Behaviors that are just slightly annoying
I thought it might be interesting to get your input on one or two of YOUR spouse’s behaviors that are just cute or a tiny bit annoying (not worth making a fuss about). I’d love to read them to see if some of my DH’s behaviors are common or unique to him.
#1 EVERY TIME he walks past the trash can, he puts his hand in and pushes all the trash down (like a human trash compactor). I have to be very careful what I put in our trash can.
#2 After his shower, he puts a large amount of shampoo on his wash cloth and washes the entire shower down with shampoo. We have a glistening shower, but we go through shampoo like nobodies business.
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Folding and stashing paper towels or napkins. That was a thing before reaching current Stage 7. For years. And I had to learn the hard way, to check EVERY pocket before doing the laundry, or we'd have paper towel debris-lint everywhere.
He'd fold and fold each rectangle into a little square and put it in pockets, up his sleeve, down his sock, and a couple of times I saw him stash one in his pull up while sitting on the toilet. I still don't know why the folding and hoarding napkins was a thing.
I finally stopped buying paper towels and napkins in mid-to-late stage 6 when DH suddenly started taking a bite out of anything he could get his hands on at mealtime. It is almost like once the chewing reflex was activated, he would just chew and (try to) swallow whatever was in reach between bites of his food! After the first time, I also learned not to put my fingers in a PWD's mouth 😑 AND that those extra absorbent brands can take a long time to disintegrate. He'd chew a piece of paper towel for more than an hour, easily.
So... the mildly annoying habit turned into a problem that I could no longer ignore. I hope your DH's shampoo cleaning habit doesn't make things slippery and create a fall risk. We have to be so vigilant!
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Oh boy. When I was packing my mom's AL room to move her things to MC, I found a neatly folded napkin under each blouse in her drawer. Some socks were also paired with napkins too - one sock, one napkin, one sock, one napkin. And yet the rest of her drawers, no matter how carefully I had organized them, looked like she had stirred everything around with a big stick. You just can't figure them out!
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My spouse is pretty easy going. The only serious problem I have is that, while he talks and loves to be with people, his sentences have no content. There are no nouns, so he says things like, "they went there and took it," and I have to judge my response by whether he's happy or upset about it, since I have no idea who went where, took what, or when this might have happened.
You might buy a sample-size shampoo and refill it for his showers.
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My DH isn't allowed to have paper products anymore for the same reasons as @ButterflyWings 😉
But he did all the same as others have mentioned. He could take a tissue or napkin and form a perfect solid square cube...we called it his origami phase.
Stage 7 seems like everything goes into his mouth, and some items haven't been very pleasant 🤪
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What is it with the paper towels and napkins?! DH has hoarded them for years. He couldn't come out of a public restroom without a carefully folded collection of paper towels in his pocket. Even now he asks for and saves extra napkins at every meal. We have quite a stack in his room. At least he can no longer manage to stuff them in his pants pockets, since the AL laundry staff doesn't check pockets before doing the laundry.
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Emptying wastebaskets into other wastebaskets; then emptying them into the wrong bins. Trivial, and a pain to sort garbage before pickup.
Stopping anyone passing the house or standing in any queue, and talking nonsense.
Reading headlines aloud over and over, sounding them out really, and expecting a response from me.
On any topic, saying “I’ve been reading about that!”
Trivial. Quit whining, Tyrone!
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What a great idea - sample size and refill it! I never thought about that!!! Thank you!
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For me, now, it's the"I never"s! I never ate that before, I've never been there. I've never been to that doctor, clinic, hospital. Close relationship to the "Nobody evers". Nobody ever told me that, Nobody ever gave me that...
I am sure it will change.
Good night, all.
Kathy
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He used to say (mid stages) when we went to a restaurant or shopping that people who were strangers looked familiar and it would bother him to no end that he couldn’t place them.
To this day when he passes any garbage can that’s more than half full he steps in it with one foot to push it down.
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When DW was still capable of bathrooming herself she would sometimes grab the end of the toilet paper when leaving the bathroom and walk around the house while unrolling the TP. This happened to coincided with the beginning of COVID when TP was in short supply so I’d have to try to respool it, but at least I knew when she was, just follow the TP.
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Dad does the folding thing, but they don’t use paper towels or paper napkins at his facility, so it is always cloth. However he keeps two cloth handkerchiefs in a shirt pocket at all times and changes them frequently. (We bought several more on Amazon.)
Another odd habit is how he eats breakfast. He always is served a lovely breakfast that, no matter what else, always includes oatmeal. Dad systematically puts bite-sized pieces of each food item served into the oatmeal. If syrup is offered, that goes in too—pancakes, sausage, eggs, syrup, etc. He stirs it well then eats it, remarking on how delicious the breakfast is. My very particular dad would never have done that in the past. Poor Mom, who lives in the same facility and eats with him, has learned not to express. Any sort of shock and to just continue eating with a smile (but not too big!) on her face.
