My grandma is in the hospital

She's in her 80s and has Alzheimer's, so it's not entirely unexpected, but still. She may have had a heart attack. I'm trying to think good thoughts for her from here.

It's not difficult on a day like today--bright sunny and 76 degrees. It'll be 80 here by Wednesday. We hit the pool this morning. The water was still freezing, though, so we took advantage of the jacuzzi instead. John's son was visiting this weekend, and his visits always leave me feeling a bit like an outsider. Like all weekend long is a boys' club, where I'm an unwelcome intruder. Oh, it's not intentional, and I have a lot of fun with both of them. But the two of them have their own private language, being boys, and I feel like I'm relegated to the food-bringer and laundry-washer in their presence. Attempts on my part to offer helpful suggestions like, "It's time for breakfast" and "Let's all brush our teeth before bed" only get me looks like I may have grown a particularly gauche second head, from both of them. And any efforts to watch a movie in which guns, airplanes, or WWII do not figure prominently are outvoted, 2 to 1.

This weekend I coped by disappearing into a large stack of books, which helped a lot. Cooking is good therapy, too, but less helpful when my day-long kitchen adventures are met with the fear and disdain one might offer upon finding a large and ulcerous copperhead rising up out of the bedcovers. Even perfectly normal dishes, like scrambled eggs or lasagna, must be whined over, poked at, closely examined for contraband, ("These carrots have white flaky things on them, I can't eat them." "That's SALT.") attempts must be made to hide some part in the napkin or wiped off on the underside of the table, exhortations made that "I'm not hungry" even though it may have been 16 hours or more since food last touched his lips, and in the piece de resistance, he may very grudgingly touch the end of his fork tines to the food in question, touch those to his tongue, then spit and declare that "I've taken a bite! And I still don't like it!" I'm trying very hard to remember that all 10-year-olds are like that. Very, very hard.