HOLIDAY MALAISE

Our holiday started with a broken dryer that now sits in pieces in the basement while Michael waits for a part that had to be ordered. Then we spent the next three days in the car. At least that's what it felt like. Cindy and Terry where gracious to have us all over at their place for Thanksgiving. Their home was filled with their family and ours and it was loud and boisterous and full with love. The next day Michael, Mom and I travelled to Talahina to see Dad and then we found ourselves back at Cindy and Terry's for campfires and s'mores. The cloud of general sadness that comes with the holidays has sort of settled on the family. There's just been too much loss for us in too short of time. Dad's illness is the icing on the cake. He's doing as well as to be expected. He remembers me, but forgot that I live in Kansas City. He tells me that he keeps losing time and that time gets rearranged. He believes that he's going to get better and that he will be able to come home soon. He even had his suitcase packed for when that day comes. But he doesn't quite remember where home is or that mom lives in a house and not the old trailer they had on the lot before the house was built. He still cries and he still laughs. He still pulls his chair to the door of his room so that he can sit and talk to people who pass by.

We are all struggling with this in our own way and the holidays are just a reminder that our family is slightly broken. I find myself reaching to pull myself out of my own hole of depression. I'm trying real hard to be happy, to care about anything other than my own sadness. I have some really good reasons to be happy. I'm not spending Christmas alone this year. This year there will be child in the house who still believes in the miracle of Christmas and that Santa will leave gifts under a tree for her. I have found a partner who understands me, knows me better than I know myself at times. On our way home yesterday, I said that I couldn't remember if I'd set the house alarm. We were minutes from the house when I realized this and Michael said "I'm so glad you're just now discovering this while we are only two miles from the house and not fretting about it all weekend". He knows that I worry constantly about everything and that I put on a good front.

I decided not to put my tree out this year because space is an issue and I have too many delicate ornaments. I would be a nervous wreck worrying that my precious Babar would be smashed (again). Instead, we picked up Michael's tiny table-top tree from his apartment. I pulled off the old lights, restrung the tree with new ones, and decorated the tree with some of my non-breakable ornaments. Next weekend, I'll buy material to make two new stockings to hang next to mine. These are little things that keep that cloud from getting darker. I'll take it.

ONION SKIN

I have the kind of skin you can see through. I tan well in the summer, but during the colder months, my skin becomes pale, paper white, and slightly translucent. I am often distracted by the bright blue veins running through my wrist and into my palms. I can trace them all the way to the tips of my fingers. One day the veins in my hand made me curious about the lines on my hand and I started looking into the art of palmistry. What a neat hat trick. I can already tell you what direction your chakras are spinning. That's always a great party trick to get out the pendulum and watch spinning chakras. I could throw in palm reading and then retire to a gypsy life, traveling the country in my caravan, teaching yoga, resetting chakras and reading palms. Michael already says that I dress like a "damn hippy". I have the wardrobe. Turns out, the art of palmistry is quite complicated and I may look into actually purchasing some books on the subject. In the meantime, I've just poked around on the internet. My favorite palm reading information space has been from Gala Darling and her Palmistry 101 article. The way she describes things makes it sound less mumbo jumbo. Regardless, it's still a pretty complex art. It starts with just the shape of the hands themselves. My palms are square and slightly longer than my fingers. I have "fire hands" which means I tend to be energetic, at times impatient, and fiercely individual. I have cold hands that denote that I am generous, yet reclusive and hermit like. My hands are contradictions. Fire and ice. Energetic and reclusive. I am that Sting song All Four Seasons.

There are two lines in my hands that fascinate me the most: my heart line and my fate line. It is believed that lines on the left hand represent things intended for you. Gifts given to you by the Gods. The Gods intended for me to be the type of girl that falls in love easily, but with very little heart break or emotional traumas. In fact the Gods planned for me to be very happy in love, with a warm and generous heart. The Gods thought I'd be constantly changed by external forces. This is represented by at least three breaks in my fate line. But if you look at the lines on my right hand, you will see a difference. The heart line on my right has more downward lines and signs of stress. There is a loop in the center representing times of depression. There is more of a curve to my heart line on the right than that on the left. I am more creative than the Gods had planned for me to be and I have not let external forces change me as much as they thought. There is only one clean break in my fate line on the right. It happens high up near the head line, but then that fate line runs strong and true to base of my hand, meaning I am the master of my own fate. All of this from just two lines in my hand.

I'm really considering changing #21 on my list to "learn palmistry". Yes, it is a totally nutty pseudoscience, but it is a pseudoscience that I find fascinating. There's just something about the differences between the lines of one hand versus the other. Just like Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, we are given gifts at birth. It's up to us to use those gifts and determine how to use those gifts. I like that all of this can be represented in the palms of our hands. Or maybe in a past life I was fortune teller. There were many Halloweens where I needed a last minute costume and more often than not that costume ended up being a gypsy costume. Next thing you know I'll be buying decks of cards and crystal balls. Maybe get a hankering for large looped earrings.

