Making it in Toledo

I remember two very different activities on Memorial Days of my childhood.  Neither involved picnics.  Or hot dogs.

Usually the official Memorial Day service was in the morning.  The high school band.  Solemn music. A classmate reciting the Gettysburg Address.  Taps.  It didn’t last long, but failing to mark the day in this way would have been unthinkable.  Is that still a thing?

Later at home, we gathered flowers bundles which always involved lilacs.  Sometimes irises.  Honeysuckle. Maybe some late tulips.  We made bouquets (I remember Mason jars) and visited the cemeteries where my ancestors were buried.  Mostly, I didn’t remember these great-aunts and great-grandparents.  It was interesting to see the names and helped me feel a sense of the context of my life at that time.

None of my ancestors are buried here.  The ashes of my parents and my sister have been scattered in places that were special to them.

I don’t have lilacs in my yard, but I’m looking forward to gathering peonies and maybe an early rose.  And indulging in memory.

 

Last day of April, my birth month.  Encouraged by the early warmth, we’ve prepared the porch and the yard for summer, but these last days have been too cold to enjoy the outside.  The lettuce seeds have sprouted, the milkweed leaves are unfurling, and our meals have begun to include frequent ingredients harvested from the garden (chives and garlic chives, thyme and lemon thyme, sage and fiddleheads).  For a few months at least, winter is not coming.

Next week we’re heading off on a road trip, the first time in years we will have driven farther than Chicago.   I’m looking forward to the Low Country.  Savannah and maybe Charleston.  We’ll be spending several days on Hilton Head Island, where I’ve never been before.  Golf of course (not for me but still…) and, weather permitting, beaches.  I hope to learn a bit about Gullah culture and maybe even bring home a basket or two.

In the meantime, I’ve continued to read books that do not encourage a lightness of heart.  I had put off reading The Underground Railroad, but after the Pulitzer it became unavoidable.  In the last few months I’ve also read The Invention of Wings and Homegoing.  So my experience in South Carolina and Georgia will  include not just an appreciation of the beauty of nature and the delicious food, but an awareness of the history of slavery and its continuing legacy.  I’m hoping to find more upbeat books (including audible) for the trip, since my mood seems to so clearly mirror my reading material.

What influences your mood?  My list would include the weather, other aspects of my environment (yes, I really do feel better when my space is clean and tidy), my activities (cooking and gardening are good), and, absolutely, what I am watching, listening to, and reading.  It’s tricky to balance awareness of the awful things that are happening, appreciation of the wonderful things all around me, and the need/opportunity to be alive every day.

I’m looking forward to May.

 

Arthritis is a bitch.  For the last few years I’ve juggled exercises, salves,  injections and pain meds, timing each according to occasions, vacations, and the weather.  “Bad knees” run in the family.  Sooner or later a knee replacement is likely, but I’m not in a hurry.

While I don’t plan on an extended work session this morning, a little garden cleanup is irresistible .  Not because I should do it, but because of how much I enjoy doing it.  I have to set a timer so that the price in aches and pains doesn’t get too high.

Few things are as rewarding to me as digging in the dirt, attacking the weeds and encouraging the herbs and flowers that I’ve planted and that, so far, the deer have not destroyed.  No-work chives are usually are the first to make it onto our plates.  I only have room for one rhubarb plant, so I augment from the market, but I can’t give up on it.

Tiny flowers are emerging from last fall’s leaves and debris, while the hyacinth I rescued from a gift pot of mixed bulbs is showing promise.

I have a special fondness for this tiny daffodil:

It’s been a rough winter.  Signs of life in the garden will help me keep faith and keep going.

