Tomorrow has to be nicer

Today I felt like one of those cartoon characters that walks around with a big brooding storm cloud over their heads. For starters, I screwed up the coffee trying to rush us out the house. On the way to work, I went to Grams' to bring her meals for the week. She'd barely touched what I brought last time. Even the little olives I tried to bribe her into eating were sadly floating in their juices in the fridge. She is slipping away before me. Last week she went to the doctor and she weighed 78 lbs. This is bad. Very, very bad. Since I'm in charge of her food shopping and preparation, I feel somehow responsible. I try so hard to make her things she'll like that are low sodium, too. I do spaghetti sauce from scratch. Sweets makes her pancakes on the weekend. Nothing seems to work. She says she is eating but her idea of a portion is a joke. On Christmas, she ate three bites of ham, a stuffed mushroom, a quarter of a sweet potato and a few shrimp. This afternoon, I convinced her to eat some cottage cheese and mandarin orange slices for a snack and waited there for her to eat before going to work. We're at the point now, where the family are all exhausted and unsure what more we can do for her. Fiercely independent, she wants to remain in her apartment. The reality is she is legally blind and a bag of bones. If she falls... I fought for months against the murmurs of a nursing home but now I give in. My sister started making some calls. I've been so upset over the past weeks and today I realized it's as if I am mourning for her already. I've been fussing and clucking over her for more than seven years. i won't know what to do with myself when that stops. So I've been dramatic, pushing my sister to tears and being short on the phone with her this afternoon. I need to get over this and focus on what she needs now and for however long we get to keep her. At works, things got worse. When I arrived in the lobby, I overheard one of the reporters talking to a woman whose daughter was murdered last night. Shortly after, her brought me a studio portrait of the girl and her killer to scan. The girl's name was Sugar and she was about my age. I deal with bad stuff alot in my job. i look at really horrible things and filter them down to what gets printed. Images can be haunting. Far worse though, is brushing the people whose lives are involved in the tragedies we cover. That makes things personal and harder to get the job in front of you done. I'll never forget taking a call from a woman who wanted to see all the photos taken of the accident scene her son died in. Her boy was ejected from the car, lying half inside and half out. She said she'd feel better if she saw it, so she could understand what happend. I didn't give her the pictures. My father died in a car accident. The newspaperman in me was a tick proud that he made page one news but the photos didn't help me understand what happened that night, who he was or what we'd be missing out on in the future. And the final downer of the day was the deadline for the celebrity dead pool some of us participate in at the office. Last year, I came in last place. Trying a new strategy this year, I did my research. While I put together my selections, I found many of them are younger than Grams and that made me feel slightly strangled. Every year, I track notable deaths for the paper's year end passings coverage. And I'm also tracking those that look not so hot for inclusion in the pool. My selections for 2006 1 Jack La Lanne - fitness guru 2 Tammy Faye Messner- former wife of televangelist Jim Bakker 3 Don Knotts - actor 4 Martin Landau - actor 5 Gerald Ford - 38th president if the United States 6 Mickey Rooney - actor 7 Dick Clark "America's oldest teenager," host of American Bandstand 8 Aaron Spelling TV producer Charlies Angels, Beverly Hills 90120 9 Nancy Reagan - former first lady 10 Diego Maradona - retired Argentinian soccer star 11 Les Paul - jazz guitarist/inventor of solid body electic guitar 12 Bob Barker Price is Right host 13 Ariel Sharon - Israeli Prime Minister 14 Andrea Yates- drowned her children in bathtub, conviction overturned in 2005 15 Olivia de Havilland- actress 16 Kirk Douglas, actor 17 Meinhardt Raabe, the �Coroner Munchkin� in The Wizard of Oz 18 Roger Moore - AKA �Bond. James Bond�, actor 19 Courtney Love - singer/actress/junkie 20 Jerry Lewis - actor/comedien/ fundraiser 21 Marcel Marceau - legendary French mime 22 Bob Guccione - Penthouse magazine founder 23 Brooke Astor- New York City philanthropist and socialite 24 Augusto Pinochet - former dictator of Chile 25 Charlton Heston - actor, gun advocate Luckily, there have been a few bright spots. Sweets ordered new postage stamps and they arrived. A pair of blue love birds on a yellow background. They are terribly cute. Just like us. Kath over at the Self Portrait Tuesday posted my photo with a selection from other newcomers on the blog. That made me feel really good. Being part of this community is going to be a good thing. And finally, Sweets posted his top ten film list which will also appear in the next issue of Jetty magazine which he art directs.