shufu to you too

Chapter test #1, Japanese, is tomorrow night. Gabe has been a bit remiss in memorizing a short list of college majors and careers, so I made a study help--clip art of the various things, labeled with the Japanese word. The shufu illustration was especially chosen to reflect my feelings about the word. Yesterday we were reviewing: Shufu I say. Um...office worker? Gabe guesses. No, I say, housewife.

You’re sort of a shufu, says Gabe. No, I absolutely am not I assert. Shufus do not write fiction. Shufus do not install tile and hardwood floors. Shufus are not the only people in the house who can fix your computer. Shufus do not jump-start cars and fix bicycles. And shufus do not learn Japanese.

But you’re sort of a shufu, Gabe insists. Sort of NOT, I doubly insist. It is a detestable word, in any language.

As such, my clip art shufu is watching soaps and ironing--neither being an act I commit if I can help it. Further, I submit that even the word is an anachronistic concept in today’s society anyway. There are people of all ages and genders whose lives don’t necessarily revolve around standard salaried employment, and I’m quite certain you would not accuse them all of being shufus, and I utterly decline the designation along with them.
But still Gabe. Learn the English translation. It might be on the test.

The pc, meanwhile, is (as I’ve alluded to,) in need of serious help. It’s a phenomenon how much crap can drift through the net-ether when one browses anime and fan fic sites. Downloading spyware removers has added burrs to hair-knots, and I’ve resolved--at this point--to learn to live with protection-racket software. We will try Kaspersky. It’s on its way. In the meantime, once the pc--now reinstalled from scratch--is reloaded with the usual line-up (Firefox, Windows Media Player, Guild Wars of course...) I will try to make a ghost of it on an external drive, possibly (but not definitely,) reducing the size of the headache the next such episode gives me.

Cellar dwellers

Sometimes the isolation wrought by organic brain syndrome is the specter you host, like it or not, on a drop-in basis. Actually, it’s always there, but sometimes it contents itself with living in the basement where you can sometimes sort of ignore it like that whiff of eau de kitty litter box. Other times it wants to hover in the kitchen, radiating its mood-deadening vibe into the shared atmosphere.

Warning: Do not watch movies such as P.S. I Love You, Love Actually, or even Mamma Mia when the specter is living upstairs. Back to the Future or anything Harry Potter are acceptable.

Clarence the muse and I have been having a little trouble finding time to get much accomplished. It’s my fault this time--I can’t pin it on Clarence. I like this Japanese stuff, see, and am doubling up on the books. The basement job is there and wants doing. (If it’s more orderly maybe the specter will stay down there? Doubt it.) And getting up at 5:15 a.m. puts me in afternoon nap mode. Hence, Clarence rarely can get any of my freshest brain time. Perhaps reality can catch up to my good intentions. We don’t want Clarence moving into the basement.

sandwich

My daydreams are taking me to weird and unfair places. Well...unfair in that I could never go there by making the right choices.

Lunch was at Panera, with Helen and 5 year old Belle. (Who can spread her own cream cheese on her bagel, thanks.) We talked about “comfort food...,” specifically, is there anything from childhood that is a true keeper, in the comfort food arsenal? Apart from the fact that I think of tunaroll cassafish (the kind made with soup and egg noodles,) with fondness, it seems that my segue from a standard American to mostly veg diet a couple of decades ago has rewritten my comfort food roster.

I love: grape leaves (dolmas,) hummus, udon noodles in miso broth, excellently-seasoned tofu, and Indian flatbreads with lentil dal. Foods that make me smile. So much for American classics. (with the caveat that I am truly enjoying the pickle they serve with sandwiches at Panera.)

In messy little blurts of indentured servitude in which the kitchen timer is boss, I’m getting the basement sorted. Jeff may be going to see Fallingwater with Helen in April. I may yet have my best chance to call junkbusters before summer.

Oh no...

I just had this thought which is both horrible and exquisite. What if Clarence isn't named after the angel in It's a Wonderful Life? What if he's actually more of an incarnation of Clarence the cross-eyed lion from Daktari?

And yet, I'm comforted in the quirky way that is characteristic of that which tends to comfort me. Large visually-impaired feline or Henry Travers...whichever...it's so helpful to live in a nebulous world where one is no longer alone in one's creative pursuit. Clarence and I--we keep each other accountable.

