Farewell, trusty Honda Civic

Today's the day (finally!) that the tow truck is coming to haul away my Honda Civic. The paperwork has been completed, the title has been transferred and the car is being donated to my local public radio station. I bought a Prius C in April and the Civic's been on the street waiting for someone to do something with it.

I said goodbye this morning. It seemed fitting, as it provided me with 18 years of reliable service. For all the times I thought something could go wrong, or smelled someone else's burning engine smell and it turned out everything was fine, it was an all around great car.

She needs a little sprucing up and for her engine to run for a while to get the cobwebs out, but will provide hopefully a few more years of reliable service for someone who needs basic transportation.

The Civic was the first new car I ever bought, and I got it when we lived in Toledo, in 1995. The tail lights, reverse lights and the little light that illuminates the license plate never needed replacing. They never went out. I replaced one headlight once. The blinkers have always worked. The doors close solidly. The rear defroster has always worked. The after-market cruise control has always worked.

Truly, they don't make inexpensive compact cars like that anymore. My mechanic said once that someone who knows what they're doing could keep a car like that going for a long time. That's good to hear and I hope someone does.

Godspeed, little Civic.

Auto Emeritus

Well, after 18 years of loyal service, I have retired my 1995 Civic and purchased a new car. Meet C:

I don't have the heart to get rid of the Civic yet, and it is relegated to the dog's car at the moment. It's not worth anything, but might make a good beater car for Mr W. That phase is only four years away. We'll see. There's plenty of parking on the street outside my house, and it is cheap to keep the Civic. I'm designating the Civic "auto emeritus", like a retired college professor who still hangs around. 

C is a Prius C. The baby Prius. It's subcompact, so about the size of a Honda Fit, which was my other choice, except the Fit just didn't deliver in the gas mileage department. I mean, a small car should get 35-40 miles per gallon, in my opinion, and the fit gets a yawning 30 mpg combined. 

They had two of the trim line (there's four levels) I wanted. I chose this blue color, "Summer Rain Metallic". Cars have come a long way in 18 years in terms of technology. My Civic has airbags, and the SRS light on the dashboard always comes on when I start the car, but after 18 years, who knows if they work or now. C has a bunch of airbags, and that makes me feel safer. 

Here's part of the sticker:

I like that the fuel savings over five years really eats into the price difference between a hybrid and a gasoline engine only car (which was about $3K for what I was looking at). On the down side, it is a little smaller than my Civic. It is a small car. But it has enough room for our stuff if I want to take Mr W and the dog on a road trip. 

I also like how there's all these readouts and calculations that the car's computer does, and one can scroll through the different screens to see information about gas mileage in real time. It also provides feedback as one drives, which I think really does train the driver to get the best gas mileage possible. The key is to drive like a person who is not in any kind of hurry. Avoiding punching the accelerator and then leaving plenty of time to stop (which charges the battery) look to be the way to go. 

We're getting snow right now. Fingers crossed that I don't get in an accident! 

A bit of a slog

In preparation for these alleged home renovations that may be coming, I've been going through the boxes in my basement. I took a lot of boxes when my dad moved out of the house where I grew up. I also have several boxes of pictures, letters and mementos, and have saved a bunch of Mr W's stuff.

It has added up to a lot of boxes.

Since I haven't gone through the stuff since my divorce, I have just now thrown away (or given away, or recycled, as appropriate) things I didn't want anymore that pertained to shared memories from when I was married. This has been weird. I saved pictures of me and Mr W's dad, and put them in the box of his mementos, but I don't want them. I mean, he should be able to see his parents' wedding picture, right? At the same time, it feels like throwing away a part of 15 years of my life. A bit of conundrum, but it felt like the right thing to do with all the things I jettisoned. I still had all the response cards and some invitations from my wedding. And all of the greeting card-type cards we received. I recycled all that stuff.

One thing I'm particularly grateful for is that when I was away at college, I exchanged letters with people. My sister, and my mom too. I'm so grateful to have these kind of mundane documentations of our lives. I have lots of letters from friends too, and kept just about all of them. It makes me want to try to get back to writing letters. It's such a deliberate thing, writing letters. I found a picture of my younger brother and our mom at his high school graduation, and will send it to him and write a little letter to accompany it.

I also found a copy of the last thing my mom wrote, when she was very sick and knew she wasn't going to make it. It was divided into practical things, saying to return things to stores that she had purchased (that's how fast it happened - six weeks. We were blindsided), the songs she wanted at her funeral, her request not to have any heroic measures to prolong her life, and then a couple of lines saying how sorry she was that things ended up like they did and that she loved us all very much.

