It was one of those days when I was so busy the step counter on my fitness watch was calling out in pain, not to mention my fallen aches were doing the same. It was window washing day at the continuum care facility and that generated three appointments for the project. The first at 7:45 AM and I normally don’t get up that early. That one was for the maintenance man to pop out my screens, then another appointment at 10ish for the guys from window washing company to wash the inside of my windows followed by a 12ish appointment for them to come back to wash the windows on the outside of my deck and to pop the clean screens back over the rest of my newly washed windows. In between all this I had a terrible case of diarrhea and the house cleaning service woman showed up on the wrong day and we had to work that out lest she be cleaning around all the stuff that I had to move out of the way of the windows.
After the three window washers/college kids left my apartment I went over to the cafe, had a half a bowl of soup before a lecture titled 'Quirky Baseball Parks' that started at 1:30. I had just enough time after that ended to go back to my apartment, pick up the Mahjong set and deposit the other half of my soup in the refrigerator. Thankfully, the afternoon was diarrhea-free and I won all three Mahjong games.
The craziness didn’t end there. After Mahjong I had a date with three others to go off campus to a popular bar for dinner. And that came about because their usual fourth for off campus adventures was Ms Manners (who moved out) and I happened to be sitting near-by when they planned their dinner so they asked me if I wanted to come (in her place). I really like all three of these women. One is as crazy about Mahjong as I am, one is my neighbor/a retired psychiatrist and the other was a high school English teacher who has the classy wardrobe on this campus. She’s tall and willowy and she could make a potato sack look like Paris couture. All three are in our Tuesday Dinner Discussion group formally known as the Secret Society of Liberal Ladies. Yes, you’d win a bet if you placed it on us toasting the latest criminal indictment of the former president. Speaking of which, there’s a rumor going around that Trump could be offered a plea deal. In exchange for admitting guilt and agreeing never to run for office again he could avoid a trial and a possible prison sentence. Place your bids, ladies and gentlemen, I’m saying he’ll never go for it. He’ll continue putting the country through his circus of flying monkeys until his tombstone reads: “I won that damn election.”
After I got home from dinner, I put all my furniture and window decor back in place, lined up clothes and plans for the following day then I felt into bed at midnight for a hard sleep that ended at 3AM with a nightmare. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Finally after playing a dozen hands of Mahjong online, I went back to bed and by morning it came to me what had caused my nightmare.
In the dream there was heavy wooden door that I kept trying to close and lock with an old fashioned key but the door kept opening up, over and over again---me slamming it harder each time but each time it would open wider than the before. On the other side of the door were ghost-like figures looking menacing like from the movie, Scream. The door in my nightmare---it finally connected in my conscious mind---looked just like the rustic table top at the bar we’d been to.
At dinner the evening before the nightmare the other ladies were all talking about their divorces and how all their husbands had been alcoholics and abusive. And I revealed a carefully guarded detail about my life: The fact that while my husband and I had been a couple for 42 years we were only married for 12 1/2 of those years but the HUGE secret part that I've never shared on campus is that we didn’t live together until after Don's stroke. We had houses a mile apart and our relationship was complicated, hard to explain without a glass of hard cider in my hand and a growing trust factor that I wouldn't be judged. The English teacher said, “You were ahead of your time. That’s the way young people are doing now.” The secret revealed was the broken lock in the dream that wouldn’t keep the door shut any longer.
By the way, the lecture about quirky baseball parks was interesting and was given by college professor from a local college who was animated and funny in his delivery. Playing field sizes and shapes were not regulated in the early days, he told us, and that contributed to some of the records set by the stars of their era. Some fields where rectangles, others the size of little league fields today and several had uneven distances between their bases---as much as 50 feet! One even had a hill to climb in the outfield. Babe Ruth fell on the hill and quit playing four days later. In a Chicago park there was a small metal sign in the outfield that read: “Hit this sign and you’ll get a free suit at so-and-so store.” One baseball player hit it seven times and got seven tailor-made suits.