Fuzzy Lenz's real name is Gary Lenz. I know, because I wrote him a check to kick off the (lovely, as it's shaping up) patio out the back door. I tell Jeff. "Fuzzy's real name is Gary," I say. Now, every day, we have a conversation very much like this:

"Okay...so it's Michael," says Jeff.

"What is?"

"Fuzzy's real name."

"No," I say. "It's Gary."

"Ok, good," says Jeff, walking away. "Robert."

If Clarence just had Freddi's spunk...

I was chuffed to have stumbled upon Elizabeth Gilbert’s very recent TED.com talk on “a different way to think about creative genius.” What an excellent way to differentiate oneself from one’s failure (or success in her, or others’ cases,) as a writer. Or person of other creative bent.

Gilbert's notion is to revisit the old Greek way of thinking about creative genius as being that which visits you in a gift of inspiration, rather than the pre-existing condition, or nature of the artist/writer/creator. A separate persona, iow, which is either on the ball or isn't. I’d been claiming all along that it is not really my fault that a possibly psycho directive to write was coupled with Clarence the crappy muse being assigned to my case. (Clarence borrows his name from the angel in It’s a Wonderful Life. I cannot predict whether this name-sharing foreshadows eventual “success” or is merely a dumb name for a muse.)

Still, it’s sort of reassuring, in a sanity-soothing way, to imagine that it’s no aberration if “calling” and inspiration do not coalesce in this lifetime. At least I showed up for my part. Three silly books in ten years can’t be the worst record ever. Perhaps my frustration and hiatus of the last little while have corresponded with Clarence being busy with some CE credits. Maybe they’ve helped him. I just can’t worry about that.

Fuzzy and his helper are laying down gravel out the back door, in prep for concrete, which will provide the foundation for eventual slate and brick and something other than mud to walk onto when we exit kitchen rear. So, for now at least, there are no back steps, which means that we need to discourage Freddi’s wish to fall on her face out the back door. Instead, she’s issuing urgent staccato woofs, just so everyone is fully aware that she’s got the thing under surveillance. Thanks Fredfred.

end of a day blather.

When I got my distance-vision only glasses in January, the optometrist advised me to hang on to last year’s progressive lenses even though I don’t love them. He was right. It doesn’t work to wear distance-only glasses in Japanese class or the grocery store, but they are excellent for driving at night. Luckily, the honking-big case that came with the new ones holds both pairs.

I fret. Should I visit Beacon--the tiniest little college ever, in Leesburg Florida--with Gabe because it might, as an LD-specific school, have the highest chance of not flunking him out? Will a mainstream school-with-LD-program work? Will he still like Japanese when he has to start reading...in Japanese? Cola-nut? Uncola-nut? Can you choose wisely? (If you can, please let me know...I could use some input here.)

It was a day of too much to do. To Georgetown, through arduous D.C. traffic first thing in the morning for a hefty dose of poking, prodding, and brain-straining (Jeff,) and a lot of time sitting in a chair or looking out the 7th floor window of the hospital room at snow flurries, while trying to entertain my ADD mind with a combination of Japanese practice, scarf knitting, and playing with my Centro’s online functions to make sure Baltimore County Schools weren’t closing early. (me.) Luckily, they did not. Close early, that is, and we had time to chomp down a Chipotle burrito, get home, let the dog out, snag Gabe from carpool, run home to use the bathroom, and take him to drum. I recognize that there is nothing unusual about having little time to alight at home and achieve that settled feeling for most people, but I am grateful that our most pressing task for tomorrow is to return the Odyssey’s license plates to the DMV so we can stop insuring it.

I imagine that one day I may need a job, to extend the time until I need to rely on eggs and nests and stuff like that, and I imagine that I will work at Trader Joe’s, or similar. And I will not mind it. Probably. Because, the people seem nice enough, and besides--there is rarely a brilliant career opening for someone who: reads several languages somewhat, writes tolerable but unmarketable fiction, and is (or will be) fifty-something. So, it will be one of those jobs for people whose more interesting features are not highlighted by their vocation.

