An update on #whatwouldyougive:

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I think I should take a shower. Actually, I know I should take a shower. I haven’t showered since Monday,  and there’s really no excuse for it, except for the fact that I haven’t had any time. And so my hair is dirty, and it itches, which is particularly frustrating for someone whose hands can’t reach their head to scratch. I have solved the problem by rubbing the back of my head against my loaner wheelchair — because my own wheelchair is back in maintenance — and this sort of works until I become disgusted by the fact that I am rubbing my head against a loaner wheelchair and I have no idea who was sitting in it before me.

I am not disgusted enough to stop using the chair to scratch my head.

There are a lot of things in the world that are frustrating, but for me one of the biggest ones is an itch I cannot scratch, which is basically all of them. At night, I ask Rob to scratch my back, which he does, but it feels so good that it only makes the situation worse. I’m pretty sure the only thing to do is pay someone to scratch my entire body all day long. This seems reasonable enough, which might indicate the depths of insanity I have sunk to as a result of my itchiness.

“This is the thing I hate the most,” says my sister, when I ask her to scratch the back of my neck as hard as she can. “I feel like I’m ripping off your skin.”

“You’re not ripping off my skin,” I explain. “That would actually feel better.”

Where is Ramsey Bolton when you need him?

I’m going to shower tomorrow. That’s the plan.

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My grandma turned 90 on Monday. That seems like quite an accomplishment, and I was lucky enough to be able to celebrate with her. Until I left for college, I lived a mile away from Nana and Papa. I was at their house all the time, and I have a vivid memory of sitting in the dining room doing my homework while they watched When Harry Met Sally in the living room. It was distracting. There were a million pasta dinners, and Nana let me pour coffee creamer into my cereal, and once she said I was very adult because I drank black tea. I remember running away to their house when I was mad at my parents, and sleepovers and baths, when Nana would dump a warm cup of water over my head to get all the shampoo out, and then I would weigh myself on her crazy industrial hospital grade scale, the kind where you had to move the notch over slowly slowly to get an exact number. I slept on the couch outside of my grandparents’ bedroom on the first floor, even though there were plenty of beds upstairs. I can still feel the cool sheets against my cheek and smell the laundry detergent on the pillow.

My grandma doesn’t live in that house anymore. Now when I visit her, which is not nearly enough, I go to the senior living facility where she has an apartment. It is a beautiful place, with views of the Chicago skyline, and I secretly wish that I lived there. I think I would be a good candidate for residency, except for the fact that I don’t meet the minimum age of 62.

When I was still using my walker, I took a trip to my parents’ house. I was sleeping on the second floor, where I had been carried the night before. Nana came into the room, and crawled into bed with me. She rubbed my arm and scratched it softly with her nails, and we laid there like that for a while. That’s who my grandma is.

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