Never Forget - 9/11

Remembering the lives lost on 9/11/2001 when terrorists attacked New York, Washington D.C., and heroic passengers fought back and a fourth flight crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, stopping that attack.

I especially remember the 343 firefighters who died in New York that day when the Twin Towers collapsed. As the wife of a firefighter, that loss holds a special significance for me.

On the 25th anniversary of this horrific day, may we all remember we are one people, not only in this nation but also upon this good earth, and honor one another as individual humans with love and decency.

The Mattress Goes BAA

 

Having determined that we would replace the mattress, my husband set out again for the mattress store. Once again, I wasn’t sure what was going on, or if we were buying, exchanging, or what.

Neither of us had done any research about mattresses. Me, because I had no clue what was going on. As for my husband, he was just trying to get his back to stop hurting.

He decided we needed a firm mattress with a softer mattress top. So, the helpful sales lady, who I’m sure by now thought we had been bitten by rabid bats, had us rest on first this mattress then another mattress.

He narrowed it down to two. One was a Stearns and Foster, which our old mattress had been, and the other was by a company I’d never heard of.

The Stearns and Foster was obviously not of the same quality as the mattress he’d so cavalierly tossed away a few weeks early, but it was also much better than Count Dracula’s slab.

The other mattress felt very nice and comfy. I liked it.

Until I didn’t.

I asked what was in the mattress. The helpful sales lady told us the mattress was by Spink and Co., out of England, but now made here in the USA, only out of wool from Yorkshire, England, and this was the same brand that the royals in the UK slept upon. The wool inside came from sheep, cashmere, angora, alpaca, etc.

“I’m allergic to wool,” I reminded my husband.

“It’s in a mattress,” he said.

“I’m allergic to wool,” I said again.

“It’s all been cleaned. It’s not that foam stuff that off-gasses. It’ll be fine,” he said.

“I can’t wear a wool coat,” I reminded him.

He bought the mattress with the wool in it. It cost about four times more than the first mattress.

The day the mattress arrived, it came encased in cardboard and plastic. After it was placed in the mattress encasement, and the movers left, I could feel the itch all over my body.

I had the air purifiers on high.

It’s just the wool from the plastic encasement, I told myself.

I also smelled something. I am quite sensitive to odors. At first it smelled faintly like cow, then it turned to a smell like burlap.

Everything seemed to have calmed down after the air purifiers ran a few hours, and it was even better after I showered.

Then my husband caught an upper respiratory thing, and gave it to me, and I had no way of knowing if I was sneezing and had watering eyes because of the virus or the mattress.

I started getting up at 5:30 a.m. just to get off the mattress.

It’s now been three weeks since we purchased this mattress. I still won’t make up the bed; I smooth out the sheets and then fold them all back, letting the thing air out even if it doesn’t need it.

My upper respiratory virus is better, aside from a lingering cough. My husband still has a bit of a cough, too.

And last night when we ran the humidifier, because we both seem to be very dry, I smelled burlap again. When I mentioned it, my husband scoffed.

“You could smell an ant fart 3 miles away,” he said.

This doesn’t have an end yet.

I don’t know that it will. I may be fine sleeping on this mattress. It sleeps very well, I have to say. It’s very cozy and comfortable.

But it also has wool.

And like I said, I’m allergic to wool.

Stay tuned.

Count Dracula’s Slab

 

Not long after I’d fallen in the night, my husband declared we needed a new mattress. He wanted to get a smaller mattress so I didn’t need to climb into the bed. He wanted to lower the bed as much as we could with an adjustable bed frame, removing the bed slats from our beautiful cherry poster bed so the mattress would be lower to the floor.

I argued against this. We did not need a new mattress. The mattress had nothing to do with my fall. I fell because I was half asleep and trying to look upside down under the bed, not because I was trying to climb into the bed.

But he would not be swayed. We were out and he drove us to a mattress store. I thought we were just going to look.

“I want the firmest mattress you have,” he told the sales woman. She led him to an ultra-firm Beauty Rest mattress.

It felt like a rock.

We tried out a few other mattresses, but he determined the first one we tried was the one he wanted. And he wanted it then.

“What are you doing?” I said. “We don’t need a new mattress.”

“I want something for my back, ok? This will help my back.”

Ah. So it had nothing to do with my fall. He was just using that as an excuse.

The mattress came the following week. The nice delivery people set up the new adjustable bed frame, put the mattress in the mattress encasement, and tossed the mattress onto the bed frame.

I added a mattress pad and the bed linens. I told myself it would be fine. I sleep on a bed wedge anyway, one that’s eight inches thick at the top, and oversized, and then I have pillows under my legs, so it shouldn’t matter about the mattress, right?

Wrong.

That mattress was like sleeping on stone. Count Dracula wouldn’t have been able to sleep on that slab of granite. My back went into multiple muscle spasms. I could hardly stand up.

This went on for three days and my husband called the mattress place and said we needed to return the mattress. “My wife doesn’t like it,” he said.

They told us the agreement said we had to try it for 30 days before we could return the mattress.

I suggested I would stay at a hotel for the next 21 days. One with a nice soft mattress.