I felt like someone punched me. I howled in my empty house. But it doesn't change anything. It's in the past and it is done. All I can do is honor her memory (my sister's, too) and live a well-lived life. I was still very sad for a while.

It was a lot of loss to feel in one afternoon. Although I've been working on the boxes for a while, there were a couple today that just got to me. But I keep telling myself there are a finite number of boxes, and once I've gone through them, I can put them away and be done with it. But the process of going through the boxes and organizing the basement, as well as proceeding with the remodeling, they mean something. There's a process underfoot and it's supposed to happen. I don't know if it's finally an acknowledgement that I am really truly on my own (but taking care of myself) or what, but suspect it will become clearer in hindsight.

Thanks for reading this ramble.

Roots and wings

Well, it doesn't look like Mr W's computer is going to be easily fixable. I took it to Best Buy and they said these kinds of repairs start at about $150 and then there's no guarantee that the motherboard and rest of it still work. $150 is halfway to a new computer, so I'm going to budget money to buy a new one, and Mr W is going to kick in a third.

Ugh.

Oh, you were asking about the warranty. I did buy a warranty, one with a fancy-sounding name like Square Trade Warranty, I think. That lulled me into thinking (it really did, my mistake on this) that it was a full coverage warranty for things like accidents, which I had with my first computer. The juice box warranty. I'll be sure to get the juice box warranty for the next one, and Mr W won't be having beverages near the computer any more. It was an accident, so we'll press on.

We've had a long-standing tradition of me reading stories to Mr W as part of our bedtime routine. It's been one of my favorite mom duties. Yesterday, Mr W asked, "If we don't do stories, can I go to bed a little later?" (Sniff) "Um, sure. You don't want to do stories anymore?" I knew this was coming, and he sees it as part of growing up. "No, not anymore. I'm eleven, you know." Yes, I know. So just like that we've left a vestige of childhood behind. I still tuck him in, though. I think he's letting me do that to make me feel better about the stories thing. He said, "You're still my favorite person ever, Mom." "Back atcha" I said. As the saying goes, as parents we give them roots and wings, right?

18 years

Hard to believe, but my mom's been gone for 18 years now. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which had spread to her lungs. She was a smoker, and was never able to kick it. It was pretty quick, six weeks from diagnosis until she died. I regret that we never really discussed the idea of her dying with her. We were so completely overwhelmed by the idea of her being sick that I think we never considered that she'd die until it was just about over.

I'd like to think I did a little better with my sister, at least trying to ask what she wanted to do, and to listen to her vent her outrage and sadness that this had happened to her. You can search the label "Sister Kris" to read my posts about her. My sisters in law referred to her as "Sister" because my dad's partner is also a Chris(tine).

I was thinking a couple of days ago, as I felt this day getting closer, that I do OK with these losses if I take them out and examine them occasionally, but continue to look forward. I'm not as afraid of getting taken early as I once was. Or of dying alone, without a partner to support me emotionally. I'm not sure if it's simply the time having passed, or that I feel like I'm eating pretty well, exercising, getting health screenings and trying to watch my stress, and so am doing really all I can, prevention wise. It sounds morose, but after I went out for a drink the other day with the person I dated briefly and now is just a friend I thought, "He'd take me to chemo if I needed it." I'm not sure where that came from, I have no diagnosis to share, but it did prompt a bout of list-making in my head of people I know (some whom I've dated, and friends) of people who would pitch in in this manner if need be. And I was comforted. Not planning on needing the help any time soon, but it felt good to have the knowledge.

ANY-way, sorry for the somber tone of this post, but I wanted to share another thing. Oh, wait. Before I do that, I haven't mentioned how fabulous my mom was. She was a nurse, had three kids one year apart (plus one more, six years later) and went back to work after her kids were in school. She juggled it all, and had a clean house, cooked dinner every night. She was my friend as well, and a solid supporter of me getting a good education so I could support myself. After she graduated from nursing school in the late 1950's, she and her friend took an epic road trip out West, and worked at various hospitals as they saw this part of the country. Two single gals seeing the world. Love that.

