Falling Down

After careful consideration, I determined that it would be far easier to just do a blog to let family and friends know what is happening on the home front. I had tried to do a sort of newsletter via e-mail, but it was rather cumbersome and it did not seem there was enough often enough to actually fill up a newsletter. I have therefore started this blog for family and friends to keep them up to date on what is happening with the family.

Chewie (my dog) usually is pretty good about not getting into the cat food in the mornings when I feed the cats and give Boots (the deaf, diabetic, insulin dependant cat) his shot. This morning I even decided she had been good enough lately that I gave her a dog biscuit and laid back down to await one or both of the folks getting up and requiring my attention.

I heard Chewie's nails clicking on the tile and decided I would go see what she was up to. Low and behold, she was pushing cats out of their dishes to get to their food. When I walked up behind her and touched her backside (just one finger touching, no swat.. ) she took off like I had lit her tail on fire. I followed and she had taken shelter next to Grandma (Mom) hoping at the very least I would not want to wake her, and at best that if I pursued, she would be defended by Grandma.

A bit later in the day, Grandpa (Dad) needed his car washed as we are taking it in for it's pre smoging check up, and smog check in the morning. Dad has a specific car wash he has been going to for years, but lately he has not been doing a lot of driving. I told him I could take the car and get it done, but he likes to go along.

When we got out of the car, and I was getting the ticket to pay for the wash, Dad was busy taking dollar bills out of his money clip to tip everybody who was doing anything to clean the car. He dropped a dollar on the ground and in the process of bending over to retrieve it, lost his balance and fell on his backside. Three chaps were all over the place ready and able to help him up, as was I. He says "wait, wait" and we all backed off thinking maybe we were hurting him, but he pointed at the still free dollar bill laying by his foot and said "hand me that" .. One of the guys handed him the bill, which he promptly handed back to the guy as a tip..

They got him on his feet, he said he was not hurt, and one of the guys walked part of the way with us to make sure he stayed in an upright position with his walker. He obviously recognized Dad as he said " He's engineer yes?" I said yes. He said, "how old is he?" I said he will be 81 nest month. He said " he is very proud man" (which I think meant.. he is a stubborn old coot.. ) to which I agreed.

I got him sat down and watched the car go through the wash.. they put it through twice which I am not sure was owing to it being really dirty, or that they wanted to do a superior job since they figured landing on his keester might have been cause for some kind of legal action.. (of course if they thought that they really don't know the old guy. )

The next time someone asks him if he has fallen down lately (which the medicare doctors tend to do pretty often) he won't remember this episode at all. Once it was conveyed that Dad was alright, Mom found the story to be amusing, but I suspect it was my inflection that made it so.