Wardrobe Malfunction

I went shopping last weekend in the big city. I got a cute red pile, shawl collared, winter coat for $2 at a rummage sale. I checked out the clothes in a couple of stores. I got a summer bathrobe, lovely aqua color in a light, cooler fabric than my heavy winter one. I like to have them especially if we get the chance to visit one of our favorite tiny hotels in remotes places with a library where you can lounge in your bathrobe and read in the middle of night if you aren’t sleeping. The sad part is a bathrobe was the only garment I found that seemed to fit. I shopped a few weeks ago in another city closer to home too. Same dismal results. I have not quite accepted how my body shape has changed over the last five years. I finally gave up high heels a few years ago because of the pain. (See how I am, it has to hurt before I do anything about it.) Part of the trouble is I am so unfamiliar with my body I don’t know how to dress myself anymore unless elastic top jeans/pants and t-shirts are it for me. The second part is lack of choice in the stores.

I came home thinking about the physical changes. And how was it I had ignored them until I couldn't any longer. I am reminded of Aurora Greenway in Larry McMurtry’s “Evening Star” as she observes her aging body and sees head to toe crepey skin and thinks how it needs ironing. Cringe. I am now exercising about an hour three days a week to improve my breathing. I'm hoping my fat and cortisone inflated tummy will recede enough to keep my pants from squeezing me to death around the middle. Even with those possible changes the choices in the stores are poor. I purchase pants to accommodate my tummy but the seat bags and the legs are like sails in the wind. I did find one pair of pants at Macy's that fit most of me with enough lycra in them to make the waistline doable. It was the only pair they had. They don't carry them anymore. At first I thought I was just shopping in the wrong places, but no, there really aren’t many choices if you are 30+ pounds overweight and/or over 50. And many of the clothes that might fit have prints on them like my grandmother’s flour sacks that she made dresses out of for us in the 40's. Or puppies. Cute on a 6-year old. I looked around me and the other women my age here are also dressed in elastic topped knit pants and tees or sweatshirts. It’s not just me.

I slept in this morning so I should cheer up pretty soon, after I get dressed in my elastic waist jeans and sweatshirt and grumble. But the sweatshirt is a nice grass green with no birds or flowers on it, or screaming pink with birds on it. Or “I love Kitties” or “Doggies” or ... ack! Must stop, don't think about it anymore today.

Hard Driving

Not much to post today. The drive home yesterday has rendered me senseless. Think I will eat, take my meds, stretch and take a nap. I am feeling my age today and then some. I resent it, I felt great yesterday but overdid it. I failed to stop while driving and stand up and stretch. I keep telling myself I must but sometimes I just don't want to stop. Mea culpa.

It was sunny but the truck traffic was heavier than I expected. I guess commerce isn't really at total standstill. Oregon allows those triple trailer trucks. I was driving near one that skipped the truck stops and was speeding and passing other trucks with his long wobbling train of trailers. I should have stopped and let that wreck in progress go on, I did slow down a bit and watched him disappear into the horizon. On a tight schedule I guess. Couldn't see his license, it was covered with dirt. And yes, I would have ratted him out. He was a menace to all on the highway. I could see huge wagon trains of Winco trucks on the other side taking up two lanes, five or six of them together, going the other way.

Chinese Restaurants and Food for the Road

If you read this earlier today and it seems different, well, it is. I wrote it quickly when I was tired and it later seemed garbled to me so on with new revision.

We had a little family dinner at Shanghai Noble House in Portland. It was good company, good stories, and good memories of our Dad. Dad treated us all to dinner there often. The people who run it are cool, sometimes funny and entertaining as they were last night. Years ago we had a post-mortem dinner there for our father. Dad requested no service after he was gone so instead we had a sit down dinner at Noble House for friends and family. We fudged, it really was more of an Irish wake but I'm sure he wouldn't have been surprised. And we didn't bring him along, he stayed in his container at my sister Pam's with the cats. We saw people some of us hadn't seen in forever. People cried, laughed, and told stories about him. Oh Dad, you missed a fine party. And at the event and the next day in the car going home I swear to God I could smell his personal scent, part little old man and part shaving cream. Peculiar eh? Still, eating there now makes me happy not sad, and brings back those memories of many dinners there with him. Thanks Monte and Pam for treating us last night.

Now it's time to head home again. I am relieved to see the weather is mellowing some. Pouring rain is no fun to drive through. I will get fueled up and find something road worthy to eat at the grocery store. I must have been hungry in a former life as I am unable to travel without taking enough food to last for a week. Car, plane, train, it doesn't matter, and water. Maybe I am just neurotic. If I were to crash in a ditch I could live for a week on the granola bars, water, chocolate, nuts, chocolate, deli chicken legs, chocolate, more water, carrots, and apples I haul along. Did I mention chocolate? Oh yes, and Tom's of Maine's Silly Strawberry toothpaste if I got really desperate. Vitamin pills, chocolate.

