It wasn't the dawn's early light, but it was good.

Advantage: Oldness. At age 62 you become eligible for a $10 lifetime Senior Pass which will admit you (and the other ≤ 3 people in your car) to National Parks and Federal wildlife areas all over the country

Yesterday's goal was to obtain one. National Park Service information online made it clear that such a thing could be obtained in person only, and--being of the get-it-done-now school of thought--I wanted to, well, get it done now.

I had not visited Fort McHenry, right down the road in Baltimore, since one of my kids formed a star, or a fraction of a stripe, or--I don't know--maybe a grommet, in the annual "human flag" event where they try to convince a couple hundred third-graders to sit still long enough for a picture to be snapped from a helicopter. It isn't easy. I don't remember this as a particularly fun field trip as these things go!

Wednesday was jacket weather, but the sun was a trooper. And for once I actually appreciated the informative video which described exactly why Francis Scott Key was aboard a ship in the harbor and thus excellently positioned to see the bombs bursting in air. (he was supposed to talk the British into releasing a prisoner--his friend Dr. Beanes--who was not, as far as I can tell, Rowan Atkinson. If he had been, no negotiator would have been required. It would have been The Ransom of Red Chief--at sea edition.)

This time I paid the kind of attention you can't pay when your companions are under 14...i.e. I read the descriptive plaques and stood still long enough to listen to the recorded commentary in places such as enlisted men's bunk room or officer's poorly lit, but better appointed, chamber. The voice of the recorded commentary, btw, was Alan Walden--a longtime WBAL radio voice--and Jeff named that tune, I mean voice, rather quickly. I couldn't come up with it, though I did concur. I could however walk in a hunched posture up and down the cramped steps into the "bomb-safe" chamber without bumping my head 3 times on the way up, and I could take pictures without the photographic subject having to guide me in pointing the camera in the right direction.

Here's the thing about Jeff--even with an increasingly bewildered and slightly askew expression as a regular feature of his face, he manages to not look his age. It has always been thus, and his recent boyish haircut reduced the unruly sticking-out grey-haired factor, so when we walked into the Fort McHenry visitors' center and I declared that we'd like a $10 lifetime pass please, the reaction of the two rangers on duty was a rapid but kindly protestation that it was only for those age 62 and up. At which point I grinned knowingly, pointed at Jeff, and said "That's why we brought his i.d."

Fortunately I had thought to ask Jeff if he had his wallet just after we walked out our front door. He did not. He hadn't seen it for a couple of days, he said, which left me two options: Get his passport from where it's safely stowed in a filing cabinet, or look for the wallet. I started with the latter and--after patting down several pairs of pants, awkwardly hanging in the closet--it paid off. Wallet recovered. And i.d. ready to move into my wallet, next to the National Park Senior Pass which will, by the way, get us into the Grand Canyon next October without the usual $25 entrance fee.

Atomic Clock

Freddi the dog smiles at me with a big doggie grin as I come in from dumping the overflowing trashcan of recyclable plastics and bottles into the big yellow bin outside. She was hoping she could come, but not this time. Dogs are very forgiving.

Outside, I’d noticed that a box had tumbled out of the yellow bin. “Atomic Wall Clock,” it said. The clock itself is now suspended on a screw on the wall, just above the bulletin board in the dining area. Exactly where, 3 days ago, the big-faced analog clock with day and date readout had been hanging. I’m thinking of putting the analog back and finding a new home for the atomic wonder clock. It’s dark, unlit, and too hard to read.

Besides--despite my scientifically precise probe of a couple months ago, which ascertained that Jeff can read a digital but not an analog clock--the Atomic Wall Clock has failed to deliver. Or Jeff’s brain has taken a step away from clock reading of any sort.

”What’s it say?” I questioned, pointing helpfully at the 3 inch tall numbers 9, 4, and 4. “Right here, in the big window.” Jeff scrutinizes it, clearly uninspired. “Wednesday,” he says. Oops. No, today is Saturday and I’m pretty sure I’ve corrected my initial a.m./p.m. time-setting error, so the smaller, lower window is reading “SAT.”

”Here,” I say. “Nine, four, four...nine forty-four.” “Oh yes, of course,” Jeff replies, “nine forty-four.”

Here’s why the clock is atomic: It’s supposed to periodically check its time against atomically transmitted signals and adjust accordingly. Here’s why it doesn’t: Our house is apparently too fortress-like to let even atomic signals pass through. This used to mean cell phones barely worked inside, but current performance suggests that both Verizon and AT&T are broadcasting with a little more gusto these days. But I doubt there’s any monetary incentive for the atomic clock radio waves to get stronger.

It is later, evening. I’m sitting here at my computer where I should have an absolutely clear shot, visually speaking, at the atomic clock. I can’t read it. Not at all. I see nothing but the glare of the kitchen lights firing back from its glass readout windows. (But if I get closer, it will tell me the date, day, time, and temperature, both indoor and out.) I think atomic clock esquire is moving to the front hall. Or somewhere. Here’s why I don’t care: We just had dinner--with Gordon, Tracy, and Helen--at the Stoney River Steakhouse. I don’t eat steak, but the mahi mahi was tasty, and I drank 1.5 glasses of a rather delicious and overpriced chardonnay. Also, I both purchased and mounted a lovely bird feeder today. It is hanging from the soffit of the back roof overhang, just outside a kitchen window. Perhaps, by tomorrow, the birds will have found it.

Pedestrian Crossing...please?

There is Annapolis, and then there is Annapolis. The first is a 350 or so year old town whose narrow streets and cozy harbor are frequently pictured in promotional material designed to highlight the colonial allure of Maryland’s “sailing capitol.” And a charming town it is, with housing prices reflecting the fact that the historic district is as big as it’s ever going to get, so folks pay dearly to live within walking distance of brick-paved streets, with easy access to boat shows, holiday fireworks, and exciting Spring flyovers by the Blue Angels stunt planes during Naval Academy graduation week. What they don’t get is a guarantee that they can park the car within blocks of the house, or a serviceable grocer, since downtown--with the exception of a wine merchant, a pharmacy, and a mini-mart--is devoid of merchants that actually serve the needs of residents as opposed to visitors.

But make no mistake--it's a great place to visit, eat, and walk. (Please though, don't forget to check the ground now and then while walking, as 200 year old trees do a number on what might at one time have been dependably level brickwork!)

As for the other Annapolis--the greater surrounding parts still within Annapolis postal code range--you can about flipflop the list of convenient and inconvenient features. Can you park? Yes. Can you walk? Well...

Rachel, daughter #1, is on a 6 week internship (which looks an awful lot like a vacation) in Costa Rica. Which meant it was time for the battery in her car (which isn't yet technically hers) to take its own sabbatical. And also die. Well, almost die. The AAA guy got it fired up just long enough for me to get the car to Annapolis Subaru for service. (and a new battery.)

Annapolis Subaru even shares downtown's 21401 zipcode. But it's on the west edge, separated from historic by a mile or so of industry, gas pumps, junk food, and "Walking Lester," a local guy who ambles with an unmistakable trebuchet-style gait up and down West St, sometimes picking up trash. Between Annapolis Subaru and a couple of decent shopping centers runs Maryland Route 2, a main conduit connecting southern Maryland to Baltimore. What does not run between Annapolis Subaru and those shopping centers are any officially planned means to travel on foot.

But, did we want to spend 3 hours in the dealer’s waiting room listening to Judge Stern-Lady on tv, giving the litigants in a petty lawsuit a good talking to, or did we want to take our chances with Route 2 and its environs? Plan B, of course, as daytime tv turns my brain into rice pudding, and across the highway at Whole Foods Market were blueberry muffins and coffee.

So right about here I want to thank the less-rich residents of the surrounding neighborhoods who are more likely to work in the stores than shop there, because they have trod footpaths through a man-made landscape which was designed on the assumption that humans cannot move 20 yards without a motor vehicle.

Wending our way along a slightly quieter backroad, Jeff and I maneuvered along the edges of yards and businesses before getting to a genuine, fully-functioning pedestrian crosswalk with lights, from which we finally achieved access to the grocery store and our reward. The trip from that shopping center--Annapolis Towne Center--to its nearest competitor, the Harbor Center (nowhere near the harbor, note,) was trickier. My opening thought was that we could travel via the “inside passage” of Home Depot, Outback Steakhouse, and Chevy’s Tex-Mex Grill parking lots, thus avoiding too much intimacy with Route 2. No dice. Each individual enterprise--be it a solitary restaurant or a U-shaped shopping plaza--appears to exist on its own bluff, with the space in between carved into impassible, impossibly steep county-owned trenches, often peppered along the edges with fences and/or no-trespassing signs. Hence, we were left with little choice but to follow the, fortunately, well-worn path of the local foot-commuters, right alongside the highway.

