Heat is a problem. I
mapped out the whole day, down to the last second, knowing what was coming
next. The heat couldn’t last. Not a cloud in the sky. This is Scotland
The morning rolled in and brought grey with
it out of nowhere. That’s when I mapped out the day. My weather forecast. We’ll
see the sun poking through here, there, stoking the heat that’s trapped under
these clouds. Then the clouds thicken and blend into one another, losing shapes.
Just a sheet of grey.
Soon enough, it’ll rain. Big wet buttons of
water. I’m in the middle of caring routine by now, and I forecast that we’ll
navigate our way upstairs, the visiting carer, me, and the cared-for, and it’ll
rain by the time I head back down to tidy this or that.
Thunder won’t be long in rumbling through.
Up the stairs we head. Music is on. Light to
see by. It is supernaturally dull. I make it back downstairs alone and head for
the door. Opening it, I feel the force of air shifting away from somewhere
else. Then it starts. Splash. I stand out in it for a moment. The contrast
kicks in. Days of sunny heat. Now heat trapped under the clouds is chasing
itself around, trying to flee the wrath of the thunder gods.
Paperwork intrudes. One of the boss carers
comes in with updated files. She couldn’t reach me on the phone. My phone is
all over the place. We blame the weather, as the carer’s phone is all over the
place as well. In truth, this is coincidence.
One of those days.
I’m glad of the
miniature storm that rumbles on as carers disappear. Thunder is nothing. It
signals a shaking of the weather system. A return to rain.
Weather comes and
goes. (What the fuck is there if the weather goes? Non-weather?) Paperwork
slides in and out. I take random calls at random times and grant access to this
carer or that nutritionist. There is no sign of bath chair guy.
He declared he’d be back in a day or a month
with the missing part. The missing part is an entire bath chair. That’s how
this works. There’s no way to replace the broken half of one bath chair hinge.
No, the entire chair must leave. Yes, you can unscrew the broken half-piece and
screw in a replacement. No, they don’t do replacement parts…just the one
part…the whole chair.
The hospital bed maintenance people are so
keen that one of them wants to visit a day after the official visit is over and
done with. I can’t oblige, walking along in the heat. He’d take twenty minutes
to reach the house. I’ll do the journey in three. That’s hardly the point. The
bed was just maintained and that’s less hassle for all concerned if I politely
decline the offer.
I politely decline the offer.
Shredding is a feature of dementia care.
It’s important to shred documents containing details…and that means all
documents. I shredded four letters offering electrical appliance insurance.
They were duplicate letters. As if the company sending duplicate letters to the
woman with poor short-term memory only had employees with short-term memory.
I believe I have an okay memory. It’s
surprising to me that other people tell me I have an amazing memory. If their
memories are shitty, they’ll tell me that again soon enough. I get to make
memory jokes…I’m a dementia carer.
What is good and bad in dementia memories?
Bad events, negative things, appear to have a greater hold on the mind,
unfortunately. Nothing stays in the memory like music, though, and I hear regularly
from the people at daycare that my mither
was singin’ like a lintie.
You could guess that
means singing like a linnet, and you’d be right. A smile to the face and a
sense of happiness in song. This is the good in dementia memories. And this is
why I leave the music channel on the TV in the background. A musical background
becomes the whole landscape, for the confused.
I don’t have a solid
subject to waffle on about. There were so many minor things that
happened…random, tiny details, this here and that there…
If this blog post has a subject, it’s no subject. Weather. Shredding
paperwork. Singing. Odd little jobs that needed seen to. I killed a jungle out
the front door. Timing the use of weedkiller is critical. Weather plays the
biggest part, there.
I need a dry sunny day, with, to use my
mother’s expression, the sun splitting
the trees. Split the trees the sun soon does. I want to hit the garden
after the daily carer has been and gone. One more part of routine out of the
way. And it’s important to finish eating. The risk of contaminating food with
weedkiller must be zero.
