Midwinter musings

Walking in the greenbelt has been interesting in the past week. The weather warmed up quite a bit – into the high 40s to mid 50s in the afternoon – which caused a lot of melting of the snow that’s been lying around. As a result, the concrete paths are in some places submerged, and the dirt paths are a quagmire of mud and slush. It makes for slow going.

As I’ve walked this week, I’ve had to pick my way and alter my route a bit. This led me to going different ways than I usually do, and reducing my pace. On either end of the big square that is the openspace I usually confine myself to, the path goes under the main road in a sort of low-ceilinged tunnel. Even on bright sunny days, these tunnels are dark, chilly, and rather creepy. My hackles go up as I peer into the gloom, and my instincts say to avoid them. I find this interesting. While they are both only the length of the road above, and I can see the path on the other side, they have an “unsafe” vibe about them. I wonder if men ever feel this way, entering a dim confined space. As a woman, I have learned to pay attention to my inner voice, and it has served me well. Still, I also have an active imagination, and I have to talk myself into doing some things, like going into places that make me shiver.

On one side of the park, the tunnel is where one crosses from one county to the next, and this is apparent, regardless of the posted signs, by the change in the path. It goes from smooth wide concrete to narrower blacktop. The surroundings immediately are more urban and littered. The noise level increases. On a bicycle, I think I’d be more inclined to follow the path and find out where it leads, but on foot, this is where I turn around and head back.

I see some interesting people walking in the greenbelt. There’s a code of conduct that is unwritten, but understood, that one is supposed to stay to the right (to avoid being run over by cyclists) and briefly acknowledge the person(s) you meet heading the other direction. This is usually accomplished with a nod, a smile, or a “hi” – or all of the above – but every once in a while you run across someone who is oblivious. There is one guy who I’ve observed wandering around in the greenbelt talking to himself. No, he’s not on a Bluetooth, looking crazy; I think he may actually be a little unbalanced. He wears a shiny blue baseball jacket over his shoulders, which reminds me of my little brother, armless sleeves flapping in the breeze. He stops in random places and looks around in what seems to be either indecision or paranoia, and stares at other walkers like he’s not sure what they are. He looks to be in his late fifties, but it’s hard to tell. He just may be grizzled looking because he doesn’t take care of himself.

There’s an Asian woman who always gives me a big smile and wave, passing in a cloud of perfume. There are lots of dogwalkers, including the ones who either don’t know or don’t care that the greenbelt is NOT a dog park, but a wilderness area, and these are the ones that don’t keep their dogs on lease and probably don’t pick up their poop. There are the families with the little ones riding bikes while mom or dad follows on foot, sometimes pushing strollers. There are the serious runners, and the middle aged folks ambling along. I was stopped the other day by a woman who asked me about the coyotes in the greenbelt. She had seen one during the day, and I guess she was afraid it might have been dangerous because she thought they only came out at night. I assured her that while they generally keep to themselves, it isn’t all that unusual to see one in the afternoon.

I hope the paths dry up soon. I am much happier roaming the walking paths or following a mountain trail than toiling away in a gym. The complex I live in has a gym, but it smells of sweat and feet, so I don’t go in there very often.

Blogaversary!

We all have little vanities about ourselves. Stuff that we want to believe, and really don’t want to be disabused of, so we avoid testing the waters too deeply. One of mine is that I’ve always fancied myself a writer, even to the extent that I harbor the fantasy that “had life not gotten in the way,” I would have pursued this dream and been published, long ago. I think I keep that one right next to “I still look good in these jeans.”


One year ago today I posted my first installment on this blog. I was in the midst of chaos, and I’ve found journaling to be a good way of organizing my thoughts and making sense of what is going on around me. I was also terribly lonely, having exiled myself to a place (literally and metaphorically) that I never wanted to be. I decided to put it out there – semi-anonymously – and chronicle my journey back to the life that I needed, and maybe not feel so isolated.

One year ago, I thought it would be a good idea to share the steps I was taking to get back to Colorado, and why. Memory is a funny thing, and I find it educational to look back at what I wrote about something at the time and get the real feelings and not rely on fuzzy, watered down rose colored glass.

I got so much more than that from this little blog. I have been the recipient of so much positive feedback, and so much camaraderie and support, that it truly touches my heart. I have Followers, which blows me away, and I appreciate each and every one of you! I have had readers from all over the world, and I find that amazing and inspiring. I haven’t always responded to my comments, but I enjoy them and look forward to them so much! I have made friends. People who are as real as I am, who also like to reach out beyond their own front porch, and who understand that a little pat on the back or “I know what you mean” is sometimes the thing that helps you get through your day, “virtual” or not. I hope you enjoy your visit when you stop by my blog.

