Betta' Beta.

Clarence my cross-eyed muse and I, and the other I, were having a conversation. See, I’m kind of more or less done with the drafting of the manuscript heretofore known (to me anyway) as “Bea and the Smart Kids.”

Drafting, yes...editing, no. That’s being difficult. I’ve been working on the thing for so little and for so long that not a one of the three of us (Clarence, I or I) can even comprehend it as more than an overly-familiar pablum of uninspired blah-ness. I probably need to work on something else. But, you know, there’s this problem I have with not completing something. I’ve not-completed something in the past and it doesn’t feel right. The not-completed thing wanders the deserted highways of my imaginary world like a waif in the night (ok, it’s not really that pathetic...it’s more like that broken window screen you never fixed, in the garage.

Anyway, Clarence says it’s my fault for not showing up for work often enough, and I blame me, and then it’s this whole merry-go-round of buck-passing. That kind of merry-go-round they used to have at children’s play parks with four different colored textured metal quadrants, and galvanized hand-rails. You’d spin the other kids until somebody either fell off and bonked her head or barfed, and no parents thought of municipal liability.

Normally, at this point, I’d edit to a fare-thee-well while still managing to overlook a handful of blatant typos and some really awkward constructions, then I’d sketch some fifth-rate cover art and try to disguise its dorkiness with watercolor paint, and then I’d send the whole assemblage to Lulu, which would happily provide me with another box of books to store in the closet. Trimmed in turquoise, or maybe yellow.

Trouble is, neither I nor I nor Clarence can summon enough love for the manuscript to jump into that solid book creation phase. But we’ve also agreed that we’re not sending it to live with the waifly window screen. So I think we’re going to (for now) settle for beta testing. (“Beta testing?” says Clarence. “You mean that cloud-o-sphere called emilygillespieclement.com?” “Yes,” says I. “It’s very much like The Island of Misfit Toys, only the residents aren’t as cute as the doll in the gingham dress who had no apparent flaw. And we give them marshmallows for their campfire. Don’t look at me that way.” Clarence suggests that perhaps betta testing--where we drop it into a tank of small pugnacious fish would be better. I ignore that.)

Anyway, I think I’ve got Clarence on my page now because until he gets his eyes fixed you can’t expect anything more brilliant to roll out of our fiction mill. So, yes. Pretty soon I’ll be mounting the chapters under the heading “new but stale" or something.

But first I have to at least try to edit. A little. I will leave some terrible prose though. Don’t worry.

going

I remember exactly how I felt this time last year when I was in a flurry of travels. End of summer beach week, two trips to Connecticut, and a cross-country Southwest Amtrak adventure. I believed the end of opportunity was impending and I wanted to make hay while the sun shone. Shined. (I don’t like “shone” there, but I think it should be. Is this breaking the third wall? This is not a play, so no.)

Then, in April, we managed the Northwest Amtrak trip with Mom...so my sense of impending closure was a little premature, maybe. Or maybe not. Things are and were closing in. Yet here I am, a year + later, planning more comings and goings. But I’m nervous in a way that I wasn’t last year because Jeff’s world is shrinking and we can almost see it day to day. Shrinking, in this case, means...maybe...the breadth of meaningful ways in which he can interface with the world. Well, that’s vague and fraught with jargon-babble. That’s because this is really hard to describe. You sense it more than you quantify it.

Let’s try another way. There is a balance between the pleasure you get from visual stimuli (because of its meaning to you, because of the way the things you see pluck the strings of your intellect and emotions,) and the bothersomeness of the visual cacophony which is too much for you to sort in a pleasant way. As more data defects from the pleasure to the bother side of the scale, less is attempted. More is shut out. A new experience may have very limited worth, if it is even tolerable. (Yet, ironically, susceptibility to boredom still exists.)

Boredom, speaking of boredom, is a condition to which I am supremely susceptible, even though I was talking about Jeff. But now I’m talking about me. Yes, caregiving can get pretty boring. Honestly, I don’t know that it makes an owl’s hoot of difference to Jeff whether I create adventures. But for me it does. I have to try to squeeze what remains out of his capacity to go, see, experience, and I’m not sure how I’ll deal when the door closes to a pinpoint.

For now, I have ways to offset the disorientation. I hold onto him. The worse he gets, the closer I pull him. It seems like being close, held, and guided, with verbal commentary to distract him from the visuals which may be too fast to process, make any experience manageable for Jeff. At a park, at a pace that average folk might find tedious, we can stop, occupy a bench, and let the visuals pass by without multiplying the relative velocities by moving ourselves. Until we’re ready.

I don’t mind that every trip is experimental. That an aspect of each adventure we attempt is the gauging of whether or not we can keep managing such things. I don’t want to be stuck without even the option of half-baked adventures. So I’ll keep pushing this cart, until all 4 wheels fall off.

splash.

