Waaaay Too Much Information

What would the holidays be without family...relaxing?...enjoyable?...stress free?  Oh, did I say that out loud?  I meant boring, sad and stressful . 

I love my family.  Really.  But based on last week and Christmas of last year, I am thinking of joining the witness relocation program.  I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of year.

You see, the problem is that my parents have thankfully enjoyed good health, my father in particular.  He prides himself on the fact that he has not needed a doctor since he was in the navy, so last Christmas, when tragedy struck, it was, well, tragic.

The day after Christmas, my dad was literally blown off his feet by an unexpected gust of wind and thrown to the ground.  Fortunately, he just ended up with a boo boo on his bottom and a pulled muscle, according to the ER doctor.  And our doctor five days later.  And the x-rays.  And Web MD.  And Marcus Welby.  And the entire cast of Gray'sAnatomy,  and The Practice.

But no matter what everyone told him, he was convinced  he might never walk again...and have to live with us instead of flying back to Florida with my mom.

For an entire week, we had to hear, in great and excruciating detail, about his boo boo.  We were treated to vivid descriptions of the size, location and severity of the bruise.  We lived through his brave attempts to walk five feet without the walker, cane, forklift, or tow-line.  We grinned and bore hearing about the indignity of sitting on a glorified whoopee cushion for meals.

We tried to distract him with the Food Network, Angry Birds and his granddaughter, but nothing captured his attention or imagination the way his boo boo did.  He just knew the doctors were all wrong and he had broken something.  He was sure that he had at least torn a ligament or severed a tendon.  It was the beginning of the end.  He would end up bedridden for the rest of his days, eating gruel and making macrame potholders.

So, to ease the pain (ours), we gave him drugs.  The doctor had prescribed pain pills and muscle relaxants, but the man who was never sick or injured a day in his life didn't want to take them.  We told him it was him or us, but those drugs were going to put someone out of their pain. 

This, of course, opened up a whole new set of issues.

While I am totally consumed with my dog's poops--size, frequency, form and texture--I really, really, really do not need to even know about my father's.

"Do you know that it says here this medication can cause constipation?" he demanded, waving the sheaf of papers at me that now come with every prescription.

"It also says it can cause you to cluck like a chicken or spontaneously break into the dance of the sugar plum fairy, but hey, let's look on the bright side, and maybe it will just make you feel better and your biggest worry will be finding a six-fingered glove for the new thumb that will sprout."

Every day, we got a potty update, along  with dire predictions of being unable to board the plane for home when the holiday ended.

"I'm fine flying back alone," my mother chirped, seeing a light at the end of her tunnel.

I believe our response was something along the lines of, "Look, we love dad to death, but he is getting on that plane if we have to buy an extra ticket and strap him to our back like a piece of carry-on luggage."

Fortunately for everyone involved, he got on the plane.

Last week, it was my mother's turn.  She had a doctor's appointment here, so she flew in the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

Monday morning, I drove her to the doctor, and waited for her.  After about a half hour, she came out, looked surreptitiously around the empty waiting room, and said, "I'll tell you what the doctor said later."

Thinking she meant in the privacy or the car or back at the house, I nodded in agreement.  No such luck.

As we entered the elevator, the crowded elevator, she launched into a blow-by-blow account of her visit...which would have been fine had we been at the eye doctor, but we had unfortunately been to a doctor for women's issues.

I am still waking up at night in a cold sweat.

At first, I tried to pretend I was just some poor, random stranger this woman had targeted to share intimate details with.  "Uh huh," I murmured half-heartedly as she used the V word for, like, the forty-seventh time in three minutes.  I wondered what the penalty was for pulling the fire alarm.  I even briefly contemplated actually setting myself on fire.  My mother, oblivious to the lack of response, chattered on.

"So you thought the doctor was nice?" I desperately tried to nudge the subject onto a path strewn with less personal information when I could no longer pretend I didn't know her.

"Oh, yes.  She said..."  And she was off and running again with things that had people bailing out of that elevator like it was a 70's disaster movie, and the director had just called "Action!".

And the best part of it was, it never ended.  Not in the lobby, not in the elevator down to the garage, not in the car, not at Toys R Us where we did some Christmas shopping.  I kept hearing about parts of my mother that I don't even want to know exist.  And there was no escape.

