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little old ladies
Thursday, June 10 2021
It was a beautiful springlike day, with clear skies and cooler temperatures. Gretchen spent a fair amount of it first out on the east deck and then down in her screened-in porch.
At some point in the late afternoon, Gretchen asked me (via Facebook direct message) what we'd be doing for dinner? Powerful had left for a multi-day adventure with his young thrift store friends, and we only had to fend for ourselves. I immediately responded that we should get pizza, and I meant that we should go get it from an actual pizza place. Ultimately, she placed an order for a larged deep-dish pizza with two zones: mushrooms and banana peppers for me, and fresh tomatoes and olives for her. The dogs joined me in the Bolt to pick it up, and, because there was no luggage area now that there's no backseat, I had to put the pizza on the dashboard as I drove to keep Ramona from immediately busting into it. Having a large light-colored object on a modern dashboard leads to visibility issues, particularly when driving in the full sun, and at times I was nearly completely blinded and had to slow down to be safe. I should also mention that the Bolt's impressive acceleration, which is much better than any other car I have ever driven, offers an easy solution to getting stuck behind some little old lady in a no-passing zone. It might legally be a no-passing zone, but if you can drive fast enough, you can safely pass all the same. This must happen so often to little old ladies that they no longer find it unusual or even rude.
Speaking of little old ladies, down in Virginia, my mother's friend Joy Tarder took her to the bank and managed to do some fancy paperwork (and have them obtain a temporary one-use power of attorney) to get her social security number. That's progress, though a more pressing need is for us to somehow obtain my brother Don's social security number. At this point he's managed to lose all his forms of identification, and our mother has also misplaced all the identifying paperwork that one normally keeps secure in a folder or a drawer: his social security card and his birth certificate. At this point, he may actually be in a legal grey zone, since he can't prove who he is and that he even belongs in this country. Untangling this mess is going to be a major headache, and it makes me fucking hate the woman my mother was back when she still had her marbles but didn't want to plan for this day because doing so was "too unpleasant" or "oh for crissakes, can't you see I don't wanna talk about it?!" Pay attention, kids, this can also happen to you.
While Joy, my mother, and Don were all at the bank, he called me on his cellphone just because, I suspect, he was bored. Apparently Joy Tarder has been filling Don's (and presumably my mother's) head with anti-vaccine propaganda about the danger of blood clots, etc., as if all the vaccines have this problem or that it was ever much of a problem to begin with. Fear of such things are enough to keep Joy from getting herself vaccinated, and if Don and/or my mother end up contracting coronavirus, such nonsense will probably be one of the causes. Don said that a couple weeks ago a social worker came out to the house trying to make sure they were vaccinated, and at the time Don seemed willing. But now, despite my having told Don that Joy is very wrong on this issue, I have my doubts that he'll end up going through with it.
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