Blueberries and Unauthorized Bike Rides

Monday morning: Worked on school things for the youngest two, watered plants, ate one of four ripe cherry tomatoes, went with the Tea Chemist, HG, Jenny, FYG and FYB and picked blueberries (36 pounds), then went and used coupons for free Arby's sandwiches, and took advantage of Mocha Monday at McDonald's for a respectably sized free sample.

Went to store to pick up tin pans for freezer meals, envelopes, and packing tape, packed books for PBS and Amazon, went to post office to mail them.

Pulled out all of crocheted washcloth I was working on (it was nearly done) because I couldn't get the sides straight. Restarted it about five more times throughout the day and pulled it out again each time because I was unhappy with it.

Came home and reviewed some school topics with youngest two. Found out my dad (long term readers will recall he has dementia) was riding his bike somewhere between here and town (some 8 miles, perhaps 9 or 10 since he goes by back ways) because he had packages to mail to the Netherlands.

My driver's license has expired, so the HG and Tea Chemist set out to help hunt him out (the Equuschick had already looked with no success).

They found him and went ahead and called Granny Tea, who, when consulted by phone, thought they may as well do what he wanted so they took him to the post office where he mailed his things to the Netherlands, where he knows nobody and has no legitimate business. We expect he's given away his social security number, credit card accounts, and pin number to his bank account. If this were a third person account that sentence would end with "she said darkly."

The HG went in with him, though he didn't want her. He needed help, was confused and dithery about how to do what he wanted to do, couldn't understand the postmaster, and then when they got back to the car insisted that the postmaster here is just mean and hates him (we have the nicest postmaster in the world) and was trying to do him down. That's also what he tells me about his doctor. I expect it's what he tells people about me.

The girls brought him home again, Granny Tea said she was going to pick up a lock for the bike on her way home for work.

Then some of us stayed home to recover and do lovely things with blueberries while others of us went to a hotdog cook-out and calf banding party. Yes, life in the country. The HM was inordinately amused by the warning on the package of the tools he purchased for the calf banding. It said, "For animal use only!"

Two young teen males came out to help, and they were not remotely amused by any of it. The calves were fine- they voice no objections, and were up and grazing within seconds. The human teens were a bit woozy, one of them kept muttering, "This is just not right. It's not right..."

And then we headed home again, where I fiddled with flowers in the sunroom, discussed wedding stuff with Strider in a FB chat, admired the Equuschick's loaves of bread she'd made, and went to bed where I spent the night fighting a losing battle with something I ate that disagreed with me.

The rest of this week includes wisdom teeth out for Pip (a procedure the dentist tells her is going to be tough, so tough that he wants her to come in two days prior so he can figure out he's going to go about it), music lessons, volunteering at the fair and library, Bible study and dinner here, several people heading out to the new Harry Potter movie, Jenny has her last week at the library and a full day helping out the little old lady who thinks Jenny should spend more time with her and less time on her other projects, getting the HG ready to fly out to Texas, and, I'm sure, dealing with dementia.

He made it all the way into town last week, and then called my mother to go pick up him up- using a Walmart telephone since he left his cell at home. There's no telling what sort of story he told the Walmart staff. Mom started lecturing him on how he wasn't allowed to ride the bike into town, he was just supposed to tootle about the country roads around these parts (which is what he told her he was going to do). The gist of his response was, "Oh, cut it out. I'm already here so it's too late for the lectures. Come get me."


We've taken away the keys to the car, and then we took away the second vehicle when we learned he had secreted away a spare set of keys (my parents' truck now lives sometimes in our driveway, sometimes in Shasta's and the EC's), the riding lawn mower (which he managed to get anyway a couple weeks ago), the golf cart, and now, I hope, his bicycle. Pretty soon he'll be asking to borrow the Boy's inline skates. Or he'll start hitch-hiking into town in order to give all his private identification to some stranger in the Netherlands.


I thought the bike was going to be removed from his access the last time he rode it into town. But then, I thought it was going to be removed a year ago last May when he told us that he'd been out riding on the state highway and a trucker was honking at him for no reason. Or two weeks later when he fell off the bike a few times and came home bloody and without any idea of putting a bandage on it, preferring, my mother told me, to watch television with his arm up over his head and dripping blood.

Incidentally, when you take an elderly person you suspect is entering dementia-land to the hospital to be tested so that the car keys can legally be revoked along with the driver's license, one of the questions asked to help establish whether you are, in fact, a danger to self and others is, "When you are out driving, do people honk at you for no reason?"

That's a clue, that is.