There was a stretch that made me uncomfortable, where the the curb gave way for drainage and we had to wait for a truck or two to rumble by so we could step momentarily into the road. Not comfy when your companion is inclined to trail by 10 feet, and has been known to lose his footing and stumble off a path now and then.

Nevertheless, we made it to Barnes & Noble, where I bought one book called America by Rail and another on Japanese grammar.

I have no argument with Dwight D. Eisenhower and his interstate highway system, but when did humans forget that they had legs, and consider only the needs of wheels? It was a silly decades-long habit ranking right up there with forgetting we come equipped with the means to feed infants, or thinking that we should synthesize food and color it bright orange and blue.




I can explain

Jeff’s family lived across the street. When I was 7, he was a 21 year old college student. When I was in high school, he was an adventurous but unrooted young man, hopscotching between driving a VW Beetle up the Alaska-Canadian Highway to see what he could see, stinting as a handyman on a Seattle college campus, and visiting folks in the most derelict of Baltimore subsidized housing venues as a social services caseworker. None of which had anything to do with his college major--Medieval History--but most people can say the same thing. As the parent of five kids--all with a very relaxed attitude toward the whole marriage and babies gestalt--Jeff’s mother was, shall we say, pleased when her oldest took an interest, at a Christmas Eve party, in the girl from across the street.

I, on the other hand--for all my lack of focus on the points of college major, or career goal--carried with me a certainty that the right partnership was a big missing piece in the bewildering puzzle of life, and it did not take me long, following our first date to a boring film followed by coffee and a donut, to recognize a kindred spirit who’d exactly fill the empty niche.

It is not difficult to recall why I wanted to marry Jeff. He became, in short order, the most extraordinary kind of best friend I’d ever had. We had fun from the get-go. I was hooked, like with coffee. Not because he possessed any glamorous traits which would earn him a slot on “The Bachelor,” but because my brain had found a nutrient of which it had heretofore been deprived, and there wasn’t any deciding...there was just knowing.

A Pavlovian serotonin spike in my brain preceded every dinner out with Jeff. Because we could talk. I could talk about whatever philosophical, religious or creative nonsense was tap-dancing through my cranium, and he'd fully engage, fully grasp, and return in kind. Once, following a physiology exam, I gave him a tediously detailed description of the metabolic processes cascading through a dog as it escaped in panic from a burning house. I don't know how many people would relish such an exposition...but Jeff did. I admired his woodwork, his architectural vision, his curiosity about the world, and he cared for me in all my unfocused randomness. You might say that neither one of us exactly knew what we wanted to do with our lives, so we both pretty much did whatever we wanted until we turned whatever we wanted into a team project.

Conversation could be silly, if you'd even call it conversing. Sometimes it was nothing but rhyming words we vollied like pingpong balls. I was young, awkward, and resolutely stubborn. He was patient, goofy, and open. For some reason, I was what he'd been waiting for, and he was a window of privilege that life granted me for 20 excellent years.

A student of architecture--especially that of F.L.Wright, H.H. Richardson, Stanford White and others with a taste for robust design--Jeff built shelving into any free nook, the better to fill with his growing library of books entitled The Old House, The Not So Big House, The Shingle House, The Small Smashing Shingle House. While I was too scattered to achieve purposefully, we both nonetheless pursued education for its own sake, though with rather different foci. Jeff explored drafting, business, and accounting. I forayed into art, language, creative writing (with a brief traipse through nursing.) And we bred a tribe of creative, fun and pleasant people. (Sadly without a mathematician or auto mechanic in the bunch.)

Not the most efficient yeoman on the job, Jeff trudged nonetheless with dedication toward his extra-career goals...a point of some frustration for me. He habitually underestimated the complexity of any remodeling endeavor, leaving me to raise children in a neglected, leaking house, while he spent half his work days steadfastly turning South Baltimore squalor into sturdy, attactive, rentable row-houses. In the final analysis, and despite his persistent vexation that he'd yet to achieve financial independence, this stood us in good stead when retirement became an unbidden necessity, as I was able to sell the houses for investable funds prior to real-estate crashing in value. (And hire a crew to put his unfinished project--the transformation of our own home from a small Cape Cod into a handsome bungalow--in order.)

The goodwill that family and community extend toward Jeff in his present state of impairment is a testament to the kind of person he's spent his life being. People like him. He's never been anything but honest, earnest, and ready to help, and people are inclined to nurture him in return.

As for me, I have nothing to say in summary. To even attempt to summarize the significance of what has been lost means to--at least momentarily--disengage the robotic force-field I have erected as an emotional buffer. I care for Jeff now with a sort of cantilevered love. He deserves the best attention only, and I provide it insofar as I am able without exposing that now empty niche where, for 20 years, a puzzle piece used to fit.

11, give or take 37.

We sure are having a terrible day for such a good day. The little weather gadget in the upper right corner of my Tosh is shining a bright sun and a "66º F" at me and, indeed, we just returned from a dog-walk where I had to go sleeveless it was so mild. But the weather in Jeff's head is a thick and barely penetrable London fog. Today I made strides, and crossed a few items off my to-do list, while striving to help--without patronizing--my spouse. It isn't easy.

I've said it before, but when days like today reinforce the principle I'm moved to say it again: It's when an AD person needs the most help that he most resents it, so careful treading and a backup plan of thick skin is fundamental. Today was in fact so far to the dysfunctional end of the bell curve that I didn't even get the "what a controlling bitch" vibe from strangers, because it was undoubtedly evident to casual observers that I was dealing with an impaired person. Just now, exactly before I typed this sentence, here's what I did. I got up from my counter stool and helped Jeff place his wine glass on the eye-level shelf. He was inserting it at a 45º angle, quite obviously unable to calculate whether to lie it down or stand it up. At lunch, he could not pull a chair out at Lebanese Taverna without knocking into the man behind him and being stuck, flummoxed. So I led him around to the other side of the table, positioned a chair for him, and we both sat on the same side, out of the way of other diners. Returning to the car, I headed to my door, whereupon he stopped, turned, and began to approach the door of the black SUV behind us--the one with a lady getting out, who might have been a bit disturbed by a rumpled man trying to enter her vehicle. Again, subtlety be damned, I gently led him around to my passenger door, opened it for him, and he got in.

My friend Katherine recently sent me a link to an article describing how a certain line of research posits that the plaques of Alzheimer's are a response to inflammation. This squares well with my observations of the past half-decade. I sense the inflammed times--they manifest as periods of Jeff's feeling more tired and more unwell--and I expect, based on experience, that what will follow is a step down to a lower plateau of function. Last month I noted unwellness. This month I note diminished cognition.

Apart from our outings, he does little. He sits in his chair, half dozing. (Chessie, our chunky diva feline is presently taking advantage of this for a back rub.) He goes outside and stands in the yard or the driveway. He enjoys the sun when it's out, and likes to watch the world. Not that there's much of the world to see from our street, but it seems to be enough. Or he naps, purposefully.

Bottom Line Personal, to which I most decidedly did not subscribe (although they like to pretend you did, and send you issues in the hope that you'll re-up when notified,) arrived in the mail today. The headline article is about "The Happiness Project," and summarizes the findings of a journalist, Gretchen Rubin, who collected reports via her website on what strategies stood out as effective in upping the happiness quotient of humans. Subscribed or no, it caught my eye, and I read the synopsis with interest. It did not (despite what the article suggested) surprise me.

#1. Seek novelty and challenge. I know this one well. I can feel serotonin spikes in my very own head, and I am keenly aware that they are triggered by adventure. It is no wonder, given the boundaries of my recent life--an immature young adult, still in need of daily guidance, and a spouse who needs a sitter--that I am feeling a bit mired in the doldrums. I'm worried about next year. I've been anticipating for a long time--with Gabe in other hands--the opportunity to take Jeff along on adventures...adventures that, really, are for me. I don't know what I will do if he becomes no longer capable. Strategy #2 (and I will skip the rest for being more obvious and pedestrian,) is to try doing whatever you enjoyed doing at age 10. Ok, as for me, I'm going to say 11. Because 11 was my favorite age. At 11, I was likely to be looking for someone to play with. No surprises here--I still am! The playground is limited, but I am very excited when I get a moment with a peer. (And here we will define peer as someone who can carry a conversation!) Oddly, I feel very much like I did when I was 11. Bored, diddling around. I tend to berate the child that I was for not being industrious enough--and I am trying to make up for it now by learning, reading, writing...but at 11 your world is limited. There's your house, your community, and what fun you can make of them. How did I end up 11 again? Funny little world.

planes, trains, and...yeah...autos.

