New Year’s Resolutions and Revelations for the Widow

A new year is here and I’m sure it will be March before I let my guard down and revert back to writing 2014 on my checks. I’m as predictable as my yappy Schnauzer greeting his squirrel friend when she comes to our bird feeders. I try to get him to only bark when the squirrel leaves the ground feeders’ station to crawl up the pole but Levi still doesn’t get the difference between high and low, even though I let him outside on the deck when I see the squirrel eating from the hanging feeders. To his vermin chasing genes it’s like giving a glass of wine, a cannoli and kiss to an Italian. Okay, that’s a stereotype and we’re not supposed to do that anymore but I’m half Italian so I’m going to let it slide.

I haven’t made any New Year’s Resolutions yet. I put myself on a no-media schedule for the three days leading up to the holiday and the two days after so I could completely ignore the holiday and all the news people talking about last year’s big stories and this year’s celebrations around the world. This was my third New Year’s Eve since Don passed away and the no-media thing worked well for me. I wasn’t sad, depressed, teary-eyed or any other adjective I could put in front of my name. I did do a little toast at midnight with a few sips of wine but then I threw the rest of the glass down the drain. If I’m going to ingest empty calories I’d rather have a cookie. But I’ve been good these past few days and when the sugar monster wants to be fed I give him an organic, rainbow carrot. There you go, blood and guts, if you work hard enough you can turn that into glucose.

For the year 2013 instead of writing resolutions (which I usually did before my husband passed away) I choose to embrace the one word mantra idea that was floating around that year. I chose ‘courage’ and I even found a ‘courage’ charm and a Cowardly Lion charm that I wore on a chain whenever I’d go someplace where I felt my newly minted widowhood would be a tested for its strength and courage. It did the trick, it really did. I’d touch that necklace and be reminded to push forward into uncomfortable situations. Now, I don’t need to be pushed; going places alone no longer bothers me.

For 2014 I resolved to take and post more photos on this blog and if you follow it at all you’ll know that resolution got broken rather early in the year. My smart phone takes more photos of my thumb than anything else and my favorite camera is too heavy to lug around. I also picked another “widow’s mantra” to see me through the year and that turned out to be a mixed bag of marbles and feathers. I had picked ‘seek contentment’ and I envisioned that happening by doing two things: 1) Keeping a tighter lid on my expectations, and 2) using the social circles I had established in 2013 to find a few good friends within. I felt I had the bones to have a more satisfying life and I just needed to flesh them out. So here it is the dawning of 2015 and I can say I’ve gotten a good handle on managing my expectations over this past year---move that one over to the ‘success column.’ But I’m about ready to call it a big goose egg on finding a few close friends. I have many friendly acquaintances in the Red Hat Society and at the senior hall but I don’t see any of them developing beyond that. Hanging out in those two groups, though, is something to do and is good for a few laughs but that’s about it.

So, I’m off to Emerald City to ask the Wizard of Oz for a friend. If only it were that easy…but on second thought, maybe it is. When Dorothy, Toto and the trio of misfits they picked up along the way saw the Wizard didn’t they, essentially, learn they already had it inside themselves to get what they all sought? Sure, they believed in the Wizard long enough to think the useless items they got from him had special powers, but by the end of the movie Glinda the Good Witch set them straight on that score. The power was in them all along. And for me that lesson does apply, meaning if I look at my life through honest eyes I already have good friends---relatives and others I’ve known for decades who have been there for me, and would be again if I had a true emergency or I just needed to talk.

Hey, that gives me an idea! For 2015 I think I’ll pick for my mantra: “Hoe the row you’ve already got and don’t go off looking for new seeds to plant.” I don’t need new friends as much as I need to cherish the ones I’ve got.  And wouldn’t you know it, e-Bay has a Glinda the Good Witch charm I can get to remind me that I already have what I’ve been moaning and groaning was missing in my life.

What was I thinking? My soul mate is gone and a dozen brand new friends isn’t going to fill that void and that is a simple fact of life in the wild and crazy territory we call Widowhood.  ©

The Storm Continues…

The November storm that has dumped enough snow to bury the dog and then some---a total of 24.6 inches---is still going strong. Many schools are still closed, my street is a mess with no cars in sight and already TV viewers are being advised to shovel their flat roofs so they don’t cave in. Usually, that comes much later in the season.   

I'm so cut off from the world I feel like Tom Hanks in the movie, Cast Away, only my ‘Wilson’ is trapped in the nature strip behind the house, covered with snow and probably as lonely as I am. Like Tom’s character in the movie, before the storm I caught myself talking to that ball and I even thought about drawing a face on him before I came to my sense. The powers of nature always push stray balls up my street and around my house until they get caught in the weeds or I pick them up and put them on the deck for Levi’s amusement. Over the years I’ve seen many beach and soccer balls circle my house 5 or 6 times before they get trapped in the back. It’s fascinating how the lay of the landscaping and the wind makes that happen. But I swear if a tornado is ever in the area my house will go up and Levi and I would be wandering around like Dorothy and Toto in the Wizard of Oz.

Old people seem to talk about their bird-feeders a lot so I will follow suit and share the fact that my feeders need a traffic light to keep the chickadees, finches, cardinals, titmouse, mourning doves, blue jays and woodpeckers from fighting over the prime positions. I’ve even had a huge Northern Harrier sitting on my deck rail---probably hunting for mice. What the heck is he still doing in town? He should be on his way to Central America. I’ve gone through an alarming quantity of seed this week. My feeders are just eight feet away from my door and very accessible from my deck and I suspect my neighbors aren’t able to get out to their feeders to resupply them which would explain why so many birds are dining at my house. The bummer part, though, is with my arm sling I’ve had to resort to using smaller feeders because I can’t lift my large feeders up to their hooks using just one arm. I’ve had to refill the little ones twice a day since the storm began.

I made a decision this morning to spend the afternoon reading The Hunger Games. I was probably the last person in the world to see the movie so I figured I might as well be the last person in the world to read the book. Amazon.com make decisions like that too easy to follow through. A quick download and it’s on your Kindle.  I’m not a fan of doomsday or dystopian themes in fiction where civilizations break down into factions of dominate, decadent or exploitative people who rule over the have-nots but on the other hand, I do like to understand pop culture and what makes people world-wide like to read popular stuff like The Hunger Games franchise. Snow days are good for reading if nothing else.

The snow is supposed to end during the coming night. Hopefully that will give the road crews a chance to catch up so I can get out tomorrow. If not, oh well. I won’t starve to death. Mostly what I need to do is replenish the protein mix for the diet I’ve been on. Speaking of which, I’ve lost enough weight so that I’ve had to buy a smaller pair of pants for when I leave the house and this morning I realized my pajamas are so big they are actually a trip hazard. I don’t need any more falls so they will be the first of my clothing to get purged from the closet. If I keep this up, it going to be fun in the spring when I can go shopping for a whole new wardrobe. Just think, my goal was just to get into the smallest of the three sizes already in my closet. ©