TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2010

Carol sometimes assures me that she can handle her medicine herself. I insist on helping her with her patch, now, but usually when I check her medicine she takes it fine (as long as I remind her to take it). So, today was one of those days she marched her medicine back to her room. A little while longer I heard her say, "Stop worrying about it," and a few other phrases that made it clear that he was yelling at her about something. I heard the garage door slam but patiently sat eating my heated up lasagna. I know at this point that Carol will come in at any minute with her purse, and like predicted there she is, looking sad as ever, hoping I will help her find her credit card and maybe her driver's license too. "We've looked in your purse a couple dozed times this week, Carol, and you have your driver's license. Did you need to go somewhere? Is Grandpa going somewhere?" No, he's actually looking for his driver's license. "I didn't take it," she keeps saying, "He keeps saying I took it, and i can't find my keys. The engine hasn't ran for awhile so it'll probably be dead and that would be just HORRIBLE!". I tell her that it's always hard for me to find something when I am frantic and upset; that worrying about everything at once is a bad idea and we need to give ourselves time to find the credit card. "But, we need to get medicine." I know for a fact they have another week and that I wrote on the calendar that we are going on Saturday. "Carol, sometimes when you get frantic like this, it means you didn't take your medicine yesterday. Can we go look?" So we find out that today and yesterday she took the cream colored pill but not the white one. I can't tell if this is because the thing she keeps them in is white and sort of blends in. I have her take the missing pill and everything is smoothed over for her. Now I go find Grandpa. "What are you looking for?" "My keys!" He snaps. "Ok, did you look in your pockets." He pulls out his keys. "Aren't those them?" "No, these are for the Ford." Well, Bill is sending the ones for her car. "When is he coming down?" So i go over the arrangement we have with Bill and the keys again. Then I go to my room to get away from the same 4 frantic questions asked everyday. Within a half hour Carol knocks on my door to announce she found her credit card in the laundry basket.
Later Grandpa finds me in the tiki hut reading and says he was making sure I was ok (?!?!). We talk about how he built everything on this property, we talk about his neighbor and his barracuda (a nickname he finds hilarious, but I don't even get when repeated for the fifth time), we talk about fishing off his deck and boats and Miami and snorkeling and his grand kids, and we also talk about me. In a strangely cinematic moment with my Grandpa, he tells me I'll figure everything out down here. Then I heat up leftover lasagna and he tells me "whatever this pile is looks good, kid."

To sum up--

Daily sanity level of house: 6 (out of 10)

Erika's daily activity away from house: Watching the Twins vs Rays game at a nearby bar but ending up talking about German expressionism with the bartender, mostly.

Daily lesson: Maybe I need a night job since all of the drama is during the day