Oops, We're Feelin' Kinda Barfie...!
It was that kind of day. You know, when the unexpected happens and although things seem all right, somehow nothing quite comes out right. Well, not entirely, but some things do fall by the wayside. Like when you're too deliberate, you try too hard, and the cookies just crumble.
Yesterday our daughter Karen worked from home. Just as well, the weather wasn't too great, we woke to freezing rain on top of an overnight snowfall, and we were expecting more of same. School buses in the area were cancelled, and I always feel better knowing they're not driving long distances in that kind of weather. And, as it so happened, Angelyne wasn't feeling well, kept threatening to upchuck. She'd slept badly all night, her mother said, and wasn't holding much down. That was fine, yesterday, meant we didn't have to pick Angie up at the bus stop after school and I had ample time to clean the house, then we went out for our ravine walk, and by that time I was really bushed, glad to have the afternoon to myself, kind of.
So this morning we had to get up earlier than usual, shower, and be downstairs for her morning arrival. Driving was bad again, because once again we had freezing rain, so they were a tad late arriving. Which meant that Karen stayed long enough for a hurried consultation on the state of the child, a quick cheek buss and off she went. Angie looked fine, although she's smart enough to maintain a certain look of constraint on her face lest her Bubbie decree that she looks good enough to go to school. Which, under the circumstances, wouldn't happen anyway, since she was genuinely not up to snuff.
She hustled up to the second floor to say good morning to her Zayde, and I wandered into the kitchen wondering what I could possibly feed the little sickie. When she came back down we consulted; she nixed an orange, a slice of cantaloupe, okayed strawberries. She'd try some dry toast, she said, and tea? is it all right if I have tea, Bubbe? Large oranges sectioned for us two, orange juice cut with cranberry for Irving, couple of eggs for him too, and toast, and coffee. For me, toast, banana, and tea, to share with Angie. Well, no chance to relax and look at the newspapers as usual, have to pay attention to Angie's ceaseless chatter. Don't have to feign interest; I am interested, and I nod now and again. This will all be history in two weeks' time when she and her mother move to their new house.
Cripes! forgot to call the school. I do that, and tell the secretary that Angelyne will not be in this day, day two of a flu condition. Thus forestalling a concerned call from the school from a volunteer.
What'll we do today? Can't go out for a ravine walk. No reason to go out, in fact, for anything, and isn't feasible in any event, with a sick child. I remind her to brush her teeth, and she goes into the powder room and sits down beside the toilet. What's wrong? I...feel like barfing, Boob. Oops, you can sit there 'till you feel better. She does, then wanders back into the kitchen and begins to open cupboards, peek into jars, fingers this and that, brings out a little malleable plastic Valentine with legs and arms and positions it this way and that. Because she's ill she has regressed from the usual pretend-tween/adult to child and it's now "look Boob, at what this little guy can do!".
Irving has long disappeared into the nether regions of the house, to do the preliminary work for a new set of stained glass windows. Angie watches me load the dishwasher and tells me she knows how to do that now, and will be able to work the dishwasher that's being left in their new, soon-to-be-occupied house. "Can I turn it on?" she asks, and does. Then she wants to work the coffee grinder that I keep specifically for grinding flax seeds. I'm still feeling a little unsettled, disgruntled, after opening a jar of flax seeds, half red, half yellow, and realizing, as I dumped the seeds into the top of the grinder that there appeared to be something suspicious about how they looked. I grabbed for my eyeglasses, and sure enough, seeds clinging by fine filaments to the mouth of the jar. Bloody damn, although I see nothing moving, I know there must be an infestation of some kind of beetle larvae in there, and dump the lot into the garbage, pull up the garbage bag, knot it and dump it into the large trash container in the garage, before hauling out another, larger flax seed-filled jar, this one uncontaminated.
How'd you like it if we make some puff pastry? You know those flaky pastries Zayde sometimes gets for you at the bakery? Don't know if I can eat it now, she responds doubtfully, but she encourages me to proceed, and I do. Simple enough recipe ingredient-wise, but complex in its manufacture. So we proceed to make the dough, then lather it with butter, fold, and roll it out, fold again, refrigerate for 25 minutes. Repeat three times, shape, bake. What a lot of silly nuisance. And how about pizza pockets for dinner? I ask her. Her face lights up, she carefully sips the cherry-flavoured tissane I've prepared, and watches me knead the bread dough.
