Got You on My Mind

Today's my wedding anniversary. We're at the big 39 years - wow. One more year until the big 40.

Some days we look at each other and say, "Weren't we just married 3 weeks ago?" because we have no idea where the time has gone. Here he is retired from one job as a battalion chief with the nearby city's fire department, while still farming and installing septic tanks, and I've managed to obtain three college degrees and a have a career as a news writer.

In a blink, it seems a distant memory. In my dreams, it catches up to me and I see it unfold like a roll of cloth, each turn revealing a different pattern. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly.

The minutia of two lives entwined.

While our marriage has been sturdy, I think how fragile it all is. Had we each made different decisions early on - like, not having gone to a high school football game where we met - we may never have known one another and lived entirely different lives. I am reminded daily, especially now that we're older, that it can all change from calm to chaos in a second - all it takes is a fall, a cut, an illness, an accident - and our lives are not the same as they were.

We are heading into the twilight years now, I guess. Still pushing, still working, still trying to be our best selves for one another and for this ol' planet we call home. We consider ourselves caretakers of the little land we manage, as we're only borrowing it for our lifetime.

Thank you, my best beloved, for these terribly beautiful 39 years. I'm looking forward to the remainder of our lives together.

When we were young, beautiful, and clueless.

Another Day, Another Shooting

Yesterday I woke to the news that three football players at the University of Virginia had been shot, and two others injured, by gunfire.

The alleged murderer was known to the campus and the local police, apparently, and he was eventually captured, about 12 hours after the murder.

The last I read, motive was unclear. Maybe there wasn't a motive.

Sometimes people are simply crazy, or bloodthirsty, or violent.

It pains me to admit that I've become somewhat nonchalant about the news of shootings. They happen EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. It may not be a mass shooting, but somebody, somewhere, is shot. Yet, I still watch those around me when I go out. I look for people who are acting "off" or suspect. I duck at loud noises.

In 2020, over 45,000 - yes, thousand - people died from gun-related deaths in the United States. We've already had over 37,000 gun deaths this year, and the year isn't over.

One guy has some blow-up stuff on the bottom of his shoe at an airport, and we all take our shoes off to get on an airplane, but we have thousands die from guns every year, and we do nothing.

Somebody found a few problems with Tylenol a long, long time ago, and suddenly medicines were put in plastic shrink wrap and made tamper-proof. Thousands die from guns every year, and we do nothing.

A child dies from a defective crib, and there's a recall. Thousands die from guns every year, and we do nothing.

A car crash indicates the air bags don't work, and there's a recall. Thousands die from guns every year and we do nothing.

I know the response - guns don't kill people, people kill people, blah blah thoughts and prayers. But guns are made for killing.

That is their sole purpose. To kill, or at least to maim.

I am a gun owner, and I am in favor of stricter gun control laws.

The Death Knell of The Roanoke Times

My husband's howl of frustration early yesterday morning had me out of my office chair and racing toward the kitchen.

"They did away with the comics. We won't be renewing our subscription," he announced as I turned the corner from the hall into the great room.

With that, our mutual 39-year love affair with The Roanoke Times will soon be at an end. Our subscription is up for renewal in about a month.

From the looks of it, we won't be getting a daily newspaper for the first time in our long marriage. And I, who have been reading the paper daily at least for the last 55 years, won't have that bit of information and entertainment to preoccupy me at breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

I always did like to read the paper with a meal.

The Roanoke Times and I go back a long way. I remember sitting at my grandparents' kitchen table, reading the front page, when I was five. I overheard my grandfather asking my grandma what I was doing, pretending to read the paper. I promptly began reading it aloud to him. My grandmother assured Grandpa that I didn't really understand what I was reading, I just knew the words.

She was wrong. And right. I was five, so of course I couldn't really understand the headlines of war in Vietnam, the numbers about budgets, the discussions of race, the talk of hippies. But I began to understand, and I suspect I understood more than the adults around me thought.

One of the first things my husband and I did after we married was obtain a subscription to The Roanoke Times & World News, as it was called then. We received the afternoon edition, which ended eventually and in 1995 the paper changed its name to The Roanoke Times and only put out a single daily edition.

I wrote for The Roanoke Times & World News for a while, freelancing for what they then called "The Neighbors" section. This was a pull-out magazine type of news with feature stories about various areas in it. I also covered graduations and occasionally ball games, calling those stories in "old school" - from the floor of a payphone at the Salem Civic Center or the high school. I'd sit in the little booth, glancing at my notes and making the story up in my head. I repeated it on the phone to Charlie Stebbins, who taught me to say things like "end graph" and "sub headline" or whatever the story called for, while I was quickly scanning my scribbles about pomp and circumstance or jump shots, composing in my brain. It had to be done then in order for the story to make the morning paper.