So, progress report? I am here in Colorado, in the Denver Metro Area, exactly where I hoped I would be. My daughter is going to kindergarten in a good school that is close to home. We are living in a cute little rented townhouse, comfortable and safe, and she’s gotten to do a lot of the things I wanted for her – like riding her own bike. I have plenty of places to walk.

We are making friends, and reconnecting to old ones. I am so grateful for the sense of continuity that my old friends give me, and how they have absorbed my daughter right into the fabric of their lives and made us feel welcome.

I still need to find a job. It is a struggle that I hope doesn’t continue much longer. I have a lot of worry about that, but I also remind myself that I will find a way.

I also reflect that really, this is the only thing that is a real problem, and to be able to say that is really great. I am comfortable with myself and feel like I’m in a good place, even though I am not getting everything I want. I am getting what I need. I am looking forward to the year ahead. Thanks for being part of it.

Brief Update

My mother is out of ICU and can move her feet, so everyone is breathing a sigh of relief. 
I was asked to call my mother's only sibling - my Uncle Rob - and give him an update last night.  I hadn't talked to him in years... maybe a decade.  It was a cordial conversation, and he offered to help me fly back to CA if I needed to.  I told him thanks, but I was going to wait and see how things went.

My father said he'd update me today, but when it got to be past noon and I hadn't heard from him, I called.  He gave me the news, and then said he was going to start building ramps for the house!  (I hadn't said a word to him about the stairs at this point.)  I kind of made a strangled laugh and said that I think it would be easier to just sell the house.  Surprisingly, my father said - seriously - that he'd thought about that, and is going to see how her recovery goes.  He said he thought he'd need to build at least 4 ramps and was glad he had lots of wood.
Good grief.  That place is going to look like the Winchester Mystery House before he's done... I hope he doesn't have a heart attack trying to do all that by himself, but he was busily building a new fence along their West border when I left California, by himself, digging holes in the rocky and packed Auburn soil.  He wouldn't let anyone help him with that, either.

Thanks to everyone who has taken a moment to think good things about my mother and the rest of us.  We'll see how it goes.  She should be in the hospital in Sacramento until sometime late next week.

Broadsided

My mother is being operated on today for a couple of spinal tumors. I found out this morning via a phone call from my father. My mother fell a while back, and then they started finding more problems and prescribing things, and last night she was taken to the ER. An MRI showed what they think has been causing it, but I think no one was expecting this. I have been feeling for a while that she was declining pretty fast, but this is a shocking turn of events. They should know more this afternoon.


My mother is not a strong woman, and I have a lot of concern for the outcome. Depending on the results of the surgery, I also am really worried about her recovery. Ever since I saw the house that my parents bought for their retirement, I have had it in the back of my mind how much trouble they could potentially have as they get older. Their house is full of stairs. There are stairs going up to the front door. There are stairs between the garage and the kitchen, the living room, and their bedroom. There are stairs going up to the second floor, and more stairs leading to the deck out back, that is a maze of – you guessed it – more stairs. And then stairs down to the back of the house, and more going out to the garden area. To say that this layout didn’t strike me as the wisest choice for a couple of aging people is a gross understatement.

When my dear Labradors had to have cancer surgery themselves a few years ago, while we were living in that house, I struggled with this problem, and one had to stay longer at the Vet’s because she wasn’t able to negotiate the stairs with her stitches being where they were. That time is fresh in my mind, today, as I think about the stairs between my parents’ beds and their bathroom.

My father said that he has had to carry my mother. I imagine him falling with her in his arms. I know how stubborn they both are. I hope it won’t be as bad as that.

Ever the staunch atheist, he is asking people today to pray for my mother. I get that he is afraid, but I find this interesting, all the same. This must be his foxhole.

My thoughts keep going from a deep gratitude that I and my daughter are as healthy as we are, to wondering what the impact my mother’s future will have on the family. It is not a stable house of cards on a good day. It most likely will not be pretty. If I were still there, it wouldn’t be much help, judging by how my mother’s pneumonia went last year.

I’ve had a feeling for a while that something was coming. I’m glad we moved when we did. I hope there is better news from California soon.

Countdown to Santa Claus

My little angel is manic right now and I am having trouble stringing words together, I’m so distracted. And sleep deprived. Normally, she sleeps late and allows me to do the same, which nicely balances out the weird staying up too late thing I’ve been doing recently, but not since she realized how close to Christmas we are. This morning, just like yesterday, she climbed into my bed to pester me into wakefulness, but I admit I love to cuddle with my baby, always in the back of my mind that soon enough she won’t want to anymore.

Being the pagan that I am, Christmas for us is entirely about the tree, lights, getting together with friends, and lots of fun food. Yesterday we made gingerbread - for making a gingerbread house tomorrow, and also for gingerbread men. We also made dipped chocolates. I loved making dipped chocolates as a child. This year I wanted to make them with M, and she seriously considered what three flavors we would make the centers. She chose raspberry, orange, and peppermint, and we colored them accordingly. She was really pretty good at rolling the fondant into little balls, but of course, lost interest in doing it long before all the balls had been made. That’s the fun of being the Mom. Going to the trouble of planning, arranging, setting up, and creating these projects, so that our kids can engage in something like candy making for a few minutes before wandering off to get into trouble in another part of the house while your hands are covered with chocolate.

The wine bottle got opened early. Outside our window, the snow kept falling all day, the kitchen was warm, the scent of gingerbread and chocolate creating a heady perfume, and Windam Hill was playing on the stereo (what M calls ballet music). She danced around the room in her pink tutu and undershirt for a long time, and then it occurred to her to go outside and play in the snow, in the dark, in her tutu. (She thought to put on a jacket, but didn’t feel she needed pants. Or boots, at first.) By the time was able to trundle her off to bed, we had a kitchen table covered with chocolate candy and cooling gingerbread pieces.

Today we are going over to our friends’ house for more cookie making, then back home to prepare for Santa. M can’t wait to hang her stocking. Tomorrow morning, she has a huge pile of presents to open, but I’m pretty sure I successfully dissuaded her dad from sending her the Zsu Zsu hamsters he thought (not being a real parent) would be a great idea. I have my fingers crossed. Merry Solstice/Christmas/Festivus, everyone!

Brother, Can you spare a tree?

Being unemployed is an interesting experience. The last time I was unemployed for an uncomfortable length of time, it was summer and I had a big landscaping project that took a lot of time and effort. I put in a retaining wall by myself, along with a lot of other things. My mind was occupied, my muscles were tired, and I had something tangible taking shape in front of me. Compared to now, living in a rented townhouse, in the wintertime; I realized again last night how much I miss my garden. I feel so useless right now, and I’m not suited to spending a lot of time watching tv. Sometimes I have moments of real terror and panic as I worry about the future. Despite this, I am trying to keep my concerns to myself at the same time being realistic with my child about some extravagant things we can’t afford.

The holidays are never a good time for me, and although I really love certain aspects of Christmas, overall I dread this season. The last couple of Christmases at my parents’ house, I tried in vain to avoid the Christmas Present Extravaganza that they unleashed on my daughter. My mother never listens to me, but I still tried to make her understand that I didn’t want to instill a materialistic concept of “getting” that heaps of presents would create in her mind. I also knew that as a single parent, I wasn’t going to be able to keep this going and didn’t want to set up unrealistic expectations. My daughter has lots of toys and other things, and her birthday is only 3 months after Christmas. The practice of buying random things just to have an impressive pile of wrapped packages makes me crazy. I wanted to try to make it about fun experiences instead of Stuff, but my mother did what she wanted and Christmas morning the last couple years was unbelievable. Along with the few nice, fun gifts that would have been completely fine, they kept piling on the crap so that she was clearly overwhelmed by the end of the morning, surrounded by piles of stuff that she didn’t even register.

This year, it is just the two of us in our little place, and she won’t be getting piles of stuff, and I tried to prepare her expectations without ruining her anticipation of Christmas. This year she is five, and believes in Santa, and Mommy is unemployed. I’ve tried to keep the conversation generalized, not so much about our own situation, and so we just say that this year, with the economy being so bad, that lots of people are having a more low-key Christmas. I reassured her that Santa will bring her something, and that we will have a Christmas tree.

Most years, no matter how poor I was, I found a way to have a tree, so I am certainly not going to short my daughter when I didn’t deprive myself, and so we set off yesterday to bring one home. I did tell her though, that we might have to go to more than one place because I didn’t want to spend too much money. She is so sweet and perceptive, and I don’t want her feelings to get hurt. I still remember how my little brother would howl if we left a store without buying anything.

