This Year's Christmas Reverie

Today I am alone for a little while, my newly retired husband off to run errands and meet with old co-workers for a lunch.  I have time to reflect on the holiday, what is the same this year and what is different.

Things change, evolve—the shape of Christmas transforms.  It used to be child-based and now my grandchildren are in three different states and half of them are over 20. There is a new element this year—my second-oldest grandson is in Afghanistan.  I have made sugar cookies with sprinkles on them and there is a box set aside of cookies that Patrick will get in his Christmas package.  Today I will make Brandy Balls, something a 22-year-old will like and an item that will pack well.  He probably won’t get his package before Christmas, but what does it matter to a soldier in the dessert?  Any package on any day will be welcome.  I’ll wrap up a Calvin and Hobbes collection for him to go along with the sweets.  I was going to make some chocolate candy for him, too, but was reminded that they would probably melt in the heat of the desert, so that’s out.

The tree is decorated; most of the gifts are wrapped. My Santa collection is still boxed—there hasn’t been time to get all those different Santas unwrapped and placed around the house yet. Hopefully, I can get them out before my daughter and her husband arrive from Virginia on the 22nd. This will be the second time they have come for Christmas and it is the best gift I could ask for. Their presence will make four of us in the house rather than the sort of lonely two we have become. It makes such a difference to have other people to share the warmth of the season with.

I’ve always made cookies at Christmas, even before I had my own house to make them in.  I started baking at an early age and have never stopped.  Some of my favorite cookies were the shortbread cookies I used to make with my daughters.  They were easy, just butter, sugar and flour, and they could be shaped or rolled and sprinkled or frosted—the possibilities were endless.  Long ago, when I had small children I made rolled sugar cookies with complicated shapes and frostings.  My daughter-in-law makes gingerbread men every year, with frosting and various chips and candies on them. We work hard to make pretty cookies for our children.  Now it seems too much work for just my husband and me.  When I had lots of kids around I made a favorite we called “bubble bread”, a pull-apart bread made in a tube pan with lots of butter and cinnamon.  I don’t make that anymore, either—too many calories for us oldies.

No matter how old we get we’ll still enjoy Christmas music.  It’s not fattening!  The first CD we bring out is the Carpenter’s Christmas Portrait.  It’s 26 years old, but remains the warmest and best set of Christmas music ever put together—in our opinions, at least.  When one of the 20 Christmas CDs isn’t playing, radio station 106.9 is playing a huge variety of seasonal music.  Right now I’m listening to jazzy Diana Krall interpret some old favorites.

I love the smell of evergreens but we have an artificial tree now. When I was a kid my Dad would choose a tree from a lot, but it always had to be modified to fit into the living room.  He often had to take a limb off of one side and add it to the other.  Trees weren't as perfectly groomed as they are now.  When I was a Mom we'd go to the tree farm, choose a tree, cut it down, tie it to the car, fit it to the tree stand.  Some years we even popped corn and strung it for a garland.  I think I may institute that tradition again with my daughter.  I can’t imagine anything more cozy than stringing popcorn while drinking a hot buttered rum, toddy, cocoa, or a coffee nudge and listening to Karen Carpenter singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. 

I think it’s obvious that I love Christmas in all its variations.  I know people who don’t and I feel sad for them and wonder what happened to take the magic out of it for them.  I was in a lower income bracket most of my life, but always had a happy Christmas.  There was never opulence, except for maybe that two-year period my Dad owned a store and I got a hair dryer and a radio for Christmas.  My Dad and Mom loved Christmas too, so maybe my memories are better because of that. 

Some years I haven’t felt the “spirit”, the soft, giving, loving feeling that I wait for.  There have been sad years, years we’ve lost a family member, Christmases following a divorce, but they have been brief periods of time.  The magical spirit usually reaches me before Christmas comes and this year it’s been around for nearly a month. 

I’ll be excited on Christmas Eve because the next morning I’ll get to see my husband, my daughter and her husband open the gifts I’ve found for them, I’ll get to watch my husband trying to control the paper clutter afterwards, we’ll get phone calls from across the U.S. from my kids, I’ll make calls to thank others, we’ll make a special dinner and play games or watch a movie.  It will be another in the long string of happy Christmases, special in it’s own way.

Cranky Old Lady

Have you noticed, as you’ve gotten older, that you seem to be a little more impatient, less apt to stand calmly in line, more apt to be irritated by a slow down.  Have you raised your voice in protest, just a little, when a sales clerk insists you can fit into a size 8 when you know darn well that you’ve never worn a size 8 and never will?  Have you felt like walking out with your hair half cut when a hair dresser says: you  “need a wax” on your eyebrows and how about a pedicure and wouldn’t you like a manicure, too?   Have you snapped at the person at the end of the phone line at dinnertime who wants you to buy tickets for “the underprivileged to attend the rodeo” or to vote for the wonderful, better-than-the-last one candidate of the moment?

Has there been a barista who is young enough to hear you, and surely has better ears than you do, who gives you a soy latte when what you’ve said is, “Oh,boy, I need a latte this morning!”  Have you lost patience in a line because the person three in front of you has decided this is the day she needs to catch up with the check-out person, who is an old friend, and they can’t possibly talk on the phone, because who does that anymore?  And have you actually yelled at the driver in front of you because the light has turned green and the driver’s attention is on the text he’s reading?

