Our guy with zero short-term memory moved out on August 31st. He called us every day for a month to check in. But we think maybe his lack of memory has gotten the better of him because we haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks now. Which is good. Because some days, even having to answer the phone was enough to push us over the edge.
New guy is a tad, shall we say, busier, than old guy. He's an active little fellow. Literally. He's a smidgen over four feet tall and weighs about 100 pounds. And he could win a strongman competition when he's mad. It's odd. Anyway, he is non-verbal (which, I must add was a welcome break from Mr. "Talks ALL the time and then repeats it all because I don't remember what I just told you.")
So he's quiet. Except he plays the piano. Not so quietly. Sometimes he plays in such a way as you might think you are in a jazz bar. Sometimes, a haunted house. He doesn't know how to play so to speak but he plays in a different way than a toddler might. It's not just banging. But it's certainly not playing.
Another "quirk" of our Pianoman is that his preferred state is naked. I could say that one took me a bit to get used to. But honestly I don't think you ever get used to a grown man stripping down to nothing. This month I've said the words, "If you want to be naked you need to be in your room" and "We don't play the piano naked" more times that I could count.
He also changes clothes more often than a teenage girl getting ready for a first date. It's ridiculous. He's very particular about what he wears. Maybe that's why he prefers naked. So he will rip off his clothes and run to the laundry area. He then stuffs his clothing in the washer (or sometimes the dryer), no matter if there are clothes in there already or not. So him adding dirty clothes to the already clean clothes means we are doing more laundry than the local dry cleaners. It's ridiculous. It's hard to think of it as a "teaching moment" when there is a four foot naked man standing in front of you, but we've been really working on teaching that the dirty laundry goes in a basket. It's a steep learning curve around here ya' know!
So anyway, last night we realized that he had changed clothes but hadn't put them in the washing machine. We got a tad excited thinking that our days of non-stop laundry might finally be over. He's learned to use the laundry basket. But alas, we were wrong.
When Lowell went outside this morning, this is what he saw:
A basket seems so limiting when there is a whole yard right outside the window. Just push out the screen and toss the clothes as far as you can. So it's not quite in the laundry basket. But maybe we are getting closer. Baby steps, y'all, baby steps.
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