Car Hop

Olivia let her wishes be known early and often. When you get a new car, she said, I want the silver one.

This, she explains, is because she does not prefer stick-shifting, despite the fact that she's been doing so almost from the advent of her driving career 4 years ago. I still stall out, she says. I'm bad at it.

If, on the other hand, one compiles the sum total of Becca's utterings on the matter (few though they've been,) one comes away with the impression that she likes manual transmissions, prefers the green '99 Forester over the blue '02 Outback, and otherwise has no particularly assertive horse in the race.

What can be said of the blue '02 Outback is that ever since it went to live in St. Mary's County with Rachel a few years ago, it has come into contact with so much mud, guinea pig stuff, and organic farm effluvia that no one apart from Rachel (who is perfectly content) makes any claim on it whatsoever.* (Though I must say I got it nice and clean in April. You may ask why. I will tell you. It was left in my custody during Rachel's 5 weeks in Costa Rica, and I was too embarrassed to take it in for service without cleaning it first. Her room, I will not touch. Well, not at least as long as there's a chance she'll still be inhabiting it.)

So, when it became indisputably obvious that I had 3 girls with 3 jobs going in 3 directions, 2/3 of a vehicle/girl failed to compute as a mathematical result.

Here again, I invite you to wonder why I don't kick my fledglings out of the nest without the padding of a parent-provided car. (Because I knew you were going to wonder that anyway.) I have no doubts that dealing early with the reality of economics is good for humans. If the girls in question showed signs of feeling entitled, or hadn't--from early on--demonstrated a capacity for recognizing what life requires and taking it on, then I would probably see being an auto-enabler as not a good thing. As it is, they understand that--while I help where I can--my future economic capacity is a big question mark covered with scribblings like nursing care, life expectancy, and if/when/what paying job could Emily possibly do?

So, after a bit of foot-dragging, coupled with some online research, I returned to Annapolis Subaru and the pleasantly un-slick salesman Ed Rucker, and came home with another blue Outback. It is mine, and I don't plan to upgrade for years to come.

It was at this point that Becca realized that her baby sister was about to assume main-drivership of a car 7 years newer than the green Forester. And that the green Forester was full of cds, dirt, empty juice bottes, and stuck-on gummy sharks only some of which were her doing.

Olivia took on the cleaning job as gamely as you'd hope for, and--except for one gummy shark which will require overnight cool weather and a chisel--it's now a clean green Soobie. A clean green Soobie which will go in for service on Wednesday, at which point vehical longevity is going to be largely a function of how meticulous each driver cares to be.

I would like to say that, at this point, I'm swearing off parental oversight and intervention in the area of personal cars. But as Rachel drove off on Saturday, after a couple days home, and I heard a car noise (the sort you don't want to hear--a clunk, chink, or squeee,) I looked at our next door neighbor, out mulching his shrub, and made a how 'bout that noise? face. He replied that he cannot count the number of similar noises he's heard emanating from the cars of his 3 adult children as they've driven off over the years. But there's only so much you can do, isn't there?

*I need to append that organic farming, animal rescue, and the development of abandoned and muddy ex-farms into environmental education centers are all goals I deeply appreciate. Not to mention that Rachel has been on the move between living situations and the car has, therefore, been more overstuffed than usual. I'm not knocking, just explaining.

I mean gaps

Today, Carlos the Do-Everything guy is out back bulldozing sticks, stumps, and bamboo roots out of the way in preparation for the fence people to re-enclose us with the 15 extra feet of backyard which was formerly under the scruffy shadow of a row of no longer extant Leyland Cypresses. One of which, in fact, had a dispute with the existing fence, during the January snow inundation, over whether horizontal is an appropriate attitude for an evergreen. I ruled in favor of the fence, which I patched, and against the cypress, which was carted off, along with its few remaining scraggly cohorts.

Here is what's curious about the approaching Fall: I thought, for at least a little while there, that I was going to find out what empty nest felt like. Here's what's not apt to happen: Empty nest. I suppose I should have named all my children Skippy, because it looks like we're segueing from the college years to the boomerang years right about now. With a healthy smudge as Gabe's collegiate tour of duty begins in August and stretches toward a horizon 5+ years distant.

I am not complaining. Boomerangability is a quality of this house that the smaller, lower maintenance dwelling of which I daydream would be hard-pressed to fill. Hence, the next time I ask myself just why do I live here again? I'll need only to glance at the pile of slides, flipflops, running shoes, sandals, and cowboy boots in the front hall, to reply Oh yes, that's why.

