Showers

It's raining here today.   All day so far.  But the new fruit trees in the back yard need it, and our well is all the better for it.  Rain is good!

Yesterday I went to a baby shower here in town.  A co-worker's daughter is having a little girl in about 5 or 6 weeks.  I crocheted an afghan for the baby, found two cute summer outfits, and bought three Golden books. The invitation asked that people bring books to start building a library for the wee one.  Since I'm a big proponent of reading to children (and reading in general) this is always an easy thing to do.  I decided to go retro and get three of those little cardboard books that I used to read to my kids.  Heck they had them when I was growing up in the 60's, probably before that too.  My books/gifts stood out among all the other shinier, big chunky baby books.  The baby's mama seemed to really be excited when she saw them. Made me glad!

I got to the shower exactly at noon, and it was already crowded.  I only knew two other guests and they were already seated at a table surrounded by others.  So I was on my own to find a table.  I found one that had four women at it, sat at the opposite end from them and just stared at the table or glanced around the room.  I was hoping one of them would say something welcoming to me so I didn't feel like I was intruding on their spot.  But none of them even glanced at me.  And so I sat. And fiddled with my phone, and smiled at my co-worker from across the room when she smiled at me.  Not long after that she made a beeline to me and said "Oh thanks for coming.  Have you met these ladies?" and she proceeded to make introductions.  The other grandma, her daughter-in-law, the baby's paternal great grandma and yet another family member.  They nodded and smiled and murmured "nicetomeetyou....!" and when my friend walked away, that was the end of the conversation.

When we ate they talked to each other but not to me.  In the meantime my friend's sister and her daughter sat with me, and the three of us talked a little, but not much.  I went out to my car to get my camera and when I came back, someone had taken my chair.  A friend of theirs. I had left my purse on the seat but they moved it.  So .... I moved to the only other empty chair at that table.  I took more than 100 pictures as a favor to my friend with the intention of uploading them to Facebook later that day.

I kept sitting there and thinking about how much I missed this kind of get together in Pittsburgh, where I grew up and lived until we had to move due to a job change in 2002.  I miss my Pittsburgh family and friends a LOT even after 11 years.  And I don't have to give it much thought to realize that if I'd been to a baby shower in Pittsburgh and arrived not knowing many people there, I would have easily made friends or at least had a stimulating conversation with those around me.  I'm not an unfriendly person.  I'm usually the talkiest person in a room at gatherings like this.  But where I live, natives from this area say they are all so friendly and so on.  But I don't find that to be the case at all.  We've lived in this community for six years and in all that time, we've only been invited to a handful of parties or celebrations. I don't know what to make of it.  I've asked at least two or three women if they'd like to get together with their husbands and the four of us go to dinner once in awhile. They say "Oh great idea! I'll get back to you!" and no one does.  I could be pushy and pursue it further but I like to think that maybe someone else will broach the subject once I have.  And it hasn't happened.

Thank heavens for my big family.  I see them as often as I can throughout the year and fill up my head and heart with conversation and love, hoping it will last me a long time.  If it wasn't for email, cell phones, Facetime, Skype and Facebook I'd be a despondent mess.  I AM married to my best friend so that helps a lot, and we have our furry friends here at home.  I really, really hope that when the house next door to us sells, we get new neighbors we can get together with for cookouts or at least sit in the driveway in the evening and b.s., like we used to do with neighbors in Cincinnati (the first place we moved to when we left Pittsburgh).

Bees

For two years now my husband has been a beekeeper. He was drawn to the hobby because he thought it would greatly enhance his vegetable garden and my flower gardens.  Within 10 days one of the two hives we bought failed.  They swarmed and left the bee box and were gone forever. Poof. The other did pretty well, and last fall we had our first really good harvest of honey.  Now after the long winter, we found out that hive has failed too.  Good thing he had built three more bee boxes (hives) and had bees on order.  They aren't cheap!  $90 plus pays for one queen and a bunch of worker bees.  So we got the three  new hives and so far, so good. Now if it would only warm up long enough that we'd stop fretting about them.

Today I had to step out of my office and go next door to another building.  A HUGE bumble bee (I swear it was the size of an armchair!) came towards me and then veered off.  Then at lunch time as I was driving down the road, another big bumble bee came right at my windshield and bounced off.  I guess I should be happy the bugs are back in business since it's spring time.  I just wish they wouldn't come within such close proximity of me!  We have two dogs and two days ago, after their after-work walk, I felt a tick crawling on my neck.  It probably jumped onto one of the dogs, figured out it couldn't get through his skin because of the meds we pay good money for, and jumped off the dog and onto me.  YECH!  Good thing I'm not bug phobic.  Bats?  Now that's a whole 'nother story.

Bugs, trees, flowers, rain - all good signs of Spring. I need so badly to get outside and pull some weeds and straighten up my perennials. If only the temperature would cooperate.  Maybe next weekend.  So far, for this weekend, low 60's and scattered rain.  YECH again.  Good thing I have lots of knitting and quilting to do.

Rain

The temperature this morning started in the  high 50's, and it's dropping through the day.  Everything is so lush and green outside, I just wish it would stay in the 60's or 70's.  Everyone bitches and whines about the weather and I'm no different.  But I've come to the conclusion that  this is the most reluctant Spring I've seen in quite awhile.

