Lunch amnesia

She's not feeling well because of a cold. I asked her if she would like to get out of the house and go to lunch, or would she rather eat here. She couldn't decide. I said if it didn't matter, I'd rather stay home and I would fix her something. I went downstairs and warmed up some leftover chicken and rice and took it to her in the living room. She said thanks, and I came back upstairs to work.

Thirty minutes later she appears in my workspace and says, "Are we going to lunch?" She can tell by the way I look at her that something is wrong. I ask her if she ate what I gave her, and she doesn't know. I walk with her downstairs to see if there's any evidence. She finds a half-eaten bowl of chicken and rice in the kitchen and holds it up for me to see. This is upsetting to her, that she ate and doesn't remember. I go back to work.

Another thirty minutes later, she shows up with her purse in hand and says, "So, when are we going to lunch?" Again she reads the look on my face. I tell her she already ate, and she remembers enough to be really upset. She's sleeping now.

***

Last night I was de-cluttering a room. I was about three-quarters finished, with a pile of stuff on the floor that needed to go to the trash or to the basement. The phone rang, and while I took the call, she decided to "help" by putting everything back on the shelves I had just emptied. I couldn't mask a slight irritation when I came back. After I had taken the stuff back off the shelves and made several trips to the garbage can and the basement, she looked at me and said, "I'm not going to get any better am I?"