I checked online to see where the lots were, although I had seen some cut trees at the grocery store and knew that if it came down to it, we could get one there. Those trees had been leaning there still wrapped up for quite a while though, and I knew what shape they were in. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Plus, the crappy grocery store trees weren’t cheap.

We drove around where I had read that they had a pretty good lot, and it took a while to find it. When we pulled up, we were the only ones there. It was windy and cold outside, and there was a lone woman struggling to tie down a wreath that had blown over. I rolled down my window and asked her what the price range on her trees was. I told her I wanted a little tree, about 4 feet tall. (Even if money were no object, we don’t have a lot of room.) When she came over to the car to talk to me, M piped up from the back seat. “Hi!” she said to the woman, who smiled and said hi back. The woman tells me what a 4 ft tree would cost, and she says she thinks they have a tree in our budget. M announces to her very seriously “We are running low on money.”

I felt a little embarrassed, and I also could tell that the woman probably felt worse than I did. I just laughed a little bit and said to M, that yeah, we were, but it sounded like we’d be able to get a nice tree here. We got out of the car and I couldn’t help but think about how it seemed that we were in an old movie, where I have my kid pretend to be destitute to con the tree seller to give us a good price on a tree. I thought about what we looked like, me with my little blonde haired girl, talking about how we don’t want to spend too much. I’d put what I thought was enough cash in my pocket and we followed her to the trailer to pay. When we went inside the trailer, mostly to get out of the cold, the guys who also worked there were huddled together, and they jumped up a little embarrassed, making room for us. They were young and had genuine smiles, and they looked like they’d been woken up too early on a cold windy day. When the woman told me what the total was with tax, I was short the 28 cents, which I told her as I handed over the bills, intending to walk back to the car for the change. Quickly she said she’d take care of it, and gave M a handful of little candycanes.

The young men cut the end off and wrapped the tree in my tarp, and took my rope and tied the tree to the top of my Rav for me, as I put M in the back seat. They were all very nice to us and wished us a Merry Christmas as we pulled away.

We decorated the tree, with M putting ornaments wherever it suited her, and she was pleased with my ornaments, which have been packed away these past years. She thinks we have a very pretty tree, and danced around happy last night in front of the twinkling lights.

Ah ha moment while watching Arrested Development

When you’ve read this, you will be thinking to yourself, “why?” So, please understand that there were extenuating circumstances and let’s just leave it at that, for now. Okay?

I used to have in my mind Stephen Colbert or Rainn Wilson, or a mutant child of the two of them, but now I have had an epiphany and realize that it is Buster from Arrested Development. This is who my child’s father really is most like. When I heard the actress say the line “people find you odd and alienating,” it made me gasp in recognition. I studied the sweater over the button-down shirt. I looked at the dorky glasses, the high forhead, the receding hairline that makes the non-existent hairstyle look that much worse, and especially the awkward smile and speech patterns. And I knew. My daughter’s father is who they modeled Buster on. They must have followed him around the Cape for a while, studying how he likes to sit alone at a bar and drink PBR and pretend he’s slumming. While he watches boat racing on the TV. Because so many blue collar regular guys closely follow the America’s Cup.

Yes, my poor, poor child is the biological descendent of a person who took for granted his parent’s money and their provision of a good education, squandered it over five years and two schools, finally and barely getting his degree in History, only to spend the next sixteen years in a series of sporadic, menial, dead-end entry level jobs, moving across the country and back, living in crappy cheap apartments, making few friends and fewer impressions, but managing, through some ironic twist of fate, to stop off in Colorado long enough several years ago to impregnate me.

Whenever I consider how his family must feel about him, I think, sardonically, “They must be so proud.” He is now living with them, doing god knows what, and I can only be grateful for the 2023 miles that keep him from being more of a colossal pain in the ass to me than he already is. A master of nothing except being supremely passive aggressive, he recently told me he wants to – over the course of the next few years – acquire the “skills that I can support myself with.”

Did I mention that he’s almost forty?

*sigh*

Lately, his shenanigans have been getting me down. There is no personality disorder I find more tedious and aggravating to deal with than passive aggressiveness. It is no accident that my mother is a master of this game, as well. To have two of them in my life, simultaneously, both of whom have a stake in my daughter’s life… well, it’s no wonder I drink. Please be gentle with me. I know where I went wrong.