Here's to the last of it

I can hear the neighbors in my grandmother's apartment complex whooping and having fun in the final remaining hours of 2008. The immediate neighbor is playing a piano, and gram is on the phone with an uncle who phoned earlier, just as we sat down to eat.

Man! Who'd a thought these senior citizens could make so much noise...or even stay up this late!

I walked to the little produce market this afternoon - it's just a few blocks away - to grab some things she needed, and wanted. Things she had been poo-pooing me not to worry about getting, but then would mention over and over again.

Let's hear it for manipulation tactics.

I guess she thought it would take me the better part of the year to get there and back, but it only took half an hour. About what I figured. I carried just under 14 lbs of apples, bananas, creamer, sweet potatoes, etc., but the fresh air felt good and so did really stretching my legs.

When I got back to the apartment building she was still sitting in the lobby yakking it up with a couple of the folks in her building. It was cute, in an odd way, to see that interaction...yet, somehow I felt supremely disconnected to the woman I was observing. I told her I was going to head upstairs to start dinner and she said, "No, I'm not hungry, and I am going to be here a while talking."

So, I headed upstairs to relax and warm up, put things away and settle in to watch an episode of CI that I had NEVER seen. Yippy! Hubba hubba.

It was 4pm when I sat down, and about 25 minutes later gram came through the door and began to peck about getting dinner in the oven. It wasn't going to take long, and all of a sudden I am getting nagged. Aaarrgh!! I wasn't about to argue with her, but I wasn't happy with her quick change.

We began eating dinner well before 5:30 and she made a crack about being done eating before the national evening news (which was hours away), and then about not eating at eight at night.

We have never eaten at eight. The second night we had dinner around seven, but that was because she was ambivalent about being hungry and when she wanted dinner.

"Hey, what are we mad about?" she asked.

I couldn't talk to her. I wasn't going to rehash...and I wasn't about to point out her demanding and silly 'argument'. Nor was I going to question her sudden change in insisting dinner be in the oven...right now, 'cuz it just wasn't worth it. But her little comment: "See, you could have been sitting here watching your show instead of being in the kitchen missing it," was smarmy.

I want to go home. I need to go home. I miss my sons, my bed, my cats, my routine, my computer. I miss the quiet and the lack of planes coming and going at all hours. I miss my bag of mint M&Ms and my wide comfy couch. I miss my 1/2% milk and a glass of orange juice, my cooking utensils and spices. I miss my sewing machine and stereo.

So, here's to the last of it. I love my grandmother, but I'm tired and I wanna go home.

See you next year.