OK here's the last bit. Last night I went to a Meet Up meet up called "Haunted Fort Collins". Two women do walking tours around downtown and one does the history, and the other can see spirits of local ghosts. Now, I am a solidly evidence-based gal. I figured she'd be all bluster and drama, but I bought it. She's quiet, sincere, humble, and absolutely confident in her abilities, which she says she got after an accident made her die briefly before being resuscitated. We made 4-5 stops around downtown, and the history woman would tell us about the site, and then the spirit woman would tell us who was there. She said she calls them in. At one point, the history woman was talking, and I glanced over at the spirit woman, who was absolutely looking into what I saw as empty space as though she saw something.

I felt nothing. She said this is normal. I was a little wary of going back to my old house all by myself, but I feel nothing of that sort here as well (phew!). See how I sort of want to believe? So much so that I took one of the spirit woman's cards, and might have her do a reading for me. She does kind of general readings of past and future stuff. While I stood there listening to her describe her services to someone else, she told this person she can "see" into the body as well. And proceeded to point to this woman's hip, saying she had something funky going on with a ligament there.

Since this happened close to a time when I'm thinking about my mom and my sister, I thought, wouldn't it be nice to hear that they're doing fine? I don't know. If they aren't, and it takes a lot of money on my part to get them there, it would start to feel like a scam, you know? It was really interesting to me to be in the presence of someone who felt as though they could tap into something I had no access to. As I said, I'm all about the evidence. However, I'm also not so arrogant to think there is stuff that science can't explain at this point in time. So, color me intrigued.

Ma? I might be in touch.

No harm, no foul

By mutual agreement, B and I decided to end our relationship today. I saw it coming, but I'm still a little melancholy tonight. We dated for about five months. In the end neither of us felt like it was a good fit. I tell you, that chemistry thing, that spark, the feeling that you and another person "fit", are still a bit of a mystery to me. It's hard when both parties are nice and good people, because you think it SHOULD work, but I guess it makes it easier, too, because you can part on good terms, which we did. No harm, no foul.

As I said, I saw this coming, and I was at the library yesterday, and happened upon a book called, "Meeting Your Half-Orange" by Amy Spencer. The subtitle is, "An utterly upbeat guide to using dating optimism to find your perfect match." The book is about getting into the mindset that: A) a person who is a really good fit for you is out there, and B) you can, by remembering this, and acknowledging what you're looking for, and what you have to offer, attract that person to you. The book stays largely away from making the process seem too mystical; she gives a psychological basis for her ideas instead, which I like. I also like how she stresses that we shouldn't settle. That we should do some soul searching as to what it is that we really want in a relationship, and ask for it.

And I find myself, strangely, optimistic. Something the book mentions is to tell the universe that you are looking for your half-orange (a translated Spanish expression that refers to the idea that if you find your half-orange, you and he make up something together that is complete, although she stresses that we are really looking for someone complementary, not someone who would "complete" us).

So I'm telling you and the universe, now, at this time. I'm in a good place in my life, and I'm looking for a committed relationship with a guy who is a really good fit for me and in it for the long haul.

I'm not soured on internet dating, either, btw. I still think it's a good way to see a bunch of people that meet your basic criteria. However, I'm not in a hurry to jump back into that pond. I'm going to just be for a while. I'm certain I'll find him. It might take a while, but he's out there.

(Please don't) cue that Elton John song

It's that circle of life thing going again. A couple of events that haven't directly affected me, but in reading up on Facebook the last couple of days, there's been the joyous occasion of a birth, and the sad occurrence of a death.

A friend of my family, who herself was the last of seven and born when her dear mom was 42, has had her first child. I had to look just now - she's 41. In my mind she stays a teenager. Little Corrine is absolutely gorgeous. OK, most babies are, but she's very cute.

And another person I know through my friend D is grieving the death of her dad. It looks like they knew it was coming, but that doesn't make the loss any easier to process. Grief is a wacky thing. You go on automatic pilot for the first couple of weeks. It's busy because there are arrangements to make, lots of people to interact with, people bring food - it's its own whirlwind routine for a bit. Then everyone goes home. Then, it creeps up on you and you weep in the produce section of the grocery store for a little bit, and then are OK.

When my sister died, I was practically begging death to come, she was suffering so much. We were all there when she died, and after she passed, I stayed for the wake, but fled home before the funeral. Looking back, I made the excuse that I had been traveling for a couple of weeks (which I had) and needed to get back home. I just had to leave, and still feel guilty about that.

So I guess the point is that it is important to bear witness. To take the long view and acknowledge that these major changes occur to all of us. I'm of the opinion that these events have a similar effect on us. Meaning, we all share some common ground in how we feel when someone dies. Or when there is a wanted child welcomed into the world.

