Very very very bad day

 

I don't consider myself superstitious, but there is no denying that today was a very very very bad day all the way around.

I got up to discover that my glucose meter was no longer functioning. New batteries, fiddling around, nothing worked, so I looked on line to see what was available. Apparently my particular meter is out of date now, which is bad luck because I have two boxes of strips left over and they are not cheap. I decided to go to a local drug store to buy a new meter and strips and after talking to the pharmacist, I brought them home. 

My first strip was way higher than it has ever been, so I tried three more times and got varying numbers over thirty points apart. Obviously the machine did not work, so I had to return it. I called to see if my doctor would prescribe a new meter and then my insurance would cover it. She did! 

Then the pharmacy called to say she neglected to give it a code. Since that is not something I can do I told them to call the doctor. Later I called to check and it was covered, but when I asked if there were strips included they said no. Now I am waiting to see if they call the doctor and she sends them a prescription for the strips, because it is useless without them. And, on top of all this, they will not have any meters in stock until tomorrow. So I am waiting.

In the meantime I got a voicemail that that my recliner is ready to be delivered. I tried to do the right thing and go to a local store to buy it. It cost a little more, but I thought there were several benefits. I was wrong. They no longer take away your old chair when you buy a new one and you have to wait 4-8 weeks for delivery! I tried to respond to the voicemail and set up a delivery date, but no one here or in the main office would answer. They gave me an email address, but the first one did not work. I finally got through to our local store and they gave me an email address that did work and umpteen phone calls later I now know that the men will text me on March 15th and give me a two hour delivery window. Ugh.

I almost cancelled my appointment to get my hair cut, because I figured with my luck it would be a disaster too, but I didn't.  My salon operator, who gave me the best cut ever five weeks ago was limping around with a knee brace, but she was sweet, cheerful and positive she could deliver a haircut that would rise above this awful day. 

One side is slightly shorter than the other, but I didn't notice until I was home.

I got out the scissors, trimmed up my hair and settled in. I am not leaving the house the rest of this day. In fact, I am not doing much of anything for the rest of this very very very bad day.

Surprise, surprise, surprise

 

Imagine someone trying to start a relationship with you, so they take you to a Valentine party! 

Right? Right!

Then they abandon you, let you buy your own meal and eat alone while they wander off to play games with other people.

Of course they come back. Whining that the other people didn't play nice with them! 

And some people wonder why the world treats them so badly.

This didn't happen to me, but it happened to someone I know quite well. I am just amazed that she went out with the guy at all. It's not like she doesn't know who he is. She was married to him once upon a time and he hasn't changed at all.

People can be so self absorbed they don't even realize the rest of the world is not there just for their use. They believe  it is everyone else who is rude, crude, and has no social skills!

Enough

 

People seem to love being joiners. They want to be part of something, sometimes, anything. It isn't rare in nature. There are herd mentalities, flock mentalities, schools of fish, religions, political parties, all sorts of ways to protect yourself by joining in with others of like minds, abilities, whatever. 

Unfortunately people also love attention. They like to be noticed, to stand out, to be special. Fortunately, or unfortunately, these two things sort of clash. It's hard to be just like everyone else and stand out. Teenagers aim for it. They are known for bucking the system just like all their friends, but I would hope adults might see through this.

They don't. People want to be "in style." They want to belong to exclusive groups, particular schools, millionaire and billionaire clubs. Joining is a national past time. We foster it from preschool on, because it is easier to control people who follow the crowd. They are swayed by the people around them and less likely to break out of the mold -- until they do. Then beware the frustrated, unhappy stray who suddenly goes berserk and shoots people, or runs them down with their vehicles. 

A few might simply rise to the top and run the show, but it is not possible for everyone to do this.

Or is it?

When I taught preschool we had people observe us for many different reasons. Student teachers had to be evaluated, we had to be evaluated, people wanted to see what our school was like before they enrolled their children.  One of the best criticisms we ever received was from a well respected, well educated person who complained, "You have a class full of leaders." What they meant was we had fifteen happy, outspoken, well adjusted little three year olds who were eager to contribute and participate in whatever we were doing.

It was no accident. 

People have bad days, but we made sure there were acceptable alternatives always available that made shaming unnecessary. In all the years I taught we only had one child who could not make it and he came from an extremely intense family situation. Of course these were three year olds coming from a loving family to a loving school. The world isn't like that for adults.

Bewildered adults join in, follow the leader, try not to make waves and still rise to the top. 

I think we need to redefine the top. It really and truly is not the same for everybody. Instead of aiming for a lot of money, bigger houses, faster cars, more possessions than those around you, what if the top was simply having enough to be happy?

Enough. It implies enough balance, happiness, food, joy, whatever it takes to make your endorphins content. This kind of success comes from within. People who find this may join things, or follow along for a while, but they are not driven to it by something that is not natural to them. Competition is a dis-ease spread by those who think they will profit from it.

Stress

 

Stress control is easier to talk about than practice! I think one of the things that draws me to the octopus is the way its emotions are instantly revealed by its color. I am a barometer for feelings.

For example: Last Friday I discovered that my car, in spite of everything I did to protect it from the numbing snowstorm that I knew was coming, had died. The battery was dead and the car was packed on four sides by frozen snow. Since it is nearly nine years old and has died several other times in the cold this past twelve months, I knew I needed a battery, but I could not get an appointment to do that until Tuesday! 

Five days with no car and the towing company would not commit to coming at a specific time to be sure I could get to the battery place, plus they wanted me to have my car dug out of the snow before they came. These are stressful things. Especially because of my age and the fact that I live in an apartment. I do not own a snow shovel and even if I did, trying to get out to my car, or being able to shovel it out are unlikely.