I’ve made a plan. I’m tucking Jeff into a duffel and heading to Florida for a four night 50th birthday present to myself. This will occur just after my birthday, in the first week of December.

Now I’m aware that Disney is not everyone’s idea of “real” travel —and without a doubt, I like reality-based adventures very much—but this is what I whimsically want to do, so I’m not going to try hard to explain myself. We’ll stay at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and see...animals. And eat stuff. And take what slow-paced, low-key pleasure we can in a few short days at the parks, (uncrowded in early December,) enjoying mostly things like The Jammitors. To be followed by sitting on the veranda at the AKL watching ostriches.

I’m a little worried today though. Jeff’s had a foggier than usual 48 or so hours, and you just wonder...are we encountering a new set-point, or is it just a passing low pressure system? So we’ll see how things play out. I have trip insurance for the cost of lodging and whatnot and won’t lose out too much if I must cancel.

The thing about AD is that it’s like Splash Mountain. (Disney reference...to an attraction we will not visit this trip.) You know that while you might be on a manageable horizontal boat ride with just an occasional swoop to port or starboard, you’re going to hit the 45º downward flume, and you’re going to be at a lower elevation at the end.

And then I’m going to be looking around like...what am I supposed to do with this? Where’s Uncle Charley? (You know...William Demerest from My Three Sons.) Or some other avuncular type who wants nothing more than to move in to the room currently housing Hazel the crazy kitty, and Be There for Jeff. Because Jeff would love him and be comfortable with him and vice versa. And I wouldn’t have to imagine that I’ll be doing everything and housebound if there’s something scary like that at the bottom of Splash Mountain.

And of course there is. It’s Alzheimer’s.

Maybe an arrow would help?

Yesterday morning I stepped into the bathroom onto a damp bath mat. This was curious, since I’d last taken a shower 2 days earlier. A sniff suggested the cause. Actually, it was a little more forceful than a suggestion, nasally speaking.

There is a scene in the Swedish movie “A Song for Martin” in which Martin, the symphony conductor now suffering from Alzheimer’s, excuses himself from a restaurant table and takes a pee in a potted plant. Things like this come to mind. Especially after this morning. I was doing sink business at the sink and Jeff came into the bathroom. He stood on the (clean) bath mat and faced the shower. “What are you looking for?” I asked. “I’m waiting for a turn,” he said. “A turn for what?” I asked. “A turn to pee,” he said. I showed him a better target.

This is a reminder of the fact that much of what we humans do is not really in our nature. We train ourselves and our children. Cats are more natural than humans at getting with the bathroom hygiene program. (Well, not my cats in particular depending on which of them you’re asking about, but cats in general.) Anyway, I recall that Jeff is not the only person I can think of with a declining mind who has selected a bath mat as a likely patch for business. And why not a potted plant, if you stop and think about it. I used to have a cat who thought likewise.

Wow, I've fussed about my brain...

...for two blog posts in a row. Sorry about that!

Who's on First? Don't know...but I'm picking clovers in left field.

There’s a bit of a disconnect between the portion of my brain known (in neuropsychiatry) as “Executive Function” and the part known (in common parlance) as “Slacker.” Or perhaps it’s more that Executive Function never took Slacker to puppy training school at Petsmart, and now Slacker, when asked to perform, falumps onto the floor belly up and says “no, not fetch, belly rub.”

Anyway, Slacker is evidently asserting passive-aggressive control of the situation this morning, as I sit at an outdoor table at the Baltimore Tea & Coffee Company with my working notebook (from which I am intended to derive where my story is meant to go next) open at my right elbow.

Slacker, though hopeless at home, is easily distracted by the parade of humans coming in and out of BT&C. Ruddy business suit guys who don’t quite have their shirttails all the way tucked, or the pristinely makeupped Asian girls coming and going from Bella—Lifestyle Nail Salon & Spa next door.

Slacker, now that I stop and think about it, has more or less helmed the ship as a lifelong habit. And this explains WHY I didn’t, to my present-day chagrin, learn Latin, geography, and the Encyclopedia Britannica as a kid like my brother.

What I have done, despite Slacker’s insouciant but unquestionable grip on the control-stick, is squeeze out 3.823 books. It’s that last 17.7% of my current effort that Executive Function and Slacker are presently tussling over.

Now, you would think (well, in fact you probably would not think, but you would hope,) that almost-four works of fiction, wrassled from the playful but resolutely ornery jaws of a bad puppy would deserve (if real-life were stories) to turn out to be sparkling with the sort of free-spirited wit that is coveted by the reading and editing world. Actually, what happens is that you get chewy gooey remnants with their squeakers ripped out. Because real-life is not stories, and this outcome is what makes the most real-life logical sense. Still, we carry on...Slacker, Executive Function, Clarence my cross-eyed muse, and I. Because that’s all we can think of to be.