Life IS short. There's a song by John Hiatt called Slow Turning (the link is to a live performance on the Letterman show). There's a line that goes

"Time is short and here's the damn thing about it,
you're gonna die, gonna die for sure.
You can learn to live with love or without it, but there ain't no cure."

I think paying a little attention to the passings of the people around us helps to ground our own experience. And before I wax too weird and philosophical, I will end this post.

A proper burial

One of the things that I think is cool about my SIL, besides the great way she and my brother exist in their relationship (lots of back and forth, but in an atmosphere of cooperation) is that she reads cards. As in Tarot cards.

Now, I'm a sciencey person through and through, but there is something about the cards that, I believe, taps into a person's subconscious and reminds them (us) of things that either are going on, or that we need to think about. There are lots of different styles of decks, although they all have the same cards. She's had the same deck for a long time, and I like how she's familiar with the symbolism (there is a lot) on each card.

I asked her to do a reading when I was there this past weekend. One can do a general reading, or ask a specific question, and I usually opt for the general reading because it covers everything. I won't bore you with what each card was and what it meant, but the first two cards that are laid down represent where you are now. The first is what's immediately going on, and the second is what "crosses" it - what confounds, or enhances, or affects it.

My first card represented loss, and the second was the Illusion card. In short this meant something like, "if you think you've dealt with a recent loss adequately, you're fooling yourself". This got me thinking about the end of the long distance relationship I was in, and by the time I was driving home from the airport, I had mulled and thought, and come to the conclusion that I needed to send one more note to this person and put the relationship to rest for good. I hadn't realized it until that point, but it felt like the relationship ended without any tip of the hat to the things that were good about it.

So I wrote the note, he was his usual gracious self, and I feel like the relationship has had a proper burial. This is good, because I've been hanging out with someone as friends that I think wants to get a little more serious, and I now feel like I'm more ready to go that way. Yes, this is the same person I've been musing about lately here in blog posts.

It's wacky to me how this psychology stuff works sometimes. It seems to simple and straightforward that the letter needed to be written, but it took a long time for me to figure out I needed to write it. I feel absolved.

Sister Kris

I'm a little early on this one, but the fact that my sister Kris's birthday is coming (January 16th) just hit me with a little wave of despair. This happened last year as well, but I didn't see it coming, and it threw me into a funk. It's hard to head grief off at the pass, but maybe writing about it will help a bit.

Kristine K. Sawyer would have been 47 on the 16th. She died about a month after her 45th birthday, and I'll probably haul all this emotional stuff out one more time here on February 20th (yippee). She was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer in November of 2006. What they found were the multiple tumors that had spread to her liver. As so very many people know how this sort of thing goes, she responded well initially to chemo, had enough time to get her things in order, and then died a difficult death.

Throughout, she insisted on being the mother and wife she was used to being. At the time she was diagnosed, she was working full time and going to school full time. She wanted to get her BSN (Bachelor's in Nursing), and had signed on to work these dreadfully long shifts to maximize her time at work, while being able to see her kids. I wonder from this, and also my mother's experience dying of pancreatic/lung cancer, the relationship of stress to disease.

When most of the types of chemo had been tried, and there weren't many treatment options left, I remember talking to her on the phone about getting into a drug trial. I remember I was at the dog park at the time. From my very limited perspective, I thought, 'hey, you've got nothing to lose, you might as well enroll'. From her perspective, an untested therapy might shorten what little time she had left, and she opted not to risk that. If she did nothing, she knew about how much time she had left, and was unwilling to gamble with that. This makes a lot more sense to me now than it used to.

I'm going to have to continue this post later, as I wanted to talk more about what she did and who she was, as opposed to how this thing came and got her.

Every time I think about how she had to say goodbye to her children, it makes me weep. If I ever had to cry on command, that thought would do it. They and Bart have coped and survived this horrible thing, and it was good to see them last November carrying on.

She wanted to die at home but didn't make it. They had the hospital bed delivered a day or so before she died, thinking she could come home, but she never stabilized enough to make it. By that time her liver was failing and she wasn't all that lucid. I remember her looking at me and I thought, 'she can't tell if she's really seeing me or if I'm a hallucination'. That's OK. She had one final moment of clarity, which we sort of laughed with, because she sort of sat up a bit, called her sons over and said sternly, 'No cigarettes! No cigarettes!' As in, if nothing else, don't start smoking after I'm gone.

OK, more on this next time. Thanks for reading.

Hippo New Ewe's!