There were no delays.

This was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I think. I did it for a few years, off and on.

I daresay few young writers today will ever have that experience, not with their laptops at the ready and the Internet satellites beaming their words instantaneously to the news editor's desk. They won't know what it is like to work with someone else to get a story out, not like that, anyway.

So, I have watched the decline of The Roanoke Times with dismay. It echoes what's going on around the nation, and I suppose the world. The younger generation turns to Instagram and social influencers for their news. They don't know the joy of reading a long, well-written and thoroughly researched article. They listen to podcasts to form their opinions, and we've created a vast echo chamber for one another. We can select to listen to only those folks we agree with. (And let's not forget to mention where the news actually comes from - newspapers like the dying Roanoke Times.)

At least in The Roanoke Times, which is not, as some people claim, a "liberal rag," there was a variety of opinions in the op-ed pages. Reporters' opinions were generally left outside of the story, though as the times changed and opinion reporting became more the norm in TV outlets, objective journalism began to fall by the wayside.

I still see good journalism, but most people, I have learned, read a story and only see what they want to agree with anyway, whether the story actually says what they think it says or not. Or at least that was my experience with the thousands of articles I wrote, because the Republicans thought I was one of theirs, and the Democrats thought I was one of theirs, and for decades I never said anything about which tribe I belonged to, and even today, when many people would label me a Democrat, I reject the label more and more, because there's not really a party out there that represents me. I am no one's huckleberry.

The Roanoke Times used to come to us on Sunday fat as a hog that was overfed the previous day, ads bursting from it, with articles from local reporters who busted their ass to investigate, and investigate thoroughly, the issue of the day. Some of those articles could be quite long, running on for pages.

I read them with relish.

But the advertising declined, and the paper thinned. Old reporters retired and were not replaced. Now, others have been forced out, and others still have jumped from what is obviously a nearly sunken ship.

The paper is attempting to go completely digital. Alienating those of us who still prefer paper is the way to do that, apparently, given the recent changes to the print edition. More and more, they want us to use our smart phones and hit the QR code (which is something I can barely manage, so I shudder to think what the older folks do) and visit the website.

There's something glorious about reading a paper, a thrill that I do not get reading the same thing on a computer screen. It's similar to holding a paperback instead of my Kindle; it's really not the same experience. It's also not an experience that folks under 30 comprehend, given a conversation I had today with a young friend who doesn't understand the allure of getting a little black ink on your hands while you are eating your chicken salad sandwich at lunch.

A newspaper is a work of art, full of other art forms. The advertisements could be an art, the comics are art - the writing frequently was (and sometimes still is) of the level of art. The newspapers I remember - not the skinny little things of today - were feasts of delight that had a little something in it for everyone, a virtual potluck of information and entertainment unmatched by anything else available.

And to think that the owners - hedge fund operators, really - have let this artform languish to the point of death is ghastly and appalling. To know that it is because of the almighty dollar bill is gut-wrenching.

To think that it was likely inevitable is the most depressing thought I will have today.

Thanks for the good times, The Roanoke Times. I salute what you once were and mourn what you have become.

Unconventional Lives

Today is Labor Day, the day when we in the USA are supposed to celebrate the working person. 

Most people simply consider it the end of summer and the start of Autumn.

As my husband and I wind down our careers and lives, it occurs to me that we have lived rather unconventional lives. We were not the typical 9-to-5 couple, never yuppies, never ran with the "in" crowd - whatever that is.

My husband was a farmer and a septic tank installer when we first met. A few months later, he went to work as a firefighter in nearby Roanoke. He continued to work the other two jobs with his father.

As a firefighter, he worked a 24-hour shift that ran like this: M, W, F he would work at the fire station, then be off for four days, then he would work W, F, Su, and be off for four days, and so on and so forth. For 10 nights out of every month, I was home alone while he was at the fire station.

When he came home from a shift, he went to work on the farm or went to dig septic tanks. A lot of young firefighters these days come home from a shift and take a nap, but I cannot recall my husband ever doing that. He may have gone to bed early, but he did not lay out on the work around the farm or with his father's septic tank installation business (both of which are now my husband's businesses).

That is not a 9-to-5 life. That's a hard-working man's life, the life of a man who loved the land, the outdoors, and his family.

My life was not routine, either. For the first 10 years of our marriage, I worked some full-time jobs that were indeed 9-to-5, but I also went to college at night. A year after we married, I published my first article, and after that I wrote as a side gig or second job (and have never stopped). Occasionally I worked part-time and went to college and wrote, but nothing about my routine was normal.

We did not live a Leave-it-to-Beaver kind of lifestyle. We worked odd hours - sometimes I was in meetings I covered for the local newspapers until midnight - and we did things like build our own home with our hands in order to save money and obtain what we wanted. (At the time we built our house, in 1987, interest rates were 13% and the economists (who really know nothing), said that was as low as the interest would ever go. We refinanced when the rates dropped, of course.)

