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.