She's gone!
8:07 a.m.
Yesterday just after lunch we went to our favourite orchard to pick apples: Paula Reds, Lobos and Joyces. The orchard has become a little run down since the previous owners sold it. The trees aren't being pruned back properly, so they're overproducing and the apples are smaller and not as nice looking, nor as tasty. Pity. My mom enjoyed the outing. The weather was beautiful, quite warm, actually, and it's very nice in the orchard. We even tramped around in a field of squash looking for pumpkins. We were in the wrong field. So we ended up buying the pumpkins that had already been picked, and they're sitting on the front porch now, awaiting Hallow'een when they will be carved into merry jack o'lanterns.
Then at 4 p.m. I took my mom to an organ concert at the chapel. The young fellow who performed, Federico Andreoni, is from Milan and is a friend of Miss T., who had brought him home to meet her family. So the T.s had a little reception afterwards which was quite nice. He played beautifully. Buxtehude, Bach, Couperin, Mozart and Mendelssohn. For an encore he played the Bach Tocatta and fugue in D minor. It was really quite amazing in that space on that instrument. He has an incredible clarity of line, each contrapuntal melody coming out exceptionally well. Very nice afternoon.
I ignored my mother as best I could at the reception, talking instead with Mrs. and Miss T. My mother is very vivacious among people, and she makes a good impression. So I don't mind dragging her along to these things. People always tell me what a great gal she is.
Then we came home to pick up the kids and went to Da Toni for supper. My mom insisted on taking us out for dinner, even though there's always plenty of food at home and my cooking is better than anything you can get in a restaurant any day. Son liked it, though, because he ordered steak, and he and Daughter shared a pizza. I had a pasta dish, "trasteverina", which consisted of spinach fettucine and vegetables. It may as well have been named "primavera". It was good, but I couldn't finish it. My mom had a salad and French onion soup. For dessert I had a frozen cappucino cake, which I shared with Hubby. He ordered cheesecake, which he shared with Son. It really was good.
The restaurant was dimly lit, as many restaurants are, and my mother would not stop telling us how she could not see and how she didn't like it. Not once, but twenty times she said this. I read the menu to her, I showed her where to sign her name on the credit card slip, and she complained constantly. I actually ordered a drink, a "cosmopolitan" cocktail, in order to alter my mood, because I was going crazy. While it was affecting me, I was really quite merry, but as soon as it wore off I got frustrated again. Even once we were in the car and on our way home, she wouldn't let up on it. I'm sorry, I know it's difficult for her, but there was nothing we could do about it, and the restaurant wasn't going to change its lighting for one patron, and the least she could have done after expressing herself on the subject once or twice was to leave it alone.
I really did lose my cool when I was trying to show her where to sign her name on the slip. I think the kids were a little embarrassed. I feel bad about that now, but I find my mother very trying. She's also a little hard of hearing and doesn't wear her hearing aid consistently, so she misses things, which means you have to repeat yourself. If you're trying to be witty, or making a funny repartee, and you have to repeat yourself, it is an anticlimax.
She did relate, however, how her parents took her to a demonstration of a theremin when she was about 10 years old at Eaton�s in Toronto. Hubby found that really interesting, because he teaches electronic music, and to hear first-hand about the theremin from someone who heard it in the early days is very exciting. Unfortunately, she was only 10 and doesn't recall too much.
Anyway, I took her to the bus station early this morning for the 8 a.m. bus to Mont�l, and I don't have to deal with her again until we are in Toronto for Thanksgiving in a month. When she's here in October with Big Brother, he will act as a buffer, hopefully, or I can go off with just him and not have to deal with her. I feel terrible having these kinds of emotions. But I don't know what to do about it.
<~~~ * ~~~>
