Skills and the !@#$ Air Conditioner

Lately the morning schedule around here has changed a bit. Joe has been getting up and getting himself a banana and a pudding rather than me trying to make him a breakfast. He seems perfectly content, and I'm happy too. I can then make him a lunch after noon, and it's easier on both of us.

Lola's mental skills have declined so much it's startling. She can't even answer the phone, much less dial it. She has trouble operating the TV remote, barely able to handle turning the volume up and down. Yesterday she accidentally muted it, and just sat there watching a mute TV. It finally dawned on me there was no volume, and I saw the muting notification in the bottom of the screen. I asked her if could read that, and she said she couldn't. She claims she can see and doesn't wear her glasses more than she does wear them, but she can't read large print on the TV screen. Those are just a few things I can think of at the moment.

Joe's verbal skills are sad. The words and names for things are slippery little demons for him. Mostly he can't come up with them and just points or says "those things." The things of import to him are centered around what he can physically do, which is next to nothing. He spends his day obsessed with mowing or raking the yard, sweeping the porches, and emptying the little waste cans in the house.

He's taken to coming in and sitting down beside me on the couch. I suppose he wants company. Yet, conversation with him is about impossible, so mostly he just sits there and eventually nods off.

The friggin air conditioner has gone off again. This time I checked all the fuses, and they all seem good, so I'm going to have to call in a HVAC repairman. Dammit. Just when I think I've got things to where we can repair the plumbing, something else with a higher priority comes up. At least it isn't in the triple digits now, and I've proven to myself that I won't die living in 85°. I simply go into a fog and can barely move from in front of a fan.

This bag of lids got thrown out the other day. They are lids to little plastic containers I bought to put pudding in. They were perfect for one portion, easy to handle, easy to get, and something Joe could recognize. The only problem? He couldn't grok they weren't disposable. So the only thing left from the last six months were the lids, and I don't do that anymore.