Thursday, March 27, 2014

Didn’t sleep much at all last night. Awoke nearly ever 2 hours, until I finally figured out why: My cell phone was beeping. A missed call! My phone was in the living room, where poor Valentino was trying to sleep. He, too, is exhausted today. It apparently awakened him as it did me. Val sleeps on the Chippendale couch, when he isn’t upstairs on one of the many dog beds (there are four in the house and one on the porch). Rob said that if Val were in Westminster, four little boys would have to carry him in, as he would sit draped on his couch, head against his plush pillow. I even had the 2-dog window seat cushion reupholstered for him. It’s a lovely pattern in a fabric called “Kryptonite,” made to withstand 10,000 scratches by a standard poodle—well, maybe!

Mom is not crazy about the dogs. She refers to them mainly as the white dog and the black dog. Although she remarks kindly about Lucia when Lucia is sleeping, Mom often shouts, Go away!, when she gets too near. I remember a few of the dogs we had when I was growing up. We never kept them more than a few weeks. Dad loved dogs; mom hated them. He put one of them in the tub one day and had to run back to the “store”—as we called it—to see to a customer. Dad was in the furniture business. Mom screamed when she found the dog and started throwing things at it. Mind you, this was a puppy. Cutest little thing ever. There was no pleasing my mother on this score—ever! And so, her particular end-of-life brand of hell or heaven is to live with two standard poodles. She does remark, however, that they are so clean: How do you keep your house so clean with two dogs. I don’t understand how you do it. And cleanliness is or used to be one of her greatest concerns. My brother, influenced as he was by mom’s fastidiousness, used to have her clean his chair at every restaurant before he would sit down. A regular Niles Crane, except that at least Niles cleaned his own chair!

We had had a maid for a very brief period of time. Lovely woman, as I recall. Her name was Page, like in a book. That’s what she said to me when I asked her name. Mom didn’t like Page very much. She preferred to do her own housecleaning. Maybe it gave her self-worth. At any rate, Page didn’t last long. She apparently mopped the kitchen floor without changing the water halfway through.

And now, mom balks when I shower her too often and will not allow me to wash her hair more than once every two weeks. But I am quick with the handheld shower and mom has little choice but to cover her ears as I administer the horrid shampoo.

How often do you wash your hair?

Every day, mom.

Oh that’s no good. Any hairdresser will tell you that’s no good for your hair. You should never wash your hair more than once a month!

I’d look like hell and smell even worse if I did that.

Oh no. They say: Never wash your hair more than once a month.

We do what we must.