Unwanted Gifts and it's Mueller Time

Time is passing by so fast. It’s hard to believe that December is almost half over and I just went to my second holiday party of the season. The gods of Michigan Snow are being kind to little old me who has lost her stomach for driving in Winter Wonderlands. The temperatures are bone-chilling cold, the landscape is covered with snow but the roads are down to bare asphalt. The worst place I have to drive is on my own driveway that, for reasons I can’t explain, is the only one on the entire cul-de-sac that is still snow covered. Not a lot of snow, just enough to make going to the mailbox akin to standing at the top of a ski slope wondering if you’ll make it to the bottom without falling. I put on my boots with ice fishing cleats attached and I use my husband’s old, four-footed cane for the trek. I also go to the mailbox in the late afternoon when people are coming home from work. In case I do fall, I figure I won’t have to lay there long before someone would drive by and take pity on me. My momma didn’t raise any fools. 

My second Christmas party of the season took place out in the boondocks which means the weather often prevents me from going but this year when twenty of my Red Hat Society sisters gathered at an upscale restaurant to order off the menu, I was one of them. This group, without exception, always orders dessert at parties so it gets pricey. I could not believe they have desserts listed for as high as $9.50. Still, we all went home with a box with half our entrées inside and the taste of brownie, hot fudge sundaes or crème brulee on our lips.

We do a $10 gift exchange that are distributed using the Right/Left game so you don’t know who will end up with what you bring. Two other groups I belong to have the bring-only-consumable-goods  gift rule and I’ve suggested that rule to the Red Hatters. We’re all in our 70s and 80s and who needs more jewelry, scarves, candles or décor do-dads, but the suggestion falls on deaf ears. This group likes bling. Wouldn’t you know it, the gift I got at the party was a watch with exchangeable bands that I’ll never wear. “You spent more than $10 on this,” I said as I thanked the woman who bought it. She smiled and said, “I just buy what I like and I don’t care about the price.” I spent July e-Baying collectible watches out of the house and I’d re-gift this one if I could, but I can’t think of anyone who'd wear it. Google priced it at $25. For a fleeting moment it made me feel cheap for only spending $11 on my $10 exchange gift. I’m thinking of wrapping the watch back up and leaving somewhere for a stranger to find. Well, except I couldn't leave it at an airport, school, mall or theater where someone would call the bomb squad about a ticking box.

Even with consumable gifts you don’t always welcome the gift you get. Last year a diabetic got a box of chocolates in an exchange and at my Gathering Girls party I went to recently I gave an assortment of teas along with a King Arthur gingerbread cake and cookie mix arranged in a cute snowman box and the next day I got a text asking me if I had the original tea boxes and receipts. Unfortunately, the recipient doesn’t drink tea. At that party we used the stealing game to distribute gifts but our game ended before she got a chance to ‘steal’ a gift she liked better than the one she opened. Oh, well, her family does a gag gifts exchange---things like toilet bowl brushes---so hopefully, she can re-gift the tea. If not, Goodwill probably benefits after the holidays from a lot of gifts that missed their marks. Even Donald Trump Jr. was joking on TV recently that his father re-gifts to him a lot of monogrammed gifts that are given to the president.

Change of topic: I probably shouldn’t bring this up but I feel like we’re getting early Christmas gifts with the high profile sentences and pleas that came out of the courts lately. (Spoiler Alert: Trump supporters should probably quit reading here.) So far the Mueller investigation has brought 36 indictments and he’s getting closer and closer to wrapping things up. To see some of the president’s lies and cover-ups finally being exposed in the courts gives me joy. Trump’s fall from grace, I predict, will be swift once all the redacted areas in the court filings get revealed over the next six months of trials and additional indictments. I personally think Donald Jr. is going to go down hard with some prison time and his father will stand by while the bus he’ll throw junior under runs over him. And the only reason Ivanka and Jared haven’t been charged in an emolument clause case is because they aren’t getting salaries while working in the White House. But I think the domino's of justice will eventually take them down, too. If you think I’m wrong about all this, don’t tell me until after the holidays. Let me live in my cocoon of believing the Rule of Law is coming back to the White House. Do I want to see Mr. Trump get impeached? That’s a question with a complicated answer but the bottom line is, we need to wait until enough wrong doing has been proven in court that even the hardcore Republicans in the Senate are calling for his head. Now, if you ask me if he deserves to be impeached my answer would be a resounding “HELL, YES!”  ©

Sentimentality, Traditions and Gifts for Widows

I’m so darn sentimental it’s embarrassing. Some of the things I’m sentimental over makes sense like my childhood doll and her fur trimmed coat that was made out of my mother’s wedding suit, but some things would have others scratching their heads, wondering why I hold on to something with so little value. An example of the latter literally got turned into a pile of rags this week. It was a t-shirt of my husband’s that I’ve been using as a nightgown in since he died almost five years ago. For a couple of months I’ve been planning to cut it up for rags but it took the dog barfing all over the place before I could actually get myself to do it. That’s not the end of it though, before I took a pair of scissors out of the drawer I went online and bought another t-shirt just like it. 

Do I think I’ll fool myself when the new and improved t-shirt is folded on my shelf, waiting for a warm summer night? Can I pretend it’s still connected to my husband in a weird, twisted kind of widow logic? I think I can and as evidence of that I offer Exhibit A: A Mickey Mouse watch. My husband had a dozen watches but this one was his favorite to wear when little kids would be around and unbeknown to me he actually had two of them. I found the second one in a shoebox of junk he probably picked up at flea markets and after finding it, I gave the one he actually wore to the son-I-wish-I-had. His own kids loved that watch when Don wore it, now they are grown with babies of their own and Tim is having fun wearing it around a new generation. The watch I didn’t know existed now hangs in my computer wardrobe and even though Don never wore it, it still queues up great memories.