I am not watching the Superbowl

My brain is about to stretch to the point of flipping inside out. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy studying Japanese. Indeed, it is pleasing me in a way that I had not anticipated. But the process has evoked a couple of minor seismic shifts in my thinking.

See...I was a little concerned about how I sort of know some French, and I sort of know some Spanish, but neither one--when push comes to shove--is going to allow me to converse fluently at the drop of a hat. At all. At all at all. I can merely take comfort in the notion that if I’m unexpectedly airdropped into Lausanne, or maybe Bolivia, I will be able to combine my base of knowledge with the total immersion experience such that I may become conversant in a relatively short time. But my internal argument went something like this: Why add a language? Why not, instead, improve at the ones I already know? And now my answer is this: Because I can’t. At least not much, short of the aforementioned airdrop. Hence, why not expand my base of places where, if airdropped, I will have the framework on which to build?

So, ok. I’m apparently not that hard to convince, because I’ve completely bought that argument. But I’m still left with this concern: I enrolled for Gabe--so, unless I succeed in helping him succeed, I will have failed. So I wave my annoying little wipe-off board drills in his face, and leave Word docs on his PC with phrases to translate before he launches 
“Kitty-face Girl,” or whatever the heck animes he watches. He is immensely tolerant, thank goodness, but not--I observe--as quick a study as I am. It seems. So I have to remind myself: a) the kid has LDs. b)I bested Eric Winter in the NSA language-translation qualifying exam, where they give you an invented language and you have to figure out the rules. Eric Winter, otherwise, beat me in the “It’s Academic” qualifying trial.
c)I am obsessive like Hermione Granger. And then, just as I’m feeling ahead of the game, Gabe throws a few anime-derived expressions at me, about whose meanings I’m clueless, and I say “no fair! It’s not in the book!”

And, to be sane about it all, we have not had a chapter exam yet. It is perfectly plausible that class expectations are lower than my self-expectations. So let us wait and see.

And yay--I just looked it up, and it turns out that AACC does offer 4 semesters of Japanese, so I can go on and on and on...and then maybe reactivate my German synapses which went into hibernation after the one year of German they offered when I was in high school. From which I retain the following: Oje, der schwamm ist nicht nass. This is a very useful statement that you might employ any time you need to inform someone that the sponge is not wet. But I think it needs beefing up with a few additional expressions.

Last night, in the interest of further cultural enlightenment, Rachel, Gabe, Jeff and I went to Joss Japanese Bistro in Annapolis. Yum. In general. Once we got Jeff straightened out so that he was holding both his chopsticks right-side-up he did just fine. And even had this to add to tonight’s exchange of Japanese phrases: “Hoots man, be thrifty.”

Turning Japanese? Not yet anyway.

Gabe and I started Japanese 111 at the Community College yesterday. It snowed today. Gabe is playing PS3 with Matt. I am studying Japanese. Gabe, the anime buff, thinks he will be helping me with Japanese homework. Time will tell.

We’re not to chapter 1 yet. We’re still in the “pre” chapter...the little bit at the beginning of language texts where you get your intro to basic greetings and a smattering of other niceties. And this I can say definitively: Japanese is like brain yoga. And I’m not talking downward dog. Nope...one of those asanas where your hand’s on the floor, your foot’s in the air, and you promptly fall into the nightstand and knock a lamp over.

Kind of makes you want to crawl back to French, Spanish, or German with a penitent air, saying all is forgiven! I didn’t mean it when I said querer was an inextricable knot of conjugations! And here’s the thing: In the pre-chapter--the baby chapter--you don’t even conjugate anything. But you also don’t get the comfort of an alphabet you recognize. Merci, gracias, danke... Oh, sure, anybody can say that, and write it too. And maybe you can say arigatoo, even though there’s probably nothing in your basic western educational background that the word even remotely resembles. But don’t get too puffed up about that. Because you’re cheating. It’s not really written “arigatoo,” it’s written ありがとう, and therein lies the problem. It’s going to be quite a while before I can look at ありがとう, and register it as a word. And sadly, my entire Japanese textbook looks pretty much like that.

Frankly, I do not know if I will ever look at Japanese characters and see words, as opposed to seeing a code that must be cracked, using the handy chart found in the back of my textbook, or online. Can a brain be that plastic at 47? Interestingly, I find that the experiment of discovering the answer to this question is almost as interesting as the language-learning process itself. Can my brain get it? Let’s see.

