Vehicular drama

Things have sorted themselves out reasonably well today, so it looks as if I can put off my nervous breakdown for the time being, although I've given it a pager and asked it to remain on standby.

1) Poppy has authorized us to find a mechanic for Buddy so that his (Buddy's, not my dad's) transmission can be rebuilt, which my dad feels would be a better value than buying a new car altogether. After Buddy is fixed, my dad says that we can continue driving it as long as we need to, and considering that this repair is going to be about $1,200, I think my dad needs a really super awesometastic Father's Day gift, don't you? I usually buy him a Kroger's gift card loaded with enough cash so that he can buy a couple of their rotisserie chickens on the way home from the golf course, but I think this year, we might do more money, like maybe enough for about a thousand rotisserie chickens. Perhaps with bows tied around their waists.

2) My husband's bosses, who are some of the nicest people ever to walk God's good earth, have arranged for him to borrow a car until either Applesauce Anne or Buddy is fixed, whichever comes first. Bless them.

3) Larry the mechanic told us yesterday evening that Applesauce Anne is not as hideously damaged as we feared and that she'll be out of his convalescent hospital and back in our loving possession within two weeks. It's going to cost a pretty penny, but again -- better the car you know than one you don't.

4) I have been thinking about reviewing one of my favorite childhood books, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, to see if I can figure out how my husband can tesseract to his place of business and how the girls and I can tesseract to the 4-H meeting or the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It would be faster and way cheaper on gas. A tesseract, for any of you who didn't read this most marvelous book, is a time-wrinkle -- a way of traveling through space that confounds the notion that the shortest distance between two places is a straight line.

Untimely

This morning, I was driving my husband to work, an activity which I do a couple days a week and which we both enjoy. It's been very pleasant to have that time to spend together. Meelyn and Aisling don't like to come with me in the mornings because they prefer to get themselves up and start on their schoolwork. They do like to come in the evenings, however, and I've mentioned in other posts about how we enjoy praying the rosary on the way home.

Buddy was acting funny today, however. When I pressed my dainty hoof on the accelerator, nothing much was happening. But of course, that didn't happen while we were still close to our house. No, that happened about twelve minutes out on the highway.

"I'm pressing my foot on the accelerator and nothing much is happening," I said to my husband, watching the rpm gauge on the dash leaping like a trout stranded on a riverbank.

"Oh God..." groaned my husband, bringing his palm to his forehead with a resounding smack. "Oh, please, no..."

"What does it mean?" I asked timorously, allowing Buddy to coast into a gas station parking lot where everyone else was putting gas in their cars that run and coming out of the mini-mart with cups of fragrant coffee and little sausage biscuits and getting into their cars that run and driving off to work with nary a care in the world, or at least that's how it seems when you're in your forties and sitting in a vehicle that you've borrowed from your dad and it just died.

Truthfully, when Pop and Nan dropped the Blazer off, my dad told us, "Now, this thing is pretty rough, and to tell you the truth, I don't know how much longer it's going to last. You can use it as long as you need to, but it's got a lot of miles on it and it does some funny stuff every now and then, so just be aware..."

By "funny stuff," my husband and I ascertained that my father didn't mean that Buddy would suddenly grab up an open mic and say, "Hi there, ladies and germs, it's great to be here with you tonight. Say, have you heard the one about the duck, the priest and the rabbi who met up in front of an ATM?"

So Buddy's demise wasn't a total shock, although the abruptness of it all and the fact that it happened fifteen minutes before my husband was supposed to arrive at work did cause a few moments of fluent swearing, although we both managed to confine our vulgarities to the inside of our heads. For the moment. My husband did offer a devout word of thanks that the bad stuff happened while he was still with me -- "Thank GOD it didn't decide to do this when you were by yourself along the state highway" -- and we turned Buddy's nose and started gingerly off toward home.

It took us about half an hour and every single frigging Ameritech phone we passed by the side of the road was out of order. Both of us are people who hate being late. HATE IT. And the fact that my husband was now fifteen minutes past due with no word to the manager was going briskly over our nerves like a belt sander on a champagne flute. When we finally rolled into the driveway, my husband launched himself out of the truck and hit the ground running to get to a phone, where he talked to a manager and found a friend who was willing to come get him in exchange for gas money.

So now I'm sitting here at the computer, typing feverishly, trying to keep my mind busy so that I won't have to think about how we're going to go get groceries or go to Mass because right now, I feel like I could use a Zoloft about the size of my head in order to get through the rest of this day.

