The Past, Present and Future

I’m sitting here at the computer like I’m in a penalty box, fingers not moving or rather I should say they aren’t writing anything I’ve planned out in my head. Ramble writing, see what comes, yup, that’s always fun. Jeez, how long will I sit in the penalty box waiting for inspiration strike? Until it does. That’s the way the big boys like Stephen King do it, they write even when it feels like punishment.

While I’m sitting here doing my time---two hours every morning---I’m dreading my afternoon project. I’m going to be unpacking some stuff of my husband’s in the garage, things that I moved out of an antique booth, last year. Hopefully I can sell it off wholesale to an antique dealer who is coming over for a private showing. I’m grouping stuff and pricing it so low I have high hopes that he’d open up his wallet and say, “Sold!” to everything on the table. I want so badly to finally see an ending to that chapter of my life. Not that I still won’t have to be in e-Bay hell again this summer, but with the gas station memorabilia finally gone, I can start in on one of my husband’s other collections. Next on the agenda will be little boy toys that big boys like to collect. In my husband’s case, he grew up poor and had a lot of toy envy when he was a kid which he more than made up for as an adult. I want to sell off the toys and their showcase in the library so I can move my computer in its place to make the room into a library/office combination. Call it staking a claim on the house as a single woman because that's what it will be. This summer I should also work on downsizing my books. I downsized books once before, when we moved here 12-13 years ago and I cried the whole time so I’m not looking forward to that project. 

Growing up poor sure molds your life, dreams, fears and attitudes doesn’t it. It turned my husband into a workaholic. His fear of being poor, of having bill collectors come to the door and getting utilities shut off like they did when he was a kid, drove him to always have more than one source of income going. He spent over thirty years working as tool and diemaker in the auto industry where forced overtime was the norm for many years. Yet that wasn’t enough, he had five rental properties and a parking lot maintenance business on the side that brought in more money than his full time job. And have I mentioned that we also had booths in three antique malls at one point in time? Life was busy and the apartments sure taught us a lot about painting, plastering and remodeling while the parking lot maintenance business taught us a lot about asphalt, line stripping, sweeping and snow plowing. As a kid I never dreamed of riding in a street sweeper much less owning one. Don did and that dream came true. Even so—and I know this is going to sound strange---but in some ways I think he was happier after his massive stroke when he was no longer in charge of keeping all those balls in the air, when I was solely responsible for keeping our lives together. God, I’m so glad I could give him that...along with building a house, which had been on our Bucket Lists. Now that I don’t have all those balls to juggle I think I need to learn how to relax and just be. I get antsy when I'm at home, thinking I should be some place. I get antsy when I’m off having fun, like I should be doing something at home. Hopefully, I still have a few years left to figure it out a balance.

The house next door has been in foreclosure since January. Have I mentioned that? They’ve finally set a date for an auction where people will be bidding on the place “as is” without getting to tour the inside and without any warranties. Cash on the barrow head, no mortgages. All week long a stream of people have been walking around it, peeking in the windows. It feels like I have a front row seat to an episode of HGTV’s Flip or Flop. If you watch that show you’ll know it’s a crap shoot. Sometimes the flipper lucks out and they find the houses have not been destroyed inside, other times they find electrical fixtures, copper pipes, toilets, etc., have been stripped out and the walls and flooring deliberately damaged. What surprises me is that none of the people walking around have come over to me or the other neighbors to ask a few questions. I was outside working in the yard one day, within speaking distance but no one asked, “Did you see your neighbors moving out?” “Do you know if they took the marble counter-tops with them?” “Were they the type of people to pour cement down the drains before they left?” That’s what I’d do---I’d ask questions, try to give myself an edge when the auction starts. But then I’d die of stress buying a house sight unseen. Flippers are short term investors. They want to get the rehabbing done as quickly as possible so they can put the house back on the market. With any luck I’ll get new neighbors by mid-summer and with even more luck they’ll be great assets to the cul-de-sac.  Life goes on…..  ©

Note: Photo above is of the farm where Don grew up taken after being struck by a tornado. It was struck twice by tornadoes, ten years apart. Just two of the unfortunate hardships his family went through.

