Yesterday I posted about my grandma’s little adventure with the emergency room, which came into existence because she was going to have a foot surgery today and was too stubborn to miss out on an overly competitive ping pong match on Sunday, knowing she’d be out of commission post-surgery.

I just spoke to my mom. She and my dad dropped off my grandma for her 8am surgery and my two parents are now hanging out at a park across the street from the hospital. I knew my mom was nervous about driving to the hospital, because it was in a city she’d never been to, and despite her insistence that we all go out and look at cars on Saturday so she could buy the luxury SUV she’d had her eye on, and the fact that she immediately made the decision she wanted that car and bought it on Saturday, she is too scared to drive it. She was lamenting the bad timing of having to drive to this hospital with a new car. I told her it was PERFECT timing, as the new car has a navigation system to help her. But she is totally intimidated by the car. So apparently she made my dad take the day off and drive.
“So where did grandma go yesterday?” I asked.
“Oh! She went to the senior citizen center! Her FRIEND had a BIRTHDAY PARTY! It wasn’t her birthday but she wanted to go.”
“Did she drive, or did someone else take her?”
“She drove! She got a long scolding from me.” Of course my grandma had to go. She’s a socialite and she LOVES cake. She loves sugar. We watched her pour a tablespoon of white sugar into a half bowl of porridge on Saturday for lunch. She uses 4-5 packets of sugar per teacup of coffee. “Your grandma is awesome, man,” my bridesmaid Sandy had remarked upon seeing the coffee thing at our wedding rehearsal dinner. We certainly don’t have the courage to spike our insulin like that, but grandma is fit and her blood test results are consistently better than just about everyone else’s.
“She’s just like a kid,” my mom went on. “My supervisor told me that after her foot surgery, I should take her car keys away and hide them.”
“She’d be mad…”
“Yeah,” my mom sighed. Doesn’t sound like my mom’s going to be mean like that, but she does seem resigned to be chasing around her mother now as if she’d gained a second child.