Missed Opportunities

My social life is nonexistent at the moment and not because I didn’t have events written on my day planner. It’s nonexistent because I’m not paying close enough attention to life beyond the downsizing rut/routine I’ve been in the past two months. Saturday I was supposed to go to a yearly Red Hat Society party which was one of the two super-sized, dress-up events of the year. I was looking forward to it but I got so distracted getting stuff ready for auction that I totally forgot on Friday to lay out my Red Hat garb. Saturday morning, I got up and went to recycling, Goodwill, the farmers market and grocery store….just like I do any other Saturday and it wasn’t until Sunday that I realized I missed the party! Crap.

Monday I made my weekly trip to the auction house---only one or two more to make before I’ll switch to eBay for a winter of serious downsizing. It's bittersweet to see so many of Don's things disappear from the house but at least it feels like I'm moving forward, making good progress. Even if I end up staying in this house at least I'll be making it mine instead of living with the past so up front and center. I'm not getting rid of all of his stuff. With a lot of things the decisions are easy but with others I ask myself, "Does this give me joy?" and if I answer ‘yes’, I keep it. If I can’t decide I set it aside and revisit that decision another day.

While driving to auction house I heard a song on the radio called Amazed by Lonestar. It’s one that never, ever fails to give me erotic thoughts and daydreams of being young and newly in love with Don.

“Baby when you touch me

I can feel how much you love me

And it just blows me away

I've never been this close to anyone or anything

I can hear your thoughts

I can see your dreams”

“I can hear your thoughts. I can see your dreams.” We never lost that in all the years we were together and I still miss sharing that kind of depth with another person. We widows sure handle that missing-the-deep-stuff differently, don’t we. One widow friend is a dating machine, trying to find a new man. That’s not for me. At a widow’s blog I visit occasionally she says she still cries a lot and her husband died around the same time as Don. That's not me either. All three of us are lonely in crowd, so to speak. We all get out and about with friends and have activities going on in our lives, but it’s not enough. Why isn't it enough?

Before I talk myself into a melancholy mood I’m switching to a new topic: my non-existent Tuesday social event. I was supposed to go to a Write and Share Meetup and this time I was determined not to miss it like I did with the Red Hat party. I packed up my stuff and got to the library where we’ve been meeting the second Tuesday every month since the group started but instead of a room filled with would-be writers little kids were waiting for story time. I checked with the librarian to see if they had moved ‘Write and Share’ to another room and she couldn’t find a room reservation anywhere. “I just got the email reminder yesterday,” I said. “You’re probably at the wrong library branch,” she replied. When I got home I went to the MeetUp website and thankfully I wasn’t the only one who had the same experience. I say “thankfully” because between missing this and the Red Hat party I was getting seriously worried about my brainpower petering out. This morning the organizer of ‘Write and Share’ sent an email and I quote: “Oh crap! I’ll get this straighten out before next month.” Oh, crap indeed. It seems the organizer thought the room was reserved until further notice but it was only reserved for the summer.

Friday is redemption day. My Movie and Lunch Club is supposed to meet and I’m determined nothing short of an earth quake is going to keep me from a date with Tom Hanks and iHop. The movie, The Bridge of Spies, is one I am looking forward to seeing. But I have a confusion to make. I had it written on my day planner for next Friday the 23^rd instead of the 16^th.  Thankfully, they sent an email reminder. Please tell me I’m not the only screw up! ©

A Widow’s First World Problems

It was raining on Friday when my house cleaner came for my monthly appointment. I’m to the point where I’m thinking it’s more trouble than it’s worth to have someone clean. The service charges me $27 an hour but the girls who actually do the cleaning only get paid $10 so there isn’t much incentive for them to work, should they want to take a long weekend off and lately I’m getting a different girl every month. Having a cleaning service was one luxury widowhood brought into my life that I really enjoyed at first. The girl who was assigned to me was a college kid studying to be a social worker and we had the best conversations while she worked but she’s moved on and all I’ve gotten since is a string of strangers. Can you believe I’m sitting there getting all bitchy, old person cranky about a first world problem? The strangers have done a passable job cleaning and I have no right to expect them to be able to carry on a decent conversation, too. But I do. Are humans ever truly happen with what we have? When we have luxuries not everyone can afford, most of us still want more. And that admission reminds me that all roads lead back to gratitude. When we don’t have gratitude, we become sourpusses. When we do have it we’re on the Zen Lane of life, seeking and often finding the fragile balance that keeps us happy.

I was so far from being Zen-like this past week when I was at my new monthly Write and Share MeetUp that I’m amazed I could even spell the word. At least I think I could. I didn’t try it at the time. Reading out loud freaked me out---again---and half way through the reading I realized I needed to slow down. I was making too many mistakes and I had to let go of the fear if I wanted to live to tell about it. I had picked a blog entry from my old caregiver days to share, one of my favorite humorous pieces that I’m thinking about putting in a book about living with language disorders. I started writing that book last year but quickly decided my widowhood was too fresh to be re-reading what I wrote about my life before Don died. Now, I think I can look back at that chapter of my life using an editor’s eye to hone my blog material into a story without me getting pulled into another round of grief.

