On Many Subjects

  My elderly mother is in an assisted living facility in Florida. She has a staff of people who do her laundry, clean her room, help her in and out of bed, help her get dressed, help her shower, take her in a wheel-chair to the dining room 3 times a day for meals, bring her any snack she wants any time she wants it, a full time nursing staff and a doctor on call 24/7. Still she calls me daily to ask, when are you moving to Florida? She wants me to take over all of the duties of her staff. And she will not pay me for my services. Taking care of woman in her nineties would put me in the grave long before her. I have told her repeatedly that I am NOT moving to Florida. (I live in Virginia where the weather is infinitely better and never as hot for as long as it is in the Sunshine State). I have explained that I will NOT sell my house, after evicting my two roommates. I will NOT evict my roommates. I will not let them live in my house and move to Florida, anyway. I don’t know how to ma...

  I admit that I am getting older and am beyond retirement age. Further, most of my friends are also getting older and beyond retirement age. It has been a very long time since I was drunk called by anyone in the middle of the night. At 8:00 PM last evening my phone rang. Just as a side note, when you are my age, 8:00 PM  is  the middle of the night. My neighbor who is a 76 year old spinster called me, drunk as a lord, and the conversation went something like this… Neighbor: I haven’t heard from you in a while. Are you still above the dirt? Me: Obviously, since I answered the phone. I waved at you two days ago when you were dragging dog food out of your car plus, a rescue vehicle hasn’t shown up at my front door recently. Figure it out. Neighbor: That was you? I couldn’t figure out who was waving at me from your front porch. Me: Who else would it have been? Are you drunk? Neighbor: Well, this is only my second bottle of wine. Me: That’s what I thought, although I mentally...