THE ITCHY AND SCRATCHY SHOW

I share an office space with five guys. It started with Jay. He was the first to fall victim to the sinus infection. In fact he carried his around for almost a month. Next was Zulin. He fared better than all of us, only struggling a couple of days with the sniffles. The next to fall was Jeff, except his got diagnosed as bronchitis. Sean fell victim soon after Jeff. I thought I was doing well, like I'd make it despite all the hacking, snorting, and coughing going on all around me. I am delusional, but after six days of antibiotics I feel like I am on the mend with the exception of wanting to claw my skin off. The antibiotic makes my skin itchy. Unfortunately I have passed my illness on to Michael. His birthday is tomorrow and we decided not to do gifts for each other's birthdays. I cheated and gave him some new house slippers, a book and a cold. I'm the best girlfriend ever. But I feel fine. Maybe fine isn't quite the word. I feel motivated. You see, they had to weigh me at the doctor's office last week and I cringed at the eight pounds that I've added to my body. I already had an inkling that I've put on a few pounds since Michael moved in. He's not a good food influence. Also, for the last month, there have been some sort of basket of candy, cookies and bagels sitting on the windowsill right behind my desk. I'm a sucker for anything bread. I've noticed this pattern emerging where I start off the week with good intentions. I eat good clean food, no snacking between meals and a smaller portion at dinner. By the middle of the week, I'm still doing OK except for the four pumpkin cookies I consumed, but I made sure to space them out through the day. A cookie here. A cookie there. It just gets worse. By Friday, my brain stops functioning and looses the ability to process the little things, like what to eat for dinner. This means I am easily talked into things like Chinese buffets and fried cheese. I'm not going to lie. Saturday night, a tipsy Michael said he was hungry as we neared the end of his birthday barhop. When I asked him what he wanted, he looked sheepishly at me and said "Taco Bell". We were barhopping in my neighborhood, close to the house, but I had no idea where Taco Bell was. Turns out, it's right down the street. Michael was amazed that I let him eat Taco Bell and more than shocked that I ate a bean burrito. I have regrets. And Michael is still talking about how I let him eat Taco Bell.

When I went a little crazy after seeing Food Inc., Chris would remind me that we eat 80% clean so we can give ourselves that 20% of leeway. That way of thinking curbed my neurotic panic attacks when forced to make a food decision in a convenient store. It has also helped me to stop beating myself up every time I put something in my mouth (I'm talking about food, you filthy minded). My 80/20 these days is starting to look more like 60/40. Holiday season is upon us which that 60/40 could easily go 40/60. Over the weekend I thought a lot about making a holiday resolution. I know we usually save up the resolutioning for the New Year. But what if I made some preventative resolutions? I'm even considering making the usual resolutions that people make every year: eat less, exercise more, yada yada yada. Make better choices. Worry less (I've been a bit of a worry wort the last couple of months. I'm imbalanced). All I know is that it sure would be a lot easier dropping those eight pounds now than eight plus who knows what after the holidays. So...once again I'm beginning the work week with good intentions, but this time I plan to see them through.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS

I want a reset button for this week. This week sort of, no really, fell apart for me somewhere around Tuesday night. I went to bed with my sinuses screaming at me and the beginnings of a sore throat. I woke up around 1:00 AM, took a Mucinex D, and then rode out the crazy train of decongestant induced shakes, sweats for the rest of the night. When morning finally showed up, I knew that I would not be shaking this thing on my own. A doctor's visit later and now I'm riding a new crazy train called Avelox. That's a fancy new antibiotic. A fancy new antibiotic that makes me slow. It's taken me an hour to write this paragraph. Don't even get me started on NaNoWriMo. The cold weather came rushing in overnight. We moved from crisp Fall temperatures to OHMYGOD freezing literally overnight. That's probably what triggered this sinus infection. It's also triggered small furry animals to seek out a warm place to hang out. I went to get some tylenol from the linen closet last night and there was a little mouse "sleeping" in front of the closet.

me:"There's a mouse!" Michael: "What?" me: "There's a mouse!" Michael: "There's a mouse?" me: "There's a mouse!" Michael (after finally coming to see what I was talking about): "There's a mouse!"

After Michael disposed of the mouse, he said to me "now, I don't want you to worry about mice coming into the house." Sometimes I'm really surprised by how much he seems to know me.

I'm going to make soup now.

PERSEPHONE AND POMEGRANATES

The other night I dreamed that I was walking with someone (Michael or Talaura or Stephanie...I don't know. someone) through a neighborhood. We walked past one house that had a huge pomegranate tree in the front yard. The branches were heavy with pomegranates, many of them hanging over the sidewalk. There were so many pomegranates. We turned our shirts into makeshift baskets and filled them with as many pomegranates as they would hold. That was it. That was all to the dream. The next day I told Talaura about it and she replied "Persephone". I didn't understand. I said "Why would she visit me?" and Talaura said "No, she IS you". Then I was all "no...get out" because...well...just because. Persephone, a Greek goddess of the underworld, was so beautiful that everybody loved her. Instead, I said the dream was probably about the seasons changing and winter coming since Persephone's mom was the reason we had winter. She would be so sad during the months that Persephone had to spend in Hades that she would make all the things stop growing.

Later that day I was telling this to Michael and he said "But you ARE Persephone!". He also said a bunch of other things like what kind of person has dreams of making baskets with their shirts and picking pomegranates. "Can't you have dreams like every one else? Zombies? Falling off tall buildings?" Nope. But any way...Persephone...beautiful and loved by all. It's not that I don't think I am loved. I know everyone loves me. It's the word beautiful that I am constantly having a problem with. Michael tells me that I'm beautiful all the time and I've finally stopped rolling my eyes at him only because I physically hold them in place. Mentally they are rolling all around in my head. Why am I so opposed to this word?

Beautiful is defined as "pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically". When I break it down to the raw definition that word doesn't seem so bad. But I guess I have turned the word beautiful into the highest form like lovely, lovelier, and loveliest. Loveliest is the absolute most lovely. Beautiful is the word you use to describe things that are unattainably beautiful. Works of art, goddesses, models. It is not a term that should be applied to lowly ole' me. I remember once asking Chris early in our relationship why he hadn't told me I was beautiful. He told me because he didn't actually put me in that category. He said I was cute but not necessarily beautiful. He had the same ideas about that word as I did. Beautiful is a special word used sparingly and doesn't apply to all or everything. Now, though, I think we were both wrong.

The thing about the story of Persephone is that you don't know what it was about her that made her so beautiful. We don't know if it was her perfect porcelain skin or her flowing main of hair. What if the thing that made her so beautiful was her spirit, her generosity, her kind heart? I am no Greek goddess but I think I can get behind the idea that I have qualities that are pleasing to the senses or mind.

