September 3, 2006
Figures. We hire the most professional-sounding housecleaner we’ve ever interviewed and she doesn’t show up for her first day of work (today) and doesn’t call. I’ll never understand why people do that kind of thing.
So, anyway, it’s back to interviewing housekeepers :-(
I called my mom this morning. Among other things, she told us how Gary inspires her – whenever she gets frustrated at how long it takes her to do things that she used to be much quicker at, she thinks of how much longer it takes Gary to do things and how well he is handling that reality (when Gary heard this, he commented that it’s not like he doesn’t get frustrated sometimes, but I said I am sure that happens a lot less often and to much less a degree than it would to most other people).
Today my main organizational accomplishment was sock sorting. I went through a huge bag of all my socks that the volunteers had collected together. I found thirty pairs. Very few of those are wearable, actually, as most are full of holes or stained or stretched out of fit because they’re so old. Others are thick woolen things only wearable on a seasonal basis. But for right now I was mainly interested in just finding matches. Besides the pairs, I came up with fifty-two unmatched socks. I decided to no longer wait for their mates to appear from the fourth dimension (since they haven’t in the past twenty years) and threw them out.
Our excursion today was to the mall to buy Dockers for Gary – he needs to get them with the waist a size bigger than before the accident (even though he weighs less, his abdominal muscles don’t function to keep guts tight). He had brought with him a pair of Dockers he had gotten over the internet to exchange them in the store of the same name, and after we went to the counter the woman informed us we were in the wrong store. Naturally, neither of us had looked at the name of the store we had entered, each of us following the other assuming the other knew where he or she was going. A foolish assumption on our part, and you would think we would know better after twenty-five years ;-).
We went to the correct store, and it turned out they didn’t have the size Gary wanted, so he will have to get them over the internet after all. The excursion wasn’t a total loss, however, as I did get five new pairs of socks. Plus we ran into the Mincs and had a nice chat with them. Oh, and Gary got an ice cream cone on our way back home, which is probably the only reason he wanted to go out anyway ;-)
During the transfer out of the car, I heard some clunking and told Gary I thought he was hitting his knee on the dashboard and that he needed to be conscious of that, as its happened before. He said maybe it was his head that was hitting the doorframe. So I asked, “Well, you could feel it if it was your head, couldn’t you? You can feel this, right?” I gave him a playful knock on the head. “Ow,” he faked. “Don’t do that. Now I have a C minus two injury.”
I assume it was because he was thinking of the LETA bus that he then wanted to see how far down our driveway he could get in his wheelchair (with me with him, of course – he had the sense not to be comfortable doing this alone). The last part, we confirmed, is definitely too dangerous for us to attempt even with me hanging onto the back of his chair.
We had a Blackjack breakthrough in the afternoon – the cat came up to Gary while he was in his wheelchair, asking for petting. :-)
During our evening routine, Gary asked if I wanted to stay overnight in Atlanta when we go back for Gary’s follow-up appointment with his Shepherd doc at the end of this month, or if I just wanted to drive up for the day. He noted that if we just drove up for the day, we’d have to get up a bit earlier than usual but would be home by late afternoon. He then noted that if we stayed overnight that we’d have to contend with finding a suitable place to stay, that he would have to sleep in a regular bed, which he isn’t used to and would require some adjustments to his/our routine, and that I would have to pack up all the supplies he needs and also all the supplies I would need, which I’d then have to unpack in Atlanta, and then I’d have to do pack and unpack them all again the next day.
I’ll bet you can guess what my choice was.
Figures. We hire the most professional-sounding housecleaner we’ve ever interviewed and she doesn’t show up for her first day of work (today) and doesn’t call. I’ll never understand why people do that kind of thing.
So, anyway, it’s back to interviewing housekeepers :-(
I called my mom this morning. Among other things, she told us how Gary inspires her – whenever she gets frustrated at how long it takes her to do things that she used to be much quicker at, she thinks of how much longer it takes Gary to do things and how well he is handling that reality (when Gary heard this, he commented that it’s not like he doesn’t get frustrated sometimes, but I said I am sure that happens a lot less often and to much less a degree than it would to most other people).
Today my main organizational accomplishment was sock sorting. I went through a huge bag of all my socks that the volunteers had collected together. I found thirty pairs. Very few of those are wearable, actually, as most are full of holes or stained or stretched out of fit because they’re so old. Others are thick woolen things only wearable on a seasonal basis. But for right now I was mainly interested in just finding matches. Besides the pairs, I came up with fifty-two unmatched socks. I decided to no longer wait for their mates to appear from the fourth dimension (since they haven’t in the past twenty years) and threw them out.
Our excursion today was to the mall to buy Dockers for Gary – he needs to get them with the waist a size bigger than before the accident (even though he weighs less, his abdominal muscles don’t function to keep guts tight). He had brought with him a pair of Dockers he had gotten over the internet to exchange them in the store of the same name, and after we went to the counter the woman informed us we were in the wrong store. Naturally, neither of us had looked at the name of the store we had entered, each of us following the other assuming the other knew where he or she was going. A foolish assumption on our part, and you would think we would know better after twenty-five years ;-).
We went to the correct store, and it turned out they didn’t have the size Gary wanted, so he will have to get them over the internet after all. The excursion wasn’t a total loss, however, as I did get five new pairs of socks. Plus we ran into the Mincs and had a nice chat with them. Oh, and Gary got an ice cream cone on our way back home, which is probably the only reason he wanted to go out anyway ;-)
During the transfer out of the car, I heard some clunking and told Gary I thought he was hitting his knee on the dashboard and that he needed to be conscious of that, as its happened before. He said maybe it was his head that was hitting the doorframe. So I asked, “Well, you could feel it if it was your head, couldn’t you? You can feel this, right?” I gave him a playful knock on the head. “Ow,” he faked. “Don’t do that. Now I have a C minus two injury.”
I assume it was because he was thinking of the LETA bus that he then wanted to see how far down our driveway he could get in his wheelchair (with me with him, of course – he had the sense not to be comfortable doing this alone). The last part, we confirmed, is definitely too dangerous for us to attempt even with me hanging onto the back of his chair.
We had a Blackjack breakthrough in the afternoon – the cat came up to Gary while he was in his wheelchair, asking for petting. :-)
During our evening routine, Gary asked if I wanted to stay overnight in Atlanta when we go back for Gary’s follow-up appointment with his Shepherd doc at the end of this month, or if I just wanted to drive up for the day. He noted that if we just drove up for the day, we’d have to get up a bit earlier than usual but would be home by late afternoon. He then noted that if we stayed overnight that we’d have to contend with finding a suitable place to stay, that he would have to sleep in a regular bed, which he isn’t used to and would require some adjustments to his/our routine, and that I would have to pack up all the supplies he needs and also all the supplies I would need, which I’d then have to unpack in Atlanta, and then I’d have to do pack and unpack them all again the next day.
I’ll bet you can guess what my choice was.
posted by Peg Daniels at 8:06 PM
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