As I've already told you, but will tell you once more, I am too eager to finish things that I don't like doing. I am, by and large, a worthless worker in most ways. I am o.k. at unskilled labor, hauling and pitching, but give me a tedious task and I'll botch the job one way or another. It was evident in my coloring pictures as a kid. All of them were obviously hurried. I'm more interested in inventing new things than mastering the old ones. When I invent, there is no comparison.
But I'll get to that in a moment.
Yesterday was as planned. I took my mother to the orthopedist. It went as predicted. They took X-rays, then the P.A. came in. He took a few notes, and in a little while, the doctor arrived. He is a young doctor, fairly smarmy in his grinning dismissiveness. It is obvious he doesn't feel any need to jaw with a patient. He had looked at the X-rays, made his judgement, and didn't need any medical advice from mom. Her bone had healed, but it was not in the right place. The only way to fix that was surgery, but he wouldn't recommend it. She is now fairly functional, and she should improve over the next year.
Bingo!
While I was sitting in the tiny room waiting with my mother, I noticed a poster on the back of the door. Wait. . . what? Dupuytren contracture, a disease of the fascia of the hand. Nodules on the tendons. I've had those for years and never knew what they were. Holy shit--I have a disease!
When the doc had finished explaining things to my mother, he asked if we had any questions. I pointed to the poster and said that I just found out I had that. He looked at me and laughed.
"It's pretty common," he said. And that was it.
I felt better. It is common. This morning, though, I looked it up. Are you shitting me? I was better off not knowing.
"What do you want to do now?" I asked my mother when we got to the car. We had three hours until I had to take her to her therapy appointment. She just shrugged.
"O.K. Let's take a ride through the carwash."
So we did.
"It's like a Disney ride," I said as the liquid soap suds were sprayed across the windshield while colored lights flashed and giant, hanging fingers descended toward us.
"Now what?"
"Do you want to try that pizza place that is supposed to be so good? The one up by the bank I took you to a couple months ago?"
"Sure."
Lazy Moon, it was called. You could get pizza by the slice or by the pie. Everything was bigger than Texas. Our slices were the size of a human chest. They sold giant 30" pies. Crazy. The girl at the counter was very friendly. It was our first time here, I said, so she walked us through it. That didn't help my mother, however, who can't hear shit. I shouted some instructions to her and she got a slice with cheese and peppers. WTF? I got bbq chicken and pineapple. We sat down at a table. I was surprised. The place was cavernous, huge. There was a long bar reaching into another room. In the kitchen, we watched a dirty hippie chef tossing and spinning the pizza dough just like in the movies. The music was loud. It was definitely a hipster place if the music was any indication. I asked Siri, "What song is this?" All the music had been much the same. I thought of Q and started to send him the song but remembered he was driving home to his home state just then.
I looked at my mother and asked if she could hear that. Of course she could. So I busted my techno move. That made her laugh.
When the nice lady from the counter brought our pizza, my mother's didn't look too appealing. Mine, however, was delicious. I watched my mother as she began taking peppers off her pizza.
"You paid extra for those," I said.
"I didn't know what I was doing," she said.
The pizza had an ultra thin crust and was delicious. At least mine was.
"How is it?"
She just looked at me and shook her head.
"Try mine."
"That's much better."
The counter lady came by again to see how we were doing. Blonde and busty, she wore her hair in stylish pigtails. Her blouse was cut low enough to be distracting. She looked quite like one of those barmaids at Oktoberfest.
"Can I get you anything else?"
"Uh. . . I think we're good."
Back at the car, I asked my mother if she wanted to ride to Home Depot. I would buy more lightbulbs and see if they worked in her overhead kitchen fixture.
"O.K."
Now here comes the part of the tale where I am as worthless as--and I quote my dead uncle who I had helped out one summer--a bear cub playing with his pecker.
Back at my mother's house, I got the short ladder and, with great difficulty, fitted the 48" LED bulbs into the fixture. These old ballasted fluorescent light fixtures aren't easy, and crippled as I am, standing on a ladder working on a ceiling light was murder. I was without hope, really, certain that the ballasts would need to be replaced, but after a seeming fifteen minutes, I had the bulbs in place.
"Hit the lights," I told my mother, and lo and behold--it worked!
"Holy shit," I yelled. "I would never. O.K. Hand me the cover.'
She handed me the big acrylic fixture cover that has to be squeezed into the frame that is smaller, of course, so that it will hold the cover in place. And again I struggled.
"Oh. . . shit. . . man. . . oh, crap. . . . "
Crash!
I dropped it. It hit a chair and much to my surprise. . . shattered. I looked at my mother. She looked at me. This was me all over, a typical move. I shattered her toilet tank cover once while replacing the inner guts. I never found a correct replacement. I fell against the sink not long ago when Tennessee was fixing the plumbing and tore the whole thing out of the wall. My friends won't let me use power tools.
"I"m sorry. I'm not good at this. I'm not handy."
I cleaned up the shards and vacuumed, then I went to her computer to look for a replacement. Nope. Nothing in that 17"x46" size. Everything everywhere was a standard two feet by four feet.
"I guess I'll have to buy that and cut it," I said. She just stared. We both knew I wasn't going to be able to cut it. I had no idea how to cut it. I had no tools with which to cut it.
"Maybe they can do that at the store for me," I said meekly.
"Do you want to split a beer?"
Good old mom--a beer before therapy. We just had time.
When I got back to my house, I was fairly beat. I made a rum and tonic and sat out on the deck. I was kicking myself for breaking the cover. "If only. . . " I agonized. "I was almost the hero."
Whatever. I put on some music to calm me.
There was plenty left to do. Tomorrow was another day, and as they say, Rome wasn't burned in an evening.
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