The t-shirt is one of two Christmas presents I bought myself. Ancestry.com was offering a holiday discount on their DNA kits and I’ve wanted to do one of those for a couple of years. Not having any children, it seems like a waste of money but on the other hand, I’ve been doing genealogy research since I tagged along behind my mother going to court houses back in the ‘60s and not long ago I had books printed up, one for each side of my family tree. DNA seems like putting a period at the end of a sentence, the end of a very long project. 

I’m getting used to spending Christmas day alone---this will be my fourth one but compared to seven decades of never being alone on the holiday, four Christmas’ is a drop in the bucket. Is it any wonder Christmas is a downer for so many widows and widowers? I try not to care about the holiday but I wish I could un-see the photos of candy cane shaped bread in various stages that a Red Hat sister posted on Facebook that she’s making for gifts. Avoiding Facebook in December helps but there is always something to remind me that joyful holidays are in my rearview mirror. Like an article in the newspaper about a project patterned after the Angel Trees for children where people pull a tag off the tree with a child’s name and age written on it, then they buy them a gift to be delivered by the “angel network.” Only this Angel Tree was for elderly people living alone. At first I thought, that’s a great idea, followed by sadness when I read that the tree is only for low income elderly people. I was thinking of another four-year widow I read online who had a major pity party---and that’s not an exaggeration---because a club she belongs to decided not to exchange gifts this year. Ya, I know her pity party goes deeper than a missed gift but that’s where she’s placing all her widowhood anger and resentment.

Although I’m quite used to buying my own presents, I think the no-one-to-give-me-a-gift thing bothers me, too. Last night while watching a movie until three in the morning I wanted to order everything they advertised. The Lumo Lift for slumping shoulders and a Google Home. No, Jean, those are fads you’d soon tire of. ThinOptics---Seriously, Jean? You don’t need another pair of reading glasses no matter how cool the design. A Water Pik. Maybe. But the biggest clue to my Christmas mood is that I ate the small box of chocolates I bought to have on hand in case someone unexpected stops by with a token gift---like cane candy shaped bread or a tray of cookies. The emergency-gift-on-hand tradition is something I inherited from my mother and it’s not supposed to be opened until New Year’s Day. That’s “The Rule” if the candy is not given away in December. My old doll caught my eye as I popped the last chocolate in my mouth, her intense stare telling me that Mom would not be pleased. Do we ever get our mothers' voices out of our heads? ©

Guilt and Grief on the Pantry Shelves, Dusty Bunnies under the Bed

I need a job. A reason to get up in the morning other than I might wet the bed if I don’t head for the bathroom before the clock strikes nine. Bedroom clocks, of course, no longer strike the time. They display it. Saying the clock strikes nine dates me---but I’m getting side-tracked here in old people-speak. Back on topic: sometimes I stay in bed until the last possible minute trying hard to hold on to a dream. I like my dream life even though it often leaves me wondering why that, why now? Lately Mom, Dad and Don have been coming to visit in the night. What does that mean? Sometimes I’m so busy in my dreams it’s a wonder I don’t wake up needing a nap. Last night I was riding in the back of a windowless bus with Don, trying to get the driver’s attention so she’d let us off.

A job isn’t really on my wish list. Human contact is what I’d tell Santa I need if he asked and could actually deliver. Let’s face it, when you find yourself listening to more than a few seconds of a Robocall you know it’s time to get out of the house and find out if you still know how to exchange meaningless chit-chat with strangers. Thus yesterday I found myself out Christmas shopping, kind of a pitiful excuse since I don’t have anyone to buy for now that Don is gone. Woo is me, so I bought myself a small crock pot in honor of living alone, and a magenta bathrobe that is guaranteed to leave a trail of colorful dust bunnies where ever I go. And that’s no joke.

A few years ago I took the dog to the veterinary because he had a bright purple nose. I was really worried. The diagnosis was “it’s a fungus” and the cure, he said, “was worse than the disease.” He was a quack! The next week our dog groomer picked all the crusty, purple stuff off the dog’s nose and showed it to me. A light bulb went off in my head. It was exactly that same color as my new, purple chenille bathrobe. Turned out the cure for the “fungus” was a good vacuuming. Apparently, colorful dust bunnies are more fun to smell than the run of the mill nondescript color. The vet was right about one thing, though. It did end up costing a lot because the whole episode made me realize I needed a stronger pair of eye glasses. Old people, what are you going to do with us? You can’t take us all out behind the barn and shoot us. Well, you could but that would be cruel.

I’ve been cleaning and rearranging my kitchen cabinets but when I got to the pantry shelves I got bogged down and stopped. I don’t cook much since Don died so I have a lot of pantry stuff that has either expired or is about to. In the first few months after he died I wouldn’t let any visitor leave the house without a “door prize”---something from the pantry that Don loved but I knew I’d never fix again. I had more door prizes than visitors causing several irrational panic attacks thinking about that food going to waste. Now it’s starting all over again…those guilty feelings over wasting food. My mother really did a number on me growing up. She still has me believing kids in China will starve to death if I don’t clean my plate and in the adult version that dictates you must use up pantry goods before they expire. Waste is bad. Jean is bad for wasting food! People in third world countries would kill for my expired flour, macaroni and baking power. I wish I could dial 1 (800) HELP-ME! and someone would come purge my pantry.

Oh, I’ll get my cabinets done by the end of the year but not without more dreamed filled nights. My subconscious mind is trying to send me a message about guilt, grief, discontentment and lack of control but my darn kidneys won’t let me stay asleep long enough to decipher it. But one thing I do know. I’m going to check under the bed for magenta colored dusty bunnies on a regular basis. There will be no more “nose fungus” in this house! ©