How Far I’ve Fallen

I have been visiting at my Parent’s house in Portland for a week now. I’ve eaten more in the last week than I usually do in a month. My Mom’s favorite phrase ‘Are you hungry? Wound you like xyz?’ rolls off her tongue like the those mythical Greek Sirens who tempted ancient sailors to wreck their boats on the rocks in the Cyclades. Except it’s my thighs that are being wrecked and, like Agamemnon, I can’t seem to resist.

I am very sure I’ll be unrecognizable to Jeff when we meet up at SeaTac airport late Friday night. It won’t be my body he won’t recognize. Even my Mother can’t fatten me up that quickly – no matter how hard she tries. No – it will be my brain that has dropped several IQ points in such a short span and it’s not hard to see how that happened.

Game Shows. I have been sitting in their living room watching their TV schedule. And it is THEIR schedule. ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ is on at 9. It’s ‘Redemption Week’ on ‘Deal’ – as insiders call it – so they’ve invited all the ex-Zonkers (what are those again?) back to redeem themselves and try to win the cash and prizes that alluded them the last time they were on.

‘The Price is Right’ comes on at 10 with the never ending ‘Come on Down!’. Afterwards we get showered and dressed so we can eat some more and go to the grocery store for more food. We come home and eat lunch. Then I take a nap from my carbohydrate induced food coma. When I wake up, I have a ‘snack’ before dinner.

Dinner will be served before ‘Jeopardy’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune’ come on. They’re ‘Wheel Watchers’ so there will be codes to input and secret puzzles that allow us at home to feel like we’re in the game filmed in Studio City, California.

Every day, before you know it, you’ve spent the entire day eating and watching people select one of three doors or various sized boxes. Or guessing the price of Tylenol or a car, and incessantly jumping up and down. Then we eat some more and watch more guessing and jumping. Then it’s time to go to bed.

My Mother ran her own successful business for nearly 4 decades. So she’s no dummy. But that doesn’t make her immune from shenanigans. Wheel of Fortune is on a half hour earlier where my uncle (her brother) lives in another state. Every night he writes down the answers and calls my Mom and gives them to her before Wheel comes on here. I just found this out after several days of her shouting them out after only one letter has been revealed. I think my Dad believes menopause and osteoporosis makes you smarter – and louder. I think it just make you more wily. If they call me in Spain and tell me my Mom is running a gang of bank robbers, or a Speakeasy, I would believe it now.

‘Let’s Make a Deal’ is my least favorite game show. It requires no skill at all. There is nothing to figure out. No rules. Just smiling people taking more time to pick the envelope or curtain #2 than they took to choose their spouse, who is in the audience dressed as a Super Hero in adult Underoos. After a few days I asked my Mom how they can watch such a ridiculous show with people dressing up and making fools of themselves for nothing – usually.

‘I love it!’ Her eyes twinkling. ‘Until they decide to get really silly. Then it’s just stupid’ she says with a serious tone only a true game show aficionado could pull off.

Really? UNTIL they get ‘really silly’? I just watched a grown man dressed as a lumberjack, with a toy ax, battle a woman dressed as an angel for a free trip to Las Vegas! The show shoots in Los Angeles. They could just drive to Vegas by lunchtime if they left now.

But I have the lingo down. ‘Showcase Showdown’ and ‘Daily Double’ are part of my lexicon now. But there’s only so much room in my brain. I can’t seem to remember my Spanish mobile number by heart anymore and had to look it up. So I’ll have to leave here before my brain turns completely to mush. I think it will be just in time too. Cause I’m starting to schedule my feedings and remaining errands around The Big Deal of the Day. Ugh. I gotta get this monkey off my back.