January 6, 2022

The loneliness sets in.  We went out to Canale's on New Years Eve, about 6:30.  There's a pretty waitress there.  I just needed to see other human beings.  Mom enjoyed it.  We got home without arguing.  The memory of the pretty food runner reminded me of the waitress, and when I asked, McKenzie only works Sunday day.  We'd run into her as our server weeks before on a Sunday night, after I got out of a yoga weekend I really had to struggle through.  Then we went out.   Mom got difficult at the end of dinner, and getting her to the bathroom and then helping with her coat I forgot to sign the credit card tab, such that the beautiful young, kind, somewhat sassy waitress, maybe 20, if that, had to follow us out to the car.  So I get out of the car and profusely apologize to her, and she tells me she just didn't want me leaving my card behind.  I tipped her forty on one hundred, and then I had to go back in and get my stainless steel jotter pen, still on the table, as if the night needed some proof I'd a long day, scrambled by the end.  As I went out I quietly told her how hard it is to be dealing with dementia, and when I got mom back to the car she was still terse with me.  I'd texted my brother about how we might call Jack from the restaurant, as we sat in the booth, but as I soon as I pulled out my phone she turned on me for being rude at the table.

Three glasses over dinner, leftovers of Chicken with Lemon and Artichoke, then a long nap, and then around 11:30 I stir again, and then because it's New Years Eve I have some Beaujolais, and wake up shaking on New Year's Day.

She comes down the stairs again, calling my name, but calmer and in better humor than usual.  I served her half a convenience store tuna sandwich an hour ago, and she went back upstairs.  Now she's back again.  The cat seems to have diarrhea.  After he came back in from stoop, not going very far, 18 degrees, layer of snow and then a dusting on top.  He took some water from his bowl.  He wasn't even interested in the dry food he usually crunches on.  No interest in catnip.  

He goes away quietly and finds his spot on the top of the sofa.  I'll clean the hatbox later.

I give her the nightly pill, the upgraded dose of Memantine.  That's enough to make me happy.  And she didn't even fight me.  I pour her a small glass of the Yellow Tail Pure Bright chardonnay, low in sugar, 9.6 %.  She tells me she doesn't know how to get back upstairs, she tells me, but her mood is surprisingly consistent, and even some calm to it.  She makes it upstairs.  The cat seems to be feeling better.

Art.  A combination of common touch, jokes, of dipping down into the communal reservoir.  I

I've spent too much time of mine being alone.

I put up one of my little improvised sketches, of grandpa telling the children, in some form of Abe Lincoln backwoods accent, one of the tales of King Tanowando and The Settlers.  Up on Facebook.  I get amusement from them at night, after mom has stopped coming to down to visit me, wanting to be fed, and the cat too.  

The next day, Monday January Third, the world goes back to work.  It's cold out.

I feel I'm still getting over something, but it's hard not to feel ashamed.  I texted a long Whats App note to Bruno the Chef over there in Portugal, responding to his wishing me a happy new year and how am I doing, and the Covid is driving everyone crazy.

There are the dishes to tackle.  Mom hit me two times in the night, saying she was "starving," first a tuna fish sandwich, then a rising dough crust frozen pizza, as she sits around at the table, looking over at me.  The abyss again.  And what help does spirituality or religion of any form do for you but just drive you mad.  Great.

The paper grocery bag has a topping of Woodchuck Cider Pearsecco cans, light blue.   

The cost of making humor and comedy is apparent in the morning.

A distant Facebook friend--she teaches architectural history in Paris--gives me a compliment on a video that iPhoto put together about Spring 2001.  Mom and I going out to Sterling Nature Center.  She tells me she remembers seeing me freshman year down in the basement of Frost Library.  I blew that one two, along with other ones I remember, Elena, Tina...

Then even worse, becoming a lone asshole up at Plimpton, the old DKE house, with Sir Isaac Newton's fireplace, while by buddies lived together down in B Dorm, and Jeffrey kept the same nocturnal schedule I did.  The lonesome country boy, Farmer Ted, the Feral Ted Beast.

Where do the educated go these days...  No G.I. Bill, no FDR, no free masters degree...  No jobs in teaching, but for the thoroughbreds.  

Mother Earth is poor.  She has been plundered, to make some wealthy business men.  But where there is wealth, there is no Jesus Christ, not much honest spirituality, as Francis, both the original Saint, a visionary, and the current Pope.

But all these good thoughts don't help so much when I wake up.  I only brighten after paying a few bills, as much as it hurts.  I hear mom stirring, so I go up and check on her, and she tells me she has a bit of a cold, but her mood seems fine, and when I've checked in on her earlier she was sleeping heavily.

The sky is grey.  I don't feel motivated to read my yoga books.

This situation will bog you down.  Trying to write will bog you down, and leave you with nothing, and no life either.  You end up doing dishes and letting the cat in and out, doing the recycling, but pondering whether or not to remove the pile of newspapers building up by mom's chair.  

And sometimes, at night, or by day, I ask myself, or I ask God, how is this all worth it, first the suffering of writing, second for the lack of the dignity of employment, the lack of dignity of having no family of my own, but tied in by fate to my aging mother with dementia.

And what began as an odd and too much isolated curiosity towards earthly part saintly things of a youth's interest, that all gets worn down.

I do the dishes, at 3 in the morning, stirring from a long nap.

Now it's five in the morning.  I've recently watched Wim Wenders documentary of Pope Francis, Man of His Word, and I've enjoyed the portrayal of the original, Saint Francis.  

I've having some Beaujolais.  With everything going on, isolation sets in.