Years of living with an irksome tendency to miss small details when it counts (I call it holes-in-brain syndrome) have taught me that one alarm is never adequate if I must wake up. So this morning, as my iPhone let loose with a bad-to-the-bone piano riff, my regular alarm clock prepared to chime out in synthesized bells. No need. I turned it off. Getting up at 3:30 a.m. is novel enough to jar me into alertness.

Well. Fie on getting up at 3:30 a.m. only to find out--after 30 minutes in the Delta check-in line--that your flight is cancelled and they can't get you to Costa Rica until tomorrow. At 4 p.m. we returned to Baltimore-Washington International...and Rachel's off to spend tonight in Atlanta, thus avoiding a rerun of this morning's adventure. Her comrades--a small cadre from St. Mary's all of whom will be completing a final internship abroad, in pursuit of their Masters in Teaching--will spend an extra day hanging around the Costa Rican airport town of Liberia before they all catch their ride to Nosara for their homestays and classroom assignments. I'd be more inclined to fret if Rachel had not previously traveled back and forth to Panama and Nicaragua. Costa Rica is aptest, of the three, to be the safest and most touristy.

Between runs to BWI, I squeezed in a trip to the vet. Hazel's belly-licking allergy has flared beyond food-control, and today she got her first steroid injection in almost 2 years. Dr. Olexia assured me that 20 months is an exemplary record, and I should hardly kick myself that I lost my grip on my dietary mastery of her immune system. She has, at this point, been well exposed to every protein source one can offer to a domestic cat, and it's time for the big guns. Or small, I guess, as what I'm about to resort to is feeding the wee nuisance a special diet wherein the proteins are hydrolized into such short amino acid chains that they're...theoretically...barely recognized by the immune system as worthy of attack. We'll see...

Then I got Gabe launched on an expedition with the driving instructor before taking off to the airport again with Rachel. Not half-bad, was the report I got later (about the driving--which says nothing, you'll notice, about the other half,) but he has a bit of trouble maintaining focus for the full 2 hour session. I quickly scribble a reminder on the calendar to dose him pre-drive on Thursday, with the same "alertness-helper" he uses to maximize the value of a school day.

Did anyone see the article in this weekend's Parade magazine supplement about American trips by rail? That is it. That's what we'll do next year. If Jeffy's still hanging in there, I'm going to tuck him onto the Southwest Chief, jump on behind, and try a sleeping car for the first time ever! We'll stop in Santa Fe--yes. Flagstaff--yes. Anywhere between L.A. and Chicago we feel like, for that matter. Or I feel like. As for Jeff, he likes windows. And looking at stuff. And food. I think we can swing this.

You have entered...The Mall Zone...

I must abashedly confess that we once again spent our midday outing striding purposefully from one specifically-targeted Annapolis Mall location (for sneakers) to another (for lunch,) and back again.

I don’t know if I’ve been clear that I don’t find shopping malls to exactly be pinnacle examples of the kind of human cultural sites that are worthy of frequent visits...but, hey, sometimes you need stuff and they serve a niche function. (A function at which Annapolis Mall sadly failed today as, once again, shoes for size 9.5 feet--that’ll be 41 in Euro--proved unavailable.)

Still, on the combined topics of malls and creativity, have you taken a gander at mannequins lately? It’s apparently a specialized art branch to design humanoids for display purposes. I will admit here and now that the talking, sliding, frozen-faced characters on the latest batch of Old Navy® advertisements and commercials give me a small case of the willies. It’s all very Twilight Zone, which might be the point...but even now I find the Zone a little disconcerting, unless the episode features William Shatner to give it a buffering dose of hamminess.

The Stepford people from Old Navy, however, have nothing on the pseudo-children in the kids’ department at Nordstrom. I will show you.

Exhibits A and B: Are these characters human? I reckon not, unless they display a heretofore unheard of genetic mutation triggered by eating too much squid. Either that or they’re...you know...aliens. You can tell because of the smug expression on the face of the blue-shirted boy who, it’s safe to say, clearly calls all the shots. When all the spelling bee champs at your children’s schools turn out to have faces like these, well...don’t say I didn’t give you a heads-up. (Note that the little girl in the pink dress is not even normal by squid-people standards. My guess is that she is actually a pet.)

Now we turn to a very different but equally disturbing vignette from Lord & Taylor, the department store that must be traversed to access Punk’s Backyard Grill from Nordstrom, without walking through the parking lot. We’ll call this Exhibit C. Quite apart from the fact that this boy’s face is apparently melting into featureless uniformity, it must be quite unsettling to have to dress up in your monkey suit only to find yourself at this party. (Umm...Mom? Do we hafta stay? Nobody here has a head.)

All I can say is, mannequin artists must be fascinating people with curious backstories. Our lunch, by the way, was tasty as usual. It was not squid.

It's only STAIN-less

Do not even wave a Scotch-Brite® (or similar) cleaning pad in the vicinity of a stainless steel appliance. I did several years ago when stainless steel appliances were a brand new concept for me. Why wouldn’t I? You use scratchy stuff on pots and pans. You use scratchy stuff on stainless steel spatulas with egg cooked tenaciously onto their leading edges. Why would an appliance be different?

Well, they are. They have a grain. A grain which will be tragically disrupted by a well-meaning but aggressive assault with a scratchy pad. We’ve lived with it since then--an abstract swoosh, roughly reminiscent of a cobra under the spell of a snake charmer. Right in the middle of the freezer door. Glaringly obvious.

I don’t even remember what nature of crud inspired the attack, but I’ve considered it irreparable ever since. Until, a few weeks ago, I randomly decided to Google it, and stumbled across a strong and enthusiastic recommendation for Revere Copper Cleaner in just such a situation. The poster had purchased the stuff at Williams-Sonoma.

Sadly, our Annapolis Williams-Sonoma--for all their array of shiny cookware and inspirational gadgets which I would never use in real-time--did not carry Revere Copper Cleaner. Neither did Target. Neither did “Sur La Table,” the charmingly hoity-toity kitchen supply temptress near Target. But I had found it on Amazon, and was shocked by the price. It was almost $40. This must be some kind of hot stuff, I thought, declining to purchase it then and there. But this was prior to my failure at all the brick & mortar locations, and finally--owing to the easy nature of Amazon button-pushing, and the constant in-my-face nature of the refrigerator blotch--I ordered it.

It came today, in a larger box than expected, and I instantly grasped the reason for the high price. I had purchased a case of 12. Well, I need it. And you can’t exactly return 11/12ths of a purchase. And it worked! Mostly. With close examination, or in certain reflective conditions, I still see the scratch. The biggest nuisance was that once I worked for a while on the scratched area, I had to do the rest of the fridge to match. But it’s 95% improved, and I’m pleased.

Now I will be handing out 7 oz. jars of Revere Copper Cleaner like party favors. Tea? Coffee? Copper Cleaner?

One day at a time (that's the only way there is, right?)

It hasn't been a promising week on the Alzheimer's front. We are going to take the garbage and recycling out, I say with my therapeutic expression of friendly invitation. Jeff jumps up. He is ready to roll. Do you want to get the blue bin out of the closet? I ask.

The blue bin is a small plastic waste can into which we cram all recyclable paper until such time as it goes outside to the big yellow bin. We empty it every Sunday, for Monday morning pick-up. On some days which aren't Sunday, Jeff just takes it out and dumps it for something to do. But today he is bewildered by both the term "blue bin," and the concept "closet." He hovers near me as I remove the full plastic garbage bag from the large trash container in the kitchen, and tie the ends closed. Then I walk him over to the closet and point to the blue bin. Why don't you grab that?

Outside, he follows me to the road, spies the partially full yellow bin (which I have already pulled out,) and makes ready to drag it back to the house. No, it's full, I say. They're going to pick it up tomorrow.

Later that night, going to the Hippodrome Theater where we will see Stomp with my mom, Gabe, and Gabe's friend Matt, Jeff cannot find the door of the car, cannot fasten his seat belt, forgets how to hand the lady at the door his ticket 30 seconds after I place it in his hand, then tries to walk through a glass door, instead of the open one next to it. I am nearby to hand over the ticket myself, then steer him through the doorway.