Wednesday are always Mahjong, lunch and lecture day. Wednesday is my favorite day of the week and in no small part because I get to interact with the blog community. Thank you all for reading and leaving comments here.
Until next Wednesday…. ©
P.S. I won two of the three Mahjong games we played this afternoon. I really love my Wednesdays.
I'm so glad you have a group of friends that you can trust! ❤️
ReplyDeleteI don't know if 'trust' or the hard cider was the biggest factor in revealing my secret. LoL
DeleteI love Weds because it is blog day, too! I rarely read other blogs any more. I do read three online newspapers, email and Facebook. Play a few NYT games as well as Words with Friends and a few others. Connecting with Maui friends and so far they are alive but have lost their homes, cars and businesses. I can't even imagine the red tape they will have to wade through to get any help. THANKS for blogging on a regular schedule! Where did you go for dinner?
ReplyDeleteThe blog community sure has changed since I started 20 years ago and I miss the way it used to be.
DeleteWe went to dinner to a local place, not a chain you'd recognize. They had a big outdoor seating area with their building wrapping around three sides and all the tables where varnished and rustic wood.
Good food.
The fire sure was tragic. I saw an interview with the governor and he was asked why the alarms didn't go off and he said, in Maui the alarms are used for hurricanes and tsunamis where the people would run up the mountain. There was debate that ringing it for a fire would have confused people and some run into the direction of the fire instead of away from it. They don't have a protocol for fires.
That's a fascinating and accurate sounding dissection of your dream! Sometimes it's easy to figure out where the pieces of a dream came from...sometimes not.
ReplyDeleteHow often do you have to go through the window washing rigamarole? Is it mandatory that they wash the inside? Because of the window height?
Dreams have always fascinated me and back in my 40s I even kept a dream diary.
DeleteManagement says they'll only pay for window washing every other year and then we paid extra for inside washing. But this year the same company did them but we had to pay for everything therefore we could choose to skip doing them and/or the screen washing or just do the inside or the outside. And they charged through the nose. Our living room windows are floor to ceiling and I don't do ladders plus my windows were dirty from the lawn crew blowing stuff my way every Tuesday. Second and third floor people can't wash their own windows outside. Out of the 52 apartments I'm guessing less than half had their cleaned.
I'm surprised you have to pay for the window cleaning! How would the place look if windows never got washed???
DeleteTrust me, our residents' advocacy committee is all over that...but not getting any where. The CEO says they've never washed windows at his house and I'm thinking his wife does it and he doesn't know it.
DeleteAs I've gotten older, trying to juggle those crazy busy days (like you had) just about sends me over the moon. And to think you needed to stay close to the bathroom while all those folks were working in your apartment. Bet you were thankful to put that behind you (no pun intended).
ReplyDeleteJean, you WERE ahead of your time with regard to your and Don's relationship. Previous posts you've shared with us point to the depth of commitment you two shared. That's the ticket in my thinking.
Pun appreciated and had me smiling.
DeleteIt's really hard to explain a relationship that had no paper to prove commitment. Especially here where the bare bone facts can come up but rarely does anyone do a deeper dive into them. Like the other ladies getting into the details of why their marriages failed and how long they tried to make them work. I didn't even know my neighbor was divorced so I wasn't the only one keeping some stuff private. And her husband was a minister which I knew but the additional information about the drinking and abuse sure changed my perception of her married life.
I'm not much of a baseball fan, but I sort of follow the Astros. One bit of history I remember is that there used to be a hill -- in center field, maybe? -- that was called Tal's hill, after the owner. I always wondered why in the world they'd do such a thing. Now that I know there was a historical precedent, it makes more sense. Eventually, they got rid of it, and leveled the playing field -- in the most literal way possible!
ReplyDeleteOur lecturer explained that in the early days of the game, promoters would find lots to build a baseball field where people could easily access from public transportation and the lots were usually as close to the center of towns as possible. The fact that the fields were all irregular sizes and shapes that made it harder for out of town players and put them at a disadvantage. I can't remember when they regulated the fields but, he said, players like Babe Ruth wouldn't not have made the records the did on today's fields and that's why so many of the old records took so long to break.
