85th Birthday Party

We threw a suprise 85th birthday party for Ma in June. Our kids and grandkids came from North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida and Massachusetts to join in the fun. Ma was completely suprised as each additional family member arrived. She still remembers all of the grandchildren's names and I think all of the great grandchildren that were here. Unfortunately, my brother and his family weren't able to come from New York where she has another great grandson. Audrey took beautiful pictures for us to remember the fun and I had some of them made into a hardcover book for Ma to keep.

Rug Cleaning Ma Style

I have a 5x7 rug on my deck outside the sliding glass door. Obviously, because it is outside and is heavily traveled, it gets dirty. It is under the roof so it doesn't get rained on unless it comes in sideways. One day last week, Ma dragged the vacuum from the house and vacuumed the entire deck including the rug of course. Evidently sweeping it, spraying it off with the hose etc. just didn't get that deck clean enough.

A day or two after the vacuuming she decided that there were a couple of black spots on the rug that could not be tolerated so decided she was going to clean it and asked Debbie to bring her some laundry detergent. She got her scrub brush out and started scrubbing these spots. Evidently there was a chemical reaction between whatever was on the rug and the detergent so as she scrubbed a bigger and bigger area Debbie could see the rug was taking on a purple tint ( its a tan rug). She mentioned this but Ma kept right on making more and more of the rug purple. When the black spots didn't disappear she told Debbie to get her the bleach. Debbie advised against the bleach but when Ma demands bleach, she expects to get bleach!

So, the bleach arrived and Ma started scrubbing the offending black spots with the bleach. Of course, now the areas being scrubbed became white. At this juncture, Ma decides that actually what is needed is that the whole rug needs to be washed, not just spot cleaned. She tells Debbie to put the rug over the railing of the ramp. We are talking about quite a heavy rug, plus now it has been gotten somewhat wet so it's not an easy move.

Debbie drags it over and is going to put it over the lower railing but absolutely not! Ma wants it on the upper rail so Debbie has to hoist it up there. Next Ma wants to hose and the broom. The next fun activity Debbie gets to do is have the rug sprayed with the hose so she can then use the broom like a scrub brush. So, there is poor Debbie scrubbing rug, trying to get it clean enough to pass inspection by Ma.

Rain was threatening and Ma certainly didn't want the rug to get wet with rain water (who knows what the difference would be ) so she had Debbie go get the top to the canopy tent and put the tent over the rug on the railing so it wouldn't get wet from the rain.

Not knowing any of this, that evening when I went to put the dog out I noticed there was no rug by the back door and saw that the tent was over the railing and saw the rug under it. When I asked Ma what the deal was, she informed me that she had cleaned the rug and asked if it was a problem.

The next day we had a lot of rain and wind and the tent got put away and the rug had several days of intermittent torrential rain pouring on it. I imagine by the time it dries that it will be mildewed and the original black spots will have been joined by many more!

Prophetic?

We have some wonderful ladies that care for my mom while I'm working. Ma has been having quite alot of pain lately and has also been quite weak so her time outside has been pretty limited. Today I received this email from one of the ladies -


She was very tired today. She fell asleep in front of her rose bush on the deck. I finally got her to move under the cover of the deck. I tried to get her to come in at that time but she wanted to stay out to watch the hummers. She told me if she were to die she would like to be on the deck watching all the birds, especially the hummers. She has never talked like that before to me.