He went to Walmart and bought a foam mattress topper. I told him just to get a twin for me, but when he came back with a queen, I knew the truth.

The mattress hurt his back, too.

“It doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would,” he mumbled when I confronted him.

Fortunately, the mattress sales woman took pity on us and agreed that I would probably never find a good night’s sleep on Count Dracula’s slab.

So back we went. And things got weirder.

A Smash and Two Falls

 

Sometime back in early November, as I walked on the treadmill, I lost my footing and began to fall. I caught myself on the bars around the home treadmill, hit the kill switch, and righted myself. I shrugged it off as “no harm, no foul” and kept going.

But I had hurt my shoulder, and as time progressed, so did the pain. Since it was my right arm that was bothering me, it became difficult to function. I wasn’t able to do the holiday baking and cooking I normally do because I couldn’t hold the mixer.

I couldn’t stir fudge, either. Talk about disaster! I’m known for my fudge. When I was a news reporter, I’d make at least 15 pounds of fudge and then walk around handing out pretty boxes of candy to my sources and other folks who’d helped me throughout the year.

With the holidays coming up – Thanksgiving, then Christmas – I just tried to keep moving through it. Then my father passed away in January. It was March before I saw a doctor and asked her to send me to physical therapy. That’s helped a little, but not as much as either I or the physical therapist had hoped.

Not long after I started physical therapy, I smashed my middle finger at the end joint. The car console lid fell down on my hand, and my finger took the brunt of the blow. I remember thinking that was going to leave a mark, but it didn’t, and it wasn’t until about 10 days later, when suddenly my whole hand swelled, that I remembered the accident. Turns out I had a fracture in that finger. It still hurts even now, months later.

And then in May, I got up in the night and placed the splint I had on my finger on the bedside table while I tried to open a bottle of water. The splint rolled off the table and under the bed. Our bed is high, and my husband had made me a stoop with two steps to use to climb into the bed.

I sat on the lower step with a flashlight, trying to find the splint, and somehow lost my balance. I fell over backwards, hitting my head on the hardwood floor and waking my husband. The next thing I remembered was him standing over me, the overhead light on blinding me, and all I could see was his boxer shorts while he said he wanted to call an ambulance.

“I can’t lift you,” he sputtered. He has had a hip replacement and isn’t supposed to lift over 50 pounds.

“Just let me sit here a minute, will you?” I said. After a few minutes I was able to get myself up. My head seemed fine. To my knowledge I never lost consciousness, I was just rattled.

But that fall set off an unexpected chain of events, about which I will write in my next post.

I'm a Summer

I haven't worn makeup for several years now. I used to never go without it. However, during the pandemic, I stopped wearing it, because who was going to see me? 

When the time came to reveal my face in public again, my skin had other plans. A new allergy had moved in while I wasn't looking. Makeup now makes my eyes itch and water. So my face is just my face these days. 

Recently, I noted that color analysis had come back around on TikTok. Once again, people were holding scarves up to their chins and declaring themselves Soft Autumns or True Winters.

It reminded me of the one and only time I went to have my "colors" done.

Back then, doing anything fashionable was completely out of character for me. But a work friend convinced me to spend a Saturday afternoon learning my "colors," a process which entailed taking off my makeup in public (a horror at that time) and having my physical self assessed. 

This was a lot of trouble for a woman who believed in blue jeans and Cover Girl.

Other women from work had spent small fortunes to be analyzed and "seasoned" so their wardrobes would match their personal coloring. As usual, I was twelve steps behind in the fad department, but at least by now the cost had gone down.

Many things can be said for humbling yourself in public. My friend and I ended up seeing each other in many different lights as the consultant ran us all over the downtown store. She led us, with bare, unmade faces, to opposite ends of the building to determine the best light.

As it turned out, my colors were not so easy to find. My eyes were an indeterminable color. I always called them hazel.

Apparently, they are not that simple.

The color consultant said my eyes were like "cracked ice." When she looked into them, she said, a person kind of fell in and kept going. Every time she placed a color near my eyes, that color became my eye color. 

She finally settled on some kind of combination gray-green-blue.

And what did I learn from this experience? I learned that I am a Summer and should wear dusty colored clothes. I also learned you're not supposed to take makeup off with soap and water, and that I should wear lipstick.

I did not then, and never have, worn lipstick. Lipstick has always bothered me, making my lips swell. I was a lip gloss girl, then and now.

The color consultant transformed my friend into a dashing sophisticate, a vision that fit her trim body and flowing hair. I thought she wore her makeup much better than I did. She bought a bunch of stuff to take home. I just paid for the consultation.

The true test of my new-found beauty came with my husband, of course. My face was tight, and my mouth tasted funny from the lipstick, but I needed his opinion before I searched for a washcloth.

He viewed me intently from afar. "Looks about the same to me," he said. He moved in for a closer look.

"Well, now I don't know. You've got it all smudged there in the corner," he said as he peered at my face.

I looked in the mirror. No, it wasn't smudged. It was applied as the color consultant had shown me, so as to accent a certain feature. "Move back and look," I said.

