Sadiversaries, Dreams and Signs from Beyond

It’s hard to believe that I’m closing in on six years since Don died. Sometimes I still feel his presence around me and that’s a warm, fuzzy feeling that fades as fast as it comes. At other times, it seems like a life time ago that I had him in my life and I can barely remember who I was when I was half of a whole. Enough years have gone by now that I have a predictable “widow’s cycle” in the weeks leading up to his sadiversary. For me, that manifests itself by increasing my dream life. Every night for nearly a week now I woke up either in a near panic or upset because the guy who’d been my best friend and soulmate for 42 years was lost and I couldn’t find him or I could see him but he’s always just out of reach no matter how fast I run in my dreams. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to assume that while my daytime brain has accepted my reality my nighttime brain still fights against it. I hate the first half of January but I know as soon as his sadiversary date passes, the dreams will stop. In the meantime, when a dream wakes me up I can’t fall back to sleep. And so in the middle of the cold, sleepless nights it all comes back…the missing him, the loneliness and the regrets. 

I would worry about my “widow’s cycle” if I thought it was abnormal to have one this far out but having talked with friends and acquaintances who have fifteen to twenty years under their widow’s belts, I know it’s common to have varying degrees of depression or anxiety leading up to their own sadiversaries. It’s the ‘what if’ thoughts that are hard to push aside around the time our husband’s died---even for widows who have filled their lives with meaningful things to do. For me, the isolation of winter adds another layer of anxiety and thank goodness that I’ve got a mouthy schnauzer who doesn’t care about anything but getting what he wants, when he wants it. Sometimes I wonder what would happen to me in the winters if I didn’t have him pushing me around. Let me out! Let me in! Give me a treat! Time for breakfast. Treat---Give! Me! One! Right! Now! Play with me. Let me out again. Let me in! Levi goes on like that all day long. If not for him barking orders at me, my Fitbit wouldn’t rack up nearly as many steps per day as it does. 

I was supposed to go to a rescheduled Red Hat Society Christmas party today but it got canceled. Again. And it won’t be rescheduled a second time although there is talk of having a party later on to welcome spring when it comes or a Christmas in July party. The temperatures are barely above zero, it will be snowing all day and it’s too cold for the salt trucks to do any good on the icy roads. At least I’ll get to keep the scarf I bought for the gift exchange. I seriously didn’t want to give it away. I even plotted that I could “accidently” forget to bring it to the party as an excuse for not taking part in the game they play to exchange gifts. I’ve never done that but once at a party with another group where we each got to choose the still-wrapped gift we’d go home, I picked the gift I brought. Why gamble when you know you’ll like the one you bought? That’s my no-excuses thought process. I am what I am.

I’m sitting here pretending I still have something more to write about, but it’s just a stall tactic to avoid going outside to shovel snow and feed the birds. Yes, I gave in last week and bought some bird seed for the ground feeders. I wasn’t going to feed anything but the woodpeckers this winter and I haven’t been since last spring. But I reasoned that there’s too much snow on the ground for any mice that might be in the basement to make their way to the birdseed which is what I was worried about. The fall before last I found a stash of seed in the basement, carefully laid away by some industrious mouse. There must have been fifty saffron seeds carried one at a time across the yard, down the basement wall, across the floor and hidden in a storage box on a shelf. It was such a Herculean task that little mouse accomplished and I felt bad about throwing out his stash and replacing it with d-CON. Why do we punish these gatherers in nature but we feed the birds that don’t plan ahead? And I dislike it when my mind goes to questions like that because some people use that same line of thinking as an excuse for not wanting their tax dollars to go towards helping others who might not have planned well for hard times. I understand that logic but it gives a blind-eye to the Herculean mice-types in our society who did plan ahead but somehow they'd lost their personal "pile of saffron" through no fault of their own. 

