Category: Uncategorized

The wisdom of older age

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As I get older I have moments of clarity where I suddenly see things with a different perspective or understand things that seemed mysterious.  For example, there was the day I dropped my daughter off for a “sleepover with Nanna” and in her excitement I saw the joy of my childhood nights with my own grandma.  Then the light bulb turned on: my parents ditched me with my grandparents so they could go out and have fun just like I was doing with my kid.  Those weren’t just my special nights, but theirs too!

This morning I had another realization as a tweezed away the first of three offensive grey eyebrows.  “Holy crap.  This is why Aunt Bert had eyebrows drawn on with a pencil!”  I left the other two.  Random grey eyebrows is better than bald eyebrows.

The Liebster Award

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Well, as a result of a recent follower/followee relationship I have been nominated for the Liebster Award.  Thank you so much Kwoted by K E Garland!  If you haven’t read any of her stuff, check her out. She’s a great storyteller with a unique perspective.

As part of receiving this award I have a bunch of questions to answer.  It’s like blogging award homework.  So, without further ado:

1. Plastic or paper?

If I don’t remember my own bags, it’s plastic.  I’d rather sacrifice a plastic than a tree.  We have this thing that looks like a pregnant patchwork maggot that holds our plastic bags until we can recycle them.

2. Book before movie or movie before book?

I am a snob about this question.   Book before the movie, always.  I read upwards of 50 books a year and see six movies if I am lucky.  (Not including repeats of kid movies.)  If I waited for the movie I’d never read anything.  Also, I like reading the unabridged story before seeing the abridgment on the big screen.

3. Oprah or Ellen?

I’m not a big talk show person, but I have to go with Oprah.  Although, I’ve most recently seen Ellen on some HGTV design  show.  They are both strong, passionate women, but having lived in Chicago for a couple of years nudges Oprah ahead in my book.   “You get a car!  You get a car!”

4. Writing in public or writing in your home?

Writing at home, preferably in my studio with the door shut and space heater on surrounded by my fabric and yarn.

5. Married or single?

Married to a vocabulary challenged mate.  (Love you Mr. Afthead!)

6. Dog or cat?

I hate this question.  I always feel unpatriotic when I say I don’t like dogs.  Cat.  Two of them usually, but one is sick right now.  I also have a hamster, snails and pillbugs in my house (on purpose.)

7. Healthy lifestyle or who cares?

Well this is a tough one.  From a working out and physical health perspective I’d pick healthy lifestyle.  I try to run 2-3 times a week and used to do crazy things like marathons and triathlons.  I get grouchy when I don’t work out.  However, as I finish off a bag of Hot Tamales with a Diet Dr Pepper, I can state with certainty that I don’t practice a healthy lifestyle when it comes to food.

8. City or Suburbs?

City.  I’ve lived in New York and Chicago.  I want to retire in San Francisco, at least for awhile.  My theory is that people only live in the suburbs because they get lost in the maze of similarly named cul-de-sacs, ways, circles and lanes and just give up and buy a house at 123 SE Marigold Way.  Once they move in their neighbors tell them how to get to Walmart after they pay their HOA fees and join the pool.

9.  Limited choice or complete freedom?

I guess limited choice, even though it makes me squirm in my chair to write that down.  I believe that people should wear motorcycle helmets because if they fall someone else is going to have to pick their brains off the road.  I won’t ride bikes with someone not wearing a helmet because I don’t want to be the brain cleaner-upper.  I think complete freedom is great so long as you are a hermit living in a cave by yourself and your choices only impact you.  (Trust me, sometimes I really want to go live in a cave, but I would wear a helmet in case a rock slide hit me in the head and some unsuspecting future hermit found me with my grey matter leaking out.)  Brains play a big part in this belief of mine.

10.  Rainy day or snowy day?

I live in Denver, so snowy days happen frequently.  Rainy days are limited to spring, especially right-now-ish,  I love the smell of rain.  I love sleeping when it is raining.  I love the sound of rain and thunder.  I love my raincoat.  I like the word galoshes.  I gotta go with rain.

