Winter is Here!

We’re getting our first major snow storm of the season and it’s coming down hard with 6 to 12 inches of snow predicted to accumulate over the next three days. For snowplowers like my husband was for decades (and I was for 17 years) a three day dump is not ideal for the first snow of the year. A one day and done thing is better for working out any bugs and for training new plowers. Even though we’d have new plowers do dry runs of their assigned places, everything looks different when it’s snowing. And back when we were in business it wasn’t common for people to have snow removal and lawn care businesses combined so they could employ people year around. Everyone who plowed for us worked other, daytime jobs as well and getting up in the middle of a cold snowy night takes some getting used to. We did commercial lots and the first predicted snow of the season would have us up checking the lots for when the magic hour would begin when the snow was two inches deep and we could call the crew in. With all-day long snows there is no need to check lots but the frustrating thing is that no matter how late you start (so lots would be ideally cleared for the business openings) it will look like you wasn’t there at all with the round-the-clock snowfalls.

Now, I’m sitting here looking across the parking lot to the Community Building where the wood shop is and where I was supposed to go to orientation class this morning. The shop is brand new and eventually that same, small building will house an art and crafts room. It’s a small, stand alone building where they also have Bible studies---all the things that could catch on fire, separate from the main campus. I want to learn to turn wood on a lathe to make bowls but I suspect I won’t be doing it until spring because I’m not keen on walking up and down a slight hill to get there in the winter. We have a heated sidewalk between and along the front of our two main buildings and last winter I felt completely safe plus we can go underground between those buildings if it’s too cold, but those options don’t extend to the little building across the way.

I was going to walk down to see my brother today, too. But that won’t happen with our non-stop snow. It’s beautiful though but it’s coming down so hard I can barely see the woods on the other side of our green space. Some kids who were visiting started building a snowman in our green-turned-white space. They didn’t stay long enough to finish and I’m wondering how long that headless snowman will stand out there begging me to forget that I’m old and have brittle bones. I shouldn’t even be dreaming about rolling a big ball of snow to finish the poor guy off. In 2017 I built a snow cat out on my deck and it was harder than I remembered from doing snow sculptures when was kid. 

Last winter our resident Cheerleader made snow angels in the snow. She’s addicted to walking and even in the summer she walks with ski polls. She walks rain or shine, two hours a day in place of any kind of treatment for her brittle bones. She’s afraid of the side effects of treatments for osteoporosis---any drugs for that matter---where I’m afraid of not getting the infusions for my bones. I wish I liked exercise as much as she does but it seems like such a waste of time, specially since the same regiment of exercise and eating healthy didn’t do my husband’s cousin a damn bit of good. Dropped dead two days after we had great visit. A visit that had me thinking I really needed to shape up and start exercising more and eating better only to be shocked that I out lived her. We make so many choices in life, take so many chances and define our adventures by separate sets of criteria in different eras of our lives. One of my friends from my Red Hat Society days just came back from a ten day trip she took to Spain all by herself. I could hardly go to Indiana all by myself and I don’t even need a passport to go one state down. A big adventure to me, now, would be putting a head on our headless snowman and living to tell about it afterward. 

Edit to add Saturday morning: We have 18 inches of snow and it won't be letting up until tomorrow morning. ©

 * Yes, that's a photo of the snow cat I made five years ago.

Our Amazing Creative Writing Session

Our third meeting of the writing group here on the Continuum Care Campus was amazing. We had five people show up and that included Chatty Cathy who claims she just took dictations from God to write the songs she did before she had a series of strokes. She actually wrote a poem on the spot about something in another woman’s essay and it blew my mind how fast Chatty Cathy came up with what she did. No wonder she thinks there’s something mystical about her writing process. If she keeps coming---she missed the second meeting---it’s going to be a lesson in patience and tolerance for the rest of us, though, because like a lot of stroke survivors with damage to the frontal lobe part of the brain she has no impulse control, talks non-stop---often about God---and usually not on topic.

When Ms Angel---who wrote about her husband’s suicide and the letter he left behind where he confessed to a secret life---read the last line of her essay there was silence for a moment from three of us who were awestruck before Chatty Cathy started in about something totally unrelated. The former librarian and high school teacher in our group grabbed Cathy’s hand, squeezed it hard which made her stop talking mid-sentence and then The Librarian gave some appropriate feedback and I swear there were tears threatening to roll down her cheeks.

