New Year’s Resolutions and Revelations for the Widow

A new year is here and I’m sure it will be March before I let my guard down and revert back to writing 2014 on my checks. I’m as predictable as my yappy Schnauzer greeting his squirrel friend when she comes to our bird feeders. I try to get him to only bark when the squirrel leaves the ground feeders’ station to crawl up the pole but Levi still doesn’t get the difference between high and low, even though I let him outside on the deck when I see the squirrel eating from the hanging feeders. To his vermin chasing genes it’s like giving a glass of wine, a cannoli and kiss to an Italian. Okay, that’s a stereotype and we’re not supposed to do that anymore but I’m half Italian so I’m going to let it slide.

I haven’t made any New Year’s Resolutions yet. I put myself on a no-media schedule for the three days leading up to the holiday and the two days after so I could completely ignore the holiday and all the news people talking about last year’s big stories and this year’s celebrations around the world. This was my third New Year’s Eve since Don passed away and the no-media thing worked well for me. I wasn’t sad, depressed, teary-eyed or any other adjective I could put in front of my name. I did do a little toast at midnight with a few sips of wine but then I threw the rest of the glass down the drain. If I’m going to ingest empty calories I’d rather have a cookie. But I’ve been good these past few days and when the sugar monster wants to be fed I give him an organic, rainbow carrot. There you go, blood and guts, if you work hard enough you can turn that into glucose.

For the year 2013 instead of writing resolutions (which I usually did before my husband passed away) I choose to embrace the one word mantra idea that was floating around that year. I chose ‘courage’ and I even found a ‘courage’ charm and a Cowardly Lion charm that I wore on a chain whenever I’d go someplace where I felt my newly minted widowhood would be a tested for its strength and courage. It did the trick, it really did. I’d touch that necklace and be reminded to push forward into uncomfortable situations. Now, I don’t need to be pushed; going places alone no longer bothers me.

For 2014 I resolved to take and post more photos on this blog and if you follow it at all you’ll know that resolution got broken rather early in the year. My smart phone takes more photos of my thumb than anything else and my favorite camera is too heavy to lug around. I also picked another “widow’s mantra” to see me through the year and that turned out to be a mixed bag of marbles and feathers. I had picked ‘seek contentment’ and I envisioned that happening by doing two things: 1) Keeping a tighter lid on my expectations, and 2) using the social circles I had established in 2013 to find a few good friends within. I felt I had the bones to have a more satisfying life and I just needed to flesh them out. So here it is the dawning of 2015 and I can say I’ve gotten a good handle on managing my expectations over this past year---move that one over to the ‘success column.’ But I’m about ready to call it a big goose egg on finding a few close friends. I have many friendly acquaintances in the Red Hat Society and at the senior hall but I don’t see any of them developing beyond that. Hanging out in those two groups, though, is something to do and is good for a few laughs but that’s about it.

So, I’m off to Emerald City to ask the Wizard of Oz for a friend. If only it were that easy…but on second thought, maybe it is. When Dorothy, Toto and the trio of misfits they picked up along the way saw the Wizard didn’t they, essentially, learn they already had it inside themselves to get what they all sought? Sure, they believed in the Wizard long enough to think the useless items they got from him had special powers, but by the end of the movie Glinda the Good Witch set them straight on that score. The power was in them all along. And for me that lesson does apply, meaning if I look at my life through honest eyes I already have good friends---relatives and others I’ve known for decades who have been there for me, and would be again if I had a true emergency or I just needed to talk.

Hey, that gives me an idea! For 2015 I think I’ll pick for my mantra: “Hoe the row you’ve already got and don’t go off looking for new seeds to plant.” I don’t need new friends as much as I need to cherish the ones I’ve got.  And wouldn’t you know it, e-Bay has a Glinda the Good Witch charm I can get to remind me that I already have what I’ve been moaning and groaning was missing in my life.

What was I thinking? My soul mate is gone and a dozen brand new friends isn’t going to fill that void and that is a simple fact of life in the wild and crazy territory we call Widowhood.  ©

A New Plan for an Old Widow

One of the catch phrases I’ve used throughout my life has been, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.” I’ve liked learning about many different things over the years and I’ve often wanted to do this or that off-beat profession. An artist, a tailor, a photographer, a teddy bear maker, a dog trainer, a writer, a furniture restorer, a basket weaver and I even tried my hand at making floor coverings. To this day the-son-I-wish-I-had stills teases me about making my own Linoleum. When he helped us move after Don’s stroke he found an area rug I had made and he couldn’t get over the fact that someone would actually make their own Linoleum. “Who does that?” “The Colonists”, I told him, “and people during the California Gold Rush when canvas off from sailing ships was plentiful and carpeting was not.” 

A summer or two ago I ran into a woman at a summer art fair who was selling handmade Linoleum area rugs.  (They're actually called floor clothes but they are the forerunners of Linoleum.) Hers were no better or worse than mine were and that old longing to march off into the sunset doing something different than the norm washed over me again. Woo is me, I guess I was just ahead of my time. That may be the excuse I tell myself for not taking my rugs on the art fair circuit, but the truth is that I get bored easily. After I’ve learned the ends and outs of doing particular craft it no longer holds any mystery for me, and I lose interest.

A professor of a ‘Women in Transition’ class I took in my forties when I went back to college to finish up my degree told me that the trick for me would be to find a career that was always presenting new challenges, new projects that changed often enough so I didn’t get bored. For that class, we had to research five careers we thought we might like and narrow it down to one that fits our personal assets and she considered my desire to keep on learning new things to be an asset. Believe it or not, that opinion changed my life. It was a light bulb moment. I no longer thought of myself as a loser who couldn’t find herself. I no longer felt guilty for spending so much time and money gearing up for hobbies and crafts that I didn’t stick with once I got good at them. That class taught me that it’s the process of learning that I like, not the finished products. Wow, why hadn’t I thought of that? It could have saved me a lot of negative feelings.  