Red Hats on Memory Lane

 

It’s been a while since I’ve made it to a monthly Red Hat Society tea or a walk-about---since the Christmas party to be exact. The roads conditions last winter was the biggest reason but Wednesday that streak was broken by our annual spring thrift shop crawl. I’m not a big fan of shopping with other women---I like to form my own opinions on whether or not something is right for me without the pressure of someone else, perhaps, egging me on. But where ever there is a group of women, shopping seems to be a common denominator to get together, like bowling or golf for guys.

There was a time when I knew the location of every antique store and mall, every flea market, and all the pawn shops, thrift and junk shops in a tri-county area. Don was addicted to them. So image my surprise when the thrift shop crawl took us to a large mall less than two miles from home that I didn’t know had been there for the past three years. It was a collection of booths filled with re-purposed goods, antiques and crafts and I ran into a showcase I sold last year! I know it was the same one because the same chip was in one of the glass shelves. The spooky part was it was filled with the same kinds of gas station memorabilia "smalls" that Don and I had it filled up with. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the guy who now owns it was one of my best customers the year after Don died, when I had a booth in an antique mall. Was it serendipity running into my old showcase? Only time will tell. I left my phone number with the mall owner to ask the showcase owner to call me if he's interested in a wholesale deal on more "smalls."

To keep the trip down Memory Lane going, the restaurant the Red Hatters picked to eat lunch at was decorated in antique gas station memorabilia like Route 66 and other porcelain signs, oil cans, gas globes and pumps from the early 1900s---like what once covered the walls of our three stall garage. There were twelve of us at lunch and the conversation at the long table went on so long after we had finished eating that I was getting antsy to get out of there. Spending a childhood where I wasn’t allowed to leave the dinner table until bedtime if I hadn’t eaten all my food still haunts me after all these years. I was a stubborn kid, I wouldn’t eat anything orange or the liver served once a week. No matter how stimulating the conversation might be, I can’t get past the feeling of being punished if I have to sit at a dinner table too long and I get obsessed with why people aren't cleaning up their plates or getting take-out boxes. Get that food out of my sight, for crying out loud, before I feel compelled to eat your left overs!

I still have one winter project to finish up before moving on to spring things---getting my 2014 blogs enters ready to print in a hard-copy book. The book is just for me. I’ve always been a diary person and turning a blog into a book is just a modern way of doing a diary. Proof reading a year’s worth of posts, though, tends to get me side-tracked into reflecting on past feelings and actions which, of course, is one of the values (or curses) of keeping a diary or blog. I’m finding things that indicate growth in acceptance of a life lived alone and in finding a direction to go that will truly make me happy. I’m not quite there yet but I can see it on the horizon. I still feel the sense of pressure to hurry up and get there and being with the Red Hat Society ladies again drove that feeling even stronger. Three of the ladies have had breast cancer treatments recently and a couple of our members have died since last fall. 

Life is short and I waste too much time thinking about the future (and perhaps the past) rather than living in the present. One of my Red Hat sisters is quite the opposite. She's a member of four chapters and a bunch of church groups. She gets up a 4:00 AM, does her house work and is on the go every single day and most evenings. She’s a widow, too, and I wonder sometimes if she isn’t running from the loneliness she feels if she stays home but in the end, does it matter? She says she’s happy when she’s busy. She’s found her way. Me? I like being alone and I like being with other people; it’s finding the right balance between the two that I’m still working on. Or rather it’s finding the right combinations of quality activities to get me out of the house. Otherwise, I might easily take the lazy way out and aspire to be a hermit, a misunderstood dreamer who stays in her bathrobe until noon. Which reminds me of an interview I saw recently of a young movie star. He was asked why he's so often photographed without his shirt on and he said, "Because I hate doing laundry." Ya, me too, I thought while trying to keep a straight face, that's why I don't rush to get dressed in the morning. If you believe that, I've got a bridge for sale.... ©

