A Weird and Unusual Week

Heidi with Abraham
"You should make these.  It only takes flour, water, and sugar, ya know," the woman said to me as she handed me the bag.

"What?" I asked, unsure if I'd heard her correctly.

She repeated the same line verbatim.

"Yeah, but yours are so good," I said and accepted the cookie from the cashier and left.

An odd conversation considering I just bought the cookie from the place where she worked.  Plus,  inaccurate.  There's at least one other ingredient to this particular cookie.

As strange as that was, I didn't think about it again until much later.  Maybe because it couldn't rival some of the other odd experiences of the week.

It started last Saturday around 2am when I received a text from my daughter, Heidi, telling me she missed her red-eye flight out of LAX.  A freak accident on the LA freeway stopped all traffic at 10 pm, and she got to the ticket counter twenty-nine minutes before her flight.  The agents wanted to let her through, but the computer system refused.  So, instead of picking her up Saturday at 9, and then enjoying a visit with her while we drove to Commerce, GA to pick up my grandchildren, Victoria and Amari, we flipped our schedule around.  We picked up the grandchildren, drove back to Greenville, fed them lunch and ran by the store for supplies, and THEN we went to the airport and picked up Heidi.  Most of Saturday was gone by then.

But that's not the only unusual occurrence.  Nope.  A few days later, after running a lot of errands and still recovering from a weekend with my grandchildren, I decided to get to bed early.  About an hour before my chosen bedtime, unexpected visitors showed up at the door...and stayed for two-and-a-half hours.  It was late for visiting when they got there, they didn't really come to see me, but there I was entertaining well beyond my time to turn into a pumpkin.

Then, we had the dog with us one day when Heidi wanted lunch, so we ate at a restaurant with outdoor seating.  Abraham inhaled his water and promptly threw up all over the patio!  The people in the restaurant were very kind about it and said it had happened before.

Yes, it was an unusual week, but, also, for good reasons.

I laughed at Abraham's antics when Heidi arrived.  He's her dog, but she couldn't take him when she moved to California, so he goes bananas, jumping, dancing, and whining like a puppy when she comes home.  It's one of the few times we have to stop him from jumping on the furniture.  He gets so excited, he jumps up there to greet her.

Heidi and Amari met for the first time, and she played with Victoria who she doesn't get to see often.  She took LOTS of pictures of the kids, so I'm expecting some really great photographs later.

Of course, the main reason Heidi came home was to visit my mom in the nursing home.  I listened to her reminisce with Mom about times they spent together.  They have a special bond that only grandmothers have with their grandchildren, so Mom responded a little more than normal this week.  Like the rest of us, Heidi remembers dancing and singing around the kitchen with her grandmother.  Any child who spent time alone with my mom knows about this. The song Heidi remembered and sang for us was one I don't recall Mom singing, Why Don't You Get Me Some Money, made famous by Peggy Lee and later Jessica Rabbit.  Although it's not among the repertoire I recall Mom singing, it sounded like most of the other big band music she loves. And in Heidi's voice, everything sounds beautiful.

Abraham visited the nursing home with Heidi one day, and I watched the faces of the residents and staff light up as this big, gangly, dog greeted them and gave them unconditional love.  He behaved like a gentlemen and enjoyed the attention of many special people.

Afterward, we grabbed some lunch (yes this is the restaurant where we took the dog), and while we sat outside enjoying the fresh air, my niece's husband pulled up on his motorcycle and chatted with us for a few minutes.  It was a nice surprise to see him and added one more person, and unexpected experience, to the people Heidi managed to see while she was in town.

So, is it any wonder that the cooking suggestion by the cashier at the restaurant rolled right off my back?  Not sure why she thought I should bake the cookies myself, but hey, she said it in a helpful manner.  I think she just meant to be friendly, not send future business away.

So, now it's back to the mundane...the normal...maybe.  Any strange or weird occurrences for you this week?

Comments

Chris Evers said…
Sounds like a busy week but glad y'all had fun :)
Very busy, Chris, and I didn't even list everything that happened...like Heidi shooting a gun, for example.
Are you sure it was a human cookie? Could have been a doggie cookie :)
Hah! Last I checked, Panera Bread sold human food.
Heidi Cox said…
Thank you again for taking great care of me, Mom. I miss you all so much.

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