Goal: By the end of today’s work period, only 17% will remain to be written. That’s a few hundred words, that 0.7%. And this blog-post doesn’t contain a one of them.

flicker...*pop*...oops.

The Whole Foods Market internet connection is not working. It usually does, so perhaps I will bundle my flotsam and decamp for a more central work area. This one, though, has a window with a view of a) traffic coming and going from the shopping center and b) Giolitti Italian Food & Wine (Homemade, Local and Extraordinary.) The alternative would have a view of the “Thank You For Shopping With Us” sign.

I did not leave the house with much of a plan this morning when Kimberly arrived. Not much of one. Although, as I have reached the climax-through-denouement stretch of my “Smart Kids” book (whatever it intends to be called,) that’s the obvious choice of activity. But my brain is working with a scattershot functionality which suggests that oatmeal for breakfast is not as good a choice as nuts and seeds. Nor does this Allegro tea...”Engage Your Brain” (or something) is the name of it...seem to be living up to its promise.

I have to wonder about this theory of humans, and the idea that one member of the species can be wholly responsible for another one whose circuitry has failed. Some of us (though as “intact” as we’ve ever been) still operate like a Kliegl light board with about 30% finicky switches. So you’d think there would have been some kind of quality control applied when they handed out life stories, but you know there’s not.

Whereas I would heretofore have a headache...

There has, of course, been some legal rigmarole and financial configuring to do with regards to Jeff having retired from the hardware business several years ago. Among the interesting discoveries we stumbled upon following the tricky moves of the so-called “Great” Recession has been the one that nearly tanked the insurance policy that was contrived to enable my brother-in-law to retire his obligations to us.

The problem with insurance policies (and thank goodness I’m not in THAT business,) is that they might have been designed to float on the buoyancy of a good economy, as ours was. Sometimes, if your raft springs a leak, it doesn’t quite totally sink, but you know if you jump on it all bets are off. That’s where we were. We (as in said b-i-l and myself) refigured, cooked up a way to make higher payments (Jeff, after all, is not someone any right-minded life-insurer is going to take into consideration again,) and now have a somewhat smaller raft that floats.

Part of what this means is more stuff to sign, at the bottom of papers with words like “whereas” and “heretofore.” Usually if I squint and cock my head so that my left ear is higher I can come away from reading these documents with something akin to comprehension. If I were a lawyer though, I would get permanently stuck that way which would seem, eventually, to be an unfortunate condition.

Does Braco have a gazing ball in his garden?

Am I procrastinating? Oh yes, I am. It is Thursday, writing time, and I am in Whole Foods having a cup of Allegro Breakfast Blend. I have picked up a copy of Pathways, a large (twice the size of a typical journal—I know there’s a name for that...tabloid?) publication which promotes such things as “mind, body, spirit and environmental resources” in the Washington D.C. area.

I usually like minds, bodies, spirits and the environment, so I picked it up to see what I might find. Leading off is “The Herb Corner,” in which an herbalist names his ten most incredible herbal products. I am sold. I definitely need to get myself some triphala to ease digestion, and while I’m here I might look for a product called “I Sleep Soundly” which could be useful in the area of releasing tension before bed.

Now I am scanning the rear of the magazine, hoping to find an ad for “Grannies Who Love to Come to Your House and Stay With Your Husband While You Go To a Movie.” I don’t find it. Instead, I find a full-page advertisement for an appearance at a D.C. hotel by Braco. Who is Braco?

At first glance, Braco is a kindly looking 50-something with a really weird mullet. He is from Croatia. From what I can glean, one shows up and, for $8, experiences a “gazing session” with a ballroom of other gazees. Braco does not speak in public. Apparently, his gaze is sufficient. Actually, if you follow the fine print, his gaze is more than sufficient and is not recommended for visitors under 18 as “the energy could overburden children.” And pregnant women. But it is recommended that you bring their photo. I guess that if Braco gazes at a photo of your loved one, the photo assimilates his power, a la Harry Potter, and forwards it to the proper address.

Yoga is smart, and so is dog-walking.

What I did at 6 a.m. this morning, 30 minutes before my alarm went off, was stand up and do some chest-opening stretches. And I talked to myself a good bit. I’m probably better at channeling the wisdom of the cosmos at pre-dawn than I am at sunset, for sure.

I think what woke me up was a combination of inferior digestion, new-forming-scar pain, and the usual sort of stressy, nondescript ouchiness that hovers in my upper torso and is best released by doing something. Like stretches.

I would posit that a good percentage of even avowed atheists are not materialists, to the extent that they would never bother tapping into the under/over/through-current of intelligence that seems to pulse through the quantum soup. (If you’ve ever effed it...I mean, it is ineffable after all.)

