The Supper Club

Technically in the South the last meal of the day is called supper. It used to consist of leftovers from dinner - the big midday meal that gave you energy to plow the rest of the back forty. (wonder if Queenie the mule got a big dinner too?) Eating the leftovers at supper meant you started from scratch for breakfast the next day.

Anyway, last night I went over to CB for supper.
"Hey", Mom said when she saw me. Then she said it again. And again. And some more.
Apparently Iggy has been replaced.

Let's meet the rest of our table companions shall we?

To Mom's left is "Myrtle". Myrtle might have been quite the astute business woman in her day - nothing gets past her.
After she ate every single scrap of food on her plate and did the same to her dessert she said, "Let me ask you something. That sweet potato was good, but how much did I pay for it? Would it hurt them to give us some dessert? I would pay more for that. I don't mind paying for it."
She picked up a sliver of green bean that had fallen on the tablecloth, held it out on the tip of her finger to a passerby and asked, "Do you know what this is? Is this all they give us? Who's running this place?! Would it kill them to give us some dessert!?"

Continuing around the table to Myrtle's left is The Hummer. But let's give her a better name. Say, Dorothy.
Her Native American name would be She Who Scrapes Her Robe With Her Butter Knife While Humming. Dorothy is genial and loves to clean up. She takes the used coffee creamer containers and rinses them out in her water glass. She also collects the empty Sweet N' Low packets. If it looks like it needs it, she will scrape the tablecloth with the butter knife. When she speaks she has a lovely Southern accent.

To Dorothy's left is "Jean". Jean likes my mother and blows her kisses. She likes to hold my hand sometimes. She's pretty low key and doesn't say much.

Finally, there's "Barbara", the den mother of this table. She's always decked out in her finery, rings on her fingers, plastic bead necklace, a brooch penned jauntily on her holiday sweatshirt. She has coffee with dessert, with cream and two packets of "sugar" - the empties of which Dorothy promptly collects.
Dorothy was humming, Mom was saying "hey", and Myrtle was asking about the price of dessert when a man at another table shouted "Shut-up!" Barbara looked over at me and said, "Can you believe this bunch?"

Mom was cold and one hand shook, making me think it was a tremor, not cold. She had taken a bite of her sweet potato and maybe two of her chicken. I tried to get her to eat another bite of the potato, but her lips clamped shut. I could hear her saying "I don't like that."
The staff was withholding dessert until she ate more. WTF. If that's all she wants to eat, fine. Give the woman her stupid Ensure and pound cake. Grrrr.

After supper we went into the living room. The woman who is always saying help me, oh God somebody help me was in rare form last night. Mom had a coughing attack and the woman told her to shut up. Mom said "Oh you shut up."
Heh.
You tell her Mom.

All the commotion seemed to be getting on Mom's nerves (or maybe that was my nerves), so we walked over to the Activity Room. Our pal Myrtle was there, examining scraps of material.
"Do you think I can take these? Should I pay for them? These are for the bathroom (a dog and cat print). This one seems cheap (an angel print) and tacky."

Then the "help me" woman (shall we call her Rhonda?) was wheeled in.
We spotted Mom's walker in the corner, identified with a luggage tag of a Boston Terrier. (Mookie!)

 "Fix it up."
I took that to mean open it up so she could use it. She went back into the living room with Jean, and I headed home to feed supper to those darn cats.

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Here's an update on Mom's condition. She is walking much better, really didn't need the walker. There was a wheelchair and oxygen in her room.
But there's the tremor and some drooling. I called hospice to see if either of those was due to new medications or old medications stopping.
Her mental decline is worse. Trauma (hospital visits, being sick) will do that.
Sigh.

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For tonight's music we have The Bulgarian Voices Angelite Dragana I Slavei. This gives me goosebumps. Like bagpipes.