on not forgetting to remember everything

Today Becca and I almost lost our newly purchased socks and tights at The Fresh Market grocery store. A composite of what each of us was 97% certain we remembered suggested that the small shopping bag from South Moon Under (an overpriced, except for socks, boutique,) disappeared somewhere between our entering Fresh Market with a double-decker two-basket shopping cart, and getting to the check-out. We found it a bit surprising that someone sneakily lifted our bag while we were selecting apples, or considering yogurt, but it was the only plausible explanation.

Still, once we got home and realized we were without hosiery, I called the store to see if such a bag had mysteriously turned up. Not yet, I was told, but they took my name and number. Within an hour the call came. Our bag had turned up in a random abandoned cart in the store. This meant that during the two and a half minutes that Becca and I were both in the ladies room at the same time, Jeff had managed to switch the cart he had been entrusted to stand with for another empty cart--identical except for the presence of our socks bag in one, and its absence of the other.

The most intriguing thing about this for me is not that it happens, but how things like this seem more likely to happen than not, given half a chance. Not that we like to blame Jeff too much--neither of us, after all, thought about the socks bag until we got home--but it is illustrative of the concept that I’m more apt to slack off in my diligence when I have a fellow Jeff-watcher along on the outing. I stop trying to remember everything I might ostensibly have the slightest cause to remember.

It was just as well anyway. Becca wanted everything bagels, which we’d forgotten on trip #1, and I also grabbed a couple canisters of wipes, which are useful for cleaning the floor up after Otis the kitty, who--when he poos--aims about 18” north of his litter box. Bad kitty.

strides, and life as normal.

Last night, I went to bed leaving Gabe with nothing but the advice to get his stuff organized for this morning’s Amtrak ride back to Connecticut. Remarkably, as I discovered this morning, he’d done exactly that. IPod, phone, and computer were all charged and stowed, clothes were re-stuffed in the duffel, and his college keycard/i.d. was clipped to his jacket. Oh, and his retainer was fizzed clean and back in his mouth. As we got in the car he asked me if I had his train ticket. (I did.)

Now he is northbound, by rail, and one Fall term more grown-up. Next Year has clearly been a timely topic at school, as many of his group plan to continue as full-fledged Mitchell College students next year, and, indeed, we got a related pack of info by mail a couple weeks ago to keep parents in the loop, as kids get their records in order. But I had barely broached the topic upon his arrival home when he replied, with unequivocal resolve, that he would stick with Plan A: Finish this year at Mitchell, then head off to Guilford in North Carolina to study creative writing, Japanese, and an eventual semester abroad in Japan. No waffling on this it seems.

Meanwhile, this morning I ventured out the back door without a jacket. Otis the kitty had zipped out for his morning scamper and seemed--in this late November dip below freezing--to be ready to come back in. He squinched through the fence and around to the front yard, where I apprehended him at a moment during which his urge to scoot and play was offset by ambivalence about the air temperature. But then we--Otis and I--found ourselves at the front door, which I had not yet unlocked from the inside. Drat. Carry the cat around back, or ring the doorbell for Jeff? Luckily, Freddi the dog would not allow Jeff to ignore the doorbell, but he positively could not process what to do once he arrived at the front door. I stood there, clutching the kitten for a moment, as Jeff stared through the door panes gazing at apparently nothing, which was located somewhere beyond my right shoulder. Freddi, in the meantime, wagged her tail at me, wondering why the heck I was not coming in. So I raised my voice to insulated glass-penetrating volume and hollared “Open the door!” Twice or so. Finally, recognition dawned and Jeff did exactly that.

Tomorrow, Rachel’s back to teaching, Gabe and Olivia back to school, and Becca into work as usual. Jeff will get something other than a peanut-butter sandwich for lunch.

Capes R Not Us.

I got a mini-startle as I drew back the shower curtain this morning thinking to step in. The scene resembled what you’d see on-set, just after Norman Bates had carted off Janet Leigh, shower curtain and all, with the following critical cast change: Janet’s role was being played by an alien with pale aqua blood.

Well, I was taking a shower anyway, so it wasn’t hard to clean up. But I will note that a full 33.9 fluid ounces of Target brand dandruff shampoo does make the shower floor a mite slippery. And it had spread quite nicely, dripping as it had from the higher of the two metal accoutrement baskets we have appended to the shower stall wall. Because it had been placed there improperly closed and upside down.