I am not placing myself among atheists by so positing, but I do find that by default I am somewhat of an a-theist. That is, assuming you take theism to require a discrete other, usually at least partially definable by the guidelines offered in a particular religion. So, it is possible that by not being able to identify a discrete presence as opposed to a generalized connectivity, one is a-theistic.

I sort of agree with the theory that one of the reasons we humans got so heavily invested in religion is that, as critters go, we got a little more intelligent than is good for a fragile psyche. While cats indubitably cast themselves as the point-of-view character in their experience of life, they probably don’t wonder what happens when the story ends.

I’m not sure the concept of mortality is a healthy thing to meta-analyze. By which I mean this: While most of us objectively recognize that we will, in fact, die, it’s comforting to hold oneself as the sort of person [that]* doesn’t happen to, until the time it actually happens. *[neurodegeneration, skin cancer, any cancer, traumatic bone-crushing injuries, etc.]

I do know for certain, and can vouch for this by dint of much personal experience, that doing something (stretches, bricklaying, walking, composing readerless books,) is a vastly more therapeutic coping strategy than lying in bed at 6 a.m. noticing how it can be painful to somaticize your existential uncertainty.

Scars...nothing wrong with looking badazzz.

As of Monday afternoon’s visit with the dermatological surgeon, I appear to have had a three inch piece of clothesline whip-stitched to my bicep. Only it’s not rope, it’s my skin. This, I am told, is to ensure a better long-term cosmetic result when the scar contracts.

This morning, pre-shower, I removed the original bandage, (which was giving me roughly the arm configuration of Pop-eye,) for the first time. Two extra-wide band-aids seem to provide adequate coverage I discovered, as the ditty “I am stuck on Band-Aids, ‘cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” jangled merrily in that part of my brain that just likes to behave that way. The jury’s still out on whether Band-Aid is, in this case, actually stuck on me.

Well, with that patch of traitorous epidermis gone to what is probably a redundant degree, we’ll see whether we carry on with a “chop early and often” approach at my regularly scheduled appointments.

Here, Otis and I are comparing arms. His is, at this point, unscathed.

Should find a fritter shop, really...

The Baltimore Tea & Coffee Company is not actually in Baltimore. It’s in Annapolis. Right across from the Annapolis Mall (whose real name, which nobody uses, is “Westfield Shopping Towne.” Nobody uses it because Westfield, in this case, isn’t even a place. It’s a Corporation.)

So, if you’re sitting at the counter facing the front window at BT&CC, you enjoy a stunning view of (in this order) parked cars, small trees trying gamely but unsuccessfully to evoke a parklike setting, moderate traffic on Bestgate Road, and the stick-up atrium of the mall parking garage outside Nordstrom. Plus the corner of a red dumpster. Oh wait. Please insert the old guys at a patio table club at the beginning of the list.

BT&CC is #2 in the series of places I’m auditioning for the part of “good place to write.” The first place was the public library. It performed well, except in that you cannot buy a veggie wrap and tea there. It is also possibly true that one is ever so slightly more alluring writing in a coffee shop than in a library. But probably not in my case since the moment the idea of allure even occurs to me I usually spill something.

Jeff is home with Kimberly, who was an hour late this morning due, ostensibly, to an accident and/or gas spill a few miles down the road in Crofton. This morning she wanted to talk about how we might get Jeff to focus. “Focus on what?” I wondered. But it’s something to do with the way he wanders aimlessly around the house moving from his books, to his hand weights, to the bathroom, to nothing in particular. She’s worried that he’ll go outside and take off. (I put some jingle bells on the door to make it more evident if it’s being opened.)

”He doesn’t really focus on anything,” I submitted, not quite clear what sort of response Kimberly was hoping to evoke. “That’s just what he does, and you check with him every so often to see if he’s lost the bathroom or something.” I don’t think that’s what she had in mind, but it occurs to me now she could always show him her shiny black motorcycle, which is parked in the driveway. He’d just like to stare at it for a while, I think. I’m still kind of wishing we were doing daycare instead of home care, but we’ll try this for now. This is the second day of this experiment, and the second day I’ve left the house half-inclined to turn around and say “Nevermind, I’ve got this.”

Guess I won’t do that, for now. Requiring myself to indulge in 12 hours a week of alone time is not harsh treatment, for anyone, and I’ll either a)get used to it with an eventual eye to expanding the time, or b)never get used to it but possibly accomplish a minor thing or two.

And now, it is probably time for me to crack open my well-traveled but too-neglected, page-crumpled notebook which is supposed to remind me of where I left off in writing that book I’m supposed to (by my own supposing, and no one else’s) be writing.

on stuff.

I’m feeling a sense of calm today that is not fully explainable by the fact that the deprivations of the aftermath of hurricane Irene (living electricity, television, telephone, and internet-free,) seem to have officially ended this afternoon. I think it has more to do with the fact that I’ve once again tackled the basement.