Plus, Jeff has been missing chairs a bit lately. By that I mean aiming poorly. So I won't object to an extra pair of hands or two to help get him back on track as he closes himself on the wrong side of the door, looks for orange juice in the freezer, or topples over the dog. And yes, I do still fully intend to take him on a train trip in October. But don't worry. We will mind the gap.

there is still fun to have

I already know what will happen at the end of the book The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian. It's a story that's referenced now and then on The Alzheimer Spouse, an online forum for spouses of AD people, and it's easy to infer, both from AlzSpouse and the Amazon review, that the narrator--an elderly woman with multiple health issues of her own caring for a spouse with dementia--is going to take things into her own hands, in a manner endorsed only by certain brave independent souls and the Hemlock Society.

This might be a risky admission, but I recall an exchange I had with Rachel, on the topic of Jeff's and my upcoming Fall trip to the Grand Canyon. I made mention of how we'd be among the less adventurous visitors. Jeff may have backpacked a northern chunk of the Appalachian Trail in the 70s, but these days vision and balance are not among the features we can rely upon, and we'll be sticking with relatively short, level, and well guard-railed ways to access the view. Then Rachel said something like this: "Yes, well...but if you've got to kick it..."

What she meant, of course, and frankly, was to pose the following rhetorical question: Would you, at stage 5 out of 7 in the game of Alzheimer's, rather see the thing to its inevitable conclusion, or would you rather fall into the Grand Canyon?

But don't worry. I will not push Jeff in, and I will, furthermore, strive to keep him away from any close encounters with gravity. Nor are his children angling for any other approach. Rachel is just one of those unusual kinds of people who, at 23, already grasp that life is tragic, absurd, possibly pointless, and most likely worthwhile anyway. And as for me, though I have no beef with Dr. Kevorkian, my philosophical position regarding hastening anybody's death, mine included, can best be summed up by a line from Joe Versus the Volcano. Joe, asked by Angelica whether he'd ever contemplated suicide, replies: Some things take care of themselves...they're not your job.

So, yes...that'll take care of itself. For all of us. Might as well stick around and watch things play out in the meantime. It could be interesting.

The Leisure Seeker meanwhile, awaits on my Kindle, and it is next up when I climb aboard the elliptical. (Tomorrow? Maybe...gotta go car shopping...) I've just finished Super Freakonomics, and I highly recommend--especially--the last chapter which deals with the potential for geo-engineering solutions to the global warming-related climate quandary. But now onto something that is apt to make me cry. It will. I will ellipt and cry, but really, I'm fine with that.

I can see but I cannot plumb.

If you've ever been tested for color blindness, you've seen Ishihara color plates. They look like they belong on the wall in the Museum of Modern Art as curated by Count von Count. They are round blotches comprised of smaller dots of related colors--let's say orange and red--in which can be seen (if your color perception is standard-issue) another set of dots--green maybe--forming a number. 7, 16, 5, 42...similar background dot colors surrounding blotchy numbers formed from dots of a contrasting color. The problem, if you are what they call color-blind, is that there is no contrast in depth, or relative saturation of the colors, between the digits and their surroundings, so if you cannot differentiate green from orange, you are out of luck.

You are also out of luck if your parietal lobe has degenerated sufficiently to leave you with a symptom called simultanagnosia, but the mechanical failure at play is different. Well, I was clearly not going to prove anything I haven't already observed in real-life anecdotal form, but when one's partner's brain is faltering, it seems natural to me to put it to the test and discern precisely how. To this end, I performed the following experiment:

First, I asked Jeff to identify a few numbers, as typed, in size 144 Corsiva Hebrew font. No trouble at all. Then I ran the Ishihara test, in which he was utterly unable to distinguish a numeral. But, if I pointed to the various areas on the plate, naming the colors involved, whether they were the ones comprising the number or those of the background, was no problem. Results: color-blind: negative. Simultanagnosia: positive.

This was not all I did today. I also broke the downstairs shower. It's been drippy for years. Ever since Jeff took this Speakman cartridge apart several years ago (for reasons that are now obscure in my recollection,) and was unable to reassemble it, the shower head has dripped. Most likely because when it was reassembled, it was done by me. And, as I do recall, I played with it quite a bit, and took a good many uneducated guesses regarding the direction of the various bits. Still, I got it functioning, and it's only been in the past year or so that the dripping has become really annoying.

