When trouble finds you, clip your toe nails and you will be rewarded

 Tonight I was packing up to venture north in the morning and feeling a bit melancholy when suddenly the big toe on my right foot started to hurt a tad. OK, more than a tad. A removal of sock revealed a gnarly toenail about two feet in length all pressurized by said sock. What a relief to get the same in acceptable dimensions! Yes. Next trip to the car and what did I see on the ground next to the drivers door?  What?

Drum-roll...

...a set of toenail clippers and not only that, they appeared to be all shiny and newish looking. Of course I took them, cleaned them with alcohol and boom another set of toe nail clippers! Nope, the other ones were in the apartment so yours truly had not dropped his outside.

 The moral of the story is use it or lose it and/or use it and double it. 

Mom and Dad

 Neither Mom nor Dad are well but Dad has serious heart issues. Most of the time when I call(for the past few weeks) I only talk to Mom because Dad is asleep. Mom has a tendency these days to talk in circles and she's never had a filter(that I can recall)so the conversations are not easy or pleasant.

Been planning a visit to see them because I want to see Dad before he passes away. He is in a critical time period following a heart attack and discovering his heart is extremely weak. And I would love to go up north to help out with chores, grocery shopping, anything they need and of course to see them. 

Tonight on the phone before I brought it up, Mom said, "I hope you don't come up here because I don't need company. I just need peace and quiet".  It did not matter that I want to help them with the exhausting chores Mom finds herself doing now that Dad cannot help her. It did not matter that I want to see her and Dad. She let me know she does not sleep as well when I am there. Her contradictory statements about Dad did not make a bad conversation better.

Yours truly has been under the weather a bit the past few days and depressed on top of that. It happens. Not seeking sympathy, just providing a context for tonight's call.  

Think I will go grocery shopping.

Recycled Memories

 The ebb and flow of memories long passed 

create pleasure and pain as anew they are grasped.