And I, I'd like to point out, have a really big head.

4x4 disappointment

Since my husband's place of business is along a state highway, we have plenty of opportunities as we drive him back and forth to work to see cars that people have for sale along the side of the road. We've been keeping a sharpish eye on what's available, hoping to find something not too far gone to rust that would serve him as a work car. Because this business about being a one vehicle family? It is really hard.

Really hard. Mee's having to miss some teen activities because of schedule conflicts with dropping her off and picking my husband up from work. We've had to quietly cancel some other activities, simply because we can't drive my husband there and back every day he works -- it costs too much in gas and also in wear and tear on Poppy's Blazer.

But the worst is not being able to go to weekday Mass anymore. I miss it so much. Even on the days when I have the car, I can't go because Mass is usually just starting right at the time when he's supposed to be at work.

So imagine my delight when I saw a very elderly Isuzu Trooper sitting by the road with a For Sale sign in its window. It was one of those vehicles that just spoke to me; I felt an immediate affinity with it. It just looked so sportily preppy and you could see that there used to be ski racks on the roof and a bicycle carrier on the back. The day I got out of Buddy to look it over, I was amused to see an orange-and-black Princeton University sticker in the back window, faded and old. Do I know my preppy vehicles, or what?

The tires were good; the interior an old tannish tweed, but not torn, ripped or stained. It had a dignified yet jaunty air that I strongly identified with. My husband estimated that it was about a 1986 or '87, with a manual transmission. I loved it. I already felt like it was mine, especially since he looked up the Kelly Blue Book value on it and found that the Kelly Blue Book values don't even go back to 1986 or '87 and that a 1989 Isuzu Trooper in excellent shape should run about $780.

We were looking to pay about $500-$600, so I felt very hopeful.

My husband called up the telephone number that I'd written down on a scrap of paper and I lingered nearby, pretending to put dishes in the dishwasher and fold laundry and generally getting underfoot while I eavesdropped on his conversation.

It didn't go all that well.

My husband started out by saying, "Hi, I'm calling about the Isuzu Trooper along state road 38? Well, it says 'Make an Offer' on the sign, so I thought I'd call up and make one. I looked up the Kelly Blue Book value and it seemed like $500 or $600 would be fair, because it's a 1986 model, right?....Uh-huh......Oh.....Okay....I see....Well, that's definitely a lot more than we can offer you....No.....Well, I just need a dependable car to get to work and this looked to be in pretty good shape.....No, we can't offer that much....No....No, there's just no way....Listen, thanks for your time....Sure, sure.....No, I don't need to think it over. Good-bye."

I was terribly disappointed. I'd all but named this car and given Wimzie a ride in the back and hung a rosary from the rear-view mirror. Give it a little sprinkle with holy water for a heavenly blessing, and she would have been a done deal.

"What?" I asked my husband, my lower lip protruding slightly.

"Well," said my husband, his eyebrows raised and chin lowered in an expressive grimace of utter incredulity, "he said that he and his son-in-law bought it a year ago to use for deer hunting, but then the son-in-law bought a new truck just after they'd put all this engine work and new tires on the Isuzu, so this mad old coot is sticking firm to a $3000 asking price for this twenty-two year old vehicle with 123,000-plus miles on it."

"Everybody has to have a dream," I said, sighing. How's come, when you don't want one, the sides of the roads in our Hoosier state are littered with cars in the $500-$1,000 price range, but when you're in sore need of one, they dry up like a puddle in the sun?

So. No Trooper love for me.

Cast iron

I went to the grocery a couple of days ago to stock up on the usual stuff we need, which always includes a large jar of jalapeño peppers. We eat jalapeño peppers on almost everything, which I choose to believe is not a quiet commentary on the quality of my cooking. Or maybe I should choose not to believe it, which would give me the excuse to serve heat-n-eat specialties like Spaghetti-O's and Swanson's Chicken & Dumplings every night.

We had tacos on Tuesday evening for dinner - really good ones with seasoned ground beef (spiced up with half a cup of jalapeño pepper juice, natch), lots of shredded cheese and lettuce -- served with tortilla chips and nacho cheese. Everyone who has ever eaten at a swim club or volleyball team's snack bar knows that you have to have jalapeño peppers for the nachos, and they're not too bad on the tacos, either. I didn't have any, however, because one of the woes of middle age is the tendency to get heartburn from eating extremely spicy food in the evening.