It has been quite some time since I traced the lines of word-parts in a work book, taking care to draw the horizontal crossbar before adding the slash and the curlicue. I’m sort of feeling like someone should give me a fresh new extra-fat pencil, and a stick-on gold star at the top of my paper. And there’s the semi-appalling truth that the hatches and swirls I’m struggling to copy are second nature to any Japanese 7 year old.

Even so, I’m finding it more fun than chore...I was just a little unprepared for the reaction my brain is having. Huh? it says. You want me to do what? So I show it a flash card featuring what appears to be a fish hook dancing with dagger and say “soo desu.” Or, more precisely, そうです. (cheat sheet: "That's right.")

Some stones are better left unrolled.

I’m done teaching Gabe to drive. He can get a license when he’s old enough and mature enough to figure out how to go about it without me. By then he’ll have at least 2 sisters over 21, and maybe couple of Tylers, who can pick up the ball I dropped, which will--by then--be moldering in a dusty corner with some dog teeth marks in it. Although, truthfully, I don’t think I dropped the ball. It’s more like none of my serves were ever returned.

The only thing that niggles me still is that he’s going to need a certificate of completion from the driver’s ed school. He’s done the classroom hours, and 2 out of 3 of the drive-with-instructor sessions. After session #2, the guy told me not to schedule #3 until he’d gotten more experience, and there’s where the twain won’t meet. Because what the guy said was correct: He’s bad at driving. And I’m done. So I’m hoping that if I call the driving school on Monday and explain that we’re bagging it for now, but would like--if possible--to have the certificate in hand so that he doesn’t have to pay for and take driver’s ed again several years down the road, that they’ll agree to one more supervised lesson, even if it’s not the sort that normally comprises lesson #3. But if they say no...oh well...it’ll be Gabe’s $400 and 30+ hours next time.

Next time, as in a time when he can both round a bend and observe, in a meaningful way, that there are 5 cars backed up at a light a mere 15 yards ahead of him. The surprising thing--to me anyway--is that you would think that a guy who can ride a unicycle, perform sleight of hand with cards, and defeat Super Mario in a melee would have the necessary eye-hand chops to handle a car, but t’aint, apparently, so.

It can be a little disconcerting though, when people do not mature according to the only scheme of which you’re aware, to feel confident that the alternative unknown scheme will also have a reasonable outcome. That, thus, is the trick of this parenting episode--to be able, in the absence of confidence, to exist on the the plane of the now, and trust the then to be either a) something you can handle, or b) something you can wash your hands of. I am practicing “b” by leaving the driving ball to grow lichen in the corner.

Swabby

Gabe is out racking up miles with the driving instructor. It’s #2 out of 3 sessions. Must get the driver’s license even if he doesn’t particularly need to use it much. For practical and i.d. reasons. And now I have another. One must have a valid DL in order to obtain a Merchant Mariner Document from the Coast Guard. One must have the MMD to enter the entry level Merchant Mariner program at the Paul Hall School in Piney Point Maryland. And one must have a back up plan should college not work out. And that’s what Piney Point would be.

Deck Department, Engine Department, Steward Department? Yes Gabe...the possibilities abound, and you’re stuck on a boat where they must make some use of you. This is not to say that college is out. By no means. We will visit, we will pick, we will entreat...but ultimately the rest is up to the kid, and--while I hope he’ll grab the magic feather and fly--it helps my inner tranquility to have a Plan B. Or a Plan 9 from Outer Space if need be.

chips ahoy?

The problem is: I don't want to be in charge of everything all by myself. All the time. That is the little lumpy thingy I have to clamber over in order to plan a trip...or social event at my house...or stuff. Ick ick ick. Want to defer!

Or perhaps I merely need a fortitude microchip implant.

Smiling Coasts, Open Minds

The Honda Odyssey went to a new home. I hope, sincerely, that it will love it there, and start faithfully with nary a hitch for its new proprietor. As for Jeff, I could see that same little wistful cloud hovering about him as the transaction was enacted--the cloud that signaled another face-to-face with the fact that he really will not drive anymore. But...with the van’s absence from the driveway will come, I hope, limited cause to even think about it much.