I was blessed by some young neighbors who took it upon themselves to take turns digging my car out while their toddler napped. Unasked, they simply showed up and told me it was done! Then the day of my appointment the towing company would only commit to showing up between 7 and 10, so I had to get up very very early then sit and wait for hours. Once they came I had to drive straight to the battery place and wait again. At least they worked me in early, but it was bad news. The alternator was bad too, so the cost was ten times what I had anticipated.

They kindly drove me home so I could wait there and then they picked me up when my car was ready to go. It runs better than ever now, the snow is packed down or scraped away, I can even get to my mailbox, but these have been very stressful days for me. I was sick by the time I went to bed Tuesday night.

I did some stress eating on Tuesday and even today, two days later, it is showing up in my glucose and weight. Age has left me incredibly vulnerable to everything. I am my own worst enemy. Experience helps with some things, but there are others it where it just doesn't matter and one of those is that many services for elderly people are set up to deal with those already suffering from dementia, or falls, or other disabilities, so they require extra steps for all the rest of us too. Instead of just getting my taxes done, I now have to go over there and pick up the forms ahead of time to be sure I fill them out properly. Whereas in the past I simply dropped my tax forms off. A misdiagnosis by my podiatrist caused my insurance to call my doctor requesting tests I don't need, but they don't seem to get that on the record, so I have to discuss it over and over again. The intentions are good, but it almost amounts to harassment.

I am beginning to understand why old people become crotchety and difficult!

Childhood

 

I like to look at the old pictures on Facebook's Bloomington Normal Remembered. It seems like only yesterday I was a child running to the grocery store for my parents back in Springfield, Illinois. The closest was a half block away. Grunwalds was a little mom and pop store. He sold meat across the back and would give me a piece of baloney or cheese while I waited for our order. She checked me out at the little counter up front. There was a small box freezer across from that counter where they sold popsicles and ice cream bars for seven to ten cents! There were two short aisles filled with bread, canned goods and a soap display showing which dishes were being packed inside the soap boxes as give aways. One year I saved a long time to buy a set of Mr. Peanut salt and pepper shakers behind that counter for my mother. I think they were $1.98. Sometimes, on Saturday mornings, my father would scrape up enough to send me to buy two packages of cinnamon rolls and we would feast on them lathered in butter.

If we wanted to stay on this side of the busy street of MacArthur, we sometimes went to Mitchel's Meat Market. It was about one city block away, a fair walk if you were carrying two big sacks of groceries, but sometimes I could ride my bike and balance a bag of groceries on the front fender while steering. Mitchel's was nearly three times as large as Grunwalds. They had a coke machine and sold giant dill pickles from a jar on top of the meat counter for a nickel. Otherwise it was much the same. He was the butcher. She was the check out. I remember one year she had a stroke and could only speak out of one side of her mouth. I was terrified by the thought of that happening.

And finally there was West Grand Market, which wasn't on west grand at all. It was run by Mr. and Mrs. Klang, but it was across MacArthur, so I wasn't sent there until I was older. They didn't have a coke machine, but they had a cooler with an intricate maze filled with bottles of soda that were accessible if you put a dime in it. They also had two beautiful, very smart daughters who didn't go to our grade school, but who I met in high school. One of them was a fantastic oboe player. West Grand Market had the advantage of allowing my parents to run a tab that they paid periodically while the others demanded cash.

These were the stores of my childhood that slowly disappeared as the owners got older and bigger stores appeared for a society whose women were starting to have access to cars so they could go farther afield to shop. First there was an Eisner's and later a National, which was so huge we used to view it as almost a sight seeing trip. My mother would buy each of us a whole pint of ice cream if we would sit in the car while she shopped! We took our own long ice teaspoons and feasted on such an unbelievable treat.

It seemed like this part of my life lasted for eons, but in truth we moved there at Thanksgiving when I was five and moved away right after Christmas when I was eleven. 

Those six years defined a lot of who I was.

The Entertainer

 

Be careful where you stand and who your friends are!

A little talent gets lost when it stands in the shadows of greats.

I'm being facetious of course.

And then again I am not. Among my friends I am known for having a little musical ability and a little writing ability, but then many of my friends are well known for having a lot of musical ability and a lot of writing ability.

They are all kind to a fault where I am concerned, but my pounding on the piano does not compare with concert level musicians who can actually support themselves with their gifts. Nor does my writing garner any great awards compared to those academic and popular books actually written and sold by other friends.

In a world without television or radio, or computers, I am passable at so many things, but on a world level I do not even rank being noticed and most of the time that is more than fine with me. I am horrifically shy. Every oboe solo I ever played caused me unbelievable anguish. I nearly dropped out of college rather than take speech. 

I am relegated to performing for people walking by windows, attending funerals, or reading under duress. It's not that I do not like to perform. I am just so afraid I won't measure up that I would rather not take chances. If I do end up in front of people and they like it, I am so excited my hands shake and I sometimes have no memory of it. Then I assume they were just being kind.

My moment in the sun was mostly while teaching preschool. Three year olds are fantastic audiences. If you are their teacher, they think everything you do is extraordinary. Every word you speak, every picture you draw, every story you tell, is rewarded by rapt attention and nothing compares to that. 

These are my people - sweet, kind, and safe.

Character

 

Middle class, upper class? When I hear these designations of course I think of money, but more often than not, I think of the way people speak and the manners they display as a reflection of who they are.

