MountainMornings

The Great Grandparents are snug in the Florida Keys, entertaining their friends and exploring new territory. The rest is us, otoh, are either getting or recovering from some illness.

Luckily, the Love Bug and her baby brother were vaccinated for measles. It seems that this rotten disease is making a comeback primarily because of parents who believe vaccines are a bad thing. Science trumps rumor and speculation every time. It’s one thing to think your child should not be vaccinated, but quite another to put the rest of the population at risk.

Adults who were born in the 70s and 80s may not have had a measles booster, sooo beware of kids with red morbilliform rashes (the Bride taught me that word). Ms Bug has some patches of red from the sun, and unfortunately a fever with a barking, seal-like cough.

She must have inherited Bob’s lovely lungs! Yes, the Bride had croup as a baby; now she’s sitting in the shower at night with her baby girl.

Who rallied today to see Hugh and Buffett, the brothers manatee! Our first overcast day, so we all landed at the Aquarium! My fav was a calico crab and the Bug loved watching a dolphin named Moonshine. It was a perfect morning.

And about the mumps – well that has to do with medical school and the Groom. And that’s a whole other story I’ll save for later. For now we’ll head over to the ice cream store for a snack.

Florida is starting to grow on me!

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I’m in transit again. And I spent one hour on a plane sitting next to a woman with Alzheimer’s recently. How did I know?

She kept repeating over and over again to anyone listening “This is the first time I’ve flown alone.” She’d been a widow for “…seven or eight years.” At first I thought she was a nervous flyer.

She was fooling around with the seat belt, trying to connect the wrong parts. So I fastened it for her. Then I thought oh, she must have cataracts. This is how it starts I guess, we make excuses for our loved ones as they age, we make accommodations.

Then she told me her children worry about her. What else is new? I know that day is coming, when the tables will turn and the Bride and the Rocker will wonder if I’m OK, did I lose my car again in a parking lot? Am I trying to dial the microwave like it’s a phone?

But then she wanted to know if I was going to Atlanta too. That whole plane was going to Atlanta, so the light bulb went off in my head. Aha, so this is what it’s like.

A friend of mine in MA tried to explain it to me when her mother developed Alzheimer’s. She forgot how to get into her bed. That night I made a mental note, this is how you do it, and I willed my mind to remember. Because it was part of my muscle memory, my head just didn’t compute those movements.

My seat mate on Delta told me her son had arranged to have someone meet her at the gate in Atlanta so she could make her connection to visit her daughter in Jackson, MS. As she was talking, her hands were trying to catch the dust bunnies in the air.

And she’s been losing weight, the doctors did all the tests and they couldn’t figure it out. I thought to myself, I know why. She forgets to eat!

It occurred to me then, Ada would never forget to eat. We sometimes can’t find our keys, and maybe my reading glasses might end up in the kitchen. But I’m making a pact with Ada, we’ll remind each other to eat.

I didn’t read “Still Alice.” But I’d like to see the movie. Julianne Moore inhabits this dreadful disease, this incremental loss of ourselves. I know the Flapper didn’t develop dementia, and it’s not in my family.

Still, how does one know when it’s no longer you?

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My first day in FL the fire alarms started screeching. This was a test, only a test; still it was tortuous. Why? Because it lasted for an hour and a half and you never knew when the red lights would start flashing and that sound, that high-pitched-fox-dying noise that would wake the hard-of-hearing elderly population in FL would start. Every three minutes or every two, sometimes five minutes.

And so we escaped our cute condo on the beach to drive inland in search of the VA. Not Virginia, the Veteran’s Hospital. Grandpa Hudson had some major feedback happening in his hearing aids, the problem was of course that he couldn’t hear it. But when Grandma Ada said she didn’t hear anything, I was ferklempt.

Could the terrible fire alarms have left a ringing in MY ears. Was I going messhuga?

Luckily the lower pitched noise I was hearing stopped after Hudson’s appointment at the audiology clinic!