Ms Angel is an accomplished writer, had a newspaper column about religion for over three decades and I used to read her during my searching for the meaning of life era. And I’ve said it before when I wrote about us meeting on a bus over the summer that we had an instant connection---I think in part because Ms Angel reminds me of my do-good cousin. They both work/ed for the church, both have the same voice quality and the same physical stature, eyes and hair coloring. Both would do anything for someone in need and they make the world a better place just by being themselves. I used to joke that I was glad I didn’t live next door to my cousin because she would have had me volunteering for all kinds of do-good projects and I wouldn't have the energy to keep up. 

I admire and like Ms Angel even though we are so different. I knew about her husband's suicide before she sat across the table in writing group and bared her soul about the worse day of her life. She found a way to end her essay in an upbeat way that shocked me and it shouldn’t have. It was a classic example of how a person’s religion gave her peace during a terrible time. When I was a mentor in the stroke community I saw lots of examples of angry people turning away from their God who, in their eyes, should have protected them from having the rug pulled out from under them, where Ms Angel saw her God as giving her the tools to get through her pain.

Mr. Graphic Artist was also in attendance and you may remember he hadn’t written anything since moving in and he had visualized spending his time here at the CCC writing full time which didn't happen. But since I started the group he's been working on poetry and this past month he was prolific. He brought a dozen short poems to read plus another from a book written by a pastor. He loaned the book to Ms Angel since it was poetry about near-death confessions and he thought she’d be able to relate to it having heard many of them in her work here with Hospice residents. The Librarian last time brought twenty pages of a book she was working on to read but this time she brought a one page poem that was pretty neat. It was a good thing, however, that she and Mr. Artist read their stuff before the powerful essay on the suicide was shared.

I read last and I brought two pieces but I only shared the essay about my childhood friend's dying recently that I posted here in my blog. I was glad I brought it because anything frivolous read after the suicide essay would have been bridge too far to go emotional for most of us or it would have fallen flat like the poem I didn't read about a sing-along birthday party here on campus. I also brought my copy of A Year of Writing Dangerously: 356 Days of Inspiration and Encouragement and quite by serendipity I had marked a page about baring one's soul. Reading it was the perfect way to end our meeting.

Since Chatty Cathy hadn't written anything new in a few years---except the poem written on the fly in group---we gave her an assignment. We suggested that she write about her stroke and how it changed her life. I’m trying really hard not to let my annoyance of this woman show. Others here on campus avoid sitting next to her at lectures, meals and parties but that isn't possible around a table of five. I know she can’t help her non-stop talking and I’m going to have to research ways to handle that kind of brain damage in stroke survivors. Grabbing her hand and squeezing it tight to make her stop talking won’t work for germaphobic me the way it did for The Librarian and it was exactly what was needed doing in that moment of time.  

All and all I was happy with our third group even if Chatty Cathy makes it feel like I'm walking in a mine field. How do we balance not hurting her feelings with the sense that she's wasting everyone's time if we don't interrupt her to give others their time for feedback? If we didn't cut her off she'd literally talk the whole session away. When my husband was in speech therapy after his stroke I learned techniques that helped with his non-verbal impulse control issues but as a family member, a caregiver or a speech pathologist you can redirect and say things you can't say or do in a group of random people gathered for whatever. 

That kind of research is what one side of me wants to do while the other side doesn't want to get back in the saddle---so to speak---where a stroke is taking me to a place I don't want to go again. Why do I have to have these selfish thoughts when faced with a dilemma like this when others like Ms Angel and my cousin seem to be able to let their compassion for others be their first and only responses? The best I can do is show compassion on the outside while having selfish thoughts on the inside and hoping that I'm a good enough actress to pull it off. ©

The Great Closet Project Part One

I’ve fallen off the discipline wagon when it comes to writing blog posts. The one I posted earlier this week about my dreams was one I wrote and originally scheduled for the week after my hand surgery but I didn’t use it because my recovery was faster than I anticipated and I wrote a post in real time instead. I’m totally off my sync for when I write and when I play and partly that’s because I’ve been doing something a few of my blog followers have been laying a quilt trip on me for not doing sooner. Yes, someone out there in Bloggerland shamed me into starting the Great Closet project. Thank you. I needed the kick in the posterior.

