Annoying things & small pleasures

(The visiting the 80-something-year-old parents edition. ;)  )(with some repetition from this previous post...!) 

Annoying things: 

• Three televisions (plus a radio in the master bedroom), all on different channels/stations, at top volume. (It's not a big house, so it's very noticeable!) 
• Almost as annoying: multiple TVs on the same channel -- but there's a delay between TV sets, creating an echo effect...! 
• Expecting us to still hear them as they walk away into another part of the house, still talking...! (and then yelling back & forth...!). 
• My dad's love for true crime shows, courtroom dramas (including the likes of Judge Judy), and most of all, TV game shows ("The Price is Right," "Family Feud," etc. -- also at top volume) -- now including the Game Channel, which shows game show episodes from the 1970s (!). (This, at least, is mildly entertaining, if only for the glimpses of long-dead minor celebrities and horrendous haircuts and fashions...!) 
• Related: his habit of walking into the room and changing the TV channel that you were watching, without asking!  
• My mother's equally inexplicable love for David Muir and ABC World News Tonight (the nightly evening newscast, on at 5:30 p.m. their time) -- albeit she usually falls asleep while she's watching it...!  lol -- plus her insistence on having a snack to eat while she's watching it (even though dinner is cooking as she watches...). 
• Their constant bickering with each other :p  which has only gotten worse as they have aged. :(  (The pandemic hasn't helped, forcing them to stay home and spend much more time together than they're used to.)  I reminded them -- as I did last Christmas -- that I did not fly 1000 miles during a pandemic to listen to this...! 
• My mother's insistence on marching to her own drummer, which means (among other things) that (more often than not) she's up prowling around the house for half the night, sleeps in until noon-ish, has her breakfast cereal mid/late afternoon, and is always the last one to the dinner table -- usually right around the time the rest of us are all finishing up. 
• Even more annoying: the certainty that she would never have tolerated the same behaviour from my sister & me when we were growing up...! 
• Dinner is never earlier than 6:30 p.m. every night -- but more often 7 p.m. or later -- which would translate to 7:30-8 p.m. or later, our time. We usually eat around 5:30 -- which means we're often starving by the time dinner is eventually ready...!  
• Having one of them hand me the phone after a long-winded conversation ("Lori wants to say hello...") and having NO idea who I'm going to be talking with...!  (Usually one of my aunts.) 
• Having to move from various sofas, chairs, etc., at various times, because (like Sheldon on "The Big Bang Theory" -- one of their favourite TV shows) "you're in my spot."  ;) 
• My parents' (and particularly my mother's) resistance to selling their house and moving, despite the fact that aging, with increasing mobility issues, in a split-level (three levels) house with a large yard is obviously NOT an ideal situation...! (I think my sister & I -- both of us childless/free, albeit for different reasons -- are being a lot more realistic in our own preparations for aging in that regard...!) 
• Their seeming lack of awareness that, while are still "the kids" and yes, we are younger than they are, we're really not that young ourselves anymore, and WE can't easily do everything we used to do either...! (My younger sister just turned 60, which means she is a senior citizen by many definitions -- as am I, at 61, and her partner, at 62. Dh is 65, which IS a senior citizen by almost all definitions...!) 
• Not getting to spend much time with Parents' Neighbours' Daughter and her daughters (the Little Princesses, now 8 & 11) while we were there. The girls are in school during the week, of course -- and PND is a teacher. So not only are they busy during the week, they're spending their time in one of the settings where covid is known to be circulating (and masks are not required).  Plus -- not only is PND a teacher, she teaches in another nearby town, which has the dubious reputation of being one of the hotspots of anti-vax/anti-covid regulation activities in the province/all of Canada. :(  (Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also one of the province's covid hotspots...!)  Understandably, much as she loves them all, my mother is nervous about spending too much time in too close proximity to them. 
• Not getting to see my sister's new house while we were there.  :(   She was not feeling well when they picked us up at at the airport, and just wanted to get out to Mom & Dad's as soon as possible... and we didn't really have time to swing by there on our way to the airport when we were heading home. (I got the feeling they weren't particularly eager to have us visit either...! -- albeit I realize the house was probably still in a somewhat chaotic state!) 
• Not spending as much time with my sister as I'd hoped. She had the week off, but besides not feeling well and having some medical appointments as a result, they've been gradually moving into their new house while trying to sell the old one (it sold while we were there) -- so they spent most of the week in the city, returning to Mom & Dad's on the weekends. (I also suspect my sister felt that it was now MY turn to deal with our aging parents, since she's usually the one "on call" for the rest of the year... fair enough!)  
• Saying to Mom at dinner one night, "We'll have to ask [Sister] what she remembers about that when she gets here" -- and then completely forgetting what it was that we wanted to ask her about!!  (I still don't remember!)  

Small pleasures: 

• Being able to help out my parents with various things around the house. 
• Feasting on our traditional family Thanksgiving dinner, with lots of yummy leftovers. 
• Chocolate cake (from a mix) with Mom's caramel icing on top -- something I loved as a kid (and still do!). (It didn't last very long!) 
• Having my mom thank me for all my help in prepping for & then cleaning up from Thanksgiving dinner (particularly since my sister wasn't feeling well and wasn't able to help out as much as she usually does). 
• Nightly card games (and my dad's obvious pleasure in them). 
• Winning, now & then. ;) 
• Working on a jigsaw puzzle together (and being the one who put the last pieces in place!) 
• Having Dad bring home Timbits (doughnut holes) from Tim Hortons (which opened a location in town a few years ago, during the pandemic) for a treat on the first day we were there. 
• Gorgeous fall weather and fall colours for the first few days we were there. 
• Just being able to spend time together, especially after not seeing them in 9 months, and especially after spending so little time together over the past 3-5 years (the pandemic, my medical procedures this summer, FIL's 2018 illness & death, etc.).  :)