I Need a Nondisclosure Agreement with Myself

 I also need a volleyball named Wilson to talk to like Tom Hawks had in the Cast Away movie.  Thankfully, I have a dog even though he’s a boring conversationalist. “Give me a treat!” he barks then repeats: “I said give me a treat. Right. Now!” “Open the door!” “I said open the door. Right. Now!” Ya, Levi’s a demanding housemate who only think of himself. If I need a hug he’s not on board. If I need him to quit barking at the neighbor’s dog, he’ll give me that look. The one that says, “You’re not the boss of me.” But he IS a living organism that's keeping me sane during the pandemic so I put up with him mouthiness. A volleyball would be easier to live with though.

I’ve never thought of myself as a person who needed others around me to be happy. Having no children and working out of my home for the majority of my working years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time alone. But this pandemic is starting to make me feel disconnected from society and not in a good way. Sure, I’m connected through Facebook, e-mails, text messages and through listening to television playing in the background of my life, but the people on the other end of those various forms of communication are starting to not feel real. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like the world is becoming all digitized and robotic and all my social contacts are like Alexa or Siri---voices with no hug-able bodies attached, no eye contact to make them real.

Speaking of Alexa, aside from missing her old voice---they soften the voice to sound more real---I also miss her spelling words for me every morning. My Kindle quit charging and no amount of trouble shooting would bring it back to life. During the pandemic reading trashy books has become my lifeline and this past week I’ve been in reading withdrawn hell. That is until I discovered that my old Kindle 3 still works, after four years of inactivity. Thankfully, I didn’t get around to taking it to electronics recycling and now I won’t. Ever. But without a light-up screen it’s not as good for reading in bed like my Kindle Fire 8 was. I was planning to get a Fire 10 next summer anyway because it has a few features I wanted like Zoom and a better/louder speaker so I can listen to books and I figure the bigger screen will be better for watching movies, when I'm ready to do Netflix's. But I’ve been sitting on my fingers to keep me from ordering the new Fire because I’d just purchased a new computer chair (after my old one broke) and I wanted to pay the credit card off so I could use the points toward the Kindle. Finally the points did show up on my Amazon Card and the wait was worth $54.00. The Fire was also on sale for Christmas so for $100 and taxes a new Kindle is coming my way soon.

I’m not sure who I’ll Zoom but it would have come in handy for an e-Visit with the doctor’s office this week and that will probably be the main way I’ll use Zoom going forward. I’ve got one of those annoying UTI. I kept putting it off calling the doctor because I thought they’d make me come in to the office to leave a urine sample and with the Covid-19 raging in my state a medical office was the last place I wanted to go. I get an UTI every 4-5 years so I was pleasantly surprised that the doctor’s nursing assistant just called in a prescription. 

Aside from the usual annoying problems that an UTI causes I wanted the darn thing under control because I needed to make an appointment with the foot doctor. Across the top of my right arch is painful and by night-time the lower half of my foot swells and I could visualize it causing a blood clot if I let it go on too long. I called the office thinking it takes at least 2-4 weeks to get an appointment but they got me in two days later (today)….on the third day of my UTI medication and thankfully I got through the appointment without having to rush out of the exam room like a cheetah with its tail on fire in search of a bathroom.

I seem to be good at assuming the worst when I’m walking into a doctor’s office. I was sure I had broken a bone and would need to have surgery and/or a cast but the pain was getting too bad to ignore. Turns out the pain IS caused by a broken bone but ones I broke back in the ‘70s. The fracture lines are so full of arthritis that it’s pinching a nerve that is causing the pain, swelling, tingling and needles-and-pins feelings followed by numbness. The She Doctor doubled the dosage of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug that I take for my arm pain, wants me to use ice for 15 minutes every night on the foot and she’s sending me to a specialty shoe store to get a pair of shoes that I’m to wear in the house. No more Crocs for me! Ever! And trust me, I hated the woman for that proclamation. In six weeks I’m to go back and if doing all this stuff hasn’t helped she’ll inject some gel along the fracture lines to get some space around the pinched nerve which is the same thing my bone doctor will be doing in my shoulder at my next appointment.

