Things That Are Stupid....and I'm an Idiot

We finally returned triumphantly from Arizona yesterday after driving for about a thousand hours. It turned out to be a good trip for the most part. We did some fun touristy stuff: went on paddle boats on Tempe Town Lake, visited the Desert Botanical Garden where we saw the Chihuly Glass (an exhibit from a famous glass artist named Dale Chihuly), toured the Riordan Mansion in Flagstaff. Remember we wanted to see Taliesin West? Well that was out because of the price and we didn't really have time anyway. We ran into this place in Flagstaff, we were staying there on our last night and needed something to do and it was on the map so we checked it out and it was a cool old mansion that a prominent Flagstaff family lived in, built around 1903 in the Arts and Crafts style of architecture. Something a little educational thrown in for good measure. Brent wanted to show us this natural bridge place he visited with his mom last fall but it was closed due to budget cuts. Darned recession! Oh and we also visited Montezuma Castle (old Native American ruins) and did the usual visit to the neighborhood lake which is great to walk around at night. That and family stuff, of course. The kids loved playing with the Arizona cousins.

The sucky part of the trip was seeing Chuck, my Stepdad. He is now about 74, thin as a rail, and in the early stages of Alzheimer's. My Stepdad has a good heart but he is also mean as the day is long. It's now like his spirit is broken. I was almost missing his embarrassing, demoralizing comments that he can make. He was so quiet and childlike. It's just STUPID that this has to happen to people often when they get older.

Of course it wouldn't be me if I didn't throw in some idiocy for good measure. Brent and I and the kids took Chuck out to lunch and he really wanted to go to the store and find a bike. He was in a car wreck a couple of weeks ago, he will likely lose his license as a result, so he really wanted a bike to get around. Made sense to me so we took him over to Walmart to look at the bikes. I didn't know if he'd be able to ride one but it couldn't hurt to see, I figured. Chuck used to be quite athletic, played lots of tennis, ran a few marathons. But now he's so thin and he hasn't exercised in some time so he couldn't ride the bike. He kept trying to talk us into going to another bike store but I didn't see the point unless he managed to strengthen his legs and recover some balance somehow. So he was naturally disappointed and I was trying to figure out how I could help him when I saw the scooters. You know how I love the scooters so I thought why not let him try one out. We went outside and he tried out Noah's, we had the kids' scooters in the van. He was doing fairly well so we went back in to check them out some more. He tried out one in the store and was doing pretty good but not so sure still so we told him we'd buy one and we could take it to the park for him to try out, if he didn't like it we'd just keep it ourselves since we had a scooter stolen recently. Well at the park he tried it for a few seconds and he fell. I felt terrible and was thinking, Great I broke his hip! He was all right but he and I both agreed it wasn't the ride for him. I was also thinking this reminded me of the time when Brent and I tried to buy Isabella a bike helmet when she was 4 months old (4 months old!) so we could put her in the newly purchased bike seat and take her on family bike rides. Another dumb idea. It shows the inexperienced should not be left alone with babies or senior citizens. So no bike or scooter for Chuck. I just really wanted to help him out if I could.
Another interesting thing was seeing hobo cats at the park. We were at Pioneer Park, across the street from the Mesa Temple, practicing the scooter. They have an old train in the middle of the park that has a metal barred fence around it. The train had a bunch of stray cats that looked like they'd lived there since they were kittens. Someone had stuck cut open bags of cat food under the fence for them so they had plenty of food. The kids thought it was highly interesting and I named them "Hobo Cats".