I think I used to be lots more forgiving and patient.  I used to do buttocks tucks when I stood in line, not caring how long it took to get my groceries.  I used to accept the soy latte and not complain.  I used to say “okay” to the eyebrow wax.  But nowadays I’m not as nice.  I want good service.  I want courtesy and competence.  I want the hairdresser to cut my hair, charge me for it and let me go without the menu of what else she would like me to buy from her.  I want all drivers to pay attention.  I want friends to chat on their own time, not on mine. 

Ick!  I’ve become a cranky old lady!  When did that happen?  It’s funny—I wasn’t like this when I was working.  I must not have cared.  If I was standing in line, at least I wasn’t behind a desk, answering phones or emails or talking to grouchy customers who were just like I have become.   Was my time not as valuable to me?  Now I want to get out of that line, away from that hair salon and get on my way, because I have good things to do and I don’t want to waste a minute.  Time.  It’s more important now.  It’s finite, it won’t last, there is an end to these days and years.  I have too much I want to do and now that I have the time to do it, I don’t want others using it up.

Time hasn’t changed, but my attitude toward it, my perception of it, certainly has.  No day is long enough to check off everything on the list of things I have set out to accomplish.  Most of what’s on that list is pretty fun—the ratio of fun to not fun (chore) is about 3 to 1—three creative projects to one clean the floor.  Let’s see, how do I decide?  Shall I make a greeting card using one of the photographs I’ve taken, or shall I dust?  Duh!  Not going to pick dusting unless someone is coming to see me.  Then I’ll relent.  Hmmmmm….shall I write a piece about being a cranky old lady or should I wash the dishes?  Eventually I’ll wash the dishes but for now I’ll just put a few paragraphs down—the dishes can wait.  Shall I plan a lunch with my aging mother, my even more aging aunt and my long lost cousin or shall I spend that day in the garden?  Lunch wins every time.  Having to stand in line when young, seemingly untrained, clerks try to solve the problems of their customers, who either want to make trouble or chat, is not on my agenda of fun things to do.  It comes under the heading of CHORE.  For me being retired is not about chores.  It is about making the very most of the time I have left on this earth, in the way I find most satisfying.  There may be some who find it wonderful to have more time to do what I consider to be chores: waxing furniture, making their toilet bowls sparkle, shining their floors, passing a white glove test.  I know some women like that, but I’m not one of them.  I have to admit to thinking it’s nice to have more time to spend on housework because I don’t like a dirty house.  Since retiring I do give more time to cleaning, but I draw the line when it gets in the way of creativity, because cleaning has never given me the satisfaction of creating something, a garden, a photo, a piece of writing, a lunch for friends or family, a gift.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not an angry driver, I’m not someone who is impatient with old people (older than me) who are having trouble getting the coins out of their pockets to pay for their bread and milk.  I’m not a person who wants to deprive a small businesswoman of her fees.  I don’t get cranky out loud or push my way to the front—but I do find myself wanting to get on with things, get my business done and on to the fun parts of life.  It’s a new, raring-to-go me—excited to get to the next enjoyable part of the day.

Let There Be Light

Just Monday afternoon I was rhapsodizing about the loveliness of snow, the cozy cocoa and warm blanket and good book.  All of that romantic winter feeling lasted until 5:00 pm when the lights went out.

It is now 11:00 am on Wednesday.  It's 46 degrees in the house, even with a blazing fire in the wood stove.  There are two warm places in the house--one foot in front of the wood stove or in bed with the flannel sheets and two quilts on top of the fleece blanket pulled up over our heads.  It also feels good to wash dishes.  Thank heavens for a gas-powered water heater.

No television, no radio, lanterns after 4:30 and the fancy generator is refusing to generate.  We've been entertaining ourselves listening to police and fire calls on the battery operated scanner.  My husband keeps asking, "How could the pioneers STAND it??? What did they do when it got DARK???"  He's not buying it but we are so much better off than the "pioneers"--we have flashlights and 4-wheel drive vehicles to take us to a lighted place if we really want to go get warm.

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow.  I was supposed to make a pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce.  I was able to grate and squeeze the oranges and cook up the cranberries on the top of the gas stove, but the pie may or may not happen, depending on when the power is returned to us.  I put some Gran Marnier in the cranberries and admit to tippling a little as I cooked.  I figure the more alcohol, the better.  I know our hostess is also still without power and probably most of her guests will have tales of snow, cold and wind.  Our hostess is a psychologist who says the jollity factor will be higher because of the tension during the last few days.  I don't know about that--I just want my hands, feet and nose to warm up!

Let It Snow

I know there are probably a whole bunch of people out there gnashing their teeth today because it's snowing and they have to get somewhere.  They likely are not snow lovers.  But I am.  I love it.  Even when I worked I loved it, but I didn't love driving in it.  I was one of those wimps that called in "stuck" in my driveway when it snowed like this.  I was stuck alright, with fear of sliding off the road.