About two years ago I took on the basement in its scarier form—the state it was in as Jeff’s continued collecting of building materials overlapped with his loss of awareness and organizational ability. That was big. This time it’s just about items on which I equivocated at the time, plus two years of entropy.

Even so, it fell into that category of chores you hesitate to take on because they seem daunting. Like most things in that category, once you start it’s not so bad. It’s not so bad. I’ve got a good foothold on the whole of the task, and it will be completed.

Meanwhile, our two downstairs bedrooms are spare and orderly. One is Jeff’s new room. He hasn’t technically moved in yet, but we are using it for changing and showers. The other is the “office,” (formerly the computer room, but now housing only my laptop plus an assortment of business related necessities.) It will also serve as a bed-chamber for sleepover caregivers, as the need arises. I am almost giddy about the relative emptiness of those two rooms, combined with the fact that our lawn mowers, just this afternoon, blew away all of Irene’s leaves and debris, and removed the stack of branches I’d piled up by the silver maple.

I am wondering why this pleases me so very much. Why is a not-so-inherently-tidy person like myself so comforted by the removal of stuff?

Wherever you fall on the clutter-tolerance scale, I am convinced that our habits derive from comfort-seeking behavior. My brother-in-law Fred (who is probably reading this—hi Fred,) likes his stuff. And he would like some more stuff, thank you. In fact, I think his Barbie Dream House would have a huge pink barn (maybe 3) out back, for stuff storage. (Fred might prefer if I rethink this fantasy in a Johnny West ranch doll theme.) Fred cannot believe the stuff I’ve gotten rid of with an almost sacrilegious insouciance. Because I presume that for Fred, having a galvanized, etched, 18th C. cotton gin cog handy when or if you need it is a source of comfort.

My mother-in-law was not dissimilar. She could not keep a barnload of objects as she moved into progressively smaller living quarters, but getting her to part with even a shrimp fork took a pry-bar and perhaps some sleight of hand. Or major distraction.

But I am not comforted by stuff. In fact, if they were looking for volunteers to have all their earthly possessions obliterated (house included) in exchange for a couple of free airline tickets, my hand would go up first. I’m not sure I’ve completely worked out why this is. But I can tell you that too much stuff, in my jurisdiction, makes me feel trapped. The more stuff, the more trapped. I don’t exactly know what I’m trapped in either. Trapped in stuff, I guess.

In the hullaballoo of hurricane Irene, I realized I’d make a terrible survivalist, because I don’t want all those emergency provisions. And that is ok, I don’t mind. If apocalyptic survival is for the most stuff-equipped, I will go first. It’s ok.

Pre-Edisonianism

I spent the first third of last night in the bathroom, on the floor. No digestive complaints, it was just the only way to get a slight bit of shut-eye while Freddi the dog wigged out over the wind, rain, and lightning of Tropical Storm Irene. For some reason, in the small enclosed tile room she feels less compelled to scratch nervously at the floor—a habit which, when performed next to my side of the bed, is impossible to sleep through. It was not the worst. I had a soft sleeping bag and two pillows, and when I became aware, at some impossibly wee hour, that the storm conditions had eased, I went back to real bed.

It occurred to me that I might go and sleep with her downstairs, where the rug does a better job of muffling her scratching, but I could not imagine how Jeff would cope if he woke to pee at 3 a.m., in the dark, disoriented, and there were no me to provide guidance.

Tonight, Sunday, we’re starting the evening electricity-free, but at least the dog should sleep normally. And I, perhaps, will sleep well, having collected a haystack-sized pile of tree droppings this afternoon, in addition to moving Jeff away from the doorway each time Olivia went out with a load of supplies for her campus townhouse. She left for school this afternoon, missing a fine dinner at Ellen and Fred’s. (Thanks sib and sib-in-law-who-have-electricity, for feeding us.)

If Baltimore Gas & Electric have not fixed us by morning, I am at least more prepared, coffee-wise. Declining to wait at Donut Shack, in the line which was snaking into the parking lot by 7:45 this morning, we instead came home where I scrounged for what remained in the coffee grinder, added one Starbucks Via instant which I found on hand, and concocted a semblance of coffee after boiling water on the Coleman stove. I steeped it in tea infusion baskets right in the mugs. Not bad. Then I made pancakes. Also on the Coleman stove, on the porch. By then I had pretty much ruined the chances of anything remaining good in the fridge or freezer, so all uber-perishables have been discarded and the fridge got a light wipe-down, which it needed.

Now, at 8:30 p.m., my small Eddie Bauer brass oil lamp is flickering away on the mantle, and we are sitting in the living room as a means of staving off bedtime. As a means of staving off wake up. As a means of letting me sleep until 6:30 a.m. Whether or not there will be power by morning is an unknown, but I am now prepared for coffee, with a fresh tin of pre-ground, and a bpa-free, but otherwise less breakable, french press. Because I am exactly the sort of person who would whack a glass french press on the edge of the countertop. I hope Donut Shack is prepared too, but I will once again not be in their line.