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@TyroneSlothrop I had to laugh when I read your comment about putting the wrong garbage in the recycle bin. I rush to get to the garbage first so I don’t have to use the picker to pick out used tissue out of the recycle dumpster. 🤣
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This thread is a true testament to what we get used to in dementia world. Someone not familiar with common dementia behaviors would think we are all in the Twilight zone--and perhaps we are. So amazing what we learn to anticipate and see as only "slightly annoying" that most people couldn't imagine and don't have to live with.....
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I really had to think hard on this to come up with something petty enough to be mildly annoying. Most of what he did was big time dangerous or created work for others.
A lot of the off-the-wall stuff he did was kind of amusing which was not unlike old dad in better times. Things like insisting that we take him to the nice steakhouse for happy hour and appetizers wearing the plaid dorm pants he'd had on for the past week. When told they were pajamas, he would insist they were his athleisure wear, the same as the Athleta pants and jacket I was wearing to run errands. This from a man who used to have the proper outfit for every activity and who routinely changed at least thrice daily.
Dad was very verbal until he died. One endless source of amusement was his version of the common loss of words. His word substitutions were unusual-- either invented compound words or code-switching to a more elevated vocabulary. An example of the former was the time he was describing a pain in his legs. I asked him where it hurt, and he replied it was his shinbacks.
The intersection of his natural pomposity and cogntive shift could be amusing. One time he was attending a care-planning meeting at the SNF after he was initially diagnosed. They started a little early, and as mom and I walked towards the conference room we heard a booming voice say by whose authority am I incarcerated in this place? Mom looked at me and said "Oh, I see he's in here" following the voice.
My parents were both unhappy in the apartment I found when I moved them north, so we decided to find them a house sooner rather than later. Mom and I found a cute carriage house in a 55+ community with many of the amenities they'd enjoyed in Florida. Dad was probably stage 5ish at this point and mom wanted to make him feel a part of it so we arranged for them along with my uncle (who was the one person dad would listen to) to tour the home after mom had signed the agreement-of-sale. The new place was only a mile from the apartment, and I happened to drive dad by it on the way home from one of his medical appointments. I'd met mom there and said I'd take dad home so she could go the pharmacy and grocery store alone.
As we headed back mom was behind us. When we passed the new community dad gestured grandly with his arm in the entrance's direction and said "your mother wouldn't consider this lovely, gated community". I kept my thoughts to myself and kept driving. When mom got home "I see your dad was showing you the new neighborhood" and I burst out laughing and told he what he'd really said. This has become something on a family joke along with "this is not your best work" said to my niece's then new boyfriend/ now husband on the quality of the waffles he made us for Christmas brunch.
The only petty-annoying thing he did was his warped version of shadowing which involved him lying on the sofa all day and randomly calling for my mother just to say hi. He would also subvocalize nonsense words from the sofa if I came to visit and was in another room with mom. One day it was so pronounced that I timed him. He let out an uh-oh! every 20 seconds for the hour I was there.
Plus-one on the paper products. Not dad this time, but my dear auntie. When we cleared out her home to prepare it for sale, my mom, aunt, cousin and I spent a month in total sifting through her extensive collection of ephemera. Take-out menus going back 50 years, matches, checks and letters copied and stapled to the envelope in which it they came, a 12x9x3' closet fill with NYT crossword puzzles, neatly written instructions on how to use her first cell phone and $1000 in crisp new Benjamins in a basket of dirty socks.
Not surprisingly, stashed folded paper napkins everywhere. In her kitchen, in the drawers of her dining room breakfront, in the pages of books, between magazine, nightstands, the linen closet and the car. I bought her cute Passat since she wasn't driving anymore, and DS was about to. I cleaned it out of napkins before driving it the 10 hours it took get home-- glovebox, console, the little place for your sunglasses, the door pockets and the ones behind the front seats. I was certain I got them all until I got a flat tire and called AAA for an assist a few months later. When the driver removed the spare, dozens of napkins fluttered out in the breeze from underneath it. I can only imagine the scenario of a little 80-something widow surreptitiously emptying the dispenser at her favorite roadside clam shack and removing a full-sized spare tire pad that space with napkins. Did she do this in full view of other customers? Did she have help? (for a time, she and a life-long frenemy who also had dementia lived together in a kind of Thelma & Louise situation until families stepped in) Did she do this at home by herself? Did she do it all at once, or was this more of a work-in-progress?
HB
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I would say that I hear, "I didn't know that" many times a day about things that I could have sworn we'd discussed for hours/years. I just let it be a new fact, for at least that moment.
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How many times do we say … if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry! Thanks for all the chuckles!
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My DW cannot keep straight what paper is trash and what paper can be recycled. It's getting to the point where it doesn't matter. Her thing is cutting paper up into little pieces. By the time she's done, the confetti isn't really recyclable. I do pull larger pieces out of the trash and put them with the recycling, but sometimes those end up right back in the trash.
Also more and more I have to shred papers I would otherwise recycle. Otherwise DW will take things out and quiz me about them... for the Nth time.
