Paging Uncle Charley (again.)

For a while there I really had myself going. I was actually thinking that Jeff could be happier living in the nicest of places, equipped for his needs, where he could socialize with others like him. I, meanwhile, would devote major portions of my days to hanging out with him so that he would continue to feel the continuity of my presence, but I would go home and have nights, plus portions of each day, to call “normal.”

There is such a haven near Annapolis, that might actually offer what I’d require for Jeff. I’m on the verge of visiting, but now just for informational purposes. I didn’t even freak about the annual cost at first...not sure why. But sitting down today with the square-in-the-face reality that the cost (which we’ll call x + .15x) exceeds my household budget (aka x) by 15% has really put the notion on a ledge called extraordinary and improbable. Not to mention irresponsible. I’m not complaining really. I have what I need. I just don’t have what Mitt Romney needs.

In some ways it’s better to wrassle these alligators, realize you’re bound to lose, and take it from there. Toying with the thought, as if it were realistic, threw me into a state of such non-equanimity that I could neither sleep nor not-sleep without psychosomatic pain and a sense of impending crisis. Shaking hands with it and recognizing it as not-an-option gives me the liberty to face what I’ve got to deal with and make the best of it...which is something I was doing pretty well up until opening the door a crack for that other thought.

Anyway, I think I will still visit. Maybe seeing it in person will reassure me that it wasn’t a good thought from the get-go. Now I’m back to needing Uncle Charley. Suitable applicants may inquire.

and today...

...Jeff asked me if I thought he'd be any good at accounting.

drinking to that...

Tonight Jeff was feeling a little celebratory. This was later, after he threw the Princeton Review LSAT book on the floor. I asked him if he also wanted to stomp on it, and he almost did.

These events were precipitated by Jeff's frustration that he could make no sense of the book. I knew this, and I suppose I was trying to, sort of, force the issue to a closing point by buying that book. As of today, it seems to have worked, relatively painlessly (except from the pov of the almost-stomped book.)

I tried to help, which was part of the plan. We sat down and tried a practice test. If a veterinarian must transport animals, using 4 cages, each of which has an upper and lower berth, and there will be 3 male animal (none of which can share a cage with another male,) and upper berths #1 and #2 will be occupied by females, then which of the following statements (A through E) cannot be true?

The correct answer was F: How does this apply to real life? This is stupid. I'm going celebrate. (Why?, I ask.) Because I don't have to take the LSAT.


And then somewhere, either just before or after the last paragraph happened, the Princeton Review LSAT book got thrown on the floor.

I picked it up. I haven't thrown it in the recycling bin yet. Later, maybe, we'll line the upper and lower berths of cages 1 through 4 with its pages.

It's still law...

Saturday: This is an experiment. Jeff sat down and said, “There’s one more thing we have to talk about. Law school.”

”Ok,” I said. “Go for it.”

”Oh,” he replied, with a note of surprise. “I thought there was going to be a big argument. Ok, so let’s do it.”

”Well, it’s not ‘us,’” I cautioned. “I’m not doing it.”

He nodded. “I know.”

Now I’m wondering if there will be more questions for me to answer, or whether the subject has been satisfied now that I’m officially not standing in the way.

Sunday: This morning Jeff asked if we could “stroll over to the law school.”

”Which law school?” I asked. “Maryland,” he said, meaning University of Maryland which is in Baltimore.

"It’s not exactly strolling distance,” I said. “Maybe you need to do a little research into this.” (I said this fully realizing that Jeff doesn't have the cognitive wherewithal to research the dog's eye color.) So I’m not sure when it will come up again and what to say that is neither discouraging nor pointlessly encouraging. Possibly, if we obtain written information, with forms and whatnot, he can spend time riffling through them for months to come. It’s a thought.

Monday: Substitute new thought. In my internet delvings into how best to deflect or manage this recurring theme, I realized the obvious: There is no road to law school on which you will not encounter the gatekeeper called LSAT. This is easy for Jeff to understand. That is, it is easy for him to understand that the LSAT is a requirement. Understanding the LSAT prep book I will buy for him today at Barnes & Noble, when we make our midday outing, is probably not going to be so easy. Still, it seems a next step is necessary since this notion has lodged itself fiercely in his cranium in a way that things like the route to the bathroom cannot.

It is almost a certainty that whatever questions you might have about my “strategy”(?) in this matter are ones I’ve already asked myself. Should I not nip this in the bud? How? I have already attempted to make the point (as a follow up to “go for it,”) that people who go to law school must be able to accomplish this without their spouse’s involvement. He says “of course,” then, when we’re in the car on the way to lunch and I’m enumerating the errands I have planned, he says “and then, law school.” As if that’s one of my errands or something I’m supposed to do. So today, I bought him The Princeton Review LSAT Prep Guide. Was this $24.37 paid toward something I should have already said “no” to, or have I bought myself a functional distraction?