So today I took it apart again, thinking I could perhaps stick in an extra washer or gasket or something. Frank at the hardware store suggested that merely cleaning the parts off well, so that they'd seal snugly might help. And indeed, it might have. Had I not dropped the little ceramic hot/cold dispersal ring (or whatever you'd call it) right smack onto the tile shower floor, where it cracked neatly in two. Following my next impulse, I called Yank the plumber who reminded me that Clement Hardware doesn't seem to have a Speakman parts source at the moment, but a part is what I'd need, short of cutting a hole in the wall.

Remarkably, I found it online. From somewhere called DoPlumb.com. I do not know whether I trust myself to install the thing when it comes, so I'd better keep Yank on standby.

naughty

I might have had a more interesting childhood had I not come equipped with a slightly overly-constraining sense of propriety. Or maybe it was just timidity. On thought, I'm going to blame it on a congenital disinclination to be caught rocking the boat. I seem to recall that, among the notes recorded by my mother in my baby book, one says "You're a little bit 'sneaky.' We have to work at keeping you honest." Well, I guess the work paid off, but there are moments. In fact, I'm sure the only difference between me and an impulsive kid is that, while we'd get into the very same trouble, I'd wait 'til no one was looking, then put it all back the way it was.

Do you remember sitting in the dentist's chair, just after the hygienist left the room but before the dentist came in, wishing you were brave enough to pull out the water sprayer or the air blower and give them a try? I think I was in college before I was uninhibited enough to do it. (I also wanted to test the chair controls and open all the drawers, but there's only so much you can accomplish in a minute and a half. To an extent, I satisfied this urge later, by looking in all the cabinets at the pediatrician's office when my kids were babies.)

This kind of inborn behavior regulatory device never entirely goes away, which I guess is a good thing, and it certainly whirred into action as I considered taking one of Gabe's Concerta pills this morning. But I told it to shut up and switch off. I've been giving the kid the stuff on school mornings for years now. I'm probably the only person in the world who would hesitate to try it once in roughly a decade. Gabe says it helps him a bit with focus, and the wholistic approach is that judicious use of such things can help a brain wire itself for learning.

There was nothing special about today. If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I'm going to have to blame my mental fogginess on too many squares of organic milk chocolate. I'm also fairly certain that there's no direct relationship between brain cloud and performance, but when--after removing about 5 clean glasses from a recently run dishwasher--I turned around and began loading the same dw with dirties (I mean, while it was still 3/4 of the way full of cleans,) it occurred to me. That I'm an absent-minded ditz whose frontal lobe might benefit from a wake up call.

So I took a Concerta. It's 27mg of extended-release ritalin. That was 6 hours ago. Report: I feel no better. No worse. No less foggy. No sharper. I am still performing adequately through the shroud of chocolate-induced mental vagueness, and I'm as certain as I need to be that I'll have no further use for that controlled substance. I may still look in cabinets at doctors' offices, but it will not be for neurostimulants, it will simply be because I like to look.

Brain cloud?

There's little worse than disembodied statistical data of exactly the sort you wouldn't want. As various sources disperse recent findings that spousal caregivers of Alzheimer's patients seem to have an enhanced probability (6x normal) of developing dementia themselves, I find myself not rushing to draw a clock face and insert the numbers and hands into their appropriate spots. (I'll probably do it later. I confess though--I just counted backwards from 100 by 7s. I think I got it. I was supposed to end with 4, right? Just kidding.)

One thing I can tell you for sure: socializing is good brain tonic, and sometimes--when I'm feeling like my clarity of thought is about on par with the clarity of tomato juice--I wish I could just drink tomato juice. Or something akin to tomato juice. If you can drink your vitamin C (to ward off scurvy,) what elixir can I drink to ward off the fog, when good conversation is in short supply?

It is something of a comfort that I have always been a fog brain. I'm pretty sure that my brain worked as well as it was ever going to work 20 or 30 or so years ago, and then--as now--I could be as murky as Turkish coffee. Hence, fog-brain cannot, I surmise, be considered a harbinger of brain death. Nor does it apparently stop me from counting backwards.

categories.

