A post in which some questions are answered

I was up at 2:30am this morning with insomnia.  I tried drinking some water, which didn't help.  I got back up and futzed around a bit, putting in a load of laundry that needed doing.  I was awake when the washer cut off, so I moved it to the dryer.  My hips were hurting.  Eventually I took a pill, and when it kicked in I went back to sleep. 

I settled in to work today, but it was a slow day, and I had a bit of time to get acquainted with my new phone.  By the end of the day I was consistently able to get it 'open' with only one or two swipes of my finger, and I set up a weather status on my home screen.  I also looked through the manual at some of the capabilities and was pretty impressed - this is a formidable little machine, and light years beyond my old phone.  If I can just figure out how it works...

I sent RBL an email, again thanking them for the phone, and for their help and patience.  They really were better to me than I even knew.

After work, it was off to Dad and Eve's for dinner.  I haven't seen them in a couple of weeks, so we needed to get caught up, but I also had an agenda.  There are a couple of things that have been kind of milling around in the back of my head about them that I wanted to know about.

#1 was more recent.  At Christmas, despite Dad having taken Eve to an auction and buying her a (I found tonight) second set of Christmas china, we ate dinner on plastic plates and plastic platters.  It was just so incredibly unlike her that it bothered me.  I was wondering about early-onset dementia or something (the women in her family do get progressively quare as they get older).  She told me tonight that she didn't want to wash the china - that she had actually set the table with it, and then took it back up and put it away.  Which to me begs the question why bother to have the freakin' stuff, but that's her life.  Then it occurred to me that the plasticware she used wasn't really intended to be disposable, and had to be washed anyway.  She told me she threw it all away!  I guess it's a silly thing to be upset about, but it is just so wasteful.  That stuff will be in a landfill for thousands of years after being used once.  To me that's just deplorable.  But all of that is her business and her prerogative, I suppose.   

#2 was older.  When I took Jason to meet them (still not a peep, btw), the only mistake I noticed was that he had put his bread on his dinner plate rather than his bread plate (the table had been set with bread plates).  I just knew that Eve would notice, and briefly wrestled with myself about whether or not I should try to make some covert gesture to make him aware of it.  In the end, I decided not to make him nervous because he was getting along with the so well.  I also knew that she would be sure to notice any 'covert' gesture anyway, so I let it go.  I wondered if in fact she had noticed it.  She told me tonight that she hadn't, which was quite a surprise.

Part #2a was that during the same meal, I noticed that Dad too had his bread on his dinner plate.  I wondered if he had noticed and done that on purpose to make Jason feel more comfortable, but decided that was a bit too empathetic for my dad.  Once again - totally wrong.  He in fact had noticed, and didn't use his bread plate on purpose.  I was quite surprised and rather touched.  I'd been too hard on the old man.  He can be surprisingly adroit at times. 

Dinner tonight was a quite nice shrimp pasta primavera, and I got my questions settled as we ate.  Afterwards we repaired to the den for quite a pleasant visit.  But the insomnia crept up on me, and after a bit I started yawning. 

I headed home, stopping by a quiet Publix on the way to pick up some Sugar in the Raw for my coffee, and turned in.