11. Writing on a device or writing by hand?

Writing on a device.  Man, if I had to write by hand no one would ever understand a word I put to paper, including me.  Terrible handwriting coupled with terrible spelling makes writing by hand a bad choice for me.  If it was 1915 instead of 2015 I’d have no dreams of being a writer.  Even I can’t read my chicken scratches.

This was fun!  Thanks again to Ms. Kwoted at https://kwoted.wordpress.com/ for the nomination.  My blog picks for this award will be coming soon, so write something awesome!

Black and white cat in the garden

Dying cat

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My cat is dying.  I’m watching him fade away, lose coordination, and stop playing.  Six weeks ago I took him to the vet because he just wasn’t right and they diagnosed kidney failure.  We weren’t sure if it was an acute issue, like an infection, or a chronic issue that would kill him.  We did dialysis to the tune of $2000.  He’s a young cat at 8 years old and if he was only halfway through his life it seemed worth it to try.  He came home feeling better, and then he started sliding downhill again.  The vet gave me a list of things to try: special food, anti-nausea drugs, fish oil supplements, subcutaneous fluids delivered at home or at the vet.  He won’t eat the food.  I don’t know how much Pepcid to give him to help with the nausea.  He hates the fish oil, and and I can’t imagine giving him subcutaneous fluids (and I gave my last cat two insulin shots a day for her diabetes).  So he’s dying.

Tuxedo cat at the vet
Hazel at the vet when we first adopted him almost four years ago.
We haven’t had him for long.  He came into our life July 2, 2011.  We adopted him from the shelter and the top of his head was shaved from the removal of something.  My husband nicknamed him “Head-wound Harry” but his shelter name was “Hazel.”  We kept it because he looked like the bunny from Watership Down, which is one of my husband’s favorite book.  He quickly stole our hearts.

Black cat and black and white cat on a bed
Nothing to see here….
He’s a weirdly social cat.  If you are a cat person or have had cats you know that cats kind of tolerate each other.  Not Hazel.  He has loved our other cats: both Neko, the diabetic, and Katie our kitten.  We find Hazel and Katie in all kinds of compromising positions.  They fight, slow fight, bathe each other, sleep together, and eat together.

Tuxedo cat bathing black cat.
Cat bath
Now he’s dying.  I’ve come to terms with it.  I don’t know how much longer he’ll have, but I’ve decided that his last days will be filled with walks in the garden (he’s too slow and fragile to run away) and tuna.  I don’t want to torture him with the vet anymore.  I don’t want him to have to eat yucky kidney diet food.  I don’t want to try filling the area under his skin with fluids.  I want him to enjoy the time he has left with us.

Don’t turn me into the ASPCA.

Vocabulary fight

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Last week was a crazy busy week.  Thursday night I should have worked, or I should have worked on my book, or I should have worked on this blog.  I didn’t do any of those things.  I sat down and thought through my options and consciously said, “Screw it.  I am tired.  I am watching TV.”  I sat my butt down on the couch and tuned out.  I didn’t knit.  I just sat there like a big lump and did nothing.  I felt a bit guilty, but I consciously made my decision to shirk responsibility for a night.

My husband got home, walked in the door and said, “Wow, remember Monday when our house was clean?”  Dagger through the heart.  See, I’d gone through my list of things I thought I should be doing and chose TV.  I did not go through the list of things others thought I would do.  That’s when I realized my major life frustration right now.

“Ugh, do you know what I hate about our life right now?” I asked.  “There is no fun without repercussion.”

My husband looked at me and said, “I think that’s the wrong word. I think you mean consequence.”

(We have an ongoing fight at our house about who has a better vocabulary.  Mine is better, in case you were wondering.)

Then he went on, “You know repercussion is like percussion.  What does that have to do with what you are talking about?”

I rolled my eyes because my mechanical engineer of a husband should not feign expertise in word derivation.

Cue the English teacher.  I called my mom the next morning and told her about the fight.  Then I asked, “So is it no fun without repercussion, no fun without consequence, or no fun without ramification?”  I’d added the last word to the list during my nightly musing on the argument.

