The Doodle Stare and Celery!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

This morning I called my mother like I do almost every day and got her just before she had to leave to go exercise.  The times you can call her are very specific because she is either leaving to play Bridge, watching Matlock, watching The Price is Right, or out the door for some other reason.  I could be in the middle of telling her I was having chest palpitations and could she hang up and call 911 for me and I can assure you I would be screwed if it happened during one of her shows.  All she would say before she slammed down the phone would be, “I told you never to call me during Matlock.”  Today, however, she was able to spare me a few minutes before exercise and even asked me what I did last night and before I tell you the rest of what happened, let me say that there is absolutely no correlation between my riveting stories and my mother’s hurry to get off the phone.

 

First, we talked about the weather and the dropping temperatures and I told her I took a bath last night because I was so cold, but it wasn’t a long one because my bath time was cut short by Vern.  This piqued her interest and I think her exact words were, “you got two minutes, kiddo.”  Nothing makes you want to tell a good story like a time limit, so I told her I was a little unnerved last night by Vern staring at me the entire time I was in the tub.  Luckily, she didn’t make one of her lame jokes like she did last week when I told her my daughter saw a turkey in our driveway and she wondered out loud if it had come looking for its parents. She stopped laughing when I said, “well, wouldn’t that make you the Turkey Matriarch?”  Anyways, I fully expected her to say something like maybe Vern was reacting like we do when we see a bad accident and even though we know we might see something horrific, we can’t look away.  I guess she was in too big of a hurry to come up with a good one liner, so I went on with my story.

 

I told her I asked Vern to leave and I even implored upon my husband to call Vern, but still Vern stayed, so finally I guided him out the door and shut it behind him.  While I was going about my business, I looked up to see Vern had pushed the door open and his head was in the door frame and his eyes were back on me.  I am used to the dogs coming to find me when they need something and I knew Vern wanted something.  I also knew it was useless to send him out to my husband because I was pretty sure Antique Roadshow was on and I know from experience the dogs could ring bells, drop their poop bags on his lap, and whistle Dixie, and if it was in the price reveal part of the show, all he would say when I asked him why he didn’t’ take the dogs out would be, “how was I supposed to know they had to go out?”  Bath time was over for me and sure enough, when I walked into our bedroom, Vern followed me and continued to stare.  Finally, I had a light bulb moment and said,  “Vern, were you waiting for me to come to bed and I was taking too long?”  Apparently, I was delaying his bedtime with my bath and the stare down was his way of telling me to pick up the pace.  Once we got that all figured out, we both got into bed and Vern promptly fell asleep. Who said humans are smarter than dogs?  When I finished telling my mom my Vern story, all she said was, “that Vern is worse than a kid.”

 

The good news for my mom is after we hung up the phone, Fudge did her own version of the Doodle stare right after I sneezed this morning and now I will have another dog story for my mom tomorrow.  Wednesday is her Bridge day, so I will have to tell her this one in a hurry, before she hangs up the phone like she did one day after she said,  “Do me a favor and look up rhetorical question and see if What riveting story about your dogs do you have for me today falls under that category.”  Other times she just says she can’t wait to tell her bridge club about her crazy dog daughter. No matter, when I tell her that Fudge reacts to sneezes in the oddest ways, she is going to be sorry she ever pooh-poohed any of my stories.  If you sneeze anywhere in the house, Fudge will come out of nowhere and sit and stare at you from a distance. I find it very unsettling, because it is as if she knows something about your health that she is afraid to share with you.  If she is near you when you sneeze, she will rise up and slink off and then turn and watch you from afar.  Sometimes, I will go get her and carry her back to bed with me and she will go to the farthest corner from me and act like she was made to lie in a bed with a leper.  I try and avoid that stare at all costs, so sometimes I do everything short of sticking my head in the hamper, so Fudge can’t hear me sneeze.  I bet when I tell this story to my mom she will say, “that Fudge is worse than a kid.”

