Icing

Inspirational song: Supersoaker (Kings of Leon)

The ice is coming down now. I have been opening the back door and checking for it, in vain, for about 12 hours. I thought that the wet surfaces were starting to freeze while there was still daylight, but I wasn't inspired enough to go touch the grill cover or top of the patio table. I was proud of myself for making it outside to retrieve another eight hunks of wood, and then I was done with walking in the cool drizzle. The dogs are suggesting they need another walk in the Park, but I suspect once the professional eater makes it to the edge of the deck, she's going to change her mind about that.

I have been hunkered down, waiting for the storm all day. I probably should have run a couple errands before the roads started to freeze, but I just didn't want to be around local drivers who have never experienced cold weather driving before. Cities down here don't own a whole lot of snowplows, because they don't need them. Most of the drivers have never had to practice driving on snow and ice. I'm years removed from daily driving on snowpack, and I don't trust myself to be the best defensive driver against the crazies. So all my optional errands had to wait.

I'm on hold while I wait to see how much ice we get tonight. I have a lot of trees to care for, and this could end up being a very busy week, if I have to spend it cleaning up downed branches. For now, I'm going to listen to the talking heads on television picking apart tonight's speech, keep my fire going as a hedge against a power outage, and try to decide whether to make another hot cocoa from scratch. The first one was excellent. At the end of a pre-snow day, it was icing on the cake.

Perfection

Inspirational song: Stand (R.E.M.)

Normally I'm pretty forgiving. I understand that housing construction is not typically undertaken by meticulous mathematicians and artists. But is it too much to ask that the subcontractors and laborers who do the actual work try not to do more damage to your property than the repairs they were hired to do? I tried so hard not to release my beserker self when they were jamming their ladder into my dormant hydrangeas, breaking all the stems and warping the way the root balls sit in the ground. I assumed that when I pointed out the nails that missed the mark directly over my front door and the man said he would fix them, he would do it. I wanted to believe them when they promised three times that someone with a trailer would come back and pick up the debris pile they left crowding my neighbor's mailbox, and I thought when they promised to caulk the gap in the gutters they re-installed badly, that action was imminent. I listened quietly when they talked about holes in the siding, as if they were pre-existing, not suspiciously shaped like the tops of ladders (as at least one appeared when I went around the house alone after my PT appointment). I don't expect perfection in much of my life, but I prefer things to be predominantly right. This was not the case this time.

I spent more time with my physical therapist this afternoon. We came to a better understanding after I explained that I view pain during exercise with a big dose of "shut up and keep going" attitude and he prefers more of an "if it hurts, stop doing it!" viewpoint. So when I told him how hard certain moves were to do, he said to modify and take breaks. I will alter my methods. Previously, this therapist impressed the hell out of me with his Bones-ian superbrain. Today, I actually noticed his Tolkien-esque elven perfection too. The dude works out. I was lying on a leg press machine that uses body weight on an adjustable incline. When my shin started to hurt unbearably, he grabbed the platform with me on it, and moved it down a rung without visible effort. This man knows his stuff and applies it in his real daily life. He has more credibility than a lot of doctors I have seen over the years. But I still left his clinic sore for hours. Can't have everything.

I proved my crazy cat lady bona fides today. I went to a friend's house for dinner, second time I'd ever been there (first time with just me), and all of her animals, even the skittish shy kitty, came out to cuddle with me. And I mean cuddle. Not just passing by just out of reach, as most animals do with strangers, but rolling around, begging for attention, right up next to me. The young pit bull, who was pretty energetic when I arrived, closed out the night curled up around me, sleeping hard on my lap. It was a perfect moment.

My mother had a lot of damage in the last ice storm to go through back home. My brother went out last weekend to haul off a lot of her downed limbs and to take down the remnants of the critically injured trees. She has transitioned from dealing with the loss of mature trees to thinking of the opportunities for new plantings. I may need to borrow some of her evolved coping skills when next I look at the broken central spire of the rhododendron I had been nursing back to health for two years. And I will really need to find inner peace in the next 48 hours, when the predicted winter storm Leon brings ice and snow to my Low Country sanctuary. I hope we come through it with only minor damage. But I know the condition my trees are in. It's going to be dangerous to be out in the park this week. Branches will be coming down.

A Little Off

Inspirational song: Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights) (Pat Travers)

