Prompt # 59 - Tasks

Prompt # 59 - Tasks

I get out of bed, turn off the tv, use the toilet and flush, wash face, dress in long skirt or jeans, loose T-shirt, fleece, no bra unless I have company. I go downstairs, turn off nightlight, turn on radio to CBC, open curtains on picture window and french door. I go to the sink, fill coffee carafe with six cups cold water, pour into machine, struggle with filter, add three T of ground coffee, push the button On. Eat a bowl of something, or a homemade muffin, and sit either on couch at picture window or in television room which is warmer, and drink coffee, two large mugs. Then, I'm ready to start my day. Work at computer. Make bed. Make lunch, usually a bowl of homemade soup or a sandwich. Omelet on Sunday. Work at computer or read. Walk either at 3 or 5 pm. 4 pm watch Murder She Wrote, with cup of instant coffee and one cookie. Make supper. Close curtains. Tidy kitchen, washing pots, loading dishwasher. Watch tv. Play Spider Solitaire or Scrabble on laptop at the same time, checking Facebook and playing Scrabble with friends there. Eleven pm. Turn off lights, except nightlight. Upstairs to bed. If I go up town, to shop for groceries, check mail, meet for coffee at the Blue Moose every Wednesday, play scrabble at the Lodge every Thursday, go to library, it is afternoon. Except I go to garage sales every Saturday morning. Every Sunday morning I watch the Coronation Street marathon.

I could add more detail, but I know you are already asleep.

When my grandmother Winifred was my age, she lived alone in a little yellow house in a small town in British Columbia. We lived on a farm in Manitoba, two thousand kilometres away. She had diabetes and went blind, so her routine changed. She had running water and flush toilet in town but not on the ranch where she had lived for 40 years. She would have had tea for breakfast, made from loose tea, probably Nabob, which she strained through a strainer to keep the leaves out of the cup. She would insist on a cup and saucer. Mugs were for truck drivers. She made toast which she stood up in a toast rack and ate cold, as they do in England. I do not know what she preferred to eat, but she was always short (under 5 feet) and stout. I know she liked fish, sole. Once she made us tomato aspic with canned shrimp in it. That seemed so exotic to me. My mother often said that the only meal Grandma ever knew how to cook was curry. Let's just say domestic skills were not her forte.

I never saw her wear anything other than dresses and shoes which she called “slippers,” because you slipped your foot in, without laces. She also had real fluffy slippers as well. She wore a large flesh pink contraption underneath her dresses, a sort of combination girdle with stays and bustier, with garters. I don't know how she got it done up without help. She was used to having help. As a child in England, there would have been helpers and servants in the house. When she was married with children at home, her daughters did most of the house work including cooking, dishes, cleaning, garden, and laundry. For most of her life, she would have been happy reading for 16 hours a day. After she went blind, she borrowed recorded books from the CNIB (Canadian National Institute for the Blind). I used to love visiting at her house. It had no wallpaper. Every wall was bookshelves, filled with books which I would volunteer to dust. Grandma enjoyed socializing, especially meeting women friends for tea. She went to church three times every Sunday. I'm really not sure how she managed for those 9 years she lived alone. I know she relied very heavily on her daughter-in-law and the 2 granddaughters who lived nearby.