V-Day a week later and other thoughts

It is Valentine Day only 10 days later.  I guess I always figured write what you are thinking as you are thinking it and then re read it and edit out the stupid stuff.  Its been a busy February and that never quite happened and now I look back at V-Day as I recall it with the hazy notion, that I got through another one.

This morning is cold.  My thermometer reads a bone chilling 0 degrees, but once again we are told we have braved and survived another period of below normal temps and out of whack winter weather after 4 days of weather last week that melted every thing in sight most of it over one very warm night.  Another snow storm of the same variety on Sunday night, though the accumulations while approximate to the last storm, had only bare ground to blow across, so the digging out was easier, I think....

But back to V-Day.  I have a love/hate relationship with Valentine Day.  As a child in school it was one of the three big holidays celebrated in school.  Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day.  School parties that we would wait for with baited breath.  Heart shaped cookies and red hots along with soapy tasting heart shaped candies with romantic sayings on each one.  But the biggest thing was the Valentines we exchnaged.  It was a shopping trip we were always allowed to go on, and I would agonize for days on what direction I wanted to go with my Valentines.   Granted I was somewhat limited as makers of Valentines weren't the saavy marketers they are today.  There were basically 3 or 4 styles in my parents price range, some geared more towards little boys and the rest seducing little girls who put copious amounts of thought and desire into those little red hearts and sentiments.  Once bought, we had to decide what was the best card in the bunch to give to our very best friends and perhaps the one boy we didn't find awful and who even at the tender ages of 7 and 8 we wanted to somehow impress.  After those momentous decisions we would work our way down the ladder and go from lesser girl friends down through the boys to the few boys we could barely stand who got the least sentimental of a box of basically generic thoughts on love.  The last valentines were always saved for the those who we just didn't even really think about and were just part of our class.  To not give everyone a Valentine was never an option, and Valentine boxes were what we spent the week prior to V-Day working on and decorating.  I don't know that there were ever crushed hopes and derailed dreams in those days of elementary children passing out innocent Valentines.  We were all innocent then and only looked to see and analyze if our best friends had given us a Valentine of equal love and sharing, and sometimes if the boy we secretly liked had selected a Valentine that was more than just the neutral sentiment found in the rest of our cards.  Sometimes we read much into that valentine and even more into a childish scrawl.  But mostly after the party and the day were done, we put away the valentines, often shoved under our bed to occasionally be pulled out and looked at and analyzed once again.  We'd dream silly, little girl dreams of that boy we liked, growing up and declaring his love for us and the white wedding dress that would follow, but that was as far as our dreams would go.

As we grew older the valentines became more elaborate, even as the party's became less.  Jr. high school meant being cool and not giving away that secret which was the boy you liked from afar.  The liking was more pronounced but the secrecy kept more carefully.  One year I made all my Valentines after being enthralled with a girl the year before who had taken the time to hand make all of her Valentines.  I labored for a week before hand making the valentines and deciding who would get what valentine.  It was the peak of my Valentine creativity. 

High school saw the end of the Valentines as I had known them in grade school.  It wasn't cool to pass out valentines and even less cool to do so in front of other people, so the valentine became an obsolete anachronism even though we felt as strongly, if not more about our friends and those boys we liked.  We just couldn't show it.  We sometimes passed out silly cards among us girls, but the order of the day became the Sweetheart Dance put on my the school's FFA and for those who have no notion of what that is, it stood for Future Farmers of America, and they selected several girls to compete for Sweetheart of the dance to be accompanied onto the floor by an FFA member of their choice.  Even then we thought it was kind of dorky, but it was one of our more formal dances, in that we got to dress up, the girls were given corsages if they had a date, and it was always around Valentines Day.  Long time couples sometimes passed out single carnations to their girlfriends in school on that day, but that was the extent of signs of affection in school.  One year the journalism class got the bright idea of selling Valentine day messages which you could fill out and have the class print up and deliver to your valentines of choice.  It was not a huge success.

College was my awakening into how other places were much more elaborate in their celebrations of love, at least outwardly.  I remember my freshman year I had just started dating a guy who went to a different school hours away from where I was at Alma College.  I always remember walking uptown and picking out Hallmark Valentine cards for my parents, grandparents and brothers and sister, such was my emersion into the rights of Valentines Day away from home.  I remember the switchboard crowded by flower arrangements all morning long.  Girls delighted squeals as the men in their lives remembered them with arrangements of varying degrees of expense and romaticism.  The day went on and my roommate received her flowers from her long distance boyfriend and I wondered if Tim would think enough of me to send flowers or if a card would suffice for him.  It was afternoon before I got the switchboard announcement that there were flowers for me.  I remember a smile from ear to ear and immense relief that I fit in with the rest of the girl's dorm by getting the arrangement of flowers that said I was special to someone.  It was a lovely arrangement as I recall and was the zenith of my college experience with V-Day.  The years after I would have no longtime boyfriend and while I received a rose or two from good "guy" friends, it was the arrangement of flowers from my freshmen year, I most remember.  And much of that had as much to do with the need to fit in my freshmen year as it did the arrangement of flowers, which apparently was not the case later on.  I do remember feeling melancholy on a few of those following V-Day's as while it was a sign of independence, it was also the one day where you want to be a couple.  As that day would leave I would often breathe a sigh that things and expectations could get back to normal.