Indeed, it is the first day of 2010 and things look pretty good. I'll be a little self indulgent here and review 2009, but am more looking forward to 2010 (is that snow out there STILL? I'm so ready to get my garden going).

I started 2009 having an old hip injury aggravated such that I started physical therapy for four months to make it feel better. Afterwards, my back hurt, and I sure felt old and broken down. The things that have helped? Good shoes, sleeping with a pillow under my knees and doing situps and back strengthening exercises. I need a new bed, no doubt about it, and will buy one in the next year.

At work, we have a weekly seminar, and in February 09 I gave one on my research. The response was good enough, and I really enjoyed being up there yakking, that I contacted the local community college to see if they needed any part time instructors. Long story short, I taught Fall semester, and will teach again Spring semester. It has been a great experience, and I'd do it full time in a heartbeat.

My day job at the CDC has been pretty good. I've been working on a study where I more or less had to recollect and reanalyze the data, and that's been a bit of a slog, but I've got some interesting things to look forward to and the funding for my position seems stable at the moment. I still overall love my job, and am very thankful to have it.

I think back about Mr W over the year, and he continues to love his screen time - computer, Nintendo DS, TV, but about 3/4 through the year he discovered that he liked to take apart his Bionicle action figures and reassemble them into unique combinations and will now spend quite a bit of time happily doing that. I bought him a cheap video camera and we're going to explore making movies of this process.

In the fall, I ended a long distance relationship that I had been in for the last 2.5 years. And although I still feel bad about doing it, as some time has passed, I realize it was the right thing to do, although being thrust again into the dating world is daunting. But I compare the me that I was the first time I looked to date again after the divorce with the me now, and my perspective has changed. I don't need someone to fill a void, I want someone to add to what I already have.

Ending the relationship drove it home for me that I was waiting to do any significant improvements to this house because I thought we might be moving. Now that I'm not, I decided to refinance the mortgage, pull some money out to do some improvements and settle in. I have more plans than money, but have decided to at least add a deck off the side of the house and put in a door so we can walk outside from the living room, and also to put a half bath in the basement.

Having my focus shifted back to staying in this house, in this community, I'm drawn to the local food movement that is developing here in NoCo (that's Northern Colorado). I want to grow more of our food next year, and also patronize others that do.

So that's about it. I have a lot to be thankful for - healthy kid, a good job, a house, my health, good friends, supportive family. I'm looking forward to what 2010 will bring.

Low spot

I recently ended my relationship with CB, and I've been melancholy ever since. I know it was the right decision, but owing to how his personality isn't to blame, and what I potentially gave up, well, it's just going to take some time to feel better.

We met online, on a site for science-y types, and from the beginning we were 900 miles apart. We talked on the phone, sometimes for hours, and exchanged emails. About five or six weeks into it, he asked if I would fly out to meet him, and then we'd drive the eight hours to Los Angeles for a concert he had tickets to. Even though I've told this story several times, it still looks like I took this huge chance with this person I met online. I never felt any red flags come up and we had a great time. Nothing like spending eight hours in a car to begin to spend time together!

Since he travels for a living and is on the road for two or three weeks at a time every three or four weeks or so, we settled into a routine of me flying out there for a few days every 5 weeks or so. Sometimes we'd have to wait longer, and I remember the first summer we were dating I waited an excruciating 7 weeks while he went to Alaska, and then to Nova Scotia, and then I had to travel for my work. A big concern for me for the first year or so was that he'd determine that it wasn't worth the trouble, and would decide to end it. But he didn't.

We went to California twice to go whale watching, and I looked forward to the opportunity to travel with him while he was working. He leads bird watching tours and that would be right up my alley. Unfortunately, the money was never there, and I spent all of my vacation time on our monthly visits.

I will miss my time with him. We started dating a couple of years after I was divorced, but I was still, in retrospect, feeling the effects of having been married for 15 years and having the rug pulled out from under me. To be with someone who accepts and appreciates you for who you are is a rare and wonderful thing indeed.

I'm looking forward to doing more in my community, maybe getting some work done on the house and have decided I'll teach again next semester. I've missed talks with my sister acutely during this time, and it's been odd and sad not to have her counsel.

Thanks, CB. Our time together changed me for the better.

