Trying to make it make sense

Things are progressing down here in the scorching desert (less scorching now, I think the high today was only in the low 90s), but though taskwise I feel like things are slowly getting accomplished, overall outlookwise it appears it's going to be status quo for the foreseeable future.

Dad's more cogent times occur only when he's well-rested, and you never know when they'll veer into distorted memory or a need to go drop me off somewhere on his way to wherever he thought he needed to go. A lot of that today, a lot of dissuading Dad from compulsions to transport me somewhere and to return to whatever place we'd supposedly been at earlier in the day. In other words, more of the same as I hung out here with Dad while Marty was out dealing with his own stuff, medical and otherwise. 

I'm sure there are professionals and scholars who know this already and could explain it to me in detail if I wanted to seek them out. I doubt I'm breaking any new ground. But I'm realizing just from observation that the part of Dad's brain that's working recognizes that his current circumstance isn't what it should be, that something is off, but it can't understand what exactly is off because of the part that isn't working—all it knows for sure is that right now, in the moment, things are not what they're expected to be. So the working parts of the brain try to compensate by treating the current moment as a transition in between something that does makes sense to it and something else that makes sense. So a memory of something that did make sense is plugged in to the slot for "recent past" and the expectation of another something that makes sense is put forth as coming up.

That's why he's always insisting he needs his shoes on, he has to be ready to go when it's time to move to the expected "coming up" thing his brain's plugged into place to compensate for right now being wonky. The thing from the other day when he was convinced we were at a conference center is probably extrapolated from things he attended in his career at U of A, that was the memory his brain could find to stick into the blank "recent past" slot, and context from those things fed the insistence that he needs to know the conference schedule and how we're going to get from place to place in "the complex" since that's the logical thing "coming up." It's not so much about believing he's someplace he's not as it is about not believing right now is real. The unreality context is just randomly picked from whatever file fragments can be easily found in the busted hard drive in his skull.

Hell, what do I know, I'm tired all the time now.

Today Dad was asking me if I had a light meter. He explained how it would help me assure anyone I was working for that I'd done things correctly, that it would be worth investing in if I didn't have one and he suggested his leftover lunch was the object I was supposed to be doing something with. I presume photographing, since he was talking about light meters and since part of his old job was managing multimedia stuff for a hospital.

Interestingly, the cat can ground him somewhat. When the cat's in view—or better, lying at his feet—he focuses. On another plane, if we have a news program on the TV and a clip of Felon47 plays, spouting whatever the bullshit of the day is, that brings him back at least enough that he confidently declares "that guy is such an asshole."

On other fronts, my wrist is better—not 100% by a long way, but healed enough that I don't feel like I need the brace. Range of motion is good and the twinges aren't excruciating. The mosquito trap has worked reasonably well; it hasn't actually trapped many mosquitos, just a few, but it does appear to at least be keeping them away from me overnight.

Tomorrow there's a doctor's appointment and a PT visit on tap, Wednesday and Thursday should be good for dealing with other logistics about various loose ends, Friday Dad's going to get another brain scan. We'll see where we are after that. Somewhere in there I hope we can get a handle on what kind of other home care help will be available for later so I can head home feeling like things are stable.