 

So I lost an hour last night.  Actually I feel like I lost many hours this week.  Our electricity went out in the windstorm Wednesday about noon and was not restored until late Friday afternoon.  Wednesday wasn’t bad.  The backup system kept the wifi on for a few hours. I went to the library and chose a book to distract and amuse.  I went to the drug store and bought a battery-powered book light.  We ate Five Guys Burgers and Fries by candlelight for dinner.  By Thursday morning it was too cold for comfort in the house, so for two days I shuttled between coffee houses (mostly Brew) and restaurants (Original Sub and Greg’s Grill and QQ) and libraries – wherever there was warmth, electricity, and wifi.  In between I came home to check whether the lights were on.   (Nope!)  I obsessively checked the Toledo Edison website for explanations and promises.  Outage reported.  Inclement weather.  Tree damage. Awaiting assignment. Additonal crews requested. First I worried that the freezer would warm up and then I worried that the houseplants – or the pipes – would freeze.  Nights were okay under warm blankets, so there was that.

Lately I’ve been trying to get out of the house more, but not for simple survival.  Now that I am warm (although I am left with a head cold that may or not be associated with the outage), I am appreciating the comforts of home but still determined to get out more.

I remember a few years ago smiling at Karen Wood’s comment that free time is a lot more valuable when you don’t have so much of it.  Karen, you certainly seem to have figured out how to handle that!  I still have a ways to go.

I don’t need to save time.  I want to spend it wisely and appreciate it gratefully.

 

We spent 16 days in Mexico this month. We had perfect weather.  For half the time, we had our whole family with us.  We moved around a bit, but wherever we were the toughest decision was pool or beach.  It was wonderful, and I feel very grateful for the opportunity and the experience.  For at least a part of every day I forgot about Donald Trump and global warming, and I am determined to capture that forgetfulness on a regular basis.

 

When we got home I found that our two fig trees, in the unheated and largely light-free basement for the winter, have begun to leaf out and even to fruit.  Like other aspects of this season, this, while a bad sign for the planet, is in the short term kind of fun.  We moved the pots to the kitchen and re-arranged the furniture to make room.  I’m looking forward to watching the figs ripen and hoping that they taste good.  It seems, from my initial research, that this is the breba crop, which may or may not be edible, depending on the variety.  A friend gave me this fig about three years ago and it’s always beautiful but has never before been fruitful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We live in an old house, and it’s  a rare winter that I don’t need to bring out the mousetraps.  Years ago, when we still had dogs, we saw a brave mouse run out from under the stove and jump eagerly into the dog food bowl.  In 2008, as we were getting to know a just-arrived organizer we were hosting for the Hillary primary campaign, she was the first to notice a small furry greeter.  Just a couple of weeks ago, a tiny quick mouse ran out of the kitchen just minutes before guests were scheduled to arrive for dinner.  While we’re watching television in the evenings, we’ve been hearing rustling and rattling among the brown paper bags I store under the sink.  Enough is enough.

We’ve tried live traps, but, well… Once I opened the compost bin we keep out by the garage on a particularly cold day to find a very happy, well fed mouse looking up at me.  Since they clearly have other options, I don’t feel too bad about culling the ones who set up housekeeping in the basement, with frequent forays into the kitchen. So last night I set my traps, a new and promising kind.  And this morning I checked them.  Although the trap under the sink was unspung, the bait well, which had been filled with peanut butter, was licked clean.  Although it won’t stop me from another sneak attack tonight,  I can’t help but admire that mouse.

We’ve just finished binge-watching Season 1 of The Man in the High Castle.  Last night I told John that I think most of the characters have at least some good in them, even the villains.  Maybe it’s the casting or the costumes, but how can you not admire Inspector Kido?  Or the Yakuza boss?  Or even feel some sympathy for Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith, as he realizes what his political affiliation means for his son.  They may be bad humans, but they are humans.  I am not in the “wait and see” camp when it comes to the new administration, and I am not ambiguous about the real, historical Hitler, but within a wide range of humans I do find something to admire and, most of the time, some reason to feel affection and to hope for some good.

Lately that makes it hard to cope with reality.

 The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why. Eleanor Roosevelt

I’m not at the women’s march, but I’m celebrating its success and hoping it is the beginning of something.  I may be feeling confessional because I’m not marching, and I may be looking for ways to do something useful.

