i love spending time in vermont in the dead of winter and freezing my ass off...

I’m in Vermont and freezing. When I woke up, my grampa asked me to check the thermometer.

“Negative eight.”
“Negative eight? What does that mean? You mean eight below?”
“Yeah, eight below. Negative eight.”
“Negative eight. Did you make that up? Did you hear that on the weather channel?”
“I dunno. It’s not positive, so it’s negative. Negative eight. Eight below.”

Ten minutes later he shuffles into the kitchen. Normally, I associate shuffling with a fast pace, but in this case of shuffling it’s extremely slow. I use “shuffling”, because of the sound it makes when he walks not because of the movement itself. His feet never really leave the ground—just skid across the carpet, which is too cushy and often trips him. He’s in the kitchen now and fiddling around with stuff that doesn’t need fiddling with. Life would be easier if he stayed in one place. My life anyway.

“For Pete’s sake, can’t you read a thermometer? It’s twenty below.”
“It’s negative eight. This line is for ten.”
“Let me see. Oh, you’re right.”
He shuffles back to the table.

He has all of these rules that I need to follow when I’m here. Ridiculous things that serve no purpose other than to give him a bit of control. I think at this age, he feels helpless and is humiliated by the fact that he constantly needs someone around, so he makes up these rules to have a little power.

1) The colored plastic cups are his. He washes them himself and they do not go in the dishwasher. They stay on the counter.
2) The blue chair and the green chair are his. If you want to sit in the living room, sit on the green couch, the blue couch, or in the white chair.
3) He only eats with a soupspoon. NOT A TEASPOON.
4) The blue towels are his. Do not touch them.