Chaplin revisited

After looking at the Google logo today, which is a clever short film in honor of the anniversary of Charles Chaplin's birthday, I was reminded of a post I wrote about Charles Chaplin in 2006. No point in rewriting the whole thing or reposting the picture, but one never knows what one might come across when going through things after people have died. In this case, it was things that had belonged to my father's mother, who died of a stroke in 1958 when she was 65 years old and I was 9 years old.

After my grandfather died, one of my aunts had taken a box of things home and later we were sent this copy of a picture of my grandmother...

which was taken when she was about 18 years old. Our entire family was certainly surprised to see this picture, because most of the pictures we had of her were when she was much older. And we were even more surprised when the picture of Chaplin was found.

We have just about finished going through our son's clothes. Taking it bit by bit. We were so surprised to find that he a lot of really nice clothes that he had collected in anticipation of -- what we don't know -- but most of them he never wore because he never went anywhere that required him to dress nice -- except for church, and he did have suit for that. Certainly anything he wrote to work at the sawmill was ruined in short order. At any rate, so far, and we are so thankful for this -- there have been no unpleasant surprises in his drawers, amongst his things, or under the bed.

“Lucy” puts ‘em on and takes ‘em off

I know that as an adult I am not a very enthusiastic wearer of shoes. Living in the country as we do and on the sort of land that we do have here in the Ozarks, means that going outside barefoot is not a very much fun unless one treads very, very carefully; I mean, mostly rocks here with a little dirt mixed in, dochna’ know.

I definitely prefer going barefoot in the house during the summer and in the winter getting by with thick socks or very soft-soled slippers. In any event, when ever I sit down in front of the computer my shoes end up on the floor under the desk. At the moment I have 3 pairs of shoes and slippers under the desk and another pair of shoes off to the side.

I suspect I was also not a very enthusiastic wearer of shoes when I was a little girl. I think my parents sang the first few lines of the popular tune of the time “Put your shoes on Lucy, don’t you know you’re in the city” to me frequently as away to jolly me into putting my shoes on.



At any rate, that tune has plays in my mind frequently in recent months, the main irony being that it is in the city, where nature has been bullied into submission by concrete and asphalt and lawns are carefully manicured and thick with various types of grass, that it actually is possible to run around quite freely outdoors without worrying about stepping on a rock.

However, sometime during 2010, and as vivid as some memories of 2010 are, I only have a vague recollection about other things, and thus I have no idea when this happened— possibly as late as in November when Nathaniel and I did a lot of schlepping through airports and then additional walking on top of that (mostly with shoes on, I might add)—plantar fasciitis developed in my right foot. What? Huh? What this means is that the bottom of the heel hurts  —  really hurts — and you must wear shoes all the time. Dr Zorba, who I listen to on public radio on Sunday afternoons, says people with plantar fasciitis should even wear rubber flip-flops in the shower. I did not have it bad enough that I required flip-flops for the shower, but I did find it necessary to wear my slippers to negotiate even the 10 steps from the bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

And then all of a sudden the plantar fasciitis went away. And I have no idea when it stopped hurting like crazy if I did not have something on my feet.

I only know I am very thankful that now that we are temporarily having summer in April that I can charge around the house barefoot without discomfort.

It is just very nice not to deal with that any more. Weaver of Grass wrote in one of her posts about getting old is not for "wimps.” How right she is. And her advice, mostly to "get on with it" and stop complaining is good as well, I think. All sorts of parts of my body seem to be falling apart – here a twinge, there a twinge, everywhere a twinge – but at least the heel of my right foot is one less thing I have to worry about. Now, if I can just figure out what is going on with my left knee….

We have some excitement in the kitchen

Richard was busy multitasking in the kitchen. He had fish baking in the convection oven, and then he decided to whip up a package of the chocolate-raspberry mousse dessert that we had found at the salvage store. (Sunday is eat-whatever-we-want day)

So he dumps the package in a bowl, pours in the milk, and begins beating it with the hand mixer at high speed, which he supposed to do for about 3 minutes. About halfway through the timer goes off for the fish, so he stops beating the dessert, sits the mixer up with the beaters over the bowl, and tends to the fish. About this time I pass through the kitchen and offer to help with finishing the dessert.

