Eventually

Some people have a knack for foresight. They seem to possess this unique ability in which they appear to be prepared for everything; never truly surprised by an event or outcome while simultaneously thinking their prescience is completely unremarkable. You know, those people whose most commonly used phrase could very well be “I told you so” because, well, they did.

I am not one of those people.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wish I was. After all, I do everything I can to try and prepare myself for my future, both immediate and long term. I plan out my week with things I need to get done. I often obsess over my public transportation routes, ensuring all the necessary elevators are working and what not till that last possible moment before heading out the door.  I plan and then I re-plan, all in hopes of stacking the deck in my favor for success and positive results in whatever realm matters to me at the moment. Yet, I’m consistently taken by surprise.

I mean, planning only goes so far. Trying to prepare yourself for all possible outcomes to a particular set of events is a hopelessly useless cause. Then again, there are also those things you know you should expect to happen “eventually” but the timeline for “eventually” tends to steer towards a more prolonged one so you never get around to actually being ready.

One of my and my family’s “eventually” clocks stopped ticking this week and sitting here now, staring at my flashing cursor, I can only shake my head and wonder how that clock ran out of life so quickly. On Monday, my family put our floofy Cheerio-loving, Little House on the Prairie watching, man-bun wearing Oscar to sleep.

Now Oscar has made a few cameo appearances here on the blog in both pictures and commentary (Who’s Counting?, Mom. Mom? MOM!, Uno. Dos., Aisle 7, and others…) but I think a little refresher course is in order.

Oscar is a 13 (almost 14) year old mutt of a pooch (although he prefers the term designer dog) who was rescued from a farm where he spent his time eating horse droppings and chasing cats. While both those activities ceased in a literal sense upon coming to live in the Schroth home, I’m 98% convinced there was a lot of kitty chasing in Oscar’s relatively abundant and assumedly vivid puppy dreams per his sleep barks and leg twitches.

Oscar is technically Lindsey’s dog (my littler sister) and made his fair share of 4-H related appearances as well as being present for countless homecoming, winterfest, and prom parties. Now even though Oscar is most certainly the “senior” pet in the household, he always seems to be at the bottom of the “status” totem pole and with his profoundly laid-back personality, I don’t think he much cares. Some of his favorite past times include eating, sleeping, eating some more, and going on walks where he is allowed to pee on everything taller than the average blade of grass (seriously, that’s not an exaggeration…). He’s a bit of a goofball with the coolest looking underbite and most happy-go-lucky personality. I saw him when I was home for Easter and I certainly had no idea that would be the last time we’d be bed buddies.

Ready

If you’ve read almost any of my past posts you’ve probably realized that on occasion, I like to give my Mom a hard time. She has this remarkable obsession with Costco toilet paper that I find simply hilarious–in our extended family, she’s like the tooth fairy but with toilet paper. I also may or may not have almost gotten her arrested in the airport this one time. I’m also convinced that she doesn’t actually know I’m paralyzed because of some of the things she says and does (Example #1: Tapping my leg to get my attention–yea, that doesn’t work).

With all that being said, my Mom is an extremely perceptive individual. She’s good at planning things and she can read between the lines better than most people can actually read. Needless to say, there isn’t much that gets past Mom (excluding the fact that I’m paralyzed and use a wheelchair–that hasn’t sunk in).

What am I getting at? Well October 18th was my Mom and Dad’s 30th Wedding Anniversary and my sisters and I decided to plan them a surprise anniversary party. The last time someone tried to pull off some sort of “surprise party” on Mom was her 40th birthday (I can say she’s over 40 right?)  and if I recall correctly, that wasn’t the most appreciated celebration. Granted, that could have been because of the whole turning 40 thing but I digress…

The day of the party Dad knew what was going on (it was the only way to get him there and out of the fields from harvest), but Mom was still clueless. Meaning Mom had no idea that she had a place that she needed to be at at a very particular time. Fittingly, it was my job to get her there.

That was an experience in itself where I convinced Mom we just HAD to go to the Farmer’s Market so I could get my last egg roll of the season and we could walk the ave just one more time. There may have been snow flurries that morning which made convincing a bit of a challenge. Thankfully I have a pretty convincing pout face. We slowly strolled the market,  I distracted Mom at a local coffee shop by teaching her how to use Instagram on her cell phone, and then made an excuse to go to the mall and get some tea.

Mom’s first ever instagram post — a selfie

We get to the mall, I go the bathroom and am gone for maybe 5 minutes. I go back to mother dearest and find out that she had called the older sister to talk to her about something or other. Naturally, Danielle was well in the middle of preparing the hall–decorating and all that jazz –and Mom had decided to call her. Seriously, I left her alone for 5 minutes. Lesson learned: no potty breaks when you’re on Mom duty. From that moment on, I followed her around like a shadow. She may have commented after the fact how annoying she thought I was that morning… Oh well, I don’t think that’s too far gone from how annoying I can be on a normal day.