The photos below might not look like they have much to do with a closet makeover but they do and it took me a three day weekend to swap that short bookcase in the living room out for the tall one in my closet. And I moved them all by not-so-little self…with the help of my handy dandy E-Z Movers pictured above. Living in an apartment house, means I had to get my E-Z Mover kit out of storage and put it back down there again which involved an elevator ride down to the underground cage storage area that is attached to our underground parking lot. 

Nothing is easy when it come to storing items you don’t use often when you live in an apartment building. For one thing you have to be fully dressed to make the trip and if you get creeped out easily you won’t be going down there after dark. It doesn’t bother me---it’s well lite and we’re not in a high crime area---but some people think they’re going to get mugged in those lonely hallways. Those are the same people who avoid underground parking and storage after dark who also keep their second and third floor deck doors locked because presumably some mastermind could rappel off the roof down to their decks to steal their family silverware. Not going to happen. I’m on the ground level and I didn’t even close my deck door all summer long, let alone lock it. With twenty-five apartments and the security guard’s desk having a clear view of my deck, I feel completely safe and the only action out front of my apartment during the middle of the night are the geese that are fooled by the bright lights. They think it's daylight and they walk around like they own the place.

Since we’re talking storage areas I’m proud of the fact that I don’t have extra boxes littering up the floor in front of my car the way about ten people do. Management is starting to lean of them about it and I don’t blame them. It’s been a year that we’ve all been living here and if you can’t find room inside your apartment or cage storage for 10-30 boxes of stuff it’s time to let go. I understand it though. If you don’t want to donate it, we’re limited on how to sell stuff.

Anyway back on topic: The first picture below shows the way my living room looked with the short bookcase and the other picture is of the taller bookcase taking its place. And if you're wondering what the heck they have to do with overhauling my clothes closet. Quite a lot, actually. With the lower bookcase now in the closet it frees up the wall above it up to get maintenance in to put a shelf and clothes rod, giving me three more feet of space to hang hangers. The tall bookcase was full of boxes and folded T-shirts, etc., and paring that stuff down involved making another elevator ride down to put some donation bags in my car to drop off at the Salvation Army. The back seat of car looks like a storage unit, by they way. It’s filled with toilet paper and paper towel. The last few months when I’d look around my apartment to make a grocery list I’d put those two items on the list, forgetting I didn’t have room on my cart to bring them upstairs the last few times I’d been shopping. Once I remember the back seat of my car looks like the paper products aisle at Meijer I won't have to buy those items all winter long.

Anyway, now that I've made the swap of the bookcases I was able to  put in a work request to Maintenance for the new bar/shelf combo. He’s also going to replace the tension rod with a regular rod. Both will cost me under $75 but worth it not to have clothes that are wrinkled from hanging too close together or being folded up on the bookcase. I though about having the closet designer company come out, gut the closet and start over. I’ve seen their work and know it would look better but it would cost over $1,500 and I’d rather spend that money elsewhere…like on new clothes. I’ve already started by making a trip to Land’s End where I bought the first part of jeans I’ve own since the last century. 

While I’m in a holding pattern waiting for Maintenance I’m starting part two of the Great Closet Project---trying on everything to determine if it stays or goes. I'm terrible about holding on to things I don't like wearing or that doesn't fit right---not a good thing if I ever get moved over to Memory Care or assisted living and I have to depend on a caregiver to help dress me. What a frustrating mess that would be for both of us.

Part three will be the fun part of making a few purchases to fill in the gaps when I get rid of some thread-bare pants and tops that have seen better days.

The short book case now in the closet

---boxes hold, purses, hats, scarves and mending.

The swap will also have an added benefit of bringing music back into my life…as soon as the maintenance man comes and can drill a hole to pass a plug through the back of the bookcase in the living room. I had the CD player on the short bookcase but I couldn’t keep my CDs out where they were easy to get at---they were under my bed---so they never got played. I really miss country western music. I realized that the other day when I sat in underground parking listening to my car radio. I would have stayed there all afternoon except that I had ice cream melting in a grocery bag. Songs like in the video below make me happy. For my writing group (update in my next blog post)  I've been writing poems like this song---the concept being to take a simple idea and turning it into a mini slice-of-life. ©