Vacation Part 1: Errands with Mom

We headed off for our latest vacation last Tuesday night. Yes, another red-eye flight to Boston to visit our families. Which also means it was another vacation apart for us, since I go to visit my family and Debbi goes to visit hers.

The payoff for the vacation for me comes tomorrow – more on that in part 2! But this week was about doing stuff with Mom.

One thing I miss about visiting is that I no longer spend long, lazy days hanging out with Mom at her house. Since she no longer drives, I spend a chunk of my visits taking her to places she wants to go, and since I’m managing her finances I often have things I need to do with her. It can be stressful at times, and it’s definitely less relaxing than before she moved.

It was raining when we landed early Wednesday, and it kept up when Debbi and her sister dropped me off at my Dad’s house. He and I went to breakfast and then I took a nap. After lunch I drove out to get Mom.

On the way I drove past my elementary school, which is being demolished to be replaced which a modern building. It’s about 90 years old and felt out of date even when I attended, so while it’s sad to see it go, it’s also time. Then I drove past my Mom’s house, which we sold last year, and found that it had been demolished. Which is what we expected when we sold it, since like the school it was old and not really able to be modernized. I was less shocked by it than I’d expected. But it does close the book on part of my childhood.

I met Mom and told her about the school and the house. And then we headed off to run some errands. First she had some watches she needed fixed, and I had researched some jewelers we could go to. One of them was supposedly just a few blocks from her place, but it no longer existed. So instead we drove to a very nice little place the next city over, and they were able to get all of her watches’ batteries replaced the same day. Then we swung by the bank to deal with an issue with her bank account, which was pretty straightforward.

We went to dinner at Tartufo, a quite good Italian place I hadn’t been to before. Definitely worth a return trip someday. The only downside had nothing to do with the restaurant – the rain had gone away for several hours, but returned during dinner, and I’d left the umbrellas in the car, so we got drenched on the way back.

Thursday morning I got up really early to pick up Mom and her cat Maggie to take Maggie to the vet. Maggie is a middle-aged cat who needed her teeth cleaned, so we dropped her off shortly before 8 am. We met the vet and he said they’d cleaned her teeth before, which was a relief to me since it meant she’d gone through anesthesia before and would probably be fine.

The other big task for the day was to go to the Registry of Motor Vehicles to get her a new state ID. One thing I’ve been very grateful for is that Mom has not wanted to resume driving, and though I asked her repeatedly if she was okay with surrendering her driver’s license, she stuck to her willingness to do so. So that meant all we had to do was wait for 90 minutes for our turn to submit the forms. Fortunately the lady who helped us was extremely helpful and after the wait it all went very smoothly.

We had lunch and then picked up Maggie, whose cleaning had the best-case outcome, with no teeth pulled. We brought her home, the vet having warned us that she might be lethargic and have a suppressed appetite for a day or so. She promptly ate half a can of food which alleviated that worry. Since we’d driven all over creation, we instead went out to get coffee and do some walking, and ended the day having dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant.

I breathed a sigh of relief at having done all the tasks I needed to do for the week, so Friday Mom and I did some shopping that she wanted to do, and had a nice lunch along the way. We also swung by my elementary school to get a closer look, and ran into my sixth grade teacher who has been taking pictures every day during the demolition. I haven’t seen him in several years, and it was good to chat with him again.

In the evening I headed back to have dinner with Dad and do my laundry.

And tomorrow Dad and I are heading to Cape Cod for a week with my sister and her clan!

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