Inedible

I remember when the food at Atria was pretty good most meals.  Now it's good occasionally.  Today's lunch was inedible.  First I had an argument with my mother.  She hardly eats anything now.  Her lunch every day is vegetable soup (and she never eats the veggies, just the broth) and fruit salad.  Today they offered clam chowder, her favorite soup, as an option but she decided she just wanted fruit and ice cream.  I tried to get her to eat more, but she can be stubborn as a bull dog.  I'm just going to give up and add a vitamin to her medication routine, so at least she gets SOME nutrition.  She feels weak so much of the time that I can't believe her decision not to eat isn't part of it!

I had the entree of the day, which was fish tacos with pico de gallo.  It took forever for the food to be delivered (which has become par for the course especially with new wait staff, which there always seems to be these days).  The taco finally arrived, barely warm, soggy on the bottom, tasteless...and no pico de gallo.  It took forever to get the attention of the waitress and I asked if there was supposed to be pico de gallo.  She said "they decided not to put them on the plates" and said she'd see if she could get some for me.  The refried beans were barely warm and crusty, like they were dished up hours before. I didn't even taste the rice.

My mother did, indeed, have the fruit and an "ice cream puff" which was about a tbsp of ice cream on a cold cream puff that had been cooked too long (from the look of it).  It didn't even look appetizing...and I love ice cream.  

At one point today she turned to me and said "your hair is growing."  She's happy that I have hair now.  Then she said "It's coming in curly....darn it."  My mother has hated my hair my whole life.  Oh, she didn't hate it. She loved it, but she hated that I had curly hair and she didn't.  I cannot tell you how many times I have heard her greet me with "LOOK at that hair.  That's disgusting!" I know that in her mind it was a compliment, but all I heard...for most of my adult life, until I had a hissy fit and she stopped doing it, was that she was disgusted every time she looked at me.  Today, again, she complained that I got my father's hair and she always wanted curly hair.

Not much I can do about that.  She didn't like it when I had no hair, so that wasn't a solution either!

When the waitress was involved with other tables and showing no desire to get pico de gallo, I told my mother the meal was inedible and I just wanted to leave.  She argued with me that I should stay and finish my lunch and that she didn't mind waiting.  I explained again that I didn't want the food because it was inedible and she acted very huffy, but agreed to leave.  I didn't stay with her, but packed up her laundry and came home.

I've just been in a pissy mood since yesterday's kerfuffle over "losing" her at Atria.  Of course it wasn't her fault.  I knew she wouldn't remember when I told her I was coming for lunch, but I never thought she'd go to lunch early....or that she would be so totally unemotional at my state at thinking she was lost.  She knew where she was.

But then the headlines today have been so terribly, terribly depressing.  There's that idiot dentist who killed the lion.  Tonight I saw pictures of him with the bear he killed (he was fined for that...it also was illegal), with a cheetah he killed, with a rhino he killed (aren't those endangered?) and with a huge horned elk he killed.  If they don't throw the book at him for this lion business next thing he will be killing will be an elephant and then I'll really be upset.

There was also a guy arrested the other day.  He tossed a lit firecracker to his dog, who happily caught it and was bringing it back when it blew up and blew away his face, as well as killing him.  How can people be so cruel to animals.

At least the public gets incensed enough at these animal torture things that the authorities actually do something about it, unlike when real people die.  Did you know that at least five young black women died in jail in July? Raynetta Turner in Mt. Vernon, New York was arrested for shoplifting, was put in a holding cell, and found dead 12 hours later.  Sandra Bland in Texas was found hanging in her cell three days after she was arrested for failing to signal a lane change.  Kendra Chapman in Alabama was arrested for stealing a cell phone and supposedly committed suicide.  Joyce Curnell was also arrested for shoplifting and found dead in her cell the next day. Ralinka Jones was taken to jail in Cleveland Heights after a physical dispute with her husband. She was taken to a medical facility for seeming lethargic, returned to her cell and found dead a few hours later.

In South Dakota, a Nativie American woman was arrested on a bond violation following a DUI.  She reported being in extreme pain and the police told her to quit faking.  A few hours later she was dead in her cell.

Another Native American, Rexdale W. Henry, 53, was arrested for failure to pay a traffic fine on July 9. Five days later, on July 14, Henry would be found dead in a Neshoba County, Mississippi jail cell.

In Staten Island, New York, four police officers dragged a gay man out of the home he shared with his 66 year old mother and violently beat him while yelling homophobic slurs.  The reason for the police?  Earlier in the evening his brother came home drunk and the two men had a loud argument, and the neighbors called the police.  But the brother was gone by the time the police arrived and they still dragged him outside and threatned to kill his dog. The man had recently had surgery on his foot and he begged them to watch out for the foot, and they stomped on it.  Fortunately for him, neighbors across the street videotaped the whole thing, so there is no dispute about what happened.  The attack left him with two black eyes, a broken nose, cuts to his face and body, and he required new foot surgery.

How many of these human deaths will receive the same degree of outrage that we have seen about Cecil the Lion?  No wonder I'm in such a rotten mood today.