Saturday Afternoon Chat August 3

Today is my mom’s 80^th birthday so this afternoon, right around the time this posts, I’ll be at her house with the kids and my brother and dad to celebrate her birthday. The Husband will, sadly, be at work, but he will see her tomorrow.

Yesterday Dad and I took her to a doctor appointment and she did fairly well despite some of her health issues.

We had an adventure while trying to get her back to the car from the lab for her bloodwork when the sky opened up and dropped all the rain on us that the weather had been saying we were going to get for a couple of days. The wind was also blowing a couple of different directions and Dad and I knew she’d get soak while we wheeled her to the car (she uses the wheelchair so she doesn’t have to walk as far with her cane and walker but doesn’t use the chair at home), so we decided to wait until the rain passed to take her out to the car.

While we were in that town for her appointment (a regular check up), we also picked up groceries in a pickup order. Well, Dad did while I stayed with Mom.

I didn’t write a blog post last week like I usually do so I didn’t write about the sleepover Little Miss had other than a mention in my Sunday Bookends post. It went well and when I mentioned it in my Sunday Bookends, some other bloggers commented about remembering sleepovers or not remembering them because they didn’t go to them.

I honestly didn’t go to a ton of sleepovers. I did have some as a kid and there were a few at my house. The sleepovers at my house often went sidewise or got weird. One time my best friend at the time (we haven’t spoken in almost six years, sadly. People just grow apart) ate hot dogs at dinner, we made a tent in my room to sleep in and I slept between her and her sister (as I often did when we had sleepovers), and threw up a mere inches from my head in the middle of the night.

Luckily her mom didn’t live very far away and came to get her. We left the sister asleep and took her home the next day.

Another time, those sisters came over for a sleep over and the younger sister – who was born with a hole in her heart and ran out of energy faster than other kids – took a nap shortly after she got to my house. I ran up to check on her and she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for several seconds. Then she turned her head slowly, like a robot, and stared at me but, it was weird, I could tell she wasn’t all there.

I told her that dinner was done if she wanted to come down. She didn’t respond. She simply turned her face toward the ceiling again, eyes still open, and then closed her eyes.

I was entirely creeped out so I went downstairs and told her sister and she shrugged and said, “Yeah. She does that stuff all the time. It’s sort of like sleep walking but she’s just lying there instead. I’ll go wake her up.”

Luckily she was fine.

When I was a teenager, I had a couple of sleepovers with several different girls at my house and during one of them a friend really did sleepwalk. She had fallen asleep early but got up while the rest of us were giggling at 2 a.m. and asked where our bathroom was. She knew where our bathroom was. She’d been to our house many times because we’d known each other since we were toddlers.

I told her where it was, though, and told her she could go through the kitchen to get there. She staggered into the kitchen, turned the lights off and on a few times, staggered back toward me, jumped up and down on the couch a couple times, staggered to her sleeping bag, curled up in a little ball and fell back asleep again.

All of us other girls just burst into laughter. In the morning she didn’t remember any of it.

During another sleepover we pranked called a radio station. So glad we didn’t get in major trouble for that one. My parents never knew or they wouldn’t have allowed us to. They’d gone to bed. The DJ still played our song and I think we recorded it on a cassette like you did back in those days. I’m pretty sure we requested Step-by-Step by New Kids on the Block.

My mom used to like to dance to the music we listened to – pretty innocent stuff like the aforementioned New Kids on the Block. That was fun to watch.

How about you? Did you hold or attend sleepovers when you were a kid?

Honestly, I was more of a homebody and mama’s girl. I didn’t like sleeping away from my house so there were really only three friends I ever had sleepovers with and they were few and far between.

Shifting gears here a bit, last week I found out that our neighbors’ cat (she’s our neighbor four doors down) had passed away. This wouldn’t be that interesting except this cat was sort of like the street’s cat. He didn’t go too far but he would roam up and down the street and all the neighbors would greet him. There are eight houses on this street and in some ways, we felt like he belonged to us.

Simba was the first “creature” we met when we moved to this street. We took Zooma the Wonder Dog on a walk and she was very “excited” to see Simba, who wasn’t too sure about Zooma and stayed a safe distance away but watched her.

After that, we would greet Simba when we walked by and he always liked a nice pet.

I think everyone gave him a nice pet when they walked by because during the winter when we had two back-to-back snowstorms of two feet each, we visited our neighbor and Simba climbed on my lap and rubbed all over me. My neighbor said that he was trying to soak up all the attention he hadn’t been getting because everyone was trapped inside their house and couldn’t pet him while they were walking by.

Over the years he and our older cat had a few stand-offs, complete with yowling, and a couple of all-out fights. When we first brought Scout home, he stalked her and let her know she was not welcome on his turf by yowling at her.

Overtime, though, they started to tolerate each other. Simba still loved us to talk to him and give him a pet no matter where he was on the street.

Our other neighbor wrote the nicest things about Simba in our local paper (they own it and no, it isn’t the paper The Husband works at) and I had saved it out to share here but I think I tossed it in the recycling. She essentially wrote that Simba loved to sun tan, get pets, and that he lived the Hakuna Matata life.

Indeed he did and he is already greatly missed by the residents of our street. I still slow down when I go by his house, being careful in case he darts out to get back to the house, though he rarely did. He would just sit by the little shed across the road and watch the cars go by and if we saw him we would stop the car and Little Miss would jump out and give him a quick pet and tell him how sweet he was.

There are a lot of debates about if animals go to heaven or not but I believe they do and I can’t wait to give Simba a quick pet on the way to my mansion.

For now, I’ll give my own cats some cuddles. I think they’re ready for the cooler weather and warm cuddles too because they’ve been climbing on me and rubbing up against me a few times a week. Last week Scout was determined to lay on me all day Saturday and she didn’t just want to be on my lap, she had to be right near my face every time. Not sure what all that was about but she was better the rest of the week and didn’t have to be in my face, luckily.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting? Let me know in the comments.