For the life of me I cannot remember what Kurt got me our first Valentines as a couple.  I know he got me something and I'm pretty sure it was some kind of roses, but I don't remember them. It wasn't until a couple of years down the road of our married life, that I discovered while Kurt always remembered Valentines Day and always bought me at least a card, it was always preceded by a dash to the local florist the day of, on the way home from work to see what was left that he could purchase.  The same held true of cards, whatever was left on that day.  Flowers and prepackaged romantic sentiments were not my husband's thing.  I learned over the years, and while that might have included some disappointing Valentine days, was that my husband was rock solid and never forgot to bring me at the very least, a card.  He just wasn't a planner of romance.  I am not a rose fan, and certainly not a red rose fan.  If money is going to be spent on flowers which I do love, spend it on an arrangement or a bouquet of  mixed flowers.  That said, Kurt believes in roses because that's what is there around V-Day.  Through the years his cards have meant more to me, as while they may have been the V-Day leftovers, they were a sentiment he picked out and read, and thought of me as he picked them out.  I still have them all.

The gifts of Valentine Day have come and gone and most haven't been remembered, chocolates that were eaten, roses that died too soon, and silly cards that made me smile and wonder how large was the selection left.  As my children reached that magical age of grade school valentines it became the job of me to buy the valentines and then cajole and harangue them into signing them and getting them ready for the school parties.  Gone were the days of carefully picking out what cards they wanted.  Whatever, was fine with them.  As they grew up, I became more moody with the approach of Valentines Day.  I rebelled against the commercialism that had once again overtaken a holiday that started out as a commercial venture, anyway.  As I grow older, age and the long dark winters make my outlook darker and I tend to look to V-Day as a lifeboat, even though it rarely is.  There were some very bad Valentine Days and probably more just mediocre ones of recent.  Valentines day this year was just strange.  My kids have never sent out valentine wishes to their parents, though Ryan did call later in the day, and as for my friends we all just kind of think its silly to send out sentiments to one another.  But for the first time in our marriage, Kurt got me neither a card or flowers or any outward sign that it was Valentine Day.  He felt bad, and I don't think he expected my reaction.  I didn't expect my reaction as I guess subconsciously I was looking forward to my sweetheart of over 34 years remembering. even though you would have to live in a cave not to know the day was approaching.  Honestly, I felt left out.  I know my mother would give anything to have my dad around to "not" remember.  But it was just a day and I was glad when it was done as it marks the last holiday of winter and the lean days of Lent, of somberness will give way to the joy that is Easter and spring.

And so it goes...

Friday Thoughts

Cars on the track at Daytona.  Pitchers and catchers report to Lakeland, FL.  The spring season for baseball is starting and Nascar is about to resume after a short winter's nap.  And we are about to leave another bout of the "Deep Freeze" of Michigan, 2011, behind.  As the sun rises on another pretty winter morning here, I wonder if next week when the temperatures are to hit in the 40's and beyond, if I will then complain about "dirty snow", slush and the mud that inevitably will appear.  It is after all, only February here in Michigan so we will not see spring anytime soon, but I guess a change from the Dr. Zhivago like crystal frozen beauty that has been us this past week to a change for the warmer will be welcome, though I will likely complain about that also. 

I try to head outside at least once a day with the dogs to walk them as braving the cold always makes me feel energized when I come back in and ready to tackle something new.  Whether I actually accomplish anything remains to be seen but at the least, I feel like I may.  This week it has been sorting and labeling old photographs that have never found their way into an album.  They go back as far as 2002, and were just thrown in the "Album cupboard" awaiting placement in an album which somehow never occurred.  The closer we have come to the present days, the less pictures I have in printed form as most I just now save to the computer or on a cd.  So, I know my labeling and cataloging is nearing its end at around 2007.  Inevitably when I tire of figuring out the years of some pictures, I pull out an old album, mostly from when my kids were just that...kids and even babies and I think how unconcerned we all look in those pictures.  There is one that is a favorite of mine at Sand Lake when my grandparents still owned the cottage there.  Annie was just over a year old.  That year she had a pink bathing suit with ruffles across her bottom.  We have several of her marching along the beach with usually Grandma in tow in case she fell over and into the water, which she did often and with seemingly little care, as we would pluck her out, stand her upright, no tears, no crying, and she would just start walking again.  But in this picture she is laying between my legs, while we both sit on an old quilted blanket.  I am brushing sand from her hair and she is calmly eating an oreo cookie that probably has more sand in it then anything else.  I am drawn, as I reexamine this picture after all these years, at the simplicity of the scene and the trusting nature of my daughter as she calmly lays against me, and the almost casual way my hand is resting just above her head, a gesture so common I do it with half a mind I am sure, my attention elsewhere, but one so trusting in the mother-child relationship.  I wonder now as I have wondered often when did that complete trust in "Mom" leave my children and cause them to venture out on their own?  It happens to every parent and child, but for that frozen moment it is captured so vividly for me.  Soon I will hold a grandchild and embark on that wonderful journey of a grandma and I wonder what moments will be frozen in time for me then.  I hope my mind can conjure all the wonderful ones that await me and I can enjoy each one in its wholeness.

I lingered over the albums for three days enjoying going back in time to a place that seems so much simpler now, though I know it wasn't.  I know I was overstressed with being a young parent, and trying to live on one wage and all of the unknown's of raising children in a society radically different than my parents raised me.  It is now through the lens of time, that I know my children will think the same of my grandchildren.  But somehow, it just all seems so much simpler then, diluted now to wonderful color pictures of babies and toddlers doing the wonderful things they do, that I was lucky enough to capture on film and now decades later marvel at once again.  I remember so few of these things now and ask myself, did that really happen?  Did I actually have three babies at one time and did I somehow navigate them through life?  They grew up and now those baby years are so precious, and it is the one thing if I could do over I would in a heartbeat.  Just a few days, weeks, months of them as babies with their lives, (and mine), spread out before us....

Time for a change in the weather and time to close up the albums for a bit and look to tearing down wallpaper, as the new has finally arrived and that's a story for a different day.....

Surviving Winter Wallop...

Watching the history of chocolate, and wishing I could dive in to that vat of chocolate.  I have been gone too long from here, and now the many thoughts of this past week are as murky as that vat of very good looking chocolate.  Throw in some peanut butter, peanuts, almonds, or caramel and I am right there with ya...I will have died and gone to heaven.

Hence the temptation to do nothing but eat chocolate this past week and read, read, read.  I managed to do the reading and resisted chocolate temptation for the most, as we lived through the first big blizzard of this winter and certainly for a few years here in Michigan.  We heard about the approaching Armeggedon for days before it actually struck on Tuesday evening, and by the time it actually arrived most of us hardened Midwesterners were more than a bit cynical at how effective it would be, (as in school closings for hopeful school children and their equally hopeful teachers and work stoppage for many others).   As most of us would say, we'd been there, done that and been disappointed more times than not.  But by 11 pm that night the wind was howling and snow was drifting everywhere and the bulk was to still be coming.  Schools were closed and I settled in to see what morning would bring. 

Kurt was up at 4 a.m. and worry or anxiety had me up right after to see what the out of doors looked like.  We had two, four foot drifts down two spots in the driveway.  The backyard we really couldn't see enough to make out how much snow we had gotten during the night.  We could discern it was still snowing and snowing hard.  Several phone calls to his brother, and other guys in the plant had me believing Kurt was more worried than the others about the day's events.  He decided to wait until daylight to get the tractor out and begin plowing the driveway out.  I had electricity, satellite tv, and my internet still worked, so I was quite content with what this "Hump Day" would bring.  At daylight it was still snowing and blowing heavily, but Kurt got out the tractor and cleaned out the drive, and down the road enough to see if he could get out later on.  Boredom and cabin fever brought on by an anxious husband, had me dress in my heavy duty clothing and try the out of doors.  We had a couple of drifts as high as the four foot fences in  back and a rather nice 6 foot drift in the back yard beyond the fence. And when I approached the front of the house, a piece of house siding on the front porch was laying on the floor, obviously the fierce Northeast wind had blown it off.  Two pieces of the porch metal ceiling were either flapping in the wind or bowed down.  I put the siding which now had a crack in it, into the garage to replace after the wind died down and when Kurt had finished we "collaborated" on putting the ceiling back in place.  I use the word collaborated loosely.  If he would just listen to me, (which he never has in over 33 years), it would have went faster and been successful.  As it was, we got them back in place but I didn't have much hope they would stay in place. And I would have been correct as always, the ceiling piece blew completely off shortly after we left it.  Holy Cow, I feel like Dorothy in Kansas, where I feared parts of my house would end up.

By 10:00 a.m. Kurt was tired of being at home while others were at work and I told him to go.  I, obviously, wasn't going anywhere, but as long as I had the amenities I was fine with being snowed in.  The news here was weather and as it was the upper Midwest's first big blizzard when the mid-Atlantic and upper South had been getting bombarded by snows that were not at all usual, we were not news to anyone but us.  I settled in and took it easy, for what I thought was the rest of the day.  Apparently I was the only one who was content to have it quiet and not worry about whether a snowplow went down our road.  Phone calls and internet buzzings were scattered throughout the afternoon.  About 2 p.m., the snows had stopped and though the wind still blew, the blizzard was over.  I estimated about a foot of snow, but it was hard to tell, as it was moving from east to west at a prodigious clip.  The sun finally broke through and Kurt was back by 3 to again plow what had drifted in since morning.  At almost dark, a phone call from Ryan let me know he had gotten his truck stuck just down the road the other side of the neighbors in a big drift.  Kurt had already pulled out a couple of trucks that had tried the roads during the day, so the tractor went back out and he pulled Ryan, Alison and Ben back to our place and we had a blizzard hearty meal of stuffed peppers.  Ryan had been itching to "play" on the tractor and move snow so he cleared a path down the road to get out.  No snow plow had hit our road, a fact that had Kurt perturbed, but I didn't worry about it.  The kids and Ben left after the road was cleared, and while all schools would be closed for a second day, we knew the worst of Winter Wallop was behind us.  Thursday would be dig out day, the snow plows would go by, and business would be up and running, though schools were still off. 

The final estimate of snow fall was about 10 to 11 inches around here, hardly blizzard proportions but the combination of the blizzard winds made is seem like much more.  I read, finishing a book in a couple of days, something I rarely do anymore.  My house still has pieces of itself laying in the garage awaiting reapplication in a slightly more battered form.  I cleaned and decided how the rest of my winter would go.  Oh yeah, that's gonna happen.   But its nice to plan, even if I seldom accomplish, and if all else fails there is always chocolate, and chocolate and peanut butter and chocolate and peanuts and chocolate and almonds...

Does this bring back memories...

Part of growing older, and we'd like to think more mature is looking back and relishing memories.  For many of us the longer we hang around on earth, the better the "good old days" appear.  Things that we likely griped about are now cherished hallmarks of how we overcame adversity.  The "hip" and cool generation we thought we were just yesterday, wasn't it, is now as historic as World War II was to us in our childhood. I just asked a friend, the other day, how did that happen?   Aren't 1970 Chevelles and '68 Stingrays just as cool now as they were 40 years ago?  And the fact that I say forty years ago so nonchantlantly tells me I have crossed into the no-man's land of "senior citizen".  I and my friends now talk the merits of how the U.S. is going to heck in a handbasket to borrow a phrase from my grandpa.  When did we quit seeing hope in the next generation to guide us and seeing only a huge ruse in the "Golden Years" analogy?  When did we start seeing greed and excess as the most visual aspects of our National Government?  When did we quit trusting? 

So, bear with me as I have just taken a stroll down Memory Lane via the Barrett-Jackson car auction the past weekend.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is a 5 day automobile auction in Scottsdale, AZ, specializing in the best of classic cars for sale.  It is a show within a show, but for those of us who reached our teens in the '60's and 70's, it is a great look into how cars influenced our growing up even as we did not realize.  I saw Chevelles, Corvettes, Mustangs, Baracuda's, Camaros, Cougars, and GTO's.  The muscle cars we grew up wishing we could all afford, and even as a female, looking back and thinking, was there anything cooler than riding on a spring afternoon when it was just warm enough to make you think summer was coming in a burgundy chevelle with some guy who was trying to show off and impress?  Ah, the innocence of those days.  We thought life would go on forever and we would never live to see thirty, and couldn't conceive of getting beyond twenty though we all wanted to be older.  How youth is wasted on the young, I once read, and it is kind of true.  Sometimes we just need to get to this point to realize we had it pretty good.  Not everyone does, but we did.... And to just reach out and grab back all those days, and see them once again in their golden tinged foreverness.

Now that I am on my way to "Grandma-hood", and trying out names for the new person I will become in less than 5 and 6 months, I have lots of sage advice which won't be of any use except to my friends who already know all of this.  The flurry of baby showers and baby "needs" begins, and a whole new level of what we will become in this new order arises.  We now talk baby beds, not cribs, and strollers that do eight different things: if only they could change diapers...I am slowly learning to be conversant in monitors and ultrasounds on a whole different level, and high chairs, (they do still make those, don't they?).  And I have to smile, as I know from all this untapped experience, babies are pretty simple after all.  They can sleep in an empty dresser drawer, lined with a blanket.  Their daily nutrient requirements are supplied by Mom, and the most important pieces of clothing needed are lots and lots and lots of diapers.  Being loved and held  are the greatest gift we can give that newborn and its as instinctual in us as breathing. 

