Tomorrow Cameron and I are driving down to Fairborn in one car and Der Bingle is going in another . . . and we hope to get the latter settled back in the Ohio Redoubt following the interpretative representation of “Planes, Trains & Automobiles”.  We will need to stock him up with food and straighten up his kitchen and help him with the laundry.

We’ll probably have a couple of Cousin Vinny’s pizzas tomorrow night and maybe go to a restaurant on Saturday; and then it will be time for Cameron and I to head back up here and start another year. Sydney is staying at the vet’s for observation and diet control while we are gone.

Uh, I caved and we got a big TV this year . . . and then Der Bingle added  Internet capability and movie downloadability  to it and it is becoming intimidating. I think I like cuddling up with a 13 inch set about two feet from my face better.

I would have liked a bobcat and a dumpster for Christmas, but I will do the best I can to get rid of all this clutter without accidentally throwing out things I really want to keep. It may be a challenge since when gathering up stuff to keep, I have stashed it in whatever is at hand – like a plastic grocery bag. Ah, yes, the idiocy of it all.

Yesterday at Mother’s I picked up some pictures from way back when and my dad’s teaching license from further way back when . . . and I looked for something to put them in . . . and I grabbed an empty box that had held window plastic. That was just so smart.

This organizational thing is going to be hard; it is not my natural state. It’s not that I can’t keep things straight in my mind – it’s just this business of having things at my fingertips. This idea of a place for everything and everything in its place. It worked okay – well, sort of okay – for a long time and then over the last ten years with folks living with me, I lost my grip.

I’ll probably be in bed before midnight  with the covers pulled up over my head – this has been quite a year. I’m a little afraid of 2010, but it’s coming anyway.

You can tell I’m scared by the random topic recital.

Well . . . over and out for now.

This morning, oh about and hour and a half ago, I stepped out in the vestibule and grabbed a Diet Coke and a Coke and thought they felt pretty damn cold. Well, I just looked at the weather and it is 17 degrees, but feels like five. I suppose somewhere the sodas are not herded together and a couple have frozen. Ha! Teach them to be stragglers. I’m being cruel; they have no legs and can’t voluntarily hover together. They can’t yell for me to do something. They just . . . feel their insides chilling and then swelling and then POP – it is an out of can experience.

Ack, I almost forgot. LZP called yesterday and passed on the word that he had broken his right arm – the tip of a bone by the elbow and I’ll be more accurate when I know more. He has a stick shift so Sam will have to be driving him. I forgot to ask Der Bingle is his arm is stabilized in a bent position or is sticking straight out.

Morning is coming in the faintest, grayest way it can. Yesterday we saw the sun for a few moments and I remarked how the sunlight just lifts your spirits physically and then it went away and I went and watched railroad journeys of Switzerland and the US. Cameron started looking up AMTRAK schedules. He’s thinking cross-country and I’m thinking we need to take practice trips first – like two hours into Chicago on the LakeShore. Oh, the train going east follows the Great Lakes . . . but it only runs at night. RATS.

We have a blizzard of clutter here and bags of scooped up Mother papers to go through and lawyers to see and “zee probate” – yes, I will feel like a drunken Frenchie by the time we get through it all.

I need a deviled egg.

Alison, Robert and Summer went to Indianapolis to visit Colin; they are staying overnight. Cameron and Der Bingle and I are here holding down the fort. It is quieter, although my little dance at their departure was almost jolly.  The cat is pissed – she is with her not favorite people and I must keep reminding myself she was Mother’s cat.

We were going to have Jim’s Pizza as a special treat, but they are CLOSED for the holiday week. CLOSED!!!!! A local outfit, they are only open Thursday, Friday. Saturday and Sunday evenings for take-out during the year. CLOSED. So I went to Scott’s and grabbed up an eclectic mound of food – cole slaw, potato salad, cheddar and horseradish cheese, a shrimp ring, barbecue pork and barbecue beef, a cranberry salad, fancy little bread sticks and pomegranate juice. Later I had a turkey sandwich and two deviled eggs. I suppose this is boring, but I’m managing it because I am also watching a show on Atilla, Huns and Constantinople’s wall.