Today proves little better. We are labeling and stamping concert association postcards with a handful of volunteers at Mom's dining room table. I know Jeff cannot put the labels on in the proper place, nor the stamps. I have him peel off then hand me stamps. It's not a speedy way to get things done, but we move along, and when he hands me bits of the plain white sticky paper framing the sheet of stamps, instead of a stamp, I simply stick it to a sheet of scrap paper and wait for the next one.

Nowadays I open his sandwich wrapper at Whole Foods, spread it out, and orient the sandwich halves for easy grabbing. I open the chips and aim the bag opening toward him. I unfold a napkin for maximum absorbent surface exposure. It's a good lunch. Jeff praises his "Santa Fe Sunrise" sandwich, and I enjoy my salad bar stuff.

I confer with my mom by phone. Yes, she has noticed a decline. She uses the word "precipitous," but I don't think it quite is. She notes that my grandmother, in her declining years with Alzheimer's, lost functions gradually. First the function would blink on and off for a while, like a dashboard light with bad wiring. Later, it completely conked out.

Jeff sits on the couch, and I sit in the rocker and read an entire chapter of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid until I am about out of voice. Jeff likes it. He doesn't get every single nuance, but the chapter is about Americans' fears and fascinations in the 50's--nuclear detonations, Communism, teenagers--and he remembers the time well, as he is only a very few years older than the writer. We note that somewhat-crazy politicians are nothing new.

In between the day's dynamic adventures I have answered review questions in Japanese, washed laundry, and read commentary from both sides on today's big news--the health care overhaul has passed Congress--making a pleased comment or two myself, while being careful to keep my tone non-incendiary. The rancor bewilders me. In a two-party system sometimes it will go this way, sometimes that. The world as we know it is no more likely to end than it was last week. Jeff notes that our very conservative friend Bill is doubtless on a rant of epic proportion today. Jeff isn't bad at reasonable observations when he's sitting still.

It is 7:30 pm. I have nothing left to provide in the way of entertainment, so Jeff goes to bed. I am going to watch "Property Virgins," an HGTV program about first-time home buyers. I don't know why I like "Property Virgins"...maybe Sandra Rinomato's overbearing personality makes me feel sensibly mild-mannered. Or there's just nothing else on, and I like the sound of human voices sometimes, even if it's only pseudo-company.

dinged cars, wrinkled clothes...yes, we're rumpled.

I pulled a wadded-up pair of L.L.Bean khakis out of the small t-shirt drawer on Jeff's side of the closet. There was a balled handkerchief in the pocket, and a braided belt still in the loops.

"Aha..." I said. So this is where last night's outfit, worn to the neighbors' 50th anniversary party, ended up. Two days ago I had pulled more wadded trousers out of Jeff's sock drawer. Today I got tired of the blue Eddie Bauer flannel-lined broadcloth shirt which has served as his default overshirt for roughly 2 weeks. "Wear this chambray," I said, handing him something suitably lighter for the changing weather. He put on his clean clothes. When he met me outside for a dog-walk, 15 minutes later, he'd added the other ubiquitous flannel-lined shirt--the army green one. It must mysteriously disappear into the laundry of no-return, I noted to myself. At least until Fall.

Later today, I did driving practice with Gabe. Our first in roughly a year and a half. Gabe drives like someone who has never driven before, and I fear it will continue to be so well into his paid sessions with the professional instructor, which start next week during his Spring break. We both maintained our decent humors, more or less, as we traversed (more of less) the byways of several neighborhoods near ours, misgauging turn radii and becoming friendly with hedges. It remains clear that I haven't the temperament to teach him myself, any more than he has the temperament to tolerate me as co-pilot. He says he finds the professional guys less annoying. I hope that under their tutelage he'll progress faster, and that they'll feel no need to scold me for our lack of practice since '08.

Now it's time for me to dig out Jeff's dress-up clothes, hoping I didn't fail to note their last location. With luck, I caught his suit before it hit the floor last time (whenever that was,) and I will not find it smashed into a wrinkled rag in a drawer full of pencils and loose change. Tonight we will attend a fundraising dinner event for the Community Center down the street, and it will be an excellent time to catch up with my sister, whom I never see, as she is usually either teaching school or ferrying small children to scouting events, while I am helping some people put their underwear on properly, and encouraging others to remove 15 dirty glasses from the computer desk, or not drive into stop signs. As a help, there will be several useful hands in our group, to take turns towing Jeff back into position when he gets stuck behind chairs or stares relentlessly at someone who does not wish to converse with him.

But there will be food, and there will be wine, and I will be happy.

many mouthfuls

Most likely I'll have to drive to Baltimore and pick Gabe up after school tomorrow. There is little chance that his usual carpool will push off promptly enough for me to make it to the orthodontist by 4:30 pm if I wait and meet him at the rendezvous point.

This is, roughly, the last orthodontic appointment I'll be taking a kid to ever. And that was a lot of teeth, a lot of wire, and a whole Jaws-sized mouthful of money, all told. (Nor have I quite seen the end of it, as Gabe will require--not long down the road--a permanent installation to replace the absent tooth which is currently supplied by means of a retainer appendage.)

What else am I almost done doing? Quite a few things, when I stop and think about it. In just under three months, I will have assembled my last school lunch. (I can't say this will break any hearts, as I have a long and entrenched history of uninspired lunch-packing.) But that's 18 years of lunch duty...and upwards of 40 if you measure in kid-years.

This summer, I will tote Gabe to his last drum lesson. I will (I hope) assist in the acquisition of the fourth and final driver's license. And I will be entirely through with waking up at 5:15 a.m. on a normal morning, so as to allow time to feed the cats and dog, make the coffee, and get Gabe up in time for carpool.

It's a little difficult to imagine life beyond a generation of regularly scheduled obligations. And no question many of the gaps will be quickly filled by irregular and unscheduled crises. But I think I'm ready. One of the things I will do is attempt to memorize the last name of my handyman, which is, by the way, Maarschalkerweerd.

Mac 'n Tosh

My MacBook Pro is a 15 incher. It's a fine figure of engineering, and a reliable workhorse. It is also seventh in a long lineage of Macs, following (starting in 1988) a Mac SE, a Mac Performa (which had, as I recall, the coolest introductory video,) a hot pink iMac (which developed a certain finickiness with regard to rejecting disks on demand,) a bright orange "toilet seat" iBook laptop (my very first "all mine" computer,) a pristinely white and clunky eMac (only recently donated to a shelter,) a small white, almost square, iBook, and a larger silver MacBook Pro (only recently donated to a daughter.)

Despite my obvious default inclination, I've maintained a PC desktop in the computer room, since the girls were in high school, for the purposes of (at the time) easily opening downloadable physics class homework. The Gateway is, at present, the seat of Gabe's domain, when he's not battling zomboids and demonoids on the PS3. Hence, as fanfic and anime sites are hotbeds of slippery worms and trojans, I have become passably competent at analysing and remedying problems that occur on PCs and not Macs.

So it was with only slight trepidation that I stepped outside my normal behavioral patterns and recently purchased a Toshiba netbook. Here is why I did: A 15" MacBook does not comfortably fit inside carry on baggage, nor does it tuck into a convenient green totebag. Additionally, I would have trouble philosophically accepting its loss due to accident or theft. Furthermore, it is unsatisfactory to type and blog on an iPhone, beyond brief texts. The final straw is that I don't like the look of the new iPad for typing, and I decidedly do not want to join the guinea pig generation of the things. So, I bought a Toshiba netbook.

It was a little weird for me--an avowed Mac enthusiast--to do so. I had to talk myself into looking at it as if I were conversant in two languages. And I had to, as a matter of course, install antivirus software, Avira in this case. And I had to laugh at my silliness. Because it seemingly is a fine little beast--easy to port, and perfectly functional. Not a Mac, 'tis true, but quite ok as far as I can tell.

So, once we commence moving around the country (for example--we will deliver Gabe to Connecticut in August, with an extended side trip to include an inn, and Mark Twain's house,) I will (gently) drop the Tosh in my carry-along and leave the Mac safely on my desk. Because it will be at that point that I can (finally!) blog about something other than a) angst, b) home maintenance, c) food shopping, and c) computers.

Give me a P!....J! oops.

I'm brainstorming.

Actually, I'm not sure whether one brain can storm all by itself, so it may be that I'm merely brainsqualling, or just brainclouding. (Wait...braincloud...that's what the bogus doc told Tom Hanks he had in Joe Versus the Volcano to falsely convince him he was terminal. Well, whatever...I'm certain, actually, that I do have braincloud, and I'm equally certain that it's not terminal.)