No, I cannot say we have lived normal lives compared to others, especially those on TV. My grandfather worked a conventional job; he had a 7-to-4 p.m. shift, and dinner was always on the table when he arrived at 4:15 p.m. My mother worked a conventional job, with a long drive from our home; she left around 7:45 a.m. and returned each night about 6 p.m., give or take the traffic or a stop at Mike's Market for bread. 

My father, after he stopped being a traveling salesman, also lived a double life, farming when he wasn't running the business he built from the ground up, a company that now has more than 60 employees and several locations. He's never been conventional about anything.

Today I salute the people I know and those I don't know who live unconventional lives. Maybe that is all of us, each person doing the best he or she can, trying to reach for whatever dream it is that prods that on.

Happy Labor Day.

Help Wanted

A very long time ago, back in the dark ages of the 1980s and 1990s, I knew how to find a job.

I opened the newspaper and I read the "help wanted" advertisements. There would be three or four pages of job listings. I'd circle the ones I was interested in. They were usually "blind box" advertisements, which meant I was sending in a resume without knowing what the company was. The newspaper rerouted the resumes through some service.

When it was time for me to change jobs, I'd perform this ritual, dropping the resumes in the mail. In about a week, the phone would start ringing. I'd go on a few interviews, and then I'd have a job.

Now the newspaper has very few advertisements for jobs (although I've noticed more lately). And I don't know how to find a job. I'm not really looking for one, especially not with Covid running rampant, but even if I was, I wouldn't know how to find one.

As best I can tell, today one goes to the place where one would like to work and fills out a job application. So, if I wanted to work for say, Bank of America, then I'd go their site and fill out the application and hope for the best. I'm guessing at this, since I've not done it.

The other way to find a job is to look at places like Indeed.com or jobs.roanoke.com.

I've thought about some kind of online work. I have DSL for my internet connection. This works for most things. Uploads are bad, though. It takes me over two hours to upload a three-minute music video to my youtube channel. I also don't know how to find online work that is legitimate. I've read so many stories about scammers using work ploys that I simply dread trying to figure out what is real and what isn't.

Freelancing remains an option, but the local markets don't pay that well, and to be perfectly honest, after doing it for so long, I'm tired of it. I don't want to have to listen to multiple editors or try to write words in a fake voice that suits some suit, something that isn't my own. I don't want to write about topics in which I have little interest. I also don't want to write 300 words for $5. My time is worth more than that.

So, while I don't know what I want to do, I would like to know how to find it when the time comes to go do something.

I miss the help wanted advertisements. That seemed much easier than the flux of today.

Remembering September 11

Twenty years ago on this day, I, along with most Americans, watched the aftermath of two hijacked planes crashing into The Twin Towers in New York City. As a nation, we watched the towers collapse in a swirl of dust, debris and screams.

The 9/11 attacks are a sober reminder for me of how badly the US government sometimes behaves in world relations, how poorly some citizens of this world think of this country, and how hard our people work, pray, and play.

September 11 also reminds me that all in the world are a part of the circle of life. Everyone, regardless of race, color or creed, deserves a chance to live. That includes bankers in the World Trade Center and Iraqis huddled in their homes during bombings in Baghdad, shooting victims in schools and theaters, people who catch Covid-19, and everyone else who is robbed of their life prematurely.

I hope for peace every day and I wish for wisdom in the leaders who hold the decisions for such things in the palms of their hands.

Perhaps one day issues will be resolved without bloodshed and tears, and the world will lose its hatred for one another and embrace good will. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.

Now we are more divided than ever, the world over. I remember that not long after the TV coverage began to die down, a feeling of helplessness settled over me. I think it settled over much of the nation. For many it never went away. I'm not sure it will. It left many feeling emasculated and I don't believe that has yet been assuaged.

The government used the attacks as a reason to implement the USA PATRIOT ACT, which abolished many civil liberties, including the right to check out what you wanted from a library without being turned into the police if somebody thought it was suspect. Unfortunately, while some of this kind of behavior settled down, the current atmosphere encourages these types of activities, particularly where it pertains to immigrants, women having abortions, or anyone perceived as "other."

The government also began spying on emails and telephone conversations and doing other Big Brother things. I seriously doubt that ever stopped.

I wish that love, not vengeance and revenge, had been the lesson learned from September 11, 2001. Because for a day or two there, we united as a nation, grieving and striving to rescue those in harm's way, and much of the world stood with us, too.

If only it had lasted.

From one end of the world to the other, we are all connected, each and every one. There is now so much hate, so much death. What can a person do in the face of so much anger and despair?

