because babycat, well, he rescued me. this black and white hulking tuxedo cat was not merely a cat. he was always an angel in disguise, just like all our pets are intended.
we – truly – miss him every day. and so does dogga. the alpha-in-the-house, babycat’s presence was part of the most basic of maslow’s hierarchy. he was as necessary to a sense of rightness-in-the-world as any of the physiological and safety needs.
i suppose as time continues to go on, the lump in our throats will ease a bit.
but as the hierarchy presses, rears its pointy head and pokes at us in these times, we gather dogdog and that babycat-angel around us and tuck in.
so there WAS this time…i was walking around the house on hold with some representative – i don’t remember that part…whether it was insurance or healthcare or a store… – and i wanted to send a text. so i started looking for my cellphone. i looked high. i looked low. i looked in my purse, by the bed, in the kitchen, on the sink in the bathroom, in my studio. i looked downstairs in the basement by the washer and dryer. i went up to the office. i ran out – still on hold – and looked in littlebabyscion. i was starting to get worried. somehow i had left my cellphone s.o.m.e.w.h.e.r.e. but where?
in the final moments before i panicked, i pulled my hand away from my ear to see how long i had already been on hold. voila! my cellphone. yes, indeedy, i was ON my cellphone all along.
it goes up there in the list of weird moments.
oddly, those seem to happen more and more these days.
there is always time. nothing we do is more important than the time we spend together. all of us.
my sweet poppo always said, “you can’t take it with you!” and was referring to money. but it generalizes to pretty much everything. in the end, you can’t take your possessions, your achievements, your investments, even your failures, with you. they will stay behind and it’s love that will carry you on, love that you will carry with you.
so even in the middle of important checklists of chores, work tasks, more achievements and more failures, more, more, more anything – cars, clothes, houses, boats, snowblowers and appliances, shoes, hairdos, all the fancypants trappings of “made-it” – there is time. to walk and talk and be silent and swish your feet through crunchy fallen autumn leaves.
cause you can’t take the other stuff with you.
my dad’s last words to me were, “i love you, kook.” my last words to him were, “i love you, my poppo.”
he’s watching us swish our feet through the leaves now. and smiling.
we can’t decide between the kind you drive and the kind you pull.
i mean, if you drive it, then you have to drive it everywhere, unless we tow littlebabyscion behind it, in which case it would be a really-really-big rv and neither of us can picture driving that kind of lumbering size down the highway. but if it’s the kind you pull, you have a vehicle. but then you have to pull it. and back it up. and fit it into parking lots. and juggle it around to get it into camping spots. that brings me back to the kind you drive. the small kind you drive.
the imperative?
a bathroom. and, preferably, a shower.
with a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, a shower and wifi we can go anywhere; we can rule the world. every other day i talk about this. because who doesn’t think about this, i wonder…
the wander women have figured it out. of course, they planned with great intention and are retired, so access to wifi on all workdays is not a sink-or-swim. for us, right now, we need to just-keep-swimming and wifi is the life preserver as we continue to work on our own plan.
i keep transferring visiting the rv place from one weekend to the next. probably because my rent-it-now signature pen is itching, the brochures are stacking up. ahhh. plan….
but really. it’s just delicious to think about all those backroads, all those mountains and canyonlands and seashore beaches at our disposal, dogdog hanging out with us, a tiny fridge filled with good food to make on our tiny stove, grilled on our tiny grill. music and art and wordswordswords created on an adventure Out There on-the-road-again.
mathletes. i loved mathletes. a math quiz team, we gathered and did math problems and equations and then went out and about, competing. apparently, it stuck. i blame woody p. and then, mostly, mr. h, everyone’s adored high school math teacher. i still cannot help myself. it’s constant, this figuring-out-thing. and, though i would love to maybe forget some of the number details, i simply can’t. i love math.
