Home Depot Crackhouse @ MindSay 
Yesterday and today I witnessed my dad in the throes of what we consider Alzheimer's, or else memory loss as a result of age/inactivity/alcohol. A light burnt out in the lower bathroom, it's a 4' flourescent bulb light. My dad determined that the ballast had gone after 20+ years of faithful service. So it sounds simple, replace the ballast. My mom goes out to get a new one from Home Depot, and the little guy who helped her gave her the wrong one. Of course, she doesn't know this, because the people at Home Depot are supposed to be knowledgeable in their area.
So she gets it home, dad wires it up, and nothing happens. Now, dad's already in a state of frustration at having to fix something, not that he doesn't want to fix it, but that it has to be fixed. It's one more thing that needs to be done in his mind. So many things need to be done. So many things to take care of. And not one of them is being done. The list stagnates, and festers, in his mind, and it drives him to drink - literally.
(Ok, the blog just did an autosave, and it came up with suggested tags for this one. I decided to click on the one that made the least sense to what I was writing. See if you can guess which one it is.)
Mom calls me over to help out, being an engineer and all. Now mind you, my degree is mechanical, not electrical. But I know enough to be dangerous (usually to myself). Dad shows me the progress so far. I take a look at everything, and slowly determine that the ballast isn't the right one. The ballast says what type of lights it's supposed to be used for, and the numbers on there don't match the numbers on the lights. Therefore, wrong ballast. I tell my dad though, that maybe it needs a different bulb - why the old ones don't work, I don't know, but the numbers don't line up. Who knows after so many years? Things change.
Dad says to get some new bulbs. Mom and I go to get said bulbs, ones that match the numbers on the ballast, but they only come in 3' lengths. Aha! Wrong ballast theory is making sense now! So we go to check out ballasts, and I find one that uses the same type of bulb that my parents have, and has all the proper number and color of wires and everything. Problem solved!
Sort of.
You see, I didn't look at all of the numbers. I neglected to see the one that said '277 V', meaning that it was for a system that ran on, oh, say, commercial voltage. I needed one that said '120 V', regular household voltage.
So today, my dad's frustration is in high gear. Why doesn't this work? What else is wrong? He's ready to *gasp* call an electrician.
In all of my years of living there, there has NEVER been an electrician, plumber, carpenter, or any tradesman in the house. Dad did it all. And to this day, I wish I had half of the experience and knowledge that he had. That same knowledge and experience that's slipping away, day by day.
So now my mom goes out, gets a new ballast, one with the proper voltage now, and it's waiting to be installed. But my dad wants to check the bulbs that came out, to see if they're still good. So we check them in another light. They're good. But he asks 3 times afterwards, whether or not we need to check the lights in another fixture to see if they're still good. And after dinner, he asks where the two lights go that are sitting out, waiting to be put into the fixture go, and are they still good? Do they need to be checked? And do we need to get a new ballast for the light?
Granted, he had a few between the time I was there after mowing the lawn for them and dinner time (approx. 4 hours) so he was two ships' worth of sheets to the wind. Yet alcohol is a poor excuse for this. This is the onset of age and possibly something else. My mom and sister have front row seats to this slow decline. I get to hear their frustration, and wonder, will I ever be this bad when I'm older? And what can I do now to at least alleviate my dad's mental state?
