OK, like, maybe you could? But I don't know how much it would take. Because I've never been a big, like, Barbie fan. Or a big, like, fan of the color pink. Or a big, like, fan of doing things that are super, like, mainstream.
I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.
Just like everyone else.
Seriously, though. Are there many other girls out there who can say they never owned a frickin' Barbie doll? I can't be the only one! I'm not saying I never ever played with them. My sister had some, and she had the cool 70's townhouse with the inflatable furniture, and the motorhome, and maybe some other crap that I don't remember off hand. I liked the motorhome because it was a big thing with wheels. I liked the townhouse because my sister didn't want me touching it, heh heh heh, and she really hated it when I'd pull the elevator up to the top floor (the thing had like twenty floors, which in reality was only probably 3 or 4, but seemed like 20) and then let go of the string and let gravity slam it all the way down as fast as it could go. Sometimes with the dolls in it, sometimes not.
But what I really only used the Barbie dolls for was for riding my Breyer horses. And they pretty much sucked at that, too, because their hips had terrible range of motion and they didn't sit right on horseback. And their heels would NEVER go down. Which was sort of OK, I guess, because they didn't fit in the saddles anyway. So mostly I'd get bored with trying to get the Barbies to play nicely with the horses and just ditch them and play with the horses.
However, I wouldn't mind seeing Oppenheimer. 😆
So, here we are, another week gone by. The words "My Dad is in a nursing home" still flash through my head many times a day, but they don't make me cringe quite as much as they did at first. Not every time, anyway. I don't know, I guess I have to keep telling myself that because it still doesn't seem like it's true. The person that I go visit there doesn't really seem like my Dad. For the first few seconds when I get there, it looks like it could be my Dad. But then he says something, and poof! Gone. Not the Dad I know anymore. He even looks less and less like my Dad. The guy I see now is in a wheelchair all the time. The things he talks about, don't even really make much sense. When I try to engage him in conversation (which is not my strong suit, even with people who aren't dealing with neuro-cognitive issues!) I have to work very hard to find topics that I think he might (a) find interesting at that specific moment in time and (b) be able to respond to appropriately and hopefully even (c) continue conversing about back and forth a bit. Even his voice is different now. He's quieter. When I get there after work, it's always when they're in the middle of dinner, so the dining room is noisy and I have trouble hearing him and I usually always have to ask him to repeat what he says; most of the time, this frustrates him and he repeats himself with a louder, angrier tone.
It just seems so unfair and there is so much I don't understand. For instance: Why?
For background, I've always been a strong believer of the concept that everything happens for a reason. Seriously, always. Way back when I was too young to even really understand what that meant, I believed it. The "today years old" me (cringe) (because I hate the phrase "today years old") will stand up and say, that is clearly because the Holy Spirit was working in me, even way back then, before I even realized it. But back then, I just knew it was something I felt super-strongly but couldn't explain and I didn't know why I felt that way but I just did and that was that. I can, and have, looked at the bad things that have happened in my life and eventually been able to see the good that has come out of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm simplifying it to the nth degree for the sake of this story, but that's a summary of my general goal in life: to try to focus on the positive. To try to keep things homeostatic, if nothing else.
And, I suppose this can be said of every chronic, terminal illness.
point of dementia?!?!This is, obviously, a rhetorical question. I don't know what lesson this whole...thing is supposed to be teaching me us, but the curriculum seems very cruel and unusual.
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