He did so, and admitted it looked all right from a few feet back. But up close and personal, where it really counts, all he could see was a smudge.

Looking back now, I have to laugh. I went through all that - the bare face, the comment about my eyes, the dusty Summer clothes, the lipstick that I could never wear - only to end up, years later, not wearing a speck of makeup at all. Somewhere my color consultant is weeping. But my husband? He says I look about the same.

In the End, She Stayed

I just finished listening to a fiction book, What Are You Going Through, by Sigrid Nunez (2020). It is literary fiction.

It's about a woman who stands by a friend with a terminal illness, some kind of never-identified cancer. The woman wants to commit suicide in order to have a beautiful death. Or a better death, at any rate.

She doesn't want to suffer.

I wish a good death upon everyone. You know, the kind where you fall asleep in a chair, your favorite TV show on or a book in your hand, and you just never wake up.

But we don't have those kinds of deaths. We have long lingering deaths that can take years, sometimes.

They are not fun. I watched that with my mother when she had pancreatic cancer. She never once, to my knowledge, thought of euthanasia as an out.

But I had a friend who was diagnosed with a terminal illness who did think of it.

We had a long talk about it one day over lunch, about six months after her diagnosis. She wasn't going for any long-term treatments, no organ transplants, she told me. And she wanted to go when she wanted to go.

She'd already contacted an organization in England that assisted people who were terminal and wanted to die, she said. She had the information in hand. This was how she wanted to go.

Her husband was against it, she said. But this was her plan. Someone would need to help her, she thought. She didn't know who that might be, but she hoped to convince him it was the right thing to do.

She did not ask me to help her. I did not volunteer, but I would have helped her. Even if it had meant I went to jail, I would have been there for her if that had been her wish. In the book, the narrator was there for her friend until the end.

My friend and I never discussed this subject again, and as her life dwindled down from a five-year span to months, I realized that she wasn't going to go through with it.

She was going to go the way she had said she didn't want to go, with hospice hovering about, and her loved ones telling her goodbye, her body growing thinner and weaker. One day she wrote me that the only way she could communicate with me was via text. Emails were too hard to write. She couldn't talk on the phone. 

She would die in her own home when life finally left her.

But it would not be by her own hand.

I was surprised, really, that she didn't go through with her initial plan. She was always so forthright, so quick to do what she wanted, and her control of herself and her thoughts were almost superhuman. 

This book brought all of that back to me, how my friend and I had discussed this in depth, in earnest. How I had thought until the last months of her life that she would, at some point, die by her own hand.

The will to live is a strong pull, stronger even, than the will to die a beautiful death. I remember watching my mother's fight to live. My friend's fight to live was no less devastating, but not quite so tortuous to me because she was, after all, a friend I loved, not my mother.

The book portrayed the narrator not as a hero, but as a kind, reflective woman who wanted what was best for her friend. But she also found the whole situation disturbing, and at the end, she wondered, what exactly is the meaning of life?

I wonder about this, too.

I see this valiant will to live in the longevity of many folks around me, people who are still going strong in their 90s. What have they found to live for? What keeps them going? The desire to see great grandchildren? The need to prove something?

What, actually, keeps me going? Love for my husband? My need to take care of him, to see to him, and ensure that he's happy, or at least as happy as he can be? 

I'm not really sure I know. Does anyone really know what they are living for, until those words from the doctor tell them their time is nearly gone?

The Long Way Home

It was to be a simple task: drive my husband to Christiansburg, about 45 miles away, to retrieve the new vehicle a friend had purchased the day before.

It's about an hour's drive, unless you're with me, the one with the lead foot and the propensity to "go with the flow" of the other 80 mph drivers. Then you get there much quicker.

However, we were on Interstate 81, which is like driving through a mini-golf course complete with windmills, potholes, and other intriguing traps. Weaving in and out of traffic, I tried not to pay attention to my husband's grip on the overhead handle on the passenger door and his occasional mutterings about speeding.

I-81 is notorious for its hazards. It's one of the most dangerous highways in the state. The highway is two lanes each way, and it now has many times more traffic than it was originally designed to carry. In particular, tractor-trailers travel this road in great numbers. Since the highway has fairly steep grades that the big rigs can't take at speed, traffic frequently slows to a crawl, with backups as long as 3 miles or more not at all unusual.

Fortunately, the southbound lane I was racing down was not all that crowded, but the northbound lane, where I would need to return, was backed up for miles. A tractor trailer on its side had turned the highway into a parking lot.

We discussed a different route for the return trip home with my husband's friend's new car. We decided to go US 460, a much less traveled route.

After we picked up the vehicle, I followed my husband down the highway. I like driving US 460, it's a good road and the traffic is light. However, as we reached other exits, the traffic picked up as folks trapped on I-81 began to siphon themselves off the interstate and onto the less frequented roads.

By the time we reached Salem, I was ready to get back on the interstate and get home. However, to my left, I could see a dark, vicious-looking cloud. My husband called me on the cell. "We're going to take the long way and try to miss that cloud. It might have hail in it," he said. "Follow me."