Homesick

Sometimes I get homesick. I never actually lived in my parent’s last home they shared together. Peculiarly it seems like my old home to me. They stayed there longer than anywhere else. It surprises me how strong the desire is to be back there. For just a bit I want that feeling that I’m home and I’m somebody’s kid again. I visited mostly in the summer and that’s the season in my memory. There’s Mom sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning with her coffee and her magnified mirror relentlessly pursuing chin hairs. She got up early to have some alone time. She’s in a terry tank top she liked to wear in the summer, white and lime striped. The kitchen table sort of blocked the entry and she sat on the kitchen side relaxing in her territory. She’d stay up late sometimes and clean the kitchen. You could hear the rumbling of the dishwasher in the downstairs guest room after everyone had gone to bed.

Dad would go get the paper in the morning, everyday after he retired. Sometimes times I’d walk up to Safeway with him to get it. We’d get the paper and wander around inspecting the veggies and fruit and maybe buy something else and walk home. He’d wrap his head with a cloth Japanese style and go out and trim the hedges, mow, and pull weeds until he needed to hire someone else to do it. He still pruned though.

There are really only a handful witnesses to my early childhood left. Part of me is disappearing like a dream. It’s as ancient history as any. Dad’s work kept us moving often, 14 schools in 12 years, and more houses. Because of that constant moving the two older of us don’t have childhood friends. They didn’t buy a house and stay put until I was a junior in my third high school. The second house they bought was where they stayed.

It’s funny that while they were alive I lived my life most adults do, but when they were gone, I discovered I had possessed a feeling that if anything went wrong there was someone who cared and had an answer just for me and that was gone too. I remember Dad saying home was a place where you could always come for a hot meal, a good night’s sleep, and a loving word. He was talking about his home, and that’s how I felt. I have never quite slept so soundly as I did when I visited there.

Stress Test 2

Today I go back for the rest of my "stress" test but today I get to eat beforehand. Less taxing than yesterday's. Yesterday's was brief but the Persantine gave me a whopping headache and a painful body, most unpleasant. I have some anxiety that something might actually be wrong. The first part took about 45 minutes. Most of the headache left with the administration of aminophillin and it helps if you drink coffee afterwards; its the caffiene. So I stopped at Starbucks and treated myself to White Chocolate Mocha Grande, caffeine and sugar. And a piece of banana bread too, made up for no lunch. I will get the results soon after part 2 today or tomorrow. I'm voting for the chest pains to be heartburn.

And, this is the second day without my usual visitations from grandgirls. I think I'm suffering from withdrawal; I am surprised at how much I miss them. The M-W girl races into the house starving, cheery, full of hugs, and dancing around. We eat almond butter sandwiches, draw, paint, and read. Then she races off to science class. Sometimes she is having enough fun she doesn't go willingly. Oboy, she likes me. The T-Th girl is very little although if you call her a little girl she gets mad, and don't call her a baby. She's two. I miss her request to watch "Marfa Speaks." It's hard not to mimic her it's so endearing but I boringly reply "so, you want to watch Mar-tha Speaks." She looks at me like I'm slow or didn't hear her. "Yup, Marfa Speaks." We usually take a nap together. And we paint, draw,and play with play dough. Art has been my part-time vocation and avocation, I was an art major, and it is a place where kids and I can connect.

Memories of Dad, and Dad's Memory

I am always amazed at people who have great recall of their childhood memories. Mine have always been sketchy. I do have some stray memories from very early childhood. I recall being frightened of a green light and what I thought were people like critters in white. I asked Mom if I had been in the hospital with asthma . She insisted it never happened. It came up one day when Dad was around. He had an excellent memory and he remembered me being in the hospital and he thought it was at age 1 or so. He got the baby books out and it was true. I'd had a serious asthma attack at age 11 months, allergic to peas, and ended up in the hospital. The green light was some kind of x-ray machine, a flouroscope (?) and the white clad staff was checking for pneumonia. In the forties they didn't allow parents in keep the child company. It's not a perfect memory, the terror is what I recalled and the green light that had become a recurring nightmare in my life. Mostly when my asthma was acting up. I was over 40 when I got the answer and the green lit dream went away.

