And the Week Goes On

I just looked down to see the dogs lined up tail to nose in a train from the office computer desk  to the hall. How can I be lonely?
back to the week:  We had a nice supper together and said our goodbyes as Margie and Ace head back to New York and he on to China. Shirley is continuing to improve and is back to pushing for her independence, we had each silently despaired of that happening and can be so grateful for it however inconvenient it might seem at the time. In our conversation over the meal Ace confirmed for me that my stories of scammers' attempts on my bank accounts were much like they had gone through when his parents died. That validates my suspicious thoughts mentioned in a prior post, makes me sad since I hoped it was paranoia, which is somehow better than there being scum who make their living off of those who are caught up in grief, and makes up a teeny little bit for the date, 3-25-2011, being burned in my mind, which is all that stood between me and the scam "purchases" of 4-01-2011.
I am reminded again that we still have no spring and Chad and I decide  during Friday's therapy session, I should have a chat with Ben about it. This is notable for it is the first I have made such a light-hearted reference about  Ben since March. It must have worked, the temperature went up 10 degrees on Saturday. I went to the nursery and bought flowers for the garden and lopped some more branches down. The yard is beginning to look like a yard! The window boxes are so bright and cheerful as are the hanging baskets on the front porch.  Roses are beginning to bloom in various paarts of the yard and I cut a few for the living room. I do so love the sight of the numerous petals on the english and antique blooms!
Not to be forgotten is lunch on Monday. My dear friend Linda and I have been planning a meal together since March and I hoped to bring her a picnic at Kauffman Gardens thereby satisfying a meal together and my needing to cook for someone. It was too cold. We  decided to do Pot Pie  in Westport and meet at noonish only to find it closed. Where to go? Linda remembers the Flea Market sort of across the street is supposed to have K.C.'s best hamburgers so we go there, threading our way past a rather major accident and resultant public safety officers along the way. The hambergers (in patty elt format) are good and so was the visit. A good friend can make even the saddest conversation fine
And today I sold the Revelation! That it was to a friend of Ben's, so the deal was sealed over a recollection of memories, was only to make it still better. Benj came up to help with the sale. I am so blessed with wonderful children and grandchildren!

What a week!

It has been what seems like a long time since the last post. I kept finding out that people who wanted to read the blog couldn't get on and since one part of my self-assigned task in writing this was to share learnings I just didn't want to post to cyberspace alone (sorry Lainy I didn't mean you. As usual I want more.) Thank God and Lainy (Does this sound like a country song? I can hear the twang.) it is beginning to work out and is reaching people.

I went to Andover/Wichita for Zach's confirmation last weekend. My first roadtrip alone since alone has become a way of life. No knitting. I gathered a group of CD's to tide me over. Found I wanted to hear, not my usual classical, rather, predominately the Willy Nelson-Bob Dylan-John Melloncamp-esque rough, smoky voiced male singer. No reason other than I have good balloon field memories of listening to any and all of them while waiting in a grassy field for winds to calm for an afternoon launch. believe me, that's a good memory. Except for a little right should/neck tightness and aching the trip went well.. I can still drive! I miss the productive knitting, however. It was such a good time to amass inches of progress.. My Kansas grands were wonderful and we did a bit of cooking together Sunday afternoon. a rather exotic combination of puppy chow and ratatouille. The chow was a request from Bren when we talked about what to make and the veggies idea just came up while we were eating Saturday night. I had a belated Gams Day on Saturday and we had a delicious fish dinner at Bonefish Grill. I do so love fish/seafood. It seems we adults had to have the same: dory with crab, etc. Delicious! As Benj noted, it wasn't the elegant ambiance of the Bristol. My opinion, it was way good. I haven't gotten past the fish/seafood thing as yet. Friday night I made the french bistro version of steamed mussels to eat with sourdough bread (It is my leftover that is being featured this week in all menus, before it molds). Speaking of taking ambiance down a few notches! Bristol and Bonefish have no worries, envision me dining in my living room chair with the bowl of mussels on my lap and one hand frequently on parts of my being-assembled while I speak (or in this case, eat) Adirondack chair Kelsey is building at my feet. But the taste was supurb, both the mussels and the liquid sopped up on the sourdough.
Saturday  the day started with a long-lost friend of Ben's appeared on my doorstep asking for Ben. No He didn't even blink at the news and I, showing great restraint, didn't hurl him from the porch, but I was chilly. You see he has been missing from the day we lost Ben and honestly his excuses put him in the same class as the death scammers I've heard from. With friends like that one doesn't need scammers beyond the known entities. Why am I so cruel? I don't believe (a. a tree fell on his house in late March and (b. that it knocked out his cell phone. But that's his story.
On Tuesday, I spent the afternoon and evening with Shirley,Margie and Ace. Ace hasn't been back to Missouri since Ben passed and I am anxious (truly anxious, not eager misused) to see him. We have been friends for so long and have so many mutual memories. We had some near tears but made it through all sorts  of memories, establishing again the truth of misery loving company. It is a good sadness to share those good times going back decades with others who love and miss him, too.