HE STILL HAS HIS SENSE OF HUMOR

Michael has met the family. Well...most of them. He's yet to meet my sister and her husband, my niece, or Melissa and her bunch, but he met my brother and sister-in-law (the toughest) and he met my dad. A while back Michael voiced his worries about my family liking him. I brushed them away. I told him that my family was all encompassing. They pull you in even if you are a stranger and make you one of their own. Ten minutes after introductions, Katrina pulled a notebook out of her purse, looked at me and Michael and said "Now. What are the things that the Cabbage is into? What's her clothing size?". It's been a really long time since we've had a little girl in our family. Amanda is the only granddaughter and she's all grown up now. The women in my family, well...Katrina at least, are chomping at the bit to buy little girl things. One time I was talking about all the things I was going to buy for the Cabbage and Michael said "you're going to spoil my kid aren't you?". My reply was "yes", but I also told him that there would be a line of others right behind me. I think maybe he finally got that this weekend. So many of you have asked me how my Dad is doing after I posted that picture on fb Saturday. I haven't replied to anyone because I wasn't sure how to reply. It is a surreal experience to visit a parent in a nursing home, particularly when that parent is in a "special needs" unit that is kept on lock down for their safety. Katrina had warned me that Dad had been having trouble remembering my name. So I was surprised to see the look of recognition on his face when we came in. In fact, he knew everyone except Michael, who he pointed at and said "who's this guy?". Dad is dad. He pulls his chair in front of his room door so that he can sit and watch people go by, sometimes snagging someone to talk to. He cries a lot, but not necessarily because he's sad. He's just lost the ability to control that. He asked me and Randy all about Michael. I'm not sure why he thought Randy would know the answers. I think maybe he was trying to figure out what my brother thought of this man. Dad asked me if Michael lived close to me and I said "well....he used to, but now he lives with me". Dad, without missing a beat, said "Oh! That's too close". And then he laughed. He still has his goofy sense of humor. He still is confused and is easily agitated. He worried about us visiting in the cafeteria because he thought they would kick us out to prepare for supper even though they had just eaten lunch. He was also adamant that I tell Michael that he hasn't always been crazy. He said that to me several times.

I wanted to tell Dad that he's not crazy. That yes, his new home very much resembled a scene from any mental institution you've seen on TV or in the movies. I did tell him once that he wasn't crazy, that he has just lost his memory. But I suppose I am deluding myself. He has a disease that attacks the brain. Of course it's going to make him crazy. It's just not easy to admit to myself that my dad has slipped away or that he's been slowly disappearing for some time now. And it's not easy to see the person he's become. The only thing that gets me through are the glimpses of the dad I know. The dad that makes the silly jokes or points out the ridiculousness of the situation is still present and with us. I don't know for how much longer that will actually be the case, but I'll take it for now.

SMELLS

Have you ever noticed the way things smell at an estate sale or a garage sale? How the smells of the previous owner works its way into the fabric of a chair or even into their nick-knacks? I remember that Pepaw's house smelled like cigarettes, coffee and Old Spice. I kept one of his ugly ash trays for kitsch and also because it was something quintessential Pepaw. I know I watched Katrina scrub that ash tray in scalding hot water, but if I hold it up to my nose, I can still smell Pepaw. Nellie, my dad's mom, smelled of Shalimar and something powdery, like those after bath powders you can buy from Avon. Years later after her death, Mom and I opened a box in the garage and we knew instantly that it was a box of Nellie's things. I remember saying "it smells like Grandmother". Mom agreed with me and then she wondered out loud what her smell would be. I couldn't answer her, maybe because she was too familiar. I saw her every day. If I had to pinpoint her smell now it would be more of a mix of memories than actual scents. Cinnamon, nutmeg, candle wax, clay. The first three are scents that always seemed to permeate through the house this time of year. Oh...that just reminded me of pecan tassies. I can smell them now, cooling on the counter, which is weird because I don't remember them smelling like cinnamon. I think of the candle wax because there always seemed to be a pot of it simmering on the stove. Mom did a lot of crafting and craft fairs between jobs. We dipped a lot of pine cones. I liked to press the palm of my hand into the hot wax and then feeling the way the wax pulled and tightened the skin. When I peeled it off, I'd have a perfect mirror image of my palm. The clay came later, after she retired and she took up pottery. It's the first thing you smell when you open the door to the garage. I think it's my favorite smell. Wet, earthy and cool. It smells like it feels. I don't know dad's smell. I would guess a mix of some generic after shave, Zest or Dial, roasted peanuts.

I held onto some of Chris's sweaters because they're big and comfy. The first time I put one on, I smelled it looking for that particular Chris smell. All I smelled was me. The last day Chris was alive, the nurse gave him a bath. I don't know the soap they used, but I had some shampoo that smelled just like it. I'd be washing my hair and images from that last day would float into my brain. I had to throw that shampoo away. Michael smells like AXE hair gel and Zest. When we first started seeing each other, he walked into my house and said "how do you make your house smell so good?!?". I never noticed that my house smelled nice. He says it's my job to make our home smell this way all the time.

It's odd how smells trigger memories. Maybe that's why I always find those estate and garage sales so sad. It's like they're selling away their memories. But then I remember that some smells don't always carry good memories, and I understand. I want to fill my home with good smells and permeate everything with those good memories.