But now that I'm retired I can love snow as much as I want to.  Snow always makes me want steaming hot cocoa, a crackling fire in the wood stove, an exciting book, a warm fleece blanket....and a buttery cookie wouldn't hurt.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing out in the snow, building a snowman, sledding, throwing snowballs and your hands would get so cold they hurt and your nose was dripping and your pants were wet and there was snow down inside your boots?  Remember how your hands ached when you tried to warm them in hot water?  Remember how good it felt to warm up at the kitchen table with a mug of sweet cocoa and graham crackers to dunk in it?  And remember how you wanted to go right back outside no matter how cold you were going to get?  Remember not caring?  Remember wet socks and coats and pants and mittens and knit hats hanging all over the kitchen making puddles of melted snow on the floor?  Remember the smell of wet wool?  I bet you do and I bet those are wonderful memories for you like they are for me.

I hope you can let yourself love the snow just a little bit because we're going to have lots of it this year and it would be a shame if it just make you unhappy.

Writing Essays

I've been writing since I was a teenager, in diaries, journals, letters, for publication and then in 2005, in this blog.  I went to a Writer's Retreat at Pilgrim Firs the weekend of November 5 and finally found out what I've been doing all these years.  I've been writing personal essays.  I was at our retreat teacher's website (Sheila Bender) just now and found this quote.

"At the core of the personal essay," Philip Lopate writes, "is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience." As essayists, in talking about ourselves, we are in some way talking about everyone. It is our experience that matters and our interest in sharing it that moves others. Orhan Pamuk, 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, put it this way in his acceptance speech, "All true literature rises form this childish, hopeful certainty that we resemble one another".

I guess that's been my impulse--to write about my experience and/or thoughts and hope you can relate, or that something rings a bell with you, makes you remember or think.  According to some of the comments I've gotten through this blog, it appears to work sometimes.  

Queen of the Mountain

It’s called Afton Apple Orchard but my granddaughter, Ali, and I  are focused on the mountain made of tires. Ali has been here before with her kindergarten class, but it’s the first time for me.

The tire mountain seems to get bigger as we approach it, sand packed and monstrous. Ali scrambles over the old tractor tires to the top and thrusts her arms to the sky, grinning wildly. I think, “Queen of the Mountain”. Suddenly she disappears. I am startled, staring at where she was just a moment ago, a little afraid. Then I hear her calling me and I see her half-way down a giant black PVC pipe slide, on her way back to me.

As she emerges the fall sunlight shines in her long hair and the eager cries of dozens of kids running towards us almost drowns out her small but excited voice, “Did you see me, Grandma?” In the next moments the others ascend the tire mountain and she is no longer the Queen.



Chairs

This would be my ultimate dream.

Where we sit when we’re relaxing or reading or watching televisions is important to us, don’t you think?  I would bet that everyone, no matter how elegant or humble the home, has a favorite spot.

My grandfather had his straight-backed wooden chair, with 3 slats at the back.  Only the seat was upholstered.  He sat in it to read his paper and listen to the radio, his feet on an ottoman.  My grandmother didn’t sit down exactly; she perched in between chores, unless she was energetically playing rousing hymns on the piano.

As a teenager I used to flop down in my Dad’s leather club chair with footstool (which had been beautifully reupholstered by him) to read and to nap before I had to help with dinner.  Later Dad would watch TV and read and often fall asleep there himself.

My mother has a favorite chair, too, but I don’t remember her having one while we kids were growing up.  She was too busy waiting on my father, or refereeing fights between my brother and me, or going to choir practice or washing the kitchen floor.  When she stopped it was more to nurse a migraine in her darkened bedroom.  Now she has a recliner/rocker, which she’s used as headquarters for many years, next to her an end table, one of those blond wood, 2-level ones from the 50s.  It’s piled high with half-done crossword puzzles, People magazines, books and pencils.  Beside her on the floor is her purse.

We have broken tradition in our home.  We have a large Mission-style couch, which I bought when I was working and had money to spend on furniture.  It has three big cushions.  The one on the right is “my area”; the one on the left is my husband’s.  I have two sofa pillows on my end, one I bought in Greece, the other I got just a few months ago in Vancouver, B.C., and a crescent-shaped airplane pillow, filled with buckwheat, to burrow into while I read books, newspapers, magazines, write, play with my iTouch or watch TV.  It is the center of my operations, where I drink my morning coffee, where I do my thinking, where I talk on the phone.

At the other end of the couch my husband watches TV.  For anything else he has another place, a loveseat, which looks like a large version of Archie Bunker’s chair, or Frazer Crane’s dad's chair, though it doesn’t have any duct tape repairs on it…yet.  This is where he reads magazines, plays with his iTouch and naps.  I have tried for years to buy him a nice chair but to no avail.  It’s formed to his body like a comfortable pair of shoes.

When I visited my son and his family in Wisconsin earlier this month I realized early on that I was sitting in someone else’s spot.  It didn’t take much intellect to decipher the longing looks and outright plaintive meows from the two cats in the house.  In the evening when the two adult humans in the house inhabit the big leather couch to read or watch television, the cats, Lucy and Sadie, share the “big, comfy” chair, as it’s called. The friendlier one, Lucy, sits on the seat cushion, the more skittish Sadie lies alertly on the chair back.  I felt badly that they had to find other quarters while I was there, but I wasn’t about to perch on the windowsill so they could have their “spots”.  Other cats might have snuggled up to me and shared the area, but not these two.

