Time to Cocoon

 Wrote a long FaceBook post (I rarely get personal on FB but today was the day).  It's easier to copy it than to retype it.

I don't often wear my heart on my sleeve on FB, or write really long posts. But today is the day.

This post goes out to Los Tenorio, Beth Roach, Maria Steurer, and all those on the bereavement path.

My year is winding down to its end. In my own personal calendar, the end of the year is March 30, the day I lost Bob.

On March 28, 2020, he raised himself up in bed and yelled "It's over. Let it be over."

We stopped his treatments. On the 29th we said goodbye, and they started the morphine drip that would finally end his pain, and keep him unconscious.

On the morning of March 30, we died. Because when he stopped breathing, after 48 years of being "we" I was suddenly just "I."

This year it's particularly difficult, because it's hard for me to comprehend that it's now been five years. For some reason, the number 5 seems significant.

5 minutes. I vaguely remember being pulled off of him and into the bathroom, where they splashed water on my face and firmly told me to stop screaming.

5 hours. Jeff Horton and Rob Barrett were infinitely kind and came to bring me home. After three months away, I was shocked to remember the beauty of my land and home, and the joy of seeing my cats.

5 days. After three months of living in the goldfish bowl of Bob's hospital room, with nurses in and out 24/7, and always buzzers and beepers and alarms going off, I am alone in the enveloping silence. Here, I can lie on the floor and scream, with no one to stop me.

5 weeks. Learning to navigate this strange new Covid world; Bob died, and everything changed. So much closed. Everyone staying 6 feet away. Furtively going to the grocery store, masked, self conscious about buying food for one.

5 months. Outwardly, I'm functioning. Inward - I'm still in a fog. I somehow feel that if I just hang in there, and go through the motions, things will be all right. But if the phone rings, I think for a moment that it might be him. Cooking dinner, I'll look out the window and wonder what's keeping him. Sometimes I look around, forgetting that he won't be there. I'll want to tell him something, but then remember that I can't.

And now somehow it's been 5 years. There hasn't been a day that I haven't missed him, or a night that I haven't reached a hand over to his side of the bed. One thing that I used to say to him quite often, laughing, was "Please take care of yourself; life wouldn't be nearly as much fun without you." Nailed that.

The best analogy I've found for grief is that it's like a heavy backpack. At first, the weight of it takes you to your knees. Eventually you're strong enough to carry it - but it's always there. Add to that "pulling your big girl panties up" and "lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps" and you get a very silly visual image, but that's me.

It's exhausting, and I'm tired. My gift to myself each year is to take these last two days off. I cocoon; I don't go anywhere, see anyone, and try not to talk to anyone. I love on the cats, wander in the woods, and be OK with not being OK. Rest. Breathe.

Come the 31st, I'll shoulder the backpack, pull up the big girl pants, grab those bootstraps, and march into year 6.

As always, my love,

I love you

I miss you

And, above all

Thank you

Plan C Day, Parasol, Treetops, and Circus

 I will always think of March 23 as "Plan C" day.  That was the day in 2020 when Bob's doctor came in to talk with him; at that point it was almost 2 weeks past the date that we should have seen some results from his stem cell transplant.  She said they would give it another week and then do another bone marrow biopsy.  I asked her what the plan was if this transplant had failed.  She kept her face carefully blank and said "We'll see what the biopsy shows."  After she left, I turned to Bob and said "I don't think there's Plan C."  That was the day that we started to accept that he was going to die.

The good thing about this blog is that it's a conversation with myself.  I look back at previous Marches - and, sure enough, I fall apart.  It's just that it's a bit harder this time, being 5 years.  I find myself being stressed (for no reason - my life is fine right now) and reminding myself to breath.  Still having those moments of PTSD - I walked outside and for a moment found myself looking for the little blue heron that lived in a pond outside the ward.  This morning when I signed onto the laptop, I was confused for a moment because it said today was the 23rd - which it couldn't be, because I was pretty sure it was Sunday and the 23rd was Monday.  But that was in 2020.  Just things like that.  I'm slowly grinding to a halt; like previous years, I will give myself two days on the 29th and 30th to just give up.

The best analogy for grief that I have seen so far is that it's like a heavy backpack.  At first it brings you to your knees.  It's not that it gets lighter over time; you just get strong enough to carry it.  But for two days, I let myself put it down, sit beside it, and rest.  

But not yet.  I have to keep going until the 29th.  And I have been.  About a year ago I talked about remaking the padded swing out front.  At the same time I was going to replace the rotted parasol over another lounge.  I finally got around to ordering the fabric and getting that done.  As I was fitting it onto the frame, one of the spokes broke.  I don't feel like dealing with it - so I positioned it to sit on the frame of the lounge.  At some point I'll figure out how to repair it.

Yet another place to settle down with a book, or to take a nap.  Or both.

