Conversing in dementia

My best friend Kim let me know last week, in case I had forgotten, that my life is frought with irony. She's right, and what's even stranger is that irony was one of my favorite devices as an English major at Rutgers when I was an undergraduate. I lloked for it in every book I read, anticipated it. When I went to film school after I graduated, it was the same thing, but with a keen critical eye.
Last week, my nana who is an old Italian lady of 89 years- soon to be 90 in June, experienced another mini-stroke. I am the primary care taker of my grandmother, my sister is also a caretaker, but I think it is fair to say, I shoulder much of the burden of caring for my grandmother in a big picture sense, in other words, I am a problem solver, I make things happen.
So when I got another one of those dreaded calls one who is in the position of responsibility gets in the early AM, I leapt into action. Alexis was right by my side- no hestation, wow, thank you, really.
I called my sis and we all converged on Somerset Medical Center, as my nana was found "unresponsive" for a bit and then came around later, she was out long enough for a trip to the hospital.

When I saw nana, her face lit up, although she did not recognize me fully, it was enough that I was a familiar. My grandmother has the condition of non-stop speaking stream of consciousness and asking questions. This was very entertaining and I'm sure helped me define my critical eye when I was younger, now as a 40 year old woman, it is interesting to be present to the same questions I have been getting for years. I found myself answering her, comforting her, tending to her, the routine I have taken up as her granddaughter. I knew she would be confused in the hospital, an unfamilar, unfriendly environment, and I did not want her to be there long without me, so I could converse with her, answer her questions, let her know that she is not alone.

It was interesting fodder for a script I may write someday, if I bring myself to it.

You fainted and that's why you are in the hospital, to make sure you are OK.
No, this isn't the morgue, you are not dead.
You are not bleeding downstairs.
You have enough money to be cared for, for the rest of your life.
Your husband died 5 years ago, I know it must be hard to want to remember that.
I'm Jackie Anne, that's Lisa.
This is not Raritan, but it's close.
You are not alone, we are here.

Reviews: film, dressing rooms

Film
I had never seen Ghost World. How could that have been? What an utterly Necessary film. I feel about it the way 30-year old jewish men from new york city with intellectual parents feel about The Squid and the Whale.

Just to be clear, The Squid and the Whale sucked. To me. Nothing ever HAPPENED in the film. It just introduced some characters, and then there they were, all gross. You never get to watch them do anything really worth watching (like ride a motorcycle, or fight an alien).

Ghost World is a little more plot driven, but not much. basically nothing happens. I just liked it because i'm a 32-year old jewish woman from the suburbs with irrelevant parents.

and it was a comic book movie (best kind). plus scarlet johansson is so damn hot, even then, and thora birch is too, although she's costumed in unflattering lines.

Dressing Rooms
The other day i went speed shopping. I entered 3 or 4 dressing rooms in about 45 minutes. Here's what i noticed: the nicer the store, the crappier the dressing room, and the less security there is in the dressing room. Macy's has barely-standing stalls in a messy back room and no one on staff. The Gap has decent stalls with doors and someone directs you to an empty one. Daffys (where i got a fabulous stripy thing) has well-lit little private rooms and a staff person who counts your clothes and gives you a cartoonishly big tag that you fear might burst ink all over you at any moment. I plan to enter a few more over the next couple days. I wonder if the pattern will continue.

air cannister does not mean NOS

I did not mean to assume that what I heard off the street was the truth!
I do not know if the air cannisters were nitrous oxide.
sorry.

"they've turned Third Street into Fallujah"

Last night the Hells Angels Club House was raided by the NY Police after a woman was found badly beaten and unconscious in front of the club house.
People on the street said that the woman was beaten after ingesting nitrous oxide.
Kevin the Hell's Angel I am friendly with, told me today that they are being set up by NY Law frat boys who beat the woman up in a near bar where she had been drinking, and when the woman fled the frat boys, she knocked on the Hell's Angel's club house for help.
The NY Post reports that someone from the clubhouse let the woman inside, and this is where she was allegedly beaten, then thrown back out onto the street.

The police did recover 20 odd nitrous oxide canisters from the club house during last night's raid.
This incident is making me feel like I am living out a sequel to BLUE VELVET.

Analog dreams

I woke up today from a dream so obvious to everyone but me, but hey, I'm the dreamer. I have been getting rid of old things in my life, and the dream was about being back in the house I grew up inside. In the dream, I've found a vast collection of lp's - record albums. Everything from my entire family's collection: everything from my grandfather's Dean Martin, to Dad's Johnny Cash (ring of fire which is Johnny's sexiest album cover- HOT!), to my sister's Muppet Christmas Album, to my gay dj uncle's Sylvester, to my early Phil Collins, yes, I used to bust out to "in the air tonight."

As the dreamer walks past the wall of albums, fingering tracks, she realizes she could save money if she would digitize all these lps, so she runs to the apartment building's basement and puts an album on the turntable left behind by Frankie Knuckles when he lived here. The needle drops and the album is spinning, she has forgotten how much of a mechanical spark one could find in the analog world! The dreamer opens her ears- yes, you can do that in dreams- stretching to Volare through the static and scratches. This sucks, it's old, no one wants to hear static.

I woke up.

Cut to real life:

This week, I
a) sold my car.
b) disconnected my land line.
C) all of the above

wiki how

i came upon wikihow.com (who knew) and, after reading "How to Build A Snow Cat," which is also excellent, found this:

http://www.wikihow.com/Tell-What-Kind-of-Thinker-You-Are.

How to tell what kind of thinker you are. Isn't that like 20% of all forwards you've ever gotten?

It ends with recommended physical exercises, which may have a political agenda ... it's unclear.

but wikihow is great. you can browse by popularity of search. It's heartwarming to see How to Make a Paper Snowflake up there with How to Get By in Prison.