I'll Get By With a Little Help From My Five-Dollar Daughter

Oh, yeah! Look at this beauty!

If you were my mom, this could all be yours. This, and two more just like it. Along with...

* a quart of potato soup left over from yesterday
* two Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits made from a box mix, left over from last night
* half an 8 oz. block of sharp cheddar cheese, Coburn Farms brand from Save A Lot
* one box of Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuit mix
* one National Enquirer
* one Globe
* eight Entertainment Weekly magazines
* three McDonald's grilled onion cheddar burgers
* one large McDonald's Diet Coke, straw included

Reads like a regular prize package, doesn't it?

Mom is still hunkered down, holed up in her brick split-level on the edge of town, refusing to let anybody enter her driveway. Yeah. What's up with that? Keeping her Five-Dollar Daughter idling on the wrong side of the road while The Pony surefoots his way down other people's footprints in the driveway. It's not like I have the audacity of the ex-mayor, and merrily roll down that gravel slope without a sideward glance. Mom told me to stay out of her driveway, and I stayed out of her driveway, by cracky!

I told mom to stay in the house. That The Pony would bring her stuff to the door. I called three times to see if she needed something from the store. No. Made up a little white lie that I was driving The Pony through McDonald's. Could I bring her something from there? A crisp Diet Coke, perhaps? A burger? Well...Mom said that since I was going there anyway, those Diet Cokes were really good (I can't stand them there), and that even though she didn't need any food at the moment, maybe I could pick up three grilled onion cheddar burgers, and she could have one for supper, and freeze two for later. I've got some advice for McDonald's: YOU REALLY NEED TO PLOW YOUR PARKING LOT! Trucks were spinning all over the place in that churned-up snow quicksand. I had sense enough to go out the lower exit by the stoplight, rather than sit at the stop sign on the 45-degree hill, waiting for Walmart drivers to go by.

Did Mom stay in the house like a good septuagenarian? What do you think? We called to say we were getting near, and I'll be ding-dang-donged if she didn't walk to the end of the porch, and act like she was going down the steps to the driveway I couldn't enter. The Pony handed her all the stuff. My plan had been for him to take it in, but Mom told him not to come up the steps. She had said earlier on the phone that those darn neighbors who brought her paper to the door Monday, and her mail, because the mail carrier pulled over and handed it to them (!), had left compressed snow icy patches on her porch that she couldn't sweep away. I guess she needs a porch directive like that driveway policy.

I did not get out, but hollered down that driveway that I was going to wait right there on the wrong side of the road until Mom got back inside the door. I was quite worried that she might take a spill on that slippery slab of a porch. Did she put her McDonald's bag down inside her Walmart bag and drape it over her arm, holding the Diet Coke in that hand, with one hand left to stabilize herself along the brick house-front? NO! She tottered along holding both bags in one hand and the soda-bottom cupped in her other hand. Did she set the soda down on that one step up into the door? NO! She held that styrofoam soda cup against her body with the two-bag forearm while she pulled out the glass storm door and pushed in the wooden front door.

That ol' gal is one tough bird. She sent The Pony back to T-Hoe with a Walmart bag containing an unopened tray of assorted chocolate cookies she had gotten as a gift. When he looked in, braying like a horse-donkey about his good luck at scoring those tasty snacks, The Pony said, "Hey! There's a five-dollar bill in here, too!"

Of course there was.