Strange story

Mr Footless died close to midnight  on a Thursday. I called no one because I didn't see any need for anyone to lose sleep who didn't have to.
The next day I talked to MyMom (among others) who was having troubles of her own. She had just been flooded out of her apartment the week before and had found  a place to roost in Camp Stuffy, the senior living facility she graces with her residence.. She got settled in a meeting room where she had just the essentials. ( I visit her on the weekends which is about what I can manage) Making sure that she had adequate housing had been part of the alarums and excitements of the week before. Also due to the floods I had not been able to go see her.
The roads being washed out and therefore closed does that.
After telling Mom about Mr Footless, there was a silence on the other end of the line. "Well" She says,"Are you coming down to see me this Saturday?"
I said that I would indeed be seeing her then." Good" She says."I need some things from the store."
Alrighty then.
 By Saturday morning a good friend did the research for me, and got me in touch with a coffin maker in one of the towns south of here and north of MyMom.  So I stopped on my way south and picked up the coffin which the maker kindly roped down in the back of my truck. Lucille has a tool box in her bed that shortens the bed by a good two feet so the coffin was propped up on the tailgate, large as life and twice as natural and obviously exactly what it was.
 So I rumble on into Snooterville to meet up with MyMom and do what needs to be done in terms of grocery and basic needs shopping for an eighty plus lady who has been rendered temporarily unhomed.
 After picking up some of the basics MyMom decided she wanted to eat somewhere that wasn't the dining room at Camp Stuffy. That's ok, I have no connection with my body at this point and so I am eating when I think I might need to refuel because I can't tell if I am hungry unless I am so ridiculously low blood sugar I am about to faint.  I'm not fainting yet but it has been a while so eating would be good, right?
My Mom decides on the restaurant, and off we go to a medium high end place at about three in the afternoon.  I had forgotten about the coffin in the back of Lucille as an actual coffin, and started seeing it as the visual obstruction in the middle of the rear view mirror, causing me to use the side mirrors more and the rear mirror a lot less.
If I had been thinking about something besides getting MyMom into the closest parking place so that she had the shortest trudge for her knees, I might have considered the effect of my somewhat battered truck and it's macabre cargo a little more and not parked center front  in the windows of the medium high end place MyMom wanted to eat at.
You would think that waitstaff would be too busy to look and had seen too much of everything that living in a town with Snooterville U could come up with to be at all interested in my load.
Aparently not.
We eat, and we head out to discover a group of people standing around the bed of my truck and speculating on what I might be going to do with the obvious coffin in the back.
I lacked a sense of humor  right then, or I might have had some fun. As it was I packed MyMom up and headed back to Camp Stuffy.
It wasn't until quite a while later that I thought about the effect it must have had on the people watching to see my show up with a coffin and a little old lady.
Mr Footless had a sense of humor that was both pretty black and bizarre. He would have gotten a good laugh over that.

In praise of steam, steam mops and cleanliness.

Due to the distressing circumstances that the house was in for the last bit of time it is to put it mildly, a pit. An ugly really grotty pit at that.
There was absolutely nothing that wasn't gritty, grimy and crud covered from one end of the place to the other. Even after some heavy duty scrubbing  on some sections there is a lot of this place that is grossly dirty. I have never been all that concerned with the process of getting things clean. In fact I have found that for some reason cleaning was something that I did when I was angry. I thought that  cleaning made me angry, and then I thought that I was using anger to clear my head so that I could get things clean.  It turns out that none of this is true.
I find that actually I like cleaning things when  they stay that way for a reasonable length  of time, it actually calms me and leaves me feeling happy.  That really surprises me, Who would have guessed that?
Over time I have had some conversations with My Stepdaughter Who Will Be the Death of Me Someday. She has her difficulties but she is hell on wheels when it comes to cleaning. I think that it is a backlash from living with Mr Footless who was profoundly uncomfortable with clean. ( Thus the condition of  the house)
She sang the praises of her steam mop and how much grime came up without having to use  cleaners and how easy it was to get the floors done up with minimal scrubbing.  I borrowed one.  Then I bought one. It is everything she said it would be.
As someone who is removing carpet and laying laminate from one end of the house to the other and who is entirely grossed out by the incredible amount of dirt that is in said carpet, I need something to take care of a lot of floor.
At present I have been trying to figure out how to use Stanley the clothes steamer to do things that the mop doesn't, like the tile in the shower, and the walls and the stove top. I think that what I am missing is some rubber bands to tie down the towel to the steam head. I am stunned at how much crud migrated to the towel while wiping the steam over the wall that I chose to try this out on.  Mind you  I had washed the wall not too long ago with soap and water and gotten  a layer of dirt off. I can see that I have some of the kind of experimentation that I find the most fun, how do I get this to work?

