The year of the snake means a time of rapid transformation. Just as a snake sheds its skin, it’s a time of new beginnings for us. Sounds good, but so far the changes haven’t been all that great given we might be heading into a recession thanks to the viper south of the border. Fine for us Boomers, but a mighty blow to any youth who’ll be laid off and unable to find work. Better grab a bottle of Smirnoff (made in Canada) on your way home and enjoy the last few weeks of employment.

Mom’s recent transformations haven’t been great, either. Last week she was taken to emergency on two separate occasions and each time sent back home. The last time the doctor phoned me and said Mom can’t be alone at night, so I’ve hired a nice woman to come in the evenings and sleep there. Then Mom will be totally safe, and no more fighting with Luke to go and stay with gramma.

Because of the new weakened state she’s in Mom’s no longer able to go down the two steps to the lower area of the house to access the TV and her bedroom. So we moved her into the old part of the house, dad’s old bedroom and bathroom, and then moved the TV into the kitchen for her. Now she’s all on one level, which is good, but moving the TV meant disconnecting the satellite, which turned out very bad.

Mom lives for TV, but we said don’t worry, that’ll be fixed and in the meantime you’ll have whatever’s on the smart TV, like YouTube and Netflix. In other words, a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, the smart TV remote has numbers, letters and arrows the size of pin heads, so mom can’t change the channel and so we had to do it for her. And guess what? Mom has the attention span of a gnat but the demands of the Queen of England.

I’d be vacuuming. “Mooooooni!” I’d come running, “Yes?” And then Mom would explain she didn’t like that movie, and I’d have to find a new one. Mom lives for CNN and MSNBC so to save my sanity I said “Hey, I can get clips of that for you on YouTube”, so was able to find half an hour here, three quarters of an hour there of her favourites. Sadly she didn’t like it.

Why didn’t Mom like seeing all her favourite people on YouTube? It just didn’t feel right without her ability to control it with her old large easy-to-use remote, so she was in a terrible snit. Besides asking when the other channels would be available, she’d grab the now useless remote and try to change channels, and each time I’d say, “Isn’t that cute, you’re trying to change channels with that remote.”

Then she’d say, “Well if that remote isn’t working sometimes this one will work”, and she’d pick up the mobile phone. I said “Nope. Actually, the white thing is for calling people in their homes, but the black thing is the remote for changing channels on the TV but right now it doesn’t work.” After about 27 rounds of this explanation and the whole satellite shemozzle, I just got drunk as fast as I could.

Because of the heinous stress of the weekend I spent with mom, Calvin and Visini decided to take my mind off things with a game of Scrabble. I haven’t played in over 35 years, and it was a fun thing to do. I made one good move which netted 34 points, then crashed and burned ever after and ended up last, but didn’t care. We learned bott is the plural of bot, and don’t know what to do with either of those. I did learn the most obscure dictionary in the world is the “official” Scrabble one.