"Six and a half dozen of another..."

I spent quite a few hours with Dad today, just he and I watching the Olympics. He said my Uncle stopped by this morning and I guess I just missed the Preston's. He was in good spirits today. Mellow, but pretty pleasant. We had a laugh when one of the nurses Ruby stopped in and said "I just wanted to look in on you and see if there was any crabgrass today..." (asking how cranky he was). He just laughed and said "nope, not today...I am pretty good today..."

We watched some swimming, and gymnastics, and men's beach volleyball. I think Dad has a pretty short attention span, and his mind doesn't work well enough to fill in the blanks when he starts paying attention again, and this frustrates him. At one point, when we were watching swimming, he said, "I don't even know what is going on..." I said, "well, they are swimming..." And he said, "well, I don't know anything beyond that..." I laughed and said "Well, Rebecca Soni just swam the breast stroke." And Dad slowly turned to me and said "she's an American? And her last name is Sony? No wonder I am confused." We just laughed.

Then we started talking about Mom, and how she is just the little busy body, and always futzing with something...His bib, his blankets, his clothes...She fusses about him and everything else all the time. She has always been like this, but obviously she didn't treat him like this before the tumor, so, I think it is slowly driving him crazy...Well, that and he kind of likes it...It really is a dichotomy...At one point, he said "she could confuse the back end of rubber band..." I was like "What?" And he said "where the heck did I come up with that?" And just laughed.

A little known secret about my Mom, is that she has a knack for screwing up proverbs...You know, those little sayings...Like killing two birds with one stone? Yah, my Mom's version is "killing a two birds with a couple of stones..." Six of one and a half dozen of another? Dorth's version is "Six and a half dozen of another..." When my Mom got there, she came in irritated about something that happened, and she said "well, whoop dee doo and Mrs. Kaniver too!" Um, what the heck does that mean??? Later, she tried to tell me that the saying was actually "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," which, when I Googled it said it was from a "popular and influential campaign song from the 1840 presidential election..." Um....Ok? We all had a big laugh over that.

We started talking about the opening ceremonies, and I was trying to explain to them the tremendous parts where all the performers were in synch. We were saying that we here in the US could never get 2008 people to work so hard to be in synch like the Chinese did. And I went on to talk about how I studied different cultures in college, and Asian is quite different than the US. While in the US, we promote the individual, and celebrate and reward those who speak up the loudest...For instance, one of our proverbs is "The squeaky wheel gets the oil." In China, it is all about conforming and being a part of the greater good. It is not good to stand out. There is a Chinese proverb that is equivalent to "the tallest nail is the one that gets hit on the head." My Mom thought about this for a few seconds and said "well, you'd better hope they don't grow any taller then..." Leave it to Dorth...

So, I am not going to see Dad tomorrow, but I am going to radiation on Tuesday, and then plan to spend the late afternoon and evening with Dad on Tuesday. I am taking a few days off this week, and hope to see Dad and maybe get Mom broken out of her habits a little...She needs a change.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Much love!