Blah.

Mom's window? Same structure, anyway.

I missed my Wednesday visit, spending a night in Madison on the county dime, as Julie had a seminar there. But I saw Mom last night, and again tonight.

I don't think I've had a more useless visit than on Thursday. We ate with the group, and the braying of Mrs. AT -- her sailing prowess, her laaarrrge family -- was so macho and repetitive that you wanted to throw something at her. And then L had somehow thought it OK not to wear her hearing aid, and so was shouting, "WHAT? WHO? WHAT CANADIAN?" And to correct her, well, it was more work than it was worth.

It's bad to make fun of these people -- I'll likely die before I'm their age -- but sometimes maintaining your sanity is a cruel business.

Mom and I went to her room, and, really, it was like we couldn't think of anything to do. She pried into my doings of the night before, the trip to Madison, which I couldn't bring myself to tell her was an overnight, but made it sound like just dinner with friends.

But still: "What friends? How do you know them?"

A mutter sufficed for my reply. I think that she doesn't really care who or what, but remembers that this is how you talk. Anyway.

She was just as bored with me as I was with her, and even said I didn't have to come today, Friday, as I said I would. But I did.

And it was better. Her mind stays with her longer in the afternoon lately, and we can actually converse, calculate, figure, if our moods are right. We had dinner, and the mix at the table was better, and I talked with Ca -- her 78th birthday was yesterday -- and D, Mom's closest friend there, who was in an up-cycle, and John the former photographer, who told about a dinner of retired colleagues he'd been to the night before. Mom listened intently, refused dessert -- very unusual for her -- and we finally went back to her room.

We made a call to V, in Michigan, one of her buddies. Mom got a little mixed up on who she'd called, but still wrestled benefit from the conversation. Then we called P&L, in Minnesota. They are going to the big college reunion that Mom wants to go to, and I explored it a little bit with L.

Mom, from saying firmly a few days go that she wanted to go, said now she now she would like to go but didn't think she was up to it. It's a five-hour drive one way, two nights in a dorm -- two nights in a dorm with my mother -- and a five-hour drive home. She's impatient, mixed-up and anxiety-ridden when we drive 10 minutes to the drugstore, and five hours would about undo us. And I really don't think, in a crowded roomful of old friends, she would get much take-away. A day or two with one person or two -- that  would work much better.

Tomorrow I'll get to bike. Unless it's cold and raining, like it is right now.