August is Augusty. It usually is.

Sometimes cleaning the “Squirrel-Buster®” bird feeder is about the best thing to do toward the end of a month that has steadily pushed you into a murky corner of existential nihilism. 15 minutes ago I could say that better, but then I went off and left my computer and came back to find a string of nonsense characters instead of the well-crafted first two paragraphs of an unsaved document. There was no retrieving it. I did not see a cat nearby. I have no explanation, but that’s the sort of life that, at its worst, feeds the above-referenced existential nihilism.

It is no wonder that the bird feeder needed, for the first time in a year point five, a thorough cleaning. Perky green domed roof or not, it would be a rare feeder which could withstand the monsoon which has pummeled the Mid-Atlantic in the past week and a half. Chickadees could only get to the occasional millet seed which filtered through the gluey glom of fused sunflower hulls. The feeder is drying in the basement. I’m letting my little inner bad philosopher diffuse on the front porch.

Fall, the season when everything dies, might be just the non-contrary counterpoint that will keep my mood and bird feeders unclogged. Because here’s a brief synopsis: I live with dying things. My dog is twelve and has bad legs. My old cat is in remission from a fibrosarcoma which almost promises to return. My other old cat is on palliative treatment wherein she gets as many bad-for-you steroid shots as she needs to keep her crazy itchy self comfortable. My life partner is experiencing some disturbing downsteps in his tango with the long goodbye. And yesterday, instead of the usual postcard stating that the spot the dermatologist sliced off during a recent “body check” was no big deal, I got a voicemail. You just don’t want voicemails when you expected a postcard.

I thought having green skin was my get out of jail (or serious dermatological trouble) free card. Only pink people are supposed to have this stuff. But, wouldn’t you know it, my olive-complected ancestors apparently dropped the ball on this one and it was snagged by my sun-vulnerable Nordic stock. Thanks Eric the Red, I owe you one. The freaky thing is that the melanoma-in-situ just zapped off my right arm did not appear all ugly and alien and dark like the pictures they show you on Google. It was merely one more splotch in the multi-splotch of freckly pigment I am pretty much covered with. It only looked slightly splotchier, and that’s what got my attention. I guess that probably suggests a comforting superficiality, but it also reinforces that the dermatologist will now be one of my best and most regularly visited friends so that any future attempts by my skin to turn against me can likewise be nipped in the easily-removable bud.

So, it turns out mortality is the rule around here, whether you are a mammal or a bird feeder. However, I still have some furniture to move so I’m going inside now. Gabe is giving up his downstairs bedroom to the call of one-level caregiving. I will figure out where to reinstall him later, before he comes home for Fall break.

tired? yes.

Tonight—5th floor of the O Henry hotel, Greensboro, NC. Different side, different view of office buildings and minor highways from our last stay. Jeff seems to be deriving some enjoyment from gazing out at the twilight panorama, and that’s a pretty good deal for someone who’s required me to reorient him to what, why and where at least three times today.

I am somewhat tickled by the geeky mix of completely un-preppy dweeby types I’ve seen milling around in our return to Greensboro. Of course where I saw the most was near our dinner locale which happens to be a strip of funky dives surrounded by the UNC Greensboro campus, but I trust that the general vibe of oddball kids extends to Guilford, a couple miles or so down the road, as well. Gabe was a fan of any place that offers numerous varieties of tea drinks including chocolate-banana, green apple, and mango bango. (In addition to udon noodle soup.)

Ok, that was Wednesday night. Tonight, as in when I’m typing right now, is Saturday night. We got back from Greensboro on Thursday night, after getting Gabe unloaded into his dorm (Binford Hall, conveniently located a few steps from the IT Building where I hope he can work out how to print his schoolwork, since I did not leave him equipped with a printer to jam all up.) But tonight, Saturday night, I’m about as tired as the old toothbrush I’ve been using to clean sink drains. I guess I should be over the two consecutive days of 6.5 hour drives, but I may not quite be over the caffeine gum I chewed and the strong iced coffee I got at the Charlottesville Whole Foods Market. Nor have I figured out how to process the critical threshold we seem to have crossed which has taken Jeff from being sort of a manageable extra pet to keep an eye on, to being an energy draining appendage. Jeff likes to ask everyone he sees on a college campus where they're from. It's just that now he has absolutely no discernment as to when to use the question and on whom. So he's apt to ask the Public Safety ladies lining the stairway into Binford Hall, as 3 dads and 2 kids are trying to go opposite directions carrying boxes and refrigerators. Or he asks the SunTrust guy who's trying to set up student checking accounts. I know, it's not quite as weird as last night when he told my bedside lamp goodnight, but it's one of many forms of mischief I need to keep him out of. Well, so I’m tired.