TALK LIKE A ROBOT MONTH

I woke up one morning last week and the first thought in my brain for the day was "I should quit Facebook". I don't even know where that thought came from. I wasn't mad about anything. I stopped paying attention to most status updates that are just re-posts or forwards or picture memes a long time ago. I think maybe I've gotten bored with Facebook. I know the only things I'm posting these days are pictures or advertisements for new blog entries. I haven't felt like saying more because, frankly, I haven't had too much time to put in any extra thought into some catchy one liners. No one cares what I had for lunch or that I have a list of chores that need doing. I'm just not contributing or taking much away from that daily activity, but it is a community (of sorts) that I need as a reminder of things I should do and not do. This doesn't make any sense, but it might by the time we get to the end of this entry. I can't tell you the last book I've read. No wait..I can, because I have photographic evidence of reading it. I have two balls of yarn ready to start on two different knitting projects that have been sitting there staring at me for well over a month now. Michael needs a scarf! I need to get with the program. My brain feels dull and inactive, like maybe I've been abducted by aliens and given a frontal lobotomy. In the last two years (three really), I've had to make so many hard core decisions and PAY ATTENTION that I think I may have used up all of my brain energy. Is that possible? I think it may be possible. According to the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, I am at serious risk of illness due to the amount of stressful life events I've had in the last three years (my score was over 400 and that was leaving out Christmas). Any way, I stopped really thinking about much somewhere between the time Michael moved in and the trip to Ireland. Or maybe its just that all my critical thinking skills were going into those things and I've sprained something. Now when I'm forced with some thinking type task, my brain goes "ugh ugh ugh" like the engine in that old Buick Skylark I had in high school. Critical thinking is HARD.

I can either take up with the Candy Crush craze or start putting my brain to better use. Every November I have friends that do NaNoWriMo. I noticed that Tiffany had left a nice little message on Chris's facebook page about it last week. They were always NaNoWriMo buddies. I never participated because up until recently I never even thought of myself as a writer let alone someone who would write a novel. Last year I started a couple of writing projects that had the potential to actually be novels. I stopped working on the little bit of fiction piece because I needed to do some research. Then, I took a break with the Widow Maddera's Guide To Widowhood because I couldn't see an ending. Profound? Hardly. I just didn't know where it was going because I was not in a position to predict the future. I still can't predict the future, but I think I have an idea of how to tie up the loose ends of that particular bit of work. I think maybe it's time to finish this "project" and just maybe giving myself some sort of deadline/goal will motivate me to do that. We finished season 3 of The Walking Dead last night. I have a brand new MacBook that doesn't die as soon as it's unplugged from the power source. There's really not a good excuse I can come up with to not do this right now.

Plus, the fortune cookie knows things. It knows.

(That line only works if you use a creepy voice while reading it.)

THINGS REMEMBERED

I remember riding in the old blue pickup truck with the windows down, chasing hot air balloons. That truck is the first car I can remember other than the tan station wagon that mom drove. I remember camping trips to Colorado in that truck. We'd all ride up front. It was four of us then, me, Mom, Janell, and Dad. I had a box that Pepaw had reupholstered that I sat on so that I could see out the windows. One time we were at Puye Cliff Dwellings and the truck died on top of the mountain. Janell and I spent all day climbing around the cliff dwellings while we waited for a tow-truck. I remember the time Janell, our friend Erica and I rode in boxes in the bed of that pickup from our house to Keystone lake. We used to sit on the tailgate of that truck and shuck corn or shell peas. I don't remember what happened to that truck. One day Dad just came home with a new one. Spring Break of my freshman year in HS, Dad and I went to New Orleans. We took a cab from the airport to our hotel and I remember having to sit behind the driver because I was small enough to fit there. The taxi driver was this really big guy and his chair back was bowed from the weight of him. He and Dad talked about places to eat good fried oysters. Our hotel was the fanciest place I'd ever stayed in with my Dad. There was a pool on the roof and a uniformed doorman in the lobby. We walked every where except when we rode the trolley out to the zoo. Then we rode a paddle boat back to the River Walk mall and we joked about how boring the 30 minute boat ride turned out to be.

I remember sitting at a picnic table in our campsite at Fun Valley, CO making up fishing lines for the next day. We sat out there tying hooks and fasteners and flies until our fingers were numb and we could no longer see the eyes of the hooks.

I remember how Dad used to wear those Western styled shirts with the snaps, badly cut-off jeans, and cowboy boots. He was arrested in that outfit once. Some stupid mix up. Dad was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle except it had never been stolen and Owasso police were and are kind of jerks. I answered the phone when he called from jail. Dad told me he was in jail and to put mom on the line and I busted out laughing. Then he said in a very serious tone "I'm serious. Get your mom".

Once, Dad and I set all the kitchen timers in Pier One to go off at random times and then we left the store.

The Tuesday after Chris died, Dad was doing a dealership drive to Omaha. He stopped in Kansas City and picked me up so I could keep him company as he drove. He told me stories about uncles that dug out basements with a spoon and great great grandmothers who stared in awe at storms they should have been afraid of. He told me that I come from a long line of calm, strong women.

They put Dad in a VA Hospital in Talahina yesterday. The distance is not ideal, but it is the closest available that doesn't have a wait list and has an Alzheimer's program. The place is nice. The people are nice and Dad seemed OK with staying.

THE MAN I LOVED BEFORE YOU

We cleaned out the garage today. Michael did most of the work while I worked in the house, dusting and vacuuming. Occasionally he'd yell at me to come out to decide the fate of this or that. At one point he came in and said "are these collapsable chopsticks?!" and I froze. He'd started to find left overs from Chris out there. This is where things get difficult. What to keep. What to throw away. He's already seen the basement and the pile of notebooks. He already knows there's so many boxes that need to be sorted. In some ways my baggage is is heavier than his. He may have an ex-wife and a child with that woman. Those things come with their own suitcases of drama. Luckily they have a good relationship and try to do what's best for The Cabbage. But if we come across something of his ex-wife's while we clean out and meld our lives, it's easy for him to say "oh, toss that". It's not so easy for me and I struggle with what to keep and what to let go of, how much of Chris I remove from my life. He's not a bad memory that needs to be erased. But he's not here. I am. I am here and moving on, moving forward with this life.