Cue the dictionary.  Not the Google one, or the online one, but the big heavy red one that sits next to my laptop.  Mom got hers too.  Here is what we decided:

  • Repercussion – there are unintended results to what you did
  • Consequence – can be good or bad, and you pretty much know what’s going to happen
  • Ramification – a derived effect of an action

So, mom and I decided I was right with my original thought.  I don’t like the fact that every time I have fun there are unexpected negative consequences, and that equals repercussion.  Before my husband showed up and yelled about the messy house I just had consequences.  Had I been reprimanded at work the next morning for not doing something Thursday night that would have been a ramification.  Glad we got that settled.

Cue the husband again.  I explained to him our research, our logic, and our conclusion and he just looked at me like he couldn’t give a crap about the exact nature of my current frustration.  That, my friends, is why I have a better vocabulary than he does.  Because I care about the right word enough to hypothesize, research, and prove my case and he does not.  I win.

Cue the raspberry noise!  Phlbbttt!

Redefining our nation’s future (a message of hope)

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This week one of my co-workers is getting married to her partner.  She is so excited.  They’ve been together forever, but finally they can have a real wedding.  She’s excited and giddy and cute in a totally not-her kind of way.  I’m not one for weddings.  My husband and I eloped.  But this wedding, this one feels special to me: fragile and new and filled with hope that things are changing.

We’ll be in her performance review together when my phone will buzz.  I’ll check, because I always check.  My kid might be sick.  There might be an emergency at work.  This time the message will be from the Washington Post.  It will announce that the Supreme Court has decided that marriage between two adults who love each other is A-Okay whether you are a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and a man.  (The message will be much more professional in it’s phrasing.)  I will tear up.  I will show her the note.  She will tear up.

We will celebrate together that for the first time there isn’t a question if her relationship or my relationship is more official.  We will both know that if our spouse is sick we will be able to visit him/her in any emergency room in any state because she/he will be recognized as our spouse.  We will know that when our spouse dies or we die our assets will go to our partner automagically.  We will have the same hard choices if our marriage doesn’t work out.

I hope that the Supreme Court makes law what I know in my heart to be true.  Adults who love each other and are willing to commit their lives to each other deserve the same rights and recognition regardless of the individual’s genders.  I hope I can tell my daughter someday about this week with pride and joy.  We are at a crossroads and I hope we go the right way.

Dinner, the final frontier.

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Life gets busy with two working parents.  Deadlines call and school demands.  Bedtime routine is followed by dueling laptops at the dining room table.  Regardless of how chaotic things get, one thing never changes at our house.  Mommy is in charge of dinner.

Don’t get me wrong, my husband is amazing around the house.  He does his laundry.  He does my daughter’s laundry.  He does towels and sheets.  He washes everything but my clothes, and sometimes he even takes those out of the drier and stacks them on chairs and couches in a semi-non-wrinkly way to keep the laundry train going.  He does the dishes.  He picks up.  He does not do dinner.  When 6:30 hits and I am not home he will never come up with the independent idea that food needs to be produced to nourish our bodies.

I attribute this to several things.

  1. My husband does not have the genetic tie between hunger and anger that my daughter and I have.  If he doesn’t eat there are no repercussions.  He just gets skinnier.  Oh darn.  My daughter and I turn into grouchy demons without food.  Somehow the presence of two grouchy demons doesn’t even trigger dinner ideas in my husband’s head.
  2. I like to cook.  I’m not a gourmet or even a scratch cooker, but I enjoy preparing meals.  Most days I’m happy to perform the little ritual that puts food on the table, but some days I come home after working 5 hours on a Sunday and the lack of dinner smells waiting for me when I walk in makes me crazy.
  3. We don’t pick up food.  We cook.  Somehow the idea that food can be prepared by others and brought home isn’t a viable option at the Afthead house.  Occasionally if I am leaving the office after 7:00 or if volleyball season has started and we can eat at the park I will get sandwiches, but mostly we eat at home.  This means we cook at home.  This means mommy cooks.

