Having a full blown technical understanding of the crazy inherent in a situation, i.e., this is normal in these...
Having a full blown technical understanding of the crazy inherent in a situation, i.e., this is normal in these circumstances, does not, in fact, help as much as you might like it to when you are in the middle of said circumstances. The least offensive illustrative example I can think of with this is the Cookie Baking Conundrum, a subset of the Donna Reed Phenomenon. Iow, somehow, my mother's brain thinks if she can make some stab at turning some tiny part of anything into a 1950's perfect house beautiful tableau, it will make her feel better. Not that that's her conscious thought process. Realities of the situation mean that there is stuff in a quasi-organized fashion all over the dining table and the kitchen counters. It just is, because. Maybe 2% of this is my contribution, because I needed to keep some separate information organized so I'd know what was what and where if I needed it when #helping. Of the other 98%, half is my mother's and half is my father's...