New Year's Eve

 Well, here it is.  Made it through another year.  My reward?  I get to try to make it through the next year.

That's a mindset that I need to work on, and I'll write about that next post.  That will be about where I'm going.  This one is for where I am.  Which I'm not sure.

I honestly don't remember 2021.  Maybe that's why I was compulsively writing in the blog this year (I did 13 posts in 2021 and 86 this year).  I wrote last January that I need to dump garbage out of my brain, and I think I've been doing that.

But where am I?  Calmer, for one.  Perhaps too calm.  Sometimes I miss my chaotic energy of 2020.  It's just as well that I was in isolation, so people didn't notice the crazy.  I think it was like taking the lid off a pressure cooker without hitting the release valve.  Three months of sitting in the goldfish bowl that was the hospital, seeing the worst happen to a man who didn't deserve it - and suddenly I was out in the open and alone and could do anything I wanted.  And everyone who has ever lived with anyone else knows that weird feeling of freedom when the other person goes away for a little while and you have the place to yourself and can do anything.  I was bouncing all over the place - I bought my little drum with the intention of maybe hitting some drum circles (Covid prevented that).  I put videos on TV and did zumba and belly dance and clogging.  I cleaned the house with a vengence and worked in the yard.  I think in the back of my mind was that Bob was going to be so proud of me - it was hard to accept that he was never coming back.  

I miss that energy.  I don't miss the screaming and the actual physical pain that went with it (broken heart syndrome is a real thing).  I miss feeling, having emotions.  I don't, much, anymore.

Back then, I'd check my phone a few dozen times a day, praying that someone would reach out to me, want to talk (and talk about something besides the damned Covid).  I was screamingly lonely (literally).  Now - it's nice (doesn't happen much except for my nephew and brother) but I'm OK with that blank screen.

I remember getting my first Covid shot - the light touch of someone actually physically touching me.  I had closed my eyes to savor it, being so desperate for any physical contact with another human.  Now - hugs can happen again and they're nice when they do, but there's no big deal about it.

I really got into cooking (and eating) after those three months of hospital cafeteria food (I still miss my Misfits).  Now, I still eat well (meaning home-cooked healthy meals) but seriously just rotate about three meals.  There are time that it's annoying to realize that I'm feeling hungry ("really?  C'mon, I ate 5-6 hours ago.  Why again?") 

Rob and Jeff visited last week!!  They were coming from Tennessee to Pensacola to see Rob's mother for Christmas and I got to go to lunch with them.

So good to see them - especially since Jeff had a quadruple bypass a couple of months ago.  We dawdled over lunch for a couple of hours and then they had to head out.  It was really nice to see them.

Nice.  Sort of a neutral word, isn't it.  I remember when they were going to move.  I never said it out loud to them, but in the privacy of my yard I would be on my knees on the ground begging "please don't leave me."  Losing them, losing the possibility of ever going to another gathering at their place, no hanging around in their living room and laughing with people, losing the safety net of someone I could call if I needed help - that really tore me up.

Now, I could smile and wave and watch them drive off with nary a pang.

I'm just kind of meh now.  But I still believe, at the core of me, that I'm not really a meh person.  I'm just long-term tired of hauling myself up by my own bootstraps - but I don't know how to take a break from that.

I've lost track of what I meant to write about when I started this post.  But maybe that sums up where I am right now - I've lost track.  I'm going through the motions, and dealing with stuff (and stuff happens - just in the last couple of months I had to have some AC ducts repaired and the roof repaired and just in time for Christmas my septic system backed up so every flush was done with a bucket in one hand, a plunger in the other, and cries of encouragement.  That got taken care of this week.

Tomorrow will be a day to think not so much of resolutions but maybe of intentions.  Life it too precious to be spending months on end twiddling my thumbs and just waiting for time to go by.

Meh.

Peacocks and Identity

 I haven't been doing much lately.  The house is a bit of a mess.  I do spend a lot of time scrolling aimlessly through FaceBook or Pinterest, or just clicking through YouTube videos - not watching them, just scrolling to see what's there.  Just wasting time, letting it go by.

I know myself well enough to know that this indicates that there's something I should do that I don't want to - maybe make a phone call or schedule an appointment.  In this case, it's writing a blog post that I don't want to.  But this has been the year of unloading on this blog - getting stuff out of my head and down where I can look at it.  And I need to write about peacocks.

I was about 7 or 8 when I remember first seeing a peacock - impossibly beautiful, impossibly exotic.  (A book I read - "Why A Peacock" - said it felt so strange when he paid money for his birds; he thought it would be more appropriate to trade a handful of magic beans or a book of spells).  I yearned for that bird.  I didn't think it would ever be possible.

