Happy Birthday, My Love

 You used to be 6 weeks younger than me.  Now you're four years and six weeks younger.   Happy Birthday.

The nice thing about this blog is that I can talk to myself.  I look back at previous years and can see - yep, this is a hard time of year.  The 52nd anniversary of our meeting, his birthday, and now the four-year anniversary of starting to realize that his treatment was not going as planned.

So I do as I have done - and keep busy.  I have really dived into cleaning the barn.  I showed one before-and-after picture last entry.  Here's the other side.

That took 4 (or was it 5) trips to the dump.  I did find a couple of treasures, one that I'm really happy about.  They were in a bin on top of the shelf, under another bin that happened to be full of small cardboard boxes.

When Bob's family was stationed in the Philippines in the 1960's, one of the things they brought home were a pair of brass Kalesa (carriage) lamps.  I loved them, but of course they stayed with the house.  I remember looking for them, without luck, after the hurricane (a lot of the contents of the house ended up being strewn outside, and much disappeared.)

Well - apparently at some point Bob got the lamps, and also apparently forgot about them, because there they were.  They need a serious cleaning up, but here's a picture of something similar

Of course, that puts something else on my "things to do" list. They have been wired up for electricity (for direct wiring into a house) but I might remove that and just put in battery flame bulbs.  And find someplace cool to put them.

When I was at Lowe's getting my lawnmower and chain saw, I also was looking at the battery circular saw.  I'm getting very fond of battery-operated tools.  Not that I *need* a circular saw - but if I ever come up with a project, I was planning on getting one.  There's an old one with a bit of a wonky cord in the barn but I'd be happy to give that up.  But lo! and behold!  One of those boxes held a Black and Decker set of battery circular saw, drill, and skill saw.   I'm charging the batteries now to see if they're still good.

A side note on tools.  I think it was about last June that I wrote that I really should take the brush cutter in to be cleaned and repaired, as I haven't been able to find a battery operated one.  So I finally did.  Eventually now I'll get back to yard work.

[side note to side note.  There was a joke on FaceBook about the tool version of being sorted into Harry Potter houses - and they showed the colors red, yellow, green, and blue.  Without even thinking I went Milwaukee, Black and Decker, Ryobi, and Makita.  But don't ask me to tell one fashion clothing brand from another]

Back to the barn.  In 2019, when the weather had cooled a little and before the hurricane (it seemed that at the hurricane is where everything changed) Bob and I were actually going to tackle the barn.  He would look at it (all of it looking like the before pictures above) and go "where do I even start?"  And I would say "pick a corner."  So that's what I've done.  I've more-or-less cleaned one corner.  Last November, when I was painting the deck and the house I cleaned up the paint cabinet and the area around it.  Today I tackled another corner (didn't take a before picture).  I did two trips to the dump yesterday and two today, with enough stuff piled up for another one tomorrow.  And yet again, anything that looks like it might have a use at all goes to the donation site and quickly disappears.

Will I get it done this year?  Don't know.  I find that I can hit it, hard, for about two hours.  At that point, I've done enough to feel a sense of accomplishment - and then I look at everything else that's there and I just sag (not to mention all the stuff he stuck up in the rafters.)  And it's physically demanding - today I hauled off a hundred pounds or so of scrap metal that I've been piling up.

It's cathartic, and also heartbreaking.  It feels good, and it feels sad.  At times the loneliness washes over me.  So I came in and fixed a hamburger for dinner (I think I had two hamburgers last year - not something I do often) and had a beer.  When I'm done with this I'm going to make a microwave cake to celebrate his birthday.

More Cleanup; Cute Animal Pictures; Jeff Visit

 Got into the swing of barn cleaning; one load to the dump on Friday and two on Saturday (so that's four loads in the week if you count the one last Sunday)

I have to admit to myself that going through stuff, dragging it to the car and then hauling it to dump is more of a mental/emotional thing than it is physical.  Timing it - I can sort enough stuff to fill the car full in about an hour.  Then it's another 15-20 minutes to take it to the dump and get home.

