Going shopping isn't that easy
By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

My son, Timmy, and I went shopping this past weekend. We drove to Rochester, as I wanted to stop at a health food store to purchase Vitamin E oil. I am going to use it as an ingredient when I make lotion for Christmas gifts. I also wanted to go to a used bookstore and get some other Christmas gifts.

I dictated the list of items I wanted to purchase to Timmy as we drove along in the car. One item Timmy told me not to forget was to get a birthday gift for his friend, Franklin, whose party he was going to the next day. At the health food store, there was no Vitamin E oil, but there was apricot oil, so I decided to substitute this in my lotion recipe. As we were leaving the store, a mother and her son were tying a pine tree to the tip of their compact car. In the car, sitting in the front seat, was a younger son, looking down, ignoring them, engrossed in a book. The mother and older son were having a difficult time tying the tree to the roof of the car and I thought that I would rather be the younger son in the car reading a book instead of the one tying the tree to the car.

After the health food store, Timmy and I went to Extraordinary Books. It is a used bookstore that sells hard-to find-books and some first edition books.

Timmy was in heaven. He is a reader who has a stash of books by his bed and brings two books for backup whenever we go anywhere. He keeps a flashlight next to his bed at night to read under the covers and has a flashlight in the car so he can read when the sun goes down. I came to the bookstore with a mind to buy books for gifts, but that idea was sucked out of my brain when I started to look at all the books. The owner of the store was so taken with Timmy that he suggested several books for him. I couldn't decide on several books that I wanted and after an hour, Timmy came over to me with five books he wanted.

"If I get you these books, they are early Christmas gifts," I said.

"OK, I really want them," he agreed.

One of the books was a first edition by Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Glass Elevator. Since it was a first edition and it cost $23, I said no to this book. I told Timmy he could get it at the library. Another book was by Betty McDonald, who created the movie characters; Ma and Pa Kettle called Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. He also had picked out Where the Red Fern Grows and two books on King Arthur. I did come to my senses and remembered to buy a book for my daughter Bridget who is an avid reader. When we got in the car, Timmy got out his flashlight and started reading Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. He was chuckling softly as we drove along in the night. We made a stop at the mall and I bought a gift for my daughter, Molly. Malls makes me so confused with all the people and so many choices that we stopped for a drink. I had a mocha cappuccino and Timmy drank a strawberry smoothie. Then we headed home. As we were driving home, I said, "That was fun. You got some good books."

"Huh?" Timmy mumbled, as he was engrossed in his book.

"I said, you got some good books. But we didn't do much Christmas shopping. I forgot what I wanted to buy after we went into the bookstore and I completely forgot about the list you wrote," I said.

"Oh my God! We forgot to buy Franklin a gift!" exclaimed Timmy.

"We can give him a card with money and some baseball cards," I suggested.

Timmy thought this was an OK idea. When we got home, we read until late. He read more of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle and I read the book I bought Bridget. I am going to have to avoid going to another bookstore until after Christmas, especially if Timmy goes with me.

Some grandmothers act alike
By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

Thanksgiving Day I spent at my daughter Mary and her husband, Dave's second-floor apartment in South Minneapolis. She and Dave cooked dinner for 10 people. I contributed apple pie, stuffed mushrooms and homemade bread to the meal. My sister Joann drove my mother over from St. Anthony's Village to eat dinner with us. Joann lives nearest to mom and sees her almost everyday and she was having dinner with her husband's family.

Mom can't get around very well, as she had a stroke eight years ago. She shuffles along with a walker and when she is on a longer outing, we push her in a wheelchair. My son, Dan, and Joann slowly guided mom up the stairs to the apartment. After we had mom settled into a comfortable chair she said, "I'm never coming here again."

We all knew then that she was her old self and doing fine. I think she has said this about every place she has ever been. We have all learned to ignore her. She looked very pretty with her crown of white hair and my sister had her dressed in black crushed velvet. My daughters all look alike to mom so she doesn't know who is who anymore and she calls 10-year-old Timmy, Danny.

This doesn't bother them, as mom called me Geraldine, a sister of mine, for years. Another confusing issue for her was trying to figure out whom Danny's baby, Tommy, was.

"Whoever that baby's parents are, they have a cute, pleasant baby. Now who does he belong to?" She asked 10 times. Finally she said, "Well then I must be his great-grandmother."

We all laughed and answered, "Yes you are."

She remembers who her son-in-law, is and asked my husband several times during the day in a smug voice, "Well hello Tom, and how are you?"

