Ok, now I go watch Comedy Central.

Jeff could tell me, approximately, nothing. Was there any good stuff? Did Bill or anyone come by? Did you get dinner? To the first two questions, I got a definitive ”ummmm” To the second, ”yes,” but there were no available details as to what and where.

Gordon, Jeff’s brother, and now the sole “Mr. Hardware,” had bought out the inventory of a small South Baltimore corner store when the long-time owner’s health collapsed, and yesterday he took Jeff on a field trip to “help” collect the unknown grab bag within.

For my purposes, here is what was so illustrative about the day: It was long. Gordon collected Jeff at 6:15 a.m, and returned him at 9:30 p.m. I wondered how Jeff would hold up. Apparently tolerably well. But there was, in fact, company, and company--in this case--constitutes help. Help with the task at hand, and help with the Jeff-sitting. In the form of Bill and John, who did take time off from their personal SoBo efforts to help Gordon spend the day loading the panel truck and sorting the wheat from the chaff. The wheat went into the truck. The chaff--sets of dishes and other flotsam which Clement Hardware doesn’t bother with--went on the sidewalk with a big “FREE” sign, which attracted a multitude of better-than-flea-market minded SoBo residents. Occasionally, such a guy would stick his head in the door and holler “Got any wrenches?” At which point he’d have to be disabused of the notion that anything highly desirable was to be put in the “free” pile.

A full and colorful day, based on the briefest of synopses I got from Gordon today. Jam-packed with the sort of stories that, seven years ago, Jeff and I would have laughed and chatted about over our evening Chenin blanc. But now, I get ”ummmm” and ”yes.”

Nor does it help if I initiate. I can tell stories about the girl in Japanese class who reminds me of a wallaby in the headlights, or wax incisive about the pluses and minuses of Lulu versus XLibris, and I get a blank, uncomprehending gaze which wants to process what I’m saying, but utterly cannot. And, to be fully disclosing, doesn’t actually want to that badly, because it’s forgotton what it ever cared about.

There is no Alzheimer spouse who does not hate the disease with all the resigned, pathetic, punch-in-the-face, simmering abhorrence she/he can register. So, here’s the thing. I would go on a date. And the purpose of the date would be as simple as dinner and conversation. So, yes...it’s cheaty, and completely out of the realm of the possible or available, but I’d totally do it. Or at least I’d totally want to. Don’t worry mom.

this is awkward.

Fiddler on the Roof is always poignant, no matter how you slice it, but the current tour--and Topol’s farewell run, as I understand it--hit me at several particularly vulnerable spots, such that bare finger skin had to suffice, during Act 2, for the tissues I forgot to bring. There’s the whole 3 daughters on the verge of flitting thing, their interactions with Tevye, the father, and the moment where the parents--married 25 years--evaluate the meaning of love. (How long ago was 1984?...25, right.) Ouchy. It probably didn’t help that I’d been having a run of ring dreams. Ring dreams are when I’m just drifting into REM and something/someone/somethings swoop in to rip my wedding and engagement rings off. I don’t exactly wake up, except just barely...enough to realize I must remove the rings and place them on the bedside table. This, of course, is where dream logic and logic-logic do not coincide: How the table is safer than my fingers, I cannot say, but apparently it’s the taking of rings from me that is pertinent, as opposed to mere taking. And it’s just occurred to me that to take the rings off, but keep them, is a perfectly adept metaphor for the “emotional divorce” advocated by counselors to Alzheimer spouses. It’s a sort of emotional cantilevering, without a nice sturdy iron I-beam. Rather awkward for years on end. But life is, in general, awkward. Awkward is not entirely bad. I’ve liked many an awkward creature.

hmmm...

What dumb thing did Emily say 5 minutes ago? She said to the dog, (while helping Jeff pet said dog, because--heaven knows--one person is never enough,) "Fredfred, you should get a job. Help earn your keep. Become a tv mascot."

Here's the thing: Never, never, never talk about getting jobs with Jeff in earshot. Because then he'll say, most decisively, "maybe I'll get a job. Yeah, that's what I'll do. What do you (meaning me) think about that?"

And then I (meaning me) will make a funny non-committal face to match my funny non-committal utterance, which basically sounds like this: "Huuh." With a slight shoulder shrug. Because I cannot, in good tactfulness, say "that probably won't work, seeing as how every psychomotor skill a person needs to perform work has pretty much flown the coop...your brain being the coop, that is."

This is, of course, what "huuh" means, but as long as I don't provide a translation it can mean anything a person wants it to mean. It is also correct to read the following shade of meaning into "huuh:" It's probably good that you'll forget this job idea by 5 o'clock glass o'wine time.

Emily is dumb, Part 2:

Jeff did not drop it, and wanted to know what I thought...what I really thought...as we waited to pick up Gabe. Well, silly me. It's going to take more time yet, apparently, before I fully realize that, in the face of Alzheimer's, you lie. Or at least you evade, with whatever Clintonesque panache you can muster. But, owing to my deep respect for what was our relationship, and mindful of a preference for honesty, I admitted--when pressed--that his cognitive limitations were unlikely to make any kind of job a successful endeavor. Hence, I got cranky sullenness for most of the evening, and an unmistakable blamatory vibe. I made up that word, but it fits.

The best one can then do, is wait for the short term memory to reset.

I (do not) regret that I have but one life to give a swift kick to...