He agrees that would be a good idea, because he has to flip the fish and put it back in the oven.

So I plug in the mixer, and immediately the beaters begin to whir around at top speed, spraying chocolate mousse everywhere – on the refrigerator, all over the window, all over Richard who has just arrived at my shout of dismay.

It seems instead of turning the mixer off, he pulled the plug. 

So we stood there, laughing and each blaming the other for the mess, and offering well-chosen opinions about our respective intelligence levels.

The fact that this man I married in 1971 was and still is good looking (well, I think he is) was a plus, but the thing I have come to appreciate and treasure the most over the years has been his amazing sense of humor and his ability to make me laugh. Oh my, what a blessing that is!

Something else to think about

I suddenly have something else  -- and someone else -- to think about.

Sue, who I have known since high school...

(she is the one there on the right in this picture, who is behaving herself)

and who I saw in November when I went to Los Angeles…



has sent an e-mail announcing that early in March she found out that she has breast cancer. Her mother died of breast cancer 20 years ago at age 73.

Sue is a very smart woman and has been faithful about having her yearly mammogram, and they have caught this cancer very early. So early in fact, that they had to do the equivalent of an “E-ticket ride” (if you did not go to Disneyland during its early years of operation you can read an explanation here) to get a biopsy specimen because the spot was so small.

Naturally this is a roller coaster for her – and no doubt there is a battle on-going in her heart not to cave into fear. I understand a little of that fear – I had a breast lump removed in 1990, that I knew they knew wasn’t cancer, but they wouldn’t come right out and tell me for sure it wasn’t cancer until they got it out. I spent some time on pins and needles until we learned it was a fibrocystic lump. 

This is the real deal for her though, not fibrocystic breast disease, and I don’t even want to hint that I know how she feels.

A lot has changed in breast cancer treatment since her mother died, and her prognosis is very good. I am so sorry this is happening to her, but I think she is going to be fine. Praying about someone else’s crises often is just the thing to help divert self-absorption.  

When Sue got married, I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. She chose purple and orange for her colors, and at the time I thought, “You have got to be kidding! Purple and orange?” Of course, it was gorgeous.

In the winter of 1981, I received a box at Christmas from friend in Oregon. The two years we spent there changed our lives in ways I can’t even go into, and I have cherished in my heart the relationships I made there. There was a king-sized “friendship quilt” in the box – which we have used every winter since then – and there was also grapevine Christmas wreath. It has hung on various walls in the house, gathering dust, and occasionally getting knocked off, since 1981. It became sadder and more tired looking as each year passed, and finally, a few weeks ago, as Spring began to peak around the corner, I decided I would give the wreath a face lift.

My friend Judy thoughtfully cut out a florist’s advertisement from the local daily paper announcing that she refurbished wreaths and arrangements, so at our last appointment with the grief counselor, I dropped the wreath off at a florist shop. I told her to “fix it up.” I gave her a dollar limit on how much I wanted to spend, and told her I wanted it to be bright and pretty, and then I blurted out that I liked “purple and orange.”

Judy was kind enough to pick it up for me. I think the florist did a great job.

It is now hanging in safe spot on Richard’s office wall,

and every time I look at it, and I can see it easily where I sit at the table to eat, I think about Sue and I say a little prayer that….

she will get the best care possible from the medical team treating her…
she will be strong…
the treatment will work…
she will have peace…
that she will be surrounded by strong and supportive people who will encourage her not to give up… and
her faith will not waver...

Crivens!

I have heard writer’s block described as many things over the years, but if I had to add my own description of what it feels like, the most appropriate would be a predicament I was in a few years ago. I drove home from where ever I'd been, got out, and popped the hood on my car so I could disconnect the battery (no fancy hood release in this old car). There was slow leak on the battery that we could not pinpoint the source of and so my clever husband had installed a disconnect switch with a lever that had to be opened when the engine was turned off and shut when one wanted to start the car.