 I have experienced the same emotions as these cats when people are visiting us.  The visitors tend to take one or the other end of the couch, where my husband and I are usually ensconced, with my feet on his lap, our fleece blanket warming us.  During these visits I cannot stretch out as usual and my husband is banished to his loveseat.  At least I get my end of the couch.  Recently my husband’s mother was visiting.  She was with us for 2 weeks and when she left for home we both took possession once again of our beloved corners, just like the cats did when I left my son’s house.  We were purring and happy again, like the cats must have been, back in our adored and comfy nests.

Save My Morning

Bob Rivers at the mic

I wouldn’t have thought it would matter so much.  I wouldn’t have expected to feel a hole, not only inside of me, but also in my daily life.  I wouldn’t have expected to react so strongly.

My radio show went off the air on Friday, October 1 and I didn’t realize it until yesterday morning.  Friday I turned on the station, heard rock music and assumed that my radio show people were taking a vacation, though this programming was different than usual.  In the past when they’ve taken a vacation day or week, the station has played old segments, interspersed with the Twisted Tunes we listeners  all love and sometimes even help to inspire.  The news will be current but the rest of the show will be old material, like a great interview with a comedian or a musician, topical issues that can be repeated for our entertainment. 

I didn’t think too much about it until Monday morning.  I turned on my show, preset in the bathroom, and while I was getting ready for the day, washing up, brushing my hair, I noted a difference.  Today it was the Gary Crow Show, blatantly not my show.  I turned it off.  I turned it back on in the kitchen, preset there also, and found the same thing.  My brain was refusing to believe what my ears were hearing.  I imagined that maybe there had been an accident, that the entire show was so affected that they’d had to take time off.  I turned on another station, KPLU, and listened to NPR for an hour.  At the top of the hour, 9:00 now, I tried KZOK again, and this time the awful truth sank in.  My Bob River’s Show was gone.  I actually stared at the radio in disbelieve, crying “no, no, no”.

There had been no announcement, no forewarning—it was like a sudden death.  Bob, Joe, Spike, Maura, Pedro and Luciana gone.  Anyone who hasn’t listened to this show for 17 years, as I have, won’t understand how this can feel so bad.  These people were my “morning family”.  I laughed at their jokes, I rooted for Pedro to get his jokes on Leno (which he did), I was excited when Bob encouraged Spike to form a rock bank and chortled when fellow listeners suggested the name, Spike and the Impalers for it.  I heard all the auditions to replace Casey when she chose to leave to pursue TV work and welcomed Maura back from parenthood retirement.  I cheered Arik and his wife when they finally adopted their Korean son, A.J.  I cried when Bob’s oldest son, Keith, came back from Dakar, Senegal, so moved by what he saw there that his reaction moved me to adopt my own Senegalese child, Sokhna Diarra, through World Vision.  I’ve listened to Bob’s younger son, Andrew, struggle to become a stand-up comedian and to get better and better.  I’ve grown to know the wives, Lisa, Melissa and Kelly, and all their daughters.

I think the worst part of this absence is that I no longer have a finger on the pulse of what is going on in the world of entertainment and the scientific and political news, because these guys are the ones who used to debate it the way I liked, with all sides heard, with humor, with irreverence, with intelligence and balance.  I can’t count the times my husband came home asking if I’d heard the latest on a brain study or a sensationalized news item and I’d answer, “Oh yes, they were discussing that on Bob River’s this morning” and then I’d quote some of what was said by Joe and Bob and Spike and listeners who called in.  Their discussions so often helped me make up my own mind about issues in the news.

I’m probably not in the demographic that the network thinks was listening to Bob Rivers and crew.  I am 66 years old, retired, didn’t start listening until I was 49, but was quickly hooked by the large personalities and the camaraderie of this group of diverse and wonderfully interesting human beings.  I am missing them terribly and judging from the website I’ll put at the bottom of this post thousands of others are, too.  We want them back, to help us start our days, to entertain and inform us, to open our minds to new ways of seeing things, to share their crazy songs with us, but most of all to keep us company in those early morning hours as no other morning radio show group ever has.  My morning coffee doesn’t taste the same without them.

If you are a listener, or a person who thinks it’s unfair to yank a show off the air that has thousands of devoted listeners, click the link below—all you have to do is click “like” and you will be counted among those who want to save the show, whether it’s at KZOK or some other Seattle station wise enough to pick them up.  Help me get my morning back.

http://www.facebook.com/BringBobRiversBack

A Poem My Granddaughter Loves

My granddaughter, Alecia, pictured above, posted this poem on her Facebook page.  I liked it and am posting it here. Seems several of my friends had already discovered it and I was the last one to the party.




The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.  http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/

Watching Anta Cook

Mother and Son

Well, so far, so good.  I am referring to mother-in-law, Anta’s, visit with us.  Our refrigerator is full to the brim with vegetables, ground walnuts (for baking), meat, French bread, special margarine (Smart Balance with olive oil), half and half.  The cupboard now has Crisco Oil and Uncle Ben’s Rice in it.  The counter has lots of new things on it--a coffee cup filled with cold coffee and topped with a paper towel; a paper plate with a plastic bag full of fortune cookies; a round box of little nutty cookies; a sugar bowl topped with a saucer.  We have the number of the Turner Movie Classics channel memorized and the times of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.  There is a lawn chair with a blanket installed in the garage with a tin can for cigarette ashes and butts.