And if it's difficult for me, I worry that it makes it difficult for Michael. Later today he told me that he could see it in my eyes when I saw those chopsticks. He said the first thing he saw in my eyes was love followed up with a look that said "that fucker". He should have been here when I found the boxes of manilla envelopes. It must be hard for him to see that in me, see that I still love another man. How do I explain that I don't love him any less and they both have equal space in my heart? Or how strange it is for me at times to realize those things myself? It's true, we never realize just how capable we can be. I can't imagine. That's what so many people say. I never imagined that I'd have to watch Chris die or even believe that I had the strength to do it. But I did. I looked him the eye and told him that I love him and then I said goodbye. I endured through the scariest worst time. I was capable. I also never imagined loving someone else. But I do. I am capable.

And Michael is so good, so gentle around all of this. He tells me I don't have to get rid of anything I don't want to. The other night we talked about a summer trip to Mt. Rushmore and maybe a side trip over to Devil's Tower. I said something about leaving some of Chris at Devil's Tower and Michael said "maybe we could have one of the Presidents doing a line of Chris". And then he hesitated as if to say "was that an OK thing to suggest?". I laughed because how perfect would that be?!? But it also made my heart swell. He gets it. He gets the humor and I love that.

At the end of the day, we tossed three boxes of crap. Two of those boxes contained things Chris had been squirreling away to make a new Ghostbuster's pack. I had no qualms about letting that shit go. It felt good to be rid of it. It felt even better to have someone strong and true helping me to do it. But I did keep those chopsticks.

DREAMS OF COOKING

Michael asked me the other night why am I not blogging. Then I typed that sentence and stared at a blinking cursor for ten minutes. And that's why I'm not blogging. No...I'm still collecting my thoughts from my time with mom in Ireland. I am also wading through and editing the two hundred and something photos I took while we were there. I have been planning to replace my fifteen year old MacBook since January. Yesterday, Michael decided that it was time I do just that. Finally I have the tools I've been missing for photo editing. Today I removed power lines from a picture on a screen bigger than my phone and I nearly cried with joy. Something I've noticed though as I go through the pictures is that there's not a whole lot of editing that I really need to do. All that time of training myself to just take a good picture to begin with has paid off. I think I've fallen in love with my camera again. It's going to take me some time to get to a place where I can show you some of those pictures. I came home with dreams of roasting tomatoes, Tibetan Roast, and apple pies. We bought a whole box of tomatoes yesterday at the Farmers' Market and I've spent the day roasting tomatoes in batches, making ghee and homemade pie crust for an apple pie. Right now I'm taking a little break and thinking about starting on that Tibetan Roast and listening to the sound of someone else mowing the yard. It turned cold here on Saturday. I say it's cold; it's cold for me. I've worn my new wool socks all day. The house is cozy from the warmth of the oven and smells like roasted garlic and apple pie. It's been the kind of Sunday I can get used to.

But it's turned me a bit reflective and I feel like crawling inside a small space to think. I have words that are stuck at the top of my heart and I lack the skills to extract them. I feel everything is so big in my life right now, filled to the brim with goodness, bittersweet, love, and sadness. It's filled with holding on and letting go. I'm left sitting here trying to wrap my brain around how to express it all. I'm turing into a sappy person with feelings I didn't even know I was capable of having and remembering how mom and I cried as our plane took off from Dublin. I want to remember all of it, not just the trip but all of these things. All the little moments of goodness. I want to trap them in a snow globe so that every time I shake it, I see all the memories swirling around like a blizzard.

But I wanted you all to know that I am still here. That I'm here safe inside my little house and being well cared for. And his reward will be apple pie.

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE

Things will be pretty quiet around here until I get back from Ireland next week. I will have minimum cell phone access (because I'm too cheap to get a real data plan) and I'm only taking the iPad for when I'm in WiFi areas. You might check back in here for Love Thursday, but other than that feel free to read back through some old entries. Up until this moment life in general has kept me distracted from this trip. New relationships, deaths, illness, work, acts of nature that caused my tree to fall into the neighbor's driveway are all the things that have been taking up my brain space. But now it's time to flip that coin. Ireland is my distraction from all of that general life stuff. For the next six days, all I'm going to do is point at things in the Irish country side with my camera or finger or both. I'm going to drink Guinness and try not to break anything in the Waterford Crystal Factory. I'm going to do yoga on the shores of Lough Leane. I'm going to reconnect with my mom because we haven't had time together like this in years. But I promise that I will come back.

Oh the tales and the pictures that await us!

THERE'S A CHANCE I MAY GO CRAZY AT AGE 75

I wanted to tell you that we had some answers regarding dad's health. I have no answers. We've gone from "you're dad has Mad Cow" to "we think it's Alzheimer's". All of that, all of the testing and more testing prompted a diatribe on the state of our health care system (and I don't mean Obama care, I mean the total unorganized cluster fuck of the current doctor/patient system). Mom and I are scheduled to leave for Ireland in one week. That sentence kind of just looms there. Saturday afternoon, I sat on a curb in the Costco parking lot listening to my brother tell me how dad had completely lost it. I listened to my brother calmly tell me about dad's latest outburst that involved the county sheriff and a SWAT team threat. Everything kind of clicked into place when I heard Randy say "we are having Dad committed" and that's when I realized I was now sitting on a curb in the Costco parking lot, crying. All I could picture was my dad being hauled into every kind of psych ward ever portrayed on TV. My dad is in a hospital. That's really all I can tell you. So instead of all those things, I give you this:

The Cabbage: "Where are we going?" Michael: "You Say Tomato." The Cabbage: "Tomato, but where are we going?"

