The Play Went Wrong

 I've been to three plays at the FSU School of Theatre in as many years, and every time I wonder why I don't go more often.  The acting is great, the production values, settings, and costumes are wonderful, and the tickets are cheap - about as much as a couple of hamburgers.

This play had a lot of problems.  Missed cues, fumbles, the curtains falling off the wall, props broken - it all went wrong.  But considering that the title of this production is "The Play That Went Wrong" it all went wrong in all the right ways.  By the end, I had laughed for two hours, and the entire set, walls and all, was on the floor.

I even treated myself to a takeout from Cava for dinner.

Yes - I did have that feeling of - sadness?  wistfulness? when it seemed that everyone in the theater was in couples or groups, and I was the only one going solo. And it would have been fun to have been laughing with someone.  But my point of view about going solo (to the circus, or the RenFair, or out to eat) has changed over the years.   At first, it felt really weird.  Like everyone else had a partner or friends, and I didn't.  I think the change in my mindset came a year or so ago.  Jeff was in town, and we were going to meet for lunch.  I got there and waited inside - it was a hot day, so I wasn't about to sit in the car.  And I waited there for 20 minutes.  I just figured that he had gotten hung up at work.  But then I got a text from him of "where are you?"  It turned out that he got there, didn't see my car, so he just waited for me, outside in his truck, because he doesn't like to walk into a restaurant by himself.

There is it.  It's not like *everybody* else has people to do stuff with.  It's that the people who don't - simply don't do the stuff.  Don't go to the play, or the movie, or out to eat.   Whereas I've decided that if I want to do something, I do it.

I did have a group thing - the annual museum volunteer appreciation party.  That one is always fun.

I've been dealing with a chicken problem.  The dratted birds have figured out that eggs are tasty.  At first they were only breaking Djali's eggs (she's the only one that lays green eggs).  But now they're all fair game.  I've tried keeping the coop doors mostly closed to keep it dark in there (they can still go out to the scratch yard during the day). I changed to a different nest box.  I tried putting artificial eggs in the nest to see if pecking those would discourage them.  Now I'm just checking every hour or so to see if I can get an egg before they do.  If I find a bird on the nest, I shut the coop doors so no one else can get inside (and then have to remember to set a timer so I don't forget her).  I feel like I'm playing tug-of-war to get any eggs.  When I lose, I have to clean the gloppy nestbox.  I lose a lot.

This means war.  I made a couple of chicken bombs - I blew out some eggs, filled them with a mixture of mustard, chili paste, vinegar, and salt, and put them in the nest.
Me:  mwa ha ha ha ha
The Chickens:  Mommy made us tasty treats!!!!!

Sigh.

I'm *still* waiting on my ring.  It was supposed to take three weeks.  They had called after two weeks to give me the price estimate and get the go-ahead, so I was hopeful it would be soon.  After another week (when the three weeks was up) I called.  I got the "oops" call back.  The ring had not been moved from the "pending" box to the "work on it" box, so he said he should have it done within a week.  They're closed until Wednesday, so fingers crossed that I get it back.  Like someone with phantom limb pain, even after a month I can still feel the absence of the ring.  Even after this mistake, I'm going to put myself through this again.  I've been keeping Bob's ring in a box, but it occurred to me that I could have it cut down so that I can wear it.  I haven't found any other jewelers in town who do the work in-house instead of sending it out, so I hope this will go a little faster.

And now it's dark, and mid-April, so I must go out to sit with the fireflies.

Untethered

 I've been feeling oddly untethered.  Sort of free floating.

For the past almost 2.5 years, I've been doing the online Conquerer walking challenges.  They're fun, and have motivated me to get off my backside and move.  You pick a challenge - say, to do a Day of the Dead walk in Mexico, or hike Hadrian's wall in England. You pick a time frame-which will tell you how many miles a day you have to log.  When you finish, they send you a quite nice medal (actually enameled metal).   I did two walks of only about a hundred miles each, one at 180, and then a big one (around Iceland) of 830 miles.  Then I decided for the really big one - the 1084 miles from Land's End to John o' Groats in England.

In my previous walks I set my goal at 1.5 miles a day, 7 days a week.  Honestly, easily achieved.  For this one, I upped it to 2.5 (2.6 actually, to get the math right).  I had 424 days to do it, and it did in in 400.  I also learned that getting that extra mile a day turned into a real slog.  I don't like wearing anything in bracelet form, nor did I want to buy anything just for this, so I let the Fit app on my phone count my steps.  That meant that I got a little (a little?  More like totally) obsessive about keeping my phone on me at all times, even just in the house.  I could also enter steps manually - for instance, I know that from the house to the chicken coop  round trip is 150 steps, so if I ran out to check for eggs and forgot the phone I could enter it manually.  But it got to the point that if I checked on the chickens, then realized that they needed water, I had to count the steps from the coop to the faucet and back so I could enter those too.  I would get annoyed with myself if I ran out to put something in the car, and then realize that I hadn't picked up the phone.