So one of the things we did today was buy Jeff some more shampoo. My goal was prevention. What kind of bottle would one either be most apt to close properly and/or least likely to replace upside down? Not a boxy cap of the type so common and popular for reasons I don’t quite grasp. But since I’ve been giving Jeff anti-flaky shampoo, that limited our options right off the bat, and a small bottle of Selsun Blue, with a normal sort of round cap, seemed the best bet. I even performed a small assessment right on the spot: “How,” (I said,) “would you place this bottle on the shelf? Like this? (upside down) or like this? (right-side up.)” “Like that, I guess,” replied Jeff, choosing correctly. And, in fact, it would take a bit of a balancing act to place it the other way.

It’s the kind of little accommodation I make daily. Another of today’s errands was a foray into Eastern Mountain Sports, in search of a light (but not too light) mens’ jacket. Here was my starting parameter: Can this be fastened without me there to do the zipper? There are ways. There might, for example, be auxiliary snaps, or, even better, velcro. But not, alas, in a jacket of the right weight. Yes for heavy coats, but jackets were stubbornly determined to exist only in zip format. So, on the fly, I came up with a new option: How about a half-zip? If the zipper-starter doesn’t need fiddling with, pulling the pull should be no problem. Such things, double alas, did not exist but in the lightest of fleeces. Something in-between was not to be had; not today anyway.

I’ll keep looking even though it is, in truth, something of an arbitrary goal. The thing is--even with velcro, snaps, or a half-zip--you’ve still got to put the jacket on properly in the first place.

Case in point--an anecdote from this very morning: Jeff headed for the stairs, post-elliptical trainer. “What are you after?” I asked. (Even though I knew the answer since he was wearing a t-shirt and had taken his button shirt off to exercise.) “A shirt,” he replied. “You left your shirt in the kitchen,” I said. “No,” said Jeff. “Not that shirt. That shirt is like a cape. It’s like a Superman cape. I can’t wear that shirt, I need a regular shirt.” Because I live here I knew what this meant. Because I’ve watched Jeff try to put on shirts. He must have tried to put it on (pick one) upside down, or armless, or head in the armhole, or without unbuttoning first. So I said, “let’s see,” and helped him thread his arms in one at a time. Then I started the buttons. He pulled the two sides of the lower placket apart a couple times as I buttoned downward, trying to demonstrate that this was a cape, not a shirt, but finally realized--with a sort of an I’ll be darned expression--that it was, in fact and when donned correctly, a shirt.

There are lots of things that continually surprise me about this brain dysfunction process. One is this: Why is there no sort of meta-analysis going on of the problems we encounter? Why would you not even think your wife asking whether it’s okay to put a shampoo bottle on a shelf upside down is weird? Or not think: wait...a shirt is never a cape. How does it make sense for me to think this is a cape?

But he doesn’t think this stuff. I guess it would be too multi-layered for an Alzheimer brain to take anything except at face value.

Now I’ll check REI online for a heavy-ish half-zip. I will not bother looking in the cape section, because I know we don’t want that.

say what?

Jeff loves to listen to a Bill Bryson book. Any Bill Bryson book. But The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way has probably (by page 90 out of 245) been our biggest challenge to date.

We are firmly into Chapter 6: "Pronunciation." I am already reading with the exaggerated enunciation of a Henry Higgins protégé, but that isn't quite doing it. I try, for example, to read the following passage:

"...when bits are nicked off the front end of words it's called aphesis, when off the back it's called apocope, and when from the middle it's syncope."

The reading of it doesn't go off quite as smoothly as vanilla ice cream. Rather, I carefully iterate a key term--apocope--and the following conversation ensues:

Jeff: "what?"

Me: "apocope."

Jeff: "escarfee?"

Me: "No, ay-pah-co-pee."

Jeff: "Oh, calumny."

Me: "NO...AY-PAH-CO-PEEE!"

Jeff: "Right, ok...papeerollee..."

Me: "shuddup."

Mind you...my last line in the above dialog was completely uncalled for, and I apologized right away. But this illustrates the basic challenge of this book as read-aloud material for us. It is, compared to some of Bryson's lighter narratives, quite academic and quite full of segments which call for a keen ability to differentiate amongst subtle distinctions in pronunciation, as well as an ability grasp certain points by picturing spellings in your head as I read. Hence, as we're dealing with the twin deficits of so-so hearing and seriously compromised processing capacity, I keep wondering if we should persist, or switch to something a little easier where getting the gist is generally enough.

But Jeff continues to want to listen, and does not seem to frustrate. That's all me. Plus, I'd like to read it, and this smallish trade-paperback with undersized print is neither going to stay open nor be legible on the elliptical console, so read-aloud is my best shot.

Besides, Chapter 7 is not called "Pronunciation," it is called "Varieties of English." Chapter 8 is called "Spelling." Maybe we can skip it. And maybe it doesn't help that we tend to combine reading time with 5 o'clock glass o'wine time.