OFF THE GRID

We made a last minute decision to spend Thursday night in Wichita and while we were checking into a motel, Michael looked at me and said that he didn't have an outlet charger with him for his phone. I looked at him and said "first world problems" and then we both laughed. The only way I could charge my phone over the weekend was to plug it into the car with the car running. That seemed like a ridiculously wasteful thing to do, but I also knew that I couldn't go the whole weekend without my phone. I use my phone to take my daily happiness picture and I needed to be able to contact people inside the venue in case we got separated or lost. I knew that in order to do these things I would have to really conserve. This meant no photo editing or postings. No checking emails or facebook. All I could do was take a daily picture and be prepared for some text exchanges. This is where I confess something to all of you, something that may surprise you. My phone has become an essential organ body part to me. There. I've said it. This person who promotes doing less and yoga and all of that just confessed to you that they cannot live without their smart phone. I have turned into one of those mindless cell phone zombie people. It makes me a little sick to think of that actually, that I am no better than the average sullen teenager when it comes to my phone. When I am not playing around with camera apps, I'm scrolling through Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses. I'm checking emails from both my personal account and my work account. I'm reading blogs and flipping through current news on the BBC app or I'm playing Sudoku. What I am not doing is fully listening to those around me or actively engaging in social behavior. I knew when I got this phone that I would need to set rules and boundaries for myself so that I would not become full on obsessed, but instead I fell right on into the obsessive side of compulsive.

When we pulled into Guthrie on Friday, Michael tossed his phone into the glove box and declared himself off the grid for the weekend. I felt a little clammy at the thought. I told him that I couldn't go cold turkey because I needed to be able to keep in touch with my friends' comings and goings. This was mostly true. I needed my phone to finalize meeting times and meeting places and to organize who I see where and all that comes with making visits to my OKC home. Instead, I compromised. I only used the phone to text and to take one (or two) photos a day. And I was fine. The only time I missed my phone was when I wanted to take pictures. I would see something and whine out an "aw man". Then I'd hold my fingers up like a camera and say "click". At some point, we saw someone charging their phone with one of those nifty battery powered things. Michael looked at me and said that he was going to get me one. He said that he never wanted me to be in that position where I couldn't take pictures again and I'll tell why this is silly. I have a good camera. Wait...I have TWO good cameras. The iPhone has become my camera of choice because it's easy and the photo editing apps are outstanding. Also...I've gotten lazy.

So here is what needs to happen. First of all I have to replace my old MacBook. It's seriously almost fifteen years old and has reached the point where I can't do upgrades. It's also started making a noise. Not a loud noise, but still, it's an I'm-working-too-hard kind of noise. It's time to upgrade. And yes Michael (he's so anti-Apple), I will be replacing the old with a new MacBook. Secondly, I need to invest in some better camera lenses. I am still just using the kit lenses. This is probably fine, but I feel like I've outgrown the kit lens. I feel like I do enough photography to warrant the purchase of a couple of really good lenses. So while I'm in Ireland, I am going to reacquaint myself with my camera and set my iPhone aside for daily happiness pictures only. Because the thing is, I liked not being attached to my phone. I didn't miss my social media or my emails. I didn't miss being completely connected to everything at one time. In fact, when I got my phone back, I didn't even really use it. Being without it became just as addictive as having it in my hands. I'm using Ireland to find that balance between have and have not.

A HAPPIER VERSION OF THE DUST BOWL

We are back from two and a half days of our hot, dirty, sweaty camping concert festival. I want to use the term "camping" lightly because where I come from camping includes campfires and cookouts on that campfire and smores. This was more of a just sleeping in your tent and eating dry hummus and tofurky sandwiches type of camping trip. Cars were parked in one field and we rode on trailers pulled by tractors into the campground. I had warned Michael about the heat and the wind, but I'd forgotten to mention the dust. There really was nothing much in the way of vegetation holding down the soft sandy red dirt in the parking lot. Just the very act of sneezing stirred the dirt up into mild dust devils so you can just imagine what it was like riding behind a tractor. I am convinced that the only reason I did not get sunburned was the layer of dirt that immediately flew onto my body after spraying on the sunscreen. Seriously. I applied sunscreen twice over the entire two days. It was a small glimpse into what it might have been like to live through the Dust Bowl. It was spectacular. Every moment of it. I have lived a pretty tame life. There were no up all night frat parties during my college days or weekends of bar hoping in my twenties. The idea of camping music festivals seemed decadent and slightly dangerous, but fun and exciting and something EVERY young person should do at least once. I'm still a young person right? No...no I am not a young person (my poor achy hip). But! I think that being a bit older and wiser made the experience more enjoyable. Meaning that I was less likely to turn this into some drunken debacle that would leave me wandering around 700 tents at 4:30 AM hollering "Patrick! Pahhhtrick! PATRICK!". I sure hope that girl eventually found Patrick. I kid a little about the whole drunken debauchery thing, but really I didn't see much of this going on. Most people were pretty dang responsible and every one looked out for each other. The campground was one giant commune or hippie refugee camp, with Michael playing the role of helpful camp counselor. We dubbed him Tomahawk.

I have never been to a concert with a more gracious or humbled headliner than Mumford and Sons. I cannot say enough good things about them. I went thinking that Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros were the only band I really cared the most about and they were fantastic and amazing and they ended their set with me wanting more from them which is how things should end. But I was blown away by Mumford and Sons. I believe they sounded better live than the recorded version of themselves. You could see that they truly loved being on that stage even when with it being so dang hot and their clothes sealed to them by sweat. They were having fun and enjoying every minute of their own performance. They graciously shared the stage with all of the artists that had played that weekend. And there was such joy on all the faces on that stage. It reminded me of the good parts of attending church. It was gospel. Gospel that I got to share with good people. Talaura and I held hands and laughed and cried. She kissed the top of my hand at some point and said "you taste like dirt". Michael saw me dance, really dance, not just silly car dancing and he was awed. And my friends, my lovely gracious friends, accepted this man into the tribe.

And then it was over. We drove home coated in layers of red dirt and goodbye tear stained cheeks. We cut off our now grimy wrist bands and said our goodbyes to Summer even though the temperatures are still in the high 90s. I admit that I am having a hard time moving on to the next thing because my heart is still lingering over the moments of hilarity and joy of the weekend. Talaura's bread sandwich. Michael, the sleeping giant. Laffy Taffy jokes. All of it. As Michael cut off his concert bracelets, he handed them to me and said "put these in our memory box". Except we don't have one of those (yet), but if we did, I'd put all of those things into it.