DeleteGoodness! What a lot of goings on you had. The whole window-washing situation would have made me nuts, let alone having a Personal Emergency in the thick of it. At least you got to have an outing as a reward.
ReplyDeleteI think relationships are so incredibly intimate and individual, even moreso than people alone. Two people together is an intricate system; it's like the workings of a fine watch. How they make it run is an operation entirely of their own crafting. Outside observers really have no way of knowing, and they can't really judge.
That's the one thing I don't like about living here is you can't pick the days when they schedule maintenance projects that involve us. On the other hand, I love that they do things like change the batteries in our door key pads, the kitchen faucets and thermostats. Clean the filters in our dishwashers and washing machines. I'm waiting for a maintenance request right now for a couple minor things which means I need to keep the place picked up for a few weeks and my showers out of the way before 10:00 each day until they pop in and do them. If my maintenance request was for something that would take hours, then they would schedule it but little things. It's a catch it when you can.
DeleteSo true what you said about relationships. As outsiders we can think we know what makes a couple they work or not. But we can't really know for sure.
I don't know that I would have had the energy to go off campus with the three others after that day, but I'm glad you did.
ReplyDeleteI didn't have the energy either but I didn't want to cancel since it was the first time I'd been invited to go out to dinner off campus. Others around here to it all the time. I'm glad I went too.
DeleteYou certainly are enjoying yourself in your new place! Nice to hear how well things are going for you.
ReplyDeleteLast week I had my first ambulance ride and spent 4 days in the hospital for Afib. All is back to normal but I am feeling a bit cautious and not quite so confident, so am not venturing out too much. I'll see what's next when I visit the cardiologist next week...
Stay safe, stay healthy, have fun, Jean!
Wow, A-fibs can be scary even though I'm told the patient can't usually tell when they have one out of sync. On the good side they have effective drugs, now, to control them. My husband had one as do all the males in his family. I'm getting an echo-gram of my heart in November---my first, still looking for a cause of my swollen leg but the doctor doesn't think they'll find anything.
DeleteI never visualized myself living in an apartment-like setting but it is working out. I feel safe, entertained and care will come when I need it.
We need our windows washed, and I'm procrastinating, because I hate the prep and also having people in my house. I bet you're glad that's done for now.
ReplyDeleteI love your hard cider conversation with your friends. I think as we get older, most of us have stories we don't share, and sometimes we have an occasion to test the waters. Most people are less horrified than we expect. Your life sounds pretty normal for today's generation, as your friend said, but I can't understand it probably wasn't when it happened -- especially in our neck of the woods. lol
Yes, the prep work before and after window cleaning is a pain!
DeleteMy dad had an uncle who lived apart from his wife, right next door in fact. They were happy I'm told so my folks didn't really thing Don and I living apart all the strange and they never pressured us to get married. And Don and I knew another couple who lived across the street from each other. He was a hoarder and she couldn't stand living that way, but they still loved each other and did things together.
To add to your baseball theme, the longest home run ever was in Atlanta in 1954 when the batter hit the ball and it landed on the coal car of a passing train. The train went all the way to Nashville and back. The conductor had found the ball and later took it to the batter to have him autograph it. Cool story!
ReplyDeleteI love that story! it's the stories like that that makes baseball far more interesting than say, football.
DeleteIf it had only occurred to me as an option to live apart from my husbands! I would have been so much happier. (Not that they ever would have gone for it, though - they expected a live-in cook, housemaid, dishwasher etc.) Kudos to you and Don - you made it work for you and that's all that matters.
ReplyDeleteDeb
I'm not so sure we made it work but rather it just happened while we were busy doing life. I only cooked on my terms---a pot roast once in awhile, a pot of chili that I brought from my house to his. Don was always working on trucks so I'd have to bring stuff over if I wanted to cook because he didn't own a kitchen stove. When he bought the house it had a pink stove and that was the first thing he moved out. My house was frilly, girly and he didn't like being there where brides would pop in and out. LOL
DeleteReading this made me think that our windows need a clean but not something I can do, hell I don't remember the last time I cleaned them.