Poor grammar is no crime, but it's no great honor either! I grew up with three siblings. Only one of us has chosen to downgrade her language to that of the uneducated people she evidently admires. This same person also has chosen to embrace fewer pleasant habits than the rest of us, choosing to say things like, "He don't," and talk with a mouth filled with food.," 

It is not being uppity to prefer people who know more than one ugly adverb and adjective, or dare to learn a bit about the world around them - beyond Sally, Dick and Jane's torrid affairs and bad habits. There is more to life than gossip, fast food and following every Pied Piper who tootles past you.

I find a sort of reverse snob-ism in some people today and it annoys me.

If you grew up speaking a certain kind of lingo then you are excused, but if you cultivated it for some bizarre reason? Well I really do not understand that. Are you trying to fit in? And who is it you want to fit in with? Are they really worth it? Can you not join them without mimicking them? 

True ignorance is lamentable, but carefully cultivated ignorance is mind boggling! Some people wear it like a badge, but I wonder if it isn't more of a shield? Stepping past it requires a certain amount of personal character and responsibility.

It's time to get real.

éadrom

 

They live mortal lives and suffer mortal woes, but there is a people who are very much different from other mortals.

They are born to love and once they discover the love of their life, nothing will ever dissuade them from continuing on in a quest no one else in the world will ever understand.

These creatures are born amongst regular humans, sprinkled here and there like dew drops on a fairy garden, so that there will always be a hidden sparkle, a tinkle of laughter and a dash of joy no matter how hard their lives may appear to others, or sometimes seem to them.

They do not necessarily find their muse right away and even then it is sometimes possible that the object of their love will not respond with the understanding and behavior appropriate to being loved so much.

That does not change anything.

I knew two who did find each other. Young, forever and in spite of terrible odds, lived out the fairy tale almost until the end.

I know one who discovered his and faithfully supported, loved, honored, and adored her forever more while she stood unknowing and blind to the magic around her.

I know another who found a love out of time, but in the end that did not matter. The feelings were still the same and the ending is always the same, because . . .

Like someone else once said, "Everything will be okay in the end. If it is not okay, it is not the end."

They live authentic lives in authentic circumstances with indiscernible beauty.

Tipping the scales

 

I am a type two diabetic who is constantly trying to find something that works long term. Over the last ten years I have gained and lost the same seventy pounds numerous times. I have tried all sorts of modifications and nothing sticks. I am never going to be a person who can eat a lot of salad long term and forever more, and eating too much meat causes me to suffer from gout. 

Everyone knows that the solution to healthy eating is a balanced diet, but finding one that accommodates my health and state of mind is tricky. In my skinny years (20-29) I ate nothing and not particularly healthy nothings. Now that I'm older I can't do that.

Around Christmas I tried to cut down on carbohydrates, thereby lowering my glucose levels for the diabetes. I had a very difficult time, eating a lot of cheese and eggs and meat, but eliminating ice cream, most breads and crackers. It worked, my glucose generally runs well below what my doctor wants now.

I noticed I had lost a bit of weight, so then I looked at what I could do to encourage that. I added more vegetables and less cheese. Now I am working on lowering the salt, which means fewer frozen products. This is dangerous ground for me, because if cooking becomes too complicated, or time consuming I will lose interest in it almost immediately. And exercise is often minimal due to foot and ankle problems.

It can be frustrating having so many restrictions, but as of right now I am losing about one pound a week, keeping my glucose low and doing the best I can, consuming copious amounts of vegetables. Slow but steady and I hope something I can live with long term.

Debate or manipulate?

 

I grew up in a two parent family, but most of that time was spent with women. My father worked night and day trying to provide the means for my mother's preferred way of living and she surrounded herself with her family and other like minded people. Controversial subjects were candidly approached by my father, but since I seldom spent time with him, the majority of my life was spent avoiding those subjects. In my mother's family we simply did not talk about certain things.

I can't recall anyone ever saying outright that something was verboten, but there were subtle ways of enforcing those things. My great aunt sometimes whispered of things she wasn't supposed to, but no one else. Life was supposed to be a bright, primary colored, sunny representation of Dick, Jane and Sally.

Variety came in the form of homely things. I loved the story of the country mouse and the city mouse, especially the listing of things they packed in their suitcase. Rearranging the furniture was about as risque as it got unless my almost unknown oldest cousin appeared. She was from my uncle's first marriage and her mother (ahem, whispered, ran a bar!) Of course this one thing explained every failing she had and the occasional stories of how she danced on that bar as an infant were told with relish.

Other than that my life was full of morality tales. Hard working, self sacrificing, noble people who persevered in spite of terrible odds without any vices, sex, or murky blurs at all to mar their virginal heroic personas. We were the stuff Baptist Sunday schools were built on!

Except the world is not a Sunday school and even if my family was composed of these paragons, I found myself needing skills it did not foster. The ability to discuss opposing ideas in a rational, sane, open way was not something I learned at home. Instead I learned manipulation and I didn't know the difference for a long time. Manipulation is a backhanded way of getting what you want without allowing discord to interfere. Oh, there may be discord, anguish and a lot of other things, but you don't have to deal with them if you are a great manipulator. The one being manipulated might be an entirely different story though.

And the insidious truth of such an upbringing is that one does not even know it exists unless he or she happens to have a lucid moment somewhere else. Realizing your format for living is flawed is infinitely uncomfortable. Turning a blind eye does not eliminate the problem and so the problem shows up twenty years later in your offspring who were sent out into the world totally unprepared for reality.

