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.