Welcome to the Misadventures of Widowhood blog!

Welcome to my World---Woman, widow, senior citizen seeking to live out my days with a sense of whimsy as I search for inner peace and friendships. Jeez, that sounds like a profile on a dating app and I have zero interest in them, having lost my soul mate of 42 years. Life was good until it wasn't when my husband had a massive stroke and I spent the next 12 1/2 years as his caregiver. This blog has documented the pain and heartache of loss, my dark humor, my sweetest memories and, yes, even my pity parties and finally, moving past it all. And now I’m ready for a new start, in a new location---a continuum care campus in West Michigan, U.S.A. Some people say I have a quirky sense of humor that shows up from time to time in this blog. Others say I make some keen observations about life and growing older. Stick around, read a while. I'm sure we'll have things in common. Your comments are welcome and encouraged. Jean

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Overdue Visits and Scary People

Can you believe it, fall is just around the corner. The nights are getting cooler and the sidewalk chalk art is fading around the neighborhood. I guess all the kids got the memo that it’s time to redirect their energy into back-to-school mode…however that will look this year during the pandemic.  

For the first time in nearly a year I took an overdue trip to my niece’s cottage, wanting to get it in before her daughter goes back to school. My great niece teaches honors English to kids who really want to learn while her two sons are cared for by my niece turned-granny-nanny and her husband who are both retired teachers. I asked Niece #1 (I have two) how her daughter feels about going back to school, given the Covid-19 pandemic we’re living in, does the school she teaches in and where her son was supposed to start 1st grade have plans that feels safe and comfortable? "No! Not at all,” she answered. It seems the powers that be in their school district is a Republican who either doesn’t think the virus is a real threat or he don’t care. They aren't taking many of the same precautions other schools in the state doing. So Niece #1 will be doing online classes with her grandson and, she says, if her daughter so much as has the sniffles coming home from the high school she’ll keeping her two grandsons at her house instead of sending them home. Last January they all got extremely sick---my niece with a confirmed case of Covid-19---and she says they’re not going through that again!

Like all states in our union there is at least one county that is a hot bed for hate groups and both my nieces lives in one. Niece #1 was telling me about the local chapter of the Proud Boys which make themselves very visible. Look them up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, where they track hate groups, and you'll find this introduction: “The Proud Boys are self-described ‘western chauvinists’ who adamantly deny any connection to the racist ‘alt-right,’ insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an ‘anti-political correctness’ and an ‘anti-white guilt’ agenda.”

My niece says they run around the area in groups of 12-14 pickup trucks that are decked out in gun racks and large American, Confederate and Trump flags, generally trying to intimidate others by the mire sight of them. They made the news last year when a black family was having a birthday party for little kids and the Proud Boys were racing back and forth in front of the house while the party was going on. And just last week they made the news again when they gathered in a college town causing counter-protesters to gather. A local news media wrote: “The group is listed as a hate group because of its frequent denigration of Muslims and Islam, misogynistic rhetoric, and its role as a gateway to other extremist groups.” You know where this is going, don’t you. Yes, our president thinks the Proud Boys have “some very fine people” in their numbers. And if you think that's the most outrageous endorsement he's made then you didn't see him at a press briefing this week saying nice things about QAnon, a group that spreads conspiracy crap and believes the Democratic party is full satanic pedophile cannibals. Yup, we literally eat aborted babies for breakfast. It would be funny if Jo Rae Perkins, a proud card-carrying QAnon member hadn't just won the Oregon Republican U.S. Senate primary and was praised by Trump.

Back to normalcy: My nieces have both grown into wonderful women, both have very different personalities and interests but they are close friends as well as sisters. They talk on the phone every day and hearing that made me long for the days when I had daily phone contact with someone I loved and who knew me as well as I know myself. It’s been years since I've had that kind of relationship in my life. Niece #2 was on vacation up north or she would have been at the cottage too. She's cornered the market on humor in our family and it's always fun to be around her.

I hate driving the expressway I have to take to get out to get to either niece’s home in the boondocks and as I was going through the infamous S-Curve through town it occurred to me that the number of times I’ll have to get on that expressway for the rest of my life can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Once I move I’ll never have to do it again and good riddance to that route out of the city because I don’t want to be one of those old people who drives thirty miles an hour under the speed limit while cursing drivers dart around me with their middle fingers in the air. As I told my niece, one of the things I like about moving is that when the time comes for me to give up driving, I’ll have a built-in back up plan in place. The continuum care campus will have a mini bus that will go to the grocery store weekly and a concierge service to help us arrange rides to doctor appointments. 