Going away to school when I was seventeen saved me in many ways, but there were leftovers that still affected my children. I am hoping their children experience fewer ripples of perfect family syndrome and more tolerance of reality without losing their ability to be positive thinkers and creative problem solvers along the way.

Now and forever

 

I was reading the news this morning and came across an article about an antisemitic flyer going around in Florida right now. My first reaction was, Jesus was Jewish too, folks, but then I stopped.

Most of the things people are ready to stir things up and die for are things they made up! Things that only exist in their heads! Myths and folk lore, prejudices and boundaries brought on by illiteracy, meanness and frustration.

These people are like the QuAnon folks that stormed the capital. They are unhappy, angry, ready for a fight and if they can't find a legitimate cause, they will fabricate one. Doing anything is better than doing nothing. And once you step into that ring, it is hard to step back. Ego and hard headed-ness go together.

So history is woven with wars based on invisible gods who rule the earth, the different colors of a human's pelt and the rights each color deserves, and which male or female is better than the other.

These are not debates. They are sacrosanct ideas implanted in the heads of the most vulnerable among us. Many based on the idea that this is the way it has always been, now and forever, amen. Of course forever varies depending upon the moment.

I cannot see a future devoid of chaos as long as people confuse education with indoctrination. Being right is as important to people, especially angry people, as breathing. Eden will not come to the earth when we have enough food, water and medicine for everyone. I suspect we already have all those things. 

Peace on earth will never reign until we stop herding scapegoats for a living and give up trying to be the hostess with the mostess. The solution is not conquering other people, it is reigning in our selves.

A breath of life

 

When I finish a book by Elizabeth Louise Mertz, writing as Barbara Michaels, I feel a sense of fulfillment I find in very few other places in my world.

She writes to my soul. Just enough mystery and drama, not too much romance, but what is there is believable from my point of view, with a little touch of the supernatural that fits nicely within my own experiences. Everything could be explained rationally, but the doubt is richly embroidered along the edges.

I know I will not be disappointed, or depressed by the ending and I am never bored by her words that draw me so deeply into the story I feel more like a visitor than reader.

I have always been an avid reader, but I have never found any other author as satisfying as this one. At first I thought she was my age and that explained it all, but it turns out she is my father's age. She is from Canton, Illinois, a town slightly north of here, a town tied to me by several extended family members, but not her. She has a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago, a subject that has always fascinated me, but there our similarities end. I am not even a fraction as educated and successful as she is. She is a prolific writer and imminently successful in several genres, including two books on ancient Egypt that have been continuously in print since they were published.

She is everything I ever aspired to be and more.  Once I finish her Michael's books I will start on the Peter's ones and when I have read them all? 

I cannot imagine what I will do after that. Her books have given me a vicarious reason to be that is one of the greatest gifts I could have found at this stage in my life.

Seeking

 

All of us have things that we do better than other things, but our aspirations in life don't always start out seeking to optimize those things.

Designed to learn by copying, the first thing we do is reflect who our care givers are. Ducks want to learn to waddle, swim and quack even if they are born without a voice or have one leg. 

The secret to success is learning to want what we do best. Focusing on the swim can seem impossible if we can't waddle to the water and heaven forbid we should want to sing opera! Unfortunately many of us balk against advice that does not jibe with our desires and I think we need to be given permission to fail on our own. Of course one in a million, or maybe even ten million do learn to quack some sort of opera, but there are an awful lot of people and choices in between success and failure in one particular area.

It is the journey through what seems like failure that can discover the path to success if we are only open to it. 

And, we are not only hindered by our weak spots, we can also be hindered by our strengths. I know, at least, one person, who is above average at everything he tries, except possibly very close personal relationships. How does a person like this find what he both loves and enjoys enough to make a career out of it?

There is guilt if he doesn't pick the one that makes the most money. Doesn't he owe his children that kind of a life style? There is frustration if he cannot make a living at the one thing he loves the most (possibly because he actually loves his children more, so there is a hidden conflict.) And, because he fails at almost nothing, failure feels like a tragedy no matter how trivial it is.

Seeking our own level in life, that fine point where we are satisfied, happy, and still eager, is not easy for anyone. It takes a lot of work, whether that work is in discovering our goal, reaching our goal, or maintaining the feeling we want upon reaching that goal.

We are seekers.

Life is not a dream

     

I've experienced sleep paralysis several times in the past. They are terrifyingly real experiences where I think I am totally awake, but cannot move and twice I even heard an evil cackling from someone who seemed to be sitting on my back. Once it felt like a hug just before it went away. All three were times were when my eyes were open and I thought I was totally awake.

Lately, though I have had a different experience. In my dreams I find myself unable to move or speak and I am terrified. The first time was a week or two ago. I finally woke up calling for my mom and dad to come help! They both passed away long ago. 

Today I fell asleep in my recliner, covered in a blanket and in the dream I was in my grandmother's little house sitting on the couch. I was cold and tired, so I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders like a shawl and dozed off. My ex husband, who I have not seen nor heard from in years walked in and lay down on the couch, putting his head in my lap. At first I found this sort of sweet, but then I realized I couldn't move. I tried to tell him, but I couldn't make any words come out. He finally sat up beside me and I heard my cousin walk into the room with a friend. I tried to call for help, but all I could do was whisper, "elp." It was almost impossible to do that. I struggled trying to move my hands, but they felt trapped by the blanket and my feet wouldn't move. I kept gasping, "elp" in my ex's ears and he seemed to be asleep.