Widows in Gilded Cages and Other Irrelevant Things

My Thanksgiving Day spent with near strangers turned out good. I had a pleasant conversation with the hostess who is a nice lady and I was grateful that I wasn’t one of the two people she asked to say a prayer before we all made our way through the food line. I sat next to my nephew during dinner---the group was made up of people in his wife’s family---and the food was tasty. After we ate I was invited to play a card game called B.S. (or 'bull shit' if you’re trying to Google it). Playing the game involves lying and deceit and I played with a large group ages 15 to 78. I found out I can’t get away with lying. I got caught nearly every time.

Then I came home and spent the entire night and Black Friday being sick and living on anti-diarrhea pills and Gatorade. I don’t know if it was something I ate or if I caught one of the bugs going around but my symptoms were more in line with food poisoning. I’ve hesitated calling anyone who was at the dinner to find out if I was the only one who go sick. It just doesn’t feel right to do that. On the good side, I didn’t gain any weight over thanksgiving and I didn’t bring home any of the offered leftovers just to throw out and make me feel guilty if the source of my food poisoning turned out to be something else.

Saturday afternoon I got all the ‘guy bling’ out of my rented showcase/booth at the antique mall….all six shelves worth of gas station and car related advertising giveaways, many of which are smaller than a quarter. You just never know when you walk into a place like that if you’re going to find that coveted Mercedes stick pin for your ascot, a brass token worth a free gallon of gas for your new 1939 Desoto coupe` or a 1914 gauge to check the air pressure on your balloon tires. Need an empty, embossed glass oil bottle to fill and sell in front of your hardware store to those crazy people who think cars will catch on and horses will all be put out to pasture one day? I still have one left. This is the kind of stuff I’ve been selling at the mall since Don passed away. I’ve done well. Between eBay for the big stuff and the mall for small stuff, I’ve downsized an entire three stall garage full of gas station and car related stuff and I’m now down to a few boxes of smalls that I was able to bring home in the trunk of my car. I might try a smaller venue closer to home next spring or do eBay again. I haven’t decided.

When I found out what my final check from the mall will be, I promptly came home and ordered the smart phone I’d been lusting after and for a shocking $59.00 savings because I had ordered on Black Friday weekend. Who knew? Then I arranged for the cable company to come out to upgrade me with Wi-Fi in the house and I got a bundle that is actually going to save me $100 a month plus I’ll be getting some bells and whistles I hadn’t counted on. They even waved the installation fee because it was Black Friday weekend. Apparently they want old people like me to step into the 21th century, a place I’m not sure I belong but, what the heck I’m not getting any younger. We did try digital TV with on-demand a few years back but Don couldn’t manage the complexities of the remote so we sent it back in favor of letting him have more independence in his viewing habits. With both the new phone and the cable company I’m getting a money back 30 day free trial, so we shall see how tech ready I am.

With all the things going on in my life I’m still finding the time to get bored. Or maybe it’s because there IS a lot of stuff going on in my life that I’m bored. I’m going through the motions of a full life but I haven’t fallen into the life pattern I want for myself. And who can I blame for that? I’d quote Miss. Piggy here for an answer, but I don’t know how to spell in French. Does it explain anything if I say I’m starting to feel like a bird in a gilded cage again? I know that place well. It’s the cage where you think ‘stuff’ is going to make you happy, make you forget about the unobtainable things in your life. It’s that cage you sit in, knowing you’ve got it much better than many other people and it makes you feel ashamed that what do have isn’t enough to make you truly happy. You still want that intrinsic hug or kind word from someone special in your life, that phone call that never comes to say ‘I love you.’ You want human warmth and companionship or maybe the life you left behind.