and so poor david is stuck listening to me as i study stuff, run the numbers, figure percentages and cost per ounce, apply coupon discounts, choose items or discard them as choices. even though i know it’s way-too-much-information, it spills from my brain and out of my mouth before i can help it. again, mr. h’s fault, making me a total math geek, but i love him for it anyway.
the fuel and heating guy came to check our boiler. it’s about thirty years old now, but a workhorse and there is a coupon that comes in the mail every year to remind you to have it serviced. as he went back out to his truck to write an invoice he asked, “do you have the coupon?”
do i????
of COURSE i do!!
and the best part (other than the a-ok on the boiler)???
figuring out how much we saved because we had The Coupon.
it’s not like we will get a medal or a certificate or a trophy. we will not be featured in a newspaper article we can clip and put on our fridge with the pizza-place-magnet. we won’t be acknowledged on a who’s who list nor on a marquee.
but we waited anyway.
the fuel and heating company is coming on friday to do a check-up on our boiler. in the meanwhile, we have waited.
until now.
it is with a mix of pride and trepidation that i will approach the thermostat. under the flannel sheets and the comforter and the quilt all is well. but step out and whammo! the cold is biting. and that’s IN the house.
one glance at the grasses out front – oddly looking like a packer-backer display – and you know it’s fall. no doubtaboutit.
the weekend before this just-past weekend – that would be two weekends ago just to be clear – i pulled out a pair of boots with fake fur in them. the fur was visible at the ankle. i wore them out. and it felt completely wrong. it was too early. i put them on the steps to go back upstairs into the winter shoe bin.
but they never made it up there. because – suddenly – in the briefest of days passing – it was no longer too early. the autumn winds have found their way here and fur is in order.
so, today as i type – a few days before the day that this post publishes – my nose is cold and my hands are freezing. and i have to give in.
i need to turn on the heat.
there is something wistful about that. the end of summer. a time of fallow to come. it was christmas in the home improvement store the other day and it’s not yet halloween. for a few moments, i panicked, thinking about how i had not completed or even started any presents-shopping. i mean, whattheheck, i just started wearing furry-ankle-boots. i relaxed as we passed the trick-or-treat candy display and the plastic pumpkin pails and perspective returned.
so – though i am hoping the fuel and heating company might come a little sooner – maybe someone will cancel their check-up, deciding to tough it out ala life-below-zero folks, deciding that mr. we (as 20 calls the electric and gas company) won’t be racking it up – atleastnotyet – on them, deciding it’s not that bad and wearing one of those snuggies – the official blanket with sleeves – all day – i think that it just might be The Day.
at the very least, maybe we could have a drum roll.
i have experienced motion sickness my whole life. no books, no games, no phone-use, no looking down.
this was a problem when – at eight and ten – i couldn’t drive. and at eleven. and twelve. and…at every turn on the number line.
they say as people a-g-e it can go two ways…either get better or worse. i thought that maybe menopause – with all its marvelous gifts and surprises – might generously reward me with a hormonal shift in my motion sickness tendencies. but no. post-menopause i can report that these days it has gotten worse. i want my menopause money back.
so i drive.
everywhere.
all the time.
and david sits in the passenger seat and entertains me. he feeds me snacks and treats and reads the news or tidbits of interesting factoids, he gps-es and makes sure we stop at rest areas to walk around a bit.
and then…
the other day these funky glasses came across my feed. i wondered how my feed knew. about the whole motion sick thing. ahhh, your feed knows all.
i clicked. because that’s what we do. we click.
and it brought me to an info-ad for motion sickness glasses with a blue liquid in them that is supposed to readjust your brain in such a way that you will no longer be motion sick. you will – indeed – look a little goofy, but you will not be motion sick.
the original ones were made in france and the ceo says, ““motion sickness comes from a sense of conflict between what your eyes can see and what your balance system and your inner ears can feel.” they have two round lenses in front and two on the side, the hollow rims each half filled with blue liquid. the liquid moves with the movement of the boat or vehicle, creating an artificial horizon. “your eyes always get the reality of the movement and get a signal that is consistent with the balance system perception.” in the same way as generic anythings, there are many other companies making them now as well.
