Soapbox By Kay

Busy Saturday with Mom

I told Mom we’d leave for the bank around 10:00 or 11:00. But since I didn’t get up until almost 10:00, my leisurely coffee drinking and morning surfing delayed our departure until around 11:30. And Mother only told me about three times that she was ready to go whenever I was, and just when was I planning on leaving. When we arrived at the bank, there was a bit of a line, about four people ahead of us. After a couple of minutes, Mom had to maneuver her walker over so that she could lean against one of the cabinets.

When we got back to the car, I told Mom we were going to have lunch before going to Fantastic Sams. She was underwhelmed and said that she wasn’t really hungry, but if I was we could do that. Then she asked me if I needed any money. I told her that I didn’t offer to take her to lunch expecting her to pay for it.

We went around the corner to Nosh! and split one of their breakfast sandwiches they press on Cuban bread. Very yummy. Mom ate every bite of hers, plus a bag of chips. Their special coffee flavor of the day was Honey Almond, which I had iced. Because you can never have too much coffee. Or at least I can’t. Especially not on perm day.

When Mom gets her hair permed, it looks kinda like this (except not blonde):

She’s worn this hairstyle since the early ’80’s. It’s easy for her to care for and she believes it hides that fact that she has a funny-shaped head. (I have never noticed that her head is shaped oddly – must be one of those childhood-anchored self-image things.) The hair stylists tell me that getting her hair trimmed a couple of times in between perms will keep it looking nice, because the weight of the hair that has grown out is what pulls  the curl out. But she won’t believe this, from me or the salon ladies, and so she just waits until it’s time for another perm before going back, which means that by the time I can get her to the salon, she has begun to look an awful lot like Brian May:

Wilma has been giving Mom her perms since we moved here over five years ago, but when we went today, we found that Wilma was no longer there. I thought this might be a problem, but Mother didn’t seem concerned and the owner assured us he could instruct the stylist on mom’s preferences. Her perms take about an hour-and-a-half (it takes awhile to roll up all those little blue rods), so I took myself across the street to Serenity Now to hang out with the very upbeat ladies always womanning the shop, look at all their colorful and bright-and-shiny objects, and try not to spend too much money (successful with #1 and #2, not so much with #3). After hanging out there for what seemed like enough time, I went back across the street to find that Mom still had about a half-hour to go. More waiting. Bummer.

I went next door to Gino’s NY Style Pizzeria, bought a large soda (Coca-Cola, with about 20% root beer – try it, really), and finally did my morning journaling at 2:30 in the afternoon. I grabbed one of their take-away menus to look over for our next “Try A New Restaurant Night”, since everything on the menu looked great, and the manager was very attentive, even though I was just having a soda and taking up space while waiting for Mom to be done.

When she was finally ready, we made our one last stop at the drug store to pick up her scripts and headed home, four hours after we had started out.

*Whew*