challenges of the day

I kept sparkling but so hard today…

Snowy ‘lost’ who Chick was today; didn’t recognize that she was her granddaughter, instead pulling out the name of granddaughter who has been lost to us for decades. Strange. She also re-engaged with some older memories and began asking about if there wasn’t a picture missing with some people in it.

She’d started puzzling over it a couple of days ago but couldn’t express what she meant. Today before I left for work she began asking about it again — wasn’t there a picture that used to be next to the couple still hanging across from her.

I figured it out, brought it from the stack in the dining room, and asked if that was it. Yes!

She wanted me to tell her who the people were, who was the fellow standing in the middle. That’s [my older brother]. Oh. Who is the other boy? That’s [my younger brother]. There’s me, there’s you, there’s Pop. Okay.

I leaned the portrait against the wall on the floor beneath the flower picture painted by her grandmother that had slipped in to take the portrait’s place when it agitated her so badly. She pondered on it all day.

Repeatedly she had Chick tell her again and again who people were. Again and again the ‘understanding’ that [my older brother] had been killed was a fresh slashing grief as she relived the newness of the shock of hearing of his death. Chick called me late afternoon and asked me to talk with Snowy as she was bawling over [my older brother]’s loss again. I did the best I could to connect and soon had her chuckling over some silliness I came up with.

Snowy asked me again about the picture, and I pointed out that everyone in it had changed greatly through the years, and, while she didn’t/ won’t remember the conversation, it had the desired effect of settling her down before she headed on to bed.

Then there was the that Chick felt when Snowy hadn’t remembered her as being her granddaughter (if you remember I had that sucker punch, too, in December, and it is heart-deep sad).

Chick had gotten out an album I had made for Snowy a couple of years ago to try to collect family together for her to be reminded (something we had read about in various Alzheimer’s resources), and Snowy pored over this repeatedly this afternoon. She started asking Chick who ‘that girl’ was — that girl was Chick,

and indeed, I’d done a section of several pages of Chick through the years, mostly pictured with Pop, who was her best crony.

Chick, testing Snowy’s memory to see ‘where’ she was [after the time she had with her yesterday, this was appropriate], said, “that’s  your granddaughter”.

“Oh,” Snowy said, “[my other, lost, daughter's name].”

“No,” said Chick, cut to the quick that someone who hadn’t been spoken of or seen in aeons (most of her life) should come so immediately to mind, and not Chick.

“Hmmm. Well, who is this girl?” pointing to a later picture of Chick.

“That’s your other granddaughter.”

Snowy studied the picture and the face for a long time before finally saying, “Oh, Josephine.”

What? To my knowledge there are no Josephines in the family tree, and don’t think even amongst Snowy’s lifelong acquaintance, so why this for a granddaughter — and the one who was sitting right next to her? But she seemed to have gone back in connection to a much earlier time, maybe even before Chick was born. Since yesterday, we aren’t quite sure where in mind she was operating from.

So, that was hard for Chick, even though a better day for Snowy.

I had a challenge at work which, not detailing but, amidst a very productive day of creating documents and turning them back around and out almost as quickly as they were requested and so feeling smiley with myself and my productivity, the chihuahua came in my office and shut the door and dropped a sulfurous rotten egg down in front of me and watched.

OH, my instinct was to pick it up and smash her with it, but prudence (and determination to SPARKLE) prevailed and I realize that to do so I would have to touch it and become stunk up with the sulfurous odor as badly as she was in carrying it in.

I pretty much let it lay there, hid my feelings even from showing through my eyes, bit my tongue (which was dancing in my mouth with a million scalding things that would have felt ‘good’ to say for about a nano of a second and then would have shamed me to myself for giving in to leaping down into the same lower depth as the chihuahua), practiced deep breathing, and more quickly than the chi expected, she was back out of my office and her stink bomb fizzled and dissolved as it rolled out behind her.

Sis demanded to know “what was that?” and then wanted to go whup the chi’s behind, but we talked that impulse down. She (and Chick after she’d called about something and asked me ‘what?’ when she heard the tightness in my voice) insisted that I clue MY boss in on the stink bomb, so I had a chance to do it ‘in passing’, and told him I didn’t want to do anything about it as that would give it and the chi more importance than they had.

He paused then agreed it was the higher path. He noted that among folks who needed to be and were standing on the trap doors, the chi was one. It’s not worth the energy to play that game, so I’m not, bolstered by last week’s determination. Yea, higher ground!

Last challenges of the day/ night, Chick asked me to pick up some chow on my way home, and when I handed over my debit card to pay, it was declined, twice. WTF! Fortunately I could piece together enough cash to cover, and then raced home to go online to check my account.

The debt-helper folks have an agreement to take a payment monthly to stockpile and negotiate down the targeted accounts, but for some reason, after they hit it once today, they turned around and hit it again (which, of course, was WAY more than was in the bank) creating a bounce not only of the second hit, but also froze up my card. GRRR!

I immediately put in a call, but no one was working a night shift for me to get through to find out WTF! All I could do was send a message to my bank and tell them that the 2nd hit was not authorized for February and that I was trying to get in touch with the hitter. And Chick is going to get me up ‘early’ tomorrow so I can try to get through before I go in to the office.

Sigh. I’m still sitting here thinking about the positive things from the day and knowing that they are more important than the challenges and the hurtful and the hits. Why do the negative things seem to overwhelm the positive things and have more impact?

I’m going to end this day reaching for more positive — maybe a few wins in a few score WCS games on Pogo (I know I’m NOT getting that badge), maybe to drowse on off to sleep watching tonight’s recording of the In Treatment episode, certainly to be snuggled up with most of my cat herd osmosising their warm, semi-unconditional love into me from their various perches on and around me.

Tomorrow is another chance to see how I handle some other challenges (as well as tie up tonight’s), and hope that I do okay like today — don’t we evolve when we learn from what we’ve gone through and adapt and extrapolate that to deal better the next time(s) around? Does that mean that I’m actually ‘growing up’ a little? Maybe by the time I hit SS-age.