I had some company on Friday.  Apparently Zeke has been talking up how much he likes my museum (and, as Rob reports to me, he says stuff like "And my Aunt Ann is old but she's really cool.")  He has a best friend, Rylin.  Friday Rylin's mother Leigh brought the two boys over and, of course, we had to do the Tree to Tree ropes course.  There I was, with two boys aged 10 and 11, and Rylin's mother who is about half my age and very athletic.  I impressed myself by being more-or-less able to keep up with the.  I gave them all a behind-the-scenes tour, including hand feeding the beaver, and even more excitingly, hand feeding one of the bears (through the fence in the case of the bear).  I think everyone had a good time.  And, as I told them, it was a treat for me.  I rarely just wander around and look at everything.

Although I was pretty sore yesterday (the day after) I wanted to tackle the front deck to get it power washed and sealed before the summer rains.  This has been on the "things to do" list for almost three weeks.  But we had those two bad storms come through - and then it was Pollen Season, when the air is filled with a fine green dust like smoke and everything gets coated.  I had to wait a couple of weeks for the worst of that to abate.  But come Saturday afternoon I had recovered enough from Friday's exertions to do the power washing.

My plan for today was to paint on the water seal.  But I read the directions on the can - and it said to wait for at least 24 hours after washing a deck to apply it.  I had finished about 6 p.m. the night before - so it's a no-go.  Besides, it says to allow 72 hours for a full cure - and it's forecast to rain tomorrow.

I came in, looked at my list of other chores that need doing (from doing my taxes to making granola to giving RiverSong a bath) and then said screw it, got dressed, and drove into town to the circus.

I love circuses, but this one, the Royal Hanneford, is my favorite.  It's a traditional, old-fashioned family circus - one that's been owned by the same family for 9 generations.  There were performers from the 7th, 8th, and 9th generation there (admittedly, one member of the 9th looked to be between 2 and 3 years old but he was a cute little clown).  There were performing dogs, and a guy juggling while standing on the back of a trotting horse, and motorcycles in a cage, and trapeze artists.  Just simple fun in an overly complicated world.

I keep pressing on.  Hopefully Tuesday I can get the water seal on the deck.  Wednesday and Thursday I work.  Jeff is coming to town this week so I hope to meet up with him.  Thursday night I have the library book club.  

After that, I rest.

Distractions

 Wow.  Eight days.  I have really been zoning out.

I had a dream about Bob last night.  I was in a room, something like a small coffee shop, chatting with two other people (a man and a woman that I don't know).  I was opening a piece of mail - a card - that was addressed to Bob.  He walked in (wearing his leather bomber jacket).  I apologized for opening his mail.  "I'm so sorry - I didn't know you were coming back."  Later, I was sitting at the table, talking to the woman while Bob was talking to the man.  I saw that he was lying down while he was talking. I sat on the floor beside him and said "Please tell me you're going to stay.  Please don't go."

Doesn't take much analysis to understand that one.

I never asked him to stay.  Our niece Amanda has said that one of the saddest things she sees as a nurse is when someone is dying, with friends/family crying and begging them not to go.  Adding stress and guilt to their last moments.  I didn't do that.  I told him that I loved him, and that I would miss him, but I let him go on his own terms.  But it still hurts.

OK - got that off of my chest. I'm getting through all this by keeping busy, finding distractions.   The last 8 days - where did they go?   Well, for one, the damned time change.  I'm always a zombie for a few days, with spring forward being the worst.  My new microwave came in (so I can go back to boiling my tea water like a heathen).  Last post I mentioned the two days of heavy rain.  A few days later I went down to the stream and it was obvious that it had come out of its banks, and that all the little ponds had become one big bog.  It's all receded now, but I had to clean a bit of debris off the path.

My sleep schedule is messed up.  First, the time change.  Then Thursday night was the lunar eclipse, totality at 2:30 a.m.  I like eclipses - and a total lunar eclipse turns it orange and it looks like a big rock somehow hanging in the sky.  I don't like them enough to get up at 2:30 a.m. - or so I thought.  I kept waking up about every 45 minutes.  Finally, the time came so I made a cup of chamomile tea and wandered outside.

It was not impressive.  I remembered that the super moon - when the moon was closest to the earth - was when I was in Roswell last November.  So the moon is approaching apogee, and it was high up, so just a rather small unimpressive orange rock.  And I finally got to sleep around 3:30.  Normally - what the heck - I'm retired so could just sleep in.  Except that in the last minutes I got from the weaver's guild (I rarely go to meetings but I get the minutes) there was a new member who is a spinner and was asking about spinning wheels. I dropped him a note to say hi, and we ended up getting together to spin and chat - on Friday morning, of course.

