I’ve been encouraged by the success we’ve had with the Monday sitter’s getting Kate up and dressed. I was prepared to try the same thing with our Wednesday and Friday sitter. That didn’t work on Wednesday because Kate was up so early. I thought yesterday might be the opportunity I was looking for, but I changed my mind (a couple of times).
I really like to have lunch with Kate before leaving, so I decided to play some soft music about 10:15. I thought that would help her wake up gently, and we could eat together before Mary arrived. At 11:15, she was still sleeping soundly. I changed my mind again. I decided it was better to let her sleep and have Mary take care of getting her up and to lunch. I walked back to the bedroom a few minutes before noon and discovered she was sitting up on the side of the bed. She wanted to shower. She was much more alert than the previous day and needed less help getting her shower though she welcomed help dressing. By the time she was ready to go it was almost 1:00. That’s the time Mary was to arrive. I called her at 12:30 and asked that she meet us at the restaurant. That worked out well, but having the sitter with us for an hour meant I had only three hours on my own. I skipped the Y and spent about 45 minutes at Starbucks working on a book of my dad’s emails and autobiographical notes. Then I had coffee with Mark Harrington for another hour before going back home.
The good news was that meeting the sitter at the restaurant provided a smooth transition for me to let Mary take Kate back home. Kate was very receptive to that. I had set the TV for them to watch YouTube Christmas specials. They did that the whole time I was gone.
After dinner, I watched the evening news. Then I turned on a video of an old (1995) Julie Andrews concert. Kate enjoyed watching but could never remember who the singer was. I kept telling her, but she couldn’t remember, nor did she remember having seen her in person two other times. One of those times was in the summer of 2016. Last night she had no recollection at all of who Julie Andrews is.
She got up later to look for her night clothes but didn’t know where to go. I took her to the room where she keeps her clothes and got her a night gown. She wanted to use the bathroom while I returned to our bedroom. In a few minutes I heard her call, “Hey.” When I got to her, she was standing in the hallway and said, “I didn’t know where to go.” I walked ahead of her as she followed me to our bedroom. On the way, she said, “This is a nice place.” I said, “So you like it?” She said, “Yes, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, I do.”