Meanwhile, another piece fell into place in the possible-trip-to-The Gambia sequence. Gabe’s passport--the one which he could ostensibly get without parental permission and that will be good for 10 years because he’s 16--arrived today. Yes. Nothing on the application requesting parental signoff. No indication from the post office lady who took the application, photos, and checks, that anything was missing. But still the Passport Office held his app, with a letter noting that it would be processed pending a copy of an i.d. and signoff from me. Naturally I obliged, with the requisite grumble that I’d have been happy to provide such permission had they only included that in the instructions. Perhaps t’was the scruffiness of his photo. Must come from a shady family, that one. But it’s here, and now--if I can get reasonably comfortable that Becca and company will be in Serrekunda during Gabe’s Spring break from school--I can try to secure reasonable flights. And no...this does not mean the ones offered on Expedia for $2500 a pop round trip from Gatwick. This means a cheap charter, and that may be harder to come by.

But what an intriguing thought--Gabe and Jeff in West Africa! Goodness...we can lose Jeff in Chipotle...we’d have to put him on a leash abroad. But how else will I ever travel, I ax ya? So, ok.

I have pushed some furniture aside in my brain. I’m making room--trying, in fact to make a most welcoming space--for a character to inhabit. See, according the the fiction-writing study I’m doing via The Open University, UK, fiction should begin with the character, around whom the plot will develop. Try to do the plot first, and the characters may not bake properly. Maybe that’s been my problem all along...hence the redecorating in my brain. I await a worthy protagonist. I hope the feng shui is adequate in my cerebrum. Not sure. Maybe a tinkly fountain would help.

In cars

Sometimes when my kids were small, nap resistant, and I needed a bit of mental space, we took a car ride. They’d settle, usually sleep, and I’d cruise quiet neighborhoods, pacified by the balm of road rumble and the visual placidity of architectural structures.

Now I do it with Jeff, and it still works. Not for nap-induction, but as a means to generate a sort of white-noise zone, where the angst of the ill-fit caused by our diverging abilities to communicate in the old ways is dissipated, much as a good antenna bearing eliminated the aggravating static on your old analog tv.

Talking works better there. Though sometimes it’s me doing most of the talking, but his listening works better too.

Wade has observed that Jeff is best able to comprehend and communicate when his eyes are closed. It is true. You can put him on the phone and--especially if he relaxes and closes his eyes--his interaction with the person at the other end is as close to “normal” as you’ll ever see it.

The car effect is similar. Despite there being visual input, it is of a low-demand sort. Jeff seems to be able to understand--mostly--and respond--mostly. To be clear--he responds at home too, but not necessarily in a way that suggests he grasped my meaning. I serve a volleyball, he returns a shuttlecock.

Car responses show a better intake of the input. There is still the hiccup factor--that is, the same question may be raised multiple times. As an example, this morning we were discussing The Campanella Family. Input items provided by me: Jeff’s family bought the Holly Ridge Road house from them. The daughters--Mary Beth and Cathy--were abrasively assertive. The dad struck me as taciturn and surly. And...once, Mary Beth and Cathy most impertinently insinuated themselves into a trip to the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that my mother was sponsoring for me, my sister Ellen, and our cousin Bev. We covered the fact that I did not recall what Mr. Campanella did for a living, as that was not of particular interest to my 7 year old self, but Jeff still asked. 3 times, spaced throughout the conversation. “What did he do for a living?” I don’t want to keep saying “we already covered that,” so I just say “I don’t remember.” Again.

But the sense of calm, and the pleasant companionship afforded by road trip white noise is nice thing. Like a good cup of coffee or just one Godiva chocolate.

Chai? Hat? Chai in a hat?

Mr. Chilly thinks there's a draft. He's checked the front door. Not open. The back door. Nope. The trouble, which has not yet occurred to him, is that he's not wearing a hat. At the moment, that hat would be a royal blue thick stocking cap which used to belong to Becca, before she moved on to jaunty berets or woolen hippie hats with earflaps.

But here is what is wrong with Jeff and hats: He likes to pull them down over his ears in such as way that the hat is not actually over his ears at all--intead, the tops of his hears are squashed down and out by the hat, which sits just high enough on his cranium that a small crown at the top remains unfilled, like the tip of a pear. All in all, the effect is what you'd get if Larry, Darryl, and Darryl were possessed by the spirit of Dopey the 7th dwarf.

