Pa & Ma in Tacoma

My parental units arrived a day early, last night, about bedtime. What followed was about 2 hours of my own personal Seinfeld episode.

The first thing brought in the house was a giant cooler. I helped my mom, who has trouble seeing, but does remarkably well, unload the cooler and figure out what was in it.

Apparently somewhere in Oregon they paid over $30 for 2 dungeness crab. They thought they were fresh crab when they bought it. But the crab was frozen.

As mom and I unpacked the cooler my dad brought in box after box after box of other stuff, til the living room floor was lined with boxes.

One of the boxes was stuff for me. It's a big box. They know I'm flying and should know this is not convenient. This is not the first time. The last time I saw Ma & Pa was a couple years ago in Phoenix. My mom loaded up my backpack with oranges. This caused all sortsa problems going through security, as in oranges falling out all over, while I tried to find my electronic stuff to put in the scanner tray. Somehow during the orange debacle my cell phone was lost.

There is a long history of trying to get me to bring big loads on a plane. I remember back late in the last century I'd flown to Vegas with a group, including Lulu. My mom and dad had been touring the country and met up with me in Vegas. We went out to the Luxor buffet. But on the way back my mom informed me she wanted me to take a huge box of Christmas presents for everyone up north, back with me on the plane.

When Lulu saw the box she was appalled. She drug it down to the hotel's customer service and shipped the box home via UPS.

I've no idea what is in all the boxes in the living room. Last night my mom was going through them and telling my dad he'd mixed things up. He'd deny, over and over again, mixing anything up. And then my mom would say, over and over again, sorry honey, I found it.

Keep in mind my mom has Macular Degeneration and can't see very well. The quality level of her vision seems to ebb and flow.

My mom and dad were under strict orders not to give anything, but their prescribed food, to the poodles. Previously my sister was appalled to learn my mom had been giving bowls of cheerios with milk to them in the morning and bowls of ice cream in the evening.

Last night mom had a huge bag of bones for the poodles. I told mom this was a no-no. That didn't stop her. The poodles gnawed the bones til nothing was on them. When I saw Blue's bone was breaking up, I wrestled it away from him.

My sister has a long to-do list for mom and dad. To keep them busy. One of the to-do things is to make strawberry jam. My dad can't hear and my mom can't see. She tells my dad what to do, so basically it's my dad who makes the jam. It is supposedly quite comical to watch this. I'm going to opt out of that entertainment.

I am securely located down in the basement. Mom and dad don't like stairs. Or so I've been told. From what I've seen nothing much stops them. I think there is a lock on the door at the top of the stairs...