Working on the ’55 Chevy

I had a nice visit with my parents yesterday.  I’ve been going at lunchtime and Dad gets sleepy after eating and typically takes a nap. So I haven’t been able to spend any quality time with him. I asked my mom when a better time might be to come and she told me to try getting there late morning after he finishes showering, but before lunch. I got there a little before 11:00 yesterday and he was ready for me.

Arthur went with me. He seems to like my dad and pays him great attention, especially when my dad is eating a meal.

We got out the model of the ’55 Chevy and the paints. The directions for this plastic model, which are moderately better than the directions for the wooden ship we built earlier this year, suggested that we paint anything that required it before we disconnected the pieces from the “trees.”

We decided to skip the black flat paint altogether, because the pieces were black anyway, and I actually didn’t have any black flat paint. Dad’s cool with all my unilateral decisions. We started with the silver paint for the teeny tiny trim on the body of the car. It became immediately apparent that we were in over our heads and all the paper towels, tissues and tiny brushes in the world weren’t going to help. But fortunately for us, we were able to draft my sister Carol, who is an artist, into helping us out a bit with the paint.

Dad was painting the interior of the car model with red paint when Arthur chose to seek his attention. Arthur stood up with his front paws resting on Dad’s knees and his little nose pointed up. Dad was holding a  half-inch paintbrush full of red paint that he began to point towards Arthur’s little black nose. About two inches of air stood between Arthur and the paintbrush when I intervened and saved Arthur from becoming Rudolf.

Dad was actually a big help today as I was trying to locate the pieces we needed to paint without a clue as to what the piece actually looked like or what part of the car it went on based only on its name. Even with his Alzheimer’s memory challenges, Dad still is pretty sharp about engine parts evidently. One for the plus column. He even recognized the name of the part when I botched its pronunciation which he corrected. I wish I would have remembered the names of the parts but I had never heard of them before and they passed right on through my brain.

Next time we’ll finish painting and then we get to glue, or I guess the correct terminology is, cement, pieces together. I’m pretty glad I only got difficulty level 2 instead of 3, 4, or 5.

After lunch I took my mom and dad outside for a very short stroll along their flower bed. They hadn’t been outside to see the tulips yet. I didn’t want them to miss this.

Here is the tulip tree my dad likes to sit under.

Carol says the blossoms got zapped and flattened by the cold snap, but I still think it looks pretty.