For lunch yesterday, then, the girls had some oven-baked pizza snacks and they had jalapeño peppers with those, although I abstained, feeling that the piquant taste of pepperoni and sausage is overwhelmed by the heat index of the peppers.

Last night, we had a pot of delicious Mexican chili for dinner. Mexican chili is served with corn chips instead of the typical saltine crackers of traditional chili and also boasts diced green onions and some shredded cheese on top - very tasty, especially when jalapeño peppers are added on top as a tasty little garnish.

I opened the fridge to get out the onions, the cheese and the jar of peppers, only to find that the peppers weren't there. Upon interrogation, the girls admitted that between the two of them, they had consumed an entire jar of jalapeño peppers between Tuesday's dinner and Wednesday's lunch. Wednesday's dinner would have to carry on, pepper free.

I was annoyed by this and told them that they need to cut back on their consumption of jalapeño peppers, leaving some for someone else in the world -- namely, me, who was willing to risk the heartburn -- to eat. Meelyn and Aisling were indignant and insisted that we need to increase our grocery budget to allow for the purchase of more peppers, two jars per week instead of just one.

Is my cooking really that bad?

Ton of Bricks

Carol came to stay this weekend, arriving at about 10:00 on Saturday morning and staying until 3:30 this afternoon. She brought with her a bundle of about 400 photographs and a shoebox full of memoribilia from her parish's pilgrimage to Ireland last fall.

We had a scrapbooking extravaganza planned, which started out with me putting together my mom's fantastic spaghetti sauce and turning on the slow-cooker so that we'd be greeted later with the wonderful, rich smell of a thick ragú simmering away. The noodles and garlic bread were ready and it was very nice to be able to anticipate a yummy dinner with not much prep work when we arrived back home, eager to start on her book.

We had lunch in Fishers at Sahm's, home of the world's best shrimp cocktails and fiery homemade cocktail sauce. Carol and I got salads; Meelyn and Aisling got sandwiches. When we were all nearly foundered, we got up and dragged ourselves out of the restaurant and over to Carmel to meet Anne at her Creative Memories scrapbooking studio.

Anne was lovely, as always, and provided Carol (and me, incidentally) with a two hour scrapbooking class. Carol bought a bunch of stuff -- an album, pages, page protectors, a photo cropper, pens....it was wonderfully exciting. We promised Anne that we would go straight back home and get busy. We also met her new dog, a Bichon Frise named Bear, and heard the too-many-coincidences-to-be-a-coincidence story of his arrival in her life right before her first Christmas without Rich.

We went next to Scrapbook Corner in Noblesville, which is one of the most overwhelming places you could ever hope to go, if you are a scrapbooking kind of person. And I mean "overwhelming" in the most positive sense of the word - it's a lot of fun. We bought all kinds of fancy papers and plain papers there to decorate Carol's scrapbook, as well as a few stickers. Super cute!

We arrived home at about 4:00, and when I walked into the house, I sniffed the air eagerly for a whiff of spaghetti sauce but....whiff of spaghetti sauce....whiff of spaghetti sauce?...I HADN'T PLUGGED IN THE FRIKKIN' CROCK-POT. I plugged in the CD player instead. There was my beautiful sauce, calmly waiting for me at room temperature for six hours on a 60^o day. I had to pour every single bit of it right down the garbage disposal. It was so off, it didn't even smell right. We made an alternative plan to go get a pizza, since Carol and I felt that botulism and whatever unpleasant sort of food poisoning you get from spoiled food might possibly ruin the rest of the weekend.

The pizza was delish, but we hurried our way through it so that we could work on her scrapbook at top speed. We worked all evening until we went to bed and got some really nice pages done, including St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin (which doesn't mean what it sounds like it means) and the Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate. Carol and I felt that the pages turned out very, very well; Meelyn was instrumental in laying down papers; Aisling was desolate that I didn't trust her to do cuts on Carol's paper. I should also probably add that we were eating cheeseball and crackers, chips and dill dip, brownies and sugar cookies while we were doing this. I thought I was going to have to be launched upstairs out of a cannon.

The next morning, we all got up to get ready for Mass, but I complicated matters by stepping on a blanket to get to the light switch in my bedroom, catching my heel in the blanket and falling down flat on my floor, managing to twist my ankle, injure my wrist and hurt my....pride. It was rather painful and made all that getting up and down during Mass a whole lotta fun.