Cameron and Der Bingle are watching a Leslie Nielson movie and Cameron is laughing the patented Cameron giggle/chortle/guffaw. Loudly laughing it. Now earlier, he and I watched the 1931 movie “M”, made in Germany with Peter Lorre. I read the subtitles; he partly understood the German and read the subtitles also. And now he’s watching snicker humor . . . Oh, well.

The turkey went in the roaster just before six this morning and, no, I did not have to do any cold water thawing. However, getting the bag of yuck out of the stuffing cavity was challenging. Fortunately, the turkey was already dead or I would have killed it. I have conquered the task of preparing potatoes in the morning and keeping them in a crockpot until time to eat.

“Time to eat” was unusual this year; all of a sudden we were doing it. I had been wondering about sitting down without Mother there and when Cameron walked through the kitchen and asked when “lunch” was going to be, I looked at the turkey and potatoes boy and told him he could eat now. It avalanched  into us having a Christmas house-picnic. Don’t think buffet; just see us pulling stuff out of the oven as it was ready and munching. Of course, we used our Christmas plates . . . We have some standards, you know.

I wore my green Christmas present socks that lit up and my trapper hat that Alison gave me – sort of looking like a skirted ice road trucking elf.

About three, I decided to watch a DVD and saw some scenes, slept through others. Then I seriously napped. Then I got shorter tempered than usual. Then I snacked and watched some show about a disappearance at Dairy Queen, then something about Columbus and his voyages. I am almost prone now, with my computer on my tummy.

I am still short-tempered.

Alison put in to “be called off” today, but she didn’t get it . . . so she worked and is working as I type. We had a real slow-paced Christmas Eve Day here at the house – I got my hair colored and went to the grocery for a short trip. Made some deviled eggs and Summer and I put bubble lights on a branch that had broken off the blue spruce tree. They look pretty cool in the darkened kitchen. We also set out our “secret weapon” wreath with the 16 function twinkling lights. I was a little worried about the frenetic blinking causing epileptic attacks in drivers going by, but I guess either no one looked or it is a groundless concern.

What I dread doing is going downstairs and poking the turkey to see if it is thawed; I don’t want to do the cold water trick early in the morning. It’s a smallish turkey with three extra legs – no extra breast tucked in this time. We are having ham as well. But, you know what? I cannot find the lemon lime jell-o salad recipe that we have always made. I googled and couldn’t find it, Somewhere in the house is a green tattered paper held together with duct tape. I could wing it but figure, oh well.

I’m at loose ends, wondering if I’m starting the “old people’s Christmas” routine. It seems . . . Christmas comes; Christmas goes.

Sydney has elevated enzymes again and is on a strict diet. We are watching him like hawks to see if he shows discomfort and stops drinking for then it will be hospital time. Right now he’s on four medicines – that’s a lot of pills being tossed down his throat. Der Bingle is downstairs again, feeling a little perkier.

I feel like I am sending a telegram of facts – which I guess is now a fax. And now I am thinking of Dragnet – hey, I guess there’s usually a little bit of the ole AmeliaJake somewhere.

I am up here alone – Der Bingle is feeling well enough to go downstairs and had an egg salad sandwich and tomato soup and while I puttered around in the kitchen and crawled under the tree with sustaining water, he plopped his leg up on a chair and talked with Summer. They are still talking. And up here FOX NEWS is talking in the bedroom . . . to itself. Now, I didn’t like Der Bingle being ill, but, you know, when he was anchored by leg pain, I knew where he was all the time. I had the exalted status of Urinal Provider. This sort of reminds me of what happens when a little kid learns to walk  – “Oh, God, what is he up to now?”