I knew he didn't want to ding up the new vehicle, and I didn't particularly want to mess mine up, either. But the cloud didn't look like a hail cloud to me. They usually have a little orange in them. But I am a good wife, so I obediently followed him. I thought at first we would get back on the interstate at Exit 140, but no.

Then I thought he was going to make a left turn off of US 460 business and head up Cove Road to Hershberger, but no.

The next thing I knew, we were driving by Roanoke City Fire Station 5. What were we doing in the heart of the city at 3:15 in the afternoon? I had no idea. I kept following him.

He turned left, finally, onto Plantation. I knew where that came out on US 11, but this seemed like a very long way home.

Then he turned right onto some other road that I have traveled only a few times.

And the rain poured.

It rained so hard I could not see him in front of me. I slowed way down because I didn't want to hit him. The water began ponding; cars coming from the other direction sent waves of water over top of my vehicle.

I clung to the steering wheel with both hands, thinking all the while, "We're heading toward Tinker Creek."

My mind leapt back 40 years to the Flood of 1985, when it took me over three hours to get home because of flash flooding and most of Roanoke was underwater, including the area we were driving through. I was on an unfamiliar road. I couldn't see. I couldn't tell what was in front of me. I didn't know where there might be a place to pull off and wait out the storm.

Finally, we neared the train tracks that I thought were coming up, and saw my husband make another right turn on Sanderson, only at the time I didn't realize it was Sanderson because it was raining so hard I couldn't see the sign. I called him. "I can't see to drive, where are we?"

"We're on Sanderson, we're near Jen's house."

"Do you have the lights on on that car? Because I can't see your rear end," I told him. He braked and I told him I could see that, but the lights for simply driving were quite dim. Since the car is silver, I was having a very difficult time seeing it.

It was a new car, so I assumed he just needed to find the right switch, and after a while he did. Then it was easier to see him. The rain also began letting up and I was able to release my death grip on the steering wheel. I was back on familiar turf.

That short task turned into quite the marathon, what with my husband's failed effort to keep the car clean and my fright at being on unfamiliar roads in such a downpour.

Next time it’s a “simple task,” I’m going home the simple way. Mine.

*This post was written in its entirety by a human, aside from spell check and normal things like that.*

I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham

I am many things, but one thing I am not.

I am no cook. Nor am I a connoisseur of foods. I do not know what most things on a fancy menu are.

What are these? Beef Wellington. Pork rillettes. Capers. Gorgonzola sauce. Potato gnocchi with Tahini parsley sauce. Yes, I had to look those up by typing in "fancy menu foods" because otherwise I would have no clue. The only one I've ever heard of beef wellington.

Reading recipes has always been a no-go for me. I have a friend who glories in reading recipes. I bought her recipe books for years for Christmas. She seemed to love every one of them.

Me? I have a Betty Crocker cookbook that I go to maybe twice a year, if that. Otherwise, my food comes out of a can or is premade at the grocery deli.

People don't believe me when I tell them I dislike cooking so much that I don't know how to do it, but honestly, I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT!

Nor do I want to know how to do it. Not all that much, anyway.

Sure, I cook. I have to, because I can't afford not to. I can bake chicken. I can cook a steak (except filet mignon, I ruin that every time). I can make a pork loin in the crockpot and sometimes it is edible. I stir fry squash. I can make spaghetti with alfredo sauce, but the sauce comes from Ragu. I don't make it from scratch and don't know how to. I bake a decent turkey at Thanksgiving. 

But that doesn't mean I like it. It just means I can do it. Sort of.

When recipes call for specific things, I can't simply go to my pantry and get them. I don't have those things on hand like someone who likes to cook would. Let's say I did get a wild hair and decide to fix something from my cookbook. Most of the things I'd need would not be available without a trip to the store, and by the time I went to that trouble, the desire to cook would be long gone.

I see things in the grocery store that I would have no idea how to fix or use or do anything with. They stay on the shelves.

Nor do I have the appropriate cooking utensils. I am not sure what a well-equipped kitchen for someone who likes to cook would look like, but I am pretty sure it would not look like my kitchen, with my 40-year-old pan set, scratched cookies sheets, and a little bitty George Foreman grill.

I consider this a fault, this lack of interest in cooking and food, and it's probably a bad fault. It means, for one thing, that I likely eat too much salt (even though everything I buy is "no salt" or "low salt"), and certainly I eat too much processed food. And unfortunately, that goes for my husband as well.

But I have never liked to cook. My mother found that forcing me to cook was the absolute best way to punish me. And when something becomes a punishment, I balk. Apparently, I balk for the rest of my life.

And let's face it, I dislike handling raw meat. That is simply gross, taking a chicken out of its bag and watching the blood fall out all over the sink, then having to clean that up and wash out the chicken, and then butter it or cover it in olive oil or something to bake it. Blech. And it was even worse when I was a kid and my parents killed chickens. Talk about gross! Chopped heads and headless birds flapping around all over the yard while my brother chased after them, laughing the whole time. And then they had to be plucked and put in the freezer. Yuck.

