Random musings

My father continues to... well, not improve, but not get worse. Impossible to tell if he's still misusing, now with the meds his doctor has given him. Perhaps he's genuinely reeling from the effects of detox, but I doubt it. He's an addict to the core, always trying to wheedle as much medication as he can (he once told me that he found facing the world without pills unthinkable), and then he wonders why he has no energy. I've been getting rather upset with him lately (but never showing my displeasure), because he's been acting like a baby, and that's just not pleasant to see in the 72-year-old man you (along with everyone else who ever met him) once revered as the smartest and coolest man on the planet. These days all he does is ask me to fix his computer, to tell him how a simple wind-up alarm clock works, to drive him places for no particular reason, to help him with various tasks, and on and on. I realize as I type this that it sounds a bit petty to resent my elderly father now that he's less capable of helping himself, but it really isn't good for my psychic health to be depended on so much. My aunt said, rather aptly, I thought, that he uses me too much as a friend.

***

Went to another cardiologist today. She was a little less alarmist than Dr. K was on the 20th. She said there is the risk of sudden cardiac death, but she was currently leaning toward not instituting any kind of invasive preventative care at this point. She said I seemed in fairly good shape: no irregular heart beat, appear totally healthy, still asymptomatic of failure. She's going to read up on the literature, I'll do another test, and then I'll see her again.

***

It's funny the things you remember. My memory, which used to be infallible when I was a kid (I could recite conversations, verbatim, days after they occurred), has gradually been getting worse with age. When I'm introduced to someone, I never remember their name. Ever. I mean not even seconds after I've heard it. I was looking at a neighborhood directory today, reading the neighbors' names with deliberate precision, in order to remember them. An hour later, I had forgotten again. Yet I drove by the house where a kid used to live back in my eighth grade carpool --- and that's twenty-three years ago now, Ganesh help me --- and his first and last names popped unbidden into my head.

I think that's a sign that you're getting past "no longer young" and into "late middle age."

***

If you offer someone a piece of fruit or other food, and they say "No thank you," but then add, "But they look great!" or "But I love dried fruit, that's one of my favorite things!" --- what's that all about? I mean, this is food you almost certainly haven't sullied with your touch, if that's their concern. So if they love it so much, why don't they have some? Is that just a way of trying to make the refusal more polite? I don't get it. It seems a bit less polite to me: "I love dried fruit, but I don't want any from you, thanks."