Super freaky

Pick that up later, I say. Pick it up when we’re done. But scrupulosity is one of the interesting features of Jeff’s changing brain, and if something from his fork takes a swan dive--as two bits of shaved carrot did today--he will root around under the table until he finds it.

Metro Silver Diner is one of our semi-regulars, because of its veg-friendly options and convenience to Target and Whole Foods Market. Its character is a quirky cross between retro 50s, and space-age (also retro 50s, I guess) Jetsons-style ingenuity. You survey the large back-lit menu boards, then enter your credit card and choices into a self-serve, touch-screen kiosk which has its own “do you want fries with that” tricks, such as splashing up a picture of a frosty milkshake and asking, with polite encouragement, whether you’d be interested. If you’re me, you hit the “no thanks” button. Then you grab a “number key” which resembles a plastic ankh, input your number on the screen, and find a table, whereupon you stick the skinny end of the key into an electronic box which sits where--in the old days--your personal jukebox control would have...and that way, the waitstaff knows where to bring your Summer Citrus salad and Veg Chili combo.

Jeff picked up the two bits of shaved carrot and placed them on the table. Five minutes later, when a chip of bacon escaped from his sandwich to the table and he began to toss the bits of everything back into his salad, I grabbed the carrot shavings with a napkin a split-second before he would have. You picked those up from the floor, I said. I did? replied Jeff. Yep, says I. Let me go get another napkin. (and pitch the floor food.)

Intervention is the norm. The irony is that the best way to minimize the appearance that I’m a control freak, is to be so very in control that I’ve headed off potential disasters before they require direct intervention. As a rule, I manage to do it with an even temperamental keel. But I’ve observed this: When frustration shortens my temper, and crankiness burbles out ahead of my action...it’s usually myself with whom I’m mad. Not that you’d know that. Cranky is cranky. No one needs it. But it comes when I should have intervened sooner, but didn’t.

Case: This morning. I’m chopping an apple. The dog is standing in the back yard issuing loud woofs. It’s 6:00 am. The neighbors don’t need this. I will get that dog, I say, in a minute. I know I should leave the apple and go get her now. But Jeff heads out the door. Maybe this is fine. Maybe I can let him do it. Maybe...he is not carrying her in the back door upside down in such an awkward way that one slight gravitational tug will have her hanging by her arthritic back-legs. I scurry over and rescue the dog. You can’t carry her like that! I scold. I should not scold. It’s not nice. But I know the truth is that I am scolding myself. I’m not frustrated with Jeff, I’m frustrated with me. My job is to prevent disasters before they’re born. Because, unlike with kids, there is no valuable learning experience for a person with AD. If the kid forgets to insert the filter basket and the coffee overflows all over the countertop...well, next time she probably won’t forget. If the AD person forgets to insert the filter basket and the coffee overflows...there is a mess, there is--for this moment--a sense of failure, and there is no learning.

So, yes, if you insist, I am a control freak. It’s the only good choice.