tobermory's Diaryland Diary

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Hold your nose

I made roasted asparagus last night for dinner so now I have to deal with the aftermath � stinky pee. I think that if I was to become a famous hip-hop recording artist and I needed a new �street� name I would go by Stinky P. Or maybe Smelly P. Or maybe not because THAT won�t be happening in my lifetime.

My across-the-alley neighbor must be slowly cleaning out his attic or garage because every weekend there is a small collection of things left out by his garbage cans. In Chicago, it�s considered polite to put anything that might be considered useful to another person or items made out of metal (for the scrap collectors) next to, instead of inside, your garbage cans. There is a whole alley subculture of pickers and scrappies and junqueros who go through the stuff that people have discarded. It can be quite useful if you need to get rid of something like, say, giant old metal radiators, as Alli and her husband did recently. But I digress. My neighbor�s offering this week was displayed like a little tableau � a black backrest (commonly called a husband), an unopened Barbie sticker fun-book (don�t ask me what made it fun � it was self-proclaimed and I didn�t bother to look through it), and an ugly faux-Egyptian hand-painted (and not the good kind of hand-painted, more like the do-it-yourself pottery shop kind of hand-painting) ceramic vase with a sprig of white plastic lilacs sticking out the top. Normally it takes anywhere from a couple of hours to about a full day for the stuff to disappear unless it�s really skanky or broken. Even though I thought the vase was ugly I was sure that someone would give it some faux-Egyptian love. Nope. The whole diorama remained intact for the whole weekend until late Monday when some brave soul with no sense of taste took the vase. Fug-ly. Hopefully they�ll repaint it.

My mom is feeling a little better � they�re releasing her from the hospital and she�s going to the long-term care/skilled nursing facility this evening. It�s a nice place � and I say that with no irony. It�s the same place where my grandma and my great aunt were before they gestorbt. We have funny terms for dying in my family � gestorbt is Germanesque for dead. We also use Ad Astra and Chapter Grand, which are the euphemisms used by my dad�s fraternity and my sorority for dead. Again I digress. The place has skilled care and they make sure that the same nursing team stays with each, um, patient? Inmate? Resident? Resident sounds nice. Anyway, each resident has the same team to make sure that they build up a rapport and a relationship. Plus, even though my grandma died in 1998 and my great aunt in 2000, there are still employees there who remembered my dad and I from the many, many visits we made. That kind of employee continuity says good things about the facility. It�s close to the hospital where she is receiving treatment and they can provide medicab transportation to the hospital for her appointments, which is extremely convenient as I don�t think my dad or I are skilled enough to safely transport her. I just have to keep telling myself that this is where she wants to be � somewhere that she can get help 24 hours a day when she needs it, a place where she can get some much needed rest, and a place where they will monitor her nutrition. It would be nice if she could get well enough to come home, but I think I�ve pretty come to terms that that won�t be happening.

Resolution Diary:
Exercise yesterday: 1 hr. body pump class.
Dinner yesterday: stuffed artichoke, small pasta side, roasted asparagus, Milky Way egg and a lemon knot cookie.
Breakfast: cinnamon chip scone and a medium macchiato from Caribou. I had to stop at my parent�s house on the way to work and show my dad how to turn on the oven (side note: he did finally figure out how to open the fruit container) and he gave me a coupon for any beverage at Caribou. I tried a macchiato because it sounded like it wouldn�t be too fat-laden and it wasn�t. Too bad it tasted like a dirty ashtray. I always forget that I hate espresso.
Lunch: edamame, miso, California roll, small salad.
Snack: apple
Reading: I pushed aside �The Cliffs of Despair� again because my next Tiffanie DeBartolo book came � �God-Shaped Hole�.

2:31 p.m. - 2006-03-14

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