When we got back home, Meelyn and Aisling set out a nice little spread that included turkey sandwiches, chips and dip, cheeseball, brownies and cookies. Carol and I ate and then got back to work, completing a number of other pages. We carried on until about 3:30, which is when Carol felt she ought to pack up and head south.

The rest of the afternoon seemed terribly empty and quiet after she left. "I miss Carol," Aisling said wistfully about an hour after she left. I did too, especially considering that it is going to be over a month before we see her again. My husband and Meelyn did a nine mile run in preparation for the Mini, which is coming up in two weeks, and when Meelyn got home, she came in and said, "I miss Carol."

We do have lots of memories of this whole weekend, though. Carol has her lovely scrapbook and I have assorted bruises from falling like a ton of bricks. I wish we didn't live so far apart, especially when only an overnight stay is involved. The good news is that by coming to our city on interstate 65 instead of the old traditional state-highway path -- and I do mean "path," since it is all too easy to get stuck behind everything from farm equipment to Amish buggies on that curvy, two-lane highway -- we've always used, Carol was able to cut half an hour off the journey.

It seems like a huge letdown to be back to Monday again tomorrow after such a lovely weekend.

Sweet fifteen

Meelyn was born fifteen years ago today after twenty-one hours of labor and no drugs whatsoever except for a little bit of something that had no effect which made me frantically ask the nurse, "If I just had an injection, why do I still feel pain?" And she said, not looking up from the magazine she was casually thumbing through, "Oh, it doesn't really take away the pain, it just changes your perception of it." And I said tightly, "My perception is still that it reallyreallyreally hurts and that that injection may have been water for all the change I'm feeling," and she gave me an impatient look, just a milli-micro-tinymeter away from rolling her eyes, which, if she had been so foolish as to do that, I was going to launch myself off the bed and hurt her and later plead that I was not responsible for my actions due to the second-rate drugs that hospital offered, but anyway, where was I?

OH YES! Meelyn is fifteen years old today! And all I can say is that if everyone had a teenager like Meelyn, there wouldn't be such a fundamental distrust and irritation for that particular demographic.

She has spent the day fielding telephone calls, emails and cards in the mail and yesterday, even received a package of the most adorable heart-shaped, pink-frosted cookies from Cheryl & Co. from a good friend. Today is Daddy's day off, so he took us to get an ice cream (in lieu of a birthday cake -- Meelyn is not a cake kind of person and asked Nanny to make her a pecan pie for their mutual birthday celebration last Sunday) and tonight, she has requested Applebee's. All this plus no school, an episode of Top Chef to watch when we're usually doing composition and grammar, Survivor later this evening and a cessation of all spring cleaning duties for the day, have made this a very happy day for her and the whole family.

Happy birthday, sweetheart. You are such a good, sweet girl and we all love you so very, very much.

Different worlds

Pope Benedict made a beautiful address yesterday afternoon at some venue I didn't quite catch -- I watched it on EWTN. A lot of it was high praise for the United States' Christian faithful, but being the Pope, he was wise to start out that way, to tuck the pill into a spoonful of jam. He also deplored our culture of crass materialism, which so often leads to a grasping sort of greed that pushes past community in the great quest for STUFF and also leads to things like married couples choosing to remain childless and a birthrate that is beginning to slowly but surely creep downward, not yet to the frightening point of France, Spain or Italy, but nonetheless worrisome.

He spoke of children being the greatest gift and blessing of a marriage; that children are beings to welcome into hearts and homes.

It was a very moving speech and I couldn't help but contrast it with a telephone call a man made to Dave Ramsey's radio show this morning.

"Dave," the man said, "my wife and I net $6,600 per month, we've been married for a few years and we're out of debt except for our mortgage. Can you tell me at what point in the future we could be ready to start a family?"

I was behind Buddy's wheel and fortunately, I was stopped at a stop light because I might have run right off the road and, I don't know, driven up the side of a building or over a tree or something. This was undoubtedly one of the craziest calls to this program I've ever heard, the craziest one being the guy who didn't see why it was wrong to charge up a bunch of top-of-the-line appliances on his credit cards as gifts for his wife and then file for bankruptcy.

The caller seemed to affect Dave the same way. He was silent for a brief moment and then said incredulously, "Dude. What are you waiting for? Baby time is, like, NOW."