I don't mind cooking vegetables if they are normal vegetables. I know how to boil green beans. I don't know what to do with Brussel sprouts except boil them, but I know they can be cooked other ways that actually taste better, because I've had them. What do you do with an avocado? How do you make a pomegranate work? How do you get into a pineapple (which I wouldn't eat because I seem to be allergic to them, but even so). I have never made mashed potatoes. I bake potatoes. Mashed potatoes come from Bob Evans in the refrigerator section of the grocery store.

I don't like frying foods at all - it takes forever, and I can't eat fried food anymore anyway. Fried food is too hard on my stomach.

Which brings me to another issue with cooking - I can't handle spices. Most everything I cook is bland. No spices on a baked chicken. Maybe a little Mrs. Dash on something once in a while, but no onion powder, no garlic powder. 

I have made chili exactly one time. 

I have made a cake from scratch exactly one time.

I have never made a pie.

I have never made a complicated meat dish, unless baked spaghetti counts.

I have never made soup, unless it came out of a Campbell's can.

I don't mind baking, but my idea of baking is a Duncan Hines mix. 

If a coffee cake from Bisquick counts as baking from scratch, then I've made a few of those.

I don't know how to make a quiche. I am not even sure what that is.

I haven't made homemade biscuits since I married. (They come in a can, or frozen.)

I haven't made pancakes, not even from a pancake mix, ever. (Pancakes come premade frozen.)

I've baked bread from store-bought dough but never made bread from scratch. Even with store-bought dough, bread is a challenge. I don't have a good place for it to rise.

I do not find joy in cooking a nice well-thought-out meal. I don't want to do that. It takes all afternoon. I love my husband and want him to have a nice meal and all of that, but I do his laundry and stuff. I'd rather read a book than spend hours in a kitchen.

He doesn't starve, at any rate.

People who find joy in cooking have my deep admiration. They are like nurses - they have a knack for that and a special something that I lack.

The cooking gene went to my brother.

I just got the eating one, I guess.

Things I Did Last Week

I thought I'd join the federal workers who are listing the things they did last week in order to keep their jobs.

So here you go:

• Washed 15 loads of laundry
• Put away 15 loads of laundry
• Made the bed 7 times
• Changed the bed linen and washed the bedspread and blanket, which takes a long time because the bedspread takes at least two turns in the dryer to dry.
• Fixed lunch for two people 7 times
• Fixed dinner for two people 7 times
• Emptied the dishwasher 7 times
• Filled the dishwasher 7 times
• Wrote 7 blog posts
• Read 110 pages of a book
• Listened to an audio book for 6 hours+
• Assisted my husband with the installation of a new mirror on his truck
• Spoke with friends and family on the telephone
• Looked up information online
• Read a lot about the federal government via doom scrolling on FB
• Took the tax records to the accountant
• Spoke with my banker on the telephone
• Walked on the treadmill for 25 minutes each day
• Talked to my chiropractor on the phone to reschedule an appointment due to snow/ice
• Visited the grocery store and purchased groceries

Lastly, I decided I don't need to justify my existence or what I do to anybody.

An Internet Boost

I have fiber! I have fiber!

Today I moved from the early 21st century to the now. I am no longer on DSL. I have fiber!

This was a BIG DEAL. I have been trying to get fiber to my house for years.

I have sent a letter to my county officials every six months for the last 7 years, asking them to ensure my area received fiber connection.

And finally, today, it happened.

After hearing that a certain person in a house made of white had stopped the payouts on the infrastructure bill passed by Biden, I was concerned that I would not get the promised "free" connection from the provider, but no one said anything about a hook up charge.

Maybe they already had the money in hand. I am not asking.

Things are not always fair. I know my brother had to pay a connection fee to get his fiber, but he paid it gladly. However, people near him who lived along the road (he lives a ways off the road), did not have such a hefty connection fee.

Is it fair that I did not have to pay? I don't know, but he's had fiber for 2-3 years longer than I have. Was that fair?

I don't know.

Fair is a juggling act. Sometimes you're on the receiving end of fair. Most times, I have found, one is not.

So, I will take my fiber and rejoice.

Now if only someone can tell me how to reliably look for online work that isn't a scam.

My Busy Wednesday

Most days, I sit at home and do home stuff. But once or twice a week, I remember I have a car.

So my busy days go like this:

• Wake up about 6:15 a.m.
• Drink a cup of hot water.
• Reset my video game.
• Read news in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, the local paper, or whatever I see that may be interesting.
• Check my email and look at Facebook.
• Mix up my Cheerios (half plain Cheerios and half something like Honey Nut Cheerios) and eat them.
• Take my medication.
• Shower and dress.
• Put the recycling into the backseat of the car.
• Make out a grocery list.
• Check the grocery store online for coupons to add to my digital card.
• Talk to a friend who calls.
• Get in the car and leave.
• Stop in the middle of the driveway because someone is coming up the driveway.
• Talk to the men from the fiber company who are "checking" to be sure some things necessary for you to one day have something besides DSL internet access have been done. No, they don't know when you will be hooked up. Have a nice day.
• Take my leave of the men and head out.
• Drop off the recycling at the recycling bins. Today it took two different tries, as the paper bin was overflowing at my first stop. They'd been emptied at the second one.
• Put gasoline in the car.
• Get lucky at the crossover and manage to get across 4 lanes without stopping.
• Drive to the grocery store.
• Once inside, purchase a lottery ticket for my husband. 
• Travel the aisles looking for the items on the list. Speak to my neighbor who's using the electric cart, call out to someone else I know and wish them a happy holiday season.
• Back track because I forgot to pick up some sausage for my husband. They are out of sausage.
• Check out and speak enthusiastically to the checkout clerk and tell him what a great job he does.
• Haul the groceries to the car and load them in the trunk.
• Put the grocery cart in the rack.
• Return to the car, start it, and head back home. Take the long route because I want to stop at the mailbox withotu getting out of the car because it's cold outside, and if I come from the west I can do that.
• The mail hasn't run.
• Go up the driveway and park the car.
• Change my shoes and wash my hands.
• Empty the truck of its groceries. Put everything away.
• Wash my hands again.
• Throw a load of towels in the wash.
• Check the destination arrival time for several packages expected today.
• Fix myself an egg sandwich and eat the crumbs of a bag of Baked Lays potato chips.
• Read a couple of articles in The Atlantic.
• Take my medication.
• Put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.
• Turn on the humidifiers because the house is dry.
• Put the towels in the dryer.
• Reset my video game. (This should be done every 3 hours, but I only manage it three times a day, at the most).
• Drive down to the mailbox to see if the mail has run. No mail. Drive back home. Wonder if I should do a video of the drive up and down the driveway so people will understand it's a very long gravel driveway.
• Answer a few texts.
• Talk to another friend.
• Check on the packages I'm expecting. Note that the "latest arrival time" has changed. Again.
• Work on this blog post.
• Answer the door to find the USPS driver has dropped off one package. I'm expecting several. She waves at me. I scoop up the package and deposit it on the kitchen counter.
• Drive down to the mailbox again. It is stuffed full. I guess she couldn't get the one package in the box.
• Return home and puzzle over the packages. Not exactly what I thought I was buying. Hmm.
• Decide this is enough of this blog post - this day will finish out itself with a walk on the treadmill, fixing dinner, and watching TV with the husband.

Negative Space

I was looking out the window a few moments ago, and I saw a gigantic cat climbing up in a tree. Clearly there was a huge cat head, with a paw playfully heading up the tree, batting at something.

The image was in the negative space between the limbs and remaining leaves, and now that there's been a little wind, it's gone.

Images appear to me all the time, and always have. My grandmother's bathroom had this tile with little squares of different colors on it, and I would bide my time doing my business by finding various items among the squares. Horses, cows, dogs, cars. Whatever my mind made an image of. Sometimes I could find it again, but often times, I could not.

One year, apparently a particularly bad year for me as an elementary school student, I found solace in a dinosaur made from a brush pile along a fence that I saw every afternoon on the school bus. I did not see it in the morning, but each afternoon on that hour-long bus ride, I would stop doing my homework and look for my dinosaur.

The dinosaur was there all year, and it brought me great solace to see it every school day.

The following year, though, I could not find the dinosaur. I wasn't even sure where to look for it, and I never saw it again.

I see dancing horses, gargoyles, and faces in the bathroom mat or in the bathroom tile these days, though they are gone after I blink. They are not really there. I simply have an overactive imagination, one that sometimes comes out through my eyes.

Negative space is an art concept. Sometimes it is called "white space," the area around and between the main subjects of an image. Negative space can significantly impact the visual effectiveness of artwork, photography, and design. Apparently, you can also see images in it when you look at trees.

I use negative space sometimes in my photographs. Landscape photography in particular can convey feelings of solitude when you have a single subject, like a cow or a deer, surrounded by huge fields, my wonderful Blue Ridge Mountains, and a blue sky. Negative space enhances the emotional tone and makes the subject seem more significant given the scale and context of the picture.

Sometimes what is left out can be just as impactful as what is included. Occasionally things left unsaid, left undone, left unseen, have great impact upon our lives, only we may not realize it. Some think these voids must be filled, but they may be better left alone. The truth may be out there, but that doesn't mean it has to be spoken. Rather than rushing to fill silence with words, leaving space for reflection or simply being present can often communicate more than words ever could.

Negative space teaches us to let go of unnecessary distractions and focus on what is essential. Just as I might zoom my camera out instead of taking a close up, we can edit our lives by eliminating what doesn’t serve us—whether it’s physical clutter, excess commitments, or unhelpful habits.

There is beauty in simplicity, balance, and intentionality. What we leave out - the things we don't say or do - can be as meaningful as the things we do say or do. Sometimes the most profound growth comes from the spaces where we allow ourselves to simply be.

Nothing But Blue Sky

I am trying hard to be more positive about everything, from the upcoming election to my personal life to local folks with whom I must deal with frequently.

My cashiers know me on sight at the grocery store. I am always polite to them. I smile and I compliment them on something. I say, "Thank you." I tell people I pass in the aisle that I like their jacket or their shoes. 

You never know what people are going through, and compliments are easy to offer up. But so few do it.

I am not by nature a positive person. I lean toward pessimism and depression. I look inward and overthink everything.