One can discern that Gabe doesn’t especially want to go away to college next Fall, but one is completely unable to conjure up a good reason for him to stay here.
And, forgetting one for a moment, I can think of a good reason for him not to stay here: Life, and the fact that burrowing in the computer room while Jeff snoozes in a chair and I try to buck myself up on St. John’s Wort and mental distractions does not constitute it.

I mean, life is weird, but you might as well try it. What else are you going to do?

In that light, our trek to New London to visit Mitchell College seemed a valuable distraction. A less valuable distraction was Janet the GPS, who was bound and determined to lose her suction and plummet off the windshield as a way of marking miles. Between that and...recalculating...every time we got within the shadow of a NYC bridge tunnel, she was a fun(?) companion.

As for Jeff, and do-it-yourself hotel breakfast bars, I am recalculating. He was extraordinarily resistant to help this weekend, in direct proportion to his increasing inability to distinguish between a bagel slicer and a toaster. Hence, he ate little for breakfast, and I think it might go over better if we all three just sit down and order.

Additionally, I have every intention of recalculating any route that takes me within shouting distance of the George Washington Bridge in NYC. Cross between 10 am and 4 pm? Yes. Then you’ll only add 1 hour of traffic-sitting to your trip, instead of 2 or 3.

There is something that impressed Gabe at Mitchell. It was the statue, situated mid-campus, of Nathan Hale. Of course he wanted it to be Moses Cleveland, who “invented” Cleveland. (Sorry, I can’t help you, other than to suggest you look up “Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video” on Youtube.) But since it was not Moses Cleveland, he was still pleased to meet a statue of the main character in one of his favorite PS3 games, Resistance: Fall of Man. The thing is, I’m pretty sure that that Nathan Hale, being a video game hero, does have more than one life to give for his country.

Anyway, let’s hope they take Gabe. There are 36 slots in the program to which he applied (“he,” meaning “we,” which really means “I.”) But he really did write the essay. And it’s not bad. And seriously, would you rather live near a statue of Nathan Hale, or have your mother ship you off to the Merchant Marines?

wakarimasen!

I pretty much never say "why me?"...just not my way of thinking. But I am almost saying it as of last week's random "Japanese culture project" groupings. For Japanese class that is.

Truthfully, I foresaw this before it happened, but--due to a random draw from a bag of colors, in which I selected むらさき (murasaki), otherwise known as violet, I found myself in a group with the following 2 individuals: A quiet guy who may be completely participative if I can get him to speak or return emails, and...oh my goodness...crazy girl.

Can you picture Little Orphan Annie's face, with anime girl eyes? Of course you can't. But try. Then add overly processed hair (dyed black) that reminds me of a doll that went through the dryer, too much makeup, and (the crowning touch, so to speak,) a plastic tiara. Throw in strangely erratic impulse control, such that she blurts tangential thoughts out mid-class on the days when she speaks. The other days she comes in late and says nothing. And, she told me with the expression of a stunned bushbaby--she doesn't email. But she texts. Ok. So, I've typed up two proposals for what we might present in our allotted 10 minutes, and how we might divide duties. I will give them to these children tomorrow. They will think I'm a pushy old middle-aged person. But here's the thing. They can either communicate and do something, or they cannot. And if they don't--oh well, I'm auditing, they're not.

Meanwhile, I do enjoy everything else about Japanese class. I am a bit befuddled, this chapter, by the introduction of a page-load of adjectives. It's not that adjectives require conjugating in Japanese, I can deal with that. It's just that Japanese vocabulary doesn't adhere to my brain in the way the more familiar Euro-based lingos do. Japanese adjectives all look something like this: hagazukimurasagii. (except in hiragana, like this: はがずきむらさぎい。) Only you can take the syllables, shake them up in a bag, and reassemble in any configuration that pleases you. And it all seems meaningless to my Euro-cooked mind grid. I realize that, in some way, this must be good for me, because my brain hurts.

info junkie.

I confess: I got an iPhone, and I like it.

The thing is, I wanted to be different, and have a phone that would not be instantaneously recognizable by 90% of the population. So I looked and looked, but nothing would do quite all the things I wanted the phone to do...and here was the clincher: The problem with my Palm Centro was that the screen and buttons were too small and too hard for presbyopic eyes to see. iPhone is screen from head to toe, and it runs my Ultralingua conjugating dictionaries, budgeting software, Scrabble, a good calendar, a functional Wifi browser, an excellent note-keeping program, Googlemaps, and get this--a built-in compass! How could I not want that? Ironically, the feature I don’t make good use of, seeing as how this is an iPhone, is the iPod music thingy. Maybe if it plugged into my car I would, but it doesn’t. And I’m just not an ear-buds kind of person. Too visuo-kinetic dependent. My ears need to follow the lead of eyes and body, or I go nutso. It’s why I like speakerphones. The ears don’t operate well on their own. They get cranky.

Tomorrow, we lose our backdoor. Only for a week or so I hope, as the water-rotted threshold gets replaced with something that won’t allow rainstorms to backwash into the kitchen. Chessie will be perplexed by not being able to stare at us through the door’s window panes. Fredfred will have to adapt to exiting through the garage. We will lose some sunlight. I hope the job will go swiftly. This, in case you wondered, is why I don’t hire someone to paint the upstairs hallway. Because there’s always something else that must be done.

I am pleased to report that I’ve added at least 3 paragraphs to Bea and the Smart Kids. Seriously. This is progress for me.