I can't even tell you how much my mindset has changed over things like this -- although my husband and I certainly weren't rolling in money when Meelyn was born fifteen years ago today -- because now I believe with my friend the Pope that the best wedding gift a couple could ever hope to get is a honeymoon baby.

Anne! Walk away from the light!

As the five of you reading this blog may recall, Applesauce Anne blew a head gasket thirteen deca-- I mean, thirteen days ago, leaving my husband and I with nothing to drive, not even a moped or one of those little tiny cars clowns crowd into at the circus. If it weren't for the combined efforts of Poppy, Nanny, Carol, Katie, Jerri and Michelle, I seriously do not know what we would have done.

My parents have a nice neighborhood mechanic named Larry, who listened to my husband's lament about Anne and then opined that he could fix her. "And once this is fixed, it isn't likely to happen again," he said wisely. My husband, who Knows Things about cars, concurred: We have been really rigorous about taking care of our van, knowing that she was going to have to put in some hard duty before we bought another. It's better, said my husband, to put a good amount of money into a vehicle we're familiar with, rather than buying another that's an unknown quantity.

So I called Larry's voice mail today to tell him that we'd be arranging for Applesauce Anne to be towed down to his house within the next week. I'm glad she's going to be fixed, because every time I see her sitting there, forlorn, in the driveway, it wrenches me. I have really enjoyed driving Buddy, my dad's Blazer, but I still feel disloyal whenever we jauntily pull out of our driveway in all our cranberry red-and-silver glory, Anne's rosary swinging gaily from the rearview mirror.

I am eagerly hoping that my husband will ask Larry to touch up the four places of chipped paint on her nose, which we've been watching with concern lest rust develop. Those four places detract from her dignity, I feel.

Our Anne. She's coming back to us.

Happy birthday to youuu! (And many more)

FoxNews is reporting that a crowd of more than 13,500 people sang the happy birthday song to Pope Benedict this morning on the South Lawn of the White House. The article I read related that the lamposts around the South Lawn were "fluttering with the red, white and blue of America and the yellow and white of the Holy See."

Many Knights of Columbus were in attendance (I love their plumy, cavalier-style hats) as well as Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and lots of civilians, many of whom couldn't fit inside the White House grounds and spilled over onto the streets outside. There was a twenty-one gun salute and soprano Kathleen Battle sang the Our Father with great feeling. I was able to hear that when Rush Limbaugh replayed it on his radio show this afternoon. It was lovely.

"Viva il Papa!" many people cheered, according to Fox. "God bless America!" the pope returned, smiling. I got to hear that on Sean Hannity's radio program when his show began at 3:00 p.m. It was also lovely, and hearing the Pope's kind voice.

From that same article: "We need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth," [President] Bush said in brief remarks welcoming Benedict to the White House. "In a world where some see freedom as simply the right to do as they wish, we need your message that true liberty requires us to live our freedom not just for ourselves, but in a spirit of mutual support."

Beautifully said, Mr. President. You are now completely forgiven for pronouncing the word "nuclear" as "nuke-you-ler."

Unpopular, unloved and undelighted

"You should write that you're totally unfair," Meelyn groused as I sat down to write this post. So please add 'unfair' to the list above in the title.

Why am I unfair? Because I am making my beautiful, strong, sturdy young daughters help me spring clean our house.* Why? Because it builds their character and helps them have strong teeth -- all that gnashing, you know.

We cleaned the living room and foyer Monday and Tuesday. That cleaning involved wiping down all wooden furniture plus the stair rail and the part of the stairs not covered by carpet, washing the glass in the curio cabinet and dusting the shelves and figurines within, dusting silk plants (I kill the real kind) and other activities that brought a snarl to their lovely lips and dire threats of further manual labor to mine.

Today was their breaking point, however. Their assignment was to tackle the two big bookshelves in the dining/study room and they both chose to forget that one of my requirements for bookshelves is that the books be ordered from tall to short, left to right. It's just how I roll. I told them this on Monday. I told them this on Tuesday. So here we are on Wednesday and they acted like I'd made this job up on the fly to persecute and annoy them. Aisling, who like her mother before her doesn't have the sense to just shut up and get on with it, whined and complained and forced two large, salty drops out of her tear ducts and tested me to the point, after two fair warnings, to say in a calm and pleasant voice, "Don't you wish you'd just minded me? Because now? You're in trouble."