It’s not that I mind our gender roles, but as I was driving home at 6:45 this evening I had a fleeting thought that maybe dinner would be waiting.  It wasn’t.  Some gender barriers just can’t be overcome.  Like dinner.  Oh and trash.  I’m sure every Wednesday night when Mr. Afthead comes home from guitar lessons, or volleyball, or a night out he thinks that maybe the trash will be out by the curb.  It’s not.  The trashcans are always still sitting by the house.  I don’t do trash.

Okay, two things never change at our house.

Baby Names

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32 weeks along and the baby girl growing inside me had no name.  I was searching everywhere for a sign for what we would call this new life.  I went to the bathroom and while negotiating my huge body in the stall something in the toilet bowl caught my eye.  It was a tiny slip of paper: pink with green letters.  It said “Amanda.”  My pregnant bladder couldn’t wait, so I pondered while sitting.  “Amanda?”  It wasn’t on any list we had.

Pink and green Amanda

Was this the name of our little girl?  I wiped, dropped the tissue and flushed.  Nope.  I didn’t like “Amanda.”

What to do with 20 minutes

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Poof!  The magic wish granting fairy has just descended down after showing little bunny fofo who is boss and has given me twenty minutes to do whatever I want.  It’s an extra bonus 20 minutes outside of the normal space/time continuum and I can use it however I please.  The task is daunting.  I have so much I want to do with every spare minute.

Option 1a: Write.  I always want to write.  But I can only use the 20 minutes to write if it’s a quiet time in the house.  I can’t write during work hours, because that would be unethical.  I can’t write when my daughter is awake, because those hours with her are precious and few.  Often I can’t write when she is asleep because other demands pull on me: work, feeding the cats, cleaning the house, laundry, or spending time with my husband.  I have to give up all those “shoulds” to give myself twenty minutes of writing.  Since we are outside of normal time demands, maybe this time I can write.

Option 1b: Write my book.  Oh, but write on the blog or the book?  The blog is fresh and new and fun and exciting.  The book is another child that needs me and my blood and sweat, but I dream about him.  I ponder where he is going and what he is up to when I’ve been away for too long.  I’m afraid he’s forgotten me, or worse that I’ve forgotten him in the shiny new blog toy or in the mundane daily life.  The story is racing toward the final conflict (if something can race at 4000 words a month) and I need to finish.  I want to finish, but somehow I need pristine time for the novel.  He can’t be interrupted by familial needs or distractions.  He needs a closed door and time to immerse myself in his world.  Is twenty minutes enough to give to that hungry offspring, or am I better off spending it with Afthead?

Option 2: Yoga.  Oh, I like yoga.  It stretches out my shoulders from my ears and releases my arms from their endless keyboard dance.  I have found a new yoga website I like, YogaGlo, so I can yoga whenever I want.  No more excuses about going somewhere.  But I’d have to change my clothes and find a mat and the props and log into the site and oh no.  Twenty minutes gone and I didn’t get to do yoga.  I only got to prep for yoga.

Option 3: Run! I can run in 20 minutes.  I can get dressed and out the door in five minutes tops.  I can race up and down the hills of my neighborhood and watch the arrival of spring: beautiful flowers showered with cascading petals from blooming trees.   Branches in the sky look fuzzily green with new buds.  Running clears my mind and rejuvenates my spirit.  Everyone in the family is happier when mom gets to run.  Oh, but it’s dark and I’m home alone with my daughter.  Running would be like child abuse.  One does not leave one’s sleeping 6 year old for a 15 minute run.

Option 4: Knit.  I can get a couple of rows done on my sweater that I was going to finish this winter.  (Missed that goal.)  I can go play with the pretty scarf I started at Mardi Gras.  The rainbow colors are so fun and tempting.  Maybe I should whip up something for the baby cousin that was just born.  I could get a good start on a baby hat in 20 minutes.  Oh, the scrap blanket with the stripes of leftover project yarn that makes me so happy as I run my fingers over it’s ridges.  I could knit, but I won’t.

