last day

Today is my last day here at my parents' house. I will have had 18 days. 

I always hate the last day and the day I have to leave. The last day is all about catch up, pack up, clean up, tidy up and close up. Yuck. It gets a little melancholy. The thing is,  I really LIKE my parents. (I mean, yes, there are political and world view differences between me and my dad that won't ever be bridged. Those have always been there, though. So I have learned how to deal with those.) My parents are hugely funny, hard working and smart people. Mom is a  total goober, she has this impish quality that affects everything she does. She's a spitfire. I can totally see her as the redheaded troublemaker of the family when she was little. Dad is very loving, a bit of a philosopher. He just wants to world to be right, he gets so frustrated at why the world can't just be RIGHT. (His right is, of course, pretty far right of mine, but I understand his confusion as to why things can't just be simplified. I mean, does the world really need to be this complex? I just wish he didn't personally feel like he has to fix it, that is too much burden for one person to carry. And it is impossible anyhow.)

So today I will help Mom unload a truckload of sawdust into her garden. It will be hot, dirty work. Luckily today is a gorgeous day, cooling breezes and it's about 80 degrees outside, not too humid. I guess I'll try to pack my stuff up before we do that. After the sweaty outside work, I'll come inside for a nice cool shower, the water coming right from a spring fed well. I might have a glass of wine with Mom. For dinner Mom wants us to go out to dinner in one of the 2 fine dining establishments in town, we will go for the home cooking place over the Chinese place. (Though I could be happy with Sonic, for my swan song Cherry Slushee.)(And yes, my tooth is better, the antibiotics fixed it fine. Wow that was painful for a couple days, though. I'm just glad I was here to get it fixed, and that i got to eperience that AWESOME dentist's office!) 

We'll come home after and watch a movie, as the Direct TV seems to be kaput and it is beyond any of us to fix it. I am pretty sure you need a degree in Rocket Science to be able to understand the entertainment set up my parents have. Which is humorous in the extreme, as they live in stark fear of hitting that one wrong button on any of the 5 remotes that will send their system crashing. (Which is, actually, what I think happened this time.  Somebody hit a wrong button somewhere and we can't hit undo.) I'm still trying to teach them how to use the cell phone. How do you explain how voice mail works? Like an answering machine in your phone? 

I thought, when I came here after Dad's accident, that I would be able to sneak off for a few days to visit family in Texas or maybe my mother in law in South Carolina. But, between the amount of work to be done here, the fact that even though Dad has about 6 cars only one seems to be working correctly right now, and my brother and his wife coming to visit last week, I never did get away. 

It's been good to be here for such a long uninterrupted time. Not many people get to spend such a long visit with their parents after they move out of the parental nest. It's been nice to spend time with them on a one to one basis, and feel like I did a little part to help them while Dad got over his shock. He's fine, we'll have him around for a good bit longer. I think he has realized he needs to slow down a bit, and I think he will put that into practice. If he doesn't? I told him that if he pulls this shit again I will personally fly out here again and kill him AND charge him for the flight. 

Half an hour before I can check in online for my flight back to Norway. The 24 hour countdown begins.