Meelyn remained tight-lipped, shooting me a couple of hard glances that I chose to ignore only because she didn't have the courage to actually meet my eyes and turned her withering gaze away every time I looked in her direction. I coached them through the task and the bookshelves look absolutely beautiful.

Now that they're finished and no longer need my constant supervision, it's time for me to get my own task started, which is taking the display items out of the china cabinet and washing them, wiping down the shelves and shining the glass, then going over the whole body of the piece with the brush attachment on the vacuum, which I find removes dust from carving and other crevices much more efficiently than even a Swiffer.

To keep myself company, I plan to shed a couple of angry tears, shoot myself wicked glances, whine several remarks about how this just isn't faaaaaaaiiiiiir and then punish myself by sending me upstairs to spend time alone in my room, reflecting on my many sins. Or maybe reading my library book.

That'll teach me.


*I am writing this all down so that I'll have it as a handy reference next year. This year, the girls refused to admit that we'd done any spring cleaning last year, even though I clearly remember hauling furniture out from the walls so that we could sweep under it ("Hey! There's that piece of candy that fell out of my mouth that I never could find later!" said Aisling in delight) and going around the edges of all the vinyl floors in the house -- upstairs and downstairs bathrooms -- with scrub brushes.

The Papa has landed

The Shakespeare class met this afternoon, where we discussed many points of the plot in The Taming of the Shrew. Everything went very well, I thought, especially the groaning table full of treats that Michelle set out for the kids, who, as always, were anxious for a snack break.

The best part of the day came when class was finished, though. Michelle's husband, Dr. Al, was in their family room watching television while moms and students gathered up folding chairs, class notes, books and used paper plates. Suddenly, we heard him yell, "Hey, everybody! The Pope's plane just landed at Andrews Air Force Base!"

We all rushed to the family room in a large stampede, where we flopped down on furniture and floors, waiting for His Holiness to deplane or whatever it's called. It took forever, of course, with some guy whom Jerri insisted had a tiny walkie-talkie hidden in his tie, standing in the door of the plane and soaking up all the television coverage. He smiled, rubbed his nose, fidgeted with his tie and pulled his ear lobe so often, I wasn't sure if he was a bundle of nerves, or saying hello to Carol Burnett's grandmother.

When the Pope deplaned, the whole room erupted in cheers. It was terribly exciting. The wind at AFB was whipping around something fierce and the Holy Father reached up and grabbed his white cap before it could be lifted from his head, Mary Poppins-like. The kids in the room were delighted at his red shoes. He descended the staircase with an affable smile, greeting President Bush with a warm grasp and moving on to Mrs. Bush, who looked radiant with her sweet smile. Mrs. Bush tugged Jenna forward, who looked extremely nervous and kind of like she wasn't sure if she should curtsy or faint. The Pope shook her hand, smiled, and made a comment and Jenna faded back behind her mama.

The people in the crowd were shown briefly on camera, cheering and waving little papal flags -- wouldn't it have been so cool to get one of those as a memento? Katie told us that there were some kids from Lumen Christi, the small K-12 school at Holy Rosary Parish in Indianapolis, there in the audience. Fun!

It's always a blessing to be Catholic, but yesterday was a real treat.

And by the way, happy birthday, Pope Benedict! (I bet no one will give him eighty-one spanks and one to grow on.)

Old-timey humor

Yesterday, we had a family birthday party for Meelyn (April 17) and my mom (April 6) at my parents house in New Castle. After a fun afternoon of watching the Masters' tournament, eating pizza and nachos and pecan pie (Mee's choice), napping and playing cards, we four McKinneys headed over to the assisted living center where my grandparents live for a visit.

Visiting Grandad and Mary Liz is always a hoot. They are both octogenarians and have reached the time of life where they say what they feel about life in no uncertain terms, much like Dayden, my seven-year-old nephew and Kiersi, my two-year-old niece.

They were terribly pleased to see us and we all gave out hugs and kisses -- I belong to a very huggy and kissy family. Pat and Poppy and my Uncle Mike frequently greet Grandad with a kiss on the cheek. I wonder where all that started?

Anyway, we got our first installment of frank and uninhibited discussion when I asked Grandad, who has had trouble with one of his feet due to poor blood circulation, that foot was doing.

"My doctor is an idiot," he trumpeted belligerently. "You know I ended up having to get my little toe cut off because he wasn't checking my foot out. I might have ended up having to get my leg cut off right below the knee."