* * *

On this day I also remember the 343 firefighters who lost their lives in the Twin Towers. There is no greater sacrifice than to perish while trying to save others. May they be at peace.

August 30 Happiness Challenge

The underwear I ordered has arrived, and it fits! Finally, after three tries!

The Fit For Me by Fruit of the Loom are made in El Salvador now. They smell like insecticide and I had to wash them twice before I could try them on. They are not the same fit as before but they fit better than anything else I've bought recently.

(The Just My Size by Hanes are made in Guatemala. You learn these things when you're ordering undies.)

So that's my happiness for today. My bloomers fit!

Each day in August you are to post about something that makes *you* happy. Pretty simple. And, it doesn't even have to be every day if you don't want it to be. It's a great way to remind ourselves that there are positive things going on in our lives, our communities, and the world.

August 25 Happiness Challenge

Today I am giving out a big shout to grocery pick up.

I didn't like it when I first started it, back at the beginning of the pandemic, but the store also wasn't up to speed on it.

Now, it goes like clockwork. I sit at the computer, pick out what I want, go to the store, let them know I've arrived, they load it in my trunk, I bring it home.

Easy peasy.

I had gone back to in-store shopping when things looked a bit brighter, but with the cases on the rise, I have returned to using the pick up option. I also had forgotten some of the things that aggravated me when I shopped inside, things like screaming children, overwhelming perfume scents, and cigarette smoke at the door exit.

Seeing people I know is one of the good things about shopping in the store, along with the exercise of walking the aisles, but I came home and walked on the treadmill. So there's that.

Hurray for options.

To Stuart's Draft

Saturday afternoon, we took a drive. We ended up in Stuart's Draft, which is about 1.25 hours away.

This is the furthest I have been from home since September 2019!

Our destination was The Cheese Shop, which is a specialty food store. It has been remodeled since I was last here. They sell a brand of apple butter that my husband likes. They have Amish spices and things like that.

The remodeled store did not seem to have as many items as the old store, but maybe more space simply made the groceries seem sparse.

Then we went down the road a ways to this:

I hadn't been in a book store in ages. What a wonderful smell! There were not many people in the store, either, so we shopped at our leisure and both of us came home with something to read.

Hurray for vaccinations! Hurray for science!

Found Geronimo's Rifle

My husband set out today to visit the big bad world, leaving me here to watch the home fires.

I worried terribly the entire time he was out. He doesn't want me out in the world right now because I have asthma and seem to catch a virus every time we drive by the elementary school. Better to hole up and wait it out.

He was doing routine things, of course. He took the dump truck to the garage for a state inspection sticker.

Then he went to the grocery store, where he came home with a multitude of items, many not on the list, like Little Debbie cookies, pork chops, etc. He said the shelves were bare in many places but fortunately we've enough staples. I'd sent him after fresh fruit and perishables, not Geronimo's rife or toilet paper.

Mostly he ventured out because he needed a medication refill, and the drugstore is inside of the grocery store. We felt like if he was going out, he may as well pick up some food items while he was there.

Fortunately, he did a good job and came home with most of what I needed. He shopped for his mother, too.

He said the biggest problem was the lack of items on the shelves and the fact that he seldom does the food shopping so he doesn't know where anything is.

I made him dump the groceries on the doorstep. I wiped each item off with an antibacterial wipe before I put it away, and washed my hands probably 8 times while I was doing that. He ate his lunch in the garage off of a paper plate. I tried to stay six feet away from him, which is rather hard when you're used to throwing yourself into someone's arms.

Then he loaded the truck up with our trash and headed off to the landfill. Not long after he left, I received a call from my father, who said he was resting on a bed at the Velocity Care because he'd fallen and now had 6 staples in his head. My father is 78 years old. He said my stepmother was in the parking lot and he didn't think he had a concussion, although how you could cut your head that badly and not have a concussion is beyond me.

Some things I have considered today that I hadn't been - the newspaper, which we still receive, apparently is good for holding this virus for 24 hours. I sprayed the front and back pages down with Lysol.

That made me wonder about the mail, since I read that the virus stays on cardboard for 24 hours. Do we not touch the mail for a day? When (if?) a package comes, should I give it a kick into the garage and leave it sitting for a long time before I open it?

I gave my husband orders to strip in the garage, wash his hands, drop his laundry in the washer, wash his hands again, and then take a shower.

He did this, and also wiped down everything in his pockets, including his pocket knife, wallet, and keys, with an antibacterial wipe.

I jokingly told him he didn't have to wash his socks with his pants because I thought the stink there would kill be the virus. He threw them in there anyway. Ha.

So this is our brave new world. For us the biggest changes are trying to be less germy, but we live on a farm and dirt has always been a big part of our world. It is hardest on him, I think, because even though I have complained for 37 years about him tracking in mud, he doesn't stop to take his shoes off.