 

Well, you know what? My mom has told me plenty of stories that really don’t interest me and never once have I said to her, “Call me when I am not so tired, because this story is putting me to sleep.”  Just last week, she launched into an entire story about celery.  She had herself laughing so hard I could hardly understand her and was afraid she might pass out since she couldn’t catch her breath.    I don’t know if it is a generational thing or less oxygen is flowing to her brain cells the older she is getting, but some of the things that seem to tickle her funny bone aren’t doing a thing for mine. Apparently, she was at her weekly Bridge Club and shared with all her friends the exciting news that she was craving celery. She went on to tell them that her refrigerator was so tiny it made buying a lot of produce really hard.  Sometime after Bridge Club was over, she decided to live on the edge and buy not one, but two, bunches of celery and she didn’t stop there. She went on to buy two quarts of strawberries and now her refrigerator was so full she couldn’t imagine what she had been thinking. I told her if she told me she also bought two gallons of milk, I was going to alert the media that we had a “Senior Gone Wild” episode in the making.

 

She went on to say she couldn’t wait to go to Bridge Club this week and bring some celery to snack on, because she just knew all the other ladies would get a big kick out of it, after all the fuss she made about getting celery last week.  I wanted to tell her that I thought the other women were probably going to turn to each other sometime during Bridge Club and whisper, “who is the kook that won’t shut up about the celery?” but I have found dementia jokes don’t go over any better than celery jokes with the elderly.  I also thought there might be a good chance she would not be asked back to Bridge Club because of the noise complaints I expected would be filed against her by the person sitting next to her, who did not think the sound of celery being chewed in her ear was soothing.  I didn’t want to burst an elderly person’s bubble, so I laughed along with her like a good daughter, even though I wanted to say,   “Mom, if a reporter shows up from the Boring Gazette or the Snoozefest Chronicles, make sure he hears that celery story.”  After all, one person’s Doodle stare story might be another person’s celery story.

[Joyce & Wilson]

Laurie,  I always smile when I see you've blogged!  I love your mom...but I was thinking of her when I saw the news that "her" Neil Diamond and remarried!!!  Is she heartbroken  : (   Keep up your entertaining blogs!!!

[Amy, Cubbie & Ollie]

So you feel concerned that you mom would ignore you if you were having chest palpitations while she was trying to watch tv.  Isn't that similar to how you would ignore your husband's heart attack if it occurred in the middle of Vern trying to poop?  :)

 

One other thing...I heard that you can buy door knobs that can actually be locked.  It is a crazy concept, I know, but it might let you take a bath in peace.  lol

[Bonnie and Kona]

Dying laughing... My mom will occasionally laugh until she cannot catch her breath and I am sitting on the other end of the phone line rolling my eyes in wonder. Too funny. DD and I laughed through this one together. I wonder if she is thinking about me in your mom's role. hmmmm!

[Carol and Banjo]

LOL.....Laurie, once again you've done a "Sienfeld"....taken the ordinary and made it hysterical.    Celery!

[Lori, Rooney & Zuzu]

Wow, you are a good, good daughter!  This was hilarious and I'm sure would remind many people of their own twisted family interactions.  Celery! LOL! I can't stand celery which is particularly funny because it was my "camp name" when I was a camp counselor.  I was a counselor at a summer camp where they would change all of the counselors names by using their own name as part of some other name.  I was "Celery" except it was spelled "Celori".  Get it? Silly, but there are still people I will run into who knew me way back then and will call me by that name.  So, in spite of my tremendous distaste for celery I have a peculiar attachment to it as well.

Loved the "Snoozefest Chronicles" too. I'm sticking that in my back pocket for just the right moment...

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

Laurie, I LOVE your "Mom stories".  Keep them coming....

[F, Calla & Luca]

Poor Mom, on the hot seat again. If you want mom to listen to your boring fascinating dog stories I have an brilliant idea. It is very similar to an idea I have given you before. This time it involves getting mom a DVR. True, you may have to travel all the time to help her reprogram unless the whole house DVRs like I have can work from one state to another.

Good for mom. She sounds active and busy and I love her feistiness. Celery no doubt is good for her too. Her doctors will approve : )

Keep on bloggin'.