When I became pregnant with Ryan, at that time we had no way of knowing what the sex would be.  While there were new gadgets on the horizon, Ryan was the last of the baby generation looked on with practicality in mind as much as "the next new big baby thing".   We bought a baby crib for the new one.  Outfitted with a mattress it was certified safe.  The side went up and down.  The bars didn't allow for a baby's head to go through.  Pretty simple.  We painted the new nursery room a sunny yellow, as we figured that could grow with the baby, whatever the sex.  My sister in law, had been through all of this before me,  she lent me maternity clothes and piled up baby sleepers, receiving blankets, (I have since come to believe you can't have too many receiving blankets), spit up cloths and rubber changing table cloths.  These basics were the best things I got as they are what I needed every day, and made the rest of the baby items, wonderful luxuries.  My dad renovated an old wooden table into a changing table.  He refinished the wood, added a large shelf underneath, and Mom made a vinyl changing table pad.  It was perfect and served three children well.  An old wardrobe stored in Dad's shed, which once housed a gun rack, was hauled out, cleaned up and retrofitted with shelves.  The doors which once held glass, then were outfitted with mirrors, I now added gathered fabric panels, and we had a storage dresser/wardrobe for the baby's things.  My parents gave us a wonderful collapsible stroller that was used, but in perfect shape.  We thought it the greatest thing ever as it actually collapsed to just a frame of heavy steel.  It was like lifting a small bicycle into the car but it was the newest thing since the "pram".   Korey would be the lucky recepient of  the new "umbrella" strollers which were just coming out, a stroller that folded in on itself like an accordian and could be carried on your arm like an umbrella.  I didn't think baby inventions could get much better than that.  Kurt's parents gave us the newest thing in "play pens" as we called them with mesh sides that folded down.  Aside from sleeping when we went somewhere, my children were never huge play pen kids, and it mostly housed the myriad of baby toys we accumulated as it was like one big open toy box to pitch things in.  Many years later the now slightly damaged play pen made a very serviceable birthing bed for our Brittany spaniel, Murphy.  Use and reuse.

Not all the baby things we were gifted proved to be of great use or even very lasting.  When Korey was born the "new" thing was an expensive stuffed teddy bear that when pushed in the stomach emitted the sounds of the mom's womb.  It sounded vaguely like water lapping on shore, and when placed in the bed with the newborn was assured to keep the little one sleeping through the night.  That didn't work at all, and I think after a couple of weeks, Mr Bear ended up in the toy pen along with all other stuffed animals.  My children all slept their first weeks of life in a generations old German cradle.  My grandfather was rocked in the cradle.  When I say cradle you would think it was something small that sat next to your knees and you could gently rock it.  Nope.  The carved head and footboard to this cradle stood almost five feet.  The wood side slats were two inches of carved wood and were over 18 inches high.  It could be rocked by hand and was a wonderful testament to craftsmanship of an era no longer with us.  We will certainly pay more for baby things now but we will never get the quality...(There's that senior mentality creeping in again....).  My mother did not even know of the cradle's existence until her children were adutls.  An aunt who had never had children had stored the cradle for many generations.  Upon her death it was retrieved and my grandpa remembered.  All of my children and my brother, Kim's children slept in that cradle.  I like the feeling that the generations whisper to the sleeping child of family things and those who have gone before. The cradle now waits for me to bring it here to allow another generation to sleep in it, rocked by a loving grandma.

For the births of four boys, my two and my brother's two, and the birth of Annie, maternity clothes, then baby sleepers, blankets, baby towels, and baby items were traded back and forth between my sister in law and I.  What a bond it created for us and one that existed long past our kids growing up.  I gave baths to my babies in the kitchen sink.  It was deep and small enough that the kids fit into it perfectly.  We put our babies to sleep on their stomachs every night, because they stayed asleep that way and it was what our mother's and grandmothers had done.  We taught them to walk by allowing them to fall down and get back up again.  Somehow they survived to be healthy, and I most certainly hope, happy children.  Things are different now, but in my old age wisdom, I know that they are very much the same.  My children will add new "bells and whistles" to raising children and in the end they will learn what works, (a Johnny Jump Up and bounce chair were my best friends, and things my mom couldn't conceive of), and what doesn't.  It is somewhat a "figure it out as you go along" kind of thing, and there is no manual I know to make you the perfect parent or make your children be carbon copies of one another, so what worked for one will work for all.  But you will figure it out, and if there is one piece of advice above all others, don't get caught up in the "needs and the changes". They will come and they will be figured out with Yankee ingenuity, some German pluck and Italian dramatics.

I see the next page of life being readied.  It will soon turn and I hope and pray I am young enough of heart to trust it will all unfold as the good Lord wishes.... 

And Here We Are...

Yesterday, I received good news, in fact, great news, considering the alternative.  The best news would have been if the cancer had never been found and my friend had avoided surgery and all the worry associated with it and the threat of what might lie ahead, but the lumpectomy revealed the mass was contained and no lymph nodes removed and after a round of radiation, the prognosis is excellent.  After I hung up the phone, I cried.  I cried like I hadn't cried in years.  Tears of gratitude for my friend, but tears of unadulterated relief.  Relief that her life wouldn't be so totally upset this next year that she would miss things she could never get back, and relief that the outcome looked so good when it had been so scary just the day prior.  But deeper down was the relief that someone I had come to like, and admire would still be around to laugh with me and do things as a foursome.  It is a rare thing when you find another couple at our ages who seem to fit so perfectly with you and your spouse.  I know it was the most selfish of thoughts, but mixed in with the feeling of gratefulness, it was there. 

Today I have awakened to a snowy, cold world.  While the thermometer outside my kitchen window, did not read the predicted 0 degrees, and actually was a balmy, (in comparison), 10 degrees this morning, it is still bleeping cold.  And the snow is a fine, driven thing which is supposed to leave no accumulation behind, but is still there and makes wanting to do mundane Saturday things like grocery shop, something I do not look to doing with any enthusiasm.  I could try foisting it off on Kurt but the months' grocery bill would be blown and I would still have to go back out for staples by mid week. 

As with everything else in my life, I am late to the "party".  I am late to this blogging thing.  By now, kindergartners know how to blog, and I am just taking my first tentative steps.  By now the link for my blog which I have sent out to family and a few friends has been read once or twice, encouraged by the ones who have actually read it, and doing their good deeds, discarded now, the link probably long forgotten.  It does not really matter as I started this for myself as an outlet to write.  Trouble is my best thoughts come when I am out walking far from a laptop or keyboard.  It is when my thoughts bounce off of one another and bubble up so quickly, I think I will need hours to get it all down.  But by the time I have returned with the dogs and unhooked them from leesh, and harnesses, thrown a few well chewed rubber toys for them, divested myself of gloves, heavy winter coat, thick scarf, hooded sweatshirt, knit hat, and finally, pulled off my lace up all weather boots, and cushy, warm wool socks, and replaced them with regular socks and indoor shoes, whatever brilliant thoughts I had that should have been put down for posterity, have long since fled.  I often think I should carry around a small tape recorder, much like my foot doctor did to "talk" out my thoughts as I walk.  He would record the patients prognosis and I assume his medical assistants would transcribe them.  He was a pompous ass most visits so maybe he was talking for the tell-all book he would someday write, and enlighten all of us to the wonderful world of podiatry.  I even bought a small, hand held recorder years ago, but never got the small tapes out of the package and inserted them in the recorder.  Maybe its another resolution I need to make.   This year I have actually crossed off the list several yearly resolutions that never were accomplished and just re-added to the list. 

As I said, I am late to the party, and always have been.  I got my first teeth late according to my mom.  I retained "baby fat" long past the baby time and then was so skinny my dad called me a zipper if I stuck my tongue out.  No girl wants skinny when the teenage years come calling and she just wants something up front and to be that mysterious thing called a woman.  Late to that party also.  Late to figure out a direction in college, though I guess I can say I went which was still something of a novelty for a female around here.  As a stay at home mom, I dreamed of coming up with things to do from home.  Great ideas but no incentive to see them through and dang, someone else always invented them.... I would look at the tv of the greatest time saver on infomercials and say, "I thought of that"....Too little too late.

And with my luck, the one thing I will be early at will be saying good bye to this world.  The good news is its not nearly the scary propisition it might once have been, and my friend's battle and ultimate victory will remind me that it is a new day with no mistakes in it, yet, and time to go shop for those groceries...

Glad its Done...

Yesterday I had my first routine colonoscopy.  Yes, I know it should have been done 5 years ago at least, but I tend to put things off that sound yucky, and wasn't cornered into it until last year by my healthcare professional.  She talked me into a bone density test along with the routine mammogram which I had been having, and a colonoscopy.  The bone density was kind of cool, but cool costs money and I could just hear the cash register on our health care doing its "cha ching".  Kind of like the electrical meter outside the house, going round and round and you can just hear the money leaving your bank account. 
The colonoscopy was scheduled for a few weeks later and when they called to pre register it, there was a hassle about the insurance, and as it turned out we were switching over, so I just called and canceled rather than deal with it until it was changed.  Of course, in the back of my mind, I had received a reprieve and completely forgot about rescheduling when the new insurance was installed.  A crisis from a good friend, who had gone in for a routine colonoscopy only to find there was cancer in a segment, which promped immediate surgery, reminded me about my postponed appointment.  I called before Christmas and a date was decided in January. 
A month ago I received the instructions from the doctor doing the colonoscopy.  Included was a prescription for the "solution to clean me out beforehand".  Oh goody...I tossed it in the drawer, and marked on my calendar the date and the "before date" so I could get the prescription filled. 

My first indication this was not going to go totally smoothly was getting the prescription filled, the Friday before the Tuesday procedure.  The pharmacist asked which one I wanted to use.  There were two prescriptions and both were marked.  I had no idea they were both separate prescriptions as I had never done it before, but the pharmacist was pretty adamant I didn't want to attempt both.  She tried calling the doctor's office which was futile, it was Friday afternoon after all, of the approaching Martin Luther King holiday.  I think its a written rule doctors never work on Fridays anyway.  We were trying to decide whether to wait until Monday to fill it when the pharmacist started laughing at what we both thought was an ink scribble was actually an "or" written between the two prescriptions.  They filled it out for the first, and a $40 co pay later I had my Halflitely and Biscodyl tablet firmly in hand for Monday's "fun". 

On Sunday night I carefully read the directions and I was ready for the process on Monday.  It started at noon when I took the Biscodyl tablet.  I was told that it would work in one to 6 hours.  It took about 3 to do its thing.  OK, got through that with only minor discomfort, and thought if this is as bad as it gets...not bad....
Little did I know....
I had premixed the Halflitely with water and one of the included flavor packets.  Oh the choices.  Cherry flavor.  Nah.  Cherry reminds me of cherry cough medicine as a kid.  Never could get even a tablespoon full down easily.  Orange reminded me of Tang and I was never a Tang fan.  Pineapple?  Just couldn't imagine anything good would come of something with Pineapple flavoring in it.  So, I went for the last choice, Lemon-:Lime flavoring, hoping against hope it tasted like Squirt.  I had been fasting all day.  I discovered the white grape juice I could have and bought especially for today was really sweet and just didn't do it for me.  I stayed with water and made some orange jello, the only non red or purple jello I had in my cupboard.  It was probably from around 1990 or so.  If you've guessed we're not big jello people, you would be right.  So I had the orange jello which managed to be soupy on the top and like rubber on the bottom, and dined with Kurt that night and the scalloped potatoes and ham I had saved for him.  It might have been worse but the biscodyl tablet had kind of kicked in and I was suffering intermittent cramps, so avoiding food wasn't all that difficult and I had the orange jello.  I scraped off the mushy, jiggly part and ate that and after one bowl full it was enough. 
At 6 pm sharp I took my first 8 ounces of Halflitely.  Not awful, but the after left a salty, sweet lemon  taste in my mouth.  Thereafter I had to take 8 ounces again at 6:10 and 6:20.  I was to wait an hour then finish off the Halflitely in 10 minute intervals.  By the third glass, the Halflitely wasn't going down nearly as easily and still didn't notice any really cleansing beginning.  I tried to gamely drink what looked to be 4 or 5 more glasses of the mixture at 7:20.  I got down 3 more glasses and believe me when I tell you, the last one felt like I was drinking a lemon flavored ocean.  I decided it was enough and dumped the last probably two glasses of the mixture.   In hindsight I must have had a genius moment, as I was paying for the 6 glasses of Halflitely I did manage to swallow for the rest of the evening and night and even into the day of the colonoscopy.   Most people will tell you the prep is the worst, and they are right.  Getting down that vile tasting stuff was bad enough and then having to camp out in the bathroom for the rest of the evening and several times during the ensuing night was akin to being in labor.  At least at the end of that, I got a baby. 
Up at 5:45 to shower and have more bathroom time, Kurt and I left the house at 7:45 to assure driving time to the hospital where the procedure was occurring.  It was snowing, when we left. and it was wet, heavy snow that piled up on the road and while it was supposed to stop long before noon, it made morning driving slow.  At the hospital by 8:30, an hour before my 9:30 appointment.  No Cicinelli on the registration sheet downstairs, so she took us up.  In the Endoscopy wing they had my name and told us to be seated while I filled out the forms.  Life is made up of forms, I've decided and the more along in life we are, the more forms we need...
The nice receptionist came over to ask me what time I thought my appointment was.  When I told her, she said they had me down for an hour later.  Obviously a mix up, but I had written it down on my calendar.  Geez, another thing to worry about, early onset Alzheimers.  She said, she would let the doctor and her staff know, but as it always goes, we didn't get in before the time they had me down for.  The prep nurse apologized for the mix up and they put me in a bed in a room with a television so at least Kurt and I had that.  They started the IV and apologized again, and said the doctor was running even a bit more behind, "what with the weather and all".  Yup, the story of my life. 
After she came in a third time to apologize, I figured they really were sorry for the delay, which at the least was refreshing and a handwritten note from my prep nurse made me think that the cold, sterile hospital really might have a heart.  Finally I was taken down to the room where the colonoscopy would take place.  I met the doctor and she explained the procedure.  The sedative was added to my IV and then I remember things only as a dream until I awoke back in the room with Kurt.  I distinctly remember voices though, and something being being inserted and removed.  It didn't hurt but I knew it was there.  All as if in a dream....the only way to go...If only we could leave life this way....maybe we do.
While I woke up, we waited for the doctor to come in.  The very good news was there was nothing.  I was clean and pink, and healthy according to the doctor.  While it was the news I expected, I was also immensely relieved.  I guess in the back of my mind, I needed to be reassured.  And its nice to go through all the discomfort and have a happy ending.  Best of all, I don't have to do it again for ten years.
We came home and I was warned that the air they have to put in your stomach during the exam, has to be expelled and to expect to be gaseous for a time.  I was certainly gaseous for a time.  The rest of the day to be exact and finally getting to eat again wasn't quite as charming as I thought it would be.  The Halflitely was still there and everything I ate last night pretty much went right through me, the express route.
But this morning, I slept in a bit and didn't feel guilty.  I did my "Fit and Firm after Fifty" exercises and embraced it, as I could do it, even if I didn't really want to.  I could do it and that was the important thing...
I still have to schedule my annual mammogram as I now know, things can change, even though they are supposed to remain the same. 
A good thing to know and embrace....

A Gathering of Friends

Our old group got together last night.  Five couples, who have somehow survived all the things life has thrown at us for over thirty years.  A few couples have been added and substracted again through the years but this group has remained together. 

The husbands played fast pitch softball together once upon a time.  The girlfriends and later wives saw each other at least twice a week during the summer months when the league was going.  We partied together as young, unfettered people party, drinking cold beers around open coolers after games, descending on bars in city tournaments after games, and back country festivals at other tournaments.  We were young and partying hearty was the highlight of a workweek.

First came marriages and then inevitably for all of us, came the baby carriage.  As the kids came and new responsibilities, for the men it finally became clear that playing softball unfettered was most likely in their past.
After a few years of going our own busy ways, we decided that we desperately needed a night out and a chance to all get together and so began our first steps toward what would become, "Couples Club".  It started as an invitation to join a group for the Stumper's Hunt, a road rally of sorts through the streets of Saginaw.  It was great fun and we enjoyed it immensely, but we had kind of attached ourselves to another larger group as fill ins.  We changed and adapted to go again, and slowly the group that emerged was the guys that had played softball together all those years.  We enjoyed getting together and for me, it was about getting out of the house and being with friends who weren't fellow story hour moms or relatives. 

We decided to "host' the get togethers during the fall and winter months when cabin fever was at its height among us.  We picked months we wanted to do it and it was up to us to decided the entertainment.  We could host at our homes and have a card game or board game ready for fun, or we could pick an event we would all go to.  The one rule, unspoken, was it had to be affordable for all of us.  We did Halloween parties and traveled as a group to Haunted Houses and even invaded a wedding reception dressed in our costumes.  The father of the bride was so tickled he had a group picture of us taken with the bride and groom.  We became groupies and followed a favorite band around venue to venue.  We attended more road rallies and had sleigh rides on nights so cold, the wine in our bottles froze.  We had bonfires and murder mysteries to be solved and Christmas caroling, and looking back we had a ball at all of it. 

Divorce split some of us up and some came a few times but drifted away.  The core five couples remained for years.  But as change is inevitable, it also came to us.  We lived in different towns and our kids attended different schools and in different districts.  Our kids became involved in school activities and sports and as they were involved so were we.  As they entered high school the Couples Club adventures ceased, to a once year gathering, usually at Christmas and running into each other at the kids rival school events.  We stayed in touch but the Couples Club was suspended for a time.

Our kids began to graduate and we would see each other at the Open Houses.  We talked about getting together again, but it was usually just talk, then came weddings of the older kids and we decided it was time.  So now we try to get together once a year at least and discuss weddings and the latest in all or most of our lives, grandkids.  Pictures were passed around and we oohed and aahhed over the newest addtions.  We laughed at the thoughts that those wonderful grandbabies become toddlers and we sometimes lament them not being babies any longer.  We talked of all the things we know in our lives as retirement creeps up on some and has descended on others.  We talk about aches and pains and kids far from home, living, working and starting families too far from us.  Our talk turns to those we have all known in our pasts and who are no longer with us.  Parents and friends who have passed on.  We talk about things once so important to us, and now how importance is a relevant word, as those things that mean the most to us are sharing laughter and the intimate things left to us by those we loved.  Its not so much what we have, but what we know now, we no longer need.  We laugh until we cry about what we will do when we become grandparents and the sage advice of those already there. 

We talk about traveling and for some it is a dream fulfilled and for others of us, it is an itch we might never scratch entirely.  We sigh and talk about how a warm house and a big fire or a big black dog flopped next to us gives us comfort we wouldn't have imagined a few short years ago.  We acknowledge much as we hate to, the Flower Children of the 60's, the Vietnam Vets, the rebels, and the Me Generation of the 70's that we are aging and things we swore would never happen to us, have come and they're not so bad.  We don't want to run a marathon, (well, some of us do), but for most it is a time past.  We like for the most part where we're at.  We're cancer survivors, retirees who've gone back to work, and those of us facing retirement who aren't sure what it will bring.  We are adventurers and world travelers, and humanitarians.  We abide in God and believe in our "Causes" and don't see why everyone else can't use common sense.  We are Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates and Independents.  We talk politics sparingly as we have known each other too many years to let those differences define what we should be in the future.  We respect and cheer for one another and we bless and cry for them.  Most of all we just enjoy our times together.

Someday our circle will be broken beyond earthly separation, and we will grieve with one another, but for now we just plan the next time we will get together and enjoy each other's company.  And that's enough...