When I was with my brother Stew, when he had advanced Parkinson's,
he had trouble talking. And eventually, even eating.
What I wondered was whether he had trouble thinking, or was it just expressing thoughts?
When we get to that stage, are we trapped in our thoughts, and unable to express them,
or, does our thinking follow a more simple path? I am aware that we become unable to recognize people.
I've always had trouble remembering names, and honestly don't know if it's any worse.
I'm somewhere along that path, and, if I can remember, I'll try to record my progress.
I remember in '65 when I moved into the Navare board house, there was an old Mr Denevan,
who complained that his eyesight was so bad that the only thing he could read were large print westerns.
10/23 - In conversations, and even writing, for a while now, I seem to have more trouble remembering a word
I want to use. The Kaiser person says "it's normal" as we age, but it seems worse than I think it should be.
When driving, I've always had a mental map in my head, and not made mistakes.
When there was an obstacle, I always knew how to get around it.
Lately, I've taken the wrong freeway exit a few times. That never happened before.
When driving, today, I have to actively think about which way to go to get somewhere.
That used to be automatic. I just knew, seemingly without even thinking.
And my memory is declining. If I'm off to do one task, and get interrupted for another,
more often than not, I forget the first. If I go grocery shopping, one item is my limit.
I'm not sure I was ever good at such, but it is much worse today.
I find that I don't feel like coding, or rather, I don't feel like I want to do any coding.
That's a significant change. The challenge of working on a program, and keeping track of several
different code interactions was, for me, something I really liked.
I find that I don't want to do it today. There are 2-3 coding things I'd like to do,
both with html, and with an assembler program I wrote, but this is about what I can manage.
I did the BerryBest Family Farm sample website -- that might be my limit.
3/24 - Not only do I not feel like coding, I seem to not want to open the editor that I really like.
Almost as if I'm afraid to face what had been my objective.
Occasionally I do a few online IQ tests, just to see how I do.
Kind of see if there's any grease left in the crankcase.
Sometimes it's close to inline with what I'd have done 10 years ago. Sometimes it's lower.
Maybe 10-20-30 points lower. I'm aware that free online IQ tests are not the be-all, end-all.
But if I do 2-3-4-5 of 'em, the average should be fairly close.
Ever since I've been programming, it always felt like I was smarter later in the day.
I've read, that's not the case. But it still feels like that's true.
Or did a few months ago, when I still did some coding.
7/24 - 8 years ago, when I though that learning to ride a unicycle was a good idea, I fell and tore my rotator cuff again.
A doctor friend said, "You know, as we age, our sense of balance does not improve."
How true it is. When I was a kid, I could scamper around on the somewhat steep roof of our cape cod house.
Today, I really, really don't like going on our roof that's not nearly as steep.
Walking around the house, which is on the side of a hill, is more than a little disconcerting.
And driving is a bit more difficult, because I don't have that mental map of the area that I did in the past.
Driving yesterday, I used Waze to get to a place that I'd been to many times.
8/24 - They started putting the new James Hardie fiber cement siding on the house, so I thought it might be time to
update the page about the siding. I started, then realized I was working on the wrong page.
That's why I don't like coding any more - I do stupid stuff, then maybe do it all over again.
And my driving is not improving either.
I really want to fix the mounting of my wide panoramic mirror in the Prius, but there are several steps, and I'm just not ready.
And there are the other 2 cars. Keep in mind, having that mirror makes me a better driver by quite a bit. But it's just so hard.
I know, small steps. That's what I was doing, just adding a couple comments and picture of the house. And messed it up.
And there's dishes that need washing, but ya have to turn the hot water on, and it's 3-4 gallons before
the hot water makes it from the tank at the far end of the house to the sink, and I don't like wasting that much water.
Typically when I do wash dishes, I check for laundry because the washing machine is very close to the kitchen sink,
and I don't want to throw another 3-4 gallons down the drain. OH MY, I lead such a tough life.