We have taken Anta (short for Antigone) to the Snoqualmie and Muckleshoot casinos where she had moderate luck at the video poker machines.  She was through with Snoqualmie pretty quickly because the machine “wasn’t giving”, but liked Muckleshoot better.  I had better luck with my machine of choice, something about Neptune, at Snoqualmie and the view there is infinitely better, but serious video poker players don’t give a hoot about the view, except as a nice place to smoke.

The first full day Anta was here we took her to Costco, where she was in paroxysms of delight over the meat section and bought lamb chops with top sirloin reserved for next week’s shopping and then to Central Market in Poulsbo where she fondled the artichokes and bought peaches, pears, strawberries, peppers, Italian parsley and five bags of Stonebridge cookies.  Michael and I kept eyeing the growing pile in the grocery basket and wondering where we were going to store all the stuff and more importantly, who was going to eat it.

Yesterday, Anta made her “famous Greek Coffee Cake”, which is a huge slab of spices, nuts and cognac soaked raisins held together by a half white flour, half wheat flour batter, moistened with orange juice, eggs and olive oil.  This is the same cake I make for my husband for his birthday—he loves it better than all others.  Anta knows how to please her boy.  The cake is so huge it might still be around when his birthday comes in November.

And her boy has been trying hard to please his Mom, too.  He gave her his iTouch, loaded games on it he thought she would like, and taught her how to use it.  Now she is playing Solitaire on the little device when she’s not cooking, smoking or at a casino.  She even plays it while she’s got the old movie channel on, but she does stop for the game shows.  Playing a game while watching a game is too much for an 82-year-old.  Today Michael is taking her for a ride in the little red Miata.  They will go to the commissary and buy cigarettes and maybe some Retsina and I’d bet, more food.  Even at 82 a Greek woman is always thinking about what she wants to cook next.

Tomorrow night we will bring my Mom over to visit with Michael’s Mom.  They know each other pretty well.  They shared a cabin when we took them on a cruise to Alaska a few years ago.  They are both the same size, tiny, and it’s fun to listen to them talk.  My Mom is always interested in Anta’s stories about WW II and how it affected her and Greece.  I guess I’m on tap for making dinner for them, but it's scary to cook in front of the expert.  I’ll have to do something Anta never cooks—Mexican food maybe.

Before mother and son go on the convertible ride we are scheduled to make cookies—Melomakarona—Greek honey cookies.  I’ve had them every Christmas, but I’ve never watched Anta make them—it’s a complicated process of baking and soaking in a honey mixture, and rolling in nuts, so I’m anxious to learn.  I will not be able to stand on my step stool and help pour the ingredients into the bowl like granddaughter, Ali, does with me.  I’ll have to keep my distance and watch closely, maybe even take notes.

Sometimes visits from mother-in-law, Anta, or to her house, can be a little bit fraught.  She, like her son, (and like her daughter-in-law, truthfully) has strong opinions and voices them loudly, like all hot-blooded Mediterranean’s. There have been times when I have not bitten my tongue and dared to enter the fray, but that has never turned out well.  I lack that ability to yell without getting truly angry.  So my tongue is being bitten, but this visit seems a little mellower.  There hasn’t been so much opinion being flung around, just a lot of flour and meat.

Deaf

Mother-in-law is visiting so not much time to write or even think, so it'll be this kind of thing or nothing for 2 weeks.  I find this hilarious since I am half-deaf myself.

Tape of the Gods

Found at the Taco Time Women's Restroom--the Taco Time across
 from Central Market in Poulsbo

Last Length of Life

At a little pond in the woods

I decided; this is the last length

of my life. I threw a big stick far out,

to be all the burdens from earlier years.

Ever since,  I have been walking

lightly, looking around, out of the woods.

William Stafford

Waste Not Want Not

An old high school chum and I were talking at a recent lunch about our desire to write.  He likes my blog and I like the blog he was writing while he was traveling in Viet Nam and the surrounding area earlier this summer.  He had stopped posting midway through his trip and he has been urged by several friends about finishing the trip for them, via the blog.  He told me his problem was “finding the time to write”.

That is my problem, too.  Finding the time, as if there is some magic time, a bagful, that is hidden, under the couch, or behind the door, or in the kitchen cupboard, that, if I could just locate it, I could use for writing.  I told him I had been analyzing the ways I waste time.

Wasting time--like it was garbage--a little here, a little there, until the day is gone and at the end there is more in the garbage heap than there is in the “something worthwhile done” bin.  I live by the Protestant Ethic, even though I am not a Protestant.  For me anyway, the Protestant Ethic is:  get work done before engaging in pleasure.  Pleasure is my reward for working hard. Work includes washing dishes, cleaning floors, gardening, washing clothes, paying bills, grocery shopping, making important phone calls, making dinner, helping my husband with a job, doing stuff for my mom, exercising.  Pleasure is playing with my granddaughters, getting on the computer, checking email and answering it, going out to coffee or lunch with friends, reading other people’s blogs, reading the newspaper, doing a crossword puzzle, playing Angry Birds http://www.rovio.com/index.php?page=angry-birds on my iTouch, taking photographs, putting the photos on my Flickr site or organizing them, reading, reading, reading books or magazines or books about writing, taking a drive in the Miata.  And then there is the writing.  I love writing, but with all the work things and all the pleasure things I haven’t created a little envelope of time for writing.

