DEMENTIA CARE: POLITELY TELLING PEOPLE TO FUCK OFF.

There's a knock at the fucking door.
   I manage parcels as best I can...and I'm expecting a parcel, so the sight of someone in a high-visibility jacket hints at the arrival of that parcel.
   It's early night. The clouds rolled in and rained down hard and fast. Sun dropped early. Streetlights are blazing away.
   In short, it's unusual for a parcel to arrive at that time. BUT...I know from the semi-decent parcel tracking that it is just barely possible for the parcel to land on the door at that time.
   I open the door and my heart falls. A power company representative. This is the second visit at the distance of some months. I remember the first visit.
   The visitor came across as a con-merchant then, and, sticking to the same script, comes across as a massive con-merchant this time.
   That company handed out a shit script. I say this as an author - dodgy company, your patter is fucking mince.

I keep it short this time around. (And I kept it short the first time.) So I explained that I was a carer and had other responsibilities, so I'd be closing the door as I had to go.
   This was as polite as I could be, telling someone to fuck off without actually saying fuck off.

It's true that I do have to manage the time. And I'll make the time for certain things, people, events, routines...
   But I don't make the time for the door-to-door sales-pitch, on a winter's night, with the rain and darkness offered to me as an invitation to drag the poor sod out of the wild and inside for a chat.
   No.
   Politely fuck off.
   Do I feel bad about that? No, I don't. The sales-pitch sounded like a con. I didn't care if the pitch was a con or not. It's vital to protect someone with dementia...I can't let myself be distracted by a con. That leads past me to trying a con on a person with poor concentration. And that's when the knives come out.

In other news, I added a gadget to the home. This is a frame that fits into a chair, with handles protruding to make it easier to rise from the chair...supposedly.
   Astonishingly, the frame fit right into the chair almost perfectly. A kick and a push and it was in place. Does it work? I tried it out. Worked for me.
   As usual, it'll take a little while for the new routine to settle in. The frame wasn't an immediate hit with the cared-for. Few gadgets are appreciated at first. One day, the gadget is accepted as if it'd always been there. (Or it is quietly retired. But that's a different story with a gloomier finish.)

Gadgets are in or out. People are in or out, too. You'll learn that it's important to politely tell certain people to fuck off. I learned that early in life, long before I was a dementia carer.