Then I heard my cousin walk past me and out onto the front porch. I screamed, "elp" as loud as I could. I knew my ex could hear me now, but I realized he wasn't going to help me at all. It was so terrifying. Just like the last time this happened, I thought if someone would reach out and pull me up to my feet by my hands, I would be okay, but no one did that.

My nose began to itch and I realized I couldn't even scratch my nose. I began to madly struggle and after what seemed like hours, I woke up! Just before I did that I thought, "This is a stroke. I am going to be like this for the rest of my life."

Wide awake I was fine. I could move, scratch my nose, and talk. I was still traumatized. I looked up sleep paralysis and it referred to people being awake while it happened. I only found one reference to someone experiencing it while in a total dream state. 

I feel rested, but lately I have been dreaming that I am sleeping. I am so comfortable in those dreams and I thought it might be because I have a new super comfortable mattress and pillow. I don't know what caused the paralysis, I was in a chair, not a bed, but it makes me leery of going back to sleep.

Pity

 

Long ago when my husband and I went for marriage counseling and it was not working, my husband refused to continue. I don't remember what I said to our counselor, but I remember what he said to me. "You don't want people to pity you."

I also remember being surprised. I didn't see anything wrong with being pitied! It meant you worked hard and were loved, right? Growing up in my family we all felt pity for Grandma because she got up at the crack of dawn, no matter what, and worked around the house until she left for her paying job. We especially loved her when she tied a rag covered in Ben-Gay around her head so she could trudge on in spite of her headache. Being sick and vulnerable made you especially lovable in our family. It was expected. My mother often told me, "Nobody feels good in the morning, you just get and go anyway." My sister defined herself by having asthma whenever she was upset (except for the couple of years she had a cat and my mother told her that the cat had to go with the first asthma attack.) One of her nicknames was Pukey, or Pookey, it spoke to how fragile and lovable she was, totally dependent on my mother to survive. If you were small, weak, fragile, sick, you were lovable because you required extraordinary care. One of my brothers was going to die before he was three, or soon thereafter. He did die - at 65.

I have often wondered what his life might have been like if he had had structure and been taught to follow directions instead of being coddled and made excuses for (like he is so brilliant, he just chooses not to follow directions! What an amazing boy, he marches to his own drummer.) He died from excesses and untreated diabetes. He refused to adhere to a diabetic diet and he smoked.

When my mother died I was miserable. I had asthma for nearly five years, especially when I went back home to visit the family. Our way of coping was to be sick. To be pitiful.

Eventually I began to look at myself and how I felt. Pity elicited love, but it also made me angry with the person. Why did they resort to such damaging ways of coping with life? 

Why? Because we were all taught to be pitiful, the way rabbits are taught to freeze and cats to arch up and hiss! If we overdid things, over reacted, over worked, we must be better than everyone else, right? 

Wrong!

Living a joyful life is much better than covering yourself by remaining pitiful. Learning to cope with life's problems, finding creative solutions, and moving along, is a much healthier process than resorting to animal instincts eliciting pity. It's hard to change, but it is certainly possible.

Gray or grey, that is the question

 

I looked it up, because I wasn't sure which one was the color. It turns out both are, depending on where you live one is more popular than the other.

In my apartment it is the color that seems to be reigning and that brings up questions. I have always wondered if I love sky blue because that is the color of our sky, or if I just happened to love that color? Now I notice that without any preordained plan I seem to be surrounding myself with shades of gray. 

It has been gradual. I have loved the pale blue gray paint on walls since I was a child and my parents used it on our living room and front hallway. It was in fashion here a few years ago and I wished I could paint my apartment that color. This apartment has different woodwork, gray would not be the best choice, but my desk, end table and lamps are glass, chrome, and black and they look great.

When I moved in I bought a charcoal gray shower curtain as a temporary thing, but I've grown to love it's understated elegance and now realize I have matching towels instead of the contrasting ones I first bought. Yesterday I put the new duvet on my bed. You got it! It's gray and I love it.

I've worn gray more and more over the years, it compliments my eyes and now my hair, so I wonder.

Do I really love grays or am I just coordinating my world with my aging person?

Portrayals Betrayals

My generation often tended to portray women as lovable air heads. People who didn't really think about what they were doing, Lucille Ball in I love Lucy, a funny but accident prone woman, was one example, but there were lots of others.

I remember throwing chess games, and other games too, in order to "prove" my femininity in junior high and even later. Doing things carelessly and suffering odd mishaps was considered cute and funny.

Only these things are neither cute, nor funny.

Carelessness causes people to get hurt and while pratfalls may look hilarious on television, they result in broken bones, sprained muscles and other real damages. It is neither funny, nor smart to make the same mistakes over and over, especially when a little forethought, planning and just plain good sense could eliminate them.

Adult women need to act like adults.

Pay attention to where you are, how you are walking, what the conditions around you are. Repair things that are unsafe. Stop using poor, flimsy equipment when working on something.

Your world betrayed you when they made you think it was cute, or even acceptable to do stupid, careless things over and over and over again. You need to stop and think, then take control of your life. The older you get the more likely you are to get hurt when you do things without thinking, or try to be cute in an outmoded way.

You are betraying yourself in the worst way possible and you are worth so much more than that.

Happy New Year

Maybe it is just because they touch our hearts so much more deeply than other people, but it seems the best people have had the saddest year. 

A young man who was like family while he was growing up, lost his wife after a long nasty battle with cancer this year. He is left as the single parent of two wonderful children, both under twelve and he is coping by remembering all the joy they have shared through the years. This is who he has always been, but it is even more poignant now.

Other friends have lost their cherished dog, really their only child and I know their hearts are breaking.