I can’t even remember when I first wanted to “write”.  I wrote a magazine in junior high for me and my friend, Anne, called “McCake” (after McCalls)--many pages, articles, fiction, pictures.   I loved Mrs. Southworth’s composition class, but I didn’t think I was as good a writer as others in the class.  I kept a daily diary then and dropped that practice when I got married and had kids, starting up again in the late sixties, but graduated to journals, which didn’t require writing every day and had a larger format for longer reflection.  Sometimes I wrote down a description of a character I saw on the ferry, in Seattle, on the side of the road.  Occasionally I wrote a long piece about an experience.  I attended a writer’s group for a year.  I went to a couple of writer’s journal workshops taught by a friend, who was a published writer.  I just wrote, never saying to myself, “I want to be a writer”.  Until I started my blog in October of 2005 .  Pretty late in the game.  But why not?

Okay, so.....this is supposed to be about wasting time and I just did something that could either be considered wasting time or research, depending on the spin I put on it.  I went to my blog to see just how long ago I started it and began reading some of the oldest posts and some of the comments and then I started getting nostalgic because one of the regular commenters was my old friend, Jim Morgan, who died a few years back and his friend, Brownshoes (her blogger name), who used to comment but hardly does anymore, even though we are now “computer friends”, we never see each other anymore.  And so it goes, turning left at the path and sliding down the rabbit hole of memories, and the time for writing gets eaten, like a delicious little cookie.

The idea here was to list the “time-wasting” activities and give the rationalizations for them.  So here goes:

 Reading and answering email.

Communicating is good for my writing, inspirational sometimes, but reading all the “funnies” people send is pretty much a waste, though I hate to blow people off by not reading them.  On the other hand, would they ever know?  Would they cut me off?

 Reading the newspaper from cover to cover.

Again, good for writing--keeping up on current news, culture and how the world is evolving.  And I have to know what is happening with Adam Lambert this week.

 Doing crossword puzzles.

Good for the brain and for vocabulary--doing them every day?--maybe not productive.  I'm the kind who must finish it, to prove I can.

 Reading other people’s blogs.

Particularly important for the writer in me.  What are others writing about, what are they doing with their blogs and their pages?  To me it is research.  Are they better than me?

 Looking through the dozens of catalogs that come for me in the mail.

Total and utter waste of time, unless I find a hairdo I want to copy, that is, or a shirt, or pants, or.....

 Reading the Quality Book Club and Book of the Month news.

Not doing it anymore.  I canceled them both.  In a month or so they will try to lure me back with free books.

 Going to lunch with friends.

Not giving this up.  A person who could be a hermit (such as I) must get out and be with people--besides I might spot a good “character study” at a cafe or coffee shop, like the older (than me) couple who were playing three handed cribbage with a younger man at the coffee shop while drinking their favorite brew.  And talk with friends is inspirational, too.  Who could make up a character like red-headed, big busted Mary, the Maintenance Woman, with a heart of gold and a mouth like a sailor?

 Playing  the game “Angry Birds” on my iTouch.

This is one I’m struggling with.  Do I keep playing because the little screeching birds who are trying to obliterate the pigs that took their eggs makes me laugh out loud and it’s challenging?  Or is it eating into time I could be doing something more important?  Is there something more important that I could be doing between 4:30 and 5:00 in the afternoon?  Lots can happen in 30 minutes--I could read an article in a writing book or magazine, I could write for 30 minutes on what I’m working on.  I could edit.  But my husband is usually in the room with me, so writing or editing is something I couldn’t concentrate on.  For the time being, I will waste time with Crazy Chickens, as I call it, in the late afternoon and enjoy the belly laughs.

 Reading.

A writer must read.  That’s all there is to that--looking at style, noticing how an author puts words together, strings the plot along, begins, ends, grabs me or doesn’t.  It’s a writing class.  And after class I get to take a little nap.

I hope you understand that this blog post is me working things out--it’s not meant as entertainment, unless you think you are wasting time and want to see how I am making some of it seem important.  My pact with David, the other writer, is meant to be challenging to both of us and he told me to write about the time we waste.  And the word “waste” is subjective--maybe “spend” is a better word to describe what we do all day.  We spend time doing what needs to be done, we decide how to spend the rest and why do we decide in the ways we do?  This is probably totally boring to Dean, and to Dean I apologize.  It also might seem like silly angst to some others, but this is the kind of dissection that a person who likes to write engages in. And since I am writing, it’s not a waste of time.

A few days before talking to David I decided the best way for me to write everyday was to write before I ever opened email, Facebook (communication again, but often excessive), or read blogs, because once I get going on those it’s all over for a couple of hours.  And it’s been working.  Once I get started writing I can’t stop unless I force myself to.  That’s the way it should be, for someone who loves and wants to write.  The future of all these words?  Who knows?  Surely not me, not yet.  For now, it’s a triumph to get a regular schedule established.  If I run out of time for all those other “wasters”, then so be it.

The Lovely Part

The Petersen's View in South Keyport

                           Abovet:  Jim's Chevy, Linda Greaves and Nancy Roi Goit

Top:  Linda, Terry Scatina's eye and John Sleasman's legs

Two views of Jim's Incredible Garage

Bonnie Petersen's Quilt Craft Room

Pete, Fred, Bruce and Fred's Wife

Jim's cola bottle collection on the shelf above.

