I love this place.
 I say this every time I come up here. Because it’s true. |
A long, glorious sleep made its way to me, and I welcomed it with open arms and closed eyes, for ten restful hours. Awakening, I looked out my bedroom window to the view above. The lake was incredibly calm this morning.
Aunt Annette had made her early morning trip to see Uncle Frank, and I imagined her stopping for the “Cab” the she promised Uncle Frank she’d pick up for him on the way in this morning. From the description, it sounded like a frozen frappuccino coffee kind of drink.
From everything set out last night by Aunt Annette before she went to bed, I made myself a breakfast consisting of a cup of coffee, two slices of Portuguese sweet bread, and a bowl of Honey Smacks cereal. Perfectly delicious.
Next, I decided to get my cardio in for the day while Aunt Annette was gone, so as not to take away any of our together-time when she’s here. I walked around the circle that Breezy Lake Drive is many, many times, as it’s not a big circle at all, and I listened to my iPod while I walked.
|
Cardio (Walking) |
60 |
(Don’t know.) |
After finishing my walk at about 11:30, I sliced a package of Cracker Barrel White Sharp Cheddar Cheese, and arranged the slices around a dinner plate. Next, I picked off and rinsed some seedless, green grapes and put them in a bowl, which I then set in the middle of the cheese plate. And finally, I washed and sliced the tops off her strawberries, sprinkling half of them with a little sugar, and leaving the rest plain. I can’t remember if my aunt has diabetes or not, and if she eats sugar.
My goal was to have lunch ready for her whenever she returned home, and I was going to boil a couple of hot dogs, but I remembered her saying yesterday that she has a few other things, one of them being some egg salad, and another some clam chowder, so I held off on that until she got back.
She returned at a little after 12:30, with a good report on Uncle Frank. He’d eaten a little more than usual, and had walked a good ways this morning—a good ways being, probably, about 200 feet.
We had a nice leisurely lunch, and then a few drinks, just relaxing and chit-chatting until she cooked one hot dog, added a little mustard and relish to it, and then wrapped it up to take to Uncle Frank.
We visited for about an hour-and-a-half or so, and had a short financial discussion during that time. I have some questions to take back to Nathan to help them make their final decision.
I had to say my goodbye, and I tried hard not to think about my last goodbye to Jeanie-baby, at which she’d said, “This won’t be our last goodbye.” I hugged him tight, and said, while he was holding me, “Please get well soon and get back to that beautiful house of yours.”
After leaving the room, I said to Aunt Annette, “Just a second.” I went back into the room, to his back half of the room, and pulled the curtain back a little so he could see me. “I love you,” I said. He mouthed back, “I love you, too, John.”
Aunt Annette stopped at “Diggy’s” on the way home from the hospital, to get some clamcakes. This doesn’t sound odd until you know that Diggy’s is an ice cream place. As we were pulling in, she got out the coupon she had and I noticed at the top of the coupon that the name of the store it was for was “Iggy’s.”
I said, “Is this Iggy’s or Diggy’s?
“It’s Diggy’s,” she said.
“Well, this coupon is for Iggy’s,” I said.
“Iggy’s? Iggy’s?” she repeated, incredulously.
We both cracked up over this, and were somewhat relieved to not have gone up to the window at an ice cream place to order clamcakes.
But, thinking some more, Aunt Annette said, “But John, I called this place to make sure I knew where it was. And they told me that it was in West Warwick, in a little shopping center, next door to an electronics store and the Subway!” Which sure enough is what surrounded us.
I said, “Well the coupon clearly says ‘Iggy’s,’ not ‘Diggy’s.”
We started to pull out, but she stopped and said, “I’m just going to go up to the window and asked them if they know where we can get clamcakes nearby.”
I watched her from the car, and after talking to the woman at the window for a minute, she turned her head back to me and made the funniest face. She came over to my door and said, “John, I asked them where the nearest place was that we could by clamcakes, and the girl said, ‘We have clamcakes.'” We both absolutely fell out about this!
What a crazy sequence of events: Several days ago, she saw a coupon for clamcakes at a place called Iggy’s. Thinking it was Diggy’s, she had called to make sure Diggy’s was located where she thought it was. Today, we pulled up to the place, and it was obviously an ice cream place, and I noticed the coupon for Iggy’s not Diggy’s. We were about to abandon the place to search for a clamcake place, but it turned out that Diggy’s had clamcakes as well as Iggy’s.
At home, we enjoyed the clamcakes, and I had some delicious New England Clam Chowder left over from a batch given to Aunt Annette and Uncle Frank by a neighbor this weekend. Aunt Annette also made me a “Coffee Cab” (which is short for coffee cabinet, which makes equally as little sense to me), but it consisted of vanilla ice cream, Autocrat coffee syrup, and 1% milk. Yum! Yum! Yum!
We chatted throughout the evening, and Aunt Annette told me a lot of stories, a very touching one about Uncle Frank’s brother’s decline with cancer, and said brother’s “tight” (and not in a good way) wife.
Also during the night, she told a story of trying to get “Coffee Cabs,” when she and Uncle Frank lived briefly in New York. When she asked a lady at an ice cream shop if they could have a Coffee Cab, the lady said, “No, but I could call you a Yellow Cab,” is that what you want, a taxi?
At about 10:00, we firmed up our plans for the morning ride back to Rhode Island Hospital from where I’d do my reverse cab (lots of “cab talk” in this entry) ride to the train station for the 9:40 train back to Boston.
And then, we said goodnight.