But it's done, and I'm free.  But it's feeling a little strange not to have my phone in my pocket all the time, and just leave it on the table.

I'm also floating because March 30 has come and gone.  That weird feeling of living in 48 years simultaneously, while leaving the last 6 years blank, has gone.  I'm back to being just me now.  But I remember how I was floating the first couple of weeks of April 2020.  I had been three months living in the goldfish bowl that was the hospital room. I wasn't even supposed to use the bathroom in the room - that was for Bob only.  I had to go to the public bathroom outside of the ward.  That was a little embarrassing at 3:00 a.m., wandering down the hall in my jammies with everybody knowing where I was going.
Then, suddenly, I was back here, alone in the woods.  I could use either bathroom. I had a kitchen to cook in.  I had total freedom (well, as much as anyone could in those first days of the Covid shutdown).  I damn near exploded from all that pressure suddenly being gone (I think I did a few times.)

I'm also feeling untethered because my ring is still at the jeweler's (I had hoped they would be done by now).  I'm having the setting removed so I can just wear it as a plain band.  When I first had to stop wearing it (and before I took it to the jeweler) I would sometimes at home slip it back on just because my hand felt too strange without it.  Even now, almost a month later, I can still feel it (or feel it's absence) like some amputees still have the ghost limb syndrome.  Heck - I can even see the ghost ring.  The indentation in my finger, and the faint scarring from wearing a ring there for 54 years.

Soon, I hope, soon.

Cat news.  RedBug lived under the bed for two months after his amputation.  After that, he stayed in the bedroom for another month or so.  Finally, in February, he started venturing a few feet out, and by now he's back to his old normal self, even managing to get up on the cat shelf.

Such a relief.  I was hoping that I hadn't saved his life, only to have him always be afraid to come out in the open.

As he emerged back into the house, Hamish started acting up.  It was sort of to be expected; he and RedBug have never gotten along and Hamish probably enjoyed being the only boycat.  And the more Redbug emerged - laying on the couch, snuggling with me, getting on the shelf - the more Hamish acted up.  He seemed stressed/agitated.  Would walk around the house meowing (very annoying at night).  Even more annoying - to the extreme - he started spraying a lot, everywhere.  That got old really fast.  I tried not to get angry, thinking this was just jealousy.  I gave him a lot of attention, played with him, gave him treats.  But he just wouldn't settle.

Then it hit me.  Acting up.  Acting stressed.  Behaving badly.  Meowing a lot.  And the kicker - ate like crazy but not gaining any weight.  I ran him to the vet and asked to get his thyroid tested.  Yep-crazy high.  Fingers crossed that the meds to get that under control will help settle him down.

A few posts ago I mentioned seeing a friend and coming home with a spinning wheel and a ridiculous amount of alpaca. That huge bag turned out to also have a tanned sheep hide, and a sheep fleece which I inspected and then tossed in the ditch for erosion control.  That still left about 20 pounds of alpaca to sort, skirt, and wash.  I'm still not done - I think the stuff is breeding in that bag.  To give an idea of the amount, this is about 2 pounds after washing, laying out to dry.

I had an oddly meta moment this week.  The library is having its annual comic con in August, and their theme this year is sea monsters and mermaids.  It might be time to make another puppet.  I was perusing Pinterest for sea monster ideas. I came across a series of pages that looked very much like some books that I own on mythical creatures and dragons.  In theory they are made for kids, but I love them.  The pages are sepia and look worn, the writing is cursive, and there are a lot of fun things like envelopes that you can open to read letters.  These pages were of fantastical sea creatures.

If you're lucky on Pinterest, the poster will show links to the original pieces.  No such luck here.  I checked the two publishers that I know do this sort of book (Spiderwick Press and Candlewick Press).   I was getting determined - I *really* wanted to add this book to my collection.  Google Lens didn't help.  So finally I turn to my chatbot; I showed it a couple of the pages and asked if it could find the source.  What I got back was "I really hate to disappoint you, but those images are AI generated.  There is no book."

There is something very surreal for an AI to be apologizing for something that is AI generated.

