Being in a war was harder, thinks Gramps
So I heard that Gramps's physio therapy chick was all, "We're ready 2 do yr physio, Jim! Around 2 the left! --U know the way!" And Gramps sed, "Yes." W/Iris perched on a side table watching, therapy girl was lifting Gramps's rite leg, all "Lot's of tension in yr legs. Let's C if we can limber them up a bit." Then she lowered the leg, kneeled next 2 the xxam table, and sed, "Now, can U use the technique we've been practicing? That's rite. Roll 2 a sitting position and.... get out of bed." Gramps did the rolling while being all, "Mmhh." I heard most of this from Iris, but I also get a lil txt mssg from Gramps: "1x ran miles, crrying rifle & gunny sack on back. physio = harder!" Poor Gramps.
Mike, no1 forces me 2 visit Gramps. I visit cuz he's my bud! Oh, and as U predicted Dad approached me, all, "April, buddy! What wd U say if I told U I'd outfit a sweet suite in the basement of the Stibbs house when we moved there?" And I was all, "What wd U say if I told U I want Mike 2 B my Daddy?" And Dad got his gobsmacked look an' sed, "Therapy!" And I sed, "Well, I didn't say it, did I? I only asked U what U wd say!" And he sed, "I think my choo-choo magazines arrive today!" And he ran away.
Apes
Mike, no1 forces me 2 visit Gramps. I visit cuz he's my bud! Oh, and as U predicted Dad approached me, all, "April, buddy! What wd U say if I told U I'd outfit a sweet suite in the basement of the Stibbs house when we moved there?" And I was all, "What wd U say if I told U I want Mike 2 B my Daddy?" And Dad got his gobsmacked look an' sed, "Therapy!" And I sed, "Well, I didn't say it, did I? I only asked U what U wd say!" And he sed, "I think my choo-choo magazines arrive today!" And he ran away.
Apes
posted by April Patterson @ 6:41 AM
9 Comments:
At 1:33 PM,
Anonymous said…
April,
Formerly little sis. It’s a sad thing when reading a story you wrote about Grandpa Jim getting physiotherapy is the highlight of my day. Gone are my days of ease. I used to get up in the morning and come home at night and never had to deal with the complications of my children. Now, when I get up, Deanna’s already gone to work with dad, and you’ve already gone to school, and there is a little note from my wife which says, “I’ve fed the children and dropped them off at the H.G. Davis Public School daycare. Be sure to remember to pick them up at 3 pm. I don’t want to get another call at work asking when my children are going to get picked up and then find you’ve spent the day in Toronto with Josef Weeder.”
You make one little mistake and you never are allowed to forget it. My wife used to be nicer before I became a kept man.
Now, by the time I get up, and get showered, finish off the granola and milk, and get ready to write more of best-selling novel #2 Breaking the Windjammer; then it’s time to pick up the children. After that I have to wait until you get home or Deanna gets home before I can go back to writing. To think, I once ran a magazine for years, carrying a full load of freelance work and writing a novel instead of sleeping in a sack with my wife! This is harder.
Love,
Michael Patterson
At 1:54 PM,
howard said…
April,
I remember the one and only occasion I drove your Grandpa Jim to his physiotherapy appointment. After we got there, the physiotherapist pointed to a sign on the side of the wall which said, “No scents is good sense. Se parfumer peut offensez.” I said, “Oh a pun on the word ‘scents’. Very clever.” The physiotherapist said, “No, um…ma’am.” I think she was confused about my gender because she noticed my skirt and I was wearing one of my nicer wigs. She continued, “If you are going to be bringing Jim here for his appointments you need to not wear perfume that day.” I was shocked at this gross statement. I said, “But I’m wearing Baccarat's Les Larmes Sacrées de Thebes. Isn’t there an exception for expensive perfumes?” The physiotherapist said there wasn’t.
Well, the next time I tried to do it. I bathed using unscented soaps. I brushed using unscented toothpaste. I gargled using unscented mouthwash. I even left the house and I went possibly two kilometres before my natural body odor started to overwhelm me, and I had to turn around and called Iris to tell her I couldn’t do it. Let’s face it, April, I am a big, stinky man, and nobody wants to smell that on my body, especially me.