It's been a bad year for dogs. Maddie, Chauncey, Brodie, Lucy, and Decatur, all crossed over that bridge into doggie heaven leaving behind an emptiness that cannot be filled by just buying another puppy.

On the other side, my children all seem to be finding their places in this world and I am grateful for that. A mother's heart is always connected to the love that binds her to her children and even though we have to let them go, it feels better when they are okay.

I am always looking at my life as if it were a novel. Wondering exactly what part I am at. I know it's not the beginning, but is this the climax, or the end? Are there more adventures coming up, or is this the first view of that sunset I'll be riding off into some day?

Right now the sorrow seems separated from me by a veil that softens everything and the light feels brighter than it has in a long time. My life is sweet. I have good friends, a great place to live and everything I need.

Once I was happy

 

Honestly, I am seldom deliriously happy. I am not crazy, but a good chunk of my life, especially the last twenty odd years, I am more than content most of the time. It is why I smile so easily in pictures. One of my Facebook friends, also a relative, once asked me if I was as happy as I look. I am.

But not during quarantine and not during Trump's four years in office. I was so unhappy that I was actually sick. Truly sick and tired. That is not just a phrase. It is an apt description of how you can feel when you are not content with your life. Those months grated on me. Bad news, isolation, covid, family members who were intelligent, but didn't have their heads on straight, it all added up to misery for me.

My bestest friend came up and spent a week with me in an Air B&B after we were both vaccinated and I was so worn out I could barely function, but that was the beginning of my comeback. My achilles heel is actually both my feet and they act up when my life does. But little by little I realize that days are getting brighter. 

Even though it's winter.

I am feeling more like my old self. Hopeful, happy, excited about things. I have more energy. I want to do things. I want to play and paint and build dollhouses. I even want to cook and entertain. 

Once I was happy and then I was forlorn, but now I'm on the road again and smiling like a blooming idiot at the strangest times. Even my dreams are happier. And I am grateful.

Grateful for my life and my friends and the gift of being able to bounce back.

Christmas

 

My daughter is having her first Christmas far away from everything and everyone she is used to. She and her boyfriend moved to Tempe, Arizona for better jobs and it is actually working out for them. They both have good jobs and they have a nice apartment.

What she doesn't have is her youngest daughter hanging around waiting to do everything with her and neither her boyfriend, nor his adult son are too interested in tree decorating or perpetuating the Christmas myth. Not to mention it is too far for her oldest daughter to show up on Christmas day

Myth, you say? Christmas isn't a myth! But the idea of Christmas, that we are fed from infancy on, really is a myth. It is supposed to be one big celebration complete with a sound track of Christmas songs while the family sits around the perfect turkey at a formal table for twenty after exchanging a billion dollars worth of fantastic gifts. The fireplace roars in the background. The tree twinkles. The cookies were decorated by Martha Stewart.

Nobody is sick, or tired, or wanting to leave and go play on the X-box. 

Everybody sits around oozing love and feeling appreciated for who they really are.

Really?

What big family gathering ever really goes that way? It is a ton of work to make Christmas happen and while most people can put up with the celebration, they don't want to do the work. After the kids are older, and before they are adults away from the nest, they aren't too interested in decorating trees, or cookies.

Christmas is a pageant directed by one member of the family, usually mom, who thinks it is so important she is willing to do almost all the work, cheer everyone else on and convince them that this is what is it all about. As long as that one person keeps it up, the ruse is perpetuated.

Once no one is interested in directing this production our dreams of Christmas have to be adjusted. It can still be fantastic. In fact, it could be better, but people have to have realistic expectations. If no one has the energy to cook, you go out, or pot luck it, or have french toast! It isn't about the food, or the tree, or even the presents. 

Christmas is a time to come together and enjoy each other's company in the best way possible, whatever that is for you,  and the more people who believe that, the better it will turn out.

Here and now

 

I grew up wanting to be and marry a man like the men my father worked with. Professors in tweed coats, smoking pipes and discussing art and poetry and great ideas. 

Then came the sixties and I wanted to be a farmer's wife, living off the land, eating food we grew, making my children's clothing, writing poetry and getting back to nature.

In college I met a man I thought was like my father and he had a beautiful name. Times were turbulent and emotions ran rampant. I married him convinced he was the love of my life.

Of course he was in Vietnam most of the time preceding our marriage, but those were the days my friends. I really thought they would never end They did. He was a good provider and for a couple of years he was even a good and faithful husband. 

My father always used to say that Adam and Eve got married. Then they got bored and decided to raise a little Cain. I thought if we only had children our marriage would be better. Nobody worked harder than I did to have children. I had nine miscarriages, was a foster mother and then we adopted two children. Right after that our youngest son was born and I loved those children more than life itself. I thought that was enough. I made their clothes. I made their baby food. I made them the center of my life.

But it was not enough.  I suffered through the lies, the betrayals, the other women and the pain of knowing I was not enough. There are a million ways to hurt your wife and my husband was exquisitely adept at most of them.

Now I am a divorcee of over twenty-two years and while life is not perfect, I have learned it is pretty darn good. The people in my life choose to be here and I want them here. I have had time to learn who I really am, warts and all and I can not only live with myself. I like me! I find it hard to think about, or talk about my good points, but I believe I really do have them.

I do have a professor to talk to, but we don't sit around in tweed jackets smoking pipes. We find it much more satisfying and fun to do a thousand other things. I no longer want to get back to nature, except from the lovely bug free shade of a screened in porch. I can still write poetry, or stories, or just my dreams if I choose. I still love my children more than life itself, but I don't need all the props I thought were necessary to feel fulfilled and happy. 

