A problem with Lily was that she could be a little too blunt and a bit too matter of fact, she was getting better but sometimes she could put her foot in her mouth. Miss honey thanked Lily before going over to the door and opened it for Evelyn to come in, "hey I'm just here to check on my daughter and to see if she needed a you know what." Evelyn said with a smile before walking over to her daughter.
I’ve spent much of this week as a kind of refugee in my own home, my beloved having some of her girlfriends up from southern (cooler) states in search of palm trees, a usable swimming pool and vats of chardonnay since Saturday.
I don’t mind her friends coming up (mostly) and the endless cheese-and-wine-time sessions have been nice although in my case, the usual potentiator for peeing in my sleep. If there have been any dry nights lately I haven’t noticed them.
One of these visiting friends is an intellectual outlier but known within their social group for her big heartedness. This I believe is a kind of damnation with faint praise. Whilst she is loyal, affectionate and indefatigably cheerful, I’ve met more interesting chickens than her some of which were laying in supermarket freezers.
We’ll call her “Olive”.
As nature abhors a vacuum, so does Olive a silence. There is neither a pause nor lull in dialog that she does not, within milliseconds, like some kind of uninterruptible power supply switch in to fill with her apparently endless capacity to discuss what might be snacked on next, the pursuit of minor physical comforts, the relief of ailments and the somewhat mundane urban adventures of her many children. Religion, politics and current affairs are all strangers in the land that is Olive’s mind.
Olive is also deeply reluctant to be left in her own company (I can understand this). Neither solitary contemplation nor companionable silences are of interest to her.
So why in the @#$ did beloved and friend #1 see fit to leave her alone in the house with me?
Quite early on Tuesday morning, I’d thought (well, been TOLD) that all the girls were going off for a sunrise walk along the beach. I’d arisen after their dawn departure and savouring some peace and solitude was sitting comfortably, although somewhat squishily at my computer in my as-yet-unchanged night nappy scanning the news sites.
Imagine my surprise and at best alloyed delight when quite suddenly and quite unexpectedly, Olive burst into my study and, sensing silence, immediately began spraying about sentences as if they were the water that might douse the unruly fires of my curiosity.
Clad in a large, techni-coloured floral dressing grown she looked AND sounded like a giant parrot.
Clad in a sodden night nappy under puffy white terry-lined plastic pants, a “Muppets” t-shirt and (mercifully), a threadbare pair of black cotton shorts that only partly concealed said nappy, I looked like a freak.
Fortunately, I was seated at my desk with my back to the wall and my front largely obscured by the wall of computer monitors that is my desk. If I’d stood up though, the bulk would be unmistakable. I was dressed for bedwetting, not for the cat-walk.
I swiftly learned she’d felt simply too tired to join the others for their early morning beach walk, preferring instead to sleep in before toast, cereal, fruit, tea, orange juice and a vigorous round of updating her social media pages and getting on for morning tea.
I’d hoped to go back to my news websites until she left the room whereupon I could skulk to our bedroom and change myself but Olive was having none of this.
To my dismay, misconstruing my monosyllabic, non-participatory responses to her attempts at engagement as a sign that she should try harder, she turned her limited attention to the bookshelves that lined my study wall.
She wanted to know about each book. Well no, she didn’t want to know about each book. She wanted to quench the silence in the air by asking about each book, presumably forgetting or failing to comprehend any answers I might have provided at roughly the same velocity at which I could articulate them. She had lots of questions about these books as she’d read none of them. This wasn’t surprising to me. Mostly they didn’t have pictures.
Her questions about the collected works of Orwell were disturbingly similar to her questions about a Javascript manual, and then an autobiography of Elton John that I had no idea we owned. Somehow my answers were segued into a complex monologue about her daughter-in-law’s tragic lapse in not yet producing the grandchildren she craves.
I felt it was possible that my night nappy was by now leaking onto my chair.
It was nearly 10 minutes before I could convince Olive to leave my study by asking that she could put the kettle on for both of us and I would re-join her out on the deck. Delighted and distracted by the prospect of a second cup of tea, she rushed to the kitchen and I was able to scuttle out of the room unobserved.
I doubt Olive noticed anything anyway. The dark horse in that race would be beloved’s other friend staying with us: a senior nurse clinician specialising in geriatric medicine. As such, I do wonder if she may not be an experienced adult nappy spotter but fortunately at this point, she was walking on a beach a mile away. Also in possession of a razor-sharp mind and that characteristically black and acerbic sense of humour that medical professionals so often require, I don’t mind her company at all.
It was a whole week of disposables though. Wet cloth nappies, bulky midriffs and non-existent odour control technologies with a house full of guests just wasn’t a combo that I felt in any way comfortable about. I’ve just pushed the wheelie bin down our cul-de-sac for the rubbish collection tomorrow. Groaning with a whole week of throw-away nappies along with alcohol and snack debris, I briefly considered towing it down there with the car.
Their flight home left yesterday and so, trying to salvage at least one re-usable night, I’m writing this in a wet Rearz pre-fold night diaper. Shortly I’ll change into cloth pull-ups and go shopping looking like a tele-tubby but I don’t care.
My second PSA test came in this week. Unsurprising, strike #2, producing another non-urgent medical recall request. This time the GP is unavailable until the end of the month so it’s quite a wait.
Oh boy. With how often those flickering lights have been mentioned, I have a feeling that something big is about to happen.
In my opinion, depending on how the rules for caregivers are setup, I’d make an agreement with Sophia and take option 2 and once a lot of stuff is fixed, she quits this job and we get a place together with the money and she can still take care of me with less things wrong and hopefully be able to help learn to manage anything else or possibly fix anything else that can.