Living Lodge

After an exhausting year of traveling, we needed some R&R, a couple of months of relaxation before we hit the road again in Mid-November. So we checked into a rest home.
We have spent the last month convalescing with our soon to be 90 year old mother/mother- in-law at her luxurious retirement lodge.

Our day begins leisurely, aware that the mail would not arrive until the late afternoon. We fill our days watching the TV on high volume, going to tend to her garden plot aka garden space (it’s preferred we don’t use the word “plot” but that’s what it is).

Pool is an option either swimming or billiard.

We could play ping pong, or read newspapers in the”Bistro” area- where coffee, tea, fruit, infused water and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies are always available . Or read in the library .

By now it is 11 am and the mail is only hours away.

We are sharing her food plan with monthly points, so strategic planning of meals is required. The weekly specials are posted beginning on Sunday so plenty of time to formulate our approach. Reservations required. Regardless, the food is plentiful and generally tasty with just enough borderline items allowing for hours of post-prandial analysis (“veal scallopini ? more like leather scallopini).

We can stop in at the tavern for a drink (using free drink coupons won at the twice a month Tuesday Bingo games) or the bar menu if we did not make dinner reservations.
A different movie is shown (twice) daily, in addition to crafts, we can join into mahjong games, cards/poker, storytelling, puzzles, board games, and drum circles.

A large chicken coop provides free eggs. The chickens ae named after famous lesbians (Rachel Maddow, Gertrude Stein, etc). This morning they were visited by wild turkeys.

Schedule a haircut in the beauty salon, or a massage as the mail is still hours from arriving. Seemingly, almost daily Doctors’ appointments fill our social calendar, otherwise we discuss with our neighbors our chronic aches and our new pains. Of course, each day is special but some days more so than others.

The housekeeper comes to our apartment on Mondays at 1pm sometimes 2 pm, close to the time people start to gather around the mailboxes in anticipation of the mail arriving anywhere between 3-6 pm. You have to check both the cubbies AND mail box.
Hopefully, mail arrives by 4:30 so that we can get to the dining hall for a late dinner.

After the mail finally arrives (just junk, as usual) it’s more loud TV, or more recently the gym to exercise to Star Trek reruns (where we ponder deep universal questions like- Is evil present in all galaxies? Why is Captain Kirk always the only one without a shirt on? Why do most planets where no man has gone before always look like Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley?)