First, may I say how much I hate dementia? This morning was
not my best. I tried to activate my new ATM card and they would not
recognize my telephone number...the number I've had for forty years.
I tried several ways of getting it activated, but I was rushing because
I told my mother I would be there for lunch. It was pushing 100
degrees when I arrived at Atria and my hip has been hurting since yesterday.
There were two parking spots and the gardeners had blocked off both of them. There was no nearby on-street parking, except for the slots which are set
aside for the g-d zip cars. I finally found a spot, rushed to the
apartment, arriving at 11:20. The door was locked, she was not inside
(neither alive nor dead) and it appeared that both of her keys were
inside and I didn't now how she could have left the room without her keys
and the door was locked.
I looked in the dining room and didn't see her where she
usually sits. I didn't find her in the lobby or in the little seating
area off the dining room. I called Ed to see if she was with him, but
he was coming to see her too and said that he had tried to all her
too earlier and got no answer. Now I was really worried, so I went to
the front desk and they got three different aids to go looking for her.
Turns out she was at lunch, sitting behind a post on the other side
of the room from where she usually sits. It was now 11:30, she never
goes to lunch with me before 11:45, but she was finishing her dessert.
I got angry with her and she told me to sit down and eat, but I told her I
had to work and left.
At least not having lunch with her allowed me time to work
out the problem with my ATM card. I realized that I started the
account 40 years ago, when Davis shared Sacramento's area code. At
some point the phone number stayed the same but the area code changed and
when I tried the old area code, that worked. So off I went to Logos.
Again, Sandy wasn't there and I was relieving Peter.
Only one customer there when he left, a woman lying on the floor in the
children's room with her toddler son. They bought 3 board books, including
Thomas the Train.
A job applicant came in and I gave her the spiel about how
we are all volunteers and that the store is for charity. She was
impressed.
A tall guy I've seen before came in. He was wearing an
aloha-like shirt, but in white with tall masted ships on it, nestled among
the photos of the Hawaiian islands and palm trees. He has a reseller's
license, so he doesn't pay tax and he bought "The Making of Antiquities," a
biography of Cormac McCarthy, a book on religion and "My First 10 Words in
Greek
Suddenly there was a steady influx of customers; an
old guy, 2 younger guys, an Asian woman, a Latino guy, another guy in a
shirt similar to the previous guy. What were all these people doing on
a hot day like this?
The Latino guy bought 2 contemporary fiction books one of
which was "Love in the Time of Cholera, which had quite a provocative cover,
which I hoped to find on Amazon, but they don't have that particular
edition.
An older woman bought 4 contemporary fiction books and said
"I'll take these to the table and start reading" - which she did, for about
half an hour. She had a Michael Crichton book, 2 mysteries by a
new-to-me author and one other.
A man in a salmon colored T shirt from Writers in Yosemite
conference came in with a bag of books to donate. On top was James
Michener's "The Novel," a book I had not read before. I had been
reading a Ruth Rendell which had not yet grabbed my attention, so I put that
back on the shelf and started the Michener.
By 3:30, I was so sleepy. It was a period of a few
minute with no customers and I was fighting to stay awake.
An Asian woman had lots of questions about the store.
She had never heard of either Doctors without Borders or Save the Children.
I think she thought all their expenses were paid by Logos. She liked
the poppy pictures of the current displaying artist, Teresa
Steinbach-Garcia.
A neatly dressed Latino came in, wearing pressed slacks and
a pressed blue shirt. He started at one end of the store and worked
his way around...humor, fantasy, sci fi, old books, gift books, misc. guy
stuff (cars, etc), gardening. He skipped cookbooks and went to the
front of the store and started at self improvement music, travel, even
foreign language books. He spent time at each book shelf, some times
picking out books to carry around. He must have been there half an hour or
more, then suddenly, after looking at lot of craft books, he stood up and
walked out, buying nothing.
A Hispanic woman came in to buy 3 bargain books and loved
the air conditioning.
A couple came in. The woman spent a long time in
fantasy and later at the music book case while her husband sat at the table
staring out the window. Ultimately she bought nothing.
A smiling young woman, a vision in yellow from her blonde
hair to her sunny yellow dress to her pleasant personality bought 5 bargain
books and was thrilled to find Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha," which she said
she'd been wanting to read for a long time.
My friend arrived at 4:45 and bought a book on food and
"1616: The World in Motion." We discussed Chihuily sculptures and he
said he will be gone the next two weeks because he's going to Minnesota.
A guy found "America Back on Track" by Ted Kennedy outside
in bargain books and came in laughing, asking me if it was a fiction book.
He was an odd guy from nearby Woodland, where he said that there are no
locally owned book stores any more because it was not a "reading town."
A volunteer, Alice, came in with a colorful multi striped
dress, stripes going in every direction. She bought two P.D. James
books and put a huge coffee table type book on chocolate on hold until she
comes to work on Saturday.
It was a shock to walk out of the cool store and feel the
heat as we walked to the car!
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