i’ve never actually seeeeen anyone wearing these, but they seem like nothing shy of a miracle.
have you tried these?
i’m seriously wondering if my brain would participate.
i’m caught in the onslaught of wistful; fall is here. and the on-and-on thoughts in the middle of the night include a zillion questions, all unanswered.
we took a walk in charlotte, on the way to a pedicure with my girl. i wanted to run to the door of the house-with-this-fence and hug the person who painted it.
where else can we be but where we are? marcel reminds us, “the real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
today is our anniversary. it’s been seven years since we had seven days in a row of parties, were surrounded by family and friends for seven whole days. oh, to relish something like that again! daisies and food truck burgers, heaping plates of pasta and sweet potato fries, cupcakes and gluten-free brownies, bottles of wine from ann’s corner store. we picked pumpkins and danced on the patio and bonfired on the beach. it was a giant celebration and we reveled in it all.
in the middle of middle age we somehow found each other – across the country from each other. we both had been married before – to extraordinary people who have also found a beloved with whom to share life. we often ponder together the “had we been smarter, more capable, wiser” questions, but the “réview” mirror is not where we are going and here – in our 60s – it’s full-steam ahead. we feel fortunate. we are able to share our time together, our growing-old, our foibles and messes and the successes that brought us to now. this time hasn’t been a cakewalk. it sure hasn’t been fancy. coming together in middle age has its challenges and we have had a few extras tossed our way through these years. we sort through the weirds and stand in the wonder. and we know we are where we are supposed to be. maybe there is some sort of design in this universe.
20 gave us a card. like most of his cards, he made it for us. it reads, “love isn’t something that happens to us. it’s something we’re making together.”
tonight we are going to bring happy hour up on the roof. because the very first day of making-this-story-together-the-day-we-met-in-person, that’s where we sipped wine under blankets as the sun went down on a cool may day.
this was last night. this was sunday night. this was monday night. this happens allthetime.
how is it that you can be yawning-up-a-storm, tired-tired-tired, yet, you go to bed, sink under those yummy covers and are wide awake? or…you wake up after the first sleep cycle and nothing – absolutely nothing – will let your mind rest.
random pieces of life pass by in ruminating-world: memories, questions, ponderings, worries, conversations. bits and snatches of life from waaay back, from yesterday, angsting about tomorrow or the next day.
i had a dear group of girlfriends who tried to meet up once a year (or as close to that as possible). we had lots of shared history and shared lots of the ups-and-downs of life from our little corners of the world – each of us with different paths and challenges. we all had nicknames. mine was “fretta”. i don’t have the opportunity to see them anymore but i’d say the nickname is generally still fitting. i do fret.
now, david, on the other hand, sleeps.
i’m not foolish enough to think he never frets, but when he lays his head on the pillow and pulls up the blankets? he is gone. i don’t know where all that ruminating stuff goes at night. i am guessing to where the wild things are.
me? i carry my wild things with me. we fret together.
he is actually a great chef. he loves sous-cheffing but he is never averse to preparing an entire dinner. give him a recipe and some space – and maybe the promise to clean up later – and he will take on anything. especially if he and 20 are at it together. they practically sing and dance while they cook. ok…they DO sing and dance while they cook. and soon, very soon, fall and winter will have us inside more and they will be making-up-dinners-as-they-go while i sit and sip wine and try to ignore how seventh-grade-ish they are.
not to say that we would not be above having a big mac. though we haven’t had one in literally years and years – diet choices at the forefront of reasons – sometimes “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun” sounds dang good.
regardless, billy joel brings me back to luigi’s and gino’s in northport, new york pizza slices folded in half, concerts at the nassau coliseum and my sweet momma’s lasagna.
reverse threading 