Tiddly Pom

The weather has reverted to winter. it has snowed and snowed again, and for what reason should I be complaining? We need the water, we need the moisture, we need the time for quiet contemplation.
I am really fine with it Except, the walk needs shoveling, front back and side, and some time today I am going to have to go to the store. The store will be slammed with people who are frantically buying all the eggs, milk and bread for what purpose I can't imagine. Epic amounts of french toast?
I think I can pass on most of it.
Then again I need to talk to Mum about my usual visit to her, because tomorrow is the huge enourmus gladiator fest AKA Superbowl, where men in armor give each other traumatic brain injuries and throw an odd shaped ball around.  Anyway she wants to watch it and I want to not be around on the streets when it is over, because the number of  Drunk People Having Fun in Cars is more than I can imagine dealing with.
I think I am electing myself for wimp hood.
I think it is a relief to just admit that I am scared to be out on the highways with a bunch of people at night who have made themselves unreliable.
I am a grownup. Grownups are not scared of things right? So who made up that lie?
Actually, mostly thinking about it is far worse than doing it. So where is the anxiety leaving off and where is mature sensible caution beginning?
I think that I will be doing any out things today and not tomorrow, and I think that I will no longer beat myself up for what I am scared about.

va a con dios apartemente

Today was the next to the last day to have my apartment.  It has been emptied, cleaned, inspected, approved, the keys are turned in and the last pieces, the very last pieces are complete.
There is not so much as a scrap to tell anyone that I was ever there. Not  even a crumb.
Eleven months ago I was living with some very kind people who had opened their house and lives to me. To this day I can't tell them why I chose to set up on my own, I just knew that I needed fiercely to have my own space, my own bed, and a place where I could close the door and be there with myself.

• I learned that I don't want to work in a galley kitchen, and that I can anyway.
•  I learned that my natural way of being is much tidier than I thought, and that I can live in a small space if it is set up right.
•  I know that I need my own chair, that a table to eat at isn't something I gravitate to, and that I like reading as I eat.
•  I learned that I like living downtown, 
•  I learned that having scattered responsibilities in too many places leaves me on the edge of insane.

 I lost my dad. My husband died. I am back in the house I left eighteen months ago. My responsibilities are still scattered but they are a lot less and a lot saner. Someday I may have a house closer to the center of old town, right now I have one hell of a mess to deal with here.
 But I Am Home
Bless that little apartment. Bless the affordable  rent. Bless the time I was there, it was a sane place in a crazy situation. I hope that whoever lives there next loves it too.

Getting unpacked and other annoyances

After packing up the apartment and moving the last things home I have been working on finding what and where everything is going to live. Now really, I ask you, I have been in a space that was the size of my living room and had everything in the space neatly set up and tidily put in its place. So why on earth am I sitting in three times the space wondering where to put a couple spatulas and how to fit all the books on the book case when they fit on three shelves with room to spare before?  I seem to have expandostuff.
Mostly it is a matter of choosing just where I want to put things so I can put things there and have them stay, and then I don't like it there and ...
Sometimes the pretty stuff is harder that anything else. Finding a place for Sick Sir Lancelot the clinically depressed knight where I can look at him and laugh is important. Right now he sits in the bay window where he is backlit, and I like him there but he really looks kind of unfinished.