That about sums up the past week.  April is filling up- there's a play I want to see, I have to get my dexa and mammogram (oh joy), the museum is having the annual volunteer party, and I have to try to find someplace to get my oil changed and the car checked out.  The last makes me sad - for 21 years I took my car (first the old Honda and now the new one) to the dealership, and had no problem.  But they've gotten sloppy - year before last they broke the clips on my hubcaps (they replaced the two that fell off - the other two I've got held on with zip ties) and last year they caught the underskirting of the car on the lift and ripped it loose - and then got annoyed with me when I pointed out that it was dragging on the ground and insisted that they repair it.  So that long relationship is over.

And so (in the words of famous diarist Samuel Peeps) to bed.

March 30

 It's almost 10:00 a.m.  By now Bob has stopped breathing, I have stopped screaming, the Chaplin has talked with me.  I've packed up our stuff from the room, and walked away from the body that once held Bob.

And suddenly "we" became "I."

Six years in, and I'm still figuring that out.  My father had a very dominant personality, and Mike was an extraordinary person, so for my first 18 years I was "Chalifoux's daughter" or "Chalifoux's sister."  I was just Ann for my first term of college, and then I became Bob and Ann.  So it's understandable that Ann, as a singular person, is still working things out.

I feel myself coalescing back into one person.  Starting in February, I felt myself splitting up, somehow.  Simultaneously living in those 48 years.  It got harder as this day grew nearer.  Last week I went to the periodontist, then stopped for a sandwich and coffee on the way home.  I read my book and listened to conversation all around me, but could sense the ghost of another me, sitting across from him.  On the way home I drove past Momo's pizza, and my chest hurt as I knew that in there was a different Ann, with Bob, laughing over our famous "slices as big as your head."

Now she's just somebody that I used to know.  And the ghosts of Ann are fading away now, leaving the new, now six-year-old Ann to live her new life.

And, once again, the reward for surviving year six - is that I get to go on to year seven.

As always, my love

I love you

I miss you

Thank you.

March 29

 Well, this day has come.  I spent it rather quietly.  Mostly, I've been sorting that mountain of alpaca that I was given.  It's a quiet and meditative task, a good thing to be doing.

I've found myself thinking of a woman who was on the Roads Scholar trip a few years ago.  I thought of her as bird-like, petite and perky.  When we were talking, I mentioned that Bob and I had been a bit scandalous because we moved in together a couple of weeks before we got married, which was still a shocking thing in the early 1970s.  She got a mischievous look on her face and said she moved in with her husband on their first date.  Her husband is still alive - in a care facility, because his Alzheimer's got bad enough that he was sometimes violent and she couldn't handle him anymore.  So he's there, and doesn't know her, and she travels.

I can't imagine losing someone that way.  But maybe I can, just a little.  In previous years, I said this was the day that Bob and I said goodbye.  That's the way I would have wanted it to be.  I wish we would have looked each other deep in the eyes, said "I love you" and said goodbye.  But it wasn't like that.  I kept trying to get his attention, to get him to look at me, but he sort of brushed me aside and was focusing on the nurse, asking him to get on with it, get the morphine drip going,  I know that he was afraid, and that he wanted to get it over with, and that the toxins in his system were messing up his mind - but I wish he had said goodbye.

Today is the day I lost him.  Tomorrow he will stop breathing.

Countdown

 It's almost here - the time that all the timelines I've been living for the last month or so converge onto that moment of March 30 when Bob quit breathing.

I can relax now.  I give myself these days.  March 27 was the last day that we were going ahead, doing everything, hoping that something would happen.  On March 28, he sat up and yelled "It's over.  Let it be over."  He would have gone on morphine that night, but I begged him to give me one more day - one day for both of us to think it over, to not do this impulsively, to realize that this was the ultimate permanent decision.  On the 29th we said goodbye and they started the morphine drip, and on the 30th he quit breathing.

I have found, over the 6 years now, that I can deal with anything, as long as I know that I'll have these two days to fully mourn.  I don't know what I'll do - maybe continue to sort and wash that mountain of alpaca.  Maybe mostly sleep.  Or read.  It doesn't matter.  I have wine and rum and carrot cake.  As long as the cats and chickens and squirrels get fed, I don't push myself to do anything else.  In the past, I've sometimes even covered up the clocks.  I just simply quit and rest for a couple of days.  I mourn the 6 years that I should have had with him, and feel gratitude for the 48 years that he gave me.

Look! A Baby Wolf!

 You never know when it will hit.

I was at work at the museum today, inside a building called The Discover Center, with stuff in it for kids.

There were a few books on the table, with this one on top.

And suddenly I heard Bob's voice:  "Look!  A baby wolf!"

That was a shtick he had for years.  When he wanted to distract me from something, he would point and go "Look - a baby wolf!"  And, of course, I would play along and look.