If I witness this, I will tuck his ears under the cap, and rearrange the hat's position to a more sporting sledder style. I cannot help caring about this. The hat is intolerable worn a la Darryl.

I am tired. The "Nano coffee-tablet" I popped last night (a free sample from the health food store,) did keep me alert through a trip to see Four Christmases with Ellen, Rachel, and Becca last night (reviews: mixed,) but it also gave me a certain level of middle-of-the-night consciousness that I don't ordinarily attain...hence, tonight I'm bushed.

I believe that the populace has achieved stability for the evening--2 out, 2 in, lockable door--so all that's diverting me is Les Mis on the Kindle, wanting me to jump back into the barricade with the combatants as they await the climactic scene. But tomorrow. I'm sure as grape shot that I cannot reach the end without Victor Hugo going off on another tangent--oh...probably several chapters on the composition of the soul of a Parisian chaiwalla or something. And that will be a trudge which requires a fresh brain, free of fog.

If I get Jeff a bomber hat, he won't be able to squash his ears, or--at least--I won't be able to tell. Thought.

I'm gettin' over it, I'm gettin' over it...

Fuzzy Lenz stopped by on Saturday, to measure the area out the back door for some sort of flagstone/brick masonry installation. We could keep stepping off the rickety plywood “temporary” steps (which Jeff assembled roughly 12 years ago) into the grassless mudflats which comprise that third of the backyard, but perhaps (I’m thinking) if we make the back door appealing I will be inspired to stop decorating the backyard with old ladders and dog doodoo, and plant a shrub or two instead.

Fuzzy, it seems, does good work. He installed the brick and concrete walkways which surround Gordon and Tracy’s chateau. My goal now, will be to discourage him broaching--any further--the topic of “retirement.”

Here’s what he said Saturday morning, if I may resort to a rough paraphrase: How’s retirement Jeff? Wow. Not sure I’d want to retire. My brother-in-law retired at 60 and went straight downhill from there. Sure, it’s good so long as you stay active. I guess you stay active, right Jeff?

This is not too unlike the ”Retired? You lucky dog!” comments which are not uncommon at cocktail parties (which are, fortunately, the sort of things we rarely go to.)

So, I smile blandly, wondering if it would be appropriate to accidentally spill a drink (or coffee in the case of Saturday morning) on the speaker, so as to nip the topic mercifully in the bud.

In truth, at this point, we would both rather be employed than not, but he cannot, and--as leaving someone who cannot turn on the oven alone all day is not good mojo--it is inadvisable that I seek outside employment.

Which brings me to the crux of why I am a cranky person who keeps promising to blog in an upbeat manner, but whines instead: At no point have I liked the idea that I would be spending an unspecified number of years acting as administrative companion to a disabled person whose formerly diverting personality has, to a large degree, evaporated. But, as recently as a couple years ago, I was able to believe that I held the ace, or consolation prize of “being a writer”; that this, in fact, was something of a purpose in life which I could pursue while attending to my administrative companionship duties. However, now that I can look semi-objectively at the fact that I’ve written 3½ crappy to tolerable, unpublishable books, the delusion is failing me. So I’m feeling like a rather horribly drab critter, incapable of the creativity necessary to sustain the saving grace of having a meaningful creative outlet. So ick. (Not the fish disease, the sentiment.)

Well wow, that’s whiny. Maybe I shouldn’t post it. But I will, because it explains, succinctly, my personal mid-life crisis.

I’m still planning to stumble upon something to do which is more worthwhile than devoting years to 25-chapter novels destined to collect dust. And while I am waiting, if you decide to expound upon the pluses and minuses of retirement, in Jeff’s earshot, I will spill orange juice on you.

Oh, it's just another cranky post.

I’ve had the sort of day where you wonder--complete with chronic visceral special effects--whether there’s any possible way you’re up to the job of discharging your obvious obligation for the length of years it appears it will take.