This chilly 65 degree morning, Ada and I were talking over coffee on the terrace. We talked about Hasidim since I’m reading the book “The Marrying of Chani Kaufman” by Eve Harris. We talked about her social calendar, which was booking up rapidly. And we talked about life in general, what makes us get up in the morning.

Then the leaf blowers started up, the garbage truck arrived, and some guy with a generator was gearing up to power wash the windows. We packed it in, we couldn’t think, let alone talk with all the noise.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the weather down here, also I’m feeling young among all the snow birds. But the noise and the cleanliness could kill you. ps. It’s supposed to get down into the 30s tonight, just so ya know.

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My family is on the move. Great Grandma Ada and Grandpa Hudson are wintering in the Florida sun, and I came down to help settle them into their new digs. So while the first big frost is heading toward the Northeast, we’ll be basking in the heat and humidity on the Gulf of Mexico.

Meanwhile the Rocker is flying back to NY, from sunny albeit lately chilly LA, to back up Nicole Atkins on the David Letterman Show! If you missed her last appearance on the show, you won’t want to miss this. Her voice gives me goosebumps and her new album , Slow Phaser, has been getting rave reviews. Stay up late and do yourself a favor this Friday, January 9th.

And if you’re young and want to see the best Rock and Roll band playing live this Saturday, January 10th The Parlor Mob will be back in Brooklyn! On New Year’s Eve a young radiologist was bemoaning the death of rock music, so of course I had to plug in my iPhone and play their album Dogs full blast. Who says sixty-something’s don’t know how to party? Alright so we did leave early, but still.

Don’t let the cold get you down. Cheers from FL and turn up the volume; Nicole and TPM will warm up your nights! http://www.songkick.com/concerts/22165708-parlor-mob-at-brooklyn-night-bazaar

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I’m still in Nashville, in a sort of toddler-enforced news blackout. But I did catch something about the NYPD turning their backs on Mayor DeBlasio at one of the slain officer’s funeral yesterday. And that just got to me. Granted I don’t know what the Mayor said to deserve the back-turning, the lack of respect. Still, this has now gone too far imho. And when I read Chris Rock’s reply on Twitter, I understood why.

“Maybe the NYPD can use their newfound love of back-turning the next time they see a dark skinned man walking the street doing nothing wrong.”

Now you know he will be getting flak for saying this, his publicist will be doing cartwheels trying to fix it, and he’ll most likely lose some revenue by boycotting white people…but, he’s so dead on. Because maybe our kids can walk around with a BB gun in suburbia and not worry about being shot. Because our kids might get picked up for walking around at night, with a Snickers bar, but they will be delivered to our homes with a wink and a nod from local cops who know us.

We are at a turning point here, and it doesn’t have to do with #BlackLivesMatter or #BlueLivesMatter. How about #ALL LIVES MATTER? Black, brown, white, grey, blue, chartreuse….ochre even? In no other country are so many people killed in such great numbers by their own police force! And in this secular humanist’s opinion, it’s all the GUNS in our society that is the major contributing factor.

No police officer – black, white or brown – will ever be the same after shooting a youngster he thought was threatening, but was found to be unarmed. He or she will carry that fatal mistake on their soul forever.

When it’s extremely hard to acquire guns, and the police force doesn’t carry guns, guess what? Murdering our children in the street will come to an abrupt end. Beginning to de-militarize our police is a good start, and declawing the NRA – getting their blood money out of the hands of our elected officials has got to be next.

If I knew how to do that I’d win the Nobel Peace Prize. But continuing to turn our backs on mayors, on our children, on jury duty, on voting; and not voting out the NRA sympathizers is using twisted logic. The Bride interned for the Children’s Defense Fund in DC one year. They are instrumental in promoting #Childrens Lives Matter. http://www.childrensdefense.org

We turn our backs on a toddler’s temper tantrum. Not on this type of apartheid in our midst.

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