Tom answered each time; "I am fine. I am keeping busy."

"Oh, good, who have you buried lately?" she asked brightly.

Before she moved to Minneapolis, mom lived in Albert Lea and most of her social life was spent going to funerals. This is what happens to many people her age that have lived in the same area all their lives.

As the day wore on, she complained and moaned that she should never have come and she was a terrible bother and she should just have been left where she lives. Around 4 p.m., she insisted I take her home. I told her she had to wait while I took a walk. When I returned from the walk she wanted to leave right away and I told her to have pie and coffee. She loves pie and coffee, so she settled down for this. Then, Tom and I drove her home. It is not easy getting her in and out of cars and she said, "Oh I should never go anywhere. I am just a bother."

Tom said, "And what fun is that never going anywhere? What would you do in your room?"

"Not a thing," answered mom.

"See, you need to get out," Tom said.

She was tired when we brought her to her room at the assisted living facility. She told the nurse and other caretakers that she'd had a great time. All day long she hadn't stopped complaining, but I don't think she knows that she does it.

The day after Thanksgiving, my daughter Theresa was visiting her friend. The grandmother of her friend was at the house and Theresa asked her how she was. The grandmother got a mournful look on her face, sighed and said, "Not good."

"Oh what's wrong?" asked Theresa.

The grandmother shook her face and looked pitiful. Behind the grandmother stood her friend's mother and she shook her head at Theresa to not believe her.

Theresa asked her friend if anything was really wrong with her grandmother and her friend said, "Oh did she tell you she wasn't doing well? She's fine. She complains all the time."

Theresa laughed and said, "Oh, just like my grandma."

Outage brings back memories
By Sheila Donnelly/Austin Daily Herald

Sunday night, the electricity went off at our house just as I had gotten in the shower and soaped up all over and was shampooing my hair. The electricity had gone off earlier and had come on again. My son Timmy had taken a very quick shower and this is what I had planned to do when the electricity went off. Fortunately, I had filled the teakettle with water before I had gotten into the shower and I had five gallons of bottled water. We have a gas stove, so I heated some of the water on the stove to rinse my hair. It was only 6:30 in the evening when this occurred. We lit all the candles that we could find and Tom, Timmy and I played the game of Life.

The electricity came back on an hour into the game and we found that we weren't playing the game by the directions. It was hard to read the small print on the flyer in the box by candlelight. Tom won the game with the millions he ended up with.

The wind blew strong all Sunday night and the electricity went off several times during the night.

Whenever a storm blew in when I was young and there was a chance that the electricity would be going out, my mother would bake. The worst winter storm occurred when I was 10. It happened on St. Patrick's Day, March 17. My dad was foreman for the Freeborn County highway department and he had gone to bed right after supper the night before. He rose at 2 a.m. to get to the highway department headquarters to contact the men that operated the snowplows and salted and sanded the roads. This particular storm lasted four days and my dad made it home once to bring us water and kerosene.

The morning of the storm, before the electricity went off, mom made a large pan of dough, which she shaped into loaves of bread and cinnamon rolls and baked in her electric stove oven. There were eight children in the house, and we felt it was a nice break away from school as we ate cinnamon rolls and played games. Later in the day when the winds came up, the electricity went out. We heated the house with a wood furnace that was in the basement.

To make dinner, mom let the coals die down in the furnace and baked potatoes and grilled steaks. They were delicious. It snowed heavily every day and the wind blew strong at night, which created white out conditions. We were without electricity for five days. The day the snow finally quit falling and the wind died down, dad had a county snowplow come up our long driveway to clear the snow. The snow was piled in huge mounds in the yard. We called them mountains. For the first time ever, we could go sledding right in the yard. We built forts and tunnels and didn't want to go back in the house where we had been cooped up for four days.

Winter storms are dangerous, especially when a person is out driving on icy roads and in white-out conditions with heavy, snow-packed roads. It is also may be time to slow down without electronic distractions and you have to make your own entertainment. When the electricity goes out, it is a lot more work for farmers that have livestock to feed or if they are milking. For the workers that keep the roads clear, it is not a time to slow down, nor for the workers that have to keep the electric power stations operating.

My dad said often how much he hated winter and being exhausted after big snowstorms because he couldn't come home for days as he was in charge of the road crews. I have a lot of respect for these workers and I am cautious when the winds come up, the roads ice over and heavy snow falls. It is a time to slow down and withdraw indoors.