I am happy being me. Here and now.

Forgiveness

Forgiving is a term I honestly do not understand. I understand the concept, the words, the idea, but not the feeling. And yet I believe I forgive without any of this.

I forgive as a child does. It is part of my makeup. It happens organically because I breathe. 

I cannot seem to choose it. It doesn't work that way for me. To choose it, I would have to have some understanding of how it works.  I don't.

And yet, I have that feeling of peace that floods the light when forgiveness occurs. Sometimes I don't even know it happened except in retrospect.

I am like a child. in so many ways. Once I thought this was not a good thing, but as I grow older I realize it really is.

Normal

I have lived in the town of Normal off and on for the better part of fifty years. A little more on than off even though I don't live there right now.

But I never appreciated normal as much as I do this evening.

I have been incapacitated in one way or another since the year before last. I was sick for a while, then there was the quarantine.  My doctor prescribed a bunch of drugs that nearly did me in. I was so weak I could barely walk upstairs, then I developed gout from the drugs and ended up with my right foot in a soft cast that caused me to injure my left foot!

I was due to stop wearing the boot on that foot last week when I injured some muscles in my back and was in more pain than I can ever remember experiencing in all my life. I spent my 72nd. birthday in agony. 

Now, today, the boot is off, my back is so much better, and I am wearing new shoes with special inserts that feel so good. 

I feel so good!

I feel ten years younger!

I made Christmas cards for my youngest grandchildren, mailed Christmas cards, and started thinking about putting up a tree! I don't think I've felt like this in, well, so long that I don't even remember.

I'm almost afraid to say this, because I don't want to jinx it, but instead of thinking like that, I'm just going to savor it.

That thing

 

The thing about feeling so bad is that when I start to feel better -- it feels so good!

I started feeling bad last spring when a new doctor prescribed a bunch of new drugs. I eliminated them, one at a time, until I was only taking one and thinking I felt okay, mistakenly continued taking that one until it caused my body to develop gout as a by product of dehydration.

The gout was tenacious. It would not go away despite all the prednisolone packs they gave me and I eventually ended up at a podiatric surgeon's office. In desperation, she put a soft cast on my foot and eventually prescribed massive doses of naproxen, which I am not supposed to take for the sake of my kidneys. I took it and the gout gradually disappeared after weeks in the cast, but not before I fractured the bones in my left heel by favoring the sore right foot.

That was nearly seven weeks ago, so I was looking forward to this holiday week (both my birthday and Thanksgiving) as a time when I would be free to sleep without the boot I have been wearing. It would, or will be, the first time I have not had some sort of thing hindering my movement in nearly four months.

Then Tuesday I must have pulled a muscle in my back and for the last three days I have been in almost unbearable pain day and night. Taking naproxen and extra strength Tylenol both at maximum doses I have been at the point where I thought I would rather be dead. Finally last night things improved.

Today I have only taken the Extra strength Tylenol and used the heating pad. I still have to remain in a position that takes all strain off my back, semi-reclining, but it is the difference between night and day. Between unbearable and believing that I am really on the mend.

Just not feeling like nothing works makes me feel so good! Now I think that by Monday, when the doctor office opens, I will be okay and not even need to make an appointment, but I wouldn't have believed that Wednesday night, or all day Thursday.

Retirement

Retirement means no longer going to work everyday and getting paid by someone to do something so you can pay bills. I think it is the money that people mistake as a valid way of feeling valuable. If they were not paid, would they do the same thing with the same vigor?

I've never been able to sustain working at a job where I was miserable, or even unhappy. There is not enough money in the world to make me believe that this is the only option. Teaching preschool, working for a florist, these are simply things I loved doing that paid me money. The few short years I spent in a office couldn't pay me enough to stay, so I didn't. 

Fortunately I was able to retire fairly early in life. Retirement didn't mean much change for me. I've always done the things I loved. I loved taking care of my children, feeding them, teaching them, playing with them, introducing them to the world and hoping I was giving them what they needed to live in it.

I've always loved doing creative things. Sewing clothes for my children and myself, costumes for plays, crafts for gifts, is just one of the loves of my life. I used to love cooking and baking. I still love eating. Under the guise of parenting, I played with blocks, painted, drew pictures, rode bikes, did puzzles.

The pay I received for doing all the things I loved was getting to do it.

Retirement has only meant a little more time to do all those things I love in a way that is less stressful than it was when I had to get up early every day and go somewhere else.  I tell people I'm retired, but really I am just doing many of the same things I've always done.

I used to redecorate and rearrange my house. Now I live in an apartment, so today I spent the entire afternoon building a house with my blocks and then I furnished it and decorated it with exquisite miniatures. That is retirement!

Sensibilities

Everyone has their own set of sensibilities. Whether they are innate, or instilled is an interesting idea for me to contemplate.

I grew up with almost no personal boundaries in a family where the children were treated as simple innocent creatures to be cared for, en masse, with no allowances made for gender until I was almost twelve. I do remember my mother shouting at my father to put some clothes on when he was heading into the bathroom when I was around three, but it was her shouting that made it memorable. I don't even remember seeing at him.

My mother had no inhibitions when it came to her and me. Up until the time she died, I was comfortable anywhere she was and that included in the bathroom bathing or using the toilet. I don't remember any of my other siblings being there, so I don't know what they thought.

I had more privacy as a mother, but it was more because I like alone time and the bathroom was the only opportunity I had for that for ten years. I wasn't overly concerned about the state of being dressed or undressed as long as we didn't have company. Sometimes the bathroom was actually a surreptitious reading room!