It's not like I *have* to do this.  I don't need the space.  But the barn is just one big cluttered mess.  I could ignore it when it was Bob's - not my circus, not my monkeys.  But now that it's mine - it's *my* clutter.  And it's weird owning so much stuff that I don't even know what it is.  It's taken me this time - almost four years - to get out of the mindset of this is Bob's stuff, and into the acceptance that it's mine.  And even the stuff that is still useful needs to meet the criteria of "is it useful to me?  Will I use it?"  So as I'm cleaning it goes into three categories.  1) trash (the biggest one), 2) donation (surprisingly big)  and 3) keep (quite small)

I have to allow myself to feel the memories.  The little desktop aquarium that I had in my office in the 90's.  The large collection of hamster wheels and water bottles, from the time that we had two mice that we thought were both females but one turned out to be a male and we ended up with a lot of pet mice for awhile.

And I have to whisper an apology as things go away.  I know how some of this happened.  Bob's parents, his father especially, were generous  - the type who would do anything for you, give you the shirt off his back.  But his father in particular was oddly unaware of boundaries, and also couldn't comprehend that if something wasn't important to him might be important to someone else.  When Bob was in high school, his room had a bunk bed. He slept in the lower one, and kept some of his things on the upper bunk.  He came home one day, and the upper bunk was empty.  When he asked his mother about it, she said they would be moving soon so she was cleaning up and tossed it - "you don't need that."   After we were married, we were going for his officer basic training to Texas for a few months, so we packed up a lot of our stuff and left it at his folk's house.  When we came back for it, we found that not only had they opened the boxes to see what was in there - but gave some of it away.
So I understand why he wanted me to leave his stuff alone.  And why he wanted to keep it all.   His parents didn't understand why he would want some of his things, so they threw or gave it away.   I'm taking his things - and throwing or giving them away.  It's damned hard.  So I can only do so much before I have to walk away again.

Fortunately at the dump they also have a covered area where you can put things that are still useful, that someone else might want.  So that's where the fish tanks and odd tools (like the splitting maul that I can barely pick up) go.  For the first few years I worried about the tools and equipment that I didn't even recognize - what if it turned out I needed them?  Four years later I realize that if I still don't know what something is for, it's unlikely that I need it.  And if I do - Lowe's probably has it.

Passing stuff on to someone else is easier than throwing it away - it lessens the guilt.  When I took my first load in on Saturday, I noticed that everything I had left Friday was gone.  When I took my next load Saturday afternoon, all the morning stuff had been picked up.  When I was offloading in the afternoon, a woman was there with her truck - and basically I ended up putting it all in her truck instead of the site, and she thanked me profusely (I assume that it will show up at yard sales or the flea market, and I'm fine with that)

Here's the before-and-after of this weekend's cleanup.

(the red thing is a parts washer, and too heavy for me to pick up, so it's on the "deal with it later" list).

To relieve the stress from doing this, I spent time cutting up a tree that fell behind the house and dragged it to the fire pit.  Saturday afternoon I had a nice fire going and could settle down and read for awhile.

On a lighter note, Jeff is back in town for work and we got to spend a few hours together today.  I forgot the selfie.

I do have a few more pictures from work.  One of the keepers came by on her way to take a baby bobcat to a facility in Central Florida.

Adorable, yes.  Cuddly, no.  He was snarling and hissing at us.  Which is good - he's going to be raised with other bobcats, and eventually released back into the wild.

On this same trip, Shelby was also going to return the two alligators that we use for education encounters, and exchange them for smaller ones.  But it was quite cold that day and we were all standing around looking at the bobcat Another keeper, Chris, was afraid that the alligators would get cold in their carrier.

This really needs some sort of "Florida Man" caption.

Finally, our education armadillo, Hank, developed some sores on his tail so he's living in the kitchen area for awhile.  When we're in there, he's let out to run around and explore.  It was quite cold that day, and in his running around Hank found the space heater and promptly crashed for a warm nap.

My goal for the next month or so is to get as much of the barn done, and as much of the yard cleared as I can before the weather turns warm again.  As the saying goes, what we do around here in the wintertime depends on whether or not it falls on the weekend.

Memories and a Bit More Cleanup

 My friend Los, who I grief bonded with after he lost his wife six months after I lost Bob, uses FaceBook as his therapy.  Every day after work, before going to bed, he posts some memories of his life with Ellen.  He hasn't missed a day yet.  I do read them every day, although after more than 1000 posts they're getting a bit repetitive so I sort of glance through them.  But he's desperate to keep her memory alive, so I at least leave a heart emoji, or sometimes make a comment.

