Are you ever a little miffed.

We went to visit daughter in DC for a few days, we had a nice visit up til the final day, when she startedto get on everyone's case for one reason or another. Personally, I think it is her way of reacting to the fact that we are leaving and she refused to admit that she misses us at times, so she gets a little prickly.

But what really got my ire was the fact that she was picking on her younger brother as if he were 10 years old. Why isn't he done with his associates degree, why is he playing that game on his phone, and on and on and on. Harshly judging everything he did or does. To the point where he had sucked up enough and basically expressed the fact that he did not answer to her.

So on a little bit of a sour note we took our leave a couple of hours earlier than we expected. My wife hates to leave under those circumstances and rightfully so.
We stopped in Baltimore and walked about for an hour and a half , thus restoring some of the relaxed sense of earlier in the weekend.

But when we came home, we came home to the furnace being down, the clothes dryer being kaput, the mother in law in the midst of one medical crisis after another, along with the demands of work .

Into that fray stepped our younger child. He waited for the utility guy to come to fix the furnace. He called me to let me know I need not rush home as it was fixed. He lugged off what appeared to be 500 pounds of laundry to the laundromat and dried, folded and brought it home, so that when I arrived home from work I found it that way. I left it that way for his mother to see, as I am sure she had the same sense I did that we would be doing laundry that night.

But the thing that got my attention is that we got calls , Mother in law is in trouble, she sat in her wheel chair and could not get out to use the bathroom. She of the stubborn : I will accept no help in the form of cleaning ladies, home health aides, visiting nurses, meals on wheels variety.

Why should she, she has us cleaning , the brother in law doing the yard work, we do her shopping and cooking.
We make sure she is clean, she is fed and all too often react to her crisises. She really ought to be in assisted living at this time, but that means she will need to spend her money, something she is loathe to do.

So she is bound and determined to die in her own home, which she might just do.

But I was in the midst of something, my brother in law at work, my wife at work . Into this we asked our son, can you go . Here is a 20 year old, going to assist his 87 year old grandmother to go to the bathroom. He dropped everything , later he said he pumped 48 minutes worth of quarters into the laundromat dryer , and went and took care of the crisis. It was his second trip of the day, for he brought over the meals my wife had cooked for her earlier in the day.

The crisis being a hysterical old lady in need. .
Someday , when I am not so miffed at his sister, I think I will let her know what her brother is all about
He isn't half the student she was and he never will be, but unless she changes, he promises to be twice the human.