Pete Batcheller, Roger Cole and Trude Gilman

I am listening to Ellen Johnson’s CD, “Warming February”, http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/EllenJohnson1, which I bought from proud husband, Bruce Johnson, at the CK Alumni lunch at Jim and Bonnie Peterson’s home last week.  She’s singing right now about bees, a metaphor for love and I’ve just been out watering plants in my yard, where I see the bees already starting their all-day work of getting every last speck of pollen out of the big lavender plant.  This morning I used the container for iced tea that Vickie C. Holt brought to the lunch for me, having offered it to me a year ago.  And I’m thinking about the pact I made with David Frazier to get serious about writing, to make a schedule, to try to keep to it, to notice how we are procrastinating and to ask ourselves why.  I don’t think that procrastination bit was in the pact we shook on—that came later when I was talking to Ralph and we talked about doing what we want to do—“we make time for what we want to do” he said, and I said something about procrastination being what we want to do, sometimes, to avoid something we DO want to do but that we’re scared of-–and that goes for writing and letting others read it.

And I’m remembering the story Pete Batcheller told me about how his mom died—a story of wishes ignored.   We need to talk to each other, the alumni, to let others know how we want our end days to be.  We can help each other.

And I’m looking at the pictures I took of Jim Peterson’s incredible garage, the dream garage of any man who loves cars and is there a man who doesn’t?  It’s more a showroom for his beautiful 50’s era Chevy sedan and truck and the Model A Ford that he and Gary Parker and Gary’s stepson are restoring.  I nearly fell on the floor laughing when I saw the “leg lamp” in his tiny office—have you seen “The Christmas Story” movie that has now become a classic?  If you have, then you’ll understand the laughter.  But most of the time I was blown away by the collecting Jim has done and the beautiful way he has displayed the antique finds he has made or kept for decades.  All of us were awed that he still had the water skis from his youth and the poster of a ski competition from the 60s.  He also had the trophy from a car show our class had in 1962.  Jim’s trophy was for The Cleanest Car and we could give him the 2010 trophy for The Cleanest Garage.

I’m re-savoring the taste of Gary Parker’s terrific beer—especially the High Five Hefe, which I hadn’t tasted before.  I knew I liked his Irish Death Porter, but the Hefeweizen has a delicious taste and a rich, deep amber color, too, like a liquid semi-precious stone.  And when it hits your taste buds and slides down to your belly, it’s a warming brew as sweet as Ellen Johnson’s voice.

I’m going to have to ask Ralph for the proportions of mayonnaise and mustard he uses in his potato salad, the best I’d tasted in a long time.  And I’d love to know who made the tabouleh salad because it was lovely.  As were the other dishes and desserts that were brought.  Everybody did a super job of feeding us well.

We were honored to have Jackie Aldrich come to eat and talk with us—she is looking for members of her class (1963) and I hope we helped her out.  I won’t soon forget how many offered to help me back out of the precarious parking spot I was in.  They probably didn’t see it as a difficult place to park, but I am not a confident driver and I’m a worse backer-upper.  As it turned out, I was having so much fun talking with Pete, David, Nancy Roi Goit, Linda Greaves Philpott  and Janet Dore’ that I stayed late and it was easy to get my car out.  Next time we have lunch at a house I’ll have to show up a little earlier and get a prime spot, as Pricilla Preus did with her tiny, yellow mini. 

Fred Graeff and his wife, Penny, came to lunch this time and it was great to see them looking fit as always and I got to get more details of Fred Just’s Seabeck cemetery work and the book he is writing about Seabeck and has been researching extensively.  His wife is equally involved and I could tell it is a love affair, not only between the two of them, but with the project as well.

Speaking of wives, Wayne Swenson brought his wife, too, and Jim Peterson’s wife Bonnie was everywhere, cleaning up after us, making coffee, and showing her beautiful quilt craft room and the results of her meticulous stitching on beds and walls.  Jim has his cars (and his cola bottle collection), Bonnie has her quilts and they have a beautiful home that we were extremely lucky to be able to borrow for our August lunch.  The ambience was warm and welcoming even if the day was cool, breezy and Fall-like.

Ellen Johnson has another song on her cd called The Middle Part of Love, that I like lots.  In it she describes our everyday lives with our mates, the “middle part”, not the beginning dizzying part or the possible ending part, the sad falling out of love.  The middle part we often trudge through, raise our kids in, get through, nearly ignore, the unglamorous part, which, really, is where the memories are made.  Ellen doesn’t go into the old age part, but I think about it.  Whether you feel you are in the middle part of love, or the ending part, or even the beginning part if life has thrown you a curve, I do hope you are enjoying the Lovely Part, which in my opinion is the continuation of our lunches and our getting to know each other all over again, and maybe with a few, for the first time.

PS:  David, it took me a lot longer to get this onto the blog than I thought it would.  Best laid plans and all that.  So even when I'm trying to be disciplined, life gets in the way.

Dreams, Cruises and Automobiles

I’m driving a little car.  I’m not familiar with the car, its instruments are odd, my seat is too far back from the pedals.  Not only that, the morning is frigid and the road I am traveling on is icy and I’m not in any neighborhood I’ve ever been before.  I am trying to reach the pedals and shaking, a headache is coming on as my neck tightens and my jaws clamp in tension.  I can feel the slide coming and slowly begin to glide off the road, in slow motion, frantically turning the wheel in the direction I’ve been taught, into the slide, into the slide, but nothing works and I end up in the ditch.  That’s when I wake up.