I don't feel the need to go that far, but there are some memories that I adore, and keep coming to mind - like every time I take a bath.  I love very hot long soaking baths.  They're one of my winter joys, because a long soaking hot bath in the summer just isn't quite as enjoyable.  The one I will always remember was just a few years after we got married.  We were renting a small house - 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom.  I had just settled into my bubble bath, with my it candle, relaxing.  In walks Bob, with his magazine, sits down, says "don't mind me" and well, you know.

He hadn't closed the door all the way, so our two cats, Algernon and Ptarmigan, joined us.  They jumped up on the side of the tub, wondering what the hell I was doing, and Algie accidently pushed Ptarm in, and suddenly I had a Jacuzzi with razor blades.  I was able to scoop her out, and she promptly did what most animals do when suddenly dumped in warm water:  peed all over the bath mat.

We didn't have our own washer at the time, so after I got out of the bath I had to throw the bath mat in and hand wash it.

For some reason, I didn't feel that relaxed and refreshed after the bath - but I always remember it.

And it's memories like this that make me miss him the most.  It's easy to sanctify someone when they're gone, to remember the best parts of them.  Those eyes.  That smile.  Him bottle feeding a baby squirrel, or holding a kitten.  Those are the gentle memories.   But the ones that make me curl up and hurt, that deep visceral missing of him, are the ones where he was most human, when he could be a pain in the ass.  When he'd toss dirty paintbrushes in the kitchen sink.  When there would be three or four laundry baskets of his clothes in the bedroom because he'd run out of places to stuff his clothes but God Forbid if I suggested that he get rid of any (literally 150 T-shirts, or 12 pairs of shoes/boots that didn't fit).  At those times he's just so human, so real, and so not here anymore.

I've been on a cleaning up kick lately.  I spent three days burning deadfall in the yard, and took down the old butterfly garden fence and powerwashed the old swing.  Then I spent two days reorganizing the cottage and doing some purging there.   What I was doing has a name:  Creative Work Avoidance.   I used to do it when I worked  - you take care of some minor tasks, so you are working and keeping busy while sort of procrastinating on some major task.

I had told myself during the hot weather months that when I got cool I would tackle the barn some more.  Guess what?  It's cool.

Our transfer station (aka The Dump) is only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I did my usual run on Sunday morning - then girded up my loins and tackled the barn a bit.  In an hour or so I had filled the car and was able to dump it as well.  I only cleared a small area, but it was something.

Some years back, when Bob was bemoaning his lack of space (in the 1,000 square foot barn) I came up up with the idea of a room within the barn.  I built a free standing storage unit, 8 feet long, 6 feet high, which made a work area about 8x10 in one corner of the barn.  That's 48 square feet of shelving, with more space to put things on top, and a solid back where hooks could be installed to hold more stuff.

It didn't take long to fill up, with more bins of stuff on the floor.

I was able to clean about 6 feet of the bench top before the car was full.  Sometimes I wish I had a passel of friends to just come and drag the stuff out, or maybe I could hire a couple of guys and a truck for a day, but I just can't do it.  This stuff, such as it is, was somehow important to him.  It was Useful.  He Might Need It Someday.  It Was Still Good.  And I keep hearing his voice - from whenever I suggested he might want to sort or organize or gasp! get rid of some stuff - "Would you stop trying to get rid of my stuff!"

So I can't ask someone else to do it.  Each piece of detritus must be held for a moment, with a quick apology before it goes in the trash bag (with a lesser amount of stuff going to the donation site).

But it's at these times, when he is the most human, the most real, the most frustrating, when I'm saying "Why, Bob, just why" (like why when you had to shorten the giant-sized zip ties did you save all the cut off ends?) that it really hits me, even as we near the four-year mark, that he's really gone.

Harbor Freight and Dr. Who

 I'm now in the "three month" phase.  I'm trying not to dwell on things, or mope, but playing in the background like white noise are the memories.  Bob went into the hospital on January 7.  Things went steadily downhill until March 30, when they ended.

Tomorrow, January 13, was one of the big days.  That was the day he got the bone marrow transplant.  The ward throws a "birthday party" on that day, because  they say this is your new birthday.  All the staff on duty that day come in to clap and sing happy birthday.  He got a bag of presents - a warm lapblanket, some toys, a card, a hand-crocheted hat (he lost his hair a few days later), and a medi alert bracelet.  It was at the last that I saw his face change.  He had convinced himself all along that if he just got through this, in a few months he would be back to normal.  It was at this moment that he realized it would not happen; he would have to be cautious the rest of his life.