But we moved out here, we had land, and I got peacocks.  Sometimes, when you yearn for something as a child and finally get it as an adult, the luster fades.  That childlike joy is missing.  Not in this case - I adored having those birds around.  I caught my breath every time I saw that otherworldly beauty in my everyday life.

Nature being nature, and having both a male and a female peacock, eggs happened.  I didn't want my female brooding them.  They nest on the ground, and we have predators - raccoons, foxes, coyotes.  We thought we should take the eggs.  So we got an incubator.  And 28 days later, the miracle.  I watched as a line was chipped around the circumference of the egg, then as the top was pushed off and a wet little chick unfolded herself.  It was a miracle we were to see over and over again, but it never became routine.  If I was at home, I had to drop whatever I was doing and just gaze at this unbelievable sight.

Peachicks are hatched with attitude.  They know exactly who they are.  And at a week old, they already practice their strutting, fanning out their little half in tails.

It got a little (a little?) out of hand.  If you take a peahen's eggs, she just lays more eggs.  We ended up with dozens of little peachicks.  Some we kept.  Others we gave away, or advertised and sold.  The chicks were an impossible amount of fun.

But also a lot of work.  Breeding season starts in April and ends in September - so we were caring for loads of chicks from May through October (at six weeks you can tell the boys from the girls, and that's the age where we would sell them).  And to sell them you have to deal with people, which can get so very annoying.   There was also the issue that our birds were all free-range, intermingling, which meant that inbreeding was going to happen.  After a few years we gave up the craziness of having all those chicks living on our back deck, but it sure was fun.

But we were still the people with peacocks.  And I never got over adoring them - catching that gleam of deep turquoise in the sun, dancing with the displaying birds, laughing when they would come up to the door and honk for treats.  That raucous scream they made, so at odds with their appearance.

They became part of our identity.  You'd be talking about pets with someone, and mention peacocks, and they would get that look on their face - "you have peacocks?"  Or if someone would come visit and suddenly be in awe - "is it all right if I take a picture?"   You'd call service people who had been here before - maybe the tree guy, or the person who cleans the air conditioner.  You'd give your name and address, and then hear "Oh, yeah - you're the ones with the peacocks, right?"

Peacocks live a pretty long time.  Bruiser (that first egg I saw hatch) was 21 when a raccoon killed her - but she was showing her age.  The last birds we kept were hatched in 2006.  They, like any other pet, become part of your life.  When you step out of the house in the morning, you check the tree (they roost in trees) or do a count if they're already down.  When you get home from work, you check on them.  And you simply enjoy them.

2006 - 2021.  We did lose a couple of birds in that time, one to a dog, a couple to racoons.  But there were a half-dozen that we had that time, so you get used to the idea that nothing will happen to them.  Until last year - I wrote about losing a bird, quite likely to a bobcat.  Then the others.  One I found and nursed for two months until I lost him.  (people will ask - why didn't you cage them?  Well, the big pen got destroyed in the hurricane.  And they're not completely domestic birds and almost impossible to catch).  Finally I had one bird left.   As the months went by, I relaxed slightly  - but I always checked on him first thing in the morning, and several times during the day, and made sure he was in the roost at night.  I admired him, and danced with him, and fed him treats.

And then, around the end of October, he was on his roost one night, and gone the next morning.

People have wondered why I don't get more - I've even had offers.  One reason is that I would have to get a pen built - they have to be kept confined for a few months to establish their territory.  The real reason is that they live for 20 years, and it's unlikely I can live out here that long.  I loved having them for the 25 years or so that I did, and it's time to let that era go.

But it hurts, which is why I couldn't write it.  I've lost so much of myself in the last 2 1/2 years.   Chunks of my identity.  I was Bob's wife.  I was the person who proudly drove the 21-year-old car (I wrote about giving that up).  I was the woman with nine cats.  Eight. Seven. Six. Now 5.   And I was the Person With Peacocks.  Was.  Sometimes I feel like a past tense person.

A couple of weeks ago a tree branch landed on the house and caused a leak.  When the roofer came out (who has worked on the house before) he greeted me with "hey, Miss Ann - you still have peacocks?"

Cold

It's a mite chilly here.  Nothing that could be bragged about to the rest of the country, but our high today was 38 and we'll be hitting 18 tonight and by Florida standards, that's cold.  (Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, people in Central and South Florida have been advised to use umbrellas when out walking because those cold-stunned iguanas falling out of trees can be heavy).