With any luck, I won’t have to give up driving for 6-7 years. But from the first time I sat behind the wheel of a car, I’ve hated driving so giving it up will not be the traumatic 'benchmark' for me as it is for others. For my brother…now that will be a different story. His first wild driving stunt happened when he was four and he took his tricycle at full speed off the end of the porch to a six foot drop below to a cement driveway. Picture Fonzie and Happy Days and that was the brother I grew up with---the stereotypical teen aged boy of the mid-'50s trying to look cool with the help of a pocket comb and pomade-enhanced greaser hair. He pushed the envelope on everything he ever drove: bikes, boats, snowmobiles, dune-buggies, cars and pickup trucks. I don't envy my nieces if/when the times comes when they have to ask their dad to hand over his car keys. ©

* That's my brother on his bike at the top.  

32 comments:

  1. That bike made me smile - its so like the ones that we had growing up!!!

    Admittedly, politics is a dirty game. That said, I've now reached the stage that I think all Trump voters/enablers are stupid and/or evil - don't really care! ~ Libby

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    1. I don't remember if I had a bike like that. I know when I got a two wheel bike I couldn't ride it and my mom threaten to give it away if I didn't learn. LOL

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  2. Sorry you have to deal with the proud boys. We have the same types here, they just aren't organized--yet. That QAnon is kind of scary isn't it? Haven't seen any here yet and hope I don't. Trump seems pleased that they "like" him.
    Glad you have your plan B in place should you be asked for your car keys. Wish I did.

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    1. The dark side of the internet is it allows groups like QAnon and the Proud Boys to organize and by our president not condemning them, he's helping them to be more out in the open.

      Where I live now would never work if I couldn't drive. It's scary how quickly that element can change in our lives.

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  3. The photo of the bike brought back such memories. All our old photos have this "color" look. Not quite sepia and not quite color. It must be how it was done in the 50s. This is my 3rd attempt at a comment. If this fails I cry uncle.

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    1. Thank you for keeping on trying. The third time was a charm. Those old photos were hand tinted by professionals. We have the black and white original as well.

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  4. My reaction to my two-wheel bike was so different from yours! I got it as a Christmas present and I distinctly remember sitting on that bike all day, reading my new Nancy Drew book. When spring came, I loved it even more. I went to the garage to say goodbye to the bike when we went on a family vacation. True love.

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    1. What a cute story! I got my two wheeler for Christmas also but it had training wheels at first. When they came off I lost total interesting in that bike and spent a terrible afternoon trying to learn to balance on that bike with my brother and mother.

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  5. "...or he don’t care." Kind of the not so subtle subtext of the GOP, isn't it?

    I'm not crazy about driving either, but I have to do it to accomplish what I need to do. I wish you well on your final drive through what sounds like the typical city mess. I envy you knowing and acknowledging it'll be the last stressful drive. Stay safe.

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    1. Our S-Curve has been a political nightmare from day one. It was built to wind around the major's property decades ago and has since been revamped several times trying to make it safer. I did a total spine out in the middle of it one icy night and I was lucky not to crash into another car. So I have a healthy respect for its evilness. I know a guy who drives it every day to and from work and he says it's the best part of his day because it makes him feel like a race car driver as he banks both sides, across its four lanes.

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  6. I have a love-hate relationship with driving. I hate it because it's so fraught with potential problems and harm, and so many people drive poorly and distractedly. I love it because it gives me so much freedom.

    I was the one to take away my mother's keys and tell her no more driving. It was a definite necessity, but I knew what it meant for her.

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    1. I get that about driving being a love-hate relationship.

      Having to take away a parent's car keys has repercussions for the whole family. At least it did for me. I committed to drive to his place in the boondocks every week, staying over night and making sure we could cover all his errands, shopping and seeing his girlfriend for a date. It ended up being a five year routine. My brother, nephew and nieces also stepped up to the plate and we made it work.

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  7. Having grown up in the sticks, driving was the only way to get anywhere, and I enjoyed driving until I moved to the Bay Area where I had to drive daily for work. That meant getting on the freeway before 6AM if I had to get anywhere for a morning meeting. And a lot of stopping and surging with traffic. I grew to hate it enough that when I moved back, I offered to ride with anyone who would drive. Now I don't mind it, and I confess to loving a good curving road with not much traffic. :-) But I have to say your story about spinning out on the S-curve is a bad one. Wow. That would freak me out for years. I wrecked a boyfriend's car in my late teens and was skittish about driving for quite a while afterward. I was lucky to walk away from it, and I learned a valuable lessons about driving on black ice.

    As for the crazies lately, I will refrain from a rant. But I will say it's hard to run as the law and order president when the country is in the condition it's in - IMO.

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    1. That is what caused my spin out...black ice. That stuff is really dangerous. When I stopped spinning I was aimed in the wrong direction.

