I suppose over all, the transition of the great grandmother into the kingdom, has been smooth. In reality, I believe she thought since she was here on vacation, that we were also going to be on vacation. Sadly, life does not stop in the kingdom and for whatever it is worth, I think she is starting to recognize that.
The transition while relatively smooth has not been without it's bumps in the road. One whole room of living space on the first floor is now just her space..."the Nan Cave". We still scratch our heads as she blow dries her hand washed clothing with a hair dryer, when we offer free laundry services, and while the pace of the kingdom has slowed to the speed of a heard of turtles mucking through peanut butter when we go out and about... things could be significantly worse.
Here are just a few "moments" in time from this past week in response to all the notes and messages I have been receiving about how things are going with Nan in the kingdom. :)
I was not sure at what point my home would reach saturation point. You know the point when you do not notice a odd non- Lingle in the midst of the daily chaos. Today at about 2:30, upon my arrival from school with a van full of kids, our total head count of dwarfs that call me mom, or friends of a dwarf that call me mom, in kingdom rose to 11. Today as the various rooms of the house were filled with piles of dwarfs doing a myriad of activities. In strolls Nan. She walks up to the dwarf at the kitchen table, sitting doing his homework, and asks when he got his glasses, she really likes them. (Alone, a very nice thing to say when starting a conversation.) However what makes this a funny is that she thought that the dwarf at the table was Happy!! The response of the Non- Lingle dwarf was nonchalant, and appropriate, and he politely played along, however the remainder of the dwarfs in the room next door stifled giggles a plenty. Saturation point is reached quickly when you add a 90 year old to the bunch. We are not sure any longer about her vision...
It seems that there is a very large conspiracy in the kingdom! We call it the Great Whisper Conspiracy. Well actually we don't, Nan does. If we have heard it 10 times, we have heard it a 100 times! " You all whisper!" "Why do you talk so softly?" I think that the event that secured in our minds her lack of hearing was the night that we all were in the living room with the surround sound on watching Guardians of the Galaxy, and around 9:30PM she strolls in, and says in a shocked voice, "Oh, I am so surprised you are all up, it's so quiet here I assumed you went to bed."
We are all in the proverbial "dog house". We lied to her. We told her that the weather would be warm here. It is not warm here it is freezing cold! Now, I completely understand the whole thin blood thing, and being older... but every day from sun up to sun down, (and the sun has been out every day she has been here except one in two weeks) the gal is never warm. She is always cold and does not once pass on the opportunity to tell me that 70 degrees here is different than 70 degrees in PA!
We sat down the third day for dinner and she finally asked if we eat like this everyday? Doc said, "you mean dinner Nan?" "Yes, we eat dinner everyday of the week." "Oh," was the response, followed by, "well I will never loose weight here eating like this everyday!"
"What's wrong with Grumpy's arm that he has to wear that cast thing on his arm to play basketball?" We all shook our heads and in unison, yelled "NOTHING, HE THINKS IT MAKES HIM LOOK COOL!" and indeed that is why he wears his shooting sleeve everywhere he can!
She wanted to gift the dwarfs in the kingdom some cash for Christmas. She set a dollar amount and told me what to give them all. A couple days later provided me with the funds, but was off by $40. The difficulty in explaining the math error is too great, so I am going to take the amount and divide it in my own creative way, and she will even get some change back from the exchange!
There is no way that you can make this stuff up!
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