her unit when they thought she shouldn't be taking up a seat on the bench that maybe a resident who didn't have a ground floor unit could better utilize.
In other words, Mrs G wants Nancy to pick her up a chair at the local Home Depot so she can place it out on her deck and use it instead of using the bench in the common area. I don't know if this is all in Mrs G's heads or maybe she's getting some weird vibes or stares from residents occupying the second and third floor units. As genteel and cultivated as her neighbors are, if there is something they don't care for they probably let you know straight away one way or another. And real or imagined, it doesn't matter. If this gives Mrs G peace of mind then a chair she shall have.
We have pair of cowbirds hanging around as of late. They've found my suet feeder and they have no compunction whatsoever about taking their share of what seems to be a very popular suet that I've settled on after convincing myself that some suets are better than other. In other words, birds can be discerning creatures too when it comes to their diets. I haven't watched the two species closely enough to know which is the dominant animal when it comes to occupying the limited real estate the feeder offers but I can say with certainty that the cowbirds are not shy about being as pesky as they need to be in order to get what they want.
I finally got around to sorting out everything I needed to replace one of the poles I needed for the clothesline. I wasn't expecting Evan to be around when all the fixing was going to take place but he was so I put him to work. I had him paint the new and existing poles a nice Cape Cod grey with a couple of coats until you could no longer see the grain of the wood beneath the paint. I think he likes to paint and he may have made a comment to that effect. Or, maybe he just said that it was "relaxing." He was a big help and I think he felt very good about lending a hand when, quite honestly, I don't think he had much else on his agenda.
His mom is constantly after me to have him help with things around the house especially when I have a designated job as it were. From start to finish the clothesline job probably took us a good two hours. I'm not always open to having a helping hand and many jobs quite frankly don't lend themselves to having more than one person attending to matters. And as any dad will tell you, or any mom for that matter, it's sometimes just easier to do it yourself than to try and get your kids to participate. By the time you get them to help you can have done the job twice over.
Evan dropped off some of his "stimulus" money for safekeeping with his mom when he was over to help me with the clothesline. Maybe he knows himself too well and knows that he would just be spending it willy nilly until it was gone and he wasn't wanting that to happen. He wanted to savor the windfall for as long as possible and having some set aside gave him that opportunity.
I think he can be frugal and judicious with his money when he wants to be and he has so little money to begin with that he often has no other choice. But the old axiom about money burning a hole in your pocket applies to the Ev man like anyone else so when he asks his mom to hold on to a little of his money she is happy to oblige. This will make you laugh. He no sooner handed her a good $500 and not ten minutes later he was turning around and asking her for $100 back. "I'll take that in twenties if you have it", he asked politely.