Nightmares are rare for me.  I have recurring unpleasant dreams, dreams that are not happy, fun, uplifting, but they aren’t terrifying.  Instead they tend to be mildly disturbing, causing me to wonder what is going on inside my head, what has caused me to create a troubling scenario that I’ve never encountered this intensely in reality; what did I eat at dinner that got into my guts and made so much turmoil that I had to have this mid-night angst?  The dreams are easy to interpret.  If Freud or Jung were at my bedside they might insist I go deeper, to find more hidden meaning, but the meaning I have found for them seems to suit my slothful psyche.

The dreams, starting decades ago, were about cars and me.  The car would be different in each dream, and the dreams were months apart sometimes, but the theme was the same.  I am driving a car.  The car is on a road.  The road is icy.  Or the road is muddy or bumpy.  Or the road is full of holes.  Or the road is steep.  Only occasionally was the road easy to navigate, a joy to drive on, with lovely scenery outside my window.  No, the road was horrid, the weather similarly awful, the conditions unhappy.  I was struggling to keep the car on the road, or pushing on the gas to get it through the deep mud, or pushing harder on the gas pedal to get it up the vertical hill.  The car wouldn’t cooperate, would slide off the road, would stall on the incline and move backwards.  The end result was not positive.  I was exhausted, afraid, without solutions.

After several of these same types of dreams, different only in the conditions of the road or perhaps the state of the car, I began to see that the car, the driver (me) and the road symbolized the problems I was struggling with in my life—an icy road was the precariousness of a marriage on the brink of disaster, slogging through mud a metaphor for trying to get to a solution about money issues, the hill the difficult climb up out of trouble.  There was never anybody in that car except me.  I was the one in charge of trying to keep the car on the road, trying to find the address, attempting to conquer the hill.  Eventually, after a series of these uncomfortable dreams, there would come one in which the car worked magnificently, the road was dry and clear, the hills were gentle.  It was clear that the problems I had were being solved; I was feeling serene again.

Then my husband and I went on a cruise to Mexico, just a short four-day cruise.  We had a wonderful time, we both loved the freedom of leaving our luggage in a room and not having to move it in order to see a new town, we relished the gourmet meals, the level of service made us feel like royalty.  We took cruise number two a couple of years later and that’s when my car dreams changed into cruise dreams, even though the second cruise was as lovely as the first.

In my dreams I was on a cruise, sometimes with my husband, sometimes with people from work, occasionally with people I’d never seen before.  I wasn’t driving (or piloting) the ship, of course.  I didn’t have that kind of control.  I was a passenger who had to do something and I had to do it quickly.  Most of the time it was packing.  If you’ve been on a cruise you know that you have to pack your bags the night before and leave them outside your cabin door, where they are collected and taken off the boat as soon as it docks.  The people who belong to the bags don’t get to disembark until several hours later. 

Lots of my dreams involved me getting the bags packed on time and out to the hallway.  In those dreams I was behind the 8-ball, late, scrambling, the boat was about to leave on another cruise, I was supposed to get off.  I couldn’t find all my clothes, the suitcase wouldn’t open or it wouldn’t close.  Anxiety!!!  Other cruise dreams involved not being able to find my room in the labyrinth of the ship (a real possibility if you have a bad sense of direction).  I wandered up and down the ship, from one level to another, confident people around me , laughing, eating, talking about their excursions, having a lovely time, knowing how to get back to their rooms—those dreams reminded me of the ones I used to have about not being able to find a classroom in high school, not having the Social Studies book, and realizing a test that would determine the quarter grade was in a half hour.

A couple of days ago I told my mother about these dreams. She thought changing to dreams about cruises meant I had “moved up in the world”.  While this is a nice idea, I see them more as meaning that the events bothering me now are more out of my control, like a huge boat—I’m not the captain.  That is in line with my “aging mom” responsibilities.  I have much less control over what happens—life is the captain of this ship and it will go where it wants to go.  In these dreams I never get to have the delicious meals, or the afternoon tea, or get to tour a new town.  I am packing, trying to get organized, be on time, or I am searching for my room—and maybe in that room there will be safety, at the very least I will know where I am.

I don’t mind having dreams like this—it shows me what is on my mind that I might not be looking at—they aren’t so disjointed and strange that I could never interpret them without the help of a professional.  There probably are more profound meanings to be found, but the ones I’ve found serve me well.  I can zero in on real-life problems.  If they are showing up in my dreams then they need to be addressed with more energy than I am giving them.  If I’m in denial about something, my dreams will not let me look away.  Pay attention!  A cruise ship is bearing down on you!  A car is sliding off the road!  You are lost!

I am happy that I haven’t had a car or cruise ship dream in a long time.  It doesn’t mean I don’t have stresses—they are still there, particularly the aging mom stress.  No “transportation” dreams must mean that I am finding solutions, working through difficult things.  What would be really cool is if I could ask my brain to give me Star Trek dreams on the USS Enterprise—I could be a crewman, beaming down to a new planet, finding problems to solve, worlds to explore, alien species to study.  That would be more fun than driving a car on a dangerous road or trying to find my room in a huge ship and I could still have distress, if my dreaming brain insisted.  I’d much rather be yelling, “Beam me up, Scotty!” than asking a steward where room #4006 is.