Wheelchair wrestling

This past Wednesday turned out to be busier than I thought. It started getting very busy once I put on my jacket at about 2 p.m. and took "the rest of the day off."

Technically, I did. In reality ...

The main reason for the trip was to see my mom. I had visited her twice in the last couple weeks, but those were just fast visits during busy weeks, and I was alone both times. (Well, David was with me once; we had a playoff football game that night.)

This time my wife could come along, and we could visit a little longer. My mom was ready for us. First thing on her list: a new cord for her phone. Whoever had that phone earlier apparently played with the cord a lot, so it was all twisted up. Need a replacement.

She also hadn't gone out to supper for a few weeks, and the cool temperatures on Wednesday (just above freezing) weren't about to change her mind. She didn't have gloves (with her winter coat, which had not yet been brought out of storage), but she had a heavy sweater and a spring coat that she thought would be warm enough. Apparently it was.

My mom is 85 and goes around in a wheelchair. My car is small, so getting her anywhere involves a lot of wheelchair wrestling. Two phases: (1) getting her in and out of the car, and (2) getting the wheelchair in and out.

Step 1 is getting her to the front passenger door. Open it. Position the wheelchair right by the door. Lock the wheels. Help her slowly stand up. Then she has to get one foot inside the car. Then transfer her weight to the seat, bracing her hands on the car. Then pulling in the other foot. My wife buckles her in while I unlock the wheelchair wheels and move it to the back of the car.

Then it's time for Step 2. Open the trunk, of course. Lock the wheelchair's wheels. (It works so much better that way; took a lot of trial and error to discover that.) Remove the cushion from the wheelchair seat and back. (It folds up.) Collapse the wheelchair. Lift it over the tailgate and into the trunk, top edge first. Fit the wheels inside so the trunk will close. Put the cushions over it wherever there is space. Close the trunk. Whew!

Those steps are, of course, done in reverse order whenever she gets in and out of the car. My wife and I have gotten pretty good at that. My wife sits in the back seat, by the way, when my mom is in the co-pilot's seat.

So the first stop on Wedneday was to get a new phone cord. We stopped at K-Mart, and I ran inside--just a quick walk, find and pay--while my mom and wife stayed in the car. Then it was time for supper.

This time we decided to go to Subway, where we got her an oven-roasted chicken breast sandwich. She chose wheat bread and only one add-on: tomatoes. Six-inch size, but she had it cut in half--my wife and I split the other half. The verdict: She liked it a lot. She said it's better than the chicken at Hardee's, where we usually go, so we might go to Subway more in the future.

As we had supper, my mom asked that we stop at a dollar store; she needed new slippers. There was one a short distance away, so we got her packed back into the car, drove there, got her out of the car and inside.

(Of course, it's the whole manual of arms with the wheelchair each time. But for reasons of brevity ...)

The slippers there were no great shakes, but we went up and down the aisles for a while, looking at the various things they had. My mom came away with butter mints, some highlighter pens and something else I can't remember at the moment. While there, she remembered that she needs a calculator, too. The dollar store didn't have anything like that. "We may have some coming on the truck," said the girl.

Not soon enough. We paid for out stuff, got her packed back into the car, and I drove back to K-Mart, land of pocket calculators. This time, it was another solo trip; my wife and mom stayed in the car and talked, while I went inside, found a calculator that met my off-the-cuff criteria for a calculator for my mom: (1) small enough to be held on one hand; (2) large buttons; (3) large number display; (4) good contrast on the keys (white on black is hard to beat; and (5) was simple and fairly cheap. Found one for about $5, and that should fill the bill nicely.

From there, we took her back to the nursing home--she had been gallivanting around for two hours. Unpacked her from the car, wheeled her down to her room, talked for a few minutes, and then we had to leave--it was already after 7, and we had some shopping we had to do.

This time, over to Wal-Mart. My wife got some various groceries, while I walked around the electronics department and looked at all the cool stuff I won't be buying. In the end, I didn't get anything at all. We paid for the groceries, loaded them in the car and were ready to start driving home.

That's when I realized: I had forgotten one of my major priorities for this trip! A new ice scraper for the car! Somehow since last winter, my yellowish-green ice scraper has disappeared, and it has stayed well hidden despite a thorough search of the car, the trunk, even under the seats. With the first snow of winter a recent memory, I couldn't wait any longer.

So I ran back inside (my wife stayed in the car) and made the long walk to automotive. They didn't have the type of scraper I had before, but I found one that seems sturdy enough for many Northwoods mornings of scraping ice, snow and other types of frozen junk off the windshield and other windows.

(Scraping snow and ice and other junk is one of the duties of every driver in this part of the country. On CBC, when they play "Oh Canada" at the end of the broadcast day, they play a montage of shots about Canadian life. One of them is someone scraping a car window as winter howls around them. Beautiful. And entirely fitting.)

Finally, we hit the road for home. After about 10 miles, we ran into a snow shower, and it was snowing fairly heavily for a while--we had to turn off the brights. But the roads were OK, and the deer stayed on the grassy shoulders of the road. Good deer! Hope the hunters don't get you!

By the way, earlier in the day, we saw some deer in a field while driving to the nursing home, and they stayed there while I got a picture ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/Deerfield-11-07.jpg[/IMG]

This was between my mom's house and the nursing home--almost exactly the same place where I hit a deer in October 2005, just after my mom went into the nursing home ...
[IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b289/drdog/DeerScene10-05.jpg[/IMG]

The two sites couldn't be more than 100 yards apart. Fortunately, these deer were satisfied just to look at us.