Since it’s warm, I went outside to check on the fish in the backyard pond.  Since I’m pretty sure the melter has been less than effective, leaving them under a solid layer of ice a few times this winter, I was worried.  But there they were, all three of them, swimming around.  Oh, the joy of small victories!  As long I was already out there, I decided to toss out the sad remains of last summer’s floating plants, too, a task that should have been completed several months ago, but better late than never.  Probably my shoes were wet.  Certainly the stones were slippery. I was almost ready to come into the house when I found myself IN the pond for the first time in the 20-or-so years it’s been in my backyard! It’s only a couple of feet deep, but somehow I ended up wet to my shoulders. 

I climbed out and came into the kitchen, dripping, while John, laughing out loud, got me a towel.  Only my pride is hurt. I have always had a hard time laughing at myself and I dislike having others laugh at me.  Probably because he’s used to my sometimes-obsessive need for privacy, and trying not to laugh out loud, John promised not to tell anyone what I had just done.  In fact, trying hard to keep a straight face, he promised to take it to his grave.  So I”m confessing:  I FELL INTO THE POND THIS MORNING.  Clumsily.  Hilariously.  Apparently without lasting ill-effects for me or the fish. 

I come from a family of serious women.  My mother was serious. Her four sisters, with one possible exception, were serious.  I don’t remember my mother laughing often, and I wonder if she would have been happier if she did.  I don’t laugh as often as I would like, and I suspect that if I can learn to laugh at myself I may be happier. I read a lot of mysteries, and I am convinced that I learn a lot from them, event those that are non-pure escapism.  One book taught me about laughing clubs.  And laughter yoga.  Maybe I should consider it.

The fish are still swimming.  I’m showered and clean, and the clothes are washed and drying.  She shoes may take a while.  I hope that I can find drier activities to laugh at until I’m somewhere warmer.

For the last few days my desktop (a relatively old Dell) has been randomly shutting down and giving me “watchdog violation” error messages.  I googled that and decided there was some kind of driver incompatibility and kind of put up with it or just switched to my new Apple laptop for most tasks.  Then yesterday the problem escalated and every time I turned it on it entered sleep mode and wouldn’t come back.  By last night I had given up on the CPU and was becoming resigned to dealing with the one-at-a-time file recovery from my Norton backup.

Today I managed to run diagnostics, resulting in several new error codes that, when googled, warned that I had better back up my data quickly.  But I couldn’t turn on the computer to back up.

On about the 15th try it worked, and I have just finished transferring all my documents and pictures to USB flash drives.

Either this is a very good sign for 2017 or I’d better watch out for some very bad luck to balance things out.

 

I’m heading into 2017 with a new computer (finally making the switch to a Mac), which is a good thing because my old computers have almost certainly become boat anchors, the laptop a few months ago and the desktop today.  So as the bubbly chills, I am trying to remember, retrieve, and construct passwords.  I am resolving to sign up for one of those password-generation thingies.  I am thanking my lucky stars for my backups but kicking myself because I have to retrieve one file at a time.

So in 2017 I will (in no particular order)

• clean up my digital life at least a little bit (passwords first)
• write more handwritten notes
• continue (and expand) efforts to de-clutter at home
• explore more places away from home but nearby
• connect with more people and connect them to one another

I could go on, but I think I will work on these five things and give myself a break on a few others. I have a feeling that there will be a lot of challenges in 2017, and beyond these goals I will simply try to do what I can where I am with what I have for as long as I can.

Who’s with me?

 

 

I am always aware of my privilege, but usually that awareness is not accompanied by guilt. Since November 8th, a low-level guilt hangs over me all the time.  I’m sending money to groups and candidates I believe in.  I’m adding my name to countless petitions.  I’m reading, somewhat obsessively, to understand WHAT HAPPENED.  But I’m also vacationing, seeing beautiful sites and eating delicious meals and reading novels.  I am enjoying myself. How is that okay? But, on the other hand, how is that not okay?

I know I’m not alone here.  We’re all struggling to understand and adjust and resist.  I don’t really want to talk about it, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

Thanking the goddess for a grandchild, the opportunity to do a few worthwhile things, and a healthy sourdough starter…

Calvin: There’s no problem so awful, that you can’t add some guilt to it and are it even worse.  Bill Waterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes