From Holiday Guilt and Presidential Powers to Full-out Gratitude

With the holiday spirit hanging in the air---the decorations lighting up the neighborhood nights, the Christmas music and good cheer heard in the stores, the parties lined up on the calendar---it feels like I’m living in an twilight zone. I swing from being genuinely happy in the ho-ho-ho season to feeling guilty about that. Who am I that I get to be light-hearted when so many people in Southern California are losing their homes and livelihoods to raging fires that are destroying thousands-upon-thousands of acres? Who am I that I get to be in my warm, well-lite home when 66% of the people in Puerto Rico are still without power since Hurricane Maria destroyed the island in September? 

FEMA is closing operations in our southern states but their workers aren’t getting a much needed break. They’re headed out to California and you can’t help but wonder how much longer our nation can afford to fund all the natural disasters we’re having back-to-back. If we lose our power grid here in the frozen north this winter, for example, will anyone be here to set up shelters for us? Yet our lawmakers are giving big tax breaks to billionaires thus raising our national debt but when it comes time to balance the budget it will be cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have in their crosshairs. They’ve actually spoke those words out loud and we’re supposed to say, “Oh, well,” and go back to our holiday cheer. If I drank I’d get one of those Virgin Wines Advent Calendar boxes. Open a door every day and pull out a bottle of bubbly.

I am getting whiplash trying to keep up with the changes the current administration is making. This week Trump set things in motion to relocate an embassy to Jerusalem against the advice of virtually every world leader, and he’s radically slashed the size of protected lands in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments by 2 million acres---to the orgasmic delight of mining and oil exploration companies. And Utah is just the beginning. The administration has plans to shrink land in 24 national monuments including in Montana, California, Kentucky, a few states out east and the new marine monument in the Pacific Ocean. The smallest monument park, one in Mississippi that is dedicated to an early NAACP official who was assassinated by white supremacists in the 1960s is already under an acre in size. What possible justification could there be for slashing that national monument land in half other than it being dog whistle gesture to the guys who like to march around with Tiki torches?

Breathe, pace myself. Yes, time to change the topic. One of the commercial blogs I read from time to time had a topic this week titled A Powerful Reason to Give Gratitude During the Holidays and into the New Year. The bottom line, according to the article, is the holidays are often stressful so we need to double down on the act of giving gratitude throughout the day. “Gratitude stimulates your neurotransmitters, the hormones that bring energy and happiness into your living experience.” Or so they claim. Call me a cynic but sometimes I think the wine would work better. 

All kidding aside, I am grateful for the things the Sixty & Me blog article said I need to focus on: the people in my life, my talents and the events in my past that helped make me who I am. Although if I’m to be 100% honest here, I’m still working on being grateful for the latter. Being a widow helped make me who I am. Being my husband’s caregiver for so many years helped make me who I am. Watching my mom die due to a series of human errors helped make me who I am. These events may have made me a stronger person yadda, yadda, yadda but I was pretty happy with myself before I was tested with these challenges. So my gratitude in this area is not written in flowery cursive in a cloth-covered gratitude journey. If I wrote them down at all, I'd write them in pencil so I could erase them from time to time when I’m decidedly ungrateful and I’ve dedicated an hour to a pity party. 

What I am is immensely proud and grateful that I can still feel a full range of emotions, that I still have empathy and a sense of humanity that have not been crushed by Man or Nature. I am also grateful that Time Magazine chose the “Silence Breakers” that launched a global movement against sexual harassment as their ‘Person of the Year’ cover. I predicted it would Tarana Burke, the #MeToo Movement’s creator, and I got that and so much more. Woman Power is back and “the future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard.” Yes, I understand the audacity of quoting that line from Al Franken’s resignation speech in the context of the Time’s magazine cover. Life is messy. ©

Wickedly Funny Widows at a Christmas Party

I should know better than to order a holiday sweater online. I did it in plenty of time, had it been the right size when it arrived in the mail but it was so big it looked more like a Christmas dress. The quality was good and the cuteness factor was right up there with the best of them, so I returned it for an exchange. Big mistake. I should have returned it for credit and ordered another one only smaller. It would have come in the mail in time for my parties. Can you believe it, I’ve got five on my calendar this year! The first one was this week with my group of Gathering Girls. Next up is a UAW party followed by a Red Hat Society party, a book club party and the most important of all, my family party the Saturday before Christmas. The sweater will probably get here in time for the last party, but since I plan on living another year I’ll have a Christmas theme sweater to wear in 2018. It will be my very first holiday themed sweater. 

The Gathering Girls party was at the condo of a lady who henceforth be will be known as H.P. Planning a party in a group that’s never had one before was tricky and when we couldn’t agree on a menu we decided that since H.P. volunteered to host the party, she’d get to decide. Her house, her rules. When she announced her menu, I jumped in (too quickly) to volunteer to bring a dessert. Little did I know that two of us would get a pass from bringing a dish and instead would be assigned to help serve and clean up in the kitchen. I do those two things far better than I cook or bake. But I’ve gotta say I love the concept of letting a couple of party attenders opt out from bringing something. The holidays can get overwhelming and if not having to bring a dish to pass takes the pressure off someone, it could make a difference. And surprisingly, it felt good not to be constantly looking for ways to jump up and be helpful to the host. I was the dessert lady, not the coffee-tea-or-let-me-take-your-plate lady.

I call myself a ‘food assembler’ not a cook so for my dessert I dug up recipes for mini tarts and I bought a backup Oreo Ice Cream Roll dessert just in case my tarts didn’t turn out well. I made chocolate cordials, Italian almond orange and lemon curd tarts. The morning of the party I was torn over bringing the tarts or the backup dessert so I brought them both but only the tarts got served. My lack of kitchen confidence is officially out of the closet with my gal pals. Still, they all had glowing things to say about how the tarts tasted and looked and to the best of my knowledge they didn’t send anyone to the hospital the next day. 

H.P.’s tree was the prettiest one I’ve seen in ages; it was thickly covered with ornaments and birds from all over the world and our party was timed perfectly because when she takes her tree down she’s going to divide her tree decorations up to give away. So it was her very last tree. The luncheon table was decked out in fine linens and china and it sat in a lovely room with an oriental inspired decor`. After coffee was served, we opened gifts. We each brought a ten dollar “consumable” gift to exchange and one woman gave Christmas postage stamps. How cleaver was that! We tried to play a game where you get to steal gifts from each other but none of us could remember how it went. And not a single one of us thought about googling gift exchange games. If there had been millennials in the room their cell phones would have come out and a quick draw contest would have taken place to see who could come up with the information first.

Then we got to joking about becoming a modern day version of the Golden Girls and all of us moving in together. H.P. had enough room, but like planning the party menu we couldn’t decide on which of us most closely aligns with which characters on the TV sitcom. None of us wanted to be lusty, southern belle Blanche Devereaux so I might have been the one who suggested the two youngest would have to duke it out because they’re the only ones in the group who can still turn a few male heads. As per our Modus Operandi laughter filled the air and after the only Trump supporter in our group had to leave to go pick up her grand kids from school, we got around to irreverently solving the world’s problems. Once again, we found ourselves trying to decide which ladies among us would make the best leaders in Washington---after we kicked the whole bunch there to the curb. I called dibs Mitch McConnell’s job in the senate. No one stepped up to the plate wanting to be the president so I was drafting a bill in my head that would allow us to do a nationwide talent search for another No Drama Obama type president. Our three branches of government would never be the same if we wickedly funny widows were in charge. ©

Gracie Gruesome and her Mighty Schnauzer

I wish it would rain. Hard!…because a skunk came to his demise on the road leading to my cul-de-sac and every time I come home from some place Levi asks to go out to his yard but instead he’ll take a detour round and round the car in the garage until I get all huffy with him and chase him inside or out. He’s pulled this shtick before, but since the skunk died nearly two weeks ago Levi has been more militant, persistent and devoted to his mission. It won’t do any good to go to the car wash until someone removes the carcass from the road and it rains. If the skunk had died in front of my house, I would have bagged it up and thrown it in the trash. How hard could that be? But, no, I’ve had to watch it go from a beautiful animal through various stages of sadness and yuckiness as time and traffic takes a toll on the body. Yesterday when I noticed a rabbit had bit the dust on the same curve it dawned on me that I’m driving past a “body farm” for critters, not unlike where some people who donate their bodies to science end up. 

We have seven body farms in the United States where people taking forensic science courses or training K9 units can study decomposing human bodies left out in the elements. I’ve always thought it was curious that all the body farms are located in southern states---people don't all get murdered and dumped where stuff doesn’t freeze in the winter---but last May our governor signed a bill that will allow a 2½ acre body farm next to the Marquette Branch Prison to be used by Northern Michigan University’s new forensic anthropology program. Isn’t that a perfect location, or what! Body farms are a necessary evil to train crime solving units, coroners and cadaver sniffing dogs but I like the idea of prisoners having to live next door to a place like that. What does that say about me?

The 76^th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor is coming up on December 7^th and I went to lecture about it. The presentation had a different twist because the speaker’s aunt and uncle were there and they were his springboard to putting a human face and emotions to the bombing. The aunt had taken an ocean liner over to Hawaii where she was met at the dock and taken directly to the Justice of the Peace where the couple was married. Then they went to the married housing area of the base and the next day the attack happened. Can you imagine having that honeymoon story to tell and document in black and white photos? The speaker also had aerial photos taken by the Japanese and plenty of before and after shots of the fleet. The young couple stayed on the base for the next four years, helping to restore the harbor and fleet.

Aren’t I Ms. Gracie Gruesome today! I did do something light-hearted and fun this week. After cardio drumming class I met a friend for lunch. We always have good conversations and lots of laughs but I did have an alarming incident happen. She was asking about my work history and I said something that wasn’t factually true. I corrected myself right away but it shook me up just the same. I had the same thing happen at the doctor’s office and it scares the freaking stuffing out of me that my brain misfired and missed part of my personal timeline like that. I can’t help but worry that it’s the beginning of the big ‘D’ word. And that leads me to the burning question of why did the word ‘senility’ fall out of fashion and the word ‘dementia’ is taking its place? Both of them refer to a mental decline associated with aging but I guess we’re supposed to be less insulted if someone says, “she has dementia” rather than “she’s senile?” I'd rather be called 'daffy' or 'she's out to lunch' when I'm not. Euphemisms. You've gotta love them.

I just started reading a book written by Effie Leland Wilder titled Out to Pasture. She was eight-five when this book was published and there 750,000 copies in print plus she wrote four since. I wanted to read it because its fiction written “journal-keepers” style and she’s supposed to be funny and wry with her elderly main character’s observations of living in an assisted living place. One observation had me mulling it over in agreement. “Many of us seem older than we are,” she wrote, “because we absorbed our parents’ memories.” She went on to explain how our generation grew up listening to the stories and conversations of our parents and their friends. How true is that! Younger people don’t do that anymore. They’ve got their noses buried in their devices and seem to have no time or interest in the experiences of their elder's. If the guy who gave the Pearl Harbor lecture hadn’t been listening to his family’s stories growing up he never would have developed an interest in researching the day that lived in infamy, as President Roosevelt correctly labeled the attack on Pearl Harbor. May the 2,403 people who died that day rest in peace. ©