I never thought I lacked empathy. But today, I am becoming aware that I might have had uncharitable, disparaging thoughts about people who might not have deserved my scorn. Like many of you, I watch a lot of home improvement television. When homeowners complain about living in construction zones, about the noise and mess when they are having major work done, I might have rolled my eyes and considered them weak or prissy. In fact, I might have done that more than I care admit. Perhaps I have been unfair. Today was the second day of having a work crew replacing the fascia boards all around the house before they come in tomorrow to re-roof. (Side note: what were they thinking all those years ago? MDF for exterior surfaces in a rainy climate? The only thing holding it together in places was the paint.) The crew arrived at 7:45 this morning, more than an hour after they wanted to start, after I told them that they couldn't make noise that early in my covenant-controlled neighborhood. I got up at 7, thinking they would arrive any minute, and pulled on dirty jeans and a sweatshirt, and tried to doze in a chair facing the front door while I waited. Once they finally got going, I realized that I had blown my best chance to feel comfortable in my own house. I didn't shower while they were here, because they were on ladders right next to my bathroom windows, and going in and out of the house early on. I didn't even feel comfortable using the restroom while they were all outside. I had no idea it would bother me so much. I kept hearing horrible noises on the roof, and waiting to hear a body hit the ground, with screaming to follow. Thankfully it never did. Tomorrow is going to be even worse, with them ripping off shingles and slamming nail guns into the decking over and over and over... From now on, when the tv homeowners whine about living in the mess and noise, I am going to sigh and nod in sympathy.

The man is back to his faraway job, trying to recover from hopping between time zones so often in two weeks. Unfortunately, he doesn't get a day off between arriving and working again to get used to the old day/night schedule. He never fully adjusted while he was here, so maybe it won't be too hard to get back into his routine. I feel bad that he has to go through it. I know I'm terrible at it. I expect to spend a lot of the next couple weeks sleeping, and I didn't have to fly a zillion miles to get off my stride. I will just be experimenting with insomnia and narcolepsy in solidarity.

Sensation Returned

Inspirational song: Avalon (Roxy Music)

The summer I was 19, I had moved out of the dorms, and was living with a couple girlfriends, the first time at a house on my own. That August, we decided to go together down to Colfax Avenue in Denver, where we all got our first tattoos. Mine was a peace sign about the size of a quarter, right on my anklebone. For those of you who don't have any experience with them, tattoos typically start out with a single needle to outline, and then they switch to multiple needles to fill in color. The single needle feels like a hot knife going through your skin, especially when it's right over bone, with no fatty cushion to soften the feeling. Four needles, on the other hand, isn't so bad. The area getting colored gets numb pretty fast. My tattoo artist was a little more than halfway through the outlining process, and I was finally able to distance myself from the discomfort and relax, when he got a phone call. He talked for maybe five minutes, during which time all my nerve endings came out of their little comas, and all sensation returned. He hung up the phone, and went back to work with his single needle. It hurt twice as bad, having had the break in the middle.

I put the man back on a plane today.

A whole lot of variables are up in the air now. Originally, the idea was that his vacation would be past the halfway point of his assignment, so that when he went back, the additional separation would be much shorter, and seem to go faster. Now everything has changed, and absolutely nothing is certain. There is still a slim chance he could be home on time, but I don't dare expect it. It's almost a lock that he will be later, but none of us can guess how much extra time he will get. I really don't want it to be equal to the time we already spent apart. The first eight and a half months were awful. And tonight, I'm sitting here thinking about how hard it was to get numb, to get into a routine of being completely on my own. I focused on this blog as a way to make the days pass, but without losing time and wasting a whole year doing nothing. It was so hard. I don't know how to make it through two thirds of another year... or more.

I guess the only thing I can do is keep on keeping on. Find my routine again. Focus on the little things that got me through every day last year. We are getting a new roof, so I can watch the progress on that, to start with. I can focus on getting back eating the right food, now that the holidays and his vacation are over. I started a bone broth tonight, and I have filled my fridge and pantry with as many good, non-GMO fruits and veggies I could find. I can pick back up the projects I put aside when I cleaned the house for him to come home, like the quilt. And I can pour myself into the ghost story I started in November. Maybe by the time winter is over, I will be numb again.

Tangible

Inspirational song: I Think I Love You (The Partridge Family)

My man has a few throwback tendencies. Okay, a lot, but there are some that are really funny. Like how he held on to his Razr phone from 2007 until it finally died for good last year a week before he left to go work far from home. And how he absolutely refuses to adapt to downloading music. He still spends hours and hours in used CD stores, combing them for things he used to have years, sometimes decades ago. When he can't find what he's looking for, and we all tell him he can easily find almost anything on iTunes, he steadfastly refuses to buy music that way. He says he prefers having a tangible disc, that he can hold and own, rather than digital copies of his jams. We have a vintage record cabinet, that came from his uncle's estate, that is absolutely full to capacity of all of our CDs from the last 23 or so years of collecting, and every time we move, we have to empty it, and pack them all away in cardboard boxes. I'm pretty sure we own at least fifty pounds of discs. They get scratched in transit, discs get misfiled or lost. Plus, while he may keep a phone for six years, he can't keep a laptop for more than about a year and a half before he smashes the crap out of it. He's constantly reloading music, but absolutely refuses to see the convenience of just authorizing his new laptop onto an account. Today, he handed me a CD of the Moody Blues live at Red Rocks amphitheater, a concert we attended in our youth, and expected me to put it on my computer. It never occurred to him I would have bought one that didn't even have a disc drive.

I was running a little late today on the way to physical therapy. I had time to jump in the car and go. I didn't pay attention to the song playing at first. I have the seventies channel programmed in my presets, and at first I assumed he had left the radio on that. But then I noticed it was a disc. It was a song I don't think I had ever heard before, but it seemed like such familiar voices. I kept thinking, this really sounds like David Cassidy, but that can't be possible. Surely this is Harry Chapin or someone. I could imagine the man listening to Harry Chapin, but there is some 1970s cheese that is even too much for him. But no, once the weird song about Albuquerque ended, and the next goofy song that sounded like the Partridge Family started, I popped out the disc, and sure enough, that's what it was. So I called him, and called him out. This was your way of saying you want not only to convert an old school bus to an RV, you want to paint it funky colors, and I should just accept it, since I was a fan of the Partridge Family when I was seven? He just laughed at me when I told him I'd figured him out.

Tonight was the last Bonfire before my man's vacation is over. It was hard to share him, even though I know all his friends wanted to see him a little more before he goes away again for months. It was not the best night to be outside around a fire. By the time we left, it was 19 degrees, according to my car. We've been home almost 45 minutes, and I'm still chilled. But the friends needed a little more time to have him in person, not just digitally through Skype or email. Of course we gave them the tangible display of affection they needed. And cold or not, we would do it again.

Silver Linings

Inspirational song: Money (Pink Floyd)

It's time to raise the roof. Or at least, tear off the old one and put on a newer, prettier, undamaged version. There was a day in June, when I arrived at the Y only to find the pool closed for weather, and when I checked the radar on my phone, there was a big red warning box around my neighborhood. I was a little show to clue in that the red box meant tornado warning, but once I did, I raced home to make sure that everyone in my little Park was safe and sound. I found the grounds covered in leaves and small branches, but I assumed that there was no structural damage anywhere on the property. Turns out I was wrong. Being afraid of heights, I didn't climb up and inspect the roof. If I had, I would have found that we had missing shingles. Not a catastrophic injury to the overall structure, but enough that recently, when we got a solicitation letter suggesting that insurance might cover it, I took a look back through the blogs and realized they could be right. Our neighbors went with this same company and liked them, and today, we made a contract to do it too. Not only is this a huge win for me, since the man has been swearing that he could take a week off and do it himself (my fear of heights extends to having my spouse in a dangerous place too), but I won the argument that insurance would come through. When he looked at everything and realized that we were going to save thousands of dollars and he didn't have to do the work himself, I looked at him meaningfully until he admitted I was right. That was worth waiting for.

 We got confirmation today that the man won't be going off on the occupational tangent we had thought was possible. Oddly, I am at peace now that we know it isn't going to happen. I can't explain how this changes the outlook for the next several years, because I haven't fully absorbed all the implications, but my gut feeling is that this is actually a positive overall. Only time will tell whether I am right or wrong. Until it is proven otherwise, I am going to insist that this is the better outcome.

I only have a little time left with the man before he heads back to his distant job. We stayed home tonight, had some comfort food and a roaring fire. It would be nice if our basketball team was playing better while we watch on tv, but there is no shame in losing to the number one ranked team in the country. It may be time to leave it recording and get some quality time while I can.

A Stretch

Inspirational song: All Right Now (Free)

I made it to the new physical therapist today. It could not have been more different than the last experience. The first lady treated me like I was making the entire thing up, but this doc and his assistant took me very seriously. I could tell from the first moment, when he had me walk 15 feet toward his assistant, and they immediately began evaluating my stride and build out loud to each other. Within a few minutes, he knew everything about me, and saw things I had no idea were so obvious. For example, I always sit sideways on the floor, with my legs curled around to the left. All I had to do was stand with my feet shoulder width apart, and he could totally tell how differently my hips had developed over the decades. I felt like I was being picked apart by Temperance Brennan from Bones. I didn't know anyone actually had that crazy level of skill.

After a two hour evaluation and initial session of stretching, I feel like I have a great chance of improvement now. I had very little faith in the last therapist, but now I am very excited to see how the next few months play out. Not only did he accept immediately that my problem was real, he explained to me how everything that went wrong last year was related. It started last spring, with an injury to the ball of my left foot. It never seemed to fully heal, but I thought I should just get used to it, after the doc showed me it wasn't broken, and sent me to buy better shoes. It was three months later that the left shin decided to ruin my life. After stumping four or five professionals who couldn't figure out what muscle could possibly be wrecked, this doc and his resident showed me that it was all the exact same grouping, causing both problems. I definitely feel like I had a workout today, and all I did was stretch. But for the first time, I stretched the right things the right direction.

I have been forgiven for leaving, I think. Either that, or every girl cat has decided to pin me down and ensure that I can never leave again. I have not had a moment to myself. Even my melancholy baby, who I worked on heavily to draw out of her shell, has been glued to me since we came back from Colorado. My younger daughter asked why she hadn't been inundated by cat pictures since we returned. I think it is because they were so close to me I had trouble squeezing a camera between us. I've tried to make up for the lack of pictures since she complained. I was driving through the Bonfire neighborhood today, and saw a hand-painted sign for free kittens. While I would have enjoyed seeing them, I knew what was waiting for me at home, and didn't even slow down. There's plenty of kittens here, and not enough of me to go around.