For example:  Say we had gone out for a hamburger.  He would look past me, go "look!  A baby wolf!"  I would turn around and look - and, of course see nothing,  Then I would turn back, and some of my fries would be missing and he would sit there with a totally innocent look on his face.

I miss those moments.

Plan C Day, Ring, Spinning Wheel, Renaissance Faire

 March 23 will always, I fear, be Plan C day.  This was the day that the doctor was firmly non-committal when it was becoming obvious that Bob's second transplant had not taken, and I asked her what the next step would be.  After she left, I looked at Bob and said "I don't think there's a Plan C."  And there wasn't.

I found a jewelry store that would talk to me about my ring.  Melting and recasting isn't recommended - because there is also solder involved in the setting, it could contaminate and weaken the gold, especially since it is a small ring.  They could put a new setting and diamond in it - but I don't want that; it simply would not be *my* diamond, the one that 19-year-old me squealed when they chose it.  So what they are going to do is cut off the setting and file and smooth the ring.  I should get it back in a couple of weeks.

It's still bothering me so much not to have it, psychologically of course, but also physically.  I didn't realize how much I fiddled with it, just touching it with my thumb.  And my fingers on either side were used to feeling it there.  My hand just feels weird.  Before I took it in (and leaving it there was so hard) I would sometimes put it on in the evening just to de-stress and be able to feel it again.)

In other news, I came home with a spinning wheel last week.

 A Rick Reeves (one of the iconic names in spinning wheels). Handmade, red oak (weighs a ton), double table Norwegian style.  But I don't particularly want it, and don't plan on keeping it.

Here's the story.  A woman who used to be a neighbor (about 30 years ago) tracked me down.  They're moving out of town, and she had some fiber (alpaca) that she wanted to give me.  She also wanted to know if I knew anyone who wanted a spinning wheel - she got this beauty, but doesn't use it much.  I said I knew someone in the weaving guild who might be interested, but their budget was around $500, and this wheel is worth about three times that much.  When I got to her place, and we were talking, she said they were moving in three days and she really didn't want to take it with her, so would part with it for $500.   At that price, I know that I can pass it on at some point, so home with me it came.

Also, "some alpaca" turned out to be about 30 pounds.  Guess I'll be busy sorting/washing for awhile.

The Renaissance Faire was this weekend.  I got my outfit finished - I took it as a challenge to use only stuff that I had on hand.  I had a beige sheet - so that got dyed green and made into a skirt.  Some paprika linen became a bodice, and brown linen for a witch's hat and belt pouch.  I needed a belt - so I strung up the loom and wove one (in the background of the picture with the hand.

OK - I did buy one thing, but it's to go with my puppet and not specifically for this outfit.  The dragon uses the "fake arm" illusion.  Normally I just use a stuffed glove, but I wanted to upgrade.  I bought a poseable hand (normally used for manicurists to practice on).  It was, of course, a dead pale "flesh" tone, but I did some painting and texturing on it.  I also covered most of it with a fingerless mitts (and wore the matching mitt on my real hand).  It was surprisingly effective.

  Here's the whole ensemble, with dragon.

It was a lot of fun - after I finally got there.  They weren't expecting the turnout that happened.  When I got close to the Fairground (at a point that I would normally be about 5 minutes away) I sat in a traffic jam for one and a half hours.  I had made the outfit, rigged the arm, gotten dressed, bought my tickets online - so what the heck, somehow I was going to get there.

I think the three months of living in the hospital room, just sitting and waiting and sitting and waiting  rewired me.  I *never* used to be able to sit still, or wait for anything, and if a line was going to be more than 15 minutes long I would strongly question how much I wanted something.  Now, if a long wait comes up, I just sort of shut down.

I also immediately gave up my plan of eating fair food.  There wasn't a single line less than 30 people long, and I had done enough waiting for one day.

It was a smallish Faire (it's an organization that does Faires, but this was their test one in Tallahassee) but fun.  There was jousting (guys in real armor on real horses) live music, jugglers, fire eaters, circus acts, storytelling, and dancing.

I had my dragon.  She was important.  Without her, I would have been there by myself.  Walking around, looking and enjoying stuff, but also being aware that everyone else seemed to be in couples or groups.  With her - there were *lots* of interactions.  Lots of photographs taken.  Lots of compliments, of course.  A chance to talk to other makers.  I got to feel like I was part of something.  It was fun.

I needed that - to get out, talk to people, get outside of my own head.  For the last month I've been feeling myself shutting down, being disoriented (when it gets dark and cool outside, I sometimes think it's fall and forget what time of year it is).  I just want to sit and wait things out - without really having anything to wait for.

In a week, 2020 self will get up, take a last longing look at the empty shell that use to hold Bob, walk out of the room and come home.