Stuff bothers me that other people seem to ignore. Maybe it bothers them, and no one speaks about it. People so seldom talk about anything other than surface discussion these days. Just, "Hi, how are you?" and then the answer is, "Fine," and then you ask back and they say fine, too. You might ask about the family and get the same answer. Fine.

Everyone's fine.

I don't think everyone is fine, really, because if they were, it would not feel so angry when I go out in public. I see so many scowls on the faces of unhappy people that it's a little scary.

The woman that cuts my hair for me talked about this yesterday as she snipped away. "Everyone seems to angry and mad," she said. "Such short fuses."

What's to blame? I'm not sure. Social media, probably. Bad news on TV. Worry about the future. We're an aging area, lots of older folks, and we all have aches and pains. 

Maybe we're just all old and cranky.

Hence my desire to smile and be positive. I smile even if I have a mask on, because I hope it reaches my eyes. (I still wear a mask sometimes if I hear someone sneezing or coughing in the store. I don't want their germs.)

Who knows when a small compliment will help? I like your purse. Your hair looks great. Thank you for working today and doing a great job at checking me out.

Maybe it helps.

Can't hurt, can it?

2020 All Over Again

Yesterday at the grocery store, a somewhat familiar sight from the past greeted me:

Yes, the toilet paper was mostly gone.

I attributed this to two things: panic about the longshoreman strike at the ports (which lasted 2 days and has resolved itself for now) and the urge to donate goods into the many donation boxes that sprang up around the county to help out the folks who lost everything in the floods in far southwestern Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, courtesy of Hurricane Helene.

We donated, too, but not toilet paper. We bought food for cattle at the local farmers' cooperative, which as I understand it went to our neighbors in far southwestern Virginia. I also donated to the United Way, which seems to be doing a good job in North Carolina.

It's hard to know what to do when an emergency strikes your neighbors - or your own community. You need and want help right away, but the flood waters have to recede, the winds have to die down, and the manpower has to be able to make to wherever you are.

I've been in the mountainous terrain in the areas around me, and there are tiny communities everywhere, back in the gullies and hollers where no one thinks anyone lives. Some people who are missing may never be found.

And now there's another hurricane headed for Florida, which also was hit by Hurricane Helene. I hope everyone has left the area as this large storm - Hurricane Milton - hits that part of the country again.

A Crazy Friday

I needed to run errands this morning. This is how the day went:

I got up and began reading the news. The internet kept cutting in and out. I checked the phone lines, and they were static. I had had the phone company out yesterday to check the phone lines for the same thing. I was told there was water getting in the line "someplace" and as soon as I noticed it, I should call and tell them to have "Doug" come immediately. This has been a problem for YEARS, but we've had a drought, so it hasn't been as much of an issue.

Anyway, I called the phone company when I realized the lines were static. It took over 20 minutes to make this phone call while I was put on hold and asked questions that I had answered yesterday. The whole time I was thinking, this is taking so long, the lines will have dried up by the time "Doug" gets out here.

I jumped in the shower when I finished talking to the phone rep. The phone company called in the middle of my shower to tell me "Doug" was on his way. I swear I could take a shower at 2 a.m. and the phone would ring.

I waited around on "Doug," who did not show up. To pass the time, I wrote out the check for the local taxes. That is always a good way to make your day better (not).

The eye doctor's office called to remind me of an appointment, and the static had cleared up. So, I knew the lines were drying out and "Doug" wasn't going to be of much help.

After a while, I decided "Doug" wasn't going to make it, so I left to run my errands. On the way out, I went by the little box where the trouble with my phone line seems to always originate. There was a phone company truck there, so I pulled in and got out. "Doug" sat in his truck be-bopping to music, playing on his cellphone. I beat on the window, and he rolled it down. I told him my name. He said he had to work on something else then he would get to me.

Yeah, Candy Crush was "Doug's" big priority.

I left him there and went to the county administration building to pay the taxes, since I'd written the checks. The fellow who took my checks and ran my receipts was absolutely the slowest clerk in the entire world. He typed in numbers with one finger, with about 10 seconds between each number.

This was another 20 minutes for something that should have taken 10 minutes at the most.

On the way out, I ran into a friend, who gave me a big (and much needed) hug. We chatted a bit and then I hurried off to my next errand.

This stop was at CVS. It seems on Wednesday when I went to get a flu shot, the pharmacist made me pay a $42 copay for something that was supposed to be free to me. When I called my insurance company on Thursday, they said to go back to CVS and make them redo the entire thing and run it through the right insurance. They apparently had used my prescription insurance and it should have been my health insurance (although a flu shot is a prescription so . . . ). 

Of course, this took another 30+ minutes and 3 people because no one knew how to refund and redo the insurance. The line behind me backed up and I could feel my face turning red for holding up the process. I had been trying to get there at an hour when I thought there would be few people, but all of those earlier hold-ups had scuttled that.

While I was in CVS, "Doug" called on my cellphone. "I'm at your house and it sounds clear as a bell," he cheerfully said of my line. He added that he was standing there talking to my husband. I asked if the Internet was working. "Doug" replaced the modem even though I'm fairly certain the problem is the water in the line (I am still on DSL and can't get fiber out here) and not the modem. Oh well. At least it's working.

