Friday the 14th of Aug – Friday humour

Dad’s not back yet from bringing Mar to the hospital this morning. Since Mom’s waiting for him to do the groceries, I text him as to his whereabouts. Let me start off by admitting that I’m usually not at my sharpest in the morning (Now, some may contend I’m not sharp. Period. But I’ll argue that a strong cup of coffee generally takes away some of my dullness!). Anyway, Dad responds: “I’m on the scale” which is a curious answer to be sure. My immediate reaction is: why is my father on a scale? Why would it even be worthy of a text message? Since I already aggravate my father enough as it is with all my sarcastic questioning, I decide this time to go with it and genuinely ask: “How much do you weigh?” It isn’t until after the message is sent and with the intelligent help of my Mom that I get it. Unless you have some imagination and are bilingual, you’d know that “scale” means stairs in Italian….My father is on the staircase on his way up! Ha yes…The confusing perks of being multi-lingual!

Mar’s still very demoralized. A multitude of little ailments plague her. Her ear still rings. One of her teeth has a cavity which can’t be treated yet. The stemcells are causing her to feel itchy all over. She still occasionally throws up. And of course, her brain just has too much still to process. She’s exhausted and the light at the end of the tunnel seems fogged up by all this smog. She’s very particular about what she eats and it’s hard to reason with her. Our logic is simple. Mar’s underweight and needs to fatten up. Vegetable soups may be very healthy but won’t do the trick. She needs FAT in the form of dairy, chocolate, chips, etc... Unfortunately high calorie foods often equal unhealthy ones and Mar won’t have it. She’s violent about it. So we’re reduced to secretly smuggling a nice lump of butter into her soups and pastas. Yesterday she caught Mom in flagrant act. It incensed her. I know we must respect her will but what else can we do?