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What, you may ask, has Cookie been up to lately?

Well, besides the usual bullshit of life, Cookie is sad to report that the Mother in Law is now under hospice care.

Which has me bummed.  Very, very bummed.

MIL was and is an incredible woman with an expansive heart, and undeniable style.  I adored being in her family and it really has me upset that instead of the kind of passing that she deserves, quietly, in the middle of the night, leaving on a sweet dream, she is in the hospital as her body begins to wind down.

You just feel so damn helpless.  Being several hundred hours away doesn't help.

Two weeks ago we spent a weekend visiting with her.  We bought her a new lift chair to replace the one that had stopped lifting.  The assisted living community found her another recliner no longer needed by a former resident, but it was one of those enormous overstuffed chairs that they sell in cheap furniture stores, and honestly, with her so small and frail, she looked like a confused child as Hernando, one of her twenty-four hour care givers, gently lowered her into the monster chair.

After consulting with Hernando ("I don't the chair gives precious mother the kind of comfort that she seeks.") we agreed and found another one, smaller, better support and with a power footrest and recline.

But now she is in a hospital bed.

The annoying thing is that we can't really schedule anything, because we don't know when we'll need to travel to her side.  So we wait.

And the worst part of it for me is that when it comes to funerals, Cookie is doer.  Give me the authority and a funeral, calls, thank you notes, everything gets done.  But because I am an inlaw, not so much.  You have to kind of stand to the side.  But trust me, I could orchestrate an Imitation of Life style funeral.  The only difference is that Mahalia Jackson would be on a memory stick and we would be mulatto-less, but I could do it.

We are supposed to host the progressive dinner cocktail hour at our house, so I met with the "Event Captain" (as she calls herself) and we discussed back up plans.

Event Captain was happy that we had "reached out so far out," from the event and taht we already had three backups for her to choose from.

She liked options one and three.  "But not the J----'s.  She lets her dog drink water from the toilet."

Then she looked right at me and said "Never let that dog lick you." She scrunched up her face.  "That's just so gross.  She wants to have a dog play date with Mitzi and I refuse.  Mitzi is prone to picking up bad habits."

Never let that dog lick you...that's just gross...

Mitzi is a six pound Yorkie.  "You think that she would consider drinking from a toilet?  It would be a reach."

"I have a squatty potty - SWEAR BY IT," she sang out, "and I don't want Mitzi to think that's her stepping stool to a drink or a drinky poo."

All right, then.

So to get ready for this event we removed the basketball pole and hoop from the basketball court, and weather permitting, we'll stage that court as an outdoor living room.

So for now we wait.