I really have no sense of what is truly right or wrong when it comes to personal boundaries between people who are close, so I try to go along with whatever the person I am with feels comfortable with now. 

These are the ties that stretch

 

Loving someone does not necessarily guarantee that love will be returned, or returned in a way you might have chosen. But in the long run, it is the loving, more than being loved, that is so fulfilling.

Thinking of the loved one. Seeing the face of someone dearly loved, even just in pictures, can be a wonderful experience. After all, love means wanting the best for the beloved. Needing to have that love returned is less loving and more selfish. 

After a while, just hearing that a loved one is happy, or thriving makes me feel good. I find myself stretching my needs and imagination to fill in those long thin threads of separation and after much practice, I am good at it.

Long ago people left on boats or covered wagons and never returned home, but those at home never stopped loving them. Today we can fly across the world quickly, but being able to do something and actually doing it can be mitigated by many things. Still, the love, invisible as it may be, travels even more quickly and the heart is full.

Simple joys

Life has been a true trial this year. A bad reaction to a prescription set off a chain reaction that has seen me off one, or both feet since the beginning of August. Now that my daughter has moved to Arizona this has been difficult. I use a service to deliver groceries, but getting to my mailbox requires driving my car down there because I cannot walk down the little hill. Taking out my trash means making it to the parking lot, which is difficult, especially when both feet are bad.

One foot has been wrapped and in a boot since September. The other has me in too much pain to walk some days and okay others. I have a world class walker that is the only thing keeping me from being totally helpless this past Fall.

Other worries mount up. My car battery died. It jumped and started, but the radio needed to be reset. I had the factory code, only it didn't work. Trash piles up between doctor visits, which are the only time I've been able to leave the house. House cleaning is a spotty and iffy process done in bits and pieces depending on my feet, the walker and the job. Even changing the sheets is a major problem and I have had to sleep on top of the blankets because I have been sleeping with the boot on so that I can get up and make it to the bathroom twice a night.

Yesterday my foot doctor decided I still need to wear the boot, but the wrapping can come off. I just need two heavy socks now, which means that showering is now greatly simplified. I was able to drive through the Honda dealership and get my car radio working. I took out my trash, got my mail and even was able to get a flu shot and covid booster. 

I cannot tell you how relieved I feel being able to do these things. Simple things become major life problems when mobility is limited for so long. Cross your fingers that soon even the boot may come off (in the next two to four weeks.) Another upside? One of my twin kindergarten pen pals wrote back!

Lost in time and space

Family meant everything to me when I was growing up. My world was in a constant state of flux. We moved. People came and went. Schools changed, but my family was always there. 

I felt safe when I was with them. There was something solid and coherent in being together in the family car, or on vacation in Minnesota on the lake. Our homes, schools, and friends changed, but our routines were the same. The first twelve years of my life were spent as one fourth of a group called the kids. We bathed together, played together, rode bikes, and sat together at meals or watching television. There was such security in that little group.

My mother was the god-like creature who held us all together. Her strength, love, and fury defined our lives in no uncertain terms. I may have been afraid of her some times, but I always felt safe from everything else in the world when she was near by.

My father WAS god. He knew everything. The state superintendent of public instruction once described my dad as the most intelligent man he had ever met. I believed that. If he said something, I was willing to die before letting anyone else tell me it was wrong.

Moving to my mother's small home town when I was a senior in high school changed the dynamics. Not right away, but in the long run. There is a snobbery in small towns, a kind of backwards clannishness that separated our family. My younger siblings spent more time there than I did and the rift between us has never completely closed. We are no long one thing made up of four parts. We were them, and me, and each thing I did away from them - going to college, moving away, having an extended family of the heart, redefined who we were.

When my mother died we all drifted farther apart. Now my father and one of my brothers have passed on, my sister has migrated into a lifestyle I do not understand and my youngest brother is someone I talk to on the phone a few times a year. It is hard to imagine we were once one tight knit little solar system orbiting around the love and light of two people whose differences made them fit together like custom puzzle pieces.

I have sunshine on cloudy days

It has been a while since my last thot and it isn't because I haven't had thoughts. It is simply because I have had such a profusion of thoughts that I couldn't seem to formulate them into any one coherent Thot.

Heading into my next birthday I am a little bit surprised at how quickly my life has moved along. There are times that seemed, or seem interminable, but in general it has flown by faster than the recap that precedes Netflix series.

I have memories prior to age three that are as clear and vivid as ever. I can honestly say I remember fifty years ago as if it were yesterday. Even sixty years and maybe seventy!

It saddens me when I see someone treated as less than coherent and intelligent just because their skin is old and withered. It infuriates me when people are judged on their physical beauty. As a species many of us are still very very primitive. I sometimes wonder how many eons it will take for us to be truly civilized. 

Running fast to kill dinner might have been important to a caveman, but driving fast has nothing to do with saving ourselves as a species. Unless we figure in those throwbacks who still murder, rape, pillage and destroy.

Many of us haven't figured out that we are one with this planet and when she goes, we go. In fact, we will most likely go way before her, because we are not as resilient as she is. Thinking we have enough money to fling ourselves into outer space where we will survive on another planet is the height of hubris. Chances are if there is life out there and they know about us, they will not encourage our visiting. It would be like inviting un-housebroken wild things to live among them.

Still, on the whole, I am enjoying my life. I am proud of my children who seem to have their feet on the ground and their hearts in the right places. My family and family of the heart truly bring me sunshine on cloudy days. I love Iphones and computers.

And who could ask for much more than that?