This is the nature of my squall: (It was more of a revelation preceding rapt consideration...) I absolutely will not need a 6 bedroom house in a very few years. Really, I won't. I don't think anyone will come back for any significant amount of time, with the possible exception of Gabe, who may try to, whereupon he will discover that the chair in the computer room has been rigged with a Batmobile-like spring device which will eject him through a special Gabe-shaped cut-out in the roof. I'm going to have to see if Dutch the handyman can work on that.

But, honest-to-goodness, I cannot picture what I'd want to do instead, because--for some reason--my vision is apparently incapable of extending that far. I'm pretty sure that this house--this rather wonderful, handcrafted, visionary, but utterly quirky house--is much too much for two people with one and a half brains. But what to run away to? And would I simply be running away from a loneliness that's going to follow me anyway? Seems entirely possible.

I cannot move to one of the places I would go if this silly life scenario had played out 2 or 3 decades down the road, when a choice to be surrounded by other seniors and the usual senior amenities (including conveniently proximate nursing care) might be sensible and appealing. Nor is it enough to stay here, reminding myself that my mother and sister are 2 and 3 miles down the road--because we have our separate lives and responsibilities and only intersect when it's deliberate. This is a largish house, on 1/3 acre, on a pleasant street where you only see your neighbors in passing, while walking the dog. I don't think this is how humans were designed to live. At least not alone.

I am somewhat enthralled by the notion of co-housing--planned neighborhoods, where families or individuals have their own smallish homes, but carry out many functions in a central structure, and enjoy community meals, a group garden, central greens. I guess it could be awful. It depends. It could be magnificent.

Trouble is, I'm far too impatient, and anxious to answer a question that doesn't yet require an answer. Lots can happen. Life may flop its own idea of a next step down in front of me like a gauntlet that I haven't imagined. And I am intrigued by that possibility.

INFJ. That's me, as measured by Myers-Briggs. I think, though, that I will just take that J and exchange it for the P, if you don't mind. I'm done with the J. You can have it. It wants everything to be mapped out and settled, and things are almost never mapped out and settled. Silly old J. Maybe it would like a glass of Pinot.

No shortage of bamboo, however

Between our backyard and the neighbors' behind us (there are two, as our lot backs up to a midline,) is a 15 foot County right-of-way. The County never has and, as far as I can imagine, never will access this no man's land. They certainly by no means maintain it in any way and, as such, it has become--over time--a sort of default place to throw the old Christmas trees, yard waste, and sawdust-based kitty litter. Our property line was more or less marked, as of almost 20 years ago, by a row of Leyland cypresses which we planted as wee little things of roughly 3 feet tall. Over the ensuing decades the ones which got sun grew tall and windblown. The ones which didn't were relatively stunted, and brown at the bottom. Many have succumbed to winter, and more than ever to the snows of 2010.

When we felt a need to fence in our dog Freddi, the only option was within the cypress-line, and the fence--as it now stands--shortens an already shallow back yard. Hence, as the only cypresses remaining are the healthy batch on our southwest border, we'll be having the sticks and fallen evergreens hauled, and then resurvey for a new fence. The dog will get an expanded sniff and poo zone, and the back view will seem a good deal less stunted than it does now. Without any cypresses, there's a clear vista into the yard of the Two Yapping Spaniels, but since the trees hardly muffled the noise...what difference?

Yes, this is instead of buying furniture for the back patio. But, perhaps it will be a more inspirational place to stand.

RDA of distraction? Check.

The first Fresh Market I ever visited was in Greensboro, North Carolina. We had checked out of the Hyatt Place after breakfast, but were early for the Guilford College open house, and there it was--in a snazzy new bells & whistles shopping center--The Fresh Market. So we stopped. As I recall we purchased a package of dried mangoes and a 6-pack of Cheerwine (Gabe's choice--I do not enjoy its cherry cough syrup allure.)

Gabe declared it to be the finest grocery store he'd ever experienced...nay, one he could verily work for, and we've been awaiting the arrival of the new one which, as of last Wednesday now occupies the space vacated by Whole Foods when it transitioned from marvelous to mind-bogglingly stellar.

Jeff and I visited Thursday, as part of our "lunch and a field trip" daily routine. As often happens with new stores, the staff--for that week--are the most scurryingly helpful humans on the face of the planet. It was the first time since I was four years old that someone (not related to me) has carted my purchases out to the car. (No, I've forgotten. They did that at Whole Foods, same location, first week or so!)

We will return. Especially since we enjoy the Lebanese Taverna, three doors down, for lunch. And I will assuredly buy a 4-pack of cupcakes. (Unless I buy an apple pie.) I will probably select a few apples, tangerines, and green things. But they will not be the green things from the broad central region of the store, which is overflowing with bins of fancy candies of all stripes, and snack mixes containing everything from pumpkin seeds to candied kumquat.

The Fresh Market is not likely to be my venue for the most serious of grocery shopping, but when you're as tickled as we are every time you get a tiny, free cup of coffee, then shopping for minneolas is at least as good as Disney. Probably better, since you would be hard-pressed to get coffee at the latter for under three bucks.

liniment required.

I can feel my brain.

Just a few seconds ago, for example, I had a website in mind. I was going to go to it next, but got distracted by a bit of flash-happy visual clutter and--clink--that website rolled right off my cerebral desk and into a dusty corner amongst a couple of neurons that most likely concern themselves with whether Gabe has any socks left that he hasn’t picked holes in.

I’m pretty sure I’ll find it later. (and discover it was about as valuable as a gum-ball machine trinket.) But the notable point is that I felt it go clink, just as I feel something akin to lactic acid build-up after a 5 page Japanese chapter test.

Ever faced a treadmill, or a 3-mile run, and had your cranky, groggy muscles say you’re kidding, right?, even if they go on to acquiesce? That’s exactly the way my brain feels--even three semesters in--every time it’s faced with a page of text in hiragana and kanji, as opposed to nice “normal” romaji. (this is pretty much typed in romaji, btw.) It’s like you go to open the receptors of your brain and find them packed in cotton batting, with a muffled voice in the back weakly protesting that it’s stuck.

So far I usually manage to unstick it. And I wonder whether--if your brain is slowly getting gunked up by beta amyloid--can you feel it? You can’t unstick it, like I can, and this soothes my paranoia a bit.

Life? Yeah.

Tonight, we finished The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson. Tomorrow we will start The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: a Memoir, by the same. I’ve read it before. Actually, I’ve read them all before, and I can’t quite remember which, over the past 2-3 years, I’ve already read to Jeff. But it doesn’t matter, because I enjoy them, and he does too.

Today I had the fleeting thought that I could switch over to rereading the Harry Potter Chronicles, or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy--either of which (set) I’d happily give a third go to. But here’s why Bryson will win out: While they’re sequential, (Lost Continent narrates his trip across America, and Thunderbolt Kid describes his childhood in Des Moines, Iowa,) neither requires retention of details. I’m certain we would not retain the plot throughout a novel, but with Bill Bryson it doesn’t matter. Each chapter is a vignette in and of itself.

In a sense, our lives are very much like the lives of our cats. The most interesting and pressing topics are what will we eat?, is it nap time?, should we go outside?...but we add thrills, including How much fun can we have buying groceries?

I’m not sure what to make of the life of an Alzheimer companion. Sometimes I feel like a caged bear, and wish for anything that I could have a job--even at a coffee shop--because then I’d make a couple bucks, and really appreciate my free time. Maybe. Other times I notice how relatively pleasant and gentle the pace is, and know plenty of folks who’d happily live at this speed for a breather. And sometimes I’m mentally generating a list of possible ways to have someone to talk to who can follow a conversation. But I guess it’s a life. So I don’t need to get one.

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.

wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles...

ApplianceLand finally delivered and installed my new dishwasher today. Two dates scheduled and lost to snow back-log, but today it actually occurred. Oh, it better run like a freshly-tuned Jaguar. Without going anywhere, I mean.

So, after removing all the dog-bombs from the backyard with my little rake and pan combo (these can--due to the residual snow--be otherwise known as i.c.b.m.s,) I explored the new Kitchenaid dw. (p.s.--I cleaned up the doggie work as a courtesy to the tree removal crew who will be clearing out the fallen and dead leyland cypresses from the backyard within the next couple of days, barring substantially more snow.)