When I finished reading to the group a conversation broke out about how people deal with stress. I knew my friends in the stroke community where I was blogging at the time I wrote the piece got my use of humor to convey stressed-out emotions but I wanted to find out if my writing style was strong enough to convey that to people who aren’t familiar with language disorders. The people in my writers group were my guinea pigs and they passed the test, they got me. If you want to see if you’d pass, click on this link to read: You’re in the Dog House Now!

Switching Topics: My new young neighbor guy is like a friendly puppy---energy in motion, feet too big for his skinny body and a perpetual grin on his face like he's been drinking goofy juice. But we might be having “an issue.” Last week a crew of young guys were like honey bees on a hive, swarming all over the hated two story deck in his back yard but in the process of taking it down and moving trucks and trailers back there one of them hit a 3’x3’ electrical junction box on the property line that services the whole the cul-de-sac. The tire tracks to the “crime” were as plain to see as Washington’s nose on Mount Rushmore. They also took out one of my irrigation thingamajigs. The next day I called the power company to report the junction box being off its cement foundation and within a half hour they came out with a boom truck to reset it. “That’s a dangerous situation,” one of the workers told me. He also said their “detective team” will study the photos he took and probably call my neighbor “to get his side of it. He may claim your lawn care service hit it.”

Oh, crap, that’s no way to start out a relationship with a brand new neighbor. (I had already decided to eat the cost of the service call from my irrigation company in the spirit of getting along.) It seems the electric company detectives, though, do their best to find someone to pin the bill on and I’m not going to be happy if it’s me since I’m the one who called it in. Another first world problem. Breathe, Jean, breathe. I have electricity every day. Regularly without interruption. I have enough money in the checking account to pay for a boom truck bill, should I begrudging have to pay it. And I have a new, young neighbor who has already borrowed a wrench which means he’s obligated to open my next new pickle jar. And those are all good things to write down in a gratitude journal. ©

The Whiny Widow

There’s a teaser promo that’s been coming on TV all week long for the finale of season six of The Good Wife, a legal drama that I haven’t watched since season one. In the promo it shows the main character, Alicia, saying, “I don’t have any friends and I don’t know why.” If there’s more to the promo than that one line, it’s going right over my head because that single sentence haunts me long after the promo is over. I’m venturing a guess---and I could be embarrassingly off base---that she has no friends because her husband and her once-best friend slept together and as a consequence she doesn’t trust or confide in others. She's a guarded person plus she’s busy being a mother and a defense attorney. How’s that for analyzing a TV character I barely know? I might just have to watch the show tonight to see why that promo line is the teaser to a storyline that’s supposed to hold viewers over to season seven in the fall.

“I don’t have any friends and I don’t know why.” That could be my theme song except for the fact that I do know why I don’t have any friends. Heck, I’ve spent all week long trying to puzzle out an explanation that doesn’t come off sounding whiny or like an excuse or a cry for someone to fix me. I’m not doing any of those things but if I was, “whiny” would probably come the closest to the truth. I’m just trying to make peace with the way things are in my life. And I guess this would be a good place to state the obvious, that I lost my very best friend and soul mate when my husband died. Before that happened, I didn’t sit around thinking about friends. Duh, I didn’t have that hole that needs filling. Like The Good Wife, I no longer have a confidante. Waaaa! Well, except for this blog. Whine, whine, whine and yes, I’ve got cheese to go with that.

Okay, moment of truth: It’s misleading to say I don’t have friends. The trouble is my closest friends and family---the ones where the give-and-take and the conversations flow seamlessly---don’t live close-by. And all the technology in the world isn’t going to give you a satisfying hug. Waaaa. Though I did get a hug this week from the son-I-wish-I-had. He stopped by. I love that guy. We chattered back and forth like a couple of magpies on a clothesline.

In the making-new-friends department, it doesn’t help that I’ve always been an independent person who is not afraid to be alone. I have this theory that it’s the people who don’t like being alone who evolve into extroverts. They invite, they organize, and they draw people to them to keep them company; me I’ve always been able to entertain myself so I depend on the extroverts to get me out of the house and away from my hobbies. Thank you, extroverts. You are an important pillar in the social order of old maids and widows. Do your thing. Just tell me where to be, when and what to bring.

I had hoped to sign up for some Olli classes this summer but everything they’re offering is dark and heavy like: The Dawn of the Nuclear Age, The Bubonic Plague, and Death Acceptance. Yuck yuck and yuck. Someone must have kidnapped all the artists and writers who normally teach the fun stuff because there isn’t a single thing in the new Osher Lifelong Learning Institute catalog that I’m interested in taking. Twenty-six classes and not one is a remotely upbeat class except for Chinese Music which conflicts with my Movie and Lunch Club. Whine, whine, whine. I am turning into a broken record. 

I have a busy week coming up. Monday and Tuesday I’m helping with the Mother’s Day banquet at the senior hall. That first day, I'll be helping to decorate the hall and setting the tables for 110 guests and on Tuesday I’ll help get the beverages ready, dish out the catered food and clean up after everyone is gone. Then later in the evening I’m going to my first “Write and Share MeetUp" at the library. Wednesday I’m going to a live musical production downtown. Thursday I have carpet cleaners coming and on Friday my Movie and Lunch Club meets. Yup, I keep throwing things into that hole in my life, hoping one day I’ll look back and say, “Where did it go? I don’t see it anymore.” I just wish I didn’t feel so restless in the meantime. What I really need is a meditation class so I can turn that whiny “Waaaa” of mine into Ommmm.  ©