As one who has a few OCD tendencies, I like to think my life is reasonably well-organized. Kate’s Alzheimer’s has tested that, and I regularly come up short. Take this morning, for example. Kate was up when I returned from my walk; so instead of going to my computer and checking email, I thought I had better change clothes to be ready when she wanted to go to Panera. I also got her morning medicine ready for her, closed down my computer and put it in its case. Then she came out before I had gotten everything ready. When she is ready to go, she doesn’t like to wait on me. I noticed that she was wearing brown shoes with her black slacks. I asked if she had wanted to wear brown with what she was wearing. She said, “No.” I went back to find a pair of black shoes. I looked everywhere without success. Then I decided to look under the furniture in our bedroom. I knew she had been wearing black shoes there last night. I found one shoe under her chair along with some socks and tissues. It is a cold morning; so I then went to get coats for each of us. In the meantime, she had gone outside to pull leaves while waiting for me. As I walked by one of our bedrooms, I noticed that she had a couple of her outfits laid out on the bed. I’m not sure why, but I pulled back the top to one outfit and found one pair of black shoes and the mate to the other black shoe I had found under her chair. I put one pair of shoes in her closet and took the other to give to Kate.
As often happens, I couldn’t’ find Kate’s iPad. She uses it to work jigsaw puzzles at Panera. I used the Locate My iPhone app to find it. Then I rushed back to the kitchen with her shoes in one hand, put on my coat, picked up hers, and got my laptop case with my computer and our iPads, and went outside. She put her coat on right away. We got in the car where she put on her shoes. We arrived at Panera, and I discovered I had left our cups at home. That’s a minor thing, of course, but that is one of the things I always do. We save 80 cents on each drink when we bring our own cups. After we were seated a few minutes, I remembered that we have a luncheon at church tomorrow, and I had not put that on the calendar in my phone. When I reached in my pocket for the phone, I discovered that I had left it charging at home. Each one of these things is of little importance, but the whole episode is a good illustration of how I frequently slip on a variety of things that I might not have done otherwise. If I can just limit this to the unimportant things, I should be fine.