As for the dishwasher...well, for starters, I am not minding another block of stainless steel, as opposed to the cabinet front set that was taken out. Also, there is always the learning curve of establishing new loading habits when you find yourself facing an unfamiliar set of interior prongs and brackets.

Still, the process has not been without fun. In reading the user guide, for instance, I discovered that Star-K, whose business it is to certify appliances as kosher or not, contributed an entire half-page to the proper usage of my dishwasher on the Sabbath and/or holidays. (Well, not my dw, per se, as it is not owned by an orthodox Jewish household, but the model.) Apparently, the 2 drawers are sufficiently disinclined to commingle their contents that you may designate one dairy and one meat. But you must not, of course, run the thing on the Sabbath. You may load it if you like, but only being very careful not to accidentally touch the sensor panel at the front of the drawer, thus inadvertently turning on a function. Furthermore, you must (if you have previously engaged it) disengage the child safety feature, and change the setting on the low rinse-aid indicator light so that it doesn’t do the work of alerting you to low rinse-aid on days when it's not free to do so. So there.

Oy vey! I thought. At least I’m not worried about that set of rules. Conjugating adjectives in Japanese is quite complex enough. This did not prevent me, however, from dancing around in front of the dishwasher, a la Tevye, singing Traditioooooon! tradition!...(stomp!) di di di di (stomp!) di di di di (stomp!) di di di di...di di di di diiii!

Oh, and apparently Dutch--the handyman--is planning to do some work for me, despite the fact that he hasn’t called me back. He told my brother-in-law Gordon. Ok, whatever works. He’ll come over eventually, and I’ll have a leaky floor all ready for him.

arigatoo, for not noticing...

Joss Café & Sushi Bar might be my favorite restaurant. I am rarely so linear as to have favorite anythings, but Joss is certainly in the favored echelon. In fact, I recently gave it a 5/5 Yelp rating. (Yelp.com--log in, rate places, and see what other people think before you go.) I’m not sure about the 5/5. Nothing really deserves an unqualified 5. Joss, after all, is a bit cramped inside, and has the tiniest of entryways such that there’s absolutely no place to wait except out on the sidewalk if there’s not a table ready. But it’s cozy and charming, and the rustic French Provincial interior of the main dining area (from the days when the space housed La Crêpe Normande) translates pretty well into Japanese rustic, with the addition of a few samurai masks and a couple of Good Luck Kitties.

Still, I always feel like it’s pushing things a bit to assign 5s. I think part of the problem is, a 5 point scale just doesn’t allow for fine-tuning. Hence, I arbitrarily decided that if Joss--at the moment--is hovering at the top of my list, and the top of my list should be 5s, then Joss must be a 5. Or something. Scale subject to later adjustment, all rights reserved, etc.

Jeff and I ate lunch there yesterday. It was a more indulgent choice than our usual lunch, given that we usually order at a counter, choose a seat, and pay half as much. But I wanted a cupcake. And right across Main Street from Joss is “Nostalgia Cupcakes” where they sell...cupcakes. Honestly, I don’t know why they’re still in business. But the cupcakes are yummy.

I ate my usual teriyaki tofu and avocado salad, and drank a pot of oolong tea, while Jeff managed to keep his chopsticks right-side up and polish off a grilled salmon salad. Then I paid. You know how sometimes waitpeople will scribble “thanks, Betsi!” with a smily-face or something on the credit card receipt? Well, sometimes I’m inspired to write back, and yesterday I did, in Japanese, although I’m sure our waitress (whose name wasn’t Betsi, but was certainly something typically American) doesn’t read Japanese. So maybe she ignored what I wrote and never checked with one of the Japanese chefs for a translation. I can only hope. Because that way, no one will ever notice that I conjugated “oishii” wrong.

Here’s what I wrote: Gochisoosama. Oishii deshita! (Only it looked like this: ごちそうさま。おいしいでした！) Here’s what’s really dumb. This is exactly what I’ve been busily drilling myself on in semester 3 of Japanese. Conjugating adjectives. And I know perfectly well that oishii, being an “i” adjective, in past tense should be “oishikatta desu,” only--unfortunately--this did not dawn on me until I was halfway home.

Oh yes...here is a rough translation of what that means: “Thank you for the meal. It was delicious! I am a dumb American who cannot conjugate delicious!”

I do not score a 5/5. Not yesterday, anyway.

Bin there, done with that.

Lately, I’ve been buying my wine at Bin 201. Bin 201 sells only wine--no beer, no liquor--and they’re conveniently located just steps from Whole Foods Market. (Do I sound like a radio advertisement yet?) I do have an inclination that I should shop from the more local merchant--in our case, Dawson’s Liquors. Dawson’s is 3 stone throws from our house and carries an impressive collection of domestic and imported booze. But, you see, I think they hate me there.

It’s possible that my imagination is acting up, or that I’m simply neurotic, but I’m pretty sure I’ve earned--as far as the handful of men (plus the one short woman with heavy-framed spectacles and a permanent scowl) who run Dawson’s are concerned--some sort of uppity alpha she-wolf status.

It’s not something I do on purpose. In fact, I’m neither mean, uppity, rude, nor aggressive. But I do take Jeff almost everywhere I go. And I do guide him.

Jeff has an additional problem which complicates the others: He can only hear about half as well as most people. Here’s how this plays out in Dawson’s liquors: We walk in. A guy or two nods. I smile or say “hi.” Jeff stops, grins, and stands blocking the doorway and limiting another customer’s access to the checkout counter. I take his arm and say “this-a-way.” He forgets to look where I’m going the minute I let go, and heads down the Schnapps aisle. Then he realizes he’s lost me. I peek around an endcap (featuring the latest squeezings of some Hollywood director’s backyard vineyard,) and say, loudly enough for Jeff (and, incidentally, the rest of the store) to hear: “I’m right over here. Let me just grab a couple things.” I grab a couple things. Then it’s time to check out.

I place my two 750 ml selections on the counter, and indicate Jeff should do the same with his doublesize jug of Chardonnay. Then I pay, and the guy puts the bottles in a paper bag. Jeff holds out his hand for the bag. Sometimes I give it to him. Sometimes I say, “I’ve got it...can you get the door?” It all depends on the size and awkwardness of the paper bag. You see, there is a not-inconsequential chance that Jeff will a) grab the paper bag with one hand, effecting an immediate rip, or b) pick the bag up upside down. (The time this happened, remarkably only one bottle of the 4 that tumbled onto our brick walkway was impaired, and it was just a chink out of the screw cap. Which meant we opened that bottle right away.) But the take-home point is that people in public, such as the Dawson’s guys, observe a dynamic between Jeff and me that is a little strange if you don’t know he’s impaired. And I believe that they have concluded, despite the fact that I am neither mean nor belittling, that there’s something wrong with this picture. It’s just that they’ve guessed wrong about what the wrong thing is.

Once, I had to get Jeff to sign a state tax refund check, so that we could deposit it into a bank account that has only my name on it. So, he and I were standing on our side of the teller window, and I was trying to point to where, on the back of the check, he should endorse. As his pen tried several times to touch down in random places, I’d redirect him to the signature line. Task accomplished. Next day, my bro-in-law Gordon went to the bank. Same teller. She sees Gordon often, and mentioned that she saw his brother yesterday. Then she wondered aloud, whether his sister-in-law (aka me) is “a little overbearing.” (Gordon has dealt with this himself. He recalls helping Jeff buy girl scout cookies once by taking the money Jeff was struggling to count, and handing the right amount to the cookie mom, while she looked at him “like he had two heads.”) So Gordon chuckled and said, “Let me guess...he needed to sign in a specific place, and she was trying to help him?” Right. Gordon explained things to the teller, who has been very sweet to me ever since.

But nobody, apparently, has had an opportunity to explain things to the men who work at Dawson’s Liquors, and at least a couple of them really don’t like women who are in charge. Even reasonably pleasant ones. It’s a horrible vibe I get from them.

But not in Bin 201. At Bin 201, there are always women salespeople, they always deal directly with me, showing no sign that they find it wrong or odd that I’m taking charge, and they’re always very pleasant. It’s local enough.

kick in the pants

What I wish I had is a more outgoing personality type. I certainly like people--there's no question--but I like them on a very lateral basis. I must've been one of those little kids who played alongside other children, rather than with them.

All this is in recognition of my need to grapple with the #1 obstacle between me and a peaceful relationship with this house: Engage the Handyman!

So, yeah...I'll DO it! I'm going to do it. This week. I will call. (Why do I hate calling people?)