At least now he is taking off his shoes before enters the house.

A Long Week Update

Husband is doing well. He is rolling about the house on a knee scooter but still spending much time with his leg elevated. Until he has it in a cast - it's in a splint and a stretch wrap right now - he needs to be very careful.

Next Friday he goes back for his post-op visit, and hopefully to get a cast on his leg. He'll feel more comfortable if he bumps it if he has a cast on it, I think.

He is getting a daily shower. This is a bit arduous and hard on me but we are managing. His appetite is a little off but he told me today he was trying not to eat much since he is not moving around a lot. So I don't know if he's not hungry or having an impromptu diet.

As for me, I'm still taking too many steps and continue to have abdominal pain. I'm also fighting a serious bout of the blues.

Yesterday I noticed an issue with a tooth and last night I took a sip of water and the tooth said, "You shall not pass." Or maybe it said, "You will suffer me." One LotR quote or the other.

The morning brought pain with cold water and sweets especially. The sugar in my morning tea was no fun.

I wondered what home remedy I might try but nothing that came up seemed appealing (put garlic on it, was one suggestion). At 9 a.m. I called my dentist's office to leave a message, and they listed emergency numbers for each dentist. I thought, what the heck, maybe I can talk to Dr. Lavinder and she'll give me an idea as to whether I need Orajel or something or know if she can see me Monday.

So I called, but her mailbox was full. I figured that was that.

She called me back about 20 minutes later, saying she'd had a call from this number. I gave her my name, which she recognized, and explained what was going on with my tooth. She asked about antibiotics and which ones I could take, and then she said that with all the medicines I am on, she didn't really want to give me an antibiotic if I didn't need one and she'd rather take a look at me. Next thing I knew, she was telling me to be at her office at 4 p.m.

On a holiday weekend Saturday.

So I went, leaving my husband alone after he assured me he would be fine. Dr. Lavinder removed an old filling and put in a new one, along with some bonding, and she thought that would fix it. If not, I might need a root canal. A few days will tell.

She really went above and beyond the call of duty to fix me up. She said I wasn't someone who called with issues and she felt like since I'd called it must really be bothering me.

What a great dentist! She interrupted her time with her family to care for me. I am so fortunate that I have found a few health care professionals who really do care about their patients. I have no idea what the charge will be for an off-hour visit, but I am grateful that she cared enough to see me like that.

Otherwise, I'm awfully stressed but we're sort of settling into a new routine for now.

Our Thanksgiving was nonexistent (we each ate a half of a butternut squash, and that was it), although we had some leftovers my brother provided the next day for lunch.

Thank you, brother.

Last night I blew up a bowl of soup in the microwave. It was hearty beef vegetable soup and it went everywhere. The inside of the microwave looked like I'd exploded a dead thing. That was quite a mess. I have no idea where I went wrong.

This morning, I fixed Cornish game hens in a cooking bag and somehow or another they didn't cook completely. We ate some of the breast (that part was done) for lunch, and then I carried the remainder out to the forest and gave it a toss.

Something will eat it. Probably a coyote.

After I finished at the dentist, I brought home pizza. I'm thinking I may never cook again and we shall live on ham and cheese sandwiches and supermarket roasted chicken.

I am very tired. Can someone tell me why?

The Runaway

When I was a news reporter, one of my favorite questions to ask people was, "How did you end up here?"
 
I ask this because "here" is not exactly on the beaten path. It's not a mega commerce center, and just the other day there was an article in the paper about how young people are moving away and officials are looking for ways to stop what they called the "brain drain." Lots of outdoor activities might be a major draw, and we do have some industry, but nothing exceptional, really.
 
So I always want to know how people come to be here. Many retire here - we do have an older population - because the cost of living is so different from other areas, particularly up north. Some people have left and returned. Some love the mountains, some love the beauty of the area, some like the people.
 
Recently when I asked that question, I received an answer I'd not heard before.
 
The woman said she was here because she had run away from a domestic violence situation, and this area was a place she thought no one would look.
 
She said this so matter-of-factly that I was somewhat taken aback. This would be a good place to hide out, if you think about it. People generally mind their own business even if we do have that small-town mentality where everyone knows your business anyway. Of course they really don't know your business, they just think they do. Gossip is always entertaining.
 
I was also struck by this woman's acceptance of her situation, the easy way it rolled off her tongue. "Domestic violence," kind of like I'd say, "pass the ketchup, please." It has been many years since she left her bad situation, and I presume her acceptance of it means she's put it in her past and intends to leave it there.
 
Good for her. Good for her for being able to talk about it. And good for this area, for being a haven for, well, anybody. I like the idea of my community as a sanctuary, a place for folks to come when times elsewhere are bad.
 