As I sat here writing today, I saw a single mourning dove eating at my ground feeder outside the window. She gave me pause for thought because they normally mate for life and it’s very rare to see one traveling along. If they’ve lost their mate they’ll buddy up with another couple. Was her appearance tied into my “widow’s cycle” somehow, someway? A sign from beyond? Sign or not, her appearance made me smile. We are all children of Mother Nature---mice, doves and widows all following her preordained rhythms. ©

Mice and Memorial Day

The holiday weekend brought a glut of cars to the highways, most of them around here were headed north to open up summer cottages on one of Michigan’s 11,000 inland lakes or going to cabins out in the boondocks where off-road recreational vehicles reign supreme. Over 3,000 other weekend warriors on the roads were pulling campers or were loaded up with camping gear headed to one of the state campgrounds. The lucky ones had reservations for the coveted campsites right on the beach. There is nothing better than waking up to the sight and sounds of water lapping the sand and seagulls looking for breakfast. Scoring a campsite away from the beach under the White Pines comes in a close second. Michiganders love Memorial Day weekends and it might seem like the original meaning of the holiday gets lost in mini vacations but it hasn’t. The stream of cars going in and out of the cemeteries the week before the holiday is as much of a tradition as having hot dogs and hamburgers on an outdoor grill. The military memorial services still go on. The Scout troops still clean up the veteran’s parks. The cemeteries are bright with flowers and flags and fresh cut grass and we remember... Boy, do we remember with feature stories in the media, war movie marathons on TV, Facebook posts and personal blogs.

This time of the year I'm wistful remembering trips up north. I cross over the highway and see the bumper to bumper traffic below and wish I was down there on my way to or from having fun, but my days of camping are long gone. Instead, I joined the homebody Michiganders who flood places like Lowe's and garden centers for do-it-yourself project supplies. The homebodies hate having sand up their bathing suits, fighting traffic and sharing showers with spiders in rustic campgrounds where a midnight walk with a flashlight to the public bathroom will not be enough to scare off the raccoons looking for careless campers who forgot to lock up their food.

I came back from my trip to Lowe's armed with ammunition for the war I’ve planned against mice. I have two coming to my bird feeder---at least I think I’m seeing two different size mice---but I’ve never seen them together. I want them dead because for the past 3-4 winters I’ve had signs of mice in my basement. I bait them down there, they eat the d-Con and I rarely see them dead. But I can’t bait them outside because of the birds and rabbits. First I tried a trap that the mice are supposed to go inside and not be able to escape but a clever mouse sprung it and moved it two feet off the path to the feeder. Next I dug a plastic paint pail into the ground below the feeder and I put a few sunflower seeds in the bottom. The birds should be able to get out if they go after the seed, but I’m told mice will not be able to climb up the slippery sides. Three days and no mice in the pail. One side of me is relieved. I don’t want them to suffer for days trying to scale the white wall before giving themselves a heart attack and I don’t think I could drop a rock on a mouse trapped in the bottom of a pail. I do own a BB gun but I’d probably shoot into the pail and have the BB bound back and put my eye out instead of killing the mouse. Can mice swim? Could I drown them?

It breaks my heart but after the rest of my birdseed is gone I’m no longer going to feed the birds except for those that eat jelly and the sugar water. I found a little stash of seeds in the basement and that was the last straw. No wonder condo communities have rules about feeding birds. I will miss seeing my cardinals and woodpeckers. Maybe I’ll get one of those videos they make for cats to watch of birds doing bird things inside the TV set.

My husband worked at a funeral home during high school and the experience indoctrinated him for life to the importance of being there to support the living and remember the dead. Decorating graves for Memorial Day was a big deal for him. I remember it all. Oh yes, the holiday get-aways but making sure the family graves were well tended before we went. I have not been to the cemetery yet to tend to Don’s stone but I’ll go soon. Half of it will be covered over with sand and I’ll carefully clean the gray granite and glue another Snoopy trinket on the corner that by fall will be in the pocket of some random kid...unless this year I put the Snoopy on the bait platform of a mouse trap that can snap down on little fingers that try to steal it. I suppose there’s a rule against that. Like condos, the cemeteries around here have rules for everything. ©

Don, I still miss your "Snoopy days."