No doubt the water dripping through the kitchen ceiling this morning put the spark to my plug. (Incorrectly tiled bathroom floor--it's item #1 on page #2 of my "Maintenance Needs" notebook.)

Yeah, don't worry about it, I completely agree. The whining was getting on my nerves too.

it's not broken...it just has a great patina.

The behemoth icicle clusters, (one is pictured 3 post down,) finally fused into solid columns of ice, hooked to the roof at the top, and a frozen pool at the bottom. I’ve been worried all along, wondering if and when I should remove them before they release themselves. Afraid the support at the bottom they had now established would cause upward pressure against the soffit and the slate shingles, I decided to hack the leg off. It took a saw, a clean cut and a solid push to the stalagmite portion, but as we left to pick up Gabe from afternoon carpool, it appeared the remaining hanging portions would finally lose their grip. They did. And the one on the right took a couple half-shingles with it.

Clearly I made a wrong move, but there I was feeling newly overwhelmed by unfinished work, entropy, and an unfortunate dearth of resident handy people. I’m usually good at shutting up, and putting a happy face on it, but temporarily I wasn’t, and I lamented--out loud--that I didn’t know what we’d do, but I’d have to find a way out of maintenance that neither one of us is capable of.

Alzheimer’s is so weird. And so fraught with Catch-22s. If you haven’t done a lick of handy work in 4 years, and the last licks you attempted resulted in disastrous butcherings of door jambs and locksets, how odd that your brain still allows you to think you’re completely capable. I could do it said Jeff. A part of me still wants to apply reason rather than fib. You can’t, I said. You can’t, because the Alzheimer’s messed up the part of your brain that could do that work.

Of course he didn’t believe me. By corollary to the first conundrum, the AD-damaged brain will also not observe that walking outside in February without your coat, because you don’t like the point your wife attempted to make is not a particularly winning way to demonstrate that she’s mistaken about your level of function.

I am not kicking myself with much force. Faking that you’ve got it under control all the time is bound to fail. There will be holes in the fabric, and sometimes rips.

I have dispatched emails to two people who might know handymen-for-hire. And I’ve got a another phone number--someone my mom’s used--as another possibility. But maybe the trick is to save my money, and save the work until I can consider moving. Can I move Jeff? Will the house disintegrate around me? Am I whiny? (maybe don’t answer that.) I will think on it all, dream up a long term plan, and set the bellyaching dial to a very low hum.

a good house.

Unclear why I’ve been dancing on the hot coals of anxiety these last few days (especially given the cold weather,) but it’s been fun. I’m starting to seriously wonder whose bedroom I should co-opt for nights when the only thing that discharges the tension is pretending I’m on a “magic fingers” bed, delivering 200 nickels-worth of agitation, all at once.

I’m sure it’s a good policy--any time you’re in the midst of a “snow event” such as we’ve been experiencing this week here in the Mid-Atlantic--to postpone any hasty conclusions about your emotional balancing needs until, at the very least, the walking conditions have normalized. In the meantime, exercise indoors as possible, and do not eat too much of that strange orange cake you made yesterday--the one with the surprisingly light crumb, given that the layers are shaped like upside-down frisbees, and the overall morphology of the assembled and frosted confection resembles a squashed hat.

Well, I am afraid of the house, no question, and to a certain extent I always have been. It scared me at the outset when I knew Jeff was biting off more than he could chew--but we could talk about it, he had skills, and I could discharge into his buffering steadiness. It scared me when Jeff’s faltering brain left us with a half-realized work of architecture that I could neither fathom a way to complete, nor to escape from. Encouragement from Jeff’s siblings, and an arranged date with a contractor budged me from that rut, and I’m grateful. More was accomplished when we serendipitously stumbled upon our second team of renovators while walking the dog. Now it’s ok. It's the house I thought I could live in forever, when forever looked different from what it turned out to be. This house is about a partnership that no longer exists, and every detail reminds me. I can picture mustering enough resources to get the house in salable form, when needed...but why I’m so obsessed with getting out--seems like an impractical notion, doesn’t it?

Maintenance. I don’t want it. There’s too much. There’s a yard that needs clearing of overgrown, half-fallen cypresses and a fence in need of repair, and preferably, replacement. There’s a heat-system manifold, of boggling complexity in the basement, and a water heater so intricately linked to it that not just any HVAC man will want to take it on. There’s another HVAC unit in the laundry room--not in use. Never has been. The purpose for it disappeared with Jeff’s brain. As did the means to hang the arts & crafts light fixture which was destined for the family room ceiling, but is still living in about 8 boxes. There are wires sticking out of the wall, which would have operated it. Presently they’re capped with plastic wire nuts--a fetching color accent of orange and yellow against the white wall. The garage is partially framed in 2x4s which are now wobbly for lack of completing members. A bathroom wants tile repair and shelves where a platform of plywood still awaits.* I won’t go on. It’s boring.

Yes, I do get hung up on this stuff, and my imagination blooms with new things which could go wrong. My official stance, of course, (official being what I say to Jeff) is: “Everything’s fine here. There’s not really anything we need to do!” I say it enthusiastically, and I’m a great liar. Especially to a person who can’t read auxiliary facial give-aways. He would just fret, (albeit merely until it occurred to him to try to make coffee,) or state, forthrightly: “I can fix that!”

Then, like a moony teenager, I log onto FranklyMLS.com and ogle condominiums in Annapolis. It concerns me a bit that all the women in my ancestry named Emily ended up hermits in dark apartments. But I don’t mean to be a hermit. Or be in the dark. Or hide in my condo. So, while I hope I’m not destined for the Emily curse, I do think I am suffering a constitutional crisis where house ownership is concerned.

*(none of the remaining work is for my brother-in-law Fred, who has plenty to do at home.)

when not in use...

Gabe and I like the bathroom door to be left open when not in use. Allows for air circulation, and a fresher bathroom experience when it’s your turn.

Jeff shuts the door when he leaves. Every time. It has not always been thus, but has become--in the past couple years--a predictable habit. We see it shut, and push it open.

”Hey, Dad,” says Gabe, as Jeff exits the downstairs bathroom (which, in general, is the only one Gabe concerns himself with.) “Look. Look at this...see the door? Leave the door open.”

As for me, I have given up on two things: Asking Jeff to leave the door open, and reminding Gabe that his efforts will be to absolutely no avail. He knows better, but he keeps trying. “Hey. Dad. Leave the door open,” says Gabe. Jeff replies, “Oh, you like it open? Ok. I’ll remember that from now on.” Then he very dutifully pulls it shut behind him.

I’ll push it open next time I go down the hall. This is about as important as whether you prefer your bathroom tissue to hang toward the front, or toward the back. As in, it’s not important. (hint: front.)

Not quite ready for Hoth, but closer.

Today we ventured out, through the unplowed fluff and slush, because Jeff suggested--for the second day in a row--that we “go somewhere warm and dry and get some food.” Last night I dispelled the notion by pointing out that we were under full-blown snowfall, no plows would attempt our street until morning, and I doubted whether many local eateries were expecting customers. When he brought it up again this morning, I was more receptive--not because we didn’t have food, warmth, and dryness at home (we did,) but because I figured he must be missing his regular lunches out, and besides, I’d dispatched the final 2 inches in the driveway this morning.

So we rallied Gabe who--remarkably--had showered already, and navigated the messiness to Garry’s Grill, a local hash house. After a scintillating lunchtime description of Gabe’s various zombie-based dreams, we’ve returned to a house under full sun, with icicles melting in drips all around. Except for the ones which have fallen off altogether, such as these which apparently crashed to the ground while we were at lunch.

As of this extraordinary winter, I’m a full-on advocate for serious snow boots, like this excellent North Face pair which I acquired, with fortuitous timing, just before the pre-Christmas onslaught when the first 18” of the season hit us. The right gear, that’s all it takes for me to embrace my father’s haplogroup I, Nordic Y chromosome.

being where you are

These silly record snowfalls bollix daily tasks at every turn. You don’t think about it until you take an otherwise-well-rehearsed step and--bam--there’s another one. Well, to be completely honest, emptying the cat box should be quite a bit more well-rehearsed than it actually is, but yesterday it smelled essential. Unfortunately this meant plodding across crusted-over 2+ foot drifts in the back yard, until I could reach the composting zone over the back fence.

I have great snow boots. But I wasn’t wearing them. So, for the next 20 minutes mini snowballs tumbled from the inside of my jeans into my wool slippers as I puttered about the kitchen wondering whether to read a book or stare out the window.