Those memories just play in the background.

I just heard that a Harbor Freight tools will be going in on this side of town.  Odd to be excited about cheap Chinese stuff, but Harbor Freight is fun.  I remember many years ago when Tallahassee got its first one, in a strip center anchored by a natural foods store on one end and Olive Garden on the other.  In the weeks before opening, when we were running errands in that area, we would look over and be excited for the opening.  Sometimes, afterwards, we would just go in to look around (we did that with a lot of places - Barnes and Noble, Michael's, Hobby Lobby.  Somehow, I don't do that any more - I don't seem to be in town much)

I was watching a trailer for the new season of Dr. Who.  Like they have done a few times before, they have brought in an actor from the "classic" Dr. Who.  In this case, it will be Leela, who was one of Tom Baker's companions in the late 1970's.

What do these two things have in common, that caused me to heave great sighs.

One is the memory of Harbor Freight.  The excitement of getting one, and the fun of just wandering through.  The other is the memory of Leela.  She was Bob's favorite Dr. Who companion.  The Doctor had found her on a planet, a descendant of people who had landed there long ago, and who had long since gone a bit feral.  Bob loved her straightforward attitude ("shall I kill him for you, Doctor?")  There may have been other reasons he was so enamored of her. 

From time to time through the decades, we might see a vintage Dr. Who with Tom Baker, and I can still hear his voice of "ahhhhhh, Leela."  (I didn't get jealous because he was diplomatic enough to say that he saw a resemblance between us, if more of attitude than appearance.)

Cheap Chinese tools and a feral warrior.  Nostalgia is a strange thing.

A Bits and Pieces Day

I don't think it shows in the last couple of posts, but other than Jan 5 and 6 (hard anniversary days) I've actually been doing quite well lately.  I let go of 2023 with a sense of relief.  That was the year that I pushed myself - to get out, do stuff, see people.  Honestly, all it really got me was tired.

So this year, I'm not going to push myself.  I'll go out if I feel like it, and stay home if I don't.  I have committed to help out at the Highland Games in February, but only a little - just one day, and not all day at that.  I'll walk around spinning, and do a waulking demonstration (because I have a leftover length of cloth from last year that didn't get done because of the rain).  Otherwise I'll eat meat pies, watch the games, and admire men in kilts.  And other than my potential annual trip to Boston to see Mike in the fall, I've got nothing scheduled.

After the several days of yard work, today was a "bits and pieces" day.  There is always a "things to do" list, and the idea of it gets overwhelming.  I have a strong tendency to feel that if I'm doing something - then I'm not doing something else.  So rather than do anything - I find myself going down rabbit holes on the laptop, or flipping through youtube videos.  Weird the way the mind works.

So today I tackled a bunch of those things.  If I'm honest with myself, a lot of them don't take much time.  Clean the fish tank.  Pay a few bills.  Put the flea meds on the cats.  Send a text to a friend who is starting a new job (good luck, Sis!).  Cut up the pineapple I brought home from work (Costco donated more to the museum than we can use).

A week or so ago the handle came off my microplaner.  If I were a proper American, I would go out and buy a new one.  But that's not how I roll.  I mixed up some epoxy and put the handle back on.  The little wooden treasure chest that I carry my tiny electric spinning wheel in had a split in one of the pieces of trim, so I got that glued.

Some months ago the toilet seat in the cottage broke.  I got as far as buying a new one and it's just been sitting there, so I put it on.  

Early last year, working in the cottage, I made the mistake of using the hairdryer to hurry up a project while I had the space heater running on the same circuit.  I not only popped the circuit breaker but burned it out.  At first I thought I had just burned out the wall socket and I replaced that, but that didn't work.  Rik and his friend Steve were nice enough to come look at it, find that the circuit breaker was dead, and switched it out with one to a plug I didn't use often.  A short time later Rik picked me up a new circuit breaker.  That was last May.  Today I replaced it.  It's a basic and simple thing to do, but I will admit that electricity scares me.  When Rik and Steve were messing with the circuit breakers - they just did it.  Not me - I came to the house and cut the power to the cottage off completely, then put on a headlamp and put in the new breaker.  Then I had to come back to the house to turn the power back on, then down the the cottage, pray for a moment, and flip on the circuit breaker.  Nothing sparked, or exploded, and the outlet works now.

Those two projects, that I've been "getting around to them" for months, took maybe a half-hour each.

