Mom's making crazy contagious by a nose

If you think by writing about personal issues involving personal tissues twice in three days I’m developing an unhealthy obsession, you are correct.

But like a bad cold, it’s something I can’t shake.

Oh, how I only wish it were a common cold. At least then I’d know where to go.

Straight to Mom’s Kleenex castle.

When well meaning people ask me how she’s doing these days I usually just say she’s doing her best to make crazy contagious.

It’s working with me, at least.

Call it dementia or early Alzheimer’s onset. I call it crazy. And it is indeed viral.

The trigger with me is Kleenex. She says she needs three boxes a week.

She lives at her condominium home mostly with my dear second cousin, a 22-year-old godsend who’s staying with Mom while she’s looking for work.

I say selfless prayers that Trump hires this sweet, energetic girl -- the day after Mom’s funeral.

And just when will that be? God only knows.

I suppose my PC answer sure to please the never-say-die Terri Schiavo crowd is, “And I hope that won’t be for many, many years!”

Instead, I’ll offer a black humor example from my own mother who seeded any wit imbued in my life. I’ve never written about this stuff before.

She was saddled with caring for her father for three years until his 2009 death at the age of 97. Unlike her, his mind was firecracker crisp right up until the bitter end.

I remember asking him once if he ever feared death. He pounded the steering wheel (he was cleared to drive until 93) and said, “Hell, no! I pray every night it’s my last. My body’s broken down, I’ve buried all my friends. I’m sick of living.”

A pity it was. He still had 11 years to go.

About eight months before he died, he told my mother, “You know if it wasn’t such a disgrace to the family, I’d --” he made a slashing motion with his right index finger across his left wrist.

Mom with a straight face said, “I wouldn’t be ashamed.”

It was hilarious, only slightly less so when three months later he locked the bathroom door, climbed in the tub and made a slashing motion across his left wrist with something sharper than his right index finger.

To his furious shame, he survived. I remember picking him up from the emergency room -- as per stipulations in his living will, they didn’t even stitch him up -- and helping him into the car.

I asked if he was going to put his seatbelt on.

“Ha, ha,” was his sarcastic reply.

One more story from that indelible day. Famished and overwrought, I went out for some sushi for Mom and me. We ate it bedside as Papa lay there weak and mortally embarrassed.

The sight of an unusual food perked him up. What is that, he asked.

It’s sushi.

“Let me try a bite of that.”

I don’t know what I was hoping would happen. I guess I thought it would be cool if he’d spring out of bed and exalt, “Now, thanks to sushi, I have something to live for!”

Those hopes were dashed when I asked what he thought.

“I wouldn’t hit a dog in the ass with it.”

So there’s a strain of gallows humor in our family. I wonder if I’ll have enough of it to get me through.

I wonder if I’ll have enough Kleenex. I doubt it. She needs Kleenex the way fish need water.

As previously mentioned, she lives alone, has only one nose and there’s no evidence she’s decorating a parade float in her apartment.

Yet, she maintains she needs three boxes a week. So Kleenex has become our tissue-thin mother/son flashpoint.

“I need a lot of Kleenex! I have a big nose and it’s always running!”

Gold medal Kenyan marathoners don’t run as much.

So in a fit of childish pique, I raced to the grocery store and purchased $17.35 worth of Kleenex; nine boxes, 1,458 individual tissues.

It’s a good thing one of my best traits is self-forgiveness because I’m ashamed of what I did next.

I stacked the boxes in a little tissue pyramid on her dining room table and said, there, now you have three months supply. That gives you 16 per day.

Yes, I even did all the lousy math.

Happily, she laughed at me and my absurdity.

She’s always fretted her nose is her most dominant feature. She's way off.

Her warm smile’s always been her most dominant feature.

She’s my honky-honk woman.

She blows her nose. She blows my mind.

Poo Pooing too much TP

I always feel as conspicuous buying toilet paper as I do buying porn.

I feel shame. I don’t want people to see me. I think people will think less of me for knowing I use the stuff.

This makes zero sense because I have no such prim inhibitions about people watching me eat.

And if I’m going to do one, I’m going to do the other. Rather, if I’m going to do one, I’m going to do No. 2.

I bring all this up because I just spent what I guess we can go ahead and call -- forgive the inevitable vulgarity -- a shitload of money on a mattress-sized raft of industrial strength toilet paper.

It’s was $12.78 for the Charmin Ultra Strength MegaRoll 9-pack. That’s 352 2-ply sheets per roll or 375.7 square feet of TP.

The package specs makes it seem sturdy and voluminous enough to construct a big top circus tent. It makes flushable toilet paper sound more durable than steel wool.

Coincidence alert! I’m writing about TP while I’m listening to TP. By perhaps subliminal determination I included the 1981 Tom Petty album, “Hard Promises” in a playlist that includes Dire Straits’ “Making Movies,” and Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” Sorry you can’t be here. I’m having fun.

It would have been freaky if I’d have selected an album by the old punk band, the Butt Hole Surfers. They were, ahem, a cheeky bunch.

Anyway, I get home -- thought I’d have to bungie strap the purchase to the roof of my Saturn -- and discover Val had bought the same thing. Twice!

She’s a coupon clipper and found a great deal on toilet paper.

And now we may be the first family who has toilet paper both out and up the ol’ wazoo.

The surfeit of toilet paper has me thinking of despotic North Korean ruler Kim Jung Il. Or should that be des-potty-ic?

Official North Korean history books declare his body so evolved it produces neither urine nor feces.

That’s certainly a pity. You’d think the sprinkled tinkle from a body so divine would be nourishing enough to feed the millions who’ve starved to death under his tyrannical rule.

It may be the lone evidence of humanitarian concern from him that all his palaces include dozens of toilets. How thoughtful.

He’s not at all like my mother. Because I’m obliged to shop for her and attend doctor visits, I’ve become grimly familiar with the natural bodily functions of this woman I always considered too pure to have even engaged in sex.

Well, maybe once or twice.

It might be entertaining to post a YouTube video of someone like me sitting there wincing every time the doctor casually asks his 78-year-old mother, “So, Rachel, how are your bowels these days?”

Her big thing is Kleenex. She can’t get enough of it.

I go to the store about once a week for her and she always insists I bring home three new jumbo boxes of Kleenex. She lives all alone, has only one nose, and there’s no evidence she’s decorating a parade float.

I once gently asked, Mom, are you sure you need three?

The impudence nearly made her head explode, which I guess would have required a cleanup involving nearly 300 boxes.

I lavish her with rolls of toilet paper and she’s unmoved by the gesture.

I try and be the good son. I try and not get upset with her.

It’s not easy, as many of you sadly sympathize.

I know I’ll again run out of patience and will again feel sad at my human shortcomings.

I wish I could convert all this toilet paper into patience. Then I’d be on a real roll.