Cold, Food & the Burn Pile

Here's a picture of Dad dressed for the day, he's going into the den to watch TV. This is how he dresses for inside. He has on a t-shirt, a shirt, a sweatshirt, and a lined sweatshirt jacket. Today he put a hat on. Most of the time he sits there with the hood of the jacket over his head.

It blows me away that he's wearing sweatshirts. Before five years ago, he wouldn't be caught dead wearing one.

Supper is over. I fed him boiled shrimp, pickled beets and shelley peas with green beans. He asked me what the beets were after the meal. He hadn't touched them. I forgot to tell him what everything on his plate was. He used to request them, and I made them exactly the way Mother used to.

It's a little irritating to constantly have to make two meals.  Mom and I don't want to eat corn dogs, hamburgers, bologna sandwiches, BLTs, hot dogs or pizza for every meal. The only vegetables that he'll eat anymore are green beans and turnips greens, and those only occasionally. I have to say he will eat fruit - apples, oranges, bananas, and grapes if they're sweet. He'll also eat a tomato with every meal.

We just got through having a "discussion" about the burn pile out back. Our weather has been windy. It's blowing a lot of limbs down. He's been stacking sticks and limbs on the burn pile since the end of last summer.

He's decided it's about time to do a burn. For him, this means splashing gasoline on the pile and throwing a match on it. The neighbors fear him. The sitters kept him from doing it last year. Now he's all revved up and ready to go. Of course, he wants to wait until it gets dry. <rolling eyes>

I said I'd help him, and he turned me down. He said he'd go out to do it sometime when it gets dry. I said he couldn't do it when it got dry. To which he replied, "I'll do it when I'm damn good and ready." "Well," I said, "Not if the sheriff says you can't." So he wanted to know how the hell the sheriff would know. "I'll call him," I say. "I'll send you home," he says.  I just waved my hand at him, and say, "Oh, go on."

I couldn't even get to the part about a burn permit. That's a new thing around this small town. Not actually so new, just something he's ignored for years. Now he's not rational at all about it. I'm at my wits end on how to distract him.  The sitters are so much better at that than I am.