I'm not sure why no one has ever described Jeff's particular condition as Posterior Cortical Atrophy. Probably because virtually all of the scrutiny he's received, post-diagnosis, has been under the auspices of the Georgetown University Hospital clinical study, and the requirement for participation was Alzheimer's, but whether a variant under the AD umbrella could be identified was irrelevant.

I'm not sure why I care. But I seem to. I suppose it's that since I live with this syndrome, I am apt (as I am with anything else in my purview,) to turn it upside down and inside out, and just see how much sense I can make of it. (Not much sense, as it turns out, but I can name and categorize, and that gives me a useful tool for holding everything at arm's length.)

Here are a few of my discoveries:
Patients with PCA (as opposed to classic AD) tend to be younger. (check.) Marked impairment in visuospatial tasks, reading, and writing. (check.) Relative preservation of memory compared to typical Alzheimer's. (check.)

But that's not all you get when you know not only the beast's first name, but its second name as well. Suddenly I have a whole quiver full of nameables. Can't open the car door? Apraxia. (ping!) Can't look where I'm pointing? Oculomotor apraxia. (ping!) Can't see that you just poured yourself two glasses of oj? Simultanagnosia. (ping!) Completely unable to grasp what I'm telling you? Transcortical Sensory Aphasia. (ping, ping, ping.)

I think I'll help out the neurologist (or Nurse Practitioner, as the case may be,) next time we head to G-town for a status update, by pointing out that according to my research (cue voice of Dorothy Ann from The Magic Schoolbus,) Jeff's AD pattern seems to most closely resemble that of Posterior Cortical Atrophy syndrome. I'm sure he or she will thank me very much.

robots aren't fuzzy

Jeff decided to go stand next to Ritchie Highway today, on the strip of curb-bordered grass between there and the Panera parking lot. This was because I behaved offensively in Panera while we were in line to order. Actually, I think it was a cumulative series of offensive acts, starting with the one where I decided, just after we walked in, to back up 5 steps and hold the door for the lady who was juggling a baby carrier and a drink tray. To Jeff, what I did was this: I returned, pointlessly and perplexingly to the Panera entryway and he followed (because what else is he supposed to do?), at which point I did the bowling alley pin-clearing thing with my arm, and cleared him out of the path after a couple verbal attempts failed. He did not see the lady with too much stuff, he just perceived being pushed around.

Then I did it again. Twice. Because the Panera man was trying to carry a 25 pound vat of coffee from the kitchen to the coffee island, and Jeff was, as usual, fully blocking the aisle. Knowing where to stand is very difficult for him. He simply cannot assess traffic patterns, and grasp layout. But, the emotional impact of being ushered here and there, "like a little kid," is something he entirely grasps, but external to context. In other words, the attempt I made to explain why I chose expediency over a gentler more time-consuming approach was met with disbelief. He was not in anyone's way, he can see what's going on, and I'm the only one who seems to think there's something wrong with him.

Sometimes these funks fade in a jiffy, which is good. And sometimes they don't, which was today. I understand that when someone is feeling very blue, and tells you that you'll "never see him as a whole person again," that the personality you should be able to put on is a "there there" sort of nurturing grandmother, or at least a very therapeutic counselor. But I am Dōmo arigatō, Ms Roboto, and--while I try to be kind in my actions and words programming--I am hardly the warm fuzzy the situation calls for. All I could think of was this: If Chessie the cat tells me that "I'll never see her as anything but a cat," what can I say other than, "but you are a cat?"

So, when Jeff said "So, what can we do?" as if this is a crisis, and there's a solution, I could only respond like this: "Well, I can keep trying to improve my skill at gauging situations and their potential pitfalls." Of course he didn't know what I was talking about, but it didn't hurt his feelings. In practice it means that the next time we go in Panera or similar, I'll suggest he sit down and "hold our table" while I wait in line. Sitting at the table is a pretty good idea. Standing on the strip between the parking lot and Ritchie Highway is not a pretty good idea.

Goodnight Jim-Bob...

I just sent Gabe off with the driving instructor I’m paying for extra on-road lessons (above and beyond the three 2-hour shifts that come with Driver’s Ed.) There is always a flutter of trepidation in my chest which half anticipates that the guy will turn the SUV around 10 minutes into the session, and storm down our brick walk bellowing “ARE YOU KIDDING? Just NEVER put this kid behind the wheel of a motor vehicle! OKAY?”

