Twas the night before Xmas...

...when all thru the house, not a creature was stirring....

only Okaasan ...television shopping at 4.30 am!

In the early hours I'd gone downstairs to the toilet after a big meaty dinner out with Cutest Baby and his family the evening before. My body in shock from meat, eat. And more meat.

Going back upstairs I paused. Could hear voices.
Outside in the street? Okaasan's TV on extra loud? Santa 24 hours early?

???? Okaasan was talking to someone! Giving her address to someone! I crept into the kitchen and peered thru into her room. 
She was sitting on the sofa with her mobile phone, holding out the My Important Contact Info laminated card we made for her handbag...telling somebody her address.

"Somebody" was a TV shopping company and Okaasan was apparently buying Glucosamine, the supplement for weak joints etc. TV is always showing old people running up and down stairs and doing the splits etc after taking these pills.
Hell - Dear Son and I were taking these pills a few years ago for our gammy knees. Seemed to help. I actually stopped, cos I read that the sugar in them may be raising my blood sugar too much...giving me the leg spasms.

ANYWAY.
4.30 am and Okaasan is having a long and confused conversation with some sales person.
I go into her room as if by chance and she waves me away impatiently.
I hover in the kitchen listening in....and hoping she wasn't ordering a jumbo box of the stuff.

She comes off the phone. I ask. She tells me she has never ever taken medicine for anything, but sometimes her knees hurt and this Glucosamine stuff could be good - someday.
She's quite tense about it all - probably a bit stressed from the confusing conversation.

But I see an opening( brain into action early morning): "Oh yes, it's good stuff, Dear Son and I were taking it for our knees! In fact we still have a large jar of it!"
I rush upstairs and return with the large jar. That gets Okaasan. She hates the idea of buying too many things, wasteful etc
"It's ok! You can cancel it - if you call back! You can cancel the order!"

By now Dear Son (he is back for 3 days, and then gone again) has got out of bed to see what on earth we are doing downstairs at this time..and while he hovers in the kitchen I am trying to help Okaasan negotiate the cancelling phone call...FULL of confusion with a different salesperson about which telephone number (his and my mobile and the house landline) she gave in the first conversation. Or her OWN cell phone number.
I don't know. She doesn't know.

The sales woman doing the graveyard shift for the TV shopping company must have been banging her head against the wall while still keeping up that over the top politeness to a customer.
It goes on and on, round and round. Okaasan won't let us take the phone and try to help, of course. It's exhausting.
Finally - 20 minutes later - she has managed to cancel the order. We hope.
And she comes off the phone and looks relieved. We tell her to ask us if she wants to take any supplements for her knee pain etc. Not to start ordering stuff off the TV in the middle of the night.
Maybe we should remove the telephone from her room at night...

Lucky! That I heard her and could stop it. That it was only a cheapish health thing. Not a family set of peacock down futons...

She says her knee isn't bad. But. We guess that it is on her mind sometimes.
The hot hands and kind chat chiro might be a good idea. Or the Glucosamine....

And that was the start of my Christmas Eve.
On into the day of classes with homemade Christmas cupcakes and parties and end of year chat, off to buy some late presents, off to deliver presents and then home to cook chicken and potatoes and stuff for Dear Son and Okaasan.

Descending into over-eating and happiness....