On dementia work.

The other week around the holidays, I went with an old library coworker to visit a mutual friend of ours, who was retired and ended up in a care home in the rural midwest that was all paneled ceilings and bedsores and rooms that smell vaguely of shit, with country-friend steak for lunch, and who also now has early dementia.

During the visit, I noticed that she kept pushing up her glasses, and I asked her if they were slipping, and they were, so I got some tape and ended up repairing them for her.

Then, when we were about to leave, she kept asking about making her glasses work, but they were sitting high up on her nose where I had thought she liked them.

And, she was getting really anxious, out of nowhere, so I asked if she could see, and she could, and then I asked her if her nose hurt, and it didn't, so then I started thinking to myself that she might be worried about a *permanent* fix, so I said that we would be sure to tell the nurses on our way out, that they should permanently fix her glasses.

At that, her anxiety *completey* dissipated, and we had a nice farewell.

Later in the car, my old coworker from the library observed that working with people with dementia is almost like a puzzle, where you have to figure out what's happening with them.

At that, it was like a light bulb went off for me, and I completely agreed, and I realized that that was probably why I find the work so engaging.

I said, too, that I enjoyed teaching others about practical care tips, like I had earlier that day a bit with our mutual friend's niece, who popped in while we were there.

It really is all the good parts of teaching but without all the bullshit: the interpersonal development stuff and the intellectual engagement and the social impact, and maybe I could eventually find a job with an actual teaching component as well.

I'm definitely going to keep my eyes open; this could be a good direction for me.

The environment is definitely less stressful and more stable and more fair than academia.

With academia, you don't realize how much you walk on eggshells over bullshit, till you're out of there.

On people who are professors.

The other week, I had a *horrendous* session with a dementia patient, where they didn't recognize me and projected a malevolent explanation onto me, that I was trying to nose into their room and steal their stuff.

Because of that, they fled the room a lot, and I had to accompany them, since they couldn't be alone.

A few times they clicked out of it and went back to normal, and a few times the residential home staff came and intervened a few times, and a new person together with us created a new and interrupting dynamic that was very helpful and also managed to usually click my client back to a more normal state of perception.

When my client was distracted, too, once a residential home person apologized sympathetically, and was like, "I'm so sorry, this happens."

At that, I was like, "Oh no, it's not a problem for me, I'm just worried for [my client's name], she's so upset."

And, that was the truth, since I wasn't stressed out at all, and I'm serious about that; I simply was completely calm, with absolutely no stress.

Later, I told this story to a woman I did my master's with, who went on for a second master's and now does editing work, for which she often has to work with academics.

"Once you've dealt with academics," she was like, "Dealing with everyone else is easy."

She then observed that academics were very much self-centered babies, and you had to coddle them no matter what they did, like when they write you and tell you they missed their deadlines because they were busy in France.

I really do think that she's right!

I've since mentioned that to a few people, including my home client care company supervisor, and everyone's laughed, and someone with a university library job said she's heard people say that before, too.

I mentioned that to my parents, and they found that observation fascinating.

Really, it's telling, I'd rather deal with a paranoid dementia client, than many tenured professors who are supposedly of right mind.

Physiological changes, since graduating and losing gym access.

Since graduating, I don't have free access to a gym, so I just don't exercise like I used to; I used to go to the gym like 2-3 times a week when I was on campus, to do "fat burner" cardio and then light weights like once a week.

I do want to do more walking and maybe even pick up jogging again, but it's tough now, what with winter, and my erratic schedule.

I've noticed that my muscles are a bit flabbier, and I eat less, and I don't sleep as soundly.

Boxing up some books.

Over the holidays, I cleaned my apartment top-to-bottom all at once, which was like the first time that I had done that in like a year, and definitely since I had finished my dissertation and graduated.

What with my deciding not to pursue any academic jobs at this point in time, a lot of my books seemed different now, and distant, and since they were gathering up a lot of dust on the tops of them, I decided that I'd use some of my empty plastic boxes to box them up in, so that I still had them if I ever needed them, but so that I'd have less clutter around my room and I wouldn't have to dust them so often.

After I picked out a lot of books - more obscure languages that I hadn't touched in a while, and medieval stuff, and some teaching copies for classes I didn't create - I noticed that what was left was dead languages, and the historical Jesus, and cults, and weird sex.

In other words, all the stuff that made me undertake advanced study in the first place.

It was like I was cleansed of all the peripheral shit, and my core self was there, strong, with that period in my life behind me, since it was now all boxed up with the other books.

I put my diploma in that box, as well.

Two sights on the subway when I was going into work the other day:

1) A (teeny-bopper) (bleached hair) (Latina) with like a beach bag on her lap, and her phone goes off and it's loud Mexican music.

2) As  I get off the subway, a (college-age) (white) guy, with gray pajama pants with silhouettes of polar bears on them, though it's well below freezing.

Too much traffic.

The other week I went to a bakesale in the northwest part of the city, with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother sister pair).

When we were walking afterwards, we almost got hit by cars, like 2 times.

The first time, we had the light and were going out in front of this crosswalk by a highway offramp, and I scooted out in front of a car that was a bit into the crosswalk and then my friend went to go, but somehow the driver didn't see him and started moving her car forward, so he turned and whacked it on the hood.

"What?!", I was like.

"She didn't see me," he was like.  "I had a feeling that she wasn't watching."

Then, he was like, "I should have fallen on the pavement and demanded five hundred dollars not to report," and he chuckled

Later, we were walking across a short driveway by a bank, and this *giant* SUV pulled over to the side of the street really fast after blazing through a nearby intersection and turned a hard right to turn into the driveway at almost full speed and almost barreled into us, but the driver looked just in time and braked fast and stopped.

"He simply wasn't looking," my friend was like, later.

I was very disturbed.  We could have easily been killed.

A subway panhandler the other day.

As I was taking the subway in to work the other day, this very well-kempt (young) (Latino or maybe Arab?) guy walked up and down the car, pulling little packs of tissues from a pouch and laying them on the seat by everyone on the car.

When you looked down at them, they had an attached photocopied note, saying that he had a kid and had to provide for them and please give a donation, God bless, or something to that effect.

No one did give him anything, so he went back through the car and picked up all the tissue packets and put them back into his pouch, and crossed over between cars in to the next one, probably to do that all over again.

He moved very slowly and purposefully, and kept his head down, never meeting people's eyes.