ReplyDeleteCrazy or weird dreams I have often, when I wake thinking what the hell
Until I moved here I don't think I ever missed having clean windows twice a year. It was a big family project spring and fall---putting screens and storm windows up and down and washing them all.
DeleteYou were indeed ahead of your Time, my Co-Worker Friend Bess from the DA's Office had been in a relationship with her Boyfriend Jim for 45 Years and they lived just a Block apart both in Chicago, and then here in Arizona. It worked for them and they saw each other every day and were in each other's Wills, since, no Children or Legal Spouses. When she got Dementia she did relay that Jim was still around and I'm glad she had him. I don't know if she ended up in long term Care or passed, since I haven't had contact now in a couple Years even tho' I've tried to. She didn't remember who I was anymore so I knew she was in final stages of Dementia and she confided it was quite a torment, as I'm sure it was. Glad you Won at Mah Jong and that you developed enuf Trust in that small Group to Share something Private and previously kept Secret. I like Blogging becoz it often does give a Safe Space for everyone to be 100% and without the baggage that Real Life Judgments can cause and/or the Gossip Mill that some delight in spreading about anything they know about someone. Here a level of Anonymity can exist to just be more transparent and free to speak of many things you'd have to be more guarded about.
ReplyDeleteYup, blogging does give us a level of anonymity so we can be 100% real. Don and I lived a mile apart and we met for lunch every day in between, spent our weekends together and talked a million times a day in between. We helped each other in our businesses. I've written about me plowing snow and line stripping but I don't think I've ever written about him helping me set up weddings and editing a 24 page romance readers' newsletter I published by monthly for ten years.
DeleteMy life long friend since kindergarten has dementia since last year and we don't have much contact anymore. We live in different states so it's really hard.
Beautiful blog
ReplyDeleteGood grief, Charlie Brown! Yikes! You are one busy woman. Your relationship sounds much like Rick's and mine. We've been together for 27, separate houses and both happy to keep it that way. He won't take a plea -- too much ego for that.
ReplyDeleteDon't think I've commented lately, but I'm still enjoying your stories and escapades!
ReplyDeleteThank you! That makes me happy.
DeleteYou know, I've recently thought about what it would have been like if we hadn't gotten married (48 years ago August 1st). See, we moved in together in May, and by July he had persuaded me to get married, because the Navy would pay him $116 a month for a dependant, and in 1975, our rent was $75 a month, so that was what the kids call a "no-brainer". He also made me promise that if we wanted a divorce, we could wait until he got out of the Navy, so we would keep getting the money. I was ok with that. I never changed my last name, either. I guess I was keeping my options open in case it didn't work out. But I didn't really want to get married (he spent two solid weeks convincing me), and I'm not sure we ever would have, except for the Navy. Maybe when we had kids, although a twenty-year contract would have sufficed for me, just so I had some legal recourse if he tried to get out of his obligation (and we negotiated having children just as we did getting married). But because we were married, that was all a moot point. So you see, lots of us look normal, but just below the surface is a whole unconventional world.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right about things looking normal on the surface but with an unconventional foundation underneath the 'secrecy'. A lot of people assumed we were married. Thanks for sharing your history.
DeleteAbout thirty years ago, I did some research about the lives of unmarried women, including never-married women, divorced women, and widows. One of the themes that emerged from the interviews with the widows was that many of them wished for a male companion/partner, but not one that they would live with or be married to. Separate houses that were not far from another was exactly what they were dreaming of. It seems to me that you had the courage to create a life for yourself that many women would consider ideal.
ReplyDeleteIt was ideal in lots of way but we didn't create it as much as we fell into it for various reasons. That doesn't mean it didn't mean we didn't face the social pressures to get married or move on to someone else. It was a choice to be together where as married couples (I'm guessing) don't always feel like they have a choice but to ride it out if they are going through a rough patch.
Delete