Painting The Serengeti

Oh, boy.  You are in for a real treat - a Toni Twofer. 

That's right, two stories about my mother.  In the same blog post.  I swear I don't make this stuff up.

Last night I was driving and talking to my mother on the phone.  She's recently become addicted to Pinterest so that pops up in conversation all the time now, her telling me about all the things she's recently "pinned".

"Oh my God.  You won't believe the gorgeous places I "travel" when I'm on Pinterest." she said.

"Oh yeah?  Like where?"  I asked.

"Oh, everywhere.  Paris.  Italy.  Switzerland.  The Fiji Islands." 

My mother has always wanted to go to the Fiji Islands.  I think because my grandmother, her mother, used to use the Fiji Islands as the catchall place for anything that was exotic.  If you were going somewhere unheard of, it was the equivalent of the Fiji Islands.  Which in her day meant anywhere more than three hundred miles from the Bronx. 

"And Africa.  I really want to go to Africa." she said.

"Africa?  Really??  Like a Safari?"  I said.

"Oh yeah.  I want to see the elephants roaming around, and the zebras, and the big cats."   she said, her voice painting a wistful image of what Africa would look like when she got there. 

"Like the ones in the Serendipity." she said.

"The Serendipity?  I think you mean the Serengeti." I said.

She laughed.  "Oh, yeah, yeah.  The Serengeti.  That's right." 

I told her I had to get off the phone because I had to call my brother immediately to tell him about what she just said - we love to share stories like this about our mother - and that I'd call her right back.  She laughed and said okay.

Little did I know he'd have one of his own.  After I finished my story and we finished laughing, he said, "I know, I know.  I had the same thing happen."

He told me about the spare bedroom my mother had painted, touching up the scuff marks on the wall.  She wound up using the wrong paint and all the places she touched up were a different color - beige, but a totally different beige - the wall was a canvas of odd shaped polka dots.  She told Michael that she thought it was the same paint he used when he painted the pantry and laundry room, but she picked up the can of floor paint, not wall paint.

"Oh.  Well, I can just go to Ted Williams and get more then." my mother said.

"Ted Williams?" Michael said.

"Yeah.  To get paint.  I'll just match it to the one I had for his room.  I think I got it at Walmart.  They sell Ted Williams."

"I think you mean Sherwin Williams, Ma."  my brother said. 

It seems a lot of our conversations with my mother end with us saying, "I think you mean..."

"Ohhhh, you're right.  Sherwin Williams." my mother said, chuckling at her mistake."Or you can just go to Dunn Edwards." my brother said.  That totally undid her.  She has no idea who Dunn Edwards is.  My brother likes to do that, throw a little wrench in the conversational works.

For some reason, he has a belief that she's capable of sorting all these things out, but I know better since I'm the one that logs hours more talk time with her. I always tell him to keep it simple. Don't overwhelm her with information and don't give her too many choices.

She used to be an alcohol and drug abuse counselor, and to this day can spout off names of drugs, along with their dosages, side effects and interactions like she was a pharmacist.

But ask her where she bought a gallon of paint and you've opened a can of very confused worms.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2012: Why Fig Newtons Will Always Be On My Shopping List
2011: Losing The Wallet At Your Convenience
2010: Bridge Over Troubled Roadway
2009: If Only The Streets Were Truly Paved With Gold
2008: She Reigns Supreme
2007: A Match Made In Heaven
2006: Proof
2005: Caped Crusaders