I hate that thing where someone has a need so evident that it practically palpates the atmosphere, seeking it-does-not-even-know-what, and you know that it is your cosmic role to be the need-meeter, but you can’t because you’re hopelessly ill-suited to the position, and--on top of that--you’re a really bad faker. And, additionally on top of--or shall we say below--that: forget your own needs because there’s absolutely no way in heck they’re going to get met, so you might as well recognize them right now as wants, not needs. And stop being such a wuss. Gads. Do you need a smack, or what?

What else? I’m digging deeper into the concept of Gabe: The Post-High School Years. Oh, and there’s another need where what I have to offer may be ridiculously inadequate, because--frankly--there may not be a place in society for just everyone, of just every disposition. But it’s still my job to find the place, even if it doesn’t exist. Because a person cannot a)live in the computer room forever watching animes and online episodes of The Office, or b)be booted into the street prematurely. Hence, there must be something else that will work, even if there isn’t. And I pretty much have to find it.

Most likely, some people--present company included--ought to just relax. Even if they’re constitutionally unable, and weenies to boot.

Oh yes, I’m reading the Title 9 Sports catalog again, wherein the “real people” models appear with little bio snippets under their action shots such as: Jean-Anne--Occupation: College Professor, Hobby: Round-the-world sailing, special accomplishment: Following my heart. But then you have to wonder how her heart got so smart.

fresh from the Keebler zombies...

Becca and Tyler A. are making Christmas cookies. Hazel is casting a dubious glance at Fredfred who might--you never know--decide to usurp her position at the watering bowl. Jeff has, as is typical, retired early. I, as usual, just ran upstairs to dole out his pills before he crashed.

Gabe insists that zombies exist. “What would YOU do,” he asks Tyler, “in a zombie attack?”

“Probably go into the woods and make a sweet fort,” Tyler replies.

The general murmur, in the kitchen, is that zombies cannot possibly climb trees, but Gabe’s authoritative book, The Zombie Survival Guide, asserts that 1 in 10 zombies can climb a ladder.

I expect that many of the cookies will adhere to a holiday or random theme, and few if any will resemble zombies, but an outlier won’t surprise me. That one could be interesting to decorate with holiday goop.

Rachel is youtubing genuine and spoof high-fructose corn syrup commercials.

Becca asks Gabe if he has a special request for a cookie shape. “Do one in the shape of a zombie,” he replies. I confess though: that was not a risky prediction for me to make.

Olivia comes in from a long day out. She is dressed like a nerd, having ransacked, from her boyfriend’s belongings, a stocking cap, a pair of geeky glasses with no lenses, and a playboy bunny necktie. She is getting ready to go out again.

Chessie is howling because Rachel scooped her up. She is too pudgy a cat to get up onto the kitchen island. Hence, the holiday goop--butter based--is inaccessible to her.

For now, I will pause as I’m inclined to decorate a zombie cookie. But Gabe got to it first, and I’ll have to settle for a star.

No Oscar, maybe.

Blanchett, Pitt, and company were perfectly good in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but the central character which I find myself the most interested in, in retrospect, is the retirement home which serves as a sanctuary and nursery for the young Benjamin, and as a haven at the end. Everyone needs such a place.

What else was right? Benjamin was right, that even the best and fullest of relationships cannot sustain the friction and ill-fit caused by insurmountable chronic physical conditions. A partnership may have occupied an utterly cherishable and eternally valued position in a person’s life story, but this esteemed place will not protect it from erosion when the tectonic plates of two lives shift unharmoniously. The white clapboard house with the piano in the parlor and a welcoming front porch might then be the refuge which fiction can supply, and real people might just have to dream about.

Wisdom from an older movie (based on the Anne Tyler novel): The Accidental Tourist. Sometimes who you should be with is not so much a function of who the other person is, but rather of who you are when you’re with that person. As wonderful and deserving as the other person may be, if you’re icky and mean around him/her then you’re probably not doing anybody any favors.

Still, you may not be able to rewrite the story line to fit the attractive parameters afforded by fiction, because you just may be one of those people who live outside the gestalt of storytelling (this may explain why--if in fact this is true of you--you can’t write fiction either.) If so, then you need to find another book to reference. Such as the only marginally fictionalized A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson. From this book you can glean the following: Sometimes it’s just a trudge through the neverending trees, step after step, where the best pleasures available are your morning coffee and the occasional glimpse of wildlife. If this seems more descriptive of your story (using the word story loosely,) then it may be at least slightly comforting that even a trudge may, at the end, show enough signs of narrative that it’s worth telling about.

badness

Hazel lives to perform.