In my case, the special people I miss the most---especially around the holidays---are all deceased so I know in order to find what is missing in my life I have to keep on getting out in the world, keep on accepting invitations from near strangers. And I need to keep on asking myself to dig deeper into the Kingdom of Jean in order to make peace with what was, what is and what will be. But one nagging question keeps dogging me: who am I when I can’t find my refection in the eyes of another? No man is an island---or so they say, but I feel like one, a storm-torn island.  

Oh, boo-hoo! I hear a voice in my head saying. If you had any talent you could write yourself a country western song and it would resonate with half the population. I’m guessing that resonate-with-half-the-population idea is an important clue along the road I’m traveling? Sometimes my inner voice talks in riddles, sometimes she's full of bull and other times she's spot on. Which is it tonight? Okay, I'm going to quit typing now and go sit in my gilded cage until I can figure it out or sing like a tufted titmouse---which ever comes first.   ©

My Weekly Report, Five Days Early

I almost learned the hard way the cars are not like kittens. You can’t wean them! At the gas station today I put $37.72 worth of fuel in my little Malibu and she said, “Thank you but don’t ever try to starve me to death again!” In my defense, she should be blaming the farmer’s market. Since I’ve been going there on Saturdays I don’t need to go to the grocery store every Monday and it’s on those trips when I’d buy gas at the station connected to their parking lot. No groceries, no gas. What can I say? I’m old and set in my ways.

I had a great day today starting out with the weather being as perfect as a summer day in Michigan gets---warm but not humid and sunny with a bright blue sky. Mid morning I took the dog for a walk down the nature trail before dropping him off at his fancy-schmancy groomers. Then I made stops at Starbucks, the pet store, the post office, and the city hall to pay my summer taxes before going to my own haircut appointment. After that I stopped at Lowe’s, the gas station, the dollar store, K-Kmart and Starbucks again before picking the dog back up. I call days like this my Hundred Dollar Days because running this chain of errands always costs that much and even more this time because, sadly, cars really aren’t like kittens. Bummer! In between stops I had the radio turned up full volume and the sun roof open and the sweet smell of summer was on the wind. Like I said, it was a great day and if I’m not mistaken, to top it off an old dude at Lowe’s was flirting with me. It’s been so long I’m not sure.

I also did something today that I haven’t done in twenty years. I ran. Imagine that! It wasn’t a conscious choice but we can blame the William Tell Overture---the Lone Ranger theme song---for it happening. I had downloaded it to my iPod and instead of walking with that fast-paced music before I knew it I was trotting along…all 9.57 minutes of it. Old ladies shouldn’t be doing that! I'd be a damn fool if I ever do it again. I’d chance falling and breaking another bone. But I couldn’t help it; I love that Hans Zimmer 'Finale' version. Listening to it makes me feel young again, like it was just yesterday that I spent Saturday afternoons watching double feature western movies and spent afternoons in between playing cowboys and Indians with my summertime friends at the cottage. I need to work on putting together a “safer” playlist for walking on the trails. Maybe a little Michael Buble` who’s music often makes me glide like one of Frank Sinatra’s showgirls. 

“When marimbas start to play
Hold me close, make me sway
Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore
Hold me close, sway me more.”

Have you seen the panda twins born at the Atlanta Zoo last week? They are newborns in the photo above. Considering how cute they get when they are older, it’s shocking how homely they look as babies. They won’t start getting their characteristic black and white fur until they are around 25 days old. I wish human started out ugly and got cuter as we age instead of in reverse. I’m not a vain person but I bugs me that when the dog gets his fancy-schmancy haircut, he looks like an expensive Steiff teddy bear that everyone wants to hug and sleep with but when I get a haircut I look like---well, like I just got a haircut, ho-hum.  

Why you're jealous of the dog!

“I guess so. Maybe," I tell the anonymous voice in my head. “He's do damn cute! Now go away before people start questioning my mental health.”  ©