GOODBYE AUGUST

Um...it's September. I don't know if you realize this, but, yeah, September. It is here. Back in late February or early March, tickets for the Gentlemen's Road Tour went on sale and Talaura and I were all over it. We waited kind of patiently not really to purchase our tickets, frantically hitting the refresh button on our computers to get the website to LOAD FASTER. I remember being so worried that I wouldn't get a ticket, like it would sell out in seconds. But it didn't. In fact, I was still able to purchase a ticket for Michael last month. So...Michael's first trip to Oklahoma...I may be a little bit nervous. Not too long after I bought my concert ticket, tax money came in and I was able to purchase a package deal to Ireland for me and Mom. We are leaving on Sept 24th. This is a Life List item and it comes at a time when I think mom will really need it. I know she's under a lot of stress right now, dealing with Dad and his failing health. It was around this time last year that we both decided that it was time to stop talking about going to Ireland and actually go to Ireland. Neither one of us have ever used a passport. We are both unbelievable excited about going. Yet as excited as I am, I have done very little research into where we will actually be going. I did buy Rick Steve's Guide to Ireland though.

And in between all of this is the Cabbage's birthday and working on getting things situated for Michael to move in. I suddenly realized that I have filled the month of September with chaos. It became apparent on Sunday that Michael would need more closet space. This means I will be packing up things I just unpacked a few months ago when I painted that room. This idea makes my shoulder sag a bit because I. Just. Unpacked. Those things. Which then led my brain to things in the basement that are still in boxes from the last move. And then there is space that needs to be made for the Cabbage. She needs a place for her toys and for her bed and my brain has started screaming at me that these are things that have to happen RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND. Then I get a little overwhelmed and feel like I need a nap.

Then I take a deep breath and say to myself "one thing at a time" and that I'm not doing this alone. There's someone here to carry those boxes down to the basement. There's someone there to talk me down from the panic ledge. It will all get done. OK, maybe I'll be studying that Ireland guide on the plane on the way over. It will be just like those college days of cramming for a test the night before. I always aced those tests.

MOSQUITO, NOT THE SAME AS A MOJITO

I feel like I've been having a hard time sitting down and writing anything these days. A lot of this is due to how busy things have gotten lately. I've just been too busy to compile any thoughts into one space and by the time I sit down to actually do that, to actually tell you about all of the great and fun things we've been doing, I've forgotten what it was I was going to tell you. Also, some of those things are serious topics that I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about. They are grown up discussions on combining households and figuring out what's wrong with Dad. Things I'm either not ready to talk about yet or don't have all the information to share. The only information I can share is the number of mosquito bites I have on one leg. It's eleven. No wait...twelve. It's twelve (ask me again tomorrow). I had no idea that Spring here would mean poison ivy for me and late Summer here would mean malaria season. Actually, I'm really surprised that I have not come down with West Nile or malaria. The other day I was out watering the garden and I looked down at my thumb and there was a mosquito sitting on my thumbnail with her proboscis jabbed into my cuticle. And if you think that a mosquito wouldn't be able to get much from a cuticle, you are wrong. A mosquito leaves just as large and itchy bite on the cuticle as it does on any other fleshy region of the body. And that's another thing. I am not walking around in my yard naked. I am fully clothed and even wearing jeans on many of those occasions. My underwear is HUGE! Why is it then that I keep finding large itchy whelps on that area where my thigh meets my ass? How does that happen? Well, I'll tell you how.

The proboscis on mosquito is made up of feeding styles collectively called a fascicle. There's a lip of tiny teeth around the outside of the fascicle that vibrate at a frequency to microsaw it's way through your skin. If it can microsaw through skin, surely it can do that through clothes. Basically the mosquito is chewing you and your clothing and it only requires about 16 uN of force to insert the fascicle into the skin. I know this because I read this abstract. There are scientist out there who are trying to figure out how a mosquito can bite through a layer of denim and a layer of giant cotton panties to get to that fleshy part of your (and I mean my) butt. Technically, they're looking for new ways to fabricate better needles, but I know, deep down, they just want to know how and why they have mosquito bites on their butts.

Or maybe I'm just trying to tell you that I've been too busy scratching my ass to write a proper blog entry.

THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW I WANTED

I never wanted kids. Women talk about their biological clocks and how once the alarm went of they knew they had to have a baby RIGHT THIS MINUTE! My clock maybe ticked and tocked once or twice, but the alarm must have been broken. I never had that urge to have a child of my own. There have been many reasons for this, one being the whole broken clock thing. But another reason was because I felt inadequate. I did not have the skills and ability to raise a good human being and the stress of attempting to raise a good human being just seemed too much. I have been content with this decision. I have my niece and nephews and my friends' kids to dote on. I used to go to my favorite breakfast place on Saturday mornings and sit at a table by myself. I never considered it to be a sad thing or lonely. I would always have a notebook with me, maybe making out a grocery list or sketching out some ideas for a blog entry. I liked to sit there and watch the families. You Say Tomato is one of those homey comfortable places. The tables and chairs are all mismatched. It sits smack in the middle of a quiet neighborhood and most of the customers are those who walked down the street from their house. Often times they will be carrying their own coffee mugs. There's a couple that always sit in the same spot near the north window. They have a little boy that toddles between them. Sometimes he runs over and tries to open the door for people. There are other families, but this one I remember the most because they are always there. They are familiar and cozy and the scene tugs a tiny bit at my heart as I sit quietly alone sipping my coffee and pretending to be interested in my journal. I didn't really need to pretend to be interested in my journal. Part of me is happy to sit alone. But I also could never really shake the glaring reality that I wasn't sitting alone by choice.