Now Dad had a nearly perfect memory. He could read a book and then quote you page after page of it. He knew many poems in their entirety. Often he could tell you what page a particular passage was on. He was a scientist and his recall worked just as well for those long tomes of numbers and facts and theories. When he was in his 80's he lamented that his memory wasn't all it was but I could never tell and it was always better than mine. When we were kids he was a walking encyclopedia for the four of us. If we saw a butterfly, he knew it's common name, it's scientific name, what it ate, how it lived, how it reproduced. Same thing for fish, trees, and critters of all sorts. He could show you all the constellations and he knew where they'd be at different times of years. Trips were illustrated with his commentary about the geologic features of the region, how to find agates, how to tell fool's gold from the real deal, how not to get lost in the woods, what to do if you did, and so on. Even in his last years if I couldn't find an answer to something I could call him and get the answer even though much of his early teaching centered around us learning to find those things out for ourselves. We are all still library affectionados, living surrounded by books, dictionaries, thesaurus, and now our computers. Something strange or amiss, look it up. Something new going on - same thing. Thanks Dad.

Health Insurance

I had thought to ponder the proposals for taxing health benefits after watching the news and reading some commentaries. The more I read the more confused I got. Representative Thomas Petri, a Republican from Wisconsin and George J Mitchell, Democrat, Maine are proposing to limit the deductibility of medical benefits and insurance premiums. Like everything else lately the more I read the more I have to read, what a can of worms.

The proposal would for instance provide, as I understand it, a every family of four a yearly voucher worth about $1,800. My Medicare and medigap cost me about $4,800 for one person. The brief time that my sister's young family had to be on COBRA it was over $800 a month or $9,600 anuually some years ago. My single son has insurance he pays for with his employer in Oregon. It only covers up to $5,000 or $10,000 a year depending on which option you chose. And, it has a permanent pre-existing condition clause which means he has to pay for his Type 2 diabetes expenses out of pocket. Yet, he and others like him, are not counted in the numbers of Americans who are not insured at all. I don't believe it covers preventive care either, even though there is mounting evidence that it pays off not only in good health returns but dollars saved as well.

The fine state of Washington last year said that it takes a $10 an hour job to support one person here. That's a yearly salary of $20,800 and won't support a family of four here. They'd need housing assistance and would probably have to visit the food bank for starters. That won't buy good insurance or even mediocre insurance here. Mitchell's proposal says "it would be a good start for a working-poor family with an income of, say, $12,000 that pays no income tax." Not true. That $1800 isn't a "good start;" the family who received that in Washington wouldn't be able to use it. No cash to complete the deal. Which one of them will give up eating to make up the difference?

Our health care is in desperate shape for sure. I am one of the lucky ones so far, decent coverage and bucks to pay for it. Many elderly people are not. I have friends didn't sign up for Part D didn't take it as it is inadequate for their prescription needs, the money it costs is better put into the meds they need. Forgive me for lack of sparkling analysis but still. this needs to be watched by all of us.

Vacation of the Mind

It snowed some again last night; winter is just not going to give up. I bundled up and went out to defrost and scrape my car so I could go to my physical therapy appointment. They start me out with a hot pack for my neck and back. I was already sleepy, thank you Daylight Saving Time (why, why, why)! The heat and lying down was too good; I closed my eyes I thought about stretching out in the shade on some warm beach with the sounds of waves in the background. Alas, they woke me up and made me work. And the PT is working, better breathing, almost no pain. And then there is the little vacation of the mind on the heating pads.

I've take other mind vacations. Your brain is a marvelous thing. A few weeks ago my husband and I went to a larger city to shop and have lunch. We didn't actually shop much but we did have lunch at a Red Lobster, with a coupon. I told him I was going to pretend I was on vacation and ordered a tropical drink and a seafood salad. I described our imaginary location to him, white sand, salt breeze, palm trees. Maybe Florida, I've never been there, original, no, but after awhile we got into it and were making silly jokes and laughing and talking about smelling the sea breezes and thinking about eating fresh fruit and coconuts. We had a great time. Next time we should wear Aloha shirts under our warm coats and go to Hawaii.

I studied meditation and visualization in my explorative distant past. One of the things I still do is to create a completely safe, relaxing place in my mind, and close my eyes for awhile and chase the stress away. One of my places is a green, sunny meadow on a hillside over a small falls in on a little river. It is like a place I used to hike. The sun is shining through the evergreens on both sides of the river and there are ferns, salal, wild rhododendrons, and little red maples growing under the tree canopy. I can hear the water rush by, feel the breeze through the trees, and relax. I have a little yurt to stay in, supplied with whatever I need. In my head I sit on the grass in front of the yurt and let the sound of the water chase away whatever bothersome thoughts I have. I breath in and out and I become calm and centered again. When I practice regularly I can slip back into it quickly whenever I need to regroup, or get peaceful enough to sleep.

Invent a place or think of someplace you were safe and happy and recreate a picture of that in your head, making it 100% safe and adding little details that relax you. It could be outside, most of mine are, but it could be a safe, comfy room too. It can be anything you want. Once you have the place in mind, sit or lie down where you can relax and let the picture fill your mind and spend a few minutes experiencing the space you made for yourself. Bon Voyage