I investigated the five careers and settled on the same career choice I wanted to be right out of high school: an architect. Oh boy, I thought, I can still do that! And that may have been technically true but in practical terms it was pointless for me head in that direction that late in life. After studying the government forecasts for the field, I learned that computers were going to drastically downsize the number of architects needed and by the time I would get a degree in that field there would be a glut of people all fighting for fewer jobs. In the end, I went for the degree I could get in the shortest length of time because, when it came right down to it, I just wanted to finish what I had started back in the 60s. Graduation day was one of the happiest days of my entire life.

What does all this have to do with the price of tea in China, as my mother used to say when something said didn’t seem relevant to the topic under discussion? A lot. On Christmas Eve I was telling my niece about a cottage I came close to buying just before Don had his stroke and how much I loved the area it was in. It’s close to where her daughter just bought a house and considerably closer to where my entire family lives. “Aunt Jean, they still sell little houses in that area,” she said. “You could still find one.”

Could I really? I thought about what is holding me to the north end of town---a house that is perfect for aging in place, a senior hall that is bustling with activities. Could I find a place and remodel it to overcome the first and find a source of activities to replace the latter? I hopped on Zillow, the real estate website, and all week long I’ve been looking at property within my budget. I found a cottage on a lake about a mile from where my nephew lives and with a little remodeling it could work for me. Zillow posts a lot of pictures so I was able to draw up the floor plan to that house and figure out what it would take to make it better suited to my needs. I did the same with several houses and googled how far away one in particular is from the doctor, the dentist, my nieces, the hospital and my favorite grocery store.

So Zillow is going to be my new best friend and maybe, just maybe the little cottage I wanted before Don’s stroke will come up for sale again. Tiny places on the lakes around here tend to do that often enough and if I keep going to Zillow long enough, I might come up with the almost-perfect house. I designed the house I live in, working closely with the architect and our builder and it will be so hard to leave it behind but the pull of being closer to my family is strong, too. At least I have a new dream to keep me busy in this new year…that is until I get bored again. ©

Confession Time, Again

It was one of those days that started out great. Cool but pleasant driving conditions. Money in the bank longing to be spent. I got a parking space up close to the doors at the super store where I can buy everything from groceries to paint thinner. Not that I’m going to thin paint any time soon but at least I know where I can go to buy some when the mood strikes me. Inside, I walked right up to the courtesy desk, no waiting in line like I expected to do this close after Christmas. And surprise, surprise they had my lost watch in their ‘lost and found’ drawer. It had been in that drawer since the Monday before Christmas, not long enough for it to make friends with the two dozen other watches waiting patiently for their owners to take them home.

I did my grocery shopping which wasn’t that easy to do because I was also busy patting myself on the back for passing up all the tempting things in the cookies, candy, chips and ice cream aisles. Walking through those aisles was a real test of my will power. I had worked hard on my recent weight loss but I had also strayed off my diet over the holidays with all temptations around and I was determined to get back on track before I can’t even see that track anymore or worse, I don’t care anymore that it’s located on the corner of Better Health and Common Sense. The last area of the store I had to walk through to get to the cashiers was the Evil Bakery where I said to myself: Why you’ve been such a good little girl passing up all those cookies, candy, chips and ice cream you deserve a Bismarck.

“Are you crazy?” I heard another voice saying. I looked around. I was alone so I figured I must be talking to myself again. Is that a byproduct of living alone or am I---well, you know---on the bridge leading to the land of senility?  If so, I should be there by now because I’ve been talking to myself since Ring was a pup. You know Ring. I wrote about him in my last blog. He’s the old Beagle Don had when he was a kid. “Ring time” was a marker for him, sort of like using B.C. and A.D. for before and after Christ was born. Okay, I’d better strike that last line out of the final draft so I don’t offend anyone who might erroneously think I’m comparing Ring’s importance in Don’s world to the importance of Jesus in the history of the world. But darn it, to a boy of 14 or 15 the death of a dog you’ve had your entire life is pretty important. If not for Ring’s passing, Don might never have reached out and discovered girls.

Back to the jelly filled Bismarck. As I reached in the case to pull one out I swear it looked at me as if to say, “Sweetie, are you sure you want to do this?” And because I really didn’t want to do that I ate it in the parking lot before coming home so the evidence of my sinful ways wouldn’t be around to mock me. Damn it, it's time for a sugar detox again! How many times do I have to have sugary treats grab me by the throat and insist that all my troubles will be far away if I just consumed it? Wait! “All my troubles will be far away?” Isn’t that a line in a Beatles’ song? Great. Now I’m channeling a song that never fails to make me cry. “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday.” Yup, only a crazy person could connect a classic Beatles song like Yesterday to a Bismarck from the bakery aisle. Or maybe a would-be writer could to that, too? So am I off the hook, off the train to Crazyville? I guess as long as I’m not grabbing the aluminum foil out of the drawer in the kitchen to fashion myself a hat, I’m still okay.

All kidding aside, my eating is out of control although my bathroom scales hasn’t yelled, “Loser!” at me yet---that didn’t come out right. I wish it would shout “loser” at me. What I meant to say is I haven’t lost or gained anything over the holidays but I have to turn that round so that I’m losing again. But mostly I have to get the sugar monster off my back. Oh, well, my day may not have ended as good as it started---contrary to how it might look, binge eating does not make me a happy camper---but at least the dog didn’t see me do it. ©