Frankly, I'm sick of water...or too much of it, anyway.

As always yesterday morning, I made a "pit stop" before I left the house—making sure I can get through the 40 minute drive—and when I flushed the toilet clogged up. The plunging only resulted in water all over the floor; I mopped it up with paper towels which I left in plastic bags near the toilet...to remind me that everything now needs scrubbing earlier than its usual weekend cleaning. Gah.

Driving home was a sloshy, chill mess, with traffic backed up on the downtown connector all the way past the GA400 onramp (over 2 miles)—at least I wasn't on I-285 westbound, which looked like autumn trees at peak on the traffic map: all reds, oranges, and yellows! I called James on the way home to ask him to take "Woody"—the wooden reindeer with the tree branch antlers that's on the front lawn—inside, as they were talking about a possible 3 to 4 inches of rain! The long ride was assuaged slightly by the fact that Holiday Pops is finally on the air. When Smoky Robinson or Elvis get too lugubrious on "Holiday Traditions," I can swap to "Holiday Pops" and hear orchestral and choral Christmas music.

When I got home James was in a swivet because he's suspected his right rear tire had a slow leak for a couple of weeks as he's had to add air to it twice; well, he didn't check it in the last few days and now it was nearly flat, so he was looking forward to having to change it after supper. Putting the spare on from the truck involves having to get it out of its sling underneath the chassis—a chilling job on a rainy 40-degree evening. Since I'm teleworking today and tomorrow, I told him to take my car today. He's going to stop at Vickery Hardware on the way home and see if he can get an adaptor for his air compressor. Since it's a slow leak, if we can get enough air in the tire to stay in the tire during the 2-or-so mile drive from our house to West Cobb tire, I can take it there tomorrow and get a new one put on without having to resort to the spare.

Had a horrible night's sleep—weather radio blaring tornado watches at all hours—and then woke up to the glorious revelation that Willow had left a puddle in the kitchen. Well, at least it wasn't on the rug.

If the day couldn't get even more miserable, I just found out my cousin Anthony died. After I left home and my dad died, my cousin Anna and her husband Anthony and their kids were always mainstays for my mom. Was she too sick to shop for groceries? Something wrong with the car? They were always there. Anthony never refused Mom anything. If he couldn't do it, he'd find a way to get it done. He was a teddy bear of a man, almost always in smiles, ready to tease you. Sadly, Anthony inherited Parkinson's disease from his mother. (I remember his mom at family gatherings when I was a child, sitting in a chair and endlessly trembling. You wanted to hug her.) He also developed Alzheimer's disease, so for the past...oh, it's at least been ten years...he's been in a world of his own, hardly comprehending the world around him. It's a tragedy with anyone, but it was especially hard to see Anthony's vibrant personality disappear to be replaced with helplessness.

If you have a little extra money today, please consider donating it to Alzheimer's research. It's a nasty disease that robs people of themselves.

Labels: cars, family, pets, weather

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:12:00 AM

Comments: Post a Comment