There was an unwanted distraction showing up Saturday night.  The weather in the middle of the country, extending down south, has been horrendous.  Some of that was extending our way - heavy storms predicted overnight, possibility of tornadoes.  After the massive destruction caused by tornadoes last year, everyone was understandably nervous.  I moved the car and the outdoor furniture into the barn and filled up a few jugs of flushing water - basic storm prep.  It's hard to go to bed and sleep when you don't know if/what is going to be destroyed by the morning.  Again - I kept waking up to check the weather and look at the radar.  Fortunately it brushed by our area, and all we got were some heavy thunderstorms around 5:00 a.m.

And, again, it would have been fine, except the the Silent Book Club meeting was at 10 this morning (so I had to leave the house around 9:15).  It seems silly to drive all that way just to sit and read quietly, but there's a bizarre charm to it.  This afternoon I was able to get some sewing done to replace the parasol cover on my outdoor lounge (the fabric came in last week).  I got the main part done; the rest is fiddly work and I was just too punchy to deal with it.

So that was the week that was.  I didn't take a nap today because I want to get back on some sort of normal sleep schedule, but it's time to crash.

Fluttering

 I've been sort of ditzing around the past couple of days.  Some of it is the sugar high - I indulged in buying myself a king cake when I went shopping on Wednesday, and here it is Saturday and I've almost finished it.  Sugar eating is high; alcohol consumption hasn't happened for several days.  Weird.

I've been feeling a little jittery and unfocused.  But it's March - on the 4th Bob finished his chemo and go the stem cells; by today - the 8th - I could tell that his body couldn't handle it.

It doesn't help that it's Ramadan so I don't have Ebaida to chit chat with - the all day fasting tends to make her feel pretty sick.

Anyway, RiverSong's skin has been acting up recently so I'm back to having to give her baths, and she got one yesterday.  Poor girl - we're back in a spring cold snap, I don't keep the house very warm, and the hair dryer scares her.  I didn't want her to get chilled, so after I got her as dry as I could I stuck her in a carrier with a warm towel (put it in the dryer first) and heating pad.  She's forgiven me - but I have to do it again tomorrow, or maybe Monday.

Now that the roof is done, I had to email the paperwork to State Farm.  That's been waiting a week.  Downloading the information from the roofer's emails was easy, but I also had a set of physical forms that I had to fill out and then scan.  So, now that I was finally going to do it, I couldn't get the laptop to talk to the scanner.  I fought that for awhile and finally got it done, but by then I was so discombobulated that I said the heck with everything else and decided to have some coffee (and king cake) and read.  Except that when I put my water in the microwave, it made a loud sound (the microwave, not the water), started vibrating, and gave off the smell of electrical death.   Time to get a new microwave

Today got off to an early start, which didn't do me any good.  I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep.  Normally this is all right - I just give up, maybe go get a glass of milk, and read for a half hour or so and then I ca  n usually fall asleep again.  But that's when I wake up at 3:00 or so.  This morning it was 5:30.  I knew that if I fell asleep again after 6:00 that I would probably sleep until 9 or 10 and then be completely groggy for the rest of the day, so at 6:00 I gave up and got up. (It didn't help that it was pouring down rain)  Did I get anything useful done with all my extra morning?  Hell, no.  Mostly doom-scrolled and played computer games.  I finally got my arse off the couch, took care of a couple of things, and then decided that I had some strawberries that needed eating and crepes would be good for lunch.  I got the batter made and the strawberries sliced - and that's when the power went out.

I gave it 20 minutes, and then gave up and had a sandwich instead. (the power eventually came back on).  Then I discovered that my Google assistant had a blank screen.  Apparently the power coming back on killed it.  I tried doing a factory reset (during the course of which I found that my home app was out of date and had to download and install a new one) but no go - it's dead.

Problem is, I like it.  I like asking for music.  And, slightly pathetic though it seems, I like having something that responds to my voice (the cats ignore me).  I say good morning, it says good morning back and tells me the weather forecast and anything on my calendar for that day.  I ask for music, and it says "Sure."  I come home, yell "Google, I'm home" and it says "welcome back" and puts on music for me.

Damn - so now I need a new microwave *and* a new Google Portal.  Except - - I talked to it, and it talked back, so it works; it's only the screen that's dead and I can live without that (I don't watch videos in the kitchen.)

Between the thwarted lunch plans and then having to spend time troubleshooting the portal I was getting frustrated, so I took a walk to check the mail.  A comb that I had ordered came in.  I've been wanting a wide-toothed comb, but not a plastic one, so I had ordered a wooden one (creates less static, and nicer aesthetic).  I opened it up - and yes, it was a wooden comb, but with a thick plastic finish on it.  Damn.

While I was getting my mail, I was feeling my usual annoyance at the trash littering the highway; I have to drive past it every day when I enter my driveway.  At least this was one problem that didn't involve appliances or downloads, so I got my trash tongs and a bag and cleaned it up.  Then I wandered around the yard and picked up downed branches from the morning's storm.