That hasn’t happened so far and, all in all, the guy seems pretty laid back, fueling my hope that the school will release his Driver’s Ed completion certificate very soon. It occurred to me that if I don’t encourage Gabe to refresh his deodorant on the way out the door, it might go even faster, but that seems unkind.

Meanwhile, Gabe has all sorts of end of year activities going on related to graduation. On Friday, he and his class of 12th graders (plus the requisite staff) will take a bus to New York City for the day...a trip on which they will, among other things, dine at a restaurant called “Jekyll and Hyde’s” which claims to be the “only haunted restaurant in Manhattan.” The only one? That seems implausible, unless they mean the only one where the haunting is staged purposefully.

At school, Gabe is preparing a video to be shown at graduation, summarizing...I don’t know exactly what...somehow summarizing Gabe. They can do this when the graduating class is roughly 20 students in number. Gabe decided, since his sister Olivia is home for the week, that she must appear in a clip. First we made this practice run, in which I play Gabe (and Gabe himself appears at the very end, looking typically scruffy: )

This reminds me exactly of why, when my siblings and I used to make tape recorded radio shows spoofing episodes of The Waltons, I always played youngest sister Elizabeth. All I had to do was make my voice just slightly more nasal. Like this. (Here I am also speaking John-Boy’s line: )

Can you tell that this blog post is really little more than an experiment in embedding video? Yes, that’s what it is. As such, we’ll enter one more--this being the actual “interview” with Olivia.

I am hoping that Gabe’s actual finished project is somehow more coherent than this clip might lead you to expect. His playwriting teacher is very impressed with his skills, particularly as expressed in an absurdist drama he’s written. I am not surprised that the absurdist style is a stand-out area for Gabe.

It was fortunate that Olivia was home today when I found myself on the phone with Delta Airlines, attempting to secure a reservation change for Rachel who will now be flying back from Costa Rica in two days instead of in four. Because Gabe called to be picked up exactly in the middle, while I was listening to the Delta rep make all sorts of noises like "oops," and "uh-oh," and other utterances that caused me to worry. So Olivia picked up Gabe, and the Delta transaction got completed. I am glad. It’s been a bit of a dicey experience for her and her fellow Masters in Teaching students, but assuredly a learning one.

(I never talk about Becca, because Becca never tells me anything. She is both the lowest maintenance and most independent of my children. But sometimes a little maintenance required at least keeps you in touch.)

Here there be monsters. But not really scary ones.

I tend to overcompensate for my tendency to fumble the balls I'm meant to be juggling. Sticky notes are essential to my arsenal, as are the timer and alarm features on my iPhone. But, as my Japanese teacher said when she typoed her hiragana: Even monkeys fall from trees (saru mo ki kara ochiru さるも木から落ちる,) and I'm about 200 times clumsier than any monkey.

What I did this morning (or last night, rather,) was fail to set my alarms. Normally I must adjust my bedside clock from its weekend setting of 6:15 am, to its weekday time: 5:15. But that is not enough. Sometimes we have a power outage which reduces all the digital clocks in the house to helpless blinking, so I also set my iPhone to go off at 5:30 as a backup plan. Last night, due to some unwarranted state of relaxation, I did neither, and the bedside alarm began to chime forcefully an hour later than I planned to arise.

There's nothing quite like awaking with a tizzy all laid out for you, and I am completely unable--at such a time of rushedness--to maintain the carefully groomed composure with which I normally try to direct both Jeff and Gabe. Hence, Gabe had to be hustled out of bed and into the shower, as he issued loud protests of this sort: "I KNOW!" and "I'M NOT YELLING! CAN'T YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXPLAINING AND YELLING?" (Gabe explains loudly, you see.)

Jeff meanwhile, rattled into the day clueless as to what might be different from any other day and innocently asked whether I intended to use the elliptical first or second. "I don't have TIME to spider!" I not-quite-snapped, as if my self-induced state of dither should have anything to do with him anyway. (Note: spider=elliptical trainer around here. I know it's weird. You'll just have to accept it.)

Fortunately he did not sulk, or feel too ill-used, as can be the result of my composure falling off the edge of the map, and I got some coffee brewed before throwing a handful of random foods into a brown paper lunch bag and herding Gabe out the door. Through all this Olivia, home for the week, did not wake up, and the dog accepted that she'd have to wait 25 minutes for her breakfast in generous spirits.

As for the rest of the day, Jeff--very fortunately--was invited to lunch by Bill, and Olivia and I accomplished our slate of errands with little ado.