But for now we will persist. Besides, when we come to unfathomable words in Welsh or Gaelic I have the enormous privilege of pronouncing them however I like, and Jeff just laughs.

the in-betweenies

I'm in the caregiver in-betweenies. It's a term I pulled out of the air, but I think it does an adequate job of connoting both the wiggly restlessness and the inescapable vague limbo-like doldrums of the stage. Except for the afternoon biorhythmic slumps when nothing trumps a nap, I have health, curiosity, and energy to share, and I need to remind myself that wheel-spinning is neither good for the wheels nor the ground.

At the same time, I can think of almost anyone else I know, and imagine him/her saying "I'll take some of that," when she gets a whiff of the relative placidity of days in which making the coffee, freshly ground beans and all, can be an anticipated ritual, where grocery shopping can be gently interlaced with a salad at Punk's Backyard Grill, and where--in the early evening--I pour out two ruby glasses of La Vieille Ferme Farmhouse red before we sit down, covered in pets, to read a chapter of Bill Bryson aloud.

Yes, I am fortunate to have a generally pleasant-natured caregivee who, at the moment, is taking his afternoon nap. Afterwards, he will come down and sit quietly in the kitchen chair to await the next activity I suggest. (Most likely, we will be at roughly the point of Bryson by then.)

I read something in AARP yesterday about how caregivers should consider doing the hands-on stuff (bathing, dressing, etc) themselves, reserving the do-nothing interludes (naps, quiet sitting, breaking sticks in the front yard,) for hired attendants. This is because doing something...doing anything...tends to be a much more personally rewarding way to pass time than just being there, as the person in charge in case anything goes amiss.

I can, of course, take the "being there" segments of the day and use them to (for remarkable example) write! I have made minor progress this week, compared to the inverse of minor progress (which looks something like 1/minor progress, and must be measured with an electron microscope) which had been the grand total for the previous month or so.

Furthermore, no matter how I squint, I can't really see hiring anyone as a rational choice for now. We're doing just fine, and no one is overly stressed. It is when the caregiver becomes overly stressed that it is time to pry open the doors of the hired help magazine. I assume (because I remain more or less grounded in reality) that incontinence and greater functional blindness are in our future, and it is that horizon whereupon I imagine the hiring will occur.

In the meantime...no matter how much you sometimes don't like the day to day bother of going to your job, I do think there's a bit of a self-winding aspect to the action of kicking yourself out the door and interacting with the other humans. I sort of have to wind myself--not by obligatory activity--but by jumping up and down, and giving in a bit to the wiggly restlessness of the in-betweenies. Then I tell myself this is good...this is a moment to write the silly book...and I tap out a line and a half.

And that is what life is like. You tell yourself...eh, I'm doing ok with this, aren't I? And most likely, you are.

grounded but ready...

I didn't want to buy the wrong suitcase. Which is how it came to pass that I spent a creditable chunk of both today and yesterday researching specs and reviews of a variety of roll-aboards.

I've had my navy blue L.L.Bean model at least since 2000, when the entire family set out for 10 days in England pulling (with the exception of Jeff--always an inveterate duffel lugger,) 5 navy blue international regulation carry-on sized cases, and nothing more, on the pack-less-than-you-need theory. I recall waffling, to the last minute, over whether to stuff in a zip-front wool blend sweater, and being mighty glad that I did since I wore it about every July day we were in the UK.

That case has accompanied me on quite a few jaunts since then, so it was with some dismay that I noted--as I stowed the luggage in our Amtrak Capitol Limited bedroom--that sizeable chunks of a wheel from my suitcase were turning up all over the industrial berber low-loop carpeting of the compartment. It was the outer shell, it turned out, of a wheel made in two layers, and I spent the remainder of the trip pulling it on the remaining inner portion of the wheel. Not difficult, but a wee lopsided.

I am somewhat committed, it seems, to flying with just carry-ons whenever I can. I realize that the rest of the world is also, which makes for some overhead compartment competition at the worst of times, but I knew one thing--that I required a replacement case that would easily pass the ubiquitous airport "is your carry-on small enough?" test.

I checked Amazon, I checked Travelsmith, I checked Magellan's. Today we even popped by the AAA office to see what was on hand, and inspected a few things at The Leather Store. (Which should actually be called The Luggage Store since it's way more about luggage than it is about leather.) I ended up placing two orders--one with Magellan's, one with Amazon--and should, by next week or so, end up with an Eagle Creek Hovercraft 20 roll-aboard, which--though a little short at 20"--compensates by being 16" wide. Additionally, I will make a PacSafe backpack serve as my "personal item," since it's small enough to squish under the seat, but large enough to hold a netbook, reading material, and whatever other sundries I need to transfer into a smaller Eagle Creek Travel Bug backpack once I reach a destination.