Sometimes we/I spill too much personal information in my posts especially since the pandemic has kept me at home with nothing but the four walls to write about. I mean do faceless Alexa and Siri-like people out in cyberspace really need to know about my UTI or the other innate thoughts rolling around inside my head? That’s a rhetorical question. You don’t need to answer. But I do think I need to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement with myself to set some limits on my what my loosey-goosey standards allows me to type into my blog. Maybe I need to put that down for my first New Year's Resolution. ©

 Photo Note: The cast up above is the actual cast I had on my foot when I broke my foot. I had that thing on for 12 long weeks. I broke several bones in my foot when I missed a step while running down a staircase.

Mind Tricks, Isolation and Solitude

 

It’s been a hard week on my ego and loneliness meter…and that sucks. There’s that word again, the one I claim to hate but have been using too much lately. What am I whining about this time? Woe is me, there wasn't many people around to interact with this week. Ya, I know, everyone (but me) had places to go and things to do and those who didn’t were camping out in front of their air conditioners trying to avoid the blistering heat. Even the blog community has been slow. Ditto on Facebook and replies to a mass e-mail sent to my Gathering Girls group seeking RSVPs for our bimonthly brunch came in so late I was nervous we’d have to cancel. And worst of all, one of the few humans I saw all week, the cashier at the grocery store “chatted” in grunts, having left his words at home in his other pair of pants. Who knows, maybe his Guinea pig died that morning and grunts were all he could muster for a woman old enough to be his great-grandmother. Wait! Was I wearing my hearing aids? Maybe he was just a low talker like the guy featured in a Jerry Seinfeld episode.

Either way, the lady at Starbucks spoke in full sentences while she finished cleaning a machine, “I’ll be right with you, Sweetie," she said. "Give me a minute to get this back together.” Grey hair earns you nicknames like that, but I’m not complaining. The only other voice I’ve heard the past few days was the “card services” robocall-lady---Rachel---who promised to lower my rates if only I’d press #1 and give the scammer my credit card numbers. Sometimes I wish I had one of those old Chatty Cathy dolls who’d talk to me with a pull of her string. But she was a needy lump of vinyl under her nylon wig, always saying things like: “Tell me a story” and “Please brush my hair” or asking questions like, “Do you love me?” “Will you play with me?” and “May I have a cookie?” That’s just what I’d need, someone else competing with me for the cookies in the house. Levi my Might Schnauzer can smell sugar-loaded treats from two rooms over.

Four of the seven in my Gathering Girls group did show up for our two hour brunch on Monday. (The other three had medical issues keeping them from joining us.) We had a spirited conversation about books, movies and bumpy finger joints, fancy rings and the relentless heat. I love being with these ladies. We crack each other up continuously. I was the only one without some place to go on the 4rd of July. (That would be another 'woe is me' if you're counting.) I wish we all lived within cup-of-sugar-borrowing distance. Not that I have much use for raw sugar these days. I did clean, hull and mash two quarts of strawberries for shortcake that could have used sweetening. My belly and my freezer thanked me for the berries anyway. And so did Levi. He sat patiently at my knee when I cut them up waiting for the slivers he got every time 4-5 strawberries went into the stainless steel mixing bowl. He’s got great manners. Levi also got a great haircut this week. Yes, his social life was equally as isolated as mine over the holiday week. My brunch and his haircut were the sum total of our fun.  

“Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment,” wrote Jeanne Marie Laskas. “Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.” I do find that beating-of-your-own-heart solitude from time to time but I’m sure I’m not the only one who occasionally struggles to find that illusive factor that turns times of isolation into solitude. Over the Fourth, people all around me were having family time or traveling and even if I stayed off Facebook my mind’s eye could still see those happy faces and almost smell the food on their grills. (Oh, wait. that's my neighbor's grill I'm smelling. I'm guessing its steak.)