Then it was off to Bank #1, where I needed new checks. The new checks for this particular account were $30 for 20 checks. 

I decided I could transfer the money into my regular checking and go that route and screw the checks.

Then it was off to Bank #2, where I waited in no line for a good 5 minutes before somebody finally waited on me to make my deposit. What do these people do while someone stands in front of them? Am I invisible?

At this point, it was almost lunch time. I decided the grocery store wasn't going to happen and if we had no eggs for the weekend, too bad. I pointed the car in the direction of home and arrived to find my husband and "Doug" still having a chat about whatever guys chat about.

"Doug" also assured me I would have fiber by December. I told him I wasn't holding my breath. They've been telling me for YEARS I would have fiber "in a few months."

I came in, fixed us lunch, tossed a load of laundry in the washing machine, worked on blog posts for Saturday 9 and Sunday Stealing, and walked for 20 minutes on the treadmill.

I also developed a whale of a headache that is still pounding firmly in my skull. 

It might be my blood pressure. You think?

At the X Roads

Something's gotta change.

It's gotta be me.

I've no f#cking idea how to go about it.

What's My Name?

Right before the pandemic hit in March 2020, my husband and I went to the DMV and obtained our REAL IDs from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

This identification is recognized by the state and federal governments.

When I married, I chose to drop my maiden name. I changed my Social Security card. I changed my driver's license. Some places would not make the change no matter how often I complained about it, like hospitals and oddly enough the women's college I attended. So even though officially, as far as I was concerned, I was First Name, Middle Name, Married Name, the Maiden Name has followed me around.

When I went in to get my Real ID, I had to take along identifying documents that my husband didn't need. I had to take my birth certificate, my marriage license, and some kind of bill that had my name on it. The latter was difficult because when we married 40 years ago, the utilities were put in my husband's name. That is how it was done back them. I mean, we were only 9 years out from women being able to have a credit card when I married. 

Most of the documents I had in my possession were not the documents the state needed for my Real ID, but they had them on file. I had to pay for the copies so they could then use them to get my driver's license. It seemed a little obscene, because they could pull it up and look at it right there, but I later needed the documents for some of my husband's retirement paperwork, so it all worked out in the end.

Still, I consider the ID requirements to be gender biased and discriminatory against women. Taking your husband's name is what people do. I know some people hyphenate or sometimes they keep their maiden name, but the majority of women who marry a man take the man's name. They've been doing this for hundreds of years. The marriage license is on file with the state; they pulled it up and looked at it. It was right there. Yet it cost me considerably more to get the Real ID than it cost my husband because I had to get hard copies of those documents.

A Real ID is supposed to be the most valid ID you can have next to a passport. I don't have a passport, but I do have Real ID. The state recognizes my name as First Name, Middle Name, Married Name. 

So, imagine my surprise when last week an officer at a banking institution informed me that she would need a document with ALL of my names on it - first name, middle name, maiden name, married name. How many women do you know who have documents with all of that on it? Not many women have all of that on their driver's license, I bet.

I argued with her that the Real ID should be enough. I also told her if she was going to make this difficult, then the reason we were talking would go away quickly enough as it was just something we used for convenience. I don't need to deal with this bank, although I have dealt with this bank for almost 40 years. I am even a stockholder in this bank, which makes this oddball requirement all the more egregious.

We are still trying to work this out. But now I don't know who I am, if my Real ID isn't good enough for a bank but is good enough for the state and the federal government. 

Havoc

Last year, frankly, was not a good year for us. Everything that could break, broke, or so it seemed. My husband was constantly patching tractors and other pieces of farm equipment. We replaced tires on both vehicles. We had to replace the heat pump and the furnace/air handler at the house. We had a drought and fretted over hay so much that our hay count is down to the smallest piece of dried straw that a cow could feasibly munch on. Vultures killed a calf.

We have a small home we rent out, a place I inherited from my mother, and things went wrong over there, too. This doohickey didn't work, some other thing-a-ma-bob didn't function. The well pump went out.

On and on it went all last year. One hopes that such luck doesn't follow one into the new year, but so far that isn't happening.

In the bitter cold, the pipes are frozen over at the small rental home. Or perhaps not the pipes, but the actual well pump itself, we're not sure yet. We've owned this home for over 20 years, and up until last year, never had a problem with pipes freezing. (They froze and burst during the horrid Christmas cold of 2022; perhaps that was the beginning of this run of tortuous bad luck.) Now it appears every time the temperatures drop into the teens, we are going to be heading over there with a blow torch, and we don't know what changed to create this problem.

Additionally, the cattle waterers froze during the night, and my husband will have to check those every few hours until the weather warms up, which won't be until next week.

The only good thing is, knock wood, the electrical power has thus far stayed on, and the expected high winds did not materialize - yet.

I am useless in these situations and can do little to help my poor old husband. The best thing I can do is stay out of his way and fix his lunch.

But I fret. I worry about my husband being out in the cold. I worry about whatever is wrong. I worry about the cattle. 

Come on 2024. Do your thing and smooth out the rough seas!