Humble Heroism

There are eight geriatric presbyterians upstairs eating cheesecake and playing bridge, and, thanks to me, none of them broke a hip tonight.

True to form, the table has been set for days.  The crystal and silver 'just so', in order to be gazed upon and anticipated (which Grandma swears, is half the fun of anything.  Ask her.)  The card tables have been at the ready for a good week now.  The cheesecake has been thawed, I even sliced it, put it on footed glass cake plates with DOILIES and made a fresh strawberry sauce while Grandma snored a room away.

Grandma spent the day sleeping, snoozing, napping, and lazing about.  Not that she has much to do on a daily basis, but truth be told, this IS unusual for her.  She complained that today she was "riddled with arthritis from head to toes!" but she doesn't seem too worse for the wear; after a nap-inducing glass of wine at 2:30 she quaffed a hefty bourbon with dinner.  I woke her up fifteen minutes before her guests arrived, and then all hell broke loose.

When I tried to turn on the front lights (which I swear, I had already switched on...) they wouldn't light.  Marvelling at the timing, I changed the bulbs of both lights and flicked the switches desperately, all to no avail.  I called my Uncle Bob, and methodically went through each switch in the fuse box as the first ladies arrived.  Nothing.  Nada.  Not so much as a flicker, of course, much diagnostic progress might have been made if the two old bats "helping" Grandma (and undoing all the work I had already done) hadn't switched the front lights OFF as they came in...  Nevertheless, it didn't really matter.  I set up a flood light out front, ran a cord from the garage, and covered the cord with a mat to minimize trippage.

And that's how I saved the bridge party from certain doom.  My heroism went pretty much overlooked, as I was requested to make coffee, pour ice water/water with no ice and changed the tank in Grandma's portable oxygen machine before slipping downstairs with my own hefty bourbon.