I know we’re all human, and we all make mistakes. For example, I have a mug and a water bottle. I make coffee/tea in the mug, and use the water bottle for, well, water. One day, my brain, on autopilot, puts cream in my full water bottle instead of my coffee mug.

But the worst mistake anyone I know has ever made was my mother putting away breakfast.

I head to the kitchen to get my own breakfast and glance at the microwave. There’s a box of cereal in it. The microwave isn’t on, the box is just in there, sitting on the little spinning plate.

I remove it, and open the cabinet to put it back, and I find the milk gallon on a shelf in the cabinet, where the cereal goes. Luckily, it had only been in there a few minutes, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. I shout to my mother (in the other room) to make sure she puts things back correctly.

I open the fridge to put the milk gallon back, and lo: there is a dirty bowl where the milk goes. It even has a spoon in it.

My mother is fine, but since then (25+ years), we’ve joked that if something is put back wrong, we have to make sure we didn’t put the cereal in the microwave, or the milk in the cabinet!

Mum: “I just met the neighbours. They seem nice. They have two boys and a dog.”

Me: “What are their names?”

Mum: “I forgot their names, actually, except the dog!”

Me: “Ha. So typical of you. What’s the dog called?”

Mum: “Hamlet.”

Me: “Is he a Great Dane?”

Mum: “…no? Why?”

Me: “Never mind.”

Dad: *Penny dropping.* “Ha!”

Mum: “What is it? What am I not getting? Is it a dad joke?”

Dad: “More like a dead dad joke.”

I’m showing my schoolfriend around my garden after school one day.

Me: “These are some olive trees. My grandad planted them when he was a boy, apparently, so now they’re pretty big.”

Friend: “That’s so cool!”

Me: “In fact, some are ready. Want to try one?”

Friend: “Yeah!”

I hand him a particularly good one. He takes a bite and spits it out, looking disgusted.

That was the day I found out he’d only ever eaten pitted olives stuffed with pimento, and assumed that’s how olives came off the tree…

Related:

As Olive And Breathe… 

Right after college, I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast, but I kept my East Coast phone number. A few months later, I discovered a new Sam’s Club had opened in my old hometown. Apparently, their phone number was a single digit different than my cell phone.

I found out by being woken up by my phone ringing.

Me: *Not fully awake.* “…Hello?”

Caller: “What time do you open?”

Me: “I’m sorry, what was that?”

Caller: “What time do you open?”

Me: “I don’t?”

Caller: “What. Time. Does. The. Store. Open?”

Me: “…I think you have the wrong number. You’ve called my cell phone.”

Caller: “I would like to speak to your manager.”

Me: “I don’t have one.”

I hung up. I immediately get a call back from the same number.

Me: “You have called my phone. It’s 3 am. F*** off.”

I hung up again. I went back to sleep and regrettably forgot to block the number. When I woke up, I had put it out of mind… until late afternoon.

Me: “Hi, this is [My Name].”

Caller: “Hello. I called this morning and spoke with a very unpleasant employee.”

Me: “Oh! That was me. I’m very sorry, you have the wrong number. You’ve dialed a personal cell phone number. I do apologize for my language this morning, but—”

Caller: “I called the right number. Being on your cell phone at work is extremely unprofessional!”

Me: “…Again, as I was saying. You called my cell phone.”

Caller: “This is Sam’s Club.”

Me: “It’s not.”

Caller: “I want to speak to a manager.”

Me: “I don’t have one. This is a personal number.”

Caller: “You shouldn’t be on your cell phone at work!”

Me: “…do you not understand how phones work?”

Caller: “I just want to f****** know what time you open!”

Me: “Then call Sam’s Club!”

I hung up and blocked the number. Looking at my recent calls, the man had apparently called back four times in the early morning, and I had apparently slept through it. He used another phone to call back a few days later in order to complain to me. About me. Sadly, I am still not a Sam’s Club and am not paid to care.

This will be the final entry of the saga of the crazy grandmother from the Stab Caesar series. This is because my parents finally got her on Medicaid, and she is now in a home full-time. But it was not without drama.

In October, her doctors approved her for a pacemaker set to be put in at the end of December. However, in early November, she came downstairs one Thursday, claiming she didn’t have a pulse. My dad barely managed to find it, and the decision was made to take her to the ER. The doctors at our local hospital determined her pacemaker surgery had to be moved up. This meant they needed to transfer her to a different (and much better) hospital in the next county.