Domestic violence is not something we discuss much. I don't hear whispers of "so-and-so hits his wife" - we simply don't talk about it. I know it goes on, though. And I suspect we should be talking about it as bravely as the woman I recently met.
 
This following information is from the Virginia Department of Social Services. They have many other .pdfs and other information available about this topic at the link.
 
Domestic violence (also called family violence) is a pattern of behavior and a method of control. One person dominates other household members by physical violence and/or psychological abuse.
 

• If you can answer "yes" to any of the questions below, you may be in an abusive relationship which would qualify as "Domestic Violence." Does your partner:
• •Hit? Slap? Choke? Kick? Bite? Push? Use, or threaten to use, a weapon? Prevent you from leaving?
• •Call you degrading names? Threaten to harm you or your family? Torture your pet? Destroy your property?
• •Keep you from seeing your friends or family? Prohibit you from using a vehicle?
• •Force you to engage in sexual acts against your will?
• •Discourage or forbid you to work? Withhold the family's financial information from you?
• •Control all the family finances and accounts?
• •Fail to provide care or medical treatment that results in injury or damages your health and safety?

 
The National Domestic Violence hotline offers up these rather scary statistics:
 

• On average, 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States — more than 12 million women and men over the course of a year.
• Nearly 3 in 10 women (29%) and 1 in 10 men (10%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by a partner and report a related impact on their functioning.
• Nearly, 15% of women (14.8%) and 4% of men have been injured as a result of rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
• 1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) aged 18 and older in the United States have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

 
 
Just something to think about while you go through your day.

 

  

I'm No Fun Anymore

Not that I ever really was the most exciting person in the room, mind you. I've always been a bit of a Debbie Downer.

Smart, though, and sarcastic. Frequently witty and often silly. Serious, studious, and stubborn, maybe. But fun?

Not an adjective people use to describe me. Nor is it a word I use to describe myself.

My idea of "fun" is a good hour with a video game or a book. Or sitting at a political meeting watching politicians make fools of themselves.

Slap happy stuff, that.

I also have a propensity toward depression and that creates a glass-half-full outlook that doesn't lend itself to happy thinking. Expect the worst and be glad if you don't get it, that's my motto.

And yet . . . I make my friends laugh. I don't make an effort at it, I'm just myself with them, and they find me hilarious. Anyone who knows me well finds me amusing, quick with a comeback, sometimes even able to remember a joke.

I can make the most mundane incident of the day sound like the funniest thing to happen to somebody ever. I make fun of myself a great deal, too.

Other people are off limits. I don't make fun of other folks, because I know how that can hurt if you hit a wrong button. I have lots of buttons and some people are very good at hitting them. Those people, I suspect, think I am never fun.

Those people don't know me very well because they've never taken the time to know me. I don't fit into their idea of who I should be, and so they don't accept me for who I actually am. All they know how to do is hit my buttons and/or be critical.

Their loss.

Because while I might not make a living as a stand-up comic, I'm actually not a bad person to know. Took me 55 years to figure that out, but hey, better late than never.

The Night Without Lights

Friday afternoon, around 5:10 or so, the power went out.

Before that, it blinked a few times. I looked outside and realized a big storm was upon us, and I was racing around trying to turn off computers and TVs when the electricity gave up the ghost.

A glance out the bedroom window told me we were having a major weather event. It was raining so hard and furiously that I could not see the fence, which is about 30 yards away. The wind was sending leaves and tree branches in my general direction.

I decided the best thing I could do was sit in the car until the weather calmed. At least if lightning struck, the tires were rubber.

Fortunately, our damage was minimal;  a few trees down in the little forest in front of the house and others on the farm, but nothing across the fences. The generator for the water pump for the cattle watering troughs kicked on and worked as it should, so I didn't have to worry about the cows. 

Without electricity, though, I had to find something to do besides keep my eyeballs on this silly screen at my computer.

I opted to read in the natural light, sitting close to a window. My house, as it turns out, is rather dark. We could have used a few more windows but didn't realize that until after we built. Oh well.

Any way, I finished up my book club book. The power did not return. I had the windows up - a rarity for me because of my asthma and allergies. My husband had mowed the night before and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to stand the grass smell. Ultimately, I could not, so I closed the windows in the bedroom and opened a few others in the far side of the house.

It grew dark around 8:30, and I went to bed. I didn't want to read by flashlight.

Fortunately, it was not a hot night. I slept fitfully, waking about every two hours. I know I dreamed and talked in my sleep; not an unusual occurrence for me. I rose at 6 a.m., long before the Man of the House came in from work. He brought me a very greasy ham biscuit from BoJangles for breakfast (something I requested he not do again). Then he fired up a generator, giving me lights, water, and a fan, but we'd already lost the contents of the refrigerator, most of which I had purchased on Thursday.

