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.

Election thoughts from a non-angry voter

(As noted in comment below, observant reader Emily Suess remarks how the picture I selected makes it look like Beck and I are both staring at the same thing. It's true, I say, it is a deity and He/She is smiling at me and is glaring at Glenn . . . I now return you to your regularly scheduled blog).

We’re nearing the end of the most heated and bitter election cycle since the last one and I’m proud to say I barely care.

The headlines say the electorate is enraged. They hate Obama. They hate Muslims. They hate the media.

Me, I’m mostly at peace because my hatreds are few and many of the things I most hate are getting the absolute crap kicked out of them.

Sure, I wish the Taliban were performing as poorly as the 1-5 Dallas Cowboys, but these things take time. And it’s impossible to diminish just how heartwarming the decline of the Cowboys is to me.

I’ve somehow managed to skate through this entire tumultuous election cycle without engaging in one political argument; any time someone’s tried to goad me into one, I’ve dismissed them with sound reasoning. 

I say, “Look, moron, there’s nothing you can say to change my opinion and as you seem so resistant to logic it would be a waste of my time to even bother trying to change yours. So let’s just sip our beers and discuss the endearing mysteries of women and the happy things we do that make them hate us so.”

I haven’t even stooped to political blogging although part of that is for strategic reasons. I know if my readership is anything like the general public then 50 percent of them will be infuriated if I write something kindly about the Democrats and 50 percent of them will be enraged if I say a Republican surprised me by doing something sensible.

That means I’d risk losing half my readers and that would leave me with, I think, just 4.5 of them.

The polls say the Republicans are going to sweep to power in the House and stand of chance of seizing the Senate.

This should make me, a man so liberal he even loves conservatives, as weepy as Glenn Beck when he considers things like apple pie.

But even if that happens, it won’t bother me one bit. Maybe because I believe the loonier elements of the right wing fringe will be exposed by having to govern and that will doom the Republicans for 2012.

Or maybe I spent all my anger during the Bush/Cheney years. I swear, I woke up every day swearing.

I swore it was a tragic mistake to invade Iraq (I was correct).

I swore cutting taxes to score cheap political points while waging two expensive wars would lead to financial ruin (I was correct).

I swore using wedge issues like gay marriage, stem cell research and Terri Schiavo to rally your conservative base and demonize your opponents would lay waste to decent political discourse for years to come (I was correct).

Right-leaning friends ask if I regret my support for President Obama.

Not for a minute.

The most sensible thing Bush ever did in office was betray his every conservative and capitalist instinct and launch the TARP program. I believe the experts who say that helped us dodge an historic bullet.

Obama continued the drastic steps needed to stave off chaos. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t popular. It had to be done. Dubya thought so.

Obama’s accomplished much in a hysterical political climate where a powerful arm of the mainstream media still hints he’s a Muslim tourist pallin’ ‘round with terrorists bent on overturning the U.S. Constitution.

Even when G.W. Bush was shredding the actual constitution, I never considered him anything as sinister as what Fox News daily asserts Obama is.

I didn’t think he was evil. I just thought he was stupid (I was correct).

Anyone who thought the historic mess the previous administration left behind could be cleaned up in two jiffy years was crazy.

The news today is pessimistic economists are surprised by a sharp drop in the number of unemployment claims. It is the second straight drop and a clear sign the dreadful job market is recovering.

So come Tuesday I’ll vote the straight Democratic ticket. I’ll do it twice if I can get away with it.

I do this to counter those who’ll be voting the straight Republican ticket to counter guys like me who vote the straight Democratic ticket to counter them, etc.

But I’m convinced the momentous measures taken the past two years have pulled us from the brink. 

And now it’ll be months before I feel compelled to write another political post.

Unless I’m afforded an opportunity to gloat.

I swear.

Tweet of the week from twitter.com/8days2amish.com: "Many political races are incredibly tight. They are neck and redneck."