A Day Out With Grandma

The Case For Spontaneous Family Fun

The Tar-Bear

My family, like many families in the world is a very busy one. Most of my time is completely allocated on any given day as I am a wife, mother, homeschooler, farmer, writer, and oh yes, a part time librarian. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, for as a 65 year old woman cattle rancher that I admired once put it:

"If you aren't doing something; you're probably dead." (She was a poet!)

That said, I don't believe in working yourself into the ground, and part of the reason that I am hustling so much these days is I am trying to do the hard stuff while I am young so I can enjoy working in a bit of a different way when I am older. Or something like that.

I've already talked about the joy that I find in the small and what could be considered insignificant things in other blog posts, so today I am going to wordly ruminate on another life and relationship principle that I think is so important: Spontaneous Family Time!!

My husband's mother died over seventeen years ago and we moved to Idaho shortly thereafter. We became friends with my Uncle's neighbors, a retired couple that were just the most amazing people ever. I mean, when we met these two they were pressure washing sod of all things (A story for another time!). They became family, and over time we started joking that they were my husband's surrogate parents. These two people have been at every important life event in our timeline for the last fifteen years, the births of our children, college graduations, funerals, and the list goes on. Grandma and Grandad are the greatest.

Well, this past spring we lost Grandad to that which claims us all in the end, and like all losses this one has been felt by all. Grandma is the most amazing lady ever, and as a former juvenile detention administrator is as tough as nails, yet one of the most loving people that you will ever meet. We often are at her house checking on her and doing odd jobs around the place that need to be done.

Today was one of those days. We had planned on going over and moving a smoker for her, checking and fixing a lawnmower that wouldn't start, and doing a few other chores for her. While we were working on all those things so we could go home and do our farm work, she blurted:

"I'd really like to go see Beauty and the Beast. I've really been wanting to watch it, and it's at the discount theater. Wouldn't you just love a bucket of caramel corn?"

Our two kids were immediately on board with the announcement, and at first I balked a bit as did my husband. We had fenceline to tend to, mowing to do, and about a million other chores, buy you know what? You will always have about a million other chores, but just how often will you have a magical afternoon with your Grandma?

So into Grandma's car we went. We proceeded to Kentucky Fried Chicken and all ingested 5 buck lunches and listened to Grandma wax poetic about just how much of a good deal that giant chicken pot pie was. We piled into the movie theater and listened to loads and loads of Disney songs and I caught myself smiling at her loudly expressed moments of glee. We ended up at a tiny grocery store in Athol, Idaho and got the biggest yet cheapest ice cream cones that I have ever beheld:

This is a single serving and cost $2.69!

The ice cream led to my favorite moment of the day. Five years ago the grandparents came back from a trip to Colorado with something in their car. Out popped the biggest eight week old puppy I had ever seen. The paws on this thing were like tea saucers in size and the creature's muzzle was on everything. I'm pretty sure that Taras the Rhodesian Ridgeback has the biggest mouth fetish of any dog to exist ever. Grandad was a huge movie buff, so of course the pup's moniker was derived from movie: Taras Bulba. I mean naming your dog after a Cossack warlord says something, but I think he should have been named Hoover, Bissell, or Dyson.

My husband and I were like, "Whoa, it's a horse!"

To which Grandma replied, "Naw, breed standard is 86 pounds."

"But, he's from Texas." I pointed out as I felt that was enough of an explanation.

Taras weighs in at about 125 pounds. He also is a huge baby. When Grandma wanted to get his nails trimmed he got to the point to where she had to take him to the vet, pay to have him sedated, and it still took the vet and two techs to get his nails trimmed. He was the most unmannerly, unruly heathen dog ever, and at his size that was a bit of a problem.

We fixed the nail trimming issue, as the dog and I are the same size. The first time I told him to lay down and I lay over him while staring him in the eye. My husband trimmed his nails with a dremel tool. The whole process took about ten minutes. That first session he howled and harrumphed with insolent rage, but he knew better than to move, for I used my patented goat stare on him. I am proud to say that he is so well trained at this ritual now that he just lays there, and I just have to place one arm on him and scratch him while his pedicure is attended too.

Well, we all walked into Grandma's house eating our ice cream cones of unusual size. This infuriated the big baby and he sat in front of Grandma telling her so in all manner of dog noise utterances. He moved from person to person sticking his Hereford bull sized head into our personal space trying to sample the frozen, sweetened bovine lactation confection from heaven (sorry, I REALLY like pistachio ice cream). When we wouldn't give him any of our treat he did a complete Taras move.

We got up to hug Grandma goodbye and suddenly I heard a thump and paper crinkling. Taras had swiped a leftover KFC chocolate chip cookie off of the kitchen counter and was eating it, bag and all. I plopped him to the ground, pried open his mouth, and removed the cookie and bag. Grandma was all manner of irritated at the big galoot, and my husband and kids were just laughing at the spectacle of it all.

And that my friends is my point. I could have spent the day covered in dirt and building some rather fine character blisters, but instead I got to relish the smile on a dear family member's face as we spent time just enjoying each other's company. I get to hear, "No one fights like Gaston." in my head over and over again for the rest of the day. My digestive system gets to scream at me the rest of the evening as I ingested processed food of normal non-consumption. I got to inhale the scent of dog toenails being ground off at multiple rpms, and most of all I get the warm and toasty satisfaction that lights up my conscience whenever I think about how happy Grandma was that we spent the day with her just doing random fun things together.

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And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's pistachio ice cream covered and slightly gnawed on iPhone.

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