Michael has a little girl. We call her The Cabbage. She's almost three (next month). When he first told me that he has a kid, I instinctively cringed with a sarcastic "great...he has a kid". I mean, it shouldn't have come as any kind of surprise. Most people my age have scores of children. This was my first full weekend with The Cabbage. We'd had a few meetings and one evening together, encounters that resembled the kind I usually have with my friends' kids. But this was a whole weekend. Her car seat was installed into my car (in fact, is sitting in my living room now) and we had a whole weekend of activities planned. There was a museum visit, ice cream in the park, Jupiter jumps, digging in the dirt to plant a new Fall garden. It was a very full weekend. We all ended up sleeping late on Sunday and Michael suggested You Say Tomato for breakfast/brunch (really leaning into lunch...that's how late we slept). There we were, sitting together at a table, The Cabbage munching on bacon next to me and Michael reading the paper across from me. Suddenly I wasn't the one observing the other families. I was the one with a family and something in my brain said "Oh! This is what that feels like". It was not a feeling I had thought was missing from my life, but it was definitely a feeling that was comforting. It was a moment that I could get used to. It opened the door to visions of a slightly older Cabbage sitting at a breakfast bar in an open kitchen, coloring or doing homework while I cooked dinner or all of us sitting down to dinner together, laughing and talking about our day. Maybe we'd play a game or invent our own game of using the word of the day from a word-a-day-calender in a sentence.

And just like that, I realized that was something I wanted.

HAPPY 365 DAYS OF HAPPY

August 1st, I received a birthday card from Tumbler informing me that my 365 Days of Happiness was officially one year old. I meant to post something about that when I received the email. I even planned on making a big deal out of it. I had successfully completed a 365 day project and figured that this needed to be acknowledged and celebrated. But the timing was off. I realized I'd taken a full year of pictures of things that had made me happy right around the time I had other things I wanted to blog about. So, I let this birthday quietly pass by. But I didn't pause. I've continued to take a daily image of something that has made me happy or brought me some sort of joy that day. It has become a regular part of my daily routine. This has two sides to it. On one hand I'm taking time to see and or find something every day that brings joy to my life. On the other hand, the practice has become so routine that it's like brushing my teeth every day. I will admit that there have been many times when I've gotten near the end of my day and said to myself with slumped shoulders "I haven't taken my 365 day picture today." On those days, I find myself scrambling around looking for anything to take a picture of. Oh! This thing! Yeah...it makes me smile when I look at it! Snap. That was not the intention of the project.

I always learn something from doing one of these 365 day projects or walk away with an intention for the next one. I started this project on a whim last year. I was six months into widowhood and grasping at straws to remain that positive amazing girl you guys all know and love. I know that's not an act I need to keep up, but at the time it was important to me to not let my grief change my core being. I thought this project would remind me of the person I am. Turns out I really didn't need that reminder (thank you internet). I know who I am. That doesn't mean that this project was for nothing. I recognize that there were too many days of phoning it in. So, I'd like to make some changes to this year of happiness pictures. I want to be more mindful of the picture I take and post. I don't want to rely on one picture either. I need to take several pictures throughout the day and then choose a favorite at the end of the day to post to the Tumbler page. Also...I'd like to capture more experiences that make me happy. I want to be more mindful of capturing those moments of joy that happen at random times. I will learn to be The Quick Draw McGraw of the camera phone. Just the idea of this is already making me smile.

So...Happy Birthday 365 Days of Happiness! Here's to so many many more.

CRAB BOILING 101

We had planned a camping trip for this weekend, but by Thursday the weather forecast for Friday and Saturday was all doom and gloom. So we cancelled the trip and then, wouldn't you know, it didn't rain at all until Sunday. Of course. But that's OK, because as it turns out, Michael and I seem to be pretty good at salvaging a weekend. He only grumbled a teeny bit when I made him get up early to go to the Farmers' Market with me on Saturday morning. It helped that I bribed him with You Say Tomato first. There was also the promise of buying some sort of live shellfish to cook up for our dinner that evening. Michael likes to cook. In fact, I'm the first girl he's every dated that can cook. He's used to doing all the cooking. I'm used to doing all the cooking and the clean up. Basically, we've been learning to dance. He worked in the restaurant industry and picked up his cooking tricks there. I was schooled in my mother's kitchen. He stirs the things I walk away from. I wash things as I go and will often be washing a kitchen tool that he just set down but still planned to use. It's like a tango, but I think we're getting better. At least the tango we're doing looks less awkward and is more fluid. When it came to cooking up the live blue crabs we bought on Saturday, I was more sous chef. Those little buggers were feisty and snappy. They made quick jerky movements that made me jumpy. I was more than happy to stand back and let him handle them.

This was were I was going to insert some video of Michael tossing crabs into boiling water, but I accidentally deleted the whole thing. I'm still learning how to use that app, but I can tell you how we cooked up everything. I didn't have a big enough pot to cook it all in and I think this worked out in our favor. We boiled new potatoes, corn and white button mushrooms in water with lemons. Potatoes went in first and cooked for about ten minutes before tossing the other things in. While that was going, we had another pot of boiling water. We added lemons and then crabs. The crabs cooked for about ten minutes. Next, in a GIANT bowl, we mixed a Hawaiian BBQ seasoning mix (we got it from the spice guy at the Farmers' Market) with melted butter. This part was done in batches. We strained the veggies and then tossed them in the bowl of seasoning. Then we repeated that process with the crabs. We dumped it all out on a newspaper lined table outside and then picked apart delicious crab meat.

It was the best meal I've had in ages. I think part of this had something to do with time. Time was not even a consideration. For the next two hours we sat outside in the shade, with a cool breeze, a good drink and great food. We laughed and slung crab bits everywhere. We made a mess. I don't have actual seafood mallets, so we used hammers which I thought was hilarious. At one point, I said "You know you're really comfortable with someone when you can eat a dinner like this together".

It was a most pleasant evening. All that was missing was smores.