Batch

8-7-12 -- Find myself at mom's new apartment, though I have no idea how I got there. Have let myself in with my key and am looking around downstairs, but no sign of mom. I do hear her calling out to somebody about needing lunch or something, and suddenly find a computer that still has something on the screen ordering delivery from Checkers.

I see a staircase and start to head upstairs. It has extra braces and such, and seems to be reinforced, but it is still kind of unstable. I climb most of the way up, and come to a place where there is a beam running across the entire width of the stairs right at hand rail height, and I am trying to figure out if you are supposed to climb over it or under it. I glance to where the stairway connects to the second floor, and there is a wall there with a gap of maybe 10 inches. I might be able to squeeze through this, but mom never could! I am trying to figure out what is going on here.

That's when mom calls to me from the first floor, and explains to me that I am on the wrong staircase. They had to put a new one in for her to make use of, and it blocked off the old one. So I am going to have to climb back down this rickety staircase which is turning into more of a ladder as I start to turn around. The supports are starting to pull out of the wall, and the entire thing is about to collapse when I kind of half step, half drop off it and onto the ground in the kitchen.

Mom leads me around to the other staircase and upstairs. The 'staircase' is made of overlapping metal bits, and it moves. It doesn't form stairs like an escalator, but instead looks like one of the luggage carousels at the airport, except it leads upstairs. I guess I caught mom in the shower, because she is wearing a towel. Because of this, I can tell she has lost a lot of weight. She is still fat, but probably no more than 200 pounds, as opposed to the 400 pounds that she used to weigh.

Now we're upstairs, and she tells me she may have forgotten to let me know, but she has now gotten a roommate, Donna Peeler's daughter, and she is teaching another young woman (who looks kind of like Torri) to become a clown. [This is kind of odd, since my mom died before I ever got into the whole clown thing.] As I step into the room I am practically accosted by the first of perhaps a dozen cats who wants to be petted.

I keep coming across more and more cats, all in good health and well-groomed, each with beautiful coats, and all with different colors and probably at least three or four different breeds of cats. Gorgeous animals, and all very friendly and wanting attention.

Mom is complaining that she can't get anybody to come around and do any gardening work, even for pay, and I am asking if she misses the guy who came by and did the lawns on Hickory. I can't remember his name, but I am trying Fowler and Fletcher. Fletcher sounds right. [In truth, I can't even remember the name in real life anymore. Been too many years.] Anyway, mom keeps teaching clown make-up to the one gal, and Peeler's daughter is walking around half-dressed, and I can't help but notice she's kind of cute.