I once ran for miles, carrying the unconscious body of your boyfriend and wearing a dress which was little more than a very decorative gunny sack when we rescued him from that clinic last year! That was difficult. Going without perfume? This is harder.
Howard Bunt
At 2:12 PM,
Anonymous said…
april, the shakespeareworks' theatre ovah by the football field at r.p. boire iz a mess. it’s gonna take hours 2 fix it w/all the mislabeled & misplaced sound & light cables. i dunno how i got stuck w/this. well, actually i do. az u know, my big weakness is wen girls cry. i wud rather run 4 miles, carryin’ a rifle & a gunny sack full of poached chickens, b-ing chased by an angry farmer w/a double-barreled shotgun & a pitch fork, than hafta make a girl cry.
i think honoria told u how she got permission 4 me 2 fix the shakespeareworks' theatre light & sound & she wuz rilly proud of herself. ‘course she didn’t seem 2 unnerstand eva’s dad, mr. abuya bought that theatre 4 the skool, & eva & duncan r both in the drama club production & i haven’t xxactly been gettin’ along w/thoze 2 since duncan stole eva frum me & duncan sent his attack cat aftah me. i wuz tryin’ 2 stay far away frum the whole thing. so, wen honoria told me wut she did, i told her i wuzn’t gonna do it. & then she cried a lot & she ran away.
so wen the principal came up 2 me 2day & sed, “mr. jones. how wud u like a job doin’ the sound & lights 4 the drama club?” i found myself sayin’, “yeah, sure. wut’s it pay?” @1st the principal wuzn’t gonna pay nethin’, cuz it wuz a skool activity. if he knew i wuz gonna take it neway just so honoria wudn’t cry, he prolly cud’ve got me 2 do it 4 free. lucky 4 me, he didn’t know that, so i gotta little salary outa it. ‘course, once i saw wut a mess the theatre’s sound & lights were, i’m thinkin’ i needed 2 ask 4 more money.
At 2:47 PM,
Anonymous said…
April,
Dearest future sister. This morning I woke up resolute to make a stand with Jeremy Jones. I had decided to break up with him in between my home economics and my shop classes. It was a tough decision to make, as you know, since I had not arranged for any backup boyfriend with a trust fund to fall back on, due to the scarcity of boys at R.P. Boire Senior Secondary who have trust funds. Not only that, but I have learned recently from Mr. Caine, who frequently employs me as a baby-sitter, that people with trust funds oftentimes prefer girls in accounting as girlfriends, so they can have their accountant who invests their money and their girlfriend all in one person. I had not realized it was a trend, but it seems so practical when you think about it. I may need to apply myself to gaining some accounting skills when I am in R.P. Boire full time next year.
Well, in between my home economics class and my shop class, I tried to find Jeremy in his usual spot he goes to try avoid being around other people, and he was not there. After some inquiry, I was told he had gone to the Shakespeareworks' Theatre over by the football field. Well, dearest future sister, when I was at my former school, Cashwell Day School, I once ran for miles, carrying a breakup note in my school backpack, so I could deliver my breakup note in person to a boyfriend I had on the Cashwell track and field team! But then, I had Bronson van Daam waiting in the wings as my next boyfriend, so I didn’t mind the effort. Going to the Shakespeareworks' Theatre all the way over by the football field to break up with Jeremy, when I didn’t have any backup boyfriend was harder. I think I must have turned around one hundred times before I got there. But I was going to be resolute to make a stand and I finally made my way there.
When I found Jeremy, he was knee deep in old, dusty cables and he was saying quite a few ungentlemanly words. I said to him, “Jeremy, could you come over here where it is not so dusty?” So he came and I said, “Jeremy. I have decided that since you are not a gentleman, I have to break up with you.” His response was a little surprising. He said, “Great. That’s just wonderful. I took this stupid job doing the freaking sound and lights for the foobish drama club for stinking nothing.”