Just “no” will not work. That means I am the roadblock. The truth (i.e. “your brain has been so damaged that you cannot possibly comprehend law, let alone write a coherent note, let alone find a classroom,”) is depressing. I don’t want to depress. This has to play in a way that I am not the enemy, nor am I the wielder of the harshest truths.

I have some hope that the LSAT book is a good idea. I can hand it to him whenever the subject comes up. He will not be able to read a page of it. But I don’t think that even his damaged brain can construe that as my fault.

Street Art

I distinctly recall noticing the pipe cleaner in the middle of the road a day or so ago. Roughly in front of our next-door neighbors’ house, it was an odd bit of flotsam to see lying in the street--fluffy and white, with an inch at each of its ends bent at a jaunty 90º angle. Not that I measured. But, I did note it as we walked the dog by, and I’m equally certain that Jeff did not as he was drifting off toward the Dunkers’ house and I was about to re-trajectorize him. (That’s not a word. Don’t look it up.)

Fast forward to this afternoon. I’ve set my iPhone timer for 33 minutes, and I’m trying to take a short nap on the couch while hiding my face and chest under a throw pillow to keep Chessie the cat from settling in that exact location. I hear Jeff ask Becca something about where is Mom, because he thinks I might want this. (whatever this is. I don’t find out until my timer goes off some fraction of 33 minutes later.)

You’ve probably guessed correctly. “This” is the white pipe cleaner, only slightly more squished by traffic, and now lying on the bit of kitchen counter where I routinely fix my muesli in the morning. Becca says “He thought you might want that.” “Thanks,” I say. Then I deposit it in the trash can while wondering, aloud, what other objects Jeff might like to pick up off the street and place on our food preparation surfaces. “A dead squirrel for instance?”

Jeff is pretty easy to amuse these days, and my dead squirrel joke got him chuckling for a good three and a half minutes or so. Later I found about 2½ inches of stick which undoubtedly came in from Jeff’s stick-breaking adventures in the yard and attempted to establish a new home-base on the kitchen floor near the stairs. I said no.

This week it's law.

I want to know what will happen when. I admit it. I stink at Buddhism. Nevertheless here we go, as always—practicing the ineluctable art of not-knowing-ism.

Jeff is getting worse at seeing things, worse at eating things, worse at even knowing which way is up or where to place himself. Strangely, this has been accompanied (for at least the past couple weeks,) by an increased restlessness and determination that he should be doing something.

Maybe different areas of the brain have re-flashes of activity over the course of a decline, like a changing pattern of flickering lights as the power is drained from the system.

Now he thinks he should go to law school. Management of this kind of thinking remains the same. DON'T shoot the idea like a clay pigeon...just listen, understand, and respond non-commitally. Of course there is always me and the urge for truthfulness. I resist it. There is little point in saying "You can't read, drive, or find your way out of the bathroom. Just how are you going to go to law school?"

I had to shove that little urge under the couch cushion and sit on it this morning. It might actually be more sensible to just say "Ok, cool idea. Go to law school." Then bop the ball back into his court every time the thought resurfaces. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Sometimes Jeff can put his shoes and socks on. I bet most lawyers can do that too. It's a perfect fit.

having words with friends.

Words with Friends is a Scrabble™ knock-off, in case you haven’t encountered this manner of trounce-or-be-trounced interactivity, available to ipod/pad and smartphone users.

Flashback to school days...I’m wrapping up 6th grade. Oak Hill Elementary—such a colorful exemplification of all that was wrong with 70s notion of education. A place where I could crawl around under “study carrels,” or swing on stall doors in the girls bathroom when I was meant to be self-pacing myself through a series of math cards. Let’s say 4th grade math concepts were more or less covered by the blue set, and 5th grade by the orange set. As I was too busy practicing math-avoidance to complete more than 30% of the blues, they’d just promote me to orange when I moved ahead a grade. I scored well on standardized tests after all...why insist I actually learn the concepts?

I tend to fare pretty well, on average, in Scrabble type games. I win a lot. You (anyone, actually) would beat me at whack-a-mole. I’d invariably lose a math-off. If the devil went down to Georgia I would NOT step up to the plate with my fiddle, and you’re going to get a book seriously published before I do. But I might beat you at Scrabble or Words with Friends. But I might not.

Junior High was a rude awakening. Unlike Elementary School where you mingled with the same-age kids who just happened to live in your neighborhood, Junior High drew from a larger region and they started grouping us by whatever the prevailing measures of academic aptitude were. Suddenly, I ceased to be smart (relatively speaking) without exerting effort. I was in the midst of academically-competitive kids, and the realization took me down a peg or two.

I know a hot game of Words with Friends when I’m in it. There are better-than-average players, against whom word placement becomes a thrust, or a parry or a “take that!” But it’s okay, because I’ve been softened up like an old punching bag. My expectations of victory have had practice being put in their place. The apple, you see, truly does not fall far from the tree. Daughter Becca has bested me two out of three so far. I can deal. But if you challenge me to whack-a-mole I’m going to say no.