chif-a-laaay

Yesterday I got a call from one of mom's friends who takes mom and another lady to church every Sunday and then to the Country Club for lunch.  Since mom is still a member, it's about the only time she gets to go unless one of us takes her and truth be told, she loves going with her friends.  She may be old but she still loves her friends.  Mom's friend was calling to tell me two things: 1) mom needs a walker that collapses (hers does) 2) a disabled parking pass would be a great help for everyone involved.  So I was on it--for the parking pass.  I've demo-ed how to collapse her stroller to mom a gazillion times, and since she has dementia, she's just not gonna remember on a consistent basis, if at all.  I told mom's friend that anytime this gets to be too much for her, to pull the plug.  She's in her eighties, too, and the point is not to kill herself, trying to be a good friend.  Nope.  She's still going to do it so allrightey then.

When I ran the paperwork by for mom's new doctor to sign for the TxDot pass, there sat mom's next door neighbor in the Lobby, beautifully dressed, wearing her recently deceased boyfriend's baseball hat.  I stopped and spoke to her and told her I knew whose hat she was wearing.  She seemed a little surprised and told me she had "loved him sooo much".  I told her I knew the feeling was returned, just from reading his obit in the paper.  I told her all the lovely things his children had said about her in the paper, and what a gift she had been to their dad's life.  Damn...I almost made myself cry when I saw the look on her face.  I felt like I was looking right into her soul and her eyes said everything her aging brain had trouble voicing.  She had really loved this man.  And though her short term memory might not be worth a toot, her long term memory hadn't forgotten a thing.  Ouch.

When I got home, I really needed a good laugh so I thought about Hadley, and my recent visit with the monkeys last Friday.  As I was holding Had and listening to her, she said something that almost made me drop her: chif-a-lay.  Yeah.  You heard it. And I laughed so hard I made her say it about a hundred times.  Like a good little Texas gal, she leans real hard on the laaaaaaay part.  It seems Chick Filet is her new most favorite place and every time she said it, I went to pieces.  Then her mom told me she and her dad were playing the other night and he was creeping around popping out at her, sort of scary like.  She looked at him, put her hair behind her ears and hands on her hips, and asked him "what are you doing trying to scare me?"   OMG.  She's way past his pay grade and she's not even three.