Movie Night, Romance and Selfishness

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a movie coming up for our Friday Movie Night here on the CC campus. I read the book and loved it so I can’t wait to see this movie. I’m going to like movie nights here. It’s a chance to discuss films in real time with real people. Something I’ve been craving in recent years: people around when I want them but solitude and plenty of places to enjoy it when I need it. 

Last week they showed the movie The Radium Girls which was based on a true story of girls who worked in a watch factory. They painted the numbers on the dials with glow-in-the-dark radium and died from being told to lick their brushes to bring them to a fine point after dipping them into the radium. This was in the same time frame when scientists wore lead shields and heavy gloves to handle the stuff. The company knew it was poisonous but hired a so-called company doctor to claim the girls who got sick all had syphilis, knowing back in the ‘20s they’d be too embarrassed to talk about their illness. 

As I was leaving the movie to walk back to my building my favorite security guard and I got into a discussion about labor protection laws and the history of the coal mines. He's taking a class that covered the sit-down strikes and I shared my grandfather's first-hand story of being in one of those strikes when sharp shooters hired by the company massacred sitting strikers. We can thank labor unions for making our work environments safe and anyone who thinks they've outlived their usefulness doesn't know human nature well enough. 

Good employers makes any place better and everyone I've asked here at the CCC seems to enjoy their work environment including the cleaning woman. She’s got quite the love story to tell. She’s an immigrant from France and she met an American guy when she was in college decades ago. He went home and they became pen pals, both going on the marry other people, raised families, lost their spouses. All that time remaining pen pals. When he invited her State Side to attend a party in his honor, she came and never went back. They got married and if you read that in a romance book you’d think the storyline was far-fetched.

When I was in the floral business and servicing weddings for twenty years I used to collect how-they-met stories from all my brides. I loved those stories, even before I started reading romance books. Not to mention I was without a boyfriend half of those years, looking for my own Prince Charming so it was research of a practical sort. I don’t know what happened to that collection of handwritten notes in a spiral notebook. A lot of that happened after my husband’s massive stroke is a blur. Yada, yada, yada you know the rest of that chapter in my story, I've told it often enough. Now, I joke that I was Wonder Woman back then meaning it’s a wonder I didn’t have my own stroke from all the stress I was under. 

The point I'm trying to make it that's it's been a long road getting to a point in life where I virtually have no/few responsibilities and my desire to keep it that way probably just earned me a label I won't like. I turned down an invitation to work with two other x-florists living here to make Christmas decorations for all the public areas. One of the guys talked management out of hiring an outside company and put him in charge. I’d been avoiding him since learning that but he sent me an email asking me to join his planning session. I had no choice but to face my first real dilemma here and I wrote back: “I have zero interest in using what little time and creative energy I have left in life to revisit what I did for 20 years to earn a living...especially the Christmas rush.” I was too blunt, wasn't I. But I didn't want to get locked into a time consuming volunteer role for all the holidays on the calendar. I don't need the jerk circle.

Does that make me a selfish person? I feel selfish. It's flower arranging I'm turning down for crying out loud, not working to save endangered animals from extinction or to put an end to world hunger. So how come I feel like this? Would a softer worded email have made a difference? I'm getting better at turning down things I don't want to do but the feeling guilty part that comes after needs work.

But if there's one thing I've learned in my almost 80 years on earth is that we can't do it all. At my age I have to cut to the chase, do what makes me happy even if it's on a smaller scale than I'd dreamed of doing before life got in the way of my plans. I can no longer be another John Steinbeck or John Singer Sargent but I can be a wordy blogger who paints ugly brown barns in a class full of beginners. ©

Life in the 'Zipper' Lane

Levi’s stuff monkey must have diarrhea. He’s taken him outside three times this morning. Or maybe they’ve been fighting because all three times I’ve had to remind Levi to “get your baby” before coming back inside. In all the years we’ve been a “couple”---me and Levi---I’ve never been able to figure out how that dog decides which animal needs to go potty in the morning. His once favorite, a duck, hasn’t been outside in eons. His monkey and frog’s paw make it out a least once a week. Yes, I said ‘frog’s paw’. It used to be a whole frog bigger than Levi was at the time the frog joined the family but Levi kept beating it up and shortening its limbs and now that squeaky paw is all that survived. It will make the cut when it comes time to downsize Levi’s collection of stuffies. Oops, there’s that ‘D’ word I vowed not to use in so many future posts.

Since the ‘D’ word did come up I’ll just do one paragraph on the topic and then move on to other happenings this week. I opened up a filing cabinet drawer in the garage that I hadn’t opened in almost a decade and I was stunned to find three bundles of type-written papers containing copies of every single word I’d written at a once-very large stroke support website where I volunteered for 4-5years. The bundles stacked together measured eight inches tall! I had a ton of time-consuming, up-front and behind-the-scenes responsibilities on their message board plus I kept a blog there---was even on the board of directors---but eventually the site owner got so demanding it wasn’t funny. It’s a classic story of volunteerism, I suppose. You work hard, you’re good at what you do and they keep piling more and more work on until you call “uncle” and quit.

Make that two downsizing paragraphs…. Anyway, I let the bundles sit on my work table overnight trying to decide what to do with them. I've often said I wanted to write a book about that period of Don's and my life and there sat a treasure trove to help with that. On the other hand, I’m getting ready to open a new chapter in my life that, hopefully, will give me something more current to write about. I finally cut the bundles open, tore each sheet down the middle, mixed them all up and filled up my recycling box. Unless you’re a wanna-be writer, too, I don’t expect others to understand how truly difficult that downsizing decision was to make. But I have no regrets. Just seeing all those bundled up pages brought painful emotions to the surface and made me realize that no matter how much time passes I can’t go wading through the fine details of living on that website again.