So tomorrow, after I finish cutting 600 or so tickets for the Concert Association, I will maybe start transforming Gabe’s room into Jeff’s room. Because here’s what I’m telling myself: I’m telling myself that I will begin the process of arranging for help two days a week after I get at least the downstairs sorted out, bedroom-wise.

plants and ants and trees and seas...

I am so due to write a Fisher Center blogpost. But too busy to formulate and sustain a thesis. So I’ll just ad lib here instead.

Today, at 1:33pm, when Jeff had just gotten up from a nap, he made a request that went something like this: Can I have a...drink...something to drink? At this point I try to ascertain whether he wanted orange juice, coffee or exactly what. No...not that...this is ridiculous...that stuff...I have it once a day...it’s a drink...Chardonnay!

This, actually, is something of an edited version of the actual conversation which at the time seemed pretty protracted, but I’ve typed enough ellipses. It’s just one of those markable moments. Not brand new really—I’ve been observing an increase the difficulty he has articulating thoughts for a couple months, but this one was marked. And also it highlighted the fact that he often has no clue as to time of day, since he is disinclined to request his glass of wine prior to 5pm.

Well, there you go, that’s what happens. I sometimes view the creep of Alzheimer’s dysfunction like a fog, rolling ever so slowly into new segments of the brain, trackable by external symptoms.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to put in a few months, or perhaps a few years, of being a grown up. Finally, perhaps. This is measurable by the fact that my yard looks groomed, a dead tree is down, and I am fully engaged in the hiring and management of an assortment of contractors. This might mean I can put my house on the market in the interest of switching to a lower-maintenance dwelling, or it might just mean I’m tired of feeling out of control and I’m just taking charge, money be damned. But you really can’t keep damning money, which takes us back to the lower-maintenance dwelling. When? Not sure. Check back. Never is one of the possibilities, but not the one I expect.

Our week at the Outer Banks of North Carolina was a fine one. Several days of gentle, navigable surf, and tolerable heat. Nice family too. It’s annual, and another one of those events that differs enough from the usual day to day life that you can use it to note the changes in a person who’s losing ground.

Last year Jeff went in the waves. Not for long, and I stayed with him, but I was not fearful that he would fall down. Big change in 12 months. Last week, a swoosh of foamy surf around his ankles would cause him to topple forward, and the one time I took him waist deep on a very gentle day he was quite discombobulated. I held him up and led him out. Katherine and I observed the obvious hazard on our last two beach days, when the waves were rolling in at random choppy angles. I could not let go of him in ankle deep water, as it quickly morphed to knee deep water, and we had zero confidence that Jeff would be able to stand up once he toppled.

I resorted to the method of beach-going my grandmother enjoyed in her declining years. I seated Jeff in a low-slung chair, just where the waves rolled ashore, so he could feel them but be in no danger of falling. He was happy.

frascati. It's Italian.

I really hate losing my mind. I wouldn’t do it if it seemed like I had a choice, but I probably don’t. I almost forgot to give the dog her evening snack for two days in a row, but each time caught a glimpse of her making her pathetic face and remembered, finally. Luckily, someone here has a brain.

Oh, the other thing is I’m getting Parkinson’s.* I might as well, my dad died of it and I’m all gangly like him, but weirder. Usually my clumsiness is worse in the morning when I’ve gone back to the coffeepot a few too many times. Caffeine jitters you say? Ok, maybe. That and the fact that my wiring and physical coordination have never exactly been state of the art could explain a few things, but I might as well have dementia and Parkinson’s because it seems neurological disorders are pretty much destiny around here.

Oh, and one more thing: Why are some people J.K. Rowling, and other people are not?

Something I am forced to wonder about is whether if you released J.K. Rowling into the Anne Arundel Medical Center complex of hospital and clinical buildings, would she be able to find her way from Parking Garage B to the office of the Greater Annapolis Medical Group? I actually did succeed in doing that today: It was down one ramp, through a door, past a barrier that indicated “don’t go this way,” down a stairway, across an outdoor place where people in cute scrubs go to smoke, in another doorway, down a hall, up a staircase, and around the corner. While it is possible that I have the worst sense of direction ever, I did that in both forward and reverse this afternoon, by paying careful attention. And giving Jeff verbal directionals. (“now we turn right,” “U-turn,” “up a curb!”)

I’m probably just mad because I’ve reached the final two stages (#s 21 and 22,) of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and I’ve realized—I don’t want to hit anything else with a sword, I stink at games like this in general, and I especially stink at this part. I’m inclined to force Gabe to complete the thing while I watch, just to achieve a sense of closure.

I will turn 50 at the end of this year. When I’m done being 50 I’m either going to laugh at myself or laugh at myself. I just hope I do it in a nice way, and laugh with me, not at me.