We had no phones except our cell phones, which do not work well in the house anyway, and I couldn't do laundry. I took a medium hot shower (there was still hot water in the hot water heater, fortunately), and then sat in the car and recharged my phone while I listened to a book on tape.

After that, I washed all the dishes by hand by heating water with my electric tea kettle and pouring it into a big pan. I folded whatever clothing I hadn't finished up the day before. Then I settled in to a chore I had long put off - tearing articles out of newspapers.

Tearing up a newspaper is a bit like ripping a little shred from my heart, but I have piles of paper. When you write for a newspaper and you keep the stories with your byline, you end up with a lot of newspaper piles. And if you keep all the stories on a local subject that you've been following with interest, even if you didn't write the articles, then you have even more paper. 

I made a significant impact on the pile, and then the phone rang. That was a surprise. After thanking the salesperson for letting me know I had a phone, I hung up on them, and then promptly plugged in my internet connection to see if I could get online with my tablet. I could, and then I couldn't. It was sporadic, but I was able to get my fix. Yes, I am addicted to the Internet. I am addicted to blogs, and reading blogs, and to reading the news, and to Facebook, and to receiving email from friends. Even so, I have thus far refused a smartphone simply because I know I will remain glued to the thing from sun up to sun down, and I don't want that.

I want to keep some autonomy, after all. And I rather like it when I go for a drive and no one can get me because only a select few have my cell number. But I didn't like it when I couldn't access things when I wanted.

The lights came back on around 1:30 p.m., and that was the end of that. I stripped the bed, washed the linens, made the bed back up, and put the dishes I had hand-washed in the dishwasher just because. I fretted over the food in the freezer and the refrigerator. I looked online for guidelines as to how long food would be safe without power. The freezer food was probably okay. The refrigerator stuff - no way. Out it went.

Sunday I rose early to head to the supermarket. Halfway through my shopping trip, I realized I had forgotten my wallet. I put everything back, came back home, and went back after it. This is no small feat given that the shopping around here is a 15 minute drive away (10 if you go fast). What should have taken me an hour and 15 minutes took two hours or better, and I arrived home in time to give my husband a ham sandwich for lunch.

So that was our eventful weekend.

And I learned something I already knew but had refused to deal with - the Internet sucks up a lot of my time. I think it is time I place some limits on it, even if it is my major method of socialization these days. That means less Facebook and video games, mostly. Anything to do with writing doesn't count - to me, that's still what I do, write. Even if I'm not doing it professionally at the moment.

Trapping Stink Bugs

Stink bugs, an invasive species, began showing up in our area a couple of years ago. They hid in the curtains, behind picture frames, and in places you'd never think to look. They don't like temperatures below 70 degrees.

 

They come out and crawl on the walls and fly around the lights. Sometimes you are in the middle of doing something and you look down and there's a stink bug. They seem to materialize out of thin air.

 

This is how I capture stink bugs.

 

 

You need a plastic bottle and a pair of scissors.

 

 

 

Cut the bottle several inches from the top; along the label line often works well. 

 

 

I use my handy kitchen scissors for this. I suppose you could also use a pocket knife or something. 

 

 

Once you have the bottle cut, you invert the top (take the lid off the bottle) and place it down in the bottle to create a funnel.

 

Then you go around the room and collect stink bugs. I usually tap them into the bottle with a pencil (using the eraser end so as not to damage the walls). They can't climb back out because the inverted funnel creates a barrier they can't cross when they climb up the sides of the bottle.

 

 

 

You can also stick a little water and Dawn in the bottom. That will kill the bugs. I'm told Pinesol also works well for this, and does a better job of covering up any stinky stink bug odor, too, but I haven't tried it.

 

 

 

Recently we discovered this stuff and sprayed it around all the doors and windows. I have seen fewer stink bugs indoors since we did that, so it seems to work to keep them at bay.

 

They aren't gone; I found a lot of them outside over the weekend. They were in my roses, my forsythia, and the garden. Stinky little beasts.

 

Anyway, if you haven't yet figured out how to deal with stink bugs in your house, maybe this will help.

*No one paid me to endorse a product or talk about stink bugs in this entry.*

Hello Gorgeous!

Of course after I discovered my car had an expensive issue, I needed a new vehicle.

So say hello to Gorgeous!

She's a brand new 2014 Toyota Camry SE.

She had 54 miles on her when we made the purchase, all, I suppose, from test drives.

White is actually our preferred color of vehicle, and this is exactly the car I'd planned to purchase - two years or so from now.

She's got a faux leather interior. The storage space is more limited because she's got all of that computer/smart phone gizmos. That's my only complaint. (I don't have a smart phone so I am not sure what to do with all of that stuff. Maybe one day.)