Weedkiller is hidden away, out of sight, and
mind, and reach. The dangerous liquid is in a massive jug that’s too heavy for
an arthritis-sufferer to lift. Mostly, the gardens are plant-free. There are
patches for flowers. The paving and the gravel occasionally sprout intruder
plants.
In a weedy year, I’ll buy two refills for
the sprayer. I don’t go daft with weedkiller as there’s not much jungle to kill
off. By quirks of wind and rain, soil blows in and builds up in corners,
creating a new garden that must be sprayed, scraped up, and done away with.
Weedkiller is something to use with extreme
caution, even before taking dementia into account. I haven’t killed anyone yet.
Though I have slaughtered entire jungles of plants. If I’m found dead in the
garden with green strangulation marks and a stomach full of weedkiller,
remember…
Plant Revenge is real.
In other news, not
that this is news…it’s non-news…in the rest of the non-news, supermarket
deliveries rolled over and died. I don’t know what the hell’s going on there.
It’s easier to order online and take deliveries, but lately everything vital
was out of stock on the day…
First it was milk. Strawberry milk. I
detoured into town on the day of delivery to take care of loads of town
business, and I picked up the milk that was available in the afternoon…even
though the daily delivery was in the afternoon. Timing was right off, in the
supermarket.
Next it was rolls. Supply problems with
these for weeks. And I think I’ll finally abandon buying rolls. The strawberry
milk is a vital lifeline for someone who gave up almost all regular foodstuffs
in the wake of changing tastes brought on by dementia.
And the rolls were for me. They felt
essential. But now, I don’t know. I just can’t be arsed playing Russian
roll-ette with a supermarket over the substituted bread-based lunacy that does
or doesn’t end up on my doorstep on a weekly basis.
If a packet turns up, it’s random. And if it
doesn’t turn up, I receive an e-mail which tells me Mr Kingsmill regrets he’s unable to lunch today, sir or madam. I’d
consider things more coolly in cooler weather…which arrives with a frequency
that can only be described as seriously Scottish.
Caring’s been all
over the effing place, this weather. After being ambushed by the strawberry
milk problem, and noting the irony in waiting for a non-delivery of milk before
I could then go into town for the milk that I knew full-well was there…I had to
switch brands of strawberry milk.
That led to merry chaos over the number of
bottles I bought in. To keep the milk budget from exceeding the gross national
output of a medium-sized country, I changed to…those bottles. The price was
almost the same, but the number of bottles shot up.
The same strawberry milk at slightly higher
cost in a million more bottles. I played the fridge like a Rubik’s cube, trying
to stack all this extra plastic in there.
And that’s what
happens. The replacement carer doesn’t make the regular appointment on Monday,
early, and somehow goes down on the list to appear by surprise for an early
appointment that should be later on the Thursday. These carers always apologise
for something that clearly isn’t their fault.
I tidy a whole load
of shit. Make things safer for myself at the top of the stairs. It’s not a
landing. Instead, it’s an extension to the bathroom. I see a way to remove the
plastic shelves and make way for a bedside table. I can slide the handy chair
into position under the bedside table in a way that wasn’t feasible with the
plastic shelves taking up more space than Stonehenge .
For that change to work, I had to rearrange
the cupboard and make room for towels. Moses had an easier time of it, parting
the Red Sea . Towels came off plastic shelves in
plain sight and went to wooden ones hidden in darkness behind a cupboard door.
There was much shoogling of furniture. The
bedside table didn’t come from the bedside. It emerged from the kitchen. The
long and the short of it is that the kitchen is tidier and the landing is
tidier and everything danced around in a complicated circle until the dust
settled…and all was tidy in the world.
Life went on in this fashion for centuries,
and I had coffee. D and F sit next to each other on the
keyboard. I mention this only after typing cod
instead of cof when trying to write
about coffee. This reminded me that I
had to change the fish order at the supermarket as well. Shopping. It’s all out
of stock, and switched around to the nearest electronic equivalent.
This is why I stockpile coffee.
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