Running Errands

Not running, actually.  More like "walking purposefully."  Too hot to run (high 90's F/36+ C).  Had to go out to pick up a prescription refill and get my "health care provider" to renew that one and another one that are about to run out.  Stopped by my folks house on the way to take my mom some frozen veggies that my friend brought me for our TV Sunday this past Sunday.  It was her turn to bring the dinner and my turn to do dessert, only she forgot I don't like bell peppers.  My mom does, though, so I took them by to her on my way to get my prescription.

Bless her heart, my mom didn't have her hearing aid in, and couldn't hear the doorbell over the TV.  (I could not only hear the TV loud and clear from the front porch, I could feel it through the soles of my feet.) So, I'm standing on the front porch calling her on my cell phone to tell her I'm outside standing on the porch!  From time to time, my dad decides he's not going to get dressed and wears his pajamas and robe all day. Today was one of those days.  He turns 87 this year, and has been suffering for some time from what is called "multi-infarct dementia" (MID) -- lots of little tiny strokes in the small vessels of the brain.  He's practically deaf, nearly blind from macular degeneration, and can barely get around.  He spends most of his time in his recliner in front of the TV with the volume turned up to "Rock Concert" levels. It's so hard to see the witty, funny, charming man I love so much slowly crumbling with age.  It's like watching someone take a devastating fall in excruciatingly slow motion, and being helpless to prevent it.  My mom, on the other hand, is still as sharp as a tack, and doesn't miss a trick.  This year will be their 65th wedding anniversary.

I stopped by our local Wal-Mart for groceries on my way home.  While I was waiting in the check out line, a Mennonite lady and her two children got in line behind me.  The Mennonite women all wear distinctive dresses with hems about 4 inches below the knee.  They all look to be cut from the exact same pattern -- home sewn -- although the fabric is mostly the same kind of tiny, busy floral prints like my grandmas used to wear.  The married women all wear their hair up and have dark scarfs covering their hair.  The older child, a girl who looked about 14, had the most gorgeous honey blond hair almost down to her waist. The other child was a little towheaded boy who looked about 6.  Their children are always so well behaved (which is more than I can say for the rest of the kids I see these days). They speak a dialect of German (Plattdeutsch) among themselves, but they also speak English, albeit with a German accent.  They're an Anabaptist sect, similar to the Amish, only not as conservative. Unlike the Amish, they allow telephones, electric lights and motorized farm equipment.  There are several colonies of them in our area, and I see groups of women and children in Wal-Mart from time to time.  They have a reputation for hard work and honest dealings that fits right in with our West Texas work ethic.  The ones here came from Canada by way of  the state of Chihuahua  in Mexico.  They've been trying to relocate to America, particularly Texas, since the 1970s, most recently because of the escalating violence of the drug wars, but the American Immigration people are not making it easy for them.   What makes our area attractive to them is the availability of large tracts of land.  I relate to them in a way, since my mother's mother's people also came to Texas from Germany -- in fact, from the same part of Germany (Saxony) that these Mennonites came from, so they would likely have spoken Plattdeutsch as well.  However, they were Lutheran.

The little bit of groceries I bought cost almost exactly all the cash money I had in my purse, so I am officially tapped out until next payday.  That meant I had to forgo the traditional Whataburger and fries that I treat myself to on the way home.  Whataburger has got a new commercial (advert) on TV now about their chicken club sandwich.  The guy that does the voice-over is priceless.  He sounds like every good ol' boy around here.  The kind in boots and jeans, with skinny legs and a generous dunlop (a belly that "done lopped" over his belt. . .which is why he still wears the same size jeans he wore in high school. . . ) with a cowboy hat, or a John Deere gimme cap jammed down tight on his head, a long sleeved western shirt.  The back pockets on his jeans are worn clear down to the white in places from sliding in and out of the seat in the cab of his pickup/tractor/cultivator/combine/stripper; the right one has a roughly square worn place in the center from carrying his wallet (which is permanently warped into a curve), and his left one has a circular worn place from carrying his can of Skoal chewing tobacco. After describing the ingredients of the Whataburger sandwich in question, the voice-over guy comes out with the tag line, "And if that don't put a zip in your doodah, I don't know what will."  Cracks me up every time I hear it.   I haven 't found that particular commercial on YouTube yet, but here's another one in the same vein with the same guy doing the voice over.

While I was putting up the groceries, I managed to put about two thirds of a glass of iced tea down the hatch, too, gulped down out of one of my 24 oz "Texas Tumblers" (on the right). I used to have eight of them but I broke one about 15 years ago -- after Libbey quit making that size, wouldn't you know.  They still make the pattern, it's called "Chivalry." but the largest tumbler they make now is 16 oz (at left), which is a bummer.  I've scoured the internet looking for another 24 oz one, but to no avail. I still have eight each of the footed wine, beer and water glasses, though.

After I put up the groceries, I changed into my "work clothes," which right now is an organic cotton "sleep shirt" that Hanes used to make, but doesn't any more (-- I bought one, really liked it, bought a couple more whenever I could and ended up with 10!) This is what they look like only in a lighter weight fabric.  They are so cool, comfortable and soft, and they get softer with every washing.  The cotton short sleeve pullover blouse I wore over slacks to run errands was too damp from perspiration to throw in the hamper -- I had to hang it up to let it dry out first -- which is why I was sucking down the iced tea.  99 F/38C temperatures at 24% humidity, even for the short time I spent outside, just wrings you dry.  Having just written that, it occurs to me that I should have been wearing a hat -- I've got a straw one with a nice wide brim.

Now I'm trying to settle down to work.  It's a good thing I have flat screen monitors now, instead of the old TV tube kind.  In the first place, those old monitors put out an incredible amount of heat (nice in winter, but. . .) whereas the flat screens put out hardly any. And in the second place,  I couldn't run a fan and one of those monitors on the same electrical circuit without giving the monitor a case of the heebiejeebies.  Right now, I've got the celling fan on "taxi down the runway" speed, and a small little fan aimed right at me.   Time to get busy.