After two weeks of cuddling his new robe I purchased the second day in the hospital like a security blanket, he now is wearing it. He looks a bit like a fleece teddy bear. A fleece teddy bear with fluffy hair. We had a talk about that today. In the past few years as he has grown older and his hair grown sparser – oh, and rue the day Summer told him about the secret bald spot –  he has fussed with combing it to look its best. Only he has been combing it when it is quite wet. With this interlude, I realized that letting it air dry after being toweled let the roots spring up and the curls reassert themselves. I said, “Hey, your hair looks bigger and better.” He frowned at me. But it’s true.

Always a blond, the greying of his hair wasn’t too noticeable. I think it looks platinum now – curly platinum; we will see if he keeps the look or not. Actually, I think he spent so much of his life taming his curls that he can’t believe they are his styling friend now.

But here is LZP sending a cheery photo to the local sickie. It seems to be working.

Yes, at nine in the evening I have felt a little oomph in my body, as opposed to a little ooph. Yesterday was busy with a trip to the doctor’s office which involved a really big wheelchair and a pulled-over desk to support the leg. After Dr. Warrener looked at it, he sent us to the laboratory down the hall and around the corner. “You know where it is, don’t you?” he asked. Well, yes I did. It was in the same place it was when I was in there with Mother. I was stressed I guess and my mouth quivered and tears dropped down my cheeks.

But the lab news was good and now we wait for the leg to clear of clots and the pain to subside. Speaking of pain medicine, Der Bingle told him he would appreciate a pepperoni pizza as much as anything . . . so after I got him home and Cameron over to the dentist, I brought home two from Little Caesars. Poor Cameron – he came home with a numb mouth.

We have been using the shaved ice feature on the refrigerator – something I thought would just be a fad – quite a bit with this illness. A tall glass of shaved ice with a straw struck in and then a gatorade product or iced tea poured in works well for when it comes to both cool and soothing. Of course, you just have to remember to stick the straw in before you pour in the liquid.

That refrigerator is part of all that has happened this fall. When Mother died, and I mean when she died – like right after the hospice nurse pronounced her and the funeral home came for her – we sent Robert and Cameron to a movie and Der Bingle and Summer and Alison and I drove over to the Sears store here and bought a refrigerator.  What were we going to do? Sit there in the house and stare at each other. Summer was only two months into the being 13 business. I think Der Bingle opted for the shaved ice one because of her. And he himself liked the bowed out shiny black front. I remember I started feeling a little shaky and sat down at a table while they filled out the paperwork. I wondered whatever was I doing, buying a refrigerator right after Mother had died. But I think Summer remembers two separate things: my mother dying and the day we got the refrigerator. And it is good we have shaved ice.

This is a heck of a post, not really saying what I mean in the best way. And now I must add: If I die tonight, do NOT go out and buy a Jenn-Aire stove; they are not of the quality they were 10-15 years ago, according to various reviews. Just order a new burner cassette, they still make them.

We got back from the hospital yesterday afternoon, at least a day earlier than we expected; the doctor in charge had determined one blood chemical level at which Der Bingle was to reach before being discharged, but another doctor  – slam, bam, thank you, ma’am – had him discharged and “out of the computer” before he could even get a travelling home pain shot. I didn’t blog angry last night; you aren’t supposed to do that. And I guess that is all I will say about it now.

Today I decorated the tree in the sitting room; last year we skipped it – I suppose shingles had something to do with it. But today, with Der Bingle lying in the bed in  the master bedroom I unwrapped each ornament put them all up. I can’t find the little embroidery piece I always hang . . . I suppose it is leaning on a bookcase somewhere in one of the two rooms. The lights are colored LED and they look vibrant and rich; I don’t light the clear LED lights – to me they seem like cold, painful, glaring, impersonal modern headlights. Not a bit of gold in them.

I’m tired, I think. So tomorrow I will think.

I’ve been spending the week in Fort Wayne at Parkview Hospital with Der Bingle who dealing with a blood clot in his leg. Knock on wood, I think he’s better today so I came up here for personal hygiene and new clothes and a Sydney check up . . . and now I have to go.