My husband has a cold and stayed home from work today.  He saw the doctor in the afternoon and he does have a sinus infection.  However the doctor also said he found a polyp in his sinuses.  This is not a complete surprise because he's been complaining about "rocks" in his nose for awhile.  And he uses a steroid nasal spray because of frequent nosebleeds.  Next step is to see an ear/nose/throat specialist to check out the polyp.  Ordinarily I wouldn't be too concerned, but he's a cancer survivor.  It naturally makes you automatically think: OH SHIT IT'S CANCER AGAIN!  I swear I'm not going to get caught up in this vicious cycle of fear and nervousness again.  After hearing of a friend recently who had a nagging cough since January, and was being treated but it wasn't getting better, so of course they kept testing, and now he knows he has cancer in both lungs and his liver, it begins to feel inevitable that we're all going to get eaten up by that nasty disease.  Maybe not ALL of us but many of us.  I've come to accept that it's a fact of life for those of us in our 50's.  We hear it all the time, whether it's a friend, or a friend of a friend, somebody at church, etc. But you can't live your life constantly looking over your shoulder, waiting for a pie to be delivered right to your face that is filled with bad things.

Now that I think about it, since I started posting to this blog, each entry has been pretty much one downer after another.  Am I preoccupied with desolate stories?!  Am I only able to talk about negative things?  Sweet Jesus I hope not. Assignment for tomorrow and the days to come: find something fun and light-hearted to talk about.  Puppies, babies, flowers, etc.

Dreaming

My husband has a bad cold, or possibly a sinus infection.  So I slept in another bedroom last night, on a different level of the house, so I could avoid his snoring.  No big deal. I slept for 6.5 straight hours and had to get up to use the bathroom, but went back to bed since it wasn't quite 5 AM. I was glad to have an extra 75 minutes of sleep, but was amazed at the vivid and memorable dream I had in that time frame.

I dreamt that my mother, one of my sisters and I went for a walk. This was, obviously, a much younger version of my mother because she's nearly 91 now. So we walked, and walked, and came across lots of people to say hello to, and kids playing on the sidewalks, etc. The skies darkened, though, and I wanted to head back home.  Mom and sis wanted to continue in the direction they were headed. I  turned around to go home, and in that mysterious way that dreams do, suddenly I was in a neighborhood that didn't seem familiar.  I saw a grocery store that looked familiar, went inside to ask if I could make a phone call because I'd left my cell at home. I was told they didn't have any pay phones and was shown the door.  Down the street (after I crossed railroad tracks) I found two men, aged 65-70, and asked if I could borrow one of their cell phones because I needed someone to pick me up.  "Sorry, I forgot mine at home too!" said one of them.  I continued on. Nearby I stopped at a house where two older women (older than me) had some young children about. When I asked if I could make a phone call, they looked at me suspiciously and told me a resounding "NO!" So I left their front porch, and looking up the hilly street, saw concrete edges to what seemed to be a bridge.  I started to walk in that direction, and began crying softly as I did.  One of the women at the house had a sudden change of heart, and called for me to come back.  They treated me much more kindly when I went back inside.  And they went in search of their phone, which (obviously) was missing. In the meantime I asked them where I was so I could tell someone, when I made a phone call, how to find me.  They kept searching for words to explain where they lived and could not really say.  I said "Do you  have a map? Can you show me where we are on a map?" "Good idea!" one of them exclaimed.  "We'll find a map!"

It was around this point in the dream when the outside/real world intruded on my sleep.  I heard the cat scratching in her litter box outside the bedroom, in front of the sliding glass door to the patio.  That was my cue to open my eyes.  I could see daylight in the window, so I realized I had to get my butt out of bed and get the day started.  The dream stayed with me when I went upstairs.  So often when I dream I lose details rapidly, and even if it's a fascinating sequence of events, when I go back to mull them over, they're gone.  Poof.  In the wind.  This one stayed with me. I wish I could figure out why.

Inaugural

I said good-bye to my son on April 6th, and whether I wanted to or not, I had to stop hugging him eventually and walk away from him, despite every molecule in my body was saying "stay here for a little while longer." He is a soldier and he's going to do what soldiers do sometimes, and that is leave his home and do his duty and miss his wife and miss his parents and his sister and miss his friends.  How do I stop imagining all possible scenarios of the coming months when any number of things could happen to him?  How do I stop the tears from springing to my eyes when I'm driving down the road and a song comes on the radio or my iPod and a trigger goes off and I'm weeping?  And how do I stop being paralyzed by fear that I will never hug him again? I sure as shit am going to have to learn how if I want to maintain any semblance of normalcy for the coming months.

My son is nearly always the funniest person in the room when we are all together.  I worry that he will return from his time overseas a changed person, changed to the point that he can't be funny anymore.  I've read so many stories about soldiers coming back with their personalities warped, their psyches damaged, and I think "There's no way he could change to that degree." But you just never know.  We have to let him go and trust in God that he'll come back to us whole, the same funny young man we've always known.  I have no control over this and that's scary.  Yet I need to remember all the times I said good-bye to him and entrusted his care to someone else or some other organization.  First it was my parents who babysat him, then other sitters, then pre-school teachers, summer camp, and eventually when he went to college.  He has a solid foundation and a strong family background so all I can do is, once again, trust that he'll be all right. 

So far there doesn't seem to be much point to this blog entry.  Mostly I want to get written down things I'm thinking about. Isn't that what blogs are for?  I can't keep up this gloomy persona forever, so maybe once this is begun, I can start to find new perspectives.