my folks are getting old

More from the holiday (still debriefing I think...)

Living in another state means that there always time passing for my folks in between visits from me. This can be kind of disconcerting. When you visit home and your folks look older it makes you scared. I kid with my mother sometimes about her dying (now mum, don't you be dying first and leaving me with that miserable old man to take care of!) but if she actually does I may just have to go to heaven and drag her back to the land of the living.

So, it is nice to be able to report that apart from my dad looking like death warmed over for about four days because he was so sick, my folks were actually looking pretty hale and well on this trip.

However...

Sadly there are other signs that they are, well, old, and here is one for each of them.

The Cereal Phenomenon

My father eats a bowl of Just Right each morning. Pretty healthy mix as cereals go, but not healthy enough it seems. To each bowl he adds exactly 8 almonds and 2 prunes ~ no more, no less. And yes, you guessed it right ~ it's to 'keep him regular'. If you use the word 'regular' and you are not referring to a size of soda at McDonalds, I'm sorry but you're old.

So...I arrive and on the first day I'm scouting the kitchen for snacks and mmm-mmm, there's a jar of almonds - yah! I grab the last handful of them because you can do stuff like that at your parents' house...right? Wrong. The next morning I am in the lounge room and I here a bellow from my father who is standing at the fridge in the next room:

Where are my almonds? How am I supposed to make my breakfast if there aren't any almonds? Did she eat my almonds? Chosha did you eat my almonds??

It's lucky I don't like prunes or he may have had to have had me killed.

Blooms as Emotional Torture Devices

My mother likes fake flowers. But like an old woman with Altzeimer's who doesn't remember that her kids have in fact visited her this week, my mother tends to forget that she has enough fake flowers. More than enough. Scarily more than enough. I present for your viewing pleasure:



The random flowers on the dining table.











The weird one with the antler-esque sticks...the photo is pretty crap, but actually this is one of the few I actually like. No I can't explain why.










These are on top of the fridge.








The poppies that should be in the bedroom where the curtains with the poppies are, but which actually live on the little table that holds way too many photo frames.








The red and white flowers that are actually in the bedroom where I think the poppies should be.







These are in her bedroom.









These are on top of the bookshelf in the dining room.











The enormous bunch of tulips you have to move if you want to watch TV.







Some extra yellow ones on the other bookcase.










The lavender in the entry opposite the front door.











More yellow flowers that live in the computer room.






The lounge and dining room are connected in one big L-shaped room that ends with the entry. Which means that seven of these are basically in one room. My mother is actually pretty normal generally, but this is one of her little...eccentricities.