I’m getting a minor taste of what it must be like…

…to be a senile parent’s sole caregiver while trying to make a living and also just generally keep the wheels on. I jumped out of the sack at 5 and LB and I were at S&L’s by 5:15 to give Ghost his first walkie of the day. It’s 10:30 as I write this line and when I’m done posting LB and I will head out for the third walkie of the day. I’m testing the theory that if I walk Ghost every three hours minimum I won’t have to swab any piss off any floors. It’s only a theory.

Between walkies I measured for the bedroom floor’s eighteen stringers, then spent a couple of hours scavenging and cutting 2X6s to make the stringers. Fed the chickens, checked on Landlady’s, TC’s and SurvivalDave’s properties, watered some plants, and now I’m looking at the mess that is my kitchen. Yesterday (between walkies) I hand-washed laundry, which took about two really quite relaxing hours. Tomorrow I’ll probably bake bread – timed to fall as neatly as possible between walkies.

I was chiding myself this morning for grousing about it – and for the fact that I’m probably being more patient with this dog than I would be with an adult human relative. But that’s just my own unreasonable expectations. I had the same problem with my daughter: When she was an infant she couldn’t try my patience because I didn’t expect anything of her. But when she became a toddler I became a much less good dad – because as soon as she could walk and talk I started expecting her to carry her weight, and never quite accepted that that wasn’t going to happen. So I probably wouldn’t make a very good Alzheimer’s caregiver, but I can put up with a deaf, lame, stubbornly stupid, incontinent dog pretty much until I run out of gasoline to go lead him out for walkies.

Speaking of which, I just remembered that I have to gas up the Jeep before I leave, so I’d better leave. Later.