The thing that I don't have, is any travel plans whatsoever. I don't see this problem being correctible before Spring, and not in any big way, at that. When the new stuff comes, I may just have to fill it up with laundry and a cat and tote it around the house in the spirit of (but lack of, in any reality-based way) adventure

maybe it's silvery, not gilded.

Two weeks ago, in the moments during which I was concluding that the top bunk of the bedroom compartment on the Amtrak Southwest Chief made for an ungainly platform from which to help Jeff with his middle of the night bathroom needs, I became aware that I'd shifted. I don't mean that I did the shifting in that moment--in fact, in the top bunk, I could barely shift at all. The headroom allowed for crunches, but not sit-ups, and one had to perform a motion much like that of a pole vaulter twisting her body so that she'll land feet first to even consider climbing down from the bed.

No, the shift I noticed was something that had already happened, but I'd yet to take heed of and shake hands with it. It was a particular milestone I'd reached in the gradual translocation of emotional tectonic plates that comes with Alzheimer's spousing. I looked down from that fold-up bunk and thought two thoughts: The first was that it would be easier and more comfortable if we both just squished into the lower bunk. The second was that I was happy to do so because it was easier to do my job from close-up. The job of caregiving. The job of helping find the bathroom and providing middle of the night reassurances to a disoriented mind.

It may seem a little strange to say that I've finally shifted, after 6+ years of diminishing cognitive function on Jeff's part, into the role of caregiver. I've been doing it for some time, 'tis true. But I didn't own the job. I didn't particularly want the job. And approaching the caregivee with the emotional closeness that enabled me to contentedly switch bunks was the new thing.

When a life partner slips from your grasp such that he is sometimes not, then rarely, then never your mind-mate again, you might, like I have, start to seal off the emotional receptor places that were shaped to receive feedback from him. Those spots are safely coated with several thick layers of New-Skin®, liquid bandage for the soul, and--like that gilded room in Captain Von Trapp's fancy chateau--nobody goes there, dammit. There are some rooms in this house we just don't use.

So, when I felt the impulse that propelled me (carefully and stepwise) from the upper bunk to the lower (other than the practical one,) I recognized it as a new row of emotional crops. Ones that have been growing, and emitting tiny whiffs of their usefulness since they sprouted, but not so much that I really understood how they worked or what you could do with them until that moment. This crop is not from the gilded room (nobody goes there, still,) but they come from another room, almost as nice and certainly better outfitted for the task at hand.

I didn't know I had that room, and now it seems I do. And it also seems that it was on our trip westward that the construction crew ripped down the final piece of plastic dropcloth, allowing me ready access. I still don't particularly want the job, any more than I want presbyopia, or pets with skin allergies, or bamboo poking through the fence in the backyard. But it's my job, and I appreciate the tools.

No rolling. Lots of shaking and rattling.

The two porcelain pedestal sinks in our master bathroom have rattled since installation. I can't remember whether Jeff or Yank the plumber hooked them up, but it was after I tiled the floor and walls (in the epoch where, of necessity, I acquired many new skills.)

A pedestal sink consists of two parts: the pedestal and, obviously, the sink. While the pedestal provides a supportive stand, the two pieces are not attached to each other by any means but gravity. For true stability, the sink is meant to be fastened to the wall it abuts. Ours never were.

If you bumped into them (a normal occurrence for us) they rattled. If you scrubbed them (a normal but less frequent occurrence) they rattled. They rattled with a deep but clanging hollow chime--or sometimes rumble--of porcelain on porcelain. And they banged into the tile wall, which was more of a boomity boomity thing. It was an unsatisfactory and somewhat disconcerting condition for sinks.

When I learned (via our handyman who never showed up again) about their improper installation, I began to puzzle over what I might do. The bathroom framing had been done when Jeff was on the verge of losing his powers. Had he, correctly, provided a plank behind the now-tiled wall? He didn't remember, of course. He'd been faltering enough by the time I finally tiled, that it never occurred to him to mention the need for bolts.

Yesterday, I detached the J-bend from the wall, shut off the supply valves, and unhooked the supply pipes which run from the floor to the sink. Then, after carefully walking the sink/pedestal assembly away from the wall, I drilled through the tile. The initial hole was the hardest, requiring the pin-prickiest of drill-bits, followed by sequentially larger bits until I'd achieved two nice half-inch holes. Then, I plowed in further to see what I would hit. Drywall, then air, then...wood? Yes, wood.

I walked-rocked the sink back into place and, with a socket wrench, ratcheted a nice fat hex-headed bolt and washer through each hole (the holes that were always there) in the back of the sinks.

The solidity of the now rattle-free sinks is a satisfying thing, indeed. Next up--replacing my cruddy stiff faucet handles.