“I wonder what the Mayor is eating right now.”

For a scintillating Friday evening Mark, Noah and myself decided to go grocery shopping. Actually, it was all Noah’s idea, and he was pretty insistent. As we were getting out of the car I spotted Mayor Street and his wife getting out of a white Jeep in the parking lane in front of us. Mark and I looked at each other awestruck and lollygagged it into the store so we could follow Philly’s first couple. It was fascinating to us that the Mayor and his wife did their own shopping. They each got a cart, but she did the bulk of the shopping while he just tooled around looking at pretzel crisps in his spare moments between requests by grocery store patrons to pose with their kids for their picture phones. Mark said “I think I see Ed Rendell over there by the lunchmeat counter.” We beat the Streets out of the store, but we used the SuperFresh staff for our checkout and the Mayor preferred to scan his own groceries.

Saturday morning I got a call that my paternal Grandfather, my Oma’s husband had had a stroke. He fell out of the bed in the middle of the night and couldn’t get up. The ambulance was called and he was taken to St. Luke’s in Bethlehem. After learning he was out of the emergency room and in his own room Mark and I cancelled our plans on Sunday to see his Grandmother for her 96th birthday so that Noah and I could go to visit my Grandfather.

My Grandfather is not a healthy man. Despite shortness of breath and loud raspy wheezing, he was still smoking several packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day while sitting on the sofa watching TV and playing solitaire. The only time he left the house was to go binge drinking every Saturday and Sunday. He ate poorly, got no exercise and never went to the doctor. He’s overweight but had lost a few pounds in the last year – but it just fell off inexplicably. For months my Dad has been saying he feared Grandpop to be very ill but there was no way to know because he’d never go for a checkup. So to say that his stroke wasn’t surprising is an understatement. The good news is that he is awake and though his is speech is slurred by left side paralysis, he can talk – mainly to say he wants to go home from the hospital despite the fact that he can’t walkor even swallow. I spoke to the doctor yesterday and was told that he could recover from much of his stroke paralysis but it will take an extended hospital stay and some rehab – but they're also concerned because he has heart disease, high blood pressure, failing kidneys and compromised lungs. So things don’t look good in the long term and if he does return home I fear a large burden of his care is going to be placed on my Oma, who has her own failing health with which to deal, and my father.

Noah was very good in the hospital. My Dad spent almost our entire visit following him around in circles on the patient floor. He got a lot of smiles. And despite being overtired and napless he only got a little temperamental when we had a late lunch at the Copperhead Grille. He started to fuss when I wouldn’t give him some of my beer. I called Mark from the restaurant to tell him we were in a room with 12 televisions, all on football – but he didn’t answer the phone. My burger was good and messy and Dad insisted on treating, as always.

Noah and I spent the night at my mom’s house since we were in the area and she wanted to go over some dog care basics with me before we watch her dogs this coming weekend. After Noah went to bed we drank a couple of cosmopolitans, ate popcorn, talked and watched Desperate Housewives and Crossing Jordan. This morning she left for Vegas and we took our time getting out of the house and got home this afternoon.

For some odd reason Noah wants to take all the colored foam balls he got for Christmas and put them under the entertainment center. We retrieve them, throw them and he fetches and returns them to their rightful place. And in music news, the Noah stomp is the newest dance craze at the Eggerts household. This hot step entails a one legged march using only the left foot. It's a dance sensation soon to be sweeping the nation.