New Topic: I think I shocked everyone in book club last week when I announced I’m dropping out. I like this group of women and they seem to like me, but I can’t concentrate on fiction when I have so much reading to do to research stuff I’m selling, and I won't be one of those members who never reads the books---too many of those in any book group. I’m sure they didn’t understand why I'm quitting now when I'm not moving anytime soon and I didn’t bother to explain how this is my last rodeo, so to speak, to make some money selling off my past. They did invite me to the summer luncheon in August and I will probably go. Maybe I'll bring my newly researched pair of 1899 handcuffs for show and tell. It's unique patent revolutionized police work.

Afterward, I went over to the office supply where I got a bunch of colored, stick-on dots to mark stuff in the house. Green dots go on stuff that gets moved with me, yellow goes on things I’ve identified to sell on e-Bay, blue stuff gets sold at the local auction house and so on. The dots will simplify the process so I’ll only have to glance at something to know a decision has already been made. Next I stopped by Bed, Bath and Beyond to look at dishes and bath towels. I’m not telling you why because I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve turned my sun porch into a Hope Chest of sorts. Okay, I’ll spill the beans on the towels; I bought new bath towels last winter but my new place will have two bathrooms with the same aqua color accents so I wanted to get more of the same towels while they’re still available and that will simplify my future laundry sorting days. Hey, I’m at my best when I’m living in the future. And dishes? That could be whole blog all by itself.

My cleaning girl is not very good at cleaning. But I love her for our great artsy-fartsy conversations. What does that say about me that I’ll clean my own sink drains after she leaves and this after I mentioned it to her in the past and I always leave an old tooth brush labeled “sink” down in the drain that’s calling out, “Clean me, clean me!” And this time I resorted to pulling the appliances away from the wall before she came or she’d just wash the countertop around them. I’ve decided I can’t be pleased. My last cleaning girl used to take everything off the countertop and set it all on the floor. Bugged the heck out of me that she was transferring yucky-do germs from the floor onto those nice, clean and sanitized counters when she’d put the stuff back where it came from. I finally spoke up about it but there again, I liked her and it was hard to be critical, knowing she had low self-esteem issues.

And so it goes living here in the 'zipper lane' where the past and present are merging until they are one and the same and they are creeping ever so slowly into my future.  ©

Levi and his monkey down for their afternoon nap.

Luncheons and Tech Savvy Guys

This week flew by and one of the reasons why is because I spent six hours spread out over two days volunteering to help with the Mother’s Day luncheon at the senior hall. Since I’m not a mother this event seems like a good place to do my suggested-but-not-required volunteer commitment for the year. It’s kind of fun to see a room get transformed from totally empty to tables set up for 115 people complete with colorful placemats, napkins, condiments and table décor. Some patience person made origami birds and they looked cute “pecking” at chocolate kisses placed on the corner of each placemat. The paper birds brought back a memory of my dad. Every night after reading the newspaper he used to make a paper hat or two to take with him to work the next day---Dad could make several styles. He wasn’t alone in that habit. The factory where he worked was not the cleanest place and the guys of his generation knew how to recycle just about everything. I still have a tiny paper hat made especially for one of my teddy bears.

The day of the luncheon is crazy and I would not want to be the luncheon chairperson. She’s in charge of assigning jobs to the volunteers and she has to make sure everything is done according to a time chart. A couple dozen water pitchers get filled and placed on the tables. Coffee and tea gets made and when it’s ready they are served by township officials or candidates running office. We’ve met judges, mayors, representatives, etc. this way. Then when the food truck arrives we volunteers man our stations on an assembly line. I was the potato salad scooper this year. Ten high school kids doing required public service hours run the plates out to the dining room. After everyone is served we get a break until the entertainment is finished, the door prizes have been given out and we volunteers have been thanked while we stand at the front of the room. The cleanup starts so quickly after that that it’s a wonder the people leaving don’t get trampled. They’ve been doing the luncheons this way for years. Somehow it all works out and I’m happy to say I was not the person who dropped a whole tray of salt and pepper shakers.

The next day Nate, my tech guy who makes house calls came to reinstall my printer that mysteriously quit talking to my computer. Windows keeps sending messages wanting me to schedule an update to Windows 10 so I asked Nate if it was a good idea. He said if I don’t upgrade, I won’t see those messages after July because after that everyone who hasn’t done the free upgrade will have to pay for it. If I have any trouble, he said, I have his phone number and he’ll talk me through it. I wish that guy was my grandson! Have you ever seen the TV commercial where a grandmother greets her grandkids at door with a bunch of electronic stuff in her arms and says, “So great to see you! Here, none of this works. Come on in.” That’s the way I feel when Nate comes only I can’t pay him with a pot roast dinner and cherry pie.

Nate’s house call was not the end of my tech issues. After he left I discovered my laptop wouldn’t let me log off. I needed to log off because it’s time to bring it into Nate’s computer repair shop to get its yearly “clean up” and virus control software update and I decided I’ll have them do the Windows 10 upgrade while it’s there. Ya, I know I could do some of that stuff myself but I have more money than time I’m willing to devote to things that drive me crazy. 

Speaking of tech inspired headaches, I finally got my smart phone issues resolved and the credits came through on my credit card for the company’s screw ups. It’s a wonderful gadget and I’m glad I got it but I was disappointed to discover that OnStar raised the data rates for Wi-Fi in my car. Unless I give up my house and move into my Chevy Trax I wouldn’t be paying $15 a month just so I can play on Google while I’m away from the house. If it were a matter of life or death, I can still buy $5 worth of data for the day and do it with the blue OnStar button in the car. I hope my old brain can keep up with all this stuff! ©

NOTE: The photo above was taken at the Mother’s Day luncheon. The guys are playing harmonicas, one of which is 93 years old.