That calmed me down enough to look at the comb again.  I could have just returned it and gotten a refund, but small items aren't worth Amazon's time to inspect and put back in inventory; they just toss little things like that, which isn't acceptable to me.  Instead, I went down to the cottage, set up my little belt sander, and started sanding off the offending plastic coating.  I was able to just finish before the belt broke and flew off.  Then I came back to the house to do hand-sanding with finer paper, and finally buffed it with Howard's Feed and Wax and now I have the comb that I wanted.

Wow.  That is a lot of words.  In short - major rainstorm last night/this morning, with another forecast for tonight/tomorrow morning.  Time change is tonight (I hate time changes).

My microwave died.  I had to spend way too much time fussing with my computer/scanner.  I gave a cat a bath (actually she's pretty good about it, just pathetic).  A  power outage just in time to make me change lunch plans.  My Google Portal died (and I had to update an app to try to fix it).  A comb I ordered was not what I wanted and I had to fix it.  The belt on my sander broke.

Oh - and the thing that was funny only in retrospect.  Yesterday morning I had a sudden strong urge in the bowel department just as I had an equally strong urge to sneeze.  So I made a mad dash for the bathroom, tugging on the drawstring of my pajamas on the way - only to have it tie into a tight knot.  So I'm standing there in the bathroom, butt cheeks clenched, stifling a sneeze, frantically picking at a knot.  (I did get the knot untied in time).

Nothing major at all.  Just two days of a lot of little stumbling blocks eating up way too much of my time.

Walking, Silent Books, Frankenstein, Bridge

 Another week and change to catch up.  Somehow time is just sort of slipping past me.

I finished my 828 mile virtual walk around Iceland (it took 10.5 months). 

 I was going to take a week or so off from logging in my steps every night.  But the next day was a work day and I got a lot of steps in and it seemed a shame to "waste" them.  So I started the 1,084 mile virtual trek from one end of England to another - that should take around a year.

I was finally able to go to a meeting of the Silent Book Club.  It was charming in  rather surrealistic way.  You sign in, get a name tag, get coffee if desired, then grab a a seat at a table of people you may or may not know (I didn't).  It's easy to chat for a few minutes because there's the opening line of "what are you reading."  Then when time was called, everyone started reading and there was dead silence for the next hour.  I didn't even hear a cell phone go off.  Then time is called again, and most people left after chatting for a few more minutes.  It was the introvert's ideal of a social situation.  I look forward to going again (it's once a month).

A year or so ago I went to a play at the FSU theatre.  I thoroughly enjoyed it; the acting (singing and dancing too) was excellent and the sets and production so good (and the prices not much higher than going to a movie.)  At the time I said that I should do this more often.  Well, it's been a year.  But I finally got over my intertia when they put on the musical version of Young Frankenstein.  And, again, I say that I should go to them more often.  We'll see.

My final project this week has been doing more work on the bridge.  One of Bob's last reminders to me (when he was getting muzzy headed but trying to give me words of wisdom) was "remember to keep the bridge shoveled off."  Which was a good thing; I don't think I would have thought of that myself (which sometimes makes me wonder what else I have let slide without knowing it).  It makes sense - it's wood, and if anything is rotting or weakening you don't want it hidden under a layer of dirt.

I've been pretty good about it - at least keeping the part that goes over the deep part of the ditch cleared.  But I had not really noticed that the upper 5-6 feet had gradually gotten covered and overgrown.  The drop is not as bad there - only  few feet, but that would still be enough to really tear up the car.  I spread it out over a few days because the dirt was compacted, and anywhere around here that you have a few inches of soil you're going to have pine roots running through it that have to be pulled out of the way and cut before you can shovel.  I did a big push yesterday and got it finished.

I was wondering why I was feeling so knackered and sore.  But then I did the math.  I cleared about 5 feet - and the bridge is 10 feet wide.  The dirt was anywhere from 4 to 8 inches thick - so average 6 inches.  That makes 25 cubic feet of dirt shoveled.  I asked Mr. Google how much a cubic foot of dirt weighs.  It's a shocking 80+ pounds.  Sand is about 100 pounds, and this was sandy soil.  Even at 80 pounds, that's a total of a solid ton of dirt that I shoveled.

Ebaida sometimes said that it's good that I go to the museum a couple of times a week, because then I can get a rest from working here.

But I need to stay busy.  It's March.  I remember Bob being readmitted to the ward, walking the walk of defeat, standing at the entry to the room, tears in his eyes, saying "Annie - I don't think I can do this."  Another round of chemo when he was still so sick from the first.  Today, March 4, he got the stem cells.  The first time they used the actual marrow, which was supposed to be gentler on the body.  This time is was the isolated stem cells.  His body couldn't handle it.  I know what's coming, and I can't stop it.  So I just keep working.