However, I think once I am used to her, and figured out where things go, Gorgeous and I shall have a long and happy life together.

Bye Bye Blue . . .

So the other week when I was feeling bad and in the middle of fighting with the health care system over who would be my primary care doctor, I also had to say farewell to an old friend.

My 2003 Toyota Camry developed an expensive issue, and I had to tell her goodbye. I loved that car. But when the fix costs more than the vehicle would trade for, it is time to say farewell.

I drove her in rain, sleet, and snow, and she never failed to get me where I wanted to go.

She had 125,000 miles on her.

I listened to several hundred books on her CD player.

I loved the sound of her engine when I sped down the highway.

Even with some age on her, she still glistened.

Her interior was nice and roomy, too. Lots of storage space. But she's lost to me now.

It's so sad . . .

One of Life's Little Adventures

I took some photos yesterday, and had a little adventure. As my husband put it, I can't even go down to get the mail without having *something* happen.

I waited until the sun was shining, and went down with my camera. I wanted a shot of the hayfield that is currently overrun with mustard.

That's a weed that is not great for hay but it is quite lovely to look at. And then I thought, well, I'll cross the street and get a picture of those Canadian geese on the pond.

The next thing I knew some guy on a bike went whizzing by. "Get your damn dog out of the road!" he shouted at me. I don't have a dog, much less a damn one, so I looked up to see this big bulldog-looking thing with its tongue hanging out heading towards me.

You must know I am not only allergic to dogs, I am somewhat terrified of strange ones I do not know. And I did not know this animal. I went into panic mode.

The dog was in the middle of the road and suddenly traffic was everywhere, backed up coming from both directions, and I was standing there helplessly scared of this dog in the street and the bicyclist was long gone by then. Part of me was thinking, I should call the dog and get it out of harm's way and the other part was yelling, that thing is going to take my leg off. A fleeting thought went something like, the dog should've chased the guy on the bike and bit his leg off, it would have served him right.

Fortunately one of the vehicles in the traffic was my neighbor, who is also the county sheriff. I waved him over and told him this dog had taken a stroll in my general direction. I thought it belonged down the street a ways, and so we walked it back and it went toward the rear of the house and we decided it must live there. There were no tags on its collar.

Then we walked back to my car, and by this time I was walking incredibly slowly given the issues I'm having with my tummy and the fact that I'd had some medical testing done earlier in the day, and wasn't prepared for all of this excitement when all I wanted was a scenic shot of mustard in the hayfield.

And darned if I didn't forget to take a picture of the dog.

The Treefrog

Yesterday afternoon, after my husband had been in and I'd fed him lunch and sent him back out to play in the dirt, I headed down the hall to my office.

My carpet is a whitish brown-speckled sort of color, and in the middle of the hall, dark from storm clouds blocking the sun and my desire not to turn on the lights, sat what I thought was a leaf.

"Good grief, how did he track that in?" I thought, blaming my husband, of course.

I bent down to scoop up the offending debris. I touched it.

It jumped.

I screamed.

I stared at it. Then I started dancing around. "I touched a frog, ohmygod I touched a frog." I left the thing sitting there and I raced for the kitchen sink and the Dawn dish washing soap. I scrubbed my hands. "I touched a frog. I can't believe it. Ohmygod there's a frog in my house!"

I went back to look. Sure enough, there it sat. A tiny little tree frog. It was about as big as a quarter.

What to do? I had to get it outside. First I picked up a broom and the dustpan. I cajoled the amphibian onto the dustpan, but it kept jumping off.

"I need a jar," I muttered.

I couldn't find a jar. Where is an old mayo jar when you need it? Finally, I found a paper cup. I used the broom again and urged the creature into the container.

Then I placed the broom over top of the cup so the frog couldn't jump out.

I let it go outside.

The frog did not look very happy.

I went and found my camera and took a picture. I suppose I should have taken a photo of it in my house, but I was too disturbed.

Cute froggie when it's out where it belongs. It doesn't belong in my house!

It's My Party!

I have waited 50 years for this day. It's my big, big day. I am officially a half-century old. I understand 50 is the new 40. Let's hope, eh?

Here's a look at Anita through the years . . .

Age 3 with baby brother

Age 5, Kindergarten

Age 13, End of School year, 7th Grade

Age 9 or 10, Christmas

Age 16, playing guitar
in a rock band

Age 14 or 15, high school band

Age 20, not yet married

Age 20, my wedding day, with my parents
and my brother

Age 20, my wedding day, with my
handsome and special husband

Mid 40s

Mid to Late 40s

Age 47 with handsome husband

Age 48, at my 30th high school reunion

Age 48

Age 48 (2012), receiving master's
degree from Hollins University

Age 49 years, 364 days. I
took this yesterday.

Happy Birthday to me!