Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Life as a Personal Aide: Being Handy

Ruth says she doesn't like to bother me. As her personal aide, I don't quite follow her logic although I absolutely appreciate her consideration. It's my job to do the stuff she can't do and I've never felt exploited at any point during the past five years.

Usually when Ruth says she knows I'm very busy with other work, I'll respond with something brilliant like, "yeah...so?" Sometimes I'll sigh dramatically and chant the Kyrie. I've been known to accuse her of scabbing when, for example, she tries to open a can of something when I'm standing right there at the ready in my kitty apron.

We've recently instituted a (better) system for scheduling and organizing our time together. It's working well and I'm noticing that Ruth is becoming much more clear and direct with her requests for assistance.

I was pretty thrilled to read, "need your hands" in this morning's email; somewhat disappointed to discover that hand shadow puppetry was not on her list of things for me to do.