I just realized it's September

It's been a good summer. How is this measured? Well, partly by the absence of tragedy, but also by the extent to which the fact that it was summer was taken advantage of (if that's a sentence). Last summer we were all reeling still from my sister's death, and a couple of years before that was the whole divorce thing, so it may be the absence of tragedy. But we did do some good stuff:

Mr W, Sally and I went hiking, something I'd like to do more of, especially given this one trail that allows dogs off-leash. We also went to an amusement park and pushed his boundaries a bit as to what he was willing to go on ride-wise. I keep saying I'll go on whatever he'll go on, but I'm going to have to modify that to exclude rides that go around in speedy queasy circles. We rode our bikes fairly often, and he had a good summer at camp.

I got a decent garden in this year, although my landscaping projects have not come to fruition. Good thing about Colorado is that I've got some time yet before the snow flies to make some progress there. CB and I visited the Grand Canyon and looked for condors. Saw the former, looked for the latter for several hours with no luck. Over half the visitors seemed to me to be foreign - welcome, of course, but where's the Americans? I did some fieldwork for work and have concluded I prefer fieldwork on plants to that with mosquitoes. On the up side, I got to visit several cities in western CO that I had not been to, and they were lovely. Not to mention I collected specimens that will be my work for the next few months!

The weather wasn't too hot, which is always nice when one's house doesn't have AC. There is usually a stretch of a week or so when I contemplate putting the window AC unit in the living room, but it never stayed hot for that long.

So all in all, it was a good summer. Mr W was asking just yesterday about how long each season is, and I told him that if we end up with a mild winter (like we did last year) fall lasts a long time. Ah, sunny, jacket weather during the day and cooler temps at night. But there's always a chance of a blizzard in October as well, but that's the price of living here.

CB's coming in on Friday for several days. It's been a while since he's come here, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Jelly-side up

"I hope you land jelly-side up".

I've had a couple of opportunities to hope for this outcome lately. Among the people I see walking their dogs at the dog park is J, who until very recently had been an adjunct instructor at the same community college I'm going to do teach at in the fall. Unlike what I'm going to do, she taught several classes and this was her main source of income. She was told very unceremoniously the other day that her services would no longer be needed in the fall.

OK, it's common knowledge that being an adjunct isn't a steady gig, but the way that she got excused was really harsh. The person (department head, I think) made a big sweep and just told her there would be nothing for her, as well as for several other people who had been adjuncts for years. Just the way that it was handled was this weird power play and abuse of power.

Can it be good to be kicked out of your rut? I don't think a person can know this until after the fact. It feels to J only like her livelihood's been torn away from her, screw the personal growth aspect of it. She strikes me as a person who has great people skills and will talk herself into at least a temporary something pretty soon.

The other person to received good jelly-wishes was my former MIL, who is now in another rehab place for two or more weeks until they evaluate her and figure out where is best for her in terms of places to live. I don't know if it's denial or hope that makes her think that maybe, just maybe she can go back to a place that is essentially just apartments, with no assistance. It seems to me that the hard part is that her weakness is intermittent. Sometimes she can transfer in and out of her chair without incident, sometimes she can't.

When I went to see her the other day, she was temporarily in a room on the full-fledged nursing home wing of this facility that has several levels of care. She whispered that she didn't want to be around "all these old people". Indeed, it's her body that's old, not her mind or spirit. I hope she moves to a place that has assistance for her when she needs it, and if that's an "assisted living" place, then so be it. It's better than getting stranded on the toilet in the middle of the night, right?

Ugh, more snow? What I meant was...

This morning finds Colorado digging out from another spring storm. No one can really bitch too much about it, as we desperately need the moisture and that's just how the climate is around here. I get a little bummed out because the plows (a good thing) pile snow up in front of my alley, and it's hard to get my car out unless I shovel that plowed snow (a bad thing).

But I didn't really want to post on the snow. This week marked what would have been my mom's 72nd birthday.

I guess I can blame this one on Facebook. People have posted a lot of family photos, and it has been really fun to see both the families of people how they were when I was growing up, as well as of their kids and families now.

I also heard a statistic this week that unemployment hasn't been this high since 1983, the year I graduated from high school. The following year, my dad lost his job, and, being the selfish teenager I was, the first words out of my mouth were, "Can I still go away to college this fall?" I still cringe when I think of that, even more so now that I'm a parent and I know how much is involved in financing kids' activities. I did get to go away to college after all, by the way.

But I guess it's these things that have me wondering about what my mom would be like at this age, and what she would think about how I've turned out. She was certainly a product of her time. She and dad (who just turned 74 and is going strong) had three kids in the space of three years, which I know I've mentioned before but it never ceases to astound me.