I'm noticing the same phenomena that I have for the past two winters - I'm cold.  Not compared to some friends of mine who really can't handle it and are suffering, but I feel it more.  I've always preferred the cold weather and love to get out in it.  But since I lost Bob, I feel it more.  I keep the house warmer now; we use to have thermostat wars - he would have been happy to keep the house at 60 degrees, but I'd be wearing a sweatsuit and a hat and a hoodie and my fingerless mitts and looking pathetic and he'd relent and we'd pop it up to 63 (and I was OK with that).  These days I tend to go for 67 or even 68.

I've also noticed trouble sleeping.  Not getting to sleep  - I *love* being able to snuggle under blankets - but waking up in the night feeling oddly stressed, even though I'm physically very comfortable, and having problems getting back to sleep.

I figured it out by accident a couple of nights ago.  I was watching TV, fell asleep on the couch, and woke up about 7 hours later.  And it occurred to me that it was my back.  In the summertime (meaning 9 months out of the year) Bob and I would sleep separated from each other, because he was such a radiator.  A hand or foot would stray over for a point of contact, but comfort required a bit of airspace between us.  But on the cold nights?  We'd be back-to-back, with that beautiful safe warm feeling of pressing against the "Wall o' Bobby."

In a pale thin imitation of that, it's what the couch gave me.  Pressed up against the back of the couch, with a bit of my body heat transferred to it.  Snuggling up to something, feeling warmth behind me, feeling a little bit safer.  So while this cold snap lasts, I think I'll be staying out here.

Christmas Card and an Interlude

 You never know when you're going to get blindsided.

There are things that you live with for years, to the point that you don't notice them anymore.  An arrangement of furniture, the pictures of the wall, knickknack on the mantelpiece.   You enjoy having them there, but you don't think about them.

I have a cork board in my cottage with various things pinned to it - small samples, postcards, cartoons.  And a couple of cards that Bob gave me, probably some time in the 1980s (our SCA/Medieval period)

A few days ago I was working in there, and glanced up at them, and realized that I didn't remember what he had said in them.  The one pictured above turned out to have been a Christmas card.

    "Merry Christmas, my love.  It  seems like such a short time ago that we shared our first Christmas together.  And I fear that time will be too short for all the Christmases I want to share with you."

Kinda had to hit the floor and weep for a bit.

I found myself thinking today about having coffee with him.  It was a bright clear day in December, cool but not cold.  We ordered a couple of lattes at the kiosk and went to sit outside at a little table with a yellow umbrella.  We each had our books, and we sat and read, sometimes looking up to catch a glimpse of a smile, or reaching out to touch a hand.  When we finished, one or the other of us said "this is nice.  How can this be so nice?  It's too surreal."  Because we were outside on of the wings of Shands hospital, a couple of weeks before he was due to become a patient, there for yet another round of tests and evaluations.  We had finished one appointment and had a half-hour or so before the next, hence the coffee break.

We were always able to do that - at any given time, form our little bubble around us, a safe little area for just the two of us, no matter the circumstances.  It had been a three-hour drive there, and would be a three-hour drive back, like we had done the week before and would do the week after, and we were both frightened - but for that half-hour we could just sit, sip coffee, read, and relax.

And now my mind wanders to an earlier dinner.  We had been running errands that took longer than expected.  Bob had his model maker's meeting to get to shortly (sometimes I would go and sit and listen to the group, usually with my knitting).  We were hungry but there really wasn't time for a meal.  The meeting was held in one of the upstairs meeting rooms at Publix, so we just went to the deli to grab a box of chicken fingers.  We picked up a small bag of baby carrots, swiped a few packets of ranch dressing from the salad bar, and went to sit at one of the admittedly grungy little tables they had available in one corner.  We ate, chatted, and when we got up Bob commented "You know - that was actually quite pleasant."

We didn't know that day at Shand's that it would be our last time having a latte together.  That we would too soon stop sharing anything.  It's all those little quiet moments together that I miss so much.

Fruitcake

 OK, sitting down with a wee dram of brandy and waiting for my heart to quit pounding and my hands quit shaking.

I put a cake in the oven.

Ye Olde Annual Fruitcake.  The type that people make jokes about, and sneer at.  White batter, filled with artificially dyed sweet candied fruit.

Honestly - I'm not even sure that I like it that much.  But it's the fruitcake that I first made when I was about 12 or 13 and in my Victorian literature phase (not sure I've ever gotten out of it).  And I've made it every year since then.  In the kitchen at the end of the hall in the dorm.  In an aunt's borrowed kitchen. Once in the middle of packing up to move across country.  I've made it when it meant eating lean for a bit to afford the candied fruit and half bottle of brandy.   I've never really that big on Christmas, but by golly those fruitcakes got made.

