Real-Life-Dilemmas

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Today I am grateful for real-life-dilemmas.  Today is the birthday of a dear friend, Marie, so I gave her a call to torture her with my rendition of “Happy Birthday.” This is her birthday gift.

Her husband had his shoulder replaced so she is on duty, doing all of the things that he used to do.  It is not easy.  So, we chatted about it.  

“I felt the same way when Himself had gout!” I told her.  “You don’t realize what they do until they can’t.”

I suspect that is a serious issue when you lose a spouse, too.  I have confessed to hating the damned toast crumbs I clean up every single morning, but after losing two friends in close succession last year, I hope I’ll be cleaning them up for many more years.  Thankfully that’s not my reality right now.  This is.

“We usually eat in the living room and he takes our dishes in later and starts the dishwasher,” I told her.  “I would stare at those trays and him with his foot up and realize it had to be lazy ME who did it.  Sucks!”

My friend doesn’t usually do the grocery shopping so that’s been hers, along with cooking and appointments and errands and everything else. 

“It’s his right shoulder and he is very dominant right-handed so that makes it so difficult,” she said.  “He really can’t do much at all with his left hand.”

I told her how Himself and I had a conversation about that very issue.  Here’s how it went, and I’m going to try and clean it up a little. . .so to speak.

Me:  Can you wipe your butt with your other hand?

Himself:  I don’t know.  I never tried.

Me:  Me neither, but maybe we should, because what if we couldn’t use the hand we always use?

Himself:  I don’t know.  I guess I’d have to wipe yours and you’d have to wipe mine.

Me:  I’m not crazy about that option. We better go into training.

Himself:  Yeah, we have way too many big-potty issues for that to work out!

Such enlightening conversations we have.  About a week went by and we checked in again.

Me:  Did you try wiping your butt with the other hand, yet?

Himself:  Yes.  I can’t twist that way.

Me:  Me neither. We better start switching it up and practicing twisting another way now.  Just in case.

Himself:  I’m not doing that.

Me:  But what would we do if we couldn’t wipe our own butts?

Himself:  We’ll bring in the garden hose!

So far, so good, because all of our hands are working well enough to do the dirty deed the way we’ve always done it.  But if we can’t, I guess we’ll have to snap for one of those bidet toilet seat thingies that I made fun of when I wrote about in a past blog story.  Aging in place is fraught with real-life-dilemmas!  BING! Heartprint.