Freezer Burn

During my recent visit, my father bragged about the kitchen appliances holding up after 26 years – “perfectly good shape, even though not very efficient” – and would not need replacing until after his death. Judging by the amount of meat carefully wrapped, hermetically sealed and labeled in their freezer (see picture), there is no need to shop for a decade. Well guess what. The refrigerator/freezer died last week. And he didn’t. In a burst of energy, Dad went door to door dividing up his stash with the neighbors for safekeeping. Then he convinced someone to take him to the nearest store to buy a new one – no comparison shopping, no coupons, no discussion with my mother. He found the dinged, dented, lowest cost model, had it delivered the next day and the old one hauled off.

My mother only realized something was amiss when she noticed how clean the refrigerator was and that it seemed organized. She also noticed it was white – the old one was beige – since my Dad is color blind, it never occurred to him that color would matter. Well, hey, it does match the tiled counter, which in theory is white but no one knows for sure because of all the debris piled on top.

I wonder if all those crusty packets of ketchup and mustard made it to the new vegetable bin. I’m guessing that they survived and will be there at my next visit. I’ll be sure to check.

Shopping for Necessities

My saintly errands today included taking my mother for a hair (and eyebrow) trim. I hauled my father to the DMV where he turned in his drivers license to get a senior ID instead (the final act of the automobile saga and my guilty but necessary role to remove him from the roads). I kept his license as a memento. He told the clerk that I was a good driver and he taught me how to be careful – OMG, probably not the time to mention I recently smashed up my front bumper, eh? Hey, I hear you all laughing, stop that. Then we went to the tool discount warehouse in the ghetto of El Cajon -- I understood that he needed to wander the aisles of manhood.

Dad found cheap amplifiers to wear in his decaying ears since he refuses to spend money on a hearing aid. My mother couldn’t navigate the steps so she went next door to the military surplus store, where she inspected the ammo and tried on hats to replace the ones I threw out on my last visit. I took her back to the car before she tried to bargain for used uniforms, and she proudly showed me her turquoise socks that had the initials of KV on the cuffs. I recognized those socks – they were mine, from 8th grade.

Tomorrow I will be transporting them to their doctor, who will tell me that they are obstinate, and I will meet their home health nurse, who will tell me that they are challenging. Then I will somehow find my way to a large margarita before escaping. I will fly back to my beautiful home, where I just learned that my cats peed and pooped all over my guest bed – and possibly mine. Feline acting out behavior for their own parental issues.

Buffet Bonanza

Sooner or later I had to come back to Santee to visit my parents, so I wrapped it into a work trip and came here to observe their latest status. I finally got smart and stayed in a hotel rather than their house. The hotel is the only one in town, next to Honey Donuts and the crack district -- the room is $59/night and worth every penny. It’s blissfully quiet with a fast Internet connection.

We had dinner at Hometown Buffet, a suburban mecca of overcooked and bland food, to belatedly celebrate their 89th birthdays. For the last 15 years my father told people he was about to turn 90. Now it’s true – and he’s changed his line to “I’m about to turn 100.” God forbid. My dietician friend Julie thinks the preservatives my parents are ingesting are keeping them alive beyond their natural expiration dates. Based on the spread I saw tonight, it’s a valid theory.

They had respective birthday 2-for-1 coupons, senior discount coupons, and promo coupons. Some were valid, some expired. My father tried to combine all the coupons for free food along with a dozen takeout cartons. My mother insisted that 3 other people could have been there with us to justify the discounts, but they didn’t show up. And with horror, I realized there is a strong genetic component to my love of a good deal and my negotiation skills.

After the feast (which I barely ate), my father assembled the walker for my mother and carefully pulled it behind him, huffing and puffing. The only problem was that Mom wasn’t attached to it – she was still at the dessert table, stuffing cookies into her purse.