52 bye bye truck

Well, the truck's gone. Sold it for the KBB value. My parents got into a fight over the money. What else is new? My dad wants to horde it in his personal checking account. My mom wanted to put it in savings to live off of. Mom won, of course, she does have power of attorney and all that. So they're down to one car. My mom was hoping to save on car insurance, but because my dad still has a driver's license, she has to keep paying for him to be insured, and because she got a 40% discount for having 2 vehicles insured, she really didn't save much.
It's obvious that my dad is never going to drive again. Why does he have to have a driver's license? There must be some other kind of state ID he can get. Then again, once you have a license, you've got one forever. Pretty stupid if you ask me. My husband's gramma Ag was completely crippled, couldn't walk a step, gnarled from a hideous case of rheumatoid arthritis, and every year the state of Florida renewed her driver's license by mail. And you'd think with their incredible population of elderly that they'd have a better system.
The people at the Alzhiemer's study got my mom to start coming to support meetings. They are only once a month, on Thursdays at 2 p.m. somewhere in New Haven. She wants me to come but I can't take off work for that. I'm glad she's found something. I've been trying and trying to get her to go; there's meetings right here in Wallingford for cripes' sake. Maybe now that she's gone to a couple of these New Haven ones she'll be more willing to go to the Wlfd ones. There's a lady there who my mom said has the exact same issues with her husband as my mom has with my dad so it's kind of a bonding thing for her. I'm glad.
I had lunch with them on Monday at Wendy's. My dad likes to get a chicken sandwich with bacon on it. Who knows why? But they are willing to put bacon on anything for $.50. But he's got to take the reciept and look at it and freak out over the cost of everything, saying it's too much. But if I don't get the bacon for him, he freaks out that there's no bacon.
Last Friday we went to Applebee's for lunch. I got there early and ordered mozzarella sticks, and the drinks for my parents and me. The sticks came just after my parents sat down, and my father got totally irate. Said something like "oh, that's it for me." and how he always gets screwed. Because he thought we were at 99 Restaurant and getting a free bowl of popcorn. He doesn't like cheesesticks but my mom and I do. He says "You can have them" and pushes them away, even though we no longer offer them to him. (he used to eat them and like them). Then he got even more angry that he didn't order clam chowder (didn't even occur to me) so I tried to get it added on, but the food was already ready so it was too late. It took forever for us to convince him that he'd eaten the chicken and broccoli pasta before (every time we come there, actually). He kept saying no. Then he had to "de-fat" the chicken, which consists of cutting off all the char marks. He must have thrown away 3/4 of the chicken. Then he cut and cut and cut the pasta until it was basically a mush, not even something you can eat with a fork.
My husband doesn't understand my father's obsession with de-fatting his food and cutting it into miniscule pieces. Especially since my father will cut and cut his meat, de-fatting it until there's nothing left, and then smother it in GRAVY. When he eats salad, he DRINKS the dressing left over. What's in gravy? Drippings. What are drippings? Melted fat. What's dressing? Oil. What's oil? Liquid fat. I guess only fat in solid form bothers him. He eats butter, he loves the popcorn I make which is made with butter-flavored oil and real butter. It's got a lot more fat in it than the char-marks on broiled chicken.
But it's like my grandma who thinks Frosted Flakes have no sugar in them unless added from the sugar bowl. How do you convince these people otherwise? Old and crazy and set in their ways.
My grandma's going to the doctor this week about her blood pressure medicine she claims is making her so sick. I can't spell it, and therefore can't look it up. Atteninol? My mom tends to pronounce unfamilar words very strangely so that might not be it. Supposedly it's been the news for causing strokes. Maybe I can find it that way. Here it is, from WebMD: Tenormin (atenolol) . But there's so many sites with conflicting information so who knows?
My dad said on Sunday when we saw him, "no more truck. My truck's gone." like someone took it. He didn't seem as sad as I thought he would be, just resigned. I talked to my mom today and she said he got his plates back ("ZZ") so he's happy about that. The strangest things make him happy. And I know those plates made people think he was a zz top fan, instead of being part of his last name. Whatever. It's a moot point now, right?
And no more pick-up truck in the family. Oh well.