      It's the other drives on the road that freak me out more than my own driving. I'm actually a good friver, just don't enjoy it.

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  8. My dad gave up driving but he wouldn't give up his car. It was his last bit of control -- if he HAD to, he would. He didn't want to. But he could. After he died, his friend kept the car at his farm because I didn't have room. Then when I was in an accident and my car was totaled, two years later, we hauled Dad's car out of Ben's house and it kept me going for five years!

    I'm glad you enjoy your nieces and could spend some time with the family. Yes, I know your basic neck of the woods and it is VERY red all over that side of the state. Don't start me on the Proud Boys -- they were key in the anti-Covid Whitmer rallies last spring at the capitol. And QAnon -- that's a scary thing. Read the article in The Atlantic about it or stream the recent Fresh Air interview with the author. But not too late at night or you'll have grim nightmares.

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    1. Ya, I know those scums were at the state capital. Someone pointed out that their numbers include a bunch of preppers but they were protesting not being able to get a haircut. Thought that was funny. I'll look up that article when I want to scare myself to death.

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  9. I can't imagine going through you have been through, I lost my licence on medical grounds 3yrs ago and it has taken some adjustment but I am coping.

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    1. Losing our driver's license for a medical reason can happen to any of us in a heartbeat. Glad you are adjusting. I'm sure it's not an easy road to give up that freedom.

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  10. I only drive around town because of my eyes, except when Andy gets a shot in his good eye in Santa Fe. Fortunately that's not as often now.

    I'm concerned about the election. I can see Trump winning again, no matter what the polls say now.

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    1. I'm more than afraid that Thump is going to win. I'll be surprised if he doesn't. And he'll cheat to do it.

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    2. If Trump wins it's undeniable truth that our country has lost it's way. I can't let myself believe that the ignorant opinion mongering I hear from some of the right who aren't afraid to 'let it all hang out, like the President does' is the core of this nation - or even the Republican party. What I'm also afraid of is if Biden wins and some of those same people decide to use their guns. What a mess he's made with his belligerence!

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    3. I cringe when I hear people say, "This isn't who we are" because I'm really beginning to think Trump's America is exactly who we are. I agree, if Biden wins he he's not going to be safe and everything is so screwed up, I don't see how anyone can get us back on a good track again.

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    4. This morning I had the awful thought, because Portland's never-ending protests are known around the world, that MY state might be the reason this election goes the wrong way. The mayor is so weak! Why doesn't he negotiate with the protesters and point out the law of diminishing returns kicked in about 6 weeks ago.

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    5. Everything is so messed up now, it's it, not just in Portland but in other cities around the country.

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  11. I'm still driving the freeways but I may be that little old lady holding back traffic. I'll have to watch myself. The bus at the center will be perfect. I looked at one complex that had that service plus a hair dresser but by the time I got around to moving they didn't have any openings.

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    1. With the baby boomers all looking to downsize I think lack of openings is going to be a problem very soon. Where I live, though, there are two new places going up.

      Stay safe down your way!!!

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  12. I still have the bike I got in 1960 -a blue Schwinn. It has the pedal brakes instead of the hand brakes and no gears at all because my parents thought I wouldn't be able to handle those! I haven't ridden it for awhile but I don't want to get rid of it yet!

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    1. What fun! If you ever decide to sell it make sure you do your homework. Depending on the model, some of those old Schwinn's can be worth quite a bit.

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  13. I love that photo of the tricycle. I have a photo of me tootling down the sidewalk with a metal bucket hanging from the handle. I'm not sure what I was up to; I might have been helping Daddy wash the car. In any event, that trike was the beginning. I love to drive, and I especially like long, deserted two-lane highways. Windows down and volume up is my motto, but spare me interstates and urban traffic. Those, I don't like.

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    1. I kinda pegged you as someone who loved to drive just by some of the photo and story gathering trips you've take. If all I drove was deserted roads I'd change my tune about driving. It really is the other drivers that bother me the most.

      I still have my metal sandbox pile and shovel. The made the downsizing cut but I don't remember me ever having a tricycle.

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  14. Love the Flashback Photo of your Brother on his Trike. So good you got to spend some time with Family that are enjoyable. Too bad they live in an area full of groups like those Proud Boys, who sound so stereotypical that it's just beyond the fray. I know you are looking forward to the next Chapter at the CCC, it will be great to hear about it after you move in and tell us about how it's all going. I have thought about alternative living arrangements should it get to where maintaining a property might be too much or I want less in advanced age should that privilege play out in the future. Of coarse I like to think this is the Forever Home, but I've thought that before and I know that the Future arrives and things aren't always as we envisioned they might be once we arrive.

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    1. My brother got all the cute genes.

      Not having any back up friends or family where I live now really bothers me.

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