COUCH, MEMORIES AND THE EXPLODING TOILET

     Well, it's one more day to go, before my sister comes. Today, I suddenly remembered that, the Salvation Army was coming to pick up some stuff.  They showed up just as I began to make it ready, and...  didn't want to take the couches! They said, the pride and joy of my mother, her sectional couch that I inherited, was "unsellable"! It may be so: it's about thirty years old now, and my cats did a number on it. 

    So, a snobbish driver and his sidekick in neon colored vests ended up just picking up dad's scooter. It was an electric chair for the infirm. You operate it by moving a small lever with your hand. My dad really wanted it. We got the doctors to attest that, he was disabled enough to get it for free! Once the chair was his, dad realized that he would have to deal with the doors and elevators while sitting on that uncertain perch (we lived in the apartment building then). He successfully ignored the chair, until we moved to the house with him. Here he announced that, the terrain was too rough and hilly for him to attempt riding the infernal contraption.          
     The chair stood on our porch for a couple of years while dad was alive and for two more after he passed away. Now it's gone.

     I made arrangements for our garbage disposal company to pick up the couch and a few more things instead. It will happen when Lera, my sis, will be here already.

     Today I took Roberta to the physical therapy appointment. While she was learning ways to strengthen her muscles, I went to Walmart. It took me more than an hour to buy linens and other supplies that Lera and the niece from Japan, who'll live with us since May, will need. I also tried to sort out Walmart's error in filling one of Taka's orders online. That proved to be impossible: the bureaucracy and indifference of the huge shopping institution won, and I left the store, counting myself lucky to still be able to walk and think after that ordeal.

     This morning, while Sonny was at school, something in our bathroom began to make frightful noise! I went to look. To the accompaniment of loud farting sounds, the water was roiling in the toilet bowl and shooting out of it! I quietly closed the door and walked away. When Sonny came back home, I told him that, it was all up to him. He had to clean up and throw some stuff away. I and Roberta soon left for physical therapy and errands, as I told you earlier. When we came back a few hours later, Sonny was sitting in the living room, I guess, still giving a thorough thought to cleaning the bathroom. It took me considerable time and effort, as well as a lot of the parental pressure, to convince him to go and clean. Right now, armed with different bleach products and rubber gloves, my poor son is defending us from a threat of e coli and other horrible diseases. In fact, when he didn't want to do it, I had to say to him: "Fine, we'll all die from e coli! Go brush teeth with that toothbrush that was sitting on the sink, when the toilet exploded!" 

     Too much? I think so.