*not really, as far as I know. coffee, in fact, is thought to help.

They look good on me.

Today, when we stopped at the library, my sunglasses decided to surprise me by divesting themselves of the screw that holds the right earpiece to the frames. Still, I was able to manage for the next two legs of the drive by balancing them on my nose and one ear. “They look good on you,” said Jeff, who recalls that I recently got a new pair of glasses, and wished to comment in a helpful way. “Thanks,” I said. “They’re old and broken.”

I grabbed my not-so-trusty eyeglass repair kit (the one that comes with a small assortment of screws, none of which fit any known spectacles,) and we trundled off to lunch, me with the notion that I could fiddle with this project while we awaited food.

I don’t know why I thought that. I know I can’t do tiny work without magnifier glasses on, so I stashed the parts in a pocket of my backpack until we got home. Then I organized my tools. 1 tiny screwdriver, 7 worthless screws + the original which fell out, 1 pair of needlenose pliers, and the sunglasses, in two parts. Oh, yes, and my zebra-striped, supermarket +1.50 magnifiers, which I put on. “They look good on you,” said Jeff. “Thanks,” I said. “They’re just the magnifiers I bought at Whole Foods.”

After numerous false starts and a variety of attempts at ways not to drop the screw while finding an available set of opposable digits with which I could begin to screw it into place I did succeed in replacing the original screw. Otherwise it would have been Peeper’s Family Eyecare tomorrow. Where I get all my prescription glasses including my new set of progressives. Which, as it happens, Jeff thinks look good on me.

What will Terry do?

Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime (until 11:00pm, that is,) because I was watching a film made by Terry Pratchett on assisted suicide. It is called Choosing to Die, and it documents Sir Terry’s visits to a Swiss facility, run by an organization called “Dignitas,” which provides the space, screening, guidance, and medications involved. Also, he interviews two terminally impaired people choosing that exit strategy, and their loved ones.

Terry Pratchett (in case you’ve never read any Discworld, or Wee Free Men books,) is an English fantasy novelist who is contemplating the Dignitas option himself as a way to escape from the otherwise inevitable endgame of his posterior cortical atrophy.

Although I’ve known of Pratchett and his diagnosis for some time, this film was the first time I’d seen him in action, and I was struck by the amount of insight he seems to retain into realizing the scope of his illness-induced limitations. Sir Terry can no longer type, and he knows it. Instead he relies on his assistant to take dictation. Also, that he is able to conceive of and carry out the making of a documentary, and interview the people involved cogently and without seeming to lose the thread is evidence that Jeff has tumbled a good many steps below Terry, off the staggered cliffs of Alzheimer’s. Jeff could not determine the steps necessary to contact Dignitas. He could not understand why he’d even want to contact them. And these very factors bespeak a cognitive condition which would, in and off itself, disqualify him from the program.

I wonder, in a moot point sort of way, what I would think if Jeff were of sound enough mind to choose the Swiss option (which is, as I understand it, also available in Belgium.) I believe that I would be like the wife of the man in the film who is suffering from a degenerative motor neuron disorder and have to be supportive and cooperative. That said, I admit that we almost have to start with a reflexive reaction that says “What? No way! I’m not getting involved with that!” This is partly because you in no way wish to be complicit in someone’s death. Unless it’s yours, and it’s you choosing. Because there are not too many folks who’ve watched a partner fade into Alzheimer’s and not considered that—were it they—they’d want a way out. Short, sweet, quick. This is why I would have to go along. What if you wanted that option and everyone stood in your way, and told you you couldn’t...that you had no choice but to degenerate into fetal, mindless helplessness?

Lately I’ve been thinking about Jeff, and what he would have wanted. What would he have thought, as a hearty active 45 year old, of his life at 63? The existing Jeff does not meta-analyze. He doesn’t think about the fact that he can’t drive, put his pants on, wield a tool, have a conversation. It is one of the dubious “gifts” of Alzheimer’s that it often protects its sufferers from understanding what kind of condition they’re in. I know what he would have said. He would have wanted out. He would’ve said “no way.” It does me no good to know that. I have to deal with who he is now.

Well, this is why it’s “assisted suicide,” not euthanasia. When we euthanize a sick pet, we are choosing. When a human wants an escape route, he/she must be able to carry out the definitive steps him/herself, up to the final action of swallowing the potion. So, like most Alzheimer spouses, I’ll be on the boat ‘til it runs out of gas.

I wonder what Terry Pratchett will do? He acknowledges that, with AD, it’s tricky. He still enjoys life. He wants to keep writing, even by dictation. He feels that when he can no longer dictate a story, that’ll be the time. But will he still then be competent? Like the younger man in the documentary, who chose to go before his multiple sclerosis rendered him unable to take action, Sir Terry recognizes that he will likely have to decide before he’s really ready, and waiting too long is a choice by default.