I even worked on a new skirt.  Last year, for the Highland Games when I demonstrated all day, I made an 18th century pleated linen skirt.  The skirt got soaking wet in the rain, and then had an encounter with a leaky pen, and pretty much got ruined.  I liked that skirt (I wear skirts a lot in the summer - they're cooler than pants).  So I've started a new one.  Ebaida wants to co-watch the musical version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame (an excellent production) but I need something to fiddle with my hands when I watch stuff, so I got the skirt to the point where I can do some handwork on it.

All in all, a gratifying day.

January 5, Remembrances and Ramblings

 I've continued to get outside work done.  After doing the butterfly garden fence (a rather large job) and then working at the museum, I was going to take last Friday off.  Maybe just sit around in my jammies all day, drink tea, and read Frankenstein.  But I noticed that there were a lot of leaves on the front deck - and it was forecast to rain on Saturday.  Wet leaves are a pain to sweep.  So I thought I would take a few minutes to sweep the deck.

But then I tried to remember the last time I had swept the roof - it probably had a foot or two of leaves on it.  So I got dressed, dragged over the ladder, got the roof swept, then all those leaves that I had to dump from the roof to the deck swept and carried off.  Then as long as I had the ladder there I might as well clean the gutters.

While I was up there I snapped a picture.  Sometimes people wonder at me, living out here.  But this is my "back yard."  I don't think I could tolerate living in a neighborhood where I would be in amongst dozens of houses.

At least all that work let me finish my first Conqueror virtual walking challenge - the 98 mile tour of Oaxaca.  I found that I really enjoyed it.  It seemed silly to pay to keep track of my walking - but there was a definite satisfaction to doing a daily log in, and seeing where I was on the map, and hitting milestones.

  So I've started the next one, joining a friend in England who is doing the Fellowship of the Ring walk from the Shire to Mordor.  The whole walk is some 600 miles, but fortunately broken up into sections.  I've started the walk from the Shire to Bree (145 miles).

Today was more yard work (it's scheduled to rain for the next week).  It was a beautiful day, cool, with brilliant blue skies.  I actually like this sort of work - building a fire, dragging up the deadfall, seeing the yard start to look a little better.  Of course, the most enjoyable part is when it's time to take a break, read a book, and let the fire burn down a bit.  There's just something so peaceful sitting by a fire in the woods.  Of course, I can't help but remember the dozens (hundreds?) of times that I sat there with Bob.  Seeing him laugh at the minuscule but fierce baby praying mantis on his arm.  Or that day when a coyote trotted by, about 20 feet away but totally ignoring us, disappearing into the trees.  At some point we would often roast some hot dogs, or even make s'mores.  I miss all of that, but I still enjoy just sitting by a fire.

Except that from time to time, I wept.  I try not to dwell on the past, but this is January 5.  On this day in 2020, it was just as beautiful and clear as today.  At one point, I brush out his "magnificent silver mane" and had him stand in the sun.

 Later on, I braided it - and then cut it off.  He was going to Shands the next day, and would be spending a great deal of time in bed.  Also - we knew it was going to fall out, and thought it might be easier to take a bit at a time.  My heart still aches to think of it.

January 5, 2020.  Four years ago now.  The last full day that he spent at home.  We were trying to get everything set up to leave for three months.  Notes for the housesitters.  Packing.  Trying to think of everything except why we were going.  Cutting his hair.

Sometimes my mind still runs around like a rat in a maze with no exit.  I try to come up with different scenarios. Did we do the right thing by trying to save him?  After our consultation at Shands, when we said we would try the bone marrow transplant, one of the doctors said she was glad that we did.  She couldn't say it beforehand, so as not to pressure us, but at the rate the leukemia was progressing, he would have maybe a year.

And sometimes I wish we had taken than year, rather than put him through two rounds of the brutal chemotherapy and the two transplants, and the killing of the kidneys.  We could have had a year instead of those too-few months.  I could have had him awhile longer.  We could have stayed in Tallahassee, at home.

Then I give myself a reality check.  This would have been hanging over our heads.  Our time would have been spent at the oncology clinic.  He would have gotten sicker and weaker, needing more and more transfusions.  His immune system would have failed.  It would be a longer, slower death.

Four years later, it's still hard to accept.  This was his last day home.  He thought that he would be coming back, but he never did.  He died.  Every alternative that I ever come up with has the same outcome.  I can never get it right.