(He tells me this every time I talk to him, and I know his doctor, who is not an idiot. Grandad often forgets -- conveniently? -- that the reason why his circulation is so poor is because he just wants to grumpily recline on his bed like a sultan, watching endless reruns of Matlock, Magnum P.I. and Little House on the Prairie.)

"Yes, that's too bad," I said sympathetically.

He ignored me. "You know what I told him? You want to know what I said?"

(I know, because he tells me this part every time, too. I looked uneasily at Meelyn and Aisling, but you might as well try to stop the earth in its orbit than try to stop Grandad when he's in Indignant Mode about his foot.)

"I told the doctor, 'Get me a gun. Just go ahead and get me a gun.'" He made a gun out of his thumb and index finger pointed it to his temple. I caught my husband's eye and he raised his eyebrows. Meelyn and Aisling looked at Grandad with shocked expressions.

I gave a tiny, silvery laugh, indicating that we all knew he was telling a funny little story and hurriedly changed the subject. "And how has the food been recently?"

This is a topic on which he can work up a great head of steam -- the deep injustice of the lack of variety, the poor use of seasoning, the enormous field-hand style servings that no one could be expected to eat and the ice crystals that are allowed to form on the outside of every cup of coffee he lifts to his lips. I don't completely understand this, because the assisted living center has a family brunch on the last Sunday of every month, and every time we've gone, the food has been wonderful.

He made an impolite noise.

"What did you have for breakfast?" Grandad and Mary Liz both love breakfast, so that's always a good place to start.

"I had oatmeal," he said, brightening. "And some eggs. Toast, and some bacon. Milk, orange juice and coffee."

"That sounds good," said my husband encouragingly.

"It was," Grandad conceded. But then he frowned. "Everything else is terrible though. I won't eat lunch, ever. I had a glass of Ensure and some yogurt today."

I smiled at him. "That sounds good. I didn't know you liked yogurt."

"I don't. I hate it. But they tell me I ought to eat it, so I do." The fact that he doesn't do anything he's in the least bit disinclined to do was not lost on me; he must like the yogurt more than he's willing to let on.

"Have you had your dinner yet?" I asked, noting that it was seven o'clock.

"Yes, chicken noodle soup."

"It would be kind of hard to ruin chicken noodle soup, so I bet it was good," I offered.

"It was awful. It was cold. Everything's cold. But the thing that gets me the most is that whenever they serve chicken, they boil it."

I was a bit nonplused by this. On the one hand, there are so many delicious ways to cook chicken, why always boil it? On the other hand, the source was a man who dearly loves to complain about the food served at his really lovely assisted living center, which you'd think from his description was run like a reform school instead of being the beautiful and gracious place it actually is.

He took my silence for disbelief because he raised his voice and said, "Isn't that right, Liz? They boil it, the chicken."

Mary Liz hadn't been following all this because she is terribly hard of hearing and often turns down her hearing aids so that conversation murmurs past her as gently as the waters of a quiet stream slip over the rocks. "WHAT?" she yelled.

"They BOIL the CHICKEN."

"WHO BROILS THE CHICKEN?"

"The KITCHEN!"

"THE CHICKEN?"

"NO! The KITCHEN! BOILS THE CHICKEN!"

Mary Liz paused to consider this. "WHY WOULD I WANT TO BOIL A CHICKEN? I DON'T HAVE A KITCHEN!"

Grandad, exasperated, shouted back, "NO! The KITCHEN here -- they BOIL the CHICKEN!"

Mary Liz gazed at him thoughtfully and then abruptly lost interest. "I LIKE FRIED CHICKEN," she announced helpfully to the room at large and then refused to participate in the discussion any further.

"She's very deaf," Grandad said unnecessarily, but in a conversational tone that indicated that he thought the visit was going quite well indeed. I was fighting back laughter by that point and noted that my husband and the girls were purple in the face and quivering.

We stayed a few more minutes after that. I took note to bring them each a Frosty from Wendy's the next time we visit, and maybe a couple of extra-crispy meals with mashed potatoes from KFC if we're there before they eat a meal. We kissed them both goodbye and came home, praying our rosary as we traveled through the greening countryside.

After we finished our prayers, I sat quietly, pondering the fact that I can see myself -- if I make it to eighty-eight years old -- being just exactly like Grandad. Or maybe even more so.