Just now, I can only see the black side of her nose, because she is peering around the corner at me, with just one eye, contemplating which of the tricks in her repertoire she should resort to next. At the moment, the kitchen table is ripe with possibilities. Even if there were not a wad of embroidery floss, a pen cap, and a roll of wrapping paper to knock on the floor with a dramatic flourish, she would tear more shreds in Olivia’s plastic bag full of dvds or dive headlong into a pile of newspapers with the velocity needed to scatter them across the kitchen.

She is 8. She should have outgrown this nonsense, but--at 7 pounds--she really hasn’t outgrown anything.

Plus, especially for the Christmas season, there is a tree to tackle. I know better--well, let’s say I’ve learned better--than to hang anything breakable near the bottom, but you can still make a lovely racket with what is there. If you tire of the basement door game.

The basement door game. That’s the one in which you (and by you, I mean Hazel,) sit at the top of the basement steps, behind the door which is left open just enough so that you can access your food and litter box. You push the door open all the way. I close it, because I don’t like the basement door wide open. You push it open again. I close it. Repeat until you decide you’d now prefer to jump from chair to chair staring at Chessie. Or stare at Rachel. She’s reading Jane Austen, but you can make her notice you’re staring at her. You know you can.

AM 111--where we broadcast mixed metaphors all day, every day

Sometimes going to Quizno’s with a person is the only way to help him feel like you are there for him and you are still “together.” So, though lunch out at Quizno’s (or Noodles, or Lebanese Taverna, or Chipotle,) may not seem like the worthiest of ways to spend one’s time or money, if it accomplishes the above-mentioned aim, it is valuable.

There’s not a lot I can do about Alzheimer’s, but I have, gradually, fine-tuned my personal description of what it does to a brain. And I am full of analogies. There is the one where I think of the brain as being a big bank of lights which, grouped into systems, operates the complexities of cognition like a theatrical kleig set. This image seems especially appropriate once you see a PET scan because that’s exactly what you see--lit and unlit spots.

But I’m failing to conjure just the right analogy to describe how the AD brain inexorably isolates itself as the channels which allow for communication with the outside world break down. A fish out of water, starved for oxygen in an atmosphere that’s full of it? Not quite, because a fish never had lungs to begin with. Maybe (as an especially seasonal metaphor) it’s a cut evergreen in a deep-bucket Christmas tree stand, browning prematurely despite your valiant efforts to keep the bucket full of water...because...its pores have all clogged with sap, and the water cannot be absorbed.

The problem is--if we extend the metaphor to the next ridiculous step in the story--the tree thinks you’re not watering it. So it’s kind of ticked off at you sometimes. And there you are, standing there with a hose.

I know that the problem is a communication one. The interface which allows for new information to enter the equation, outside that which already exists in the head, is broken. Because often the AD person will describe a thought or share a thinking process which has the marks of some fairly complex processing. But, should you try to add a relevant tidbit, or provide some tangential insight, you will find--when he responds as if your contribution has entered the mix--that it has not. He is simply restating the point of view that exists in his head, unreachable by external variables.

That which is new--that which deviates from the pre-existing template--does not compute. To interact with another person in a meaningful way, requires an exchange of information. When the AD person does not receive your signals, it is because his receiver is disconnected, but he thinks it’s because you aren’t broadcasting. Consequently, in addition to feeling unable to follow the ambient conversation in the room, he also feels that you are not attempting to include him, and that is a very difficult situation to correct without resorting to a tone and manner that will be perceived as patronizing (which adds a whole other layer of negative emotional content to the smorgasbord.)

To further complicate the issue, all but the emotionally super-human will find it difficult to sustain the incentive level needed to give and give and give into a relationship where communication and common understanding have failed. Because good relationships are positive feedback loops wherein the energy available to feed the relationship is directly proportional to the nutritional content you derive from it.

Another truth, therefore, is this: Sometimes it’s that your broadcasts are not being received, and sometimes it’s that your station’s power grid has run out of juice and there’s nothing to broadcast.

So, you go to Quizno’s instead, because at least everyone gets to eat.