Saving the World and other 21th Century Dilemmas

I am going to start living in an alternate universe of my own making. Yup, screw the fact that nuclear annihilation is a real possibility and that my schnauzer would make a better statesman than some of those running the world. Screw the fact that sexual predators are coming out of the woodwork and that some people are using the story of the Virgin Mary and Joseph in an attempt to normalize pedophilia. I’m designating my worrying time, my advocacy time, my resistance time and my time to help save the world to the weekends and during the week I’m going to play hooky from reality. No more going to the grocery store, for example, and peering into my cart to discover that it looks like I’m stocking a new-age ark. Two bags of ethically sourced coffee, two cartons of Liberte` organic yogurt, two boxes of bio-degradable trash bags and how did those two bars of Endangered Species Dark Chocolate get into my cart? I can’t even shop without trying to save the world! 

And can we all agree that I’m not in charge of other people’s conscience? Like at the grocery store when a guy in his thirties and I were both putting groceries in our vehicles---mine in environmentally friendly cloth bags, his in plastic. When it came time to walk our carts to the cart corral he watched me go and I could see the electrodes in his brain firing back and forth, one side telling him he should follow my lead and the other side was telling him, “Screw doing the right thing!” He took his empty cart and parked it on the other side of his truck where it was temporarily out of my sight. Until he drove away. That was funny all by itself, but it was even funnier when paired with the fact that I had debated with myself about taking a thirty foot detour and offering to take his cart along with mine but the selfish side of my brain spoke up and said: I’m more than twice his age. He should be offering to take my cart! Gosh, was that the start of my alternate universe where every man is out for himself? It was Friday so I was okay. In my new universe I only have to care about being nice and socially responsible on the weekends. 

Speaking of grocery stores---again---my favorite one spent the entire summer remodeling. They got new flooring, shelving, lighting, bathrooms, checkout stands and carts plus freshly painted ceilings and walls and they moved entire departments clear to the other side of their store. The parking lot covers 10 acres and it had 25+ semi-trailers lined up for the work crews. Shopping in that 250,000 square foot store during construction was like going on a scavenger hunt. But every month they sent me coupons for free stuff that I usually buy in the brands I like so it was like getting paid ten bucks a week to continue shopping there. The biggest change is they nearly doubled the beer and wine department. It was already pretty big so what does that say about our society? It says they quit stocking Hershey’s syrup in cans and other old school stuff to make room for people to have more choices for getting drunk! I’m in mourning over that. I have a can in the refrigerator and when it’s empty I’m washing it out and keeping it. Hershey syrup in cans have been in my life since I was born so I’m hoarding that last can for my nieces to throw out when I die. 

I’ve also been trying to buy d-CON to feed the mice who like to winter over in my basement. The shelf at the grocery store where it’s supposed to be was empty three weeks in a row. I went to Lowe’s and found the same thing there. Time to order it from Amazon, I thought. Wrong. Every Amazon.com vendor, in every size bag of d-CON I tried to buy, said they were temporary out of stock. Mice are going to rule the world! What’s going on? Google had the answer: “The 12 d-CON products being canceled do not meet EPA’s current safety standards. All 12 of the products are sold without a protective bait station. Bait stations are required for consumer products to protect children and pets from contact with bait pellets.” Oh. My. God! I need to find a black market source for outlawed d-CON! I refuse to use those sticky, mouse pad thingies. They look like cruel and unusual punishment for just wanting to live in a nice house. And the spring-style traps? In my neighborhood the mice have figured out how to out-smart them.

After my unsuccessful trip to Amazon I went to a mama/papa hardware store known for still having stock on their shelves from the last century and I bought the last bag of off-brand mice blocks they had. I felt sleazy, like I should have been wearing dark glasses to fool the satellite imaging that was no doubt tracking my illegal purchase. But I was doing it during the week, keeping my commitment to myself to only try to save the world on the weekends. So all is well and good in my new alternate universe. Hey, I wonder if that hardware store has any cans of Hershey’s syrup! ©

From Car Accidents to Zhuangzi

My sweet, innocent little car that hadn’t lost its virginity yet got herself molested by a big bad-ass four wheeler. We were waiting in a take-out line at Culver’s for a North Atlantic Cod sandwich and a concrete mixer when the truck in front of us rolled back and my baby got smacked with a trailer hitch dead center in the front. I hopped out of my seat to look for damage and the woman driving the four wheeler got out to ask, “Are you alright?” I was, but I appreciated the fact that she thought about a human being before property damage. Me, I was just the opposite. I was busy searching my car for boo-boos. I didn’t find any until I got home and wiped some of the winter road crud off the car. There is was, a nicely formed square punched about an eighth of an inch deep into the nose of my Chevy Trax. 

I spent the next two hours pouting about my first world problem while trying to remember that the nice lady did something I could have easily done myself back in my bad-ass truck driving days. Sitting up high in a truck it’s easy not see a car sitting low behind you and it's easy not to put your car in park when you're waiting in line. And even if we had exchanged insurance information the damage wouldn’t have exceeded my deductible. Well, maybe it would have. It doesn’t take much to spend $500 on body work these days. Still, I’m not enough of a perfectionist to spend that much out-of-pocket to make my little car whole again. That didn’t stop me from pouting about the square tattoo on my bumper reducing its resale value even though I kept reminding myself I’ll probably keep this car until someone pries my driver’s license out of my wallet and hides my keys. Then resale value will be the least of my problems. At least I had a good reason to pout. Before the accident happened I was already having a regular pout-fest. 

Why was I pouting? I don’t know. I was having a doofus week, feeling sorry for myself, feeling fat, feeling like a failure, feeling all alone even though the morning of the accident I spent an hour talking on the phone to the son-I-wish-I-had. If someone wrote ‘doofus’ on my forehead with a magic marker I wouldn’t have been surprised. This week, even the dog looked fat and I only finished 7/8 of my closet cleaning project---I still have to vacuum the floor. And I can’t find a rug I want for my bathroom online. Damn first world problems! What I need is to spend a week living on a pile of raw garbage in Bangladesh. I also need to sleep one night without getting woke by a dream of my husband. Apparently, my sleeping self has been trying to contact him but he’s always just out of reach and I’ll wake up feeling frustrated that I couldn’t hogtie him to the bed so he’ll be there after I’m fully awake. At least long enough to have a conversation. He’d have some animated opinions about our current political landscape. We used to love the drama and craziness of election cycles and would talk them to death.

Before I went to Culver’s where my car lost her new car virginity---I’m still sad about that---I was at JoAnn’s Fabrics where I bought a tube of paint and some fabric for my bedroom. With the Naples yellow paint I no longer have any excuses not to start painting again. (It’s been almost 30 years!) I’ve been studying how-to books, I’ve identified and located everything I need. I even know what I want to paint first and have done a few rudimentary drawings, but I still have to screw up my courage to mix that first palette of paint. Color theory was never my strong suit. I won’t let myself start, though, until I finish the closet project which probably explains why I haven’t gotten the vacuum out of its cave. Doofus, yup, that’s me. Who cares if I vacuum the closet? No one goes in there but me and the dusty bunnies. That territory is even off limits to my cleaning woman and maybe that should change next time she’s here. Ohmygod, could my first world problems get any shallower?

The fabric I bought for my bedroom is to go in five picture frames that line up across the wall in place of a head board for my bed. I’m toning down the colors in there, getting rid of my red bed sheets, the red fabric in the frames and the red rug in the adjoining bathroom. I’m going subtle and Zen. I’ve hauled two yards of fabric home from Joan Ann’s and neither one does what I want it to do. Honestly. I should be ashamed to admit to the frivolous stuff that occupies my brain. 

“Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” Ya, sure, that’s easy to say if you’re an ancient Chinese philosopher making a living writing wise and influential ditties but try letting your mind be free and staying centered when you’ve got a closet full of dust bunnies taunting your allergies. And try letting your mind be free and staying centered when your poor car is still sobbing over losing her virginity and the dog is yell, "Hey, I'm not fat! How could you say that?"

“Grasshopper…”

What?!

“Chill out. Remember what I’ve been saying for centuries, ‘Those who realize their folly are not true fools.’” 

Thank you Master. I keep forgetting. ©

From Widow’s Guilt to Moby Dick

Every night at bed time I play a game of checkers on my Kindle. It’s a ritual that began after my husband died. Don had a long history of playing the game with his brothers that dated back to growing up on a farm in the pre-TV era. He could beat the pants off me every time we played checkers and I didn’t particularly enjoy the game but in the month leading up to his death, we’d been playing checkers every night. I was surreptitiously using it as a gauge of his mental capabilities. When he quit winning almost every game, I was worried but I waited a few days before making an appointment to see the doctor. That’s how playing checkers on my Kindle became a punishment of sorts for my widow’s what-if. Call it a guilt trip if you like. The what-ifs in life are so common that we often title them. 

That morning of the appointment, I got him in the car but we never made it past the end of the driveway before I called an ambulance. The rest is history. He died in a matter of days though I don’t remember how many. Isn’t it odd how I forgot a detail like that but I can still remember the look of confusion in Don’s eyes the first time he lost at checkers. That look would come back the day they took him off the ventilator to let nature take its course. Do I still play checkers as a punishment now that I’m nearing my forth sadiversary? I don’t think so but I am 100% sure that somewhere along the line I took up cheating at the game. Yes, it’s possible to cheat playing against a computerized gadget. All you have to do is turn the forced jumps on or off when it’s to your advantage and you can undo any move that gets you jumped so you can try another. It’s rare that I lose playing that way, but if I see that a game isn’t going my way I just won’t finish it. That way, my stats don’t register a loss. There you have it, my big checkers confession. At times I wonder if I’m not testing my own mental capabilities the way I tested Don’s near the end of his life. Am I’m afraid if I lose too often that I’ll fall off the face of the earth like he did? You tell me. Do other elderly women worry that their brains will turn into mush and their body will follow suit? And while I'm asking questions, can anyone tell me when the heck did the hair inside of my nose turn gray?

I need to get off the intersection of Guilt Street and Scary Avenue. Next up: Shopping past and present. In our post-stroke years Don and I had a holiday tradition of picking a day when the weather was just right for pushing a wheelchair on the snowy sidewalks of his hometown (now an upscale tourist town) and off we’d go to shop. Most of the businesses that line the old town square are not wheelchair friendly but he didn’t care. I could leave him briefly by a shop door and he’d have his memories to enjoy of peddling newspapers to those same stores, of his father giving the town kids horse drawn sleigh rides in the winter, and of going with his mom when she’d bring eggs into town to sell to the corner grocery store. I’ve grown to love the charm of that town and Don’s history in it and so this year I decided it was time to resume the tradition of spending a holiday afternoon roaming in and out of the stores looking at things I don’t need and hoped I wouldn’t buy.

I strolled “the square”---the confectionery store, the coffee shop, the rustic décor and candle shop, the olive oil store and the stained glass art studio. At the non-profit War Chest Boutique to help women rescued from the sex trade I bought a trinket and I ended up at the converted, old grain mill where I had lunch. As I waited for my salmon sandwich I alternated between jotting down notes for this blog and looking out the window. It was a lovely view of the top side of the dam with winter-dried cattails swaying in a gentle breeze along the river’s edge. The calm and quiet scene outside was in sharp contrast to the noisy din of the diners inside.

“Why write?” author Carolyn See once asked and then answered, “Because we live in a beautiful, sentient universe that yearns for you to tell the truth about it.” Would-be writers are told that truth is in the details, in the moments when we’re able to expose our flaws and fears to the world. And truth is in our observations---those gray nose hairs, the flat-bladed cattails and a stranger’s Mona Lisa smile. At lunch, my truth was also in the beauty of being alone in a crowd, of turning my imagination loose and pretending I knew which of my fellow diners have cheats-at-checkers like secrets. “Call me Ishmael” because like Ishmael, that day I was wandering and searching for insight. I just didn’t do it on water and my salmon sandwich was the closest I got to finding the White Whale and all it symbolizes in Melville’s book. ©