My parents loved them (and possibly they loved the memory of their tween daughter making a mess of the kitchen).  My father in law adored it (we saw them on that cross-country trip, and he came out to the car going "did you make fruitcake?")  My brother and his wife like it, because Christmas Tradition.

And most importantly, Bob loved the whole ritual of making them.  The fruit would be soaked in brandy for a day (or a week) before, and he would sneak nibbles.  The, on Baking Day, he'd be hovering over my shoulder, spoon in hand.  Cream the butter and sugar, add eggs (time for a taste), add brandy - and time for more tasting until I would slap his hand and tell him that I needed at least some of it for baking.  Then he would get to lick the beaters and the bowl.

So now I'm 70 (still getting used to that idea).  58 years of annual fruitcake baking.  But my parents are gone, as is Bob's parents, as is Bob.  The family (Rob, Amanda, Della, and Don) let me know many years ago that this is one tradition that they don't need.  I have another fruitcake recipe (Alton Browns) with dried fruit and spices that I like much better, and that is the one that gets made for friends.

But somehow I have to make this one anyway.  It's part of Who I Am.  And I've lost so much of my identity in the last few years (there's a post coming up on that) that I have to cling to something.  So, as in 2020 and 2021, I thought seriously about finally skipping it, knowing that I would hurt doing it, and then knowing that I would hurt more if I didn't.  So, with thoughts of the bustling Christmas market from A Christmas Carol in my head and the Nutcracker Suite playing, I cut the recipe down and made two small cakes, one for Mike and Margo and one for me.  I tasted the fruit and the batter and licked the beater and the bowls.  This evening I'll make the dark fruitcake and Monday mail one of each to Mike and Margo.

Traditions are sometimes what keeps us going.

[I have to come back at edit this, because I just got a note from my friend Nancy who moved to California saying that she found herself missing my fruitcake and would I share the recipe? How coincidental is that? I've asked her for which one - the white or the dark.  If it's the white with candied fruit I'm going to have hysterics)

Birthday

 Well, I have a birthday tomorrow.  A big one - 70.

Not sure how I feel about this.  I've never been one to dread birthdays, and never understood why anyone would, given the alternative.

It's just that Bob and I used to be the same age.  Almost.  I was 6 weeks older.  Now I'm going to be three years and six weeks older.  I feel that I'm leaving him behind.

I used to take my birthdays off work whenever possible.  Now that I'm off work 5 days a week it doesn't seem as special - so I'm going to work tomorrow.

I wasn't big on presents, either.  After awhile you have enough stuff.  The one thing that I always asked for was breakfast in bed.  Even if Bob couldn't take the day off, he could plunk a sweet roll on a plate and pour a cup of tea and bring it to me, and I would finally get out of bed when I damn well felt like it.  Luxury.

I've tried doing that since I lost him, but it's not the same.  Along with putting a roll on a plate and pouring tea, Bob would take care of the critters.  Alone - getting up, feeding the cats and chickens, then fixing my breakfast and taking it back to bed just seemed to lack that luxury feeling.

Mostly I've been missing my Mom.  It would have been good to talk to her, and cry together.  She adored Bob.  And tomorrow will be the 10th anniversary of her passing.

I always liked the story of my nativity.  It was A Dark and Stormy Night, and Mom was about three weeks overdue with me.  After dinner she told Dad that she was going to have me that night.  No signs of labor, but she just knew.  So he took her to the hospital - who confirmed that there were no signs of labor, but checked her in anyway because the night was nasty and they might try to induce labor in the morning.

In the middle of the night, she rang for the nurse and said "it won't be long now."  The nurse checked her, said that she wasn't in labor, and that she would come back later.  About 45 minutes later Mom rang for the nurse again - because I had arrived.  So at my birth, around 2:45 in the morning, it was just the two of us.

60 years later, in the hospice house, around 2:45 in the morning, it was just the two of us as I held her hand and she stopped breathing.

Almost mythical, isn't it?

So - what's happening tomorrow?  I have no idea.  No breakfast in bed because I'm going to work.  People might remember and say Happy Birthday.  There might be treats.  Or they won't and there won't be.  I'm good either way.  FaceBook usually announces birthdays so I'll probably get some birthday wishes there.  Mike and Margo will likely call.

After work I'll head over to Gill's because she's making me a birthday cake.  I'm quite excited about that.  She is one hell of a baker, so it's going to be decadent and fancy - vanilla with toffee, a homemade dulce de leche filling, and, knowing her, it's going to be gorgeous.  I don't think I've ever had a fancy bespoke birthday cake before.

I might fix myself something nice for dinner - or I might just sit in a corner with my cake and a bottle of rum.  If the latter, it's good that I don't have anything planned for Thursday.