The Rest of the Day

In my previous post, I said that Kate had slept late yesterday. Here is the rest of the story. Mary arrived right on time at 1:00. I told her that Kate was still asleep but would probably be up soon. Then I left for Panera to get a bite to eat before going to the Y. During lunch, I began to feel bad that Kate would wake up to find that I wasn’t there. I decided to go back home, wake her, tell her I was leaving for the Y, and that Mary would be with her. That made me feel better, but I realize that she probably forgot that pretty quickly. That was a few minutes before 2:00.

I took a short spin on the stationary bike at the Y and then went to Starbucks to meet my friend, Mark Harrington. We get together almost every Friday after I leave the Y. At 4:00, I got a call from Mary. She said they were at Panera and wanted to know what Kate usually ate.

I got home just before 5:00. Kate and Mary were in the family room. Everything was fine though I did notice a large stack of towels that Mary had put on the dryer. She had apparently picked them off the floor after Kate’s shower. When I went back to our bathroom I noticed two cabinet drawers were open. That’s where I keep our hand towels and wash clothes. There were none in either drawer. I did see one wash cloth and hand towel that appeared to have been used and thrown on the counter. In addition, I found a pair of my underwear and wondered how it had gotten there. Later, I noticed that the drawer where I keep my underwear was open. Underwear was missing. This morning as I was checking each bathroom for things I needed to wash I found another pair.

I’ll never know exactly what motivated her, but I think she was looking for her things and couldn’t remember where they are kept. Her memory of the various rooms in the house and the location of things within them is getting weaker. This can only get worse. It calls on me to be more aware of the time she gets up so that I can guide her where to go and where to find things. I had hoped that putting out her clothes on the chair beside her side of the bed would solve this, but she seems to forget and/or not see them when she gets up. It is also possible that she sees them, goes to take her shower, and forgets that her clothes were out.

Normally, we go out to a nearby pizza place on Friday. Sometimes we go shortly after I get back home. Other times it is as late as 6:00. It’s a popular place, and I try to beat the crowd. I thought about Kate’s having had breakfast/lunch after 4:00 and thought we might need to eat a little later than usual. Then I thought about the times she is ready to eat the next meal as early as an hour or two after the previous one. My next thought was “Why don’t we do something different tonight?” We have a very nice Italian restaurant not too far from us, but we don’t eat there often. I made reservations at 6:00, and we had a really good dinner. It was a nice change from our Friday night routine.

When we got home, I watched a little of the news while Kate worked on her iPad. Because Kate had slept so late, I thought she would have trouble going to sleep. I was wrong. I played a portion of our DVD of Fiddler on the Roof. She enjoyed it but was tired. She went to bed about her normal time. It had been a very short day for her, but she never realized it.