She grew up in Pine Bush, NY, the daughter of a teacher and a large animal vet who worked for Cornell. She enrolled in nursing school at St. Luke's hospital, in New York City, and got her nursing degree. After she graduated, she and a friend drove out West, and spent 6 months sightseeing and working. To hear her tell it, all you had to do to get a job was to tell the nursing supervisor where you went to school and who your nursing supervisor was there, and you could get a job. I've always been impressed that, as two single women, they had the chutzpah to go on this adventure. I think it was the late 1950's.

She moved to Cleveland, I assume because that's where her friend was from, and at the almost-old-maid age of 24, met my dad at a party and they were married a year later. She stayed home with us kids until I was going to start first grade. I still remember getting her all to myself that year, when I only had half day kindergarten. Can you imagine? She almost had her freedom, the third kid ready to start school and.... she gets pregnant with my younger brother. Ouch. This must have been very difficult for her, for both of them, but she stayed a stay at home mom until he went off to school, and then continued working as a nurse.

Unfortunately, she was a smoker, and could never manage to quit. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had spread to her lungs (or maybe the other way around?) in 1993, during a summer that she was in and out of the hospital, and we were all firmly in denial of the incomprehensible idea that she could die. I regret that no one ever acknowledged that she was actually dying, she just got sicker and sicker and then she was gone.

I wish she and Mr W could have met. They would have been fast friends, and I'm so grateful that he's got his grandma on his dad's side that treats him the way a grandma should (treats, gifts, a good listening ear).

She was a huge Cleveland Browns fan, in the glory days of Brian Sipe and in the days when the team was actually a contender. We'd watch the games on Sundays, and I must have been in junior high at the time. She hated to watch the games alone, and my dad would get so worked up that he had to go upstairs and read, or go take a walk. She'd get all excited when the Browns would make a good play, and in her euphoria, she'd pinch the upper arm (hard, sometimes!) of the closest person.

To say that I miss her is not quite getting at it. It's like with my sister. There's simply a hole there that can't really be filled. We are so adaptable as people, though, that this stuff teaches what we can deal with ourselves and what we need to call on our support circle (that's so new agey, but still) for.

Happy Birthday, Judy!

Remembering

I received an invitation to the dedication of the Continuing Care Nursery (not the NICU as I had originally heard) for my sister. I'm trying to think of a way to say this without being too melodramatic. Today marks 15 years since my mom died, again of cancer.

I think about what she would think of 'how I turned out' and I think she'd be proud. There are times when I could use her guidance, and it makes me feel that much worse that my sister's kids have to continue without their mom. It's not fair.

And I'm a little scared that if I'm not vigilant, I'll get sick and have to say goodbye to the people I love too. But this is more about missing Kris and Mom. So I will take a few minutes today and remember what these extraordinary women meant to me.

Hand me my umbrella, will you?

Because when it rains it pours sometimes. I feel like I've sort of dodged most of this, but my brothers' families have been taking some hits lately. I feel sad for their losses.

My dear sister in law lost her dad to cancer over the weekend. Not unexpected at all as he was at the end and everyone knew it. It was going to happen any time now, and she said he passed peacefully.


But it is still a loss.


My other dear sister in law's grandfather passed about a week ago. I still am amazed at how long her grandparents have persisted. These grandparents who lived in the same house for a very long time, a lifetime, and who just recently moved "to town" so that they could be cared for in an assisted living situation. Imagine being 6 (the age of R and L's oldest daughter) and to not only have a doting grandma, but a doting greatgrandma as well. One of life's bonuses, to be sure. And it's a similar thing - not a surprise, but yet a loss, a hole is there.

To add insult to injury, R and L had to euthanize their nice little cat yesterday. Geez. Named Muenster (like the cheese), he was the companion of the now-passed Colby (big, orange, you get the picture) and was this geeky, bad-hipped little goofball of a cat that was a lot of fun to watch because you would swear he saw things the rest of us mere mortals could not.

Life does that sometimes. We have to sift through a lot of stuff at once, and only when it's passed and we've processed can we look back and say, "wow, that was tough." It reminds me to appreciate the times when life is not like that. When the big things I've got going on are getting the place ready for a CB visit, and trying to get Mr W and I into a smooth school-year schedule. Work is good, I have a good idea for a project that I'm going to pitch to my boss after having lunch tomorrow with one of my mentors and I'm happy the warm weather is done for the year. My kid is healthy and so full of questions lately (transportation using giant magnets, etc.). Heck, I even have three nice pumpkins from the garden that will look very nice on my porch.

It's what you make it, usually.