Well, I could not have been more surprised, dearest future sister. You could have knocked me over with a feather, such was my dismay. I had thought my Jeremy flower was not a gentleman, and thus not worthy of me; and then he turned around and showed me I was not worthy of him for not trusting him to do the gentlemanly thing. I felt just as embarrassed as when Elizabeth Bennet read Mr. Darcy’s letter, perhaps even moreso. Needless to say I apologized to Jeremy right then and there, and I daresay, if the place had not been so utterly filthy and Jeremy not covered in dust, I might not have been able to restrain myself from doing more than kissing him unreservedly.
April, I can only hope that when you finally get the courage to speak to my brother about his rumour-mongering, you will similarly find that he is actually a gentlemen worthy of your love and affection, as my Jeremy flower is to me.
Love,
Honoria Delaney-Forsythe
At 6:38 PM,
April Patterson said…
soundz like a lot of u r doing stuff u find harder than other stuff u have dun b4. i can kinda rel8. uc, my french teacher? she switched classrooms w/the spanish 3 teacher, senorita confundir-abril. but i guess when this got announced, i was preoccupied. and when it was time 4 french class, i wandered in2 the spanish class. and i guess i was preoccupied then, 2, and i sat down w/out noticing that the wrong students and teacher were in our classroom. and senorita gave out a test, and i took it. that was way harder than my french tests have been. since i've never, like, studied spanish @ all.
apes
At 8:06 PM,
Anonymous said…
april, i h8 wen that happs. i remembah 1 tyme senorita confundir-abril switched class w/my math class & i wuz convinced she wuz a supply teach & she wuz introducin' a lotta new mathematical terms.
At 8:15 PM,
Anonymous said…
April and Jeremy,
Honestly you two. I wonder how you managed to make it into Grade 10 with those attention spans.
April,
Just to let you know, dearest future sister, Jeremy is helping me baby-sit Francie tonight, while Mr. Caine is out with his accountant lady friend and her odd menagerie of creatures that follow her about. I haven't seen my brother all night, so I have high hopes for a very nice, uninterrupted evening now little Francie is asleep in bed. I think my Jeremy flower is going to learn just how I believe a lady should treat her gentleman caller.
Love,
Honoria Delaney-Forsythe
At 9:23 PM,
April Patterson said…
i think that senorita confundir-abril is a major trickster, eh?
honoria, just w8. sumtyme u will b a lil bit preoccupied and u will have a similar thing happen 2 u, even w/out having a short attention span. uh-oh, what's this txt i'm getting? hm, it's from ger. uh, honoria. here's what ger sez: "jones in trub! messing w/sister! g. getting him!"
apes
At 1:16 AM,
Anonymous said…
April,
Dearest future sister. Thanks ever so much for the warning about my brother coming over to disrupt my nice time with Jeremy. He was too late to prevent us from kissing, and though I was trying to encourage Jeremy to go further, he kept on muttering “Only 14” to himself. Nevertheless, we did get to do some quite pleasant kissing. Jeremy is clearly experienced in this area, and he did a fine job of it. He doesn’t quite match the kisses of my prior boyfriend Bronson van Daam, but Bronson was trained in proper elocution from the time he was an infant, so naturally it would be difficult for any man to match his mastery of lip and tongue. Nevertheless, Jeremy’s kissing is quite suitable, even though it does take a little bit to get over the feeling I am kissing a man who appears older than Pater, and his proclivity for greasy food which leaves a little after taste to his kisses.
Your warning was quite nicely timed though. Jeremy left long before Gerald got here, and Gerald made the mistake of tackling Mr. Caine as he was coming home from his date, thinking he was Jeremy, no doubt because they appear to be the same age. Mr. Caine was quite upset and informed Gerald in no uncertain terms that even though he and Gerald are both potential brother-in-laws linked by Patterson women, he will seek his revenge. When he got inside, Mr. Caine called up his employer, Gordon Mayes, and tried to order a hitman for my brother. Naturally, I was quite distressed to hear it, but fortunately, Mr. Mayes is not as vengeful as Mr. Caine.
The only thing I am worried about now, is whether or not Jeremy will prove to be a true gentlemen and keep his activities with me to himself, or will Jeremy prove to made of the same mettle as my brother and seek to ruin my reputation with slanderous gossip, as my brother did to you. I think it will be a good test for my Jeremy flower, don’t you?
Love,
Honoria Delaney-Forsythe
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