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Been there, suffered that. There's never any question in my mind that we discussed the subject.
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This goes along with "I never knew that." There's so much DW never did and never knew.
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I get those!
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While reminding DH to brush teeth etc. he will give me the sarcastic “Yes Dear” routine. Note: I have his dental care items on the kitchen counter next to the sink. It is annoying to have it there but at least I know he has brushed.
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Oh yeah, one more pet peeve that I had forgotten about. Multiple cups and glasses of half full or barely sipped beverages all over the house, before I wised up to that one.
DH had to be creatively secretly banned from the fridge and I had to stop chilling more than one kind of drink, or they'd all be emptied by end of day. Expensive to say the least, wasteful, extra dishes, and one more thing for us to have a tug of war over during early stages.
He would take 3 cups to bed at night for example, hot tea, juice, and water. They'd still be there in the morning. And often had left a tall glass of a different flavor of juice in a different room, AND maybe a long cooled-off cup of coffee on the kitchen counter. And more water somewhere else. Yes, he was also hydrating, but pouring, pouring omg.
Then there was the inevitable "aht, aht!!!" a few times a day (me) catching him just before he poured out the full glasses of juice to rinse and fill glass with more juice. (WTH?!!) Mind you, we were not yet on 1 income because this started just pre-diagnosis, at least I had not noticed it among all the more dangerous things that I was having to intervene in. But still. I was running out of juice every day, shopping, and just why?!
When I finally got the memo (Note to self: We are not in Kansas any more, and no my dear you are not imagining or overthinking things... something is very, very wrong here and you are the only damage control volunteer on staff...) it was around the time I counted 8 nearly full glasses of various beverages one day and in addition to the fact that he was literally pouring money down the sink, I just could not take it any more.
Yes, well he did get diagnosed and I was told to "watch him", and that "you are in charge now" (sheesh). What worked to stop the multiple glasses and cups of expensive juice, tea and even wine everywhere?
- Don't ask don't tell.
- I disappeared all but 2 or 3 mugs from our cabinets
- Gave away ALL tall glasses
- Started placing only 1 bev at a time in the fridge e.g. cranberry juice gets finished before apple appears
- And even tried to hide that one container in a brown paper bag in the door of the refrigerator
- Tried to beat him to the fridge every time (cost me a broken pinky one day when he snatched the door)
- Eventually learned to head him off before he got to the kitchen, so we didn't have to wrestle the door
This walk down memory lane also reminds me of the day I thought he'd long since stopped pouring his own drinks and noticing a mug in his hand full of bright blue liquid (huh?) I smelled it and...mouthwash!
Keep those dangerous cups and glasses under wraps friends 😅 Downsizing or locking things up early, helps.
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"Well it wasn't me" to everything he has done! Bathroom mistakes, spills, moving stuff from room to room. There are only two of us in the house but he is always the innocent one!
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Love reading all of these because bacially have experienced most if not all of these. In addition to put recycling and trash in wrong cans, my DH will take the can out to the curb multiple times even after the truck has emptied it because one of the neighbor’s car is still out to the street. He will have see. The truck come and emptied it, bring the can back into the garage and then no more than a half hour it will be back out at the curb. I’ll say the trash truck already emptied ours, can you bring it back in? He will go get it….and then once again it’s out at the curb. I’ve come to dread trash pick up day.
Today I found a pair of his socks in one of our coffee mugs in the cupboard. OMG. I bought him a really nice sweater for Christmas and hadn’t seen it since right after Christmas and had really looked for it. Just yesterday I wanted to look up a date regarding my dad and we have a couple of boxes with some pics and information about our parents stored in a closet in one of our extra bedrooms. Well there was his sweater in the one box I opened!! Never would have thought to look there for his sweater.
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It’s the hiding things that puts me over the edge 🙄😳Mo rhyme or reason.
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I had to hide all paper products. I simply use cup towels for bib, napkins, ect. I hide the wipes I use for him in the bathroom. But what does bother me is his mocking me. If I say my hand hurts (which it does) his hand hurts, if I scratch my head he does the same. Then there’s the “hay”. He will sit in his chair and just start hollering “hey “ and I will be right there with him, I tell him “I’m right here “ him oh okay. Then there goes the hay!! I just have to smile!
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Tonight everything is annoying, so it's hard to decide what's mild or mildly humorous. We were driving home the other night, and I was going along with the traffic at about 43 mph in a 35 mph zone. She has a fit that I'm speeding in her car. I ignore it. About a mile later, the speed limit goes up to 55 and I accelerate slowly so she won't have a fit - and she tells me I'm going too slow at 47 because the speed limit is 55. It was hard not to laugh out loud at that one.
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Commonly Used Abbreviations
DH = Dear Husband
DW= Dear Wife, Darling Wife
LO = Loved One
ES = Early Stage
EO = Early Onset
FTD = Frontotemporal Dementia
VD = Vascular Dementia
MC = Memory Care
AL = Assisted Living
POA = Power of Attorney
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