Rest in Peace, Leroy

When my sister was diagnosed with colon cancer in November 2006, I searched around the Internet for information. The NPR (National Public Radio) website has several blogs and one of them is called My Cancer, which up until a couple of days ago was written by Leroy Sievers, a former journalist who told his story through a series of blog posts for the two and half years he had the disease. This is a link to the blog. This is a link to NPR's remembrances of him.

Leroy died in his sleep Friday night. He and his partner, Laurie, were planning on transferring him to hospice soon, so I assume he died in his sleep in his own home.

I just visited the blog and became the 596th person to leave a comment there. Talk about having an impact. You wouldn't think this would be a new thing, to blog about cancer, but he just seemed to have a way of talking about the disease and how it affected so many aspects of his life. And, more importantly, he strove to be defined not soley by his cancer, but by other things he had done and believed in.

And the treatments. His cancer was in several places: spine, ribs, brain, lungs. And they would systematically treat each one and Leroy got more time out of it. He had many procedures besides chemo, and it was a lesson for me in what possible treatment options are available these days. He never went down the "alternative medicine" route, though, and I respect him for that.

He said that the blog was his greatest accomplishment. This from a person who was an embedded journalist in the Iraq war in 2003, and reported on crises from all over the world.

I hope that his partner Laurie will agree to carry on and blog about the grieving process. I know that when my sister died, there was a tendency for people to assume things had returned to normal before they really had.

*sigh* I'll miss you Leroy. It's like losing a friend.

A Milestone

I guess I saw this coming. Mr W was playing on the computer and I asked, “so what do you think of getting rid of the train table?” And he said, “You can get rid of the Thomas stuff, but I want to keep the Brio”. Wow, and in that statement, my kid went from being a little boy to more of a big boy.

He was a wee lad of 18 months when he got his first Thomas play set. It was a slippery slope and we first had the cheaper metal engines, followed by the wooden ones. A friend was nice enough to lend us their train table, and before long we had amassed an impressive collection of more toy trains than any kid could reasonable play with in one sitting. I counted them tonight, and am slightly embarrassed to say we have 41 toy engines of the Thomas ilk. That doesn’t count another 15 or so Brio (which have no faces and are therefore less baby-ish, I gather) ones we are keeping. Holy cow.

And he was a big Thomas fan for years. Family and friends could count on being able to give him Thomas stuff and knowing it would be a big hit. We went to the “Day out with Thomas” down at the RR museum in Golden for three years, most recently in 2007. We own several videos and got others out from the library. A teacher in preschool bought him a Thomas comforter.

Lest you think I will wallow in sentimentality too long, I am planning on giving a couple of engines to the little boys next door, and then putting the lot for sale on ebay. I told Mr W that he could have a cut of the proceeds.

What will he buy? Well, of course he wants a Nintendo DS, but he’s not likely to get one of those for a couple of years. He wants an Airhog remote controlled plane, and he wants a Swype-out racing kit, where you get cards and your own scanner to do races online. Those are OK with me. There are plenty of violent computer games out there, and I’m trying hard to keep those from him (keep him from those) for as long as possible. But the racing stuff is fine. And he’s good at it. Picture above from http://www.postershop.co.uk/

Oh, and Percy and Edward were always my favorites.

Can death be a blessing?

My sister died around 11:30 am on Wednesday, February 20. We (my brothers, dad and myself) made it in around 9 pm the night before and stayed with her until she died.

She was in really bad shape, and I hope all who read this never have to bear witness to that kind of suffering. Liver failure was what killed her, and this was accompanied by fluid accumulation in her abdomen, nausea that was really hard to keep under control, and pain. Always the pain. It seemed she only occasionally found the right balance between lucidity and pain management, and in the end had to opt for the latter.

The doctor on call checked on her around 9 am that day, and said she'd order something for "anxiety". We (there were about 10 of us in the room with her - I hope I'm as fortunate) said we didn't think she was anxious, but the doctor ordered it, "just in case". Shortly after that Kris did get anxious and scared, so they gave her a sedative and after that she calmed down and gradually stopped breathing.

I feel guilty saying it was a blessing for her to die, but that body was junk at that point. There was no sense in keeping it going, the miracle wasn't going to happen. So, at this point, I'm still riding a wave of relief that she doesn't have to throw up bile every 10 minutes (sorry if that's too graphic), and haven't been sad to the point of crying since we left the hospital. It will come, I'm sure, probably when I'm at Target (who is that woman weeping by the detergent?...), but for now, I'm glad her suffering is over.