My Mom's Birthday Surprise

There are just some days that your blog simply writes itself.  Spending the day with my mother is always like that.  So in lieu of WTF and WOW Recipe Wednesday, I’ll write about my day. The day started out with us picking Mom up to take her to Lowe’s to get supplies to build a box garden.  I decided to do that for her birthday.  She met me at the door, blocking the entrance and saying, “Let’s not build the garden, you’re tired from the drive yesterday.”  I told her I wasn’t and the garden was happening.  She said, “Don’t spend any money on that garden.”  Sigh…it just went on and on, but the garden was going to be built.   She then insisted she was going to drive.  Now here’s the deal…it takes my parents awhile to get anywhere.  They drive slowly because they are old.  My mom has added an extra feature of constantly slamming on the brakes for no reason.  As we were headed to the car, I said, “how about I drive and chauffer you around!”  Thankfully, she liked the idea.  So we piled into her 10 year old Chevy Malibu with only 59,084 miles on it and headed to Lowe’s.  As we left her neighborhood, she yelled, “OH!  I forgot my shoes!”  Tiffany and I looked at each other astonished because to loosely quote Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption, “When do you ever notice someone’s shoes?”  Back we go to get her shoes, and then we were off again to Lowe’s.  The shopping trip was eventful in the fact that we met a man who had a five day old puppy with him.  We played with the puppy and he said, “he (Gizmo was the dog’s name) is already off milk and eating dog food.”  WTF?!

We then picked up my dad and headed out to lunch.  Dad drove…we got there eventually.  On the way to the restaurant Mom asked me if I remembered the Kennedy assassination.  I said, “Well…I wasn’t born yet, but I have read about it.”  She said, “Oh, then I guess you wouldn’t remember that.”

After returning from lunch, I started construction on the garden.  Mom wanted to “help” and ended up standing everywhere I needed to work.  At one point, she even somehow got trapped inside the box garden and we had to help her step over.  Once I finished construction and moved on to painting, my Dad came out and said, “You are sweating.  Let me turn on the fan.”  My parents have a ceiling fan on the patio.  It has been there since 1982.  Dad went inside and flipped the switch.  Suddenly, I felt a thud on my back and felt a stinging pain.  I looked over at Tiffany she appeared to be moving in slow-motion and was mouthing, “W…A…S…P!”  My mom’s arms began flailing and she started screaming “Shut it off! Shut it off!” at my Dad.  Apparently, the wasps had built a nest inside the fan and got disturbed when Dad turned it on.  I turned around to see a swarm of wasps encircling the patio and my Dad unknowingly smiling and waving at us through the window.  I took off in a defensive run with the pain in my shoulder intensifying.  I should also mention that the wasps were hummingbird sized.   Turns out, I had been stung.  Tiffany took the stinger out.  My arm is numb, but I’ll live and we did laugh hysterically once the terror had died.  Finally, I finished the garden. 



Dad said, "Your Mom is sure proud of her new garden!"

She kept wanting to help.  She grabbed the cart.  It wasn't really all that helpful.