Mannequins, Movies and Mice

One of the ladies from The Gathering invited me to be her guest at a meeting of the local chapter of the American Sewing Guild. We’d been taking about needing inspiration and, she said, that was the place to get it. She wasn’t kidding. The ASG, according to their pamphlet, “was founded in 1978 for the purpose of preserving and promoting the sewing arts through sewing education and activities for sewing enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels.” The night I went the speaker talked about the benefits of making your own duct tape mannequin. Yes, duct tape. I used to sew my own clothing starting back in high school and the two decades that followed---even took tailoring classes in college---but I never had my own mannequin. A google search will find tutorials and photos galore of duct tape mannequins. I never knew it was a popular trend! Oh my gosh, if I still sewed clothing for myself I would have signed up for one of the classes that, by the end of the day, would have you walking out with a duct tape version of your own body type---flaws and all. The speaker had a wonderful sense of humor and had us laughing frequently. 

After Mannequin Lady finished and snacks were serviced there was a show-and-tell which was also punctuated with laughter as women told the kind of stories all sewers can relate to---happy and sad accidents and one-of-a-kind treasures. One woman made a wonderful suit but discovered after making both pieces that the fabric dye lots for the top and bottom are noticeably different. She’d bought part of the fabric online and the other part locally and no way could she wear the two pieces together. It was clear there was a lot of talent and creativity in the room of fifty women and a few men. Some wore their show-and-tell and others did a “Vanda White” as they displayed an assortment of bags and purses, showing off techniques they’d learned at a recent retreat. One quilt top blew me away with its unusual color scheme and 1920s art deco vibe, a project started by a mother years ago and a daughter took on to finish.

As much fun as I had that night, I’m not sure if I’m going to join the guild. I was hoping there would be more handcrafts but that was probably my misunderstanding of the ASG and I’m thinking a quilters bee or knitters club would fit my area of crafting interests more at this point in my life. I can barely keep my computer, printer, and other tech stuff running without pulling my hair out, I can’t imagine adding the stress of keeping stitch tensions on a sewing machine operating smoothly. It also wouldn’t be as much fun to sew for my old woman, pudgy body as it was to make A-lines dresses to go with my go-go boots back in my clubbing days. But all the ladies at the guild were friendly and excited about what’s going on in their world and I could see my younger self in their enthusiasm. It was time well spent.

The next day the son-I-wish-had came over to work on the Mouse Project. For the last three winters I’ve had mice in the basement and I wanted to see if we could figure out how they’re getting in and plug up their entrance point. It won’t be too many more years before I’ll get too old to go downstairs every few days to bait them and it wouldn’t take long for them to breed their way upstairs. (I killed nine last winter.) I had a pretty good idea where to start looking and sure enough we found two places to block with a foam sealant by Great Stuff, PESTBLOCK, especially made to block yucky things including mice. We also replaced a twelve foot section of insulation where we found signs of nesting and vacuumed up the mice droppings so we can tell if they come back. I shouldn’t say “we” because he’ll have to check since I don’t do ladders and this area is at the top of the basement wall where it meets with my sun-porch. Next I’m getting some mothballs to throw under the porch. He swears by mothballs for keeping mice out of boats and cars in storage and Google confirmed it. I have latticework around the porch so no animals will get the mothballs, but they will melt if they get too wet. Worth a try anyway. If they last through the fall, the mice will have already found homes somewhere else before the snow flies.

Yesterday my Movie and Lunch Club saw the new Tom Hanks movie, Sully, which was about the 2009 water landing of US Airways Flight 1549 dubbed the ‘Miracle on the Hudson.’ The film focused mostly on the aftermath that was not made public at the time---the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation while Sully was being treated like a hero in public. The board was pushing the narrative that Sully needlessly endangered his 155 passengers and crew when he didn’t turn the plane back to the airport. Eventually, Sully was cleared of any wrong doing and a lot was riding on that decision: large insurance claims involving the airline and manufacturer, not to mention Sully’s pilot license and pension rights. We all walked out of the theater feeling good about our movie experience. It was an engaging story, well told. ©