Mondays aren't the only rainy days

No matter how much I fool myself into thinking how well I am doing on my journey, some days put the lie to that notion.  This is one of those times. It began when I was going through the piles of correspondence, OK bills(!) on the desk and unexpectedly came across a notation Ben had made. Nothing special, but it was his writing and I was startled by it as well as the force of  my reaction. Do you ever wonder who holds sobbing widows? No one. It is a most unpleasant experience to realize that and each time I've met that moment  I have resolved to try not to go there again. I can't seem to get away from it since last night, however.  I had accomplished a lot of work in the business of death for one day. The fed gov't is beginning to know I exist and is filling my mailbox and giving me passwords to key in on the computer. I traced out a couple of accounts and paid them. I found another copy of the certified death certificates and sent it off to close another piece of business.
I had had a conversation re the positive power of production earlier this week, applying it to the benefit of getting my house in physical and financial order and being rather smug, upon reflection , about how good it was for me. Bolderdash! The duality of poles - things pulling one forward while one is tugging backward to how things had been has smote me before and will most likely do it again. On the day I sold the truck I should have felt only relief and a little joy, I did but I also felt I was being shoved further and further away from where I had been with Ben and that airbrushed the day with sorrow.
One could look at it as a little bit of physics - to every action there is another and equal reaction, but for once physics fails me. It is too clinical. This is about irrationaltiy.
I feel like the MO Park Ranger I met years ago during one of the Pershing Balloon races. It had been a rainy, muddy weekend scrubbing all the flights so that we were compelled to turn our collective attention elsewhere. The muddy hillsides formerly covered in lush grass came to mind so we held mudslide races of various kinds, by gender, age, singles, groups, forward, backward (get the idea and a notion of the number of runs made - sort of an Olympic trials of mudsliding) down the hill - until, along came the ranger. He was livid and overexcited and shrieking "You're ADULTS!. . . . .Stop it now!!!" Our erstwhile balloonmeister tried to help the situation and asked what we could do to fix things, say like putting down new grass. No, this man would not be appeased, "I want it back to what it was!" he yelled.
That's me, I want it back to what it was.

Cooking for One

First of all, I am a cook. I see myself as a cook. People who eat my food consider me a cook. The love of my life and the person I delighted in cooking for day after day, year after year, is gone. I have tried gamely to adapt to this part of the "whiplash". But I can't say that I have found accommodation as yet. I wish I could puzzle out this part of life alone. I think that each time I open and pour an expired quart of milk down the sink because I think I need to keep it on hand and I don't drink it. I think that each time I find myself eating a pasta dish, quiche, or soup three and four days in a row, giving larger and larger portions to the dogs each day. I think that each time I get wound up cooking up a lot of different dishes so that I use up, for example the raisin bread, milk, eggs that I found aging on various shelves in the fridge and then churn the resultant bread pudding into the garbage disposer because I didn't want or need a two quart casserole of the stuff.
I created a few rules for eating early on this journey. Rule number one: no dependency on junk or fast food meals. That was pretty easy to start. It's not my favorite kind of  food and I had no appetite until about the first of May. Rule number two is to really think out what I buy because I am most likely going to meet the meal on consecutive days and do I really like the idea of that casserole THAT much(!?). Rule number three is to avoid little boxes of leftovers in freezer space being crowded out by still more little freezer boxes of leftovers. Rule number four is to use up some of the food I have on hand each week rather than laying in a new supply no matter how good it looks in the store. We had a nice supply of food in March and I really need to use it up before the canned goods expire..Rule number five is food usage is not linear i.e. one doesn't eat half of two any more (actually much less true) than two didn't eat 40% of 5 (We were a family with 3 children). A whole new math is necessary to live in this kitchen.
Ideas I have tried that have worked out well (or fairly well, beggers can't be. . . . .) are - cooking for a friend who has been ill and not able to cook her usual outstanding style. and eating with her. That's been my most successful idea so far. It uses up food, and provides companionship for both of us.Its failing is doing it on a daily basis isn't too feasible. Cooking lots of fish fillets. They are single portion foods which cook fast and are healthy. Streamlining some favorite menus from our twosome times - I changed a favorite creamed aspergus on toast with hard-cooked eggs into roasted aspergus with soft scrambled eggs on top (which I find I really like better,it takes fewer pans, and I think it is healthier!). Salads work out well, too and with a little creativity can be delicious as a meal. My new favorite one is romaine, pears, dried cranberries, bleu cheese and dijon/oil/lemon dressing and croutons - all the best food groups except ice cream. And as for ice cream - the single serving cartons are self-limiting so one doesn't pig out on a half-gallon of Edy's coffee mocha.
All told no single solutions have emerged but I'm still seeking one..


