Ok with nonsense these days.

I was determined to get an enormous quantity of Concert Association membership checks processed today, so I took my box of work with me to Sunrise, so I could do it while keeping Jeff company. I’m happy to report I accomplished my bare minimum (opening envelopes, sorting checks from paperwork,) but I’ve got more than plenty of databasing left to complete.

Meanwhile we paused for Jeff’s lunch (he was doing better than usual with scooping chili into his own mouth,) then Dot the visiting piano player, a brief stroll in the sunshine, a couple of bathroom excursions, and an occasional other resident wandering in. In which case, I’d have a conversation like this: Linda (the other resident:) “diddo yubba really so?” Me: “Yes, I think you’re right!” Linda: (with a bit more conviction) “do na na giddum is it.” Me: “Yeah, me too.” Then one of the caregivers called her.

Meanwhile, I put the iPod nano tunes on shuffle, sat Jeff in the bouncy IKEA chair, and spread my stuff out on the new comforter I had just bought and put on his bed.

I don’t really have a good idea what makes a difference to him and what does not. Mostly he sits and dozes or half-dozes. He doesn’t look at me much of the time, because he is frequently functionally blind and doesn’t process visual information in a very useful way. I remember once reading about a woman in the later stages of Posterior Cortical Atrophy, and she was for all practical purposes blind, but these are things you don’t really expect until they come to you. Now they’ve come to us.

When I went to Sunrise at lunchtime, Jeff was just finished getting a haircut from Valerie at the small salon upstairs. All the caregivers in his “neighborhood” said they loved his haircut but missed his curls. Exactly how I always feel.

I’m happy we’re, for now, done with the hospital and back to easy access. Does he miss me when I’m not there? I don’t know. I know he asks. I bought a wipe-off board which I leave on the counter in his room. Usually I write something like “Emily will be back soon!” if I don’t have something more specific such as “Emily is driving Gabe to North Carolina” to write. At this point, Jeff can’t read it, but I figure the caregivers can read it to him.

There and back again.

Olivia and I, on a marathon drive, escorted Gabe back to North Carolina for his make-or-break 5 week summer term, then headed home, to the soundtrack of The Muppets.

Summer digs are nice at Guilford College. We’ve stocked Gabe’s personal closet full of dry goods, and his freezer full of frozen pizzas.

One item I had failed to add to the list of things we needed from Target was a key lanyard. Gabe’s apartment takes two keys--one for the front door, and one for his bedroom. Dropping two keys in the pocket of worn-out pants seemed a bad bet, so when we got back from shopping, still lacking a lanyard, we made do with car supplies. A zip tie is now serving as a keyring, and it’s hanging from the drawstring cord we dissected out of an old Whole Foods Market shopping bag. Good enough for Gaberment work. However, we did acquire a shower curtain and rings, full-size bed sheets, a trash can, toilet paper, a plate, bowl, and cup, plus a batch of perishable groceries (we already had the non-perishables) at Target. Plus a very small battery-operated alarm clock since, for inexplicable reasons, the outlets in Gabe’s room refused to accept a plug with the standard two prongs where one prong is wider.

On another note, if you find yourself in Greensboro, NC, and you like Indian cuisine, Saffron Restaurant is worthwhile.

And now, Gaberment work or not, it better be up to GPA snuff, or we’ll be putting him on Craigslist as an available ship’s swabby. Stay tuned.

It's a different kind of liberty I guess...

Gabe and I drove north from Greensboro, North Carolina, making a pitstop for lunch in Lynchburg, Virginia. In ferrying Gabe to and from Guilford College, or visiting for parents’ weekend, I’ve had a few opportunities to scan the hilly vistas that line route 29, as it bypasses Lynchburg, and I’ve seen Liberty University’s enormous dome-like structure which houses sports and campus mega-church gatherings. The residence buildings at Liberty cling to the hillsides like terraced tree-fungi made of red brick, but our lunch stop on Wednesday was the closest I’ve gotten to a Liberty U. edifice, and it took me a little by surprise.

Right behind the strip mall where we ate at Panera Bread, and where I’d stopped for a Starbucks coffee (on my southbound trip the day before,) stood the fortress-like entryway to LU that you see here. I knew this was not the main campus entrance, but it was an odd one, seeming to lead you into a subterranean lair under the train track running above on the embankment.

I might struggle to explain what intrigues me about the whole concept of Liberty University. Founded by the late evangelist Jerry Falwell, it serves to educate several thousand young people of fundamentalist Christian ilk. I read a book once, by Kevin Roose, a Brown University student who attended Liberty for one semester in order to research a milieu that departed from his usual experience. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/22/kevin-roose-infiltrates-l_n_190124.html So, while I know that LU holds no appeal for me, nor is it a place I’d ever recommend to my children, I looked around at the Panera full of well-groomed students in LU sweatshirts, and couldn’t help wondering whether any of them were cramming for the final in one of the first classes a student would take there--one that establishes agreement with a worldview in which the Earth is 6000 years old, homosexuality is a no-no, and you’d better vote against “socialism.” (In other words kids, vote Republican.)

I guess that in what we bill as a “free country,” it shouldn’t be particularly novel that such a place (and others much more rigid in view,) would be thriving, but it’s still a strange notion that I find myself flipping around in my head with a touch of bewilderment, much as I would a Rubik’s cube--that real live ornery, skeptical, learning-focused college students would tackle their studies while accepting that Genesis is a literal depiction of what followed the Big Bang.

Anyway, I had to go and examine this immense passageway close up, so Gabe and I walked over and had a look. Just inside the opening is a black metal gate of rather prison-like bars, next to which sits a card reader. So qualified students or staff may pass through, but no gawkers such as we. I stuck my iPhone through the bars and snapped a pic of the tunnel.

It looks like a good choice during an air raid. I hope that, in such an event, shelter would be proffered even to those of us who do not plan on being raptured. Meanwhile, it made for an interesting image.

I noted with interest that the name tag of the order taker in Panera identified him as “Jesus.” I’m pretty sure though, that he pronounces it “Hay-SOOS.” Gabe and I hit the road, fortified by a cream cheese bagel and a tuna salad sandwich respectively.