Now it’s the garbage cans filling, and the recyclables collecting on the kitchen counter, as I’ve completely run out of space in the indoor bin. So, out I’ll go, crunching through the drifts the whole way, to yellow and green bins which will have to be shaken loose from the snow they’re 2/3 wedged into.

Yes, generally we manage these things around here, with a smile and the aplomb that goes with a novel type of mental stimulation coupled with the assumption that it will all end soon.

A broken fence, a trickle of water through the basement foundation, and two days without tv or internet, plus the relatively healthy (for most) upper-body workout of a driveway in need of shoveling have nothing on an overburdened tent camp on Hispaniola. In another life, in another dimension, I would be aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort, currently floating off the coast of Haiti; part of a medical and support staff serving as they might. Sometimes I wonder about a life full of pedestrian game moves, such that (at the moment) my greatest concern is whether I’ll be capable of single-handedly patching the back fence where the snow-burdened Leyland cypress fell over on it.

1 dishwasher, hold the scary logo.

I will try to see my dysfunctional Fisher-Paykel dishdrawers as a charming, but ultimately disappointing, object lesson in why we avoid early-issue technology. Assuming this strategy succeeds, I will manage not to buy an iPad until they’ve discovered the worst kinks, and released a second generation.

However, this plan is of no help whatsoever to my dishes which, at the moment, are being sloshed with steamy water, but not washed in particular. Because, indeed, there were kinks aplenty in the guts and electronics of our prototype double-decker dishwasher. And now, about 5 years into service (and about 8 years after purchase...the kitchen took us a while...) it has this one advantage over letting the dog do the dishes: You can close the drawers and make them disappear.

So, on Thursday, we went to ApplianceLand. To be completely forthcoming, the name of the business is “ApplianceLand, etc.” First let me say that I have always failed to understand why businesses append words such as “city,” “land,” or “world,” to the name of the commodity they’re peddling in order to construct a name. I’d rather they just call it “Filbert’s Appliances.” (Or, if not Filbert, then whatever name is appropriate.) Because an ugly former bank building, with reflective turquoise-mirror windows, at the corner of Route 2 and West Street, is most certainly not a land. I can get over it, because they’ve been reasonable merchants to deal with, but I’m still nagged, just slightly, by the second appendage--that is, “etc.”

ApplianceLand, etc? What does this mean? That they also retain the riparian and mineral rights to this land, and possibly the airspace as well? Important, no doubt, however small and bounded by traffic the land is. (Maybe they should have called it “Appliance Duchy,” or “Appliance Principality.”) At any rate, stupid name or not, I will be completely happy with them when they deliver my new dishwasher, and get it properly installed, in a week. Oh...unless it’s delivered by the mascot:

If I open the door next Saturday, and something that looks like this slithers in, I’m going to be seriously wigged. I’m not exactly sure what this is. As near as I can tell, it is a fiendish female genie wearing a crustacean gown and a Jackie-O pillbox hat, who is gesturing for you to come close enough that she can push you down the garbage disposal. I did not see her in the showroom on Thursday, but the thought of her popping out might make me wary of opening the ovens or fridges on display.

Well, demonic mascots notwithstanding, I’ll be glad to have a functioning dishwasher.

time for adjustment

Today we went in search of a watch. Jeff has had many watches over the years, and the most recent--a rugged but basic Timex, with white face and black hands--was selected with visual simplicity in mind. For several months now, he’ll catch sight of the watch counter as we make our way through stores, and say “Hey...I need a watch.”

"Is there something wrong with your watch?” I reply, realizing he has no idea we’ve had this conversation five or six times. “It’s just...” he says, looking at it. “It’s just...I just want a basic watch.”

I don’t know why I’m so slow, but I finally connected the dots after the third time I saw him walk over to the oven, stoop down, and squint at the control panel. We have two wall clocks in the greater kitchen/dining zone. One classic round, which I found on the clearance table at Williams-Sonoma quite a few years ago, and a more recent acquisition--directly from the Alzheimer’s Store online--a big, white standard clock-face over which resides a flip-type readout which tells us (today) that it’s “WED 3 FEB.” I rely on this calendar help quite a bit myself, as I tend to be lax where keeping track of dates is concerned. And for a while, Jeff remembered to look at this clock.

But now, the oven display. Which is, now that I thought about it, digital. This all makes sense. What is an analog clock, but a graphic, pie-chart representation of time? And what is a big thing Jeff can’t do? Read graphs.

Flashback to 2004. We and all 4 kids are visiting Jeff’s brother Wade in Boulder, Colorado. Wade is working, and we’ve decided to drive to Pike’s Peak, near Colorado Springs, to give oxygen deprivation a try. I’m driving south (by then, I mostly was driving,) in our rented minivan (completely inadequate, I might add, for Rocky Mountain terrain,) and I want to know, for my own sense of orientation, how much ground we’ve covered between Boulder and Colorado Springs. With the sense of foreboding that goes with doing something about which you know better, I hand Jeff the Colorado highway map. “Find Boulder,” I say. “It’s that smaller yellow blob, just northwest of Denver.” Jeff stares intently, as if staring intently will cause what has become--to him--nothing but a confusing array of lines and colors to make sense. I realize what I had suspected: He can no longer read maps. At this point, I know I should forget about my desire for orientation and live with the uncertainty of being “somewhere” between Denver and Colorado Springs, but instead, I ask Jeff if he would mind giving the map to Rachel, who is sitting in the seat behind him. He has a mini temper-tantrum and throws it behind him. Rachel orients me, and I’ve learned something new about Jeff’s cognition, 3 years pre-diagnosis.

So I realize what has happened. Jeff can’t read an analog clock. We need to find him a digital watch. After rejecting the too-expensive options at assorted mall kiosks, we stop at Kohl’s on the way home, and I zero in on a Timex Expedition with nothing going on but the time and date. It is in a counter-top case, with many other Timex models. Jeff points to a plain-looking analog. “How about that one?” he says, “it looks simple.” In fact, I say to myself, it looks just like the watch you already have, and it occurs to me, then and there, to conduct a small clinical test. “Let’s see which watches are easiest to read,” I say. (I am helped in this test, by the fact that none of these watches have been set to the proper time, so they’re all different.) Then, I point to various of them and ask him to tell me what time it reads. Each time I point to a digital he tells me straight away. “3:32, 6:28, 11:05.” When I point to an analog, he hangs...like a computer with frozen software. “Uhhh...” And I switch to a different, digital one.

We choose the light brown one. He likes it. He does not realize why he can read some and not others. He thinks the ones he can’t read are just “too busy” or something.

We stop for a treat at Baltimore Coffee & Tea. For Jeff, this means simply coffee. For me, this means a “Snow Angel” Latte--chocolate and vanilla with soymilk. We take turns using the facilities. When it is Jeff’s turn, he heads to the rear of the shop. This is what you see: two doors, plainly marked, with tea displays to the left and right. I am watching. He doesn’t know what to do. He peers at both doors, then turns to the tea shelves on the right to see if they’ll provide any assistance. I hurry to the back of the store, turn the handle to the men’s room and say “right here.” Brains are complex, and they fail complexly.

blogging by iPhone email...

...doesn't format properly, I see. (Shall fix it.)

7 up, 7 down

I like the view from the 7th floor of Georgetown University Hospital. Across Reservoir Road, a pair of retrievers is trampling merry dog prints all over the snow in the middle of the University practice field, while their person runs laps on the track. Not far beyond, the highest tower of the National Cathedral is poking its four spires above a row of old, and therefore well-built houses. If we were across the hall we'd be looking at the Washington Monument obelisk.

Behind me, Jeff is being unwired from an EKG machine. Soon I am summoned to think of two events--one within the last week, and one within the last month, which Jeff will be asked to recall. I think of our flight to Colorado 3 weeks ago, and the snowfall over the weekend, providing useful details to the extent that my sometimes foggy memory permits.

I hope that we'll have time for lunch. Even a Chipotle burrito. A last-minute change in routine (the usual ride going home sick) means we'll be hightailing it from D.C. to Baltimore to retrieve a couple of schoolboys this afternoon. I've brought snacks, and we could avail ourselves of the bag lunches on offer to clinical research participants, but they aren't my favorite, and seasoned rice and black beans always appeal.

Funny thing--as we were headed toward the stairwell from our parking space in the catacomb-like L7 level of the underground garage (that's level negative 7,) a healthy looking man said "Elevator's broken. But the east-side one is working." And he took off across the long, gloomy tomb of a garage to the far stairwell. People really don't use stairs, do they? I thought, as Jeff and I walked up the stairs.