Upstairs, I make up our bed, clean up our bathroom, and tell Angie to sit still so I can run the brush through her unruly hair. Which she washes but once a week, and then never runs a brush or a comb through until it's time for the next wash-and-brush. Her hair is so curly, so tufted and knotted and I proceed slowly and gently, but she protests and winces, and since she really isn't feeling up to par, I desist. Back downstairs to the family room, where we settle down with a book she's not familiar with, about a rural-dwelling pair of neighbour children who discover the presence of an orphaned fox kit in a nearby wood, and tame it. As I'm reading to her, Irving comes back upstairs, dumps himself into a chair and listens until the tale is done. He loved it, he said, listening to the story, just like old times, so relaxing, and pleasurable. Angie liked it all right, too, but she's unresponsive when I suggest that she pull out another book and read it herself.
Lunch time, so we discuss her options and she ends up with a small bowl of chicken noodle soup, more toast, this time with mozzarella cheese melted over it, another bowl of strawberries, and apple juice. She holds it down nicely, and I haul the disappointing-looking confections out of the oven. The puff pastry dough into which I'd inserted raspberry jam and shaved coconut looks fairly unattractive, but she's game to try one and insists it's pretty good. I go outside with Riley because he hasn't been out in too long, and he's kind of stinky. While he disports himself in the new snow in the backyard, I shovel off the deck, the stairs and the network of trails we leave open for him and Button.
Later, we shred mozzarella cheese, chop mushrooms, red, yellow and green peppers, open a tin of tomato paste, roll out roundels of the bread dough and begin to fill them. No vegetables in Angie's, she has instructed, just tomato paste, sweet basil, pizza seasoning and cheese; veggies for her mom and for me, and in addition to that in Irving's, thinly-sliced bits of pepperoni. They'll be baked later, in time for dinner, but the work has been done, only a salad to prepare now, before dinner.
I feel sorry for Button and Riley, no walk for them. So we throw Button's ball for her, and play tug with Riley's plastic hamburger, throwing it as far as we can whenever we can tease it out of his jaw, so he goes scrambling madly to retrieve it. We take turns, either rolling Button's ball back over to her, whereupon she gently gnaws it for a few seconds, before hitting it with her snout back in our direction, or tossing Riley's hamburger for retrieval. We play until they, and we, become bored and tired of the game.
How about looking at some old photograph albums? Sure, Bubbie, why don't we? But Irving has come upstairs, muttering something about taking a photograph of one of the stained glass doors upstairs, as he wants to use the design as a guide for a new cartoon he's doing for the new windows. Aha! I tell him, I've already done that, and we troop upstairs to the computer, and go through all of the photos in the "stained glass" folder I've got, until he finds the one he wants, and we print it out. He's happy, goes back downstairs with it, and Angie and I haul out a few old, coming-apart albums, part of our vast album collection of photographs old and new. "Who's that? she asks, and I respond that it's my mother. Egad, I'd ask the same in the same tone of voice. We flip through the pages, look at old-old pictures, and her attention soon lapses, so I keep calling her back to look at baby pictures of her mother.
She's feeling better, much better: each time the telephone rings she leaps to answer it. Once, it was my down-East sister-in-law calling to apologize for taking so long (not that I minded) to call in response to my having sent a few pieces of jewellery down for her and Rachel, when my kid brother Billy was last here. I mention that I'd forgotten to send him birthday greetings on the 20th, and she laughs, telling me about the surprise party at a local restaurant she had arranged. They'd arrived a full 45 minutes after their friends because he kept piddling about doing things before she was finally able to successfully haul him out of the house. I ask her why she puts up with him, he's such a schlep, and she says she thinks he's wonderful. Meanwhile, Angie thundered downstairs to see her Zayde, to tell him the latest gossip, that George-Ann had called, and who is George-Ann, anyway?
Finally, release. Karen arrives at five to four. I haul out her share of the pizza pockets and a newspaper article I'd cut out for her to read. Karen is on her cell phone all this time with her best friend who is bemoaning miserably about something, while Karen keeps clucking in sympathy. Finally, they leave, and we hurriedly pull on our jackets, ditto for Button and Riley and we're off into the ravine for a walk before dinner. Nice to be out, finally, and the dogs are happy about it, rushing about hither and yon sniffing happily. The footing, despite the morning's new snowfall, is far better than it was yesterday, and we're back home just on the cusp of five.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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