Now, non-emergency transport is, in a word, slow. They took so long to get to her that my dad ended up leaving before the ambulance arrived. The slow service was completely unacceptable to her, and no one could give her an exact time of when her transport would arrive. It was nine or ten o’clock at night when it finally arrived, based on when she stopped calling the house to complain about the wait, the nurses, and whatever else she fancied.

Friday, the next day, she had the surgery. My dad, uncle, and cousin went to visit her around lunchtime. She was not happy. “The doctors are horrible! The nurses are horrible! I’ve never been treated so horribly in my life!” This is arguably the best hospital in the entire state, and you don’t hear many stories about patient neglect here, so my uncle did some digging.

The problem: the doctors and nurses insisted on doing their jobs, which involved seeing their other patients. My grandmother seriously expected them to wait around on her hand and foot like they were servants. My uncle went to the nurses’ station to warn them that she was in a mood, but she had already been labeled as “difficult” in their system. She had been in this hospital for a little over twelve hours at this point.

The next day, my dad went to get her, since we had been told since October that the pacemaker surgery was supposed to be an outpatient procedure. But two different doctors agreed that since she is ninety-five, she needed to go straight to a rehab place for a few days so she can be under observation and someone can answer any questions she has about the pacemaker. She was pissed when she found out she wasn’t going home, but the staff eventually convinced her that this was for the best.

The staff at the hospital told my dad they would arrange the transportation, but since it was a weekend, she may not get transferred that day. Dad stayed with her most of the day, but he did eventually have to leave since Mom didn’t want him driving an hour and a half in the dark. (He had a mini-stroke last summer, and he’s mostly fine, but every once in a while, he does something weird, like taking three lefts to turn right.) Crazy called the house several times to complain about the lack of transportation. My dad tried to reason with her. “It’s Saturday night, they’re probably busy and have minimal staff.” This wasn’t good enough.

Sometime on Sunday, she was transferred to the rehab/nursing home. My dad visited her on Monday. She was not happy. After a few days, some of the staff talked to my parents about getting her homed there permanently. Now, my parents had tried to get her on Medicaid a few times before, but she was always denied since she made too much money from Social Security. She drew off my grandfather’s Social Security, even though 1) they divorced when Dad was in high school, 2) he’s been dead for almost twenty-six years now, and 3) she’s been married and divorced a couple of times since she divorced my grandfather.

We can’t figure out how she was allowed to do this.) The staff at the rehab were great and helped walk my parents through the process in a way that would significantly raise her chances of getting accepted, and in the meantime, Medicare would pay for, I think, a hundred days of care for her.

Grandma went back and forth on her view of the place during this hundred-day trial period. She liked the social aspect of it and often played bingo with the other residents. (We had tried to sign her up for elderly social things before and rejected it.) But, she wasn’t allowed to have any outside medicine, and the staff still weren’t treating her like the queen she thinks she is.

We did try to clean her room while she was gone since it was a complete disaster area. The amount of medicine we found in her room was astonishing. Twenty bottles of unopened OmegaXL. Twelve unopened bottles and three opened bottles of Balance of Nature vitamins. Two opened things of Colace. One unopened bottle of calcium chews. Four bottles of Shaklee vitamins. And a whole medium-sized box full of various prescription medications. Some of the medicines and supplements my parents bought for her with her money, but the rest she conned my cousin into getting for her.

Then there was the food.

There was a peanut butter jar that wasn’t closed, three big cans of coffee, too many protein shakes to count, a moldy orange juice bottle, a large jug of powdered Balance of Nature, three boxes of her special tea bags (she refused to drink tea that wasn’t a certain brand), and two cans of long-expired chicken were in her closet. There were also countless pills scattered on her floor, and we are lucky the cats never tried to eat them. The power strip had stains from where she spilled coffee, juice, and who knows what else on it over the years. We’re lucky she didn’t burn our house down. And the smell of urine, baby powder, and Chanel No. 5 was baked into that room. Leaving the window open for a full day did nothing to get rid of that smell. Our best guess is that she lost her sense of smell long before she moved in with us.

We greatly enjoyed our holidays without her. The stress levels in the house plummeted. My parents started to fantasize about going away for long weekends without having to arrange care for her. Finally, at the end of January, we got the acceptance letter in the mail! She is approved and will now stay in the home!

Related:
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad), Part 2
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad)