Tears at the Car Wash

The luncheon at the senior hall got canceled this week but when I got up that morning I didn’t check their website or look for district school closings on TV that triggers that to happen. It was rainy and gloomy but the temperature was a couple of degrees over 32 so it never occurred to me that ice or fog might have been an issue earlier in the morning when they have to send the buses out. Off I went to find the doors to the hall locked up tight and eight or nine others in the parking lot who’d made the same mistake. “Hell’s bells!” as my mother used to say---her only foothold in the world of swearing. A local restaurant chain I’ve ordered breakfast in since before I went through menopause was around the corner, so off I went. I surprised myself and the waitress by ordering the baked chicken special because it seemed like a comfort food kind of day. It was good but not like my mother used to make with a can of cream of mushroom soup. I’ve been craving chicken so much lately that I’m starting to crow like a rooster looking to get laid. Not funny? Not accurate? Sorry, I know nothing about the sex life of poultry. I do know my chicken cravings caused me to sign up for a two-hour cooking class on what you can do with store-bought rotisserie chickens. Apparently there is more than making soup.

The dollar store was my next stop. It's close to home and I often stop there when I’ve got no place else to go thus wasting getting all spiffed up for just a hour’s worth of time away from the house. (I used to joke about my dad’s girlfriend who, when I chauffeured them around on their dates, always wanted to go to the dollar store. Now that I’m the age she was back then, I get it. I get that sometimes a lady just needs to go shopping someplace where she can’t be tempted to spend more than a $1.98.) But Bill Murray, that prolific recording artist of Vaudeville fame---be still my heart---summed it up better when he sang: “When you're all dressed up and have no place to go, how you long for someone near you, just to cheer you, just to dear you. It’s when you’ll understand the meaning of that little word ‘lonesome’ when you’re all dressed up and have no place to go.”

Change of topic. Levi has a birthday coming up soon, his ninth, which meant he got to go shopping at Chow Hound to use the birthday money/coupon they sent him. We picked out a new collar and some peanut butter bones that usually make him barf. He got to smell the rabbits and cats in cages and the other dogs shopping. He loves Chow Hound and it’s sad that his mom (that would be me) doesn’t take him more often. When he’s along on shopping trips it cost more because Chow Hound puts all the plush toys, smelly pig parts and flavored treats down low where the dogs can grab them. With Levi’s long Schnauzer beard and mustache he always manages to smuggle something up to the checkout line where he’ll be coerced to drop it long enough for the cashier to scan it. Thankfully, he waits until I get the plastic off the contraband (usually a peanut butter bone) before he eats it. 

After Chow Hound we went to Starbucks where Levi got a puppuccino and I got a cappuccino. I get my drink free around my birthday but he gets his “drink” free any day of the year. After I pulled out of the drive-thru line I had to park the car to hold his cup while Levi licked up the cream. By the time he’d finished off the puppuccino his beard and mustache were white with cream. But he was happy and raring to go to the third place on his birthday tradition list: the car wash. Some dogs hate the car wash, others love it and Levi is in the latter group. When my husband was alive the three of us used to sing our way through the place but I can’t make Levi howling the way Don could. 

It’s funny how your emotions can change on a dime.  The first half of January leading up to my husband’s sadiversary usually effects my moods but the years when it made me cry, I thought, were in the rear view mirror. Going through the car wash, however, had me wiping a few tears off my cheek. Maybe it was the week of endless rain. Maybe it was the baked chicken disappointment without the mushroom soup the day before or maybe I was just crying because Levi was such a mess I would have liked to hold head out the window while going through the car wash. Nope, the tears couldn’t have been a ‘widow thing.’ I am woman and I’m too strong for that! ©

Levi's old and new collars. From 'Pets for Peace', bought during the Obama administration and
 'psychedelic', bought under the Trump administration.

Politics, Parties and Tears

Tuesday when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released their 525 page summary of their 6,000 page still classified report on torture, I was glued to the TV. I knew it would be a hot topic on the political site where I go to debate so I wanted to hear all the details firsthand. I was also getting ready to go to a “Spirit Party" at the senior hall and just when it was time to leave John McCain came on and I didn’t want to miss his speech. I thought about skipping the senior hall, then I remembered I could listen to McCain on my satellite car radio, so I hopped in the Malibu and drove to the hall. It was probably the best speech I’ve ever heard from Senator McCain---elegantly worded and heartfelt. He said he’d read all 6,000 pages of the report and he gave his full support to the findings of the committee and the decision to publicly release the summary report. His speech ended two minutes before “Spirit” was to begin which meant when I got inside the building I had no other choice but to sit in the front row.

“Spirit” was supposed to be about Christmas but the choir director in charge of the forty-five 8^th graders who came to sing for us only included two or three Christmas songs and the rest were music was from the distance past. I was so close that I could have literally reached out and patted the director’s fancy which made it really embarrassing when I lost control of my emotions on the second song the kids sang:

I'll be seeing you

In all the old familiar places

That this heart of mine embraces

All day and through

I'll be seeing you

In every lovely summer's day

In everything that's light and gay

I'll always think of you that way

I'll find you in the morning sun

And when the night is new

I'll be looking at the moon

But I'll be seeing you

I turned around in my chair, so I’d be facing my peer group instead of those fresh-faced, innocent looking kids and I couldn’t get my tears in check. I couldn’t get up and leave either, because the choir had the door blocked. The next song up didn’t help. “Don't take your love away from me. Don't you leave my heart in misery. If you go then I'll be blue....”

Unexpected tears haven’t hit me that hard in I can’t remember when---a year, two years? In my first year of widowhood I cried over that same, I’ll be Seeing You song and maybe that’s why it struck me so hard this time? Was I also crying because I’d just spent several hours listening to such a heavy topic on TV and the radio? But I think it went deeper than either one of those things and here’s why I say that: I keep my wedding ring on the base of my computer monitor and I rarely ever wear it anymore. However that morning I slipped it on my finger. It wasn’t a conscious decision but for some reason unknown to me and I must have needed to feel closer to Don. One thing is for sure, if you’re going to cry in public doing so in a room full of mostly widows is a good place to do it. One woman handed me a Kleenex, another patted me on the knee and a third woman whispered comforting words. Afterward, several other women came up to me and asked if I was okay.

As usually happens when you cry like that I was exhausted by the time I got home. I took a nap and woke up in time to see Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. That reminded me of one of his best quotes: “If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies." And that, I thought, is a great rebuttal to anyone who thinks it was okay for our country to pay two psychiatrists eighty (80) Million dollars to design a program to teach over 100 other guys how to torture prisoners and then oversee the carrying out of so many heinous acts. As a country we are better than that, aren’t we? And don’t the 911 terrorists win if we let their barbaric act turn us into a country that no longer values or respects the rule of law? If, as a country, we don’t own up to our mistakes and vow never to let this kind of thing happen again then we have lost America's soul. The release of the Senate Select Committee's summary report goes a long way towards restoring our moral authority on the world stage. In the opinion of this teary-eyed widow... ©

The Widow's Quilt and Tears

After Don’s stroke we had two auctions to downsize our lives---one of Don’s business equipment and collectible stuff that was housed in a large pole barn and one of household stuff, my wedding rental equipment and various stuff we couldn’t take to the one bedroom apartment we had moved into as we waited for our wheelchair accessible house to get built. At the time I had several half-done quilts that sold at auction and I think of those quilts every once in a while, wondering if they ever got finished. Their plight reminds me of my mother. In the year before she died she made a New Year’s Resolution to finish every project she ever started or dreamed of starting. She did things like refinish pieces of furniture she wanted handed down in the family. She finished all her knitting projects and she painted works of art for everyone she cared about. And then she died. It wasn't as if she had advanced warning of her impending death to make her want to finish up the loose ends of her life. She died from something totally unforeseen.

Since the auctions I managed to make another quilt, a queen-sized top that has been waiting ten plus years for me to mate it with its backing. Just before Don died, I had decided to take the quilt top to a long-arm machine quilting service---rather than me finishing up the project by hand---but it still hangs in the closet. I think I’m afraid if it gets finished then I’ll died of something unforeseen like my mom and Don did. Totally irrational thinking I know but, hey, I never claimed to be a sane and clear thinking person.

I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself because I missed the Red Hat Society Christmas party. I wasn’t willing to drive ten miles on secondary roads, through a winter advisory that included up to six inches of blowing snow. What’s wrong with me? From the mass e-mails going back and forth this morning I was the only one who canceled out. But then again most of the other women live in my adapted home town which is seven miles closer to the party location plus they all have kids/grandchildren who could pull them out of a ditch should they get into trouble. Two days ago there was a forty car pileup near-by and the roads have only gotten worse since then. The odds were high, in my opinion, that my little Malibu would have been in a ditch and I’d miss the party anyway. At times like this I miss having a four wheel drive pickup truck with an orange flasher on top. I felt safe in that vehicle and I was spoiled to have one at my disposal for so many decades. Life changes. We grow old and loss our self-confidence. Well, at least I seem to be losing mine when it comes to winter driving, not that I was ever very brave without my pickup truck.

So what was all that happy crap I wrote about on December 9th--choosing our change? I am sitting here choosing to make myself melancholy thinking about unfinished quilts and my unfinished life and wishing the former could get finished and the latter could go on forever. If I wasn’t so old I’d think I’m having PMS. I’m up one day then down with just a little hiccup in my master plan for making a new life for myself. No party. Boohoo. I should survive the disappointment, don't you think? After missing the party today I had gone out to get my mail and saw that a neighbor had snow-blown my sidewalk. His kindness brought tears to my eyes. I wasn’t looking forward to shoveling all that snow. I don’t know the guy very well but he was the very first neighbor to introduce himself when we moved in and I could tell by the way he always treated my disabled husband that the man has a good heart. Why should this neighbor’s kindness make me weepy today of all days? I know, I’m a woman and women don’t need an excuse for turning into tear factories.

Oh, well, if I’m down today then that means I’ll be up tomorrow….or by Tuesday at the latest. The weather will be better by Tuesday and I have another party to go to that afternoon. This one, within a couple of miles of home. ©

My unfinished quilt that I call "Keeping me Sane" made while we were living in the apartment.

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