It's sundown and the dinner hour, here in winter, along with her getting into the wine, that makes her very hard to deal with.  It's no so bad other times of the day.  I come down from one nap, feeling the cold from the wind in my body still after my little walk, after taking her on the grocery rounds, and the confusion is setting in.  Is this where I'm supposed to be?  Where are my parents?  Yes, mom, this is your apartment.  Do we have to go anywhere tonight?  How will we move the cat?  Mom, we're home here, don't worry about it.  

Then she's on me about what to do for dinner.  Things have gotten tighter by the month, after the two rounds of mechanical repair for the old Corolla.  It's a beautiful car, the 2003, standard transmission.  The rust is eating at it from underneath, but for the time being... hopefully we are okay.

The Big M.  I ordered my low sodium sliced turkey breast.  The regular hot counter person, with friendly blue eyes under her hat with a name card that says Sandy, she's very nice.  And because she seems to be in charge of the flow of things and the extra offerings, I say, Hi, Chef, how are you...  I get some chicken tenders too.  What are you making for dinner...  Beef tips, she tells me, having to pull down her mask so I can hear her, over egg noodles.  Oh, cool, I tell her.  Yeah, with the meats on sale, I made a beef stew the other night.  Get tired of chicken.  Mom always wants chicken...  Cooking is like therapy for me, taking care of mom, I let her know.  She gets it.  It's so nice when someone takes the time to chat with you in this world.  I tend to feel like I'm bothering people, taking their time, but they get I understand people and the ways we serve each other and the humanity we bring along with us.

I'm back out in the wind now, get to the car, get us back to the Cedarwood Townhouses.  The sun is out, significant continents of blue sky amidst the clouds at 4 o'clock with western sun coming to my face as I walk up the road bundled against the wind.  

After dinner a nap to hide.  Two hours rest, even a dream or two.  I wake up and slink past her bedroom.  I come down at use the bathroom, the cat coming down and finding me sitting, telling me something about what he wants and expects and needs to do.  Okay.  

I sit down in mom's chair and pull our her laptop, as it works far better than my hand-me-down 2009 MacBook Pro, but soon enough she's coming down the stairs, first at 9;45, and then again, almost putting me over the edge into panic and inner strife, at 10:30, in a wandering state.  "I don't know if I'm coming or going," she says.  She uses the downstairs hallway bathroom.  When you turn the light on the fan comes on too, and it's not quiet.  Nervously I get up from the writing, and go to the kitchen.  Maybe it will help her if the cat's back in, and I look out into the darkness, but no sign of him.  I top off my little tumbler glass from the box wine and take my own computer back with me.  If I sit in her chair, she'll be less likely to stay downstairs.  "It's awfully dark out," she says.  She opens the front door, standing in her baggy Levis, sneakers, a fleece zip up.  I put my hands up to my brows, to focus.  The earlier time she said, I won't bother you...  But this time I have to tell her, Mom, your bed is upstairs, here's your Eleanor Roosevelt book, and she shuffles up the stairs, childishly unhappy.   Good night, I say.  Her response expresses her discontent with that, a minor insult.  But, she goes off to bed, and later I have a couple of phone calls...

The writer's nerves are fragile, shaky, and just such an encounter wreaks its havoc.

I go back into the kitchen after turning out the light, looking out over the pathway I've dug for the cat's night wanderings.  

I struggle to get up at 12:30 in the afternoon.  I was awake earlier, at 9, then at 11, but felt low on sugar and water, and then finally feeling almost worse, but at last ready to get up, feeling shameful, is it all the sugar I put through my system, waking so low and empty and knowing I've missed the boat of being a decent employed citizen faithful to a career...

I sneak past mom who seems content reading upright on her bed, down to use the john, then for yesterday's leftover coffee, then to brew some tea, then to assess the dishes situation, the pan from last night's eggs fried with a touch of water to finish, over bread with thin slices of ham.

I feel like the devil when I wake up, like he played me, Satanically, yet again, somehow.  I am not the classy gentleman my father was.  I've been a bum my whole adult life, not ever having a plan or at least one I had the self-discipline and the energy to carry through with anything, not even getting up at the proper hour, preferring a night job, one with a built in excuse to get up late.  I feel iII, though I didn't have much wine the night before.  The dry heated air in the kitchen, sinus congestion I try to open so air can come in and breath can come out and my stomach will not have to respond to the slightest alarm with the gag reflex that once initiated cannot be put aside, a fine way to wake up on your knees in front of the toilet off the kitchen, kitty litter on the floor, the garbage can nearby.  A thick nose, you can't smell anything at all, and so without being able to differentiate, at this age, everything is poison, potentially, and maybe most everything is, given the world and the floating atoms of plastics and industrial chemicals that should have remained in the ground, not having been crucibled into daily creature life.  It's mostly clean air up here, with the vast lake down the hill going as far as the eye can see, a curved earth visible to the naked eye from any decent vantage point.