By the time she flew back to Florida, I was waxing nostalgic over my father's boo boo and ensuing poop issues.

Can't wait for Christmas this year.

I'm Late! I'm Late! I'm Late!

My parents came to visit this weekend on their way down to Florida, and it was like spending time with the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

First of all, this was the first time they were taking the auto train from here to Florida, and my father had been reading about it on the Amtrak website. I am sooo glad we taught him to surf the net. Next time we have a brilliant idea like that, we should just slam our hands in a door repeatedly. It would be less painful.

"It says you can check in as early as 11:30," he started in on Saturday about fifteen minutes after they arrived.

"But the train doesn't leave until 4...on Monday,". I pointed out. "Why do you want to sit around the station for several hours?"

"I want to make sure we get the 7pm seating for dinner," he informed me, "otherwise, we'll be stuck eating at either 5 or 9."

"So it's first come, first serve?"

"I don't know, but I want to be there early, so we get the 7pm seating for dinner."

Okay. Got it. You want to eat at 7.

"I really want to get there early," he broached the subject again about an hour later. "5pm is too early to eat and 9 is too late."

"What time do they board?". Tim tried a different tack.

"2pm, but I want to make sure we get the 7 o'clock dinner seating," my father stressed.

"So you reserve dinner when you check in?" Tim tried again to clarify.

"I don't know, but 5 is too early and 9 is too late for dinner," said the rainman, er, my father.

"That's a long time to sit in the station," sometimes Tim didn't have the sense God gave a turnip.

Stop. Roll over and play dead. Give up. I tried to communicate telepathically with Tim, but had no more success getting him to listen to me that way than I have when I actually speak out loud to him.

"I'd go around 1," he offered, "otherwise, it'll be a really long day."

"I don't know," my father seemed to waver for a moment, but recovered. "I'd hate to get there too late to get the 7 o'clock seating."

He actually managed to not bring up the subject for at least another hour or two and then only 86 or 87 times more an hour for the next two days.

Each time, we tried to lure him off topic by steering the conversation toward some other aspect of the journey.

"So, does arriving early affect the order in which your car comes off the train at the end?"

"It says it doesn't because of the way they load them on, but it does affect whether you get the 7pm seating."

Shoot me.

"Do you want to order a Netflix movie so you can watch it on your iPad? They have wi-fi on board, right?"

"If we get the 7pm seating, we won't have time for a movie afterwards, so we'll just watch a TV show. That's why I want to get there early."

Shoot me now.

"What do they serve for dinner anyway?"

"I don't know. I couldn't find that on the website, but it says they have three seatings: 5, 7, or 9."

Okay, one bullet for the both of us. We'll stand really, really close.

And while my father was obsessed with getting to the train early on Monday, my mother was just as obsessed with getting to church early on Sunday.

"What time is mass?" she questioned on Saturday night.

"All different times. Sleep as late as you want, and we'll go from there," I told her.

She was up at 7.

"What's the mass schedule?" she wanted to know. "What time do we have to leave? I don't want to be late."

We decided on 10:30 mass at a church less than five minutes away. Rose offered to drive, so at 10:10, my mother decided that Rose was late and she would wait outside for her.

"It's kind of breezy and chilly," I warned, "why don't we just watch out the window?"

"She might park the car and get out before we can get to the door, and then we'll be really late."

Okay, you and dad need to get either a hobby or a prescription for an incredibly powerful drug.

"It's 10:17," she fretted as we stood at the bottom of the driveway getting blown apart. "I don't want to be late."

"I know, but the church is less than five minute away," I tried to soothe her.

"It's 10:20, we're going to be late," she pronounced exactly three minutes later.

Maybe a hobby and a drug.

"It's 10:22. We'll never make it on time."

Hobby, drug and smash the watch.

Fortunately, Rose arrived at 10:25, just as I was getting ready to perform CPR...on myself because my blood pressure shot up sixty points every time Big Ben ticked off another second.

I am happy to say that my mother was not late...much.

I wish I could say the same for my father. Sadly, by the time he stopped for gas on the way to the train, he was late. They were stuck with the dreaded 5pm dinner slot.

"I told you so," he pouted over the phone. "I knew I should have been here early. Now, we'll have too much time to kill just sitting around after dinner."

As opposed to the time sitting around before? I wanted to, but I didn't say it.

Hobby, drug, gun, one bullet.