Option 5: Read.  Reading often takes up my spare 20 minutes.  I’m reading “Jennifer Government” which is a cute little book that I’m enjoying.  It isn’t the awesome books I’ve read lately: “The Bees,” “The Husband’s Secret,” “The Scorpio Races,” “Big Little Lies,” “The Blue Journal,” and oh the list goes on and on.  I am in a book reading streak right now that makes me so happy!  There is so much amazing fiction out there and I’m finding it over and over.  I should just finish up “Jennifer Government” and move on.  I wonder what’s up with her barcode tattoo.

Did I use commas and quotation marks and colons the right way in that last paragraph?  Crud.  Punctuation is so hard.  That and grammar are going to be the downfall of my writing career.

Oh yeah, writing.  This was fun.  I enjoyed my twenty minutes and covered a lot of things.  It’s nice to have my list ready for when that fairy shows up.  I wonder if she’ll be little like the tooth fairy, or big like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz.  Wait, was Glinda a fairy or a witch?  She had a wand, so I’m certain she could grant my wish,so I guess it doesn’t really matter.  When the time comes though, I’ll just say, “Hold on a second fairy/witch” and I’ll pull up my blog, look at my list, and evaluate my options.  I’ve already done Option 1, so next time I’ll have to move on to something else.  Maybe yoga.  Ommmmmmm.

I am a good person, and I have written proof!

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As previously mentioned in this space, I can be hard on myself, but this week I got written proof that I’m not all bad.  

One of my values is to see people and acknowledge them.  The old golden rule stuff.  I thank the fast food lady, look her in the eye and smile when I do it.  I tell my daughter’s teachers when she loves their lessons. I thank police officers who stop traffic after events so I can cross the road. 

It makes my life better.  I am happy when the Which Wich guy gives my daughter an extra fruit roll up because we talk to him as he makes our sandwich.  I tip the valet before he takes my car and thank him so sees me as a person and takes better care of my car.  (I also tip when I get it back safely.)

I tip the cleaning people every day during a hotel stay because my dad taught me that there may be a different person cleaning every day and I want to thank all of them, not just the lucky last one.  I know they are individuals, but I don’t really get to relate to them as people because I never see them.  This last trip I found a note on my nightstand.  She told me her name and said “thanks for the tips.”  The note made my heart soar.  17 years I have traveled for work and pleasure and I always leave my daily tip.  With this lavendar note they all became people to me and I have written proof that my daily tip effort is worthwhile because this came on day one of a four day stay.  Yay me!

Loving People with Mental Illness

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Last week was a rough week for mental health.  Up the road from where I live a woman cut a fetus out of a pregnant mother.  In Europe a pilot with a history of depression crashed a plane. There are many obvious victims here: the mom who never met her baby, her unborn child, the passengers of the plane, and the pilot of the plane. I empathize with other people in the shadow of these stories.

The pilot had a girlfriend and parents.  They probably know a bigger story than the one horrible decision he made.  They have seen his struggles.  They have talked endlessly with him about his fears, his problems and his dreams.  They may have wished his suffering would end at times, but they never wanted this ending.  If he was a good actor and hid his feelings they are hurt and sad and furious that such a thing could happen to him, and to them.  Their lives are forever changed because he is gone, hundreds died, and they are left with the loss and the burden of what he did, and the question about what they could have done to change it.

The woman who cut the baby out had a husband.  He took her and the fetus to the hospital.  What mentally healthy person would do what she did?  He is likely pouring over every detail of his life with her and wondering what he could have done to stop the tragedy, and his life is tainted by the ramifications of what his wife did.

Mental illness runs rampant and there is so little you can do if you love someone who is sick.  The stigma of mental illness is real and asking for help is a series of hard choices. Medicate and risk losing the person you love to a haze of drugs. Hospitalize and risk the person’s job, livelihood and reputation. Do nothing and risk your loved one injuring himself or others. While all this is going on you are stuck with a person who resembles your loved one but is hidden behind a cloud of anger, sadness and fear. You can’t get to him/her to ask what they need from you, what they want from you or what you should do. It is a horrible place to be.

I don’t personally know the people involved in either of these news stories, but I have been personally involved in depression, and I cannot fathom what these poor families are going through. It makes my heart sick.