Mom & Me Three Archive

    I noticed it this morning when I awoke. I was, of course, thrilled with the thick air. I quickly checked the weather report. We're supposed to have thunderstorms this evening. My spirit danced. Then, during Mom's bath, I noticed she was doing some distressive mouth breathing. As I was getting her concentrator cannula I calculated together the humidity, her heavy breathing and what the woman at the oxygen company said about humidity and excess phlegm and realized, oops, that's what's been bothering her all along. The reason she had no problems yesterday was that it was a warm, dry day. While the monsoon continues to spurt back into our area she's going to continue to have heavy duty days. Sure enough aside from getting up late again (I let her sleep in) today, she had no energy, needed oxygen the entire time she was up and insisted on laying down for a nap rather than going to the drug store. Unfortunately, while we can put off Costco we couldn't put off the drug store. We used the last of her paper underwear today.
    Still, it's better for her here than "down in the Valley, the Valley so low". The humidity is always higher there anymore, except maybe during the monsoon when both places are about equal, and the air quality is absolute shit and not improving.
    There is a bank of thunderheads gathering in the southwestern sky. The air is so thick I'll bet you could bounce off it...I'm sure it's one of those bounces that has my mother in a prone position right now.

    Last night Mom started what she thought was going to be a very sly conversation.
    "We own this house up here, don't we?" she asked.
    "Yes, Mom, we own it."
    "And we don't own any other real estate, do we?"
    "Nope, nor do we any longer own any faux real estate, like that mobile home in Mesa."
    "So, we don't have to be here, do we? We could sell and move anywhere, couldn't we?"
    I choked. Then I laughed. "Theoretically you're correct, Mom."
    She eyed me suspiciously. "What do you mean, 'theoretically'?"
    "Okay, okay. Let me spell it out for you. You've got that moving bug again, don't you?"
    "Well, yes," she confirmed, her fingers working as though she was readying to scratch a fresh bite. "Don't you think it would be exciting to go someplace else?"
    "Exciting for you, yes. Pure drudgery for me."
    "Oh, but I'd help. I did most of the work when your dad and I moved, you know."
    "Mom, I'm going to be straight with you. You are no longer capable, physically or intellectually, of doing the work. That's why I've been doing all our moving work for several years."
    "Well, I don't know about that."
    "Well, I do. We're finally settling in here. I don't want to do any of that work again, including the overwhelming additional work of supervising you while I'm doing all the other work."
    She reared back in her chair and glared at me. "You don't have to supervise me."
    An exasperated sigh. "What do you think I've been doing since 1996, Mom?" I thought about continuing thus, "You wouldn't even remember the intricacies of wiping your iron-shit laden bottom if I wasn't here," but thought the better of it. Let sleeping inner cats lie, I decided. I did, however, add, "This is where we live now. We're not moving anywhere, anymore. This is where you're going to die. That's that."
    "Well, I suppose so..." she was visibly disappointed.
    "Look, Mom. I'll make you a deal. If someone comes out of nowhere, asks to buy the property, accepts an asking price of two million plus the tax we would owe the following year on the settlement, cash on the barrelhead, taking the house and the property as is, they do all the selling work, pay all the fees, get everything in order including our business shit and give us six months after the sale to relocate, we'll pack up, do everything that's necessary to make sure The Little Girl can go with us...
    "Oh, of course. The Little girl goes with us."
    ...secure passports and move to New Zealand. How does that sound?"
    "New Zealand!?! Why New Zealand?"
    "Oh, I don't know. They have country and a climate zone similar to here, I've wanted to go there for awhile..."
    "So have I," she interrupted.
    "And I think we could live easily and peacefully there."
    "So do I."
    "Then, it's a deal?"
    "It's a deal."
    She was excited again, looking through our old picture atlas for pictures and information on New Zealand, making plans, talking about possible places and houses...completely ignoring the contingencies of the deal.
    Funny, I thought she'd veto New Zealand for Iowa. Thank the gods that didn't happen!

    More to report on the rewriting and transferring efforts: The index for Mom's Test Results has been leaned up, is snuggly in its new home and a redirect is in place in it's old home. When I speak of leaning up pages, there is a lot of redunancy Trellix produces that I simply left, for instance: Trellix splashes font tags all over in every unnecessary place it can find. If they didn't cause a problem I left them. What I removed were spacers, tables in tables in tables (one of Trellix's favorite tricks), all kinds of Meta shit, loads of non-breaking spaces (although there were a lot of imbedded non-breaking spaces that I left) and programmer notes. I considered tranforming the pages into CSS documents but that would have engendered too much work. Some pages, like the histories and the poem page, I will not be able to move without completely redesigning them: Those, within which I used Trellix's backgrounds, which don't come as whole meal deals but are assembled from ala carte elements, I'll leave where they are.
    So, I think I'll traipse over and record some stats. Maybe I'll put those recipes in the food section, too. Then again, I'm developing screen-eye, so maybe I'll wait.
    Later.