Dimanche

Today, we're going down to my sister-in-law's house for what will, essentially, be Thanksgiving. Well, some of us are going. My niece is bugging out early because she's invited to her boyfriend's house for the annual Packer food fest cum family reunion. And my daughter is bugging out because she wants to go see the Harry Potter flick. About which, I understand that Emma Watson was told how much money she's earned so far, and said she felt sick. Me, too. So it'll just be me and my wife, her and her husband, and their joint mother. I'll nod and smile a lot, while thinking how can you people live with so few books in this house?

My wife pointed out an article in, of all places, Parade magazine about an innovative method of assisting people with Alzheimers. That disease scares me, as it does a lot of other people. I don't know anyone who has it, but I fear it. Of course, even if I did, they wouldn't know me ( rimshot) . But the approach is intriguing, and is based on the assumption that the person, their core personality, is still there, still available -- you just have to assist them in making the linkage between what their senses are telling them and what they know from prior experience. One woman was not being recognized by her mother. She held up two pictures -- one of her at a young age, with her name and age written beneath them; another, a more recent phone, with her name and age. The mother recognized her.

I am still studying French. There are times when it comes easily, and times when I despair. Last night, one of the writing exercises had a male voice rattling off the request for his father to read to him; even after I gave up and displayed the phrase, I couldn't 'hear' the phrase's words in the spoken portion. Not even a hunch. Very depressing. But every so often I can make a decent guess, a close-enough approximation, and that gives me hope.