 On the upside such as it is, I can have and eat things that would have been barred preflight.
I also find that feeding myself when no one is looking is pretty problematic. The whole idea of making a meal with all the nutritious food groups just doesn't seem to be worthwhile.
I have relearned that you don't save glazed donuts for later, a few hours is fine but not a day or more. I am fussy about my bakery treats, My nose reacts to stale and rancid with revulsion, and I will go to the store in the morning to get them fresh rather than get them the day before and save myself the trouble in the morning

If you are wondering why I didn't find some of this out while living in the apartment, well some of it I did.  But then I was just not there for much because I was bouncing between my commitments and responsibilities. It was pretty much a place I slept and changed clothes on my way to the next part of what was going on at the time.
Moving my things back has put me in one place for the first time in a year and a half. Coping with both the old and the new of being here is uncomfortable. 
This house is/has been home for me, I realize that I have lived here most of my adult life and I actually could like it here.  What I make it is up to me, and right now I need to make it a place where I can put my kitchen away and make something I want to eat for lunch and dinner today.

putting my head above water once again

So I am starting this blog up again. seems like a place to figure things out while waiting for the stink of sadness to leave.
It has been about a year  since I last posted, and there are so many sad things, funny things and other things that have happened.
 My office has moved, My dad died, Mr Footless also died, I moved twice and sometimes I can't imagine being the person I was when I started to write things down  a few years ago.
Last weekend I moved from my wee apartment in the middle of downtown back into what is now my house.
I am struggling with my status as a widow.
I am struggling with rehabbing the house and de-stashing Mr Footless's possessions.
I am struggling with twenty seven years of living with a hoarder, and how much are his attitudes and my attitudes the same?
Sometimes I have no clue who it was that I was married to.
At present I am reintegrating the things from my household to my household and my main floor is full of trumpeting furniture milling about waiting for me to heard it into its new places.
Getting it situated will involve a daisy chain of events and unless I get the last chain of the daisies it won't go well.
Let us start over with some of the suspects and begin introducing them.
There is me.
Older female, faced with a collosal and overwhelming physical mess.
I am in the healing professions but my passions have been damped and I am rethinking what I do along with who I am.
I knit passionately, clean reluctantly, cook reasonably.
I have decent instincts but I don't behave well when I am operating from survival.
my organizational skills leave a lot to be desired
My sense of humor has been a bit impaired by grief and loss
I find that I am beginning to like living alone,and that my ability to enjoy life is starting to return.
there is a whole lot I don't know about myself as the lone arranger including how I am going to deal with the outside of the house, yard and seven possible flower beds.  It is mine and I don't know what I will do with it..
So tomorrow I will start my usual tasks including  spending the early morning with  my friend The Instrument of Grace.
oh and somewhere in the midst of it all I need to change my sheets, do a load of socks and run a bunch of towels as well.
my ability to attend to the details of daily life are off.
This isn't my first rodeo with grief as the event, and I know that by the end of next September I will be in a very different place.  How far I get is up to me and what I put in to it, my goal is to have put together some idea of a life that I can live with some comfort and enjoyment, be of some use to people that I might help, and manage well enough given some of my limitations.
It isn't much but it is a start.

keeping on a keeping on

Life has been undocumentable. I have not been able to talk about some of what is going on and have been too busy to document the rest.
Here is my thought for the holidays  thanks to the sabbath prayer book
Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing. Let there be moments when your Presence, like lightning, illumines the darkness in which we walk. Help us to see, wherever we gaze, that the bush burns, unconsumed. And we, clay touched by God, will reach out for holiness and exclaim in wonder, “How filled with awe is this place and we did not know it.”
If I can sum up the last year in any way at all, this is it