.

The Year without a Spring

It is May 9th , in the upper 80's and feels like summer. We skipped right over spring and went from winter to summer's heat. Early March was wet and chilly, we seemed to be headed for a warm up and on the 25th (yes, that 25th) I was back in my winter coat, chilled to the bone. All of April it seemed we couldn't sustain any attempt to warm more that a couple of days at a time.  Up the thermometer would struggle only to fall back into a wet chill with near frost at night. If the sun came out it would be steamy warm but once clouds returned - as surely they did - it would chill again.It seemed as if we looked out at an endless procession of somber, grey days with the prospect of drizzle or rain ever present. I truly hold no responsibility but it did almost seem as if my inner chill was mirrored in the weather pattern. Finally, this weekend we held warm sunshine for consecutive days.Like the flowers along my side yard by the drive, we seemed to automatically turn our heads upward and in the direction of the sun, drinking in its belated warm glow.
There is an old southern phrase for the cold snap that seems to occur at the end of April-first of May: it is "spirea winter." It is  named for the bushes so common in this part of the world - a plant usually left to grow long slender branches which in the aforementioned time frame burst into small white blooms , looking somewhat like a dusting of snow  on the branches and coinciding with a cold snap. I think there is a related folk thinking that there is cause and effect between the white blossoms and the colder weather. Well, this spring was so cool that one didn't even notice the spirea winter.
Despite the chilly spring we found morel muchrooms (3!) in the shady side yard. That was a pleasant surprise.

Whiplash

After enduring an increasing amount of pain in my right shoulder and neck for three weeks I decided to make an appointment with my orthopedist, who happens to be one of the kindest and best doctors I know. I anguished about the appointment because I felt I was turning to him inappropriately-for emotional comfort, not physical relief but the pain kept up and interfered with what sleep I was getting, so I went. I first saw his physician's assistant, a boor. I really dislike intently medical  folk who neither introduce themselves nor refer to the patient by name when they enter the exam room.. He put me through my range of shoulder/arm motions. I explained that I felt that the pain was arthritic at its base but aggravated by increased tension carried through my shoulders and neck since my husband died three weeks before. No comment. He left and a few minutes Dr. M. came in with the assistant on his heels. Somehow I assumed the boor had told Dr. M.. about my news. I was put through my paces again for the doctor's benefit - all the while Mr. Boor leaned in a corner commenting about how the exam he had performed had gone. When he said that I let Dr. M. move my arm higher than I had let him, I informed him that it was because I trusted Dr.M. more . A little bit of verbal volleying between Dr. M and myself r evealed that his assistant had not considered it important or significant enough to tell Dr. M. that my husband and his patient, also, had recently died.. (Of what import was this visit if not to pre-advise the doctor. of the patient's state?? Or maybe he thought it was my show and tell for the day!)  . When I told Dr. M. he was shocked and we started to talk about the details. We had a very helpful conversation. I didn't realize until later that he was the first person I had talked with about what had happened for whom I had not felt the need to filter the information in order to shield some realities of the circumstances. In other words I had not had to be concerned aboout the listener's loss. That alone was therapeutic. It messed up his afternoon schedule, but he didn't act as if that was highest concern at the time. Those two aspects were so very helpful - and truly demonstrated Dr. M. has remembered possibly one of the reasons he became a doctor. Would I feel the same if I were the one waiting to see him? Yes, I had stated so several times: He gives each patient what they need which may take extra time, but I know that when it is my turn he will do the same for me.
Back to the diagnosis. Dr. M.. said the pains were muscle spasms. He said "I've seen enough whiplash to know it when I see it." Wow! I wanted to know if he knew how precisely accurate he was, but I just quietly mulled over the definition of "whiplash": The body's painful response to an abrupt, dramatic change of direction.