Other times I can barely see....
So in the latest installment of my ever-so-glamourous life, I had to drop off "supplies" at my grandmother's assisted living facility tonight. This is not my favorite chore, because suffice to say they are found in the aisle at Tar-zhay that's labeled, like, "Adult Supplies", but they ain't condoms. (They are, however oddly, right across the aisle. And I'll just note that Target is at this moment like a freaking Pleasure Palace that just happens to carry adult diapers. Just sayin'.)
I don't mind hanging out at her assisted living. It's usually relatively entertaining. Tonight, as I followed an old lady down the hall who was toddling swiftly to her room with the aid of a walker, I spontaneously broke into "Truckin'...truckin'..." by the Grateful Dead. I can't help it - It was just what she was doing...truckin'....truckin'...down the hall. She didn't hear me, so I kept it up until I got on the elevator, laughing like an idiot at myself.
"Get tired of travelin’ and you want to settle down./I guess they can’t revoke your soul for tryin’..."
Upstairs, my grandmother sat, ready for bed at 7:15 although it was still light out, watching the lameass, like, worse than local access because it lacks the purposefully homegrown vibe, Channel 8 news.
"Oh, it's you!," she says, which really does pass for enthusiasm in our family. "You have my stuff."
"Yep," I say.
She is distracted - bothered even, bothered by the tv news.
"Children kill people now. CHILDREN are killin' people. YOUNGSTERS," she says, and then repeats "Children do...murders," because I must be looking at her with my past-quittin' time face that says, 'I hearest what thou sayest but knowest not what the FUCK thou meanest." Or something.
"Did a kid kill someone today?" I asked, knowing one probably did but she may or may not remember, depending on how long ago the report ran.
"I don't know. I don't think so. It's just terrible, though, when they do," she says, and picks at her nightgown. I refrain from swatting at her hand to have her stop.
"I know. It's a world gone mad," I say.
"Damned if it hasn't," she says, and scooches her wheelchair over just a little bit to emphasize the point. "I'll say."
"WHY are you watching Channel 8?" I say. "Channel 8 sucks, anyway. Wheel is on. And then Jeopardy. You can get smarter instead of more depressed."
"Wheel's on?" she says.
"Uh-huh," I say, and correct her assumption that the up arrow on her tv is broken, getting it somehow to Pat Sajak's shit-eating grin.
Forgetting the murderous youth of 2006, she turns her attention instead to me - washed out, work-weary, and wearing a sweater I should have retired in the last Value Village pickup. Like Billy Crystal on Fernando's Hideaway, she says,
"Well. You. You look good. I don't know if you feel good, but you sure do look good."
"I feel like crap," I say.
"Well you don't look like it, that's the thing. Too much work," she says, and then going backwards, "You work too much. Why kill yourself over it?"
And thus I am taking June off. Because my grandma said.
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