The Grandma Delay

When we get on the road, I’m amazed at how yellow everything is in Northern Utah. Not just yellow ... curry yellow. It's so different from the fiery red we've passed through in the last few states. I mention it to the girls. Mom says it’s jaundice.

And then I notice something strange – the Grandma Delay.

Mom and I can have an entire conversation in the car and then like five minutes later, Grandma either adds something to the conversation, or has the same conversation over again. We say we’re taking Highway 15. Nothing. There’s silence in the backseat for 5 minutes. Then Grandma says we should take Highway 15. Still, that’s not half as bad as the random commentary coming from the back seat. Every once in a while you’ll hear something completely unrelated to anything we’re talking about ... like, “There’s an Applebees” or “Space kittens need love.”

Ok, I added the last bit in there for dramatic effect – but it really is that bad.

Grandma has always been a tough lady. For as long as I can remember, she's been strength incarnate. She cared for my great aunt, my grandfather's mother and stepmother, and then my grandfather until they passed. She makes more baked good at Christmas than Hostess or Little Debbie. At 86, she STILL works ... from 4 pm to midnight. This is an amazing woman, and I know she's having a hard time with us telling her to put her feet up constantly, not to try and carry anything – doing everything so she doesn't have to. It's such a role reversal.

Today, we're on our way to a friend of my Mom's house. Ray and my mother met ten years ago. When he kissed her, she looked at him and said, "No bells and whistles." When he got home, he set Grandma something in the mail, including a special package for Mom ... a box of bells an whistles.

Very romantic, but it didn't work. They've been great friends ever since.

When we arrive, we kid Ray about how bad we smell due to the copious amounts of dirty laundry we're carting around. He says no, but when Grandma bends down to pet his little dog, Rascal, she growls. I hit the laundry room. On the way to see Shoshone Falls, we drop Mom’s car off for an oil change and headlight polishing at Walmart. They’ll later try and convince me the tab is more than $100 dollars. Yeah, right. I just about have a coronary and we pay about half that.

The falls are really beautiful – like the Grand Canyon, but dark and porous volcanic rock. There’s a small rainbow hovering over the spray from the water coming over the damn.

Ray gives me a pic of what the falls look like on a good day. It's often called the "Niagra of the West":

And here's the one I today:

Ray explains to me a little about how they capture the energy, though from the later picture, the falls look like they're harnessing about as much energy as me these days!

We drive past an area used as a Japanese internment camp during WWII on the way back to pick up the car and then to Ray’s. He makes us our first home cooked meal in two weeks -- beef stew and garlic bread. It’s like warm hot love in my tummy. Or maybe that’s the drinks he’s been feeding me. This guy obviously reads the blog, because there’s a pitcher of Bloody Mary’s waiting for me and a pitcher of margaritas waiting for Mom. She says she can’t even feel her face, so I try and steal her garlic bread. She’s not that drunk – she nearly rips my arm off trying to get it back.

Yum.

Two margaritas later, she can barely stand up. I love that when she gets tipsy, her nose turns red. It’s so cute. I call her Rudolph. But then she asks me why the room is moving.

I think it’s time for bed.

This is the first time I've gone to bed before about 1 or 2 am since we left. I've died and gone to heaven.

We got the camera from Vegas delivered to Ray's today. Scroll back over previous posts for some pics and hysterical video.