Doris Grumbach in Fifty Days of Solitude wrote: “The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.” Oh. My. God! That’s me! Apparently I need people to (metaphorically) pat me on the top of my head and feed my ego by saying, “Good girl!” Painting, writing, cooking, knitting, reading, keeping a nice house---none of those are good enough if it’s only my own voice telling me I did well. 

I send these thoughts off with the winds and whims of Mother Cyberspace hoping they’ll find someone who knows how to do the “mind trick” that transitions our hours of isolation into solitude. And it is a mind trick, something that has to come from within... ©

If this were true for humans, wouldn't I have wings like Tinker Bell by now?

Another Valentine’s Day Under my Belt

After a long stretch of dreary winter days, Valentine’s Day was so bright and beautiful I had to put sunglasses on as I drove home from the grocery store and serendipity brought Travis Tritt on my radio singing “…it's a great day to be alive. I know the sun's still shining when I close my eyes.” I was feeling good. I even had one perfect red rose with baby breath in the back seat as well as a heart shaped box with three pieces of chocolate candy inside. Heck, if there’s no one else around to treat me, why not do it myself. I love me, right? No crime in that. 

While I was picking out the rose a young man was near-by and he was studying one miniature rose plant after another trying to decide which one to buy. The ex-florist in me wanted to ask him if I could help because I could see he was leaning toward plants that were nearly bloomed out and the ones with a few flowers still in bud would last longer. I laughed at myself when it crossed my mind that he might think I was trying to flirt with him if I offered my opinion. Me 70-something and him 30-something. Dream on, old lady! My second thought was that I should write a note for him to give to the recipient of his gift, telling her she’d better appreciate the thoughtfulness he put into picking it out. He was as serious as a Tibetan monk as he studied his choices. But I had my own perfection to find and that’s not easy in this day and age when supermarket cut flowers are so jacked up on preservatives that they often don’t open. I hate that. 

When I got home I went to my Facebook page. I rarely post anything there---a few animal videos just to let people on my friends list know I’m still alive. Mostly I go there to read my news feeds and look at family photos others post. But I had something I wanted to share so when Facebook asked me “What’s on your mind?” I wrote: “It was on a bright, sunny day just like today and I was selling Valentine's Day flowers in the middle of the mall when Don came strolling in after plowing snow all night. He ended up staying to help me and he was so good with the customers. If that isn't love, then I don't know what love is. Still miss you, Don!” That day at the mall is one of those days that comes floating back to the surface when I’m trying to decide exactly when and where I was when I first knew I was in love with Don. I have five-six memories like that fighting for first place on my love-smacked list.

Like all couples, I could also conjure up a short list of memories when I wanted to kick Don to the curb. But there’s something that happens to many women when we get knighted with our WIDOW titles that diminishes memories of fights and hurt feelings and changes them into regrets or comedy skits. Not long after Don died I was in the toothpaste aisle at the grocery store and a couple was arguing over what brand of toothpaste to buy. I had a hard time resisting the temptation to step in between them with my metaphorical referee’s whistle and telling the couple to buy both brands, for crying out loud! “Isn’t having a peaceful marriage worth four bucks and a little extra space in your medicine cabinet?” I’ll never understand why people argue over trivial stuff like that. We never did that. Ya, right. It’s too bad there wasn’t a newly minted widow around the day I picked a fight with Don because the night before I had dreamed he was cheating on me with a woman who looked like Jennifer Anderson. Back in the days when Friends was the hot TV show he developed a crush on her that lasted his entire life. How does a guy defend himself against a dream? See what I mean about how fight scenarios when viewed after death could easily be turned into comedy skits? The mind is an amazing place when it’s trying to justify our own illogical behavior. 

Valentine’s Day night I dreamed something with details that are fuzzy to me now but when I woke up in the morning I was happy and I knew Don had come to visit me in my sleep. Often times my sleeping life is richer and more fun than my daytime life. And if the need to pee didn’t wake me and force me out of bed, I wouldn’t mind living in that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness. Too many mornings I throw my legs over the side of the bed and sit there for a few minutes dreading the long, lonely day ahead. I don’t know how to fix that feeling when it comes… ©