Somehow, my fingers got pinned between the hood and the hood release latch, and I was well and truly stuck. I started hollering for help—the pain was excruciating—and fortunately, Richard had seen me drive in and was wondering where I’d got too so he eventually came to see what was going on and figured out how to get me loose. It scared both of us very badly, and it changed forever how we approach the hood of a car. I have since heard of people self-amputating body parts to free themselves... well, it doesn't bear thinking about.

So that is sort of what it has felt like during the past couple of weeks, struggling to write something but not really being able too…                                                      

It became part of our habit while Nathaniel’s physical life was coming to an end for me to read a book to him and Richard in the evenings in the nursing home because we found ourselves running out of things to talk about, strange as that may seem. We all wanted something light and funny, so I read “Going Postal” by Terry Pratchett, and then I started a second one...

But time ran out for Nathaniel before I could finish it. We brought the book home and set it aside, because we were not emotionally ready for me to resume reading that one.

So we started Thud, yet another Terry Pratchett book, mainly because we still really did need something silly that we could laugh at. We finished that one. And then Richard decided maybe we should finish the Wee Free Men.
Every one of Pratchett’s novels has at least one really deep and profound thing buried in there amongst the silliness that can cause one to stop and reflect, and Wee Free Men is no exception.

Last week we went to Springfield for the first time since mid-December, the last time either of us was there because Nathaniel was in the hospital. As we passed the oh-so-familiar landmarks, we had some time to reflect on those many, many, many hours we spent driving him back and forth beginning in June, to various doctors or to the hospital for imaging studies and operations, and what not. Richard observed how resentful he sometimes felt that he had to give up so much time driving him back and forth, and now of course he is grateful for every minute he got to spend with Nathaniel.

And the thought has occurred to me more than once that it really is too bad that we can’t more easily develop an “attitude of gratitude” for things as they are happening instead of having to wait for some tragedy to wake us up. As Joni Mitchell points out “Don't it always seem to go.... you don’t know what you got ‘til its gone…”

When we were about half-way to Springfield, I came to the end of the Wee Free Men. Not to spoil it too badly for anyone who might want to read it, the heroine, 9-year-old Tiffany Aching, with the help of the Nac Mac Feegle (the fierce little blue men on the cover), has been successful on her perilous quest and is wanting some special schooling. She is met by Mistress Weatherwax, the person who would be in charge of all that, who tells her

“First, you get the test, and then you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.”

So I find myself thinking back on our lives since May 31, when I drove Nathaniel to the emergency department and heard the ER doc say “brain tumor or abscess” and then a week later, when I had to drive to Springfield by myself for the first time in years and years to take him to the hospital for his first operation, and Nathaniel was laying all the way back in the seat next to me, deathly ill because of the brain tumor…

And I wonder now how in the world Richard and I managed to pass all of those tests -- and Nathaniel too, for that matter. He is now free of all these worldly cares; but we, of course, are in the midst of the worst test ever. We are assured by friends who passed through this dark tunnel themselves 10 years ago and who know about these things, that we will pass this test as well. And then we will wonder how we managed it….

“Crivens!”— a word used frequently by the Nac Mac Feegle, and which we suspect is probably a swear word— has become our new favorite word to bellow when we have dropped something for the umpteenth time… or the cat has thrown up all over the carpet… or….

Weekend movie viewing

Today's Quote for the Day 
Not every story has explosions and car chases. That's why they have nudity and espionage.
- Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum

I enjoy a good car chase or explosion as much as anybody else (anybody who saw the classic Steve McQueen movie Bullitt, won't soon forget that car chase!) but it seems like a lot of movies are nothing more than excuses for car chases and explosions and there is little else going on to recommend them. 

Which prompts a few comments about The King's Speech, which did not have explosions or car chases or nudity or espionage. It played in the local theaters during at time when we had no interest in going to the movies and we missed it. When it won the some Academy Awards, as everyone suggested it would, then it was back in the local theaters and we were able to see it over the weekend.

I actually don't care very much about who does or does not win an Academy Award, and I certainly have not seen every film Colin Firth has made, and I suppose he has made some stinkers, but who can forget him as Mr Darcy? Or the character he played in the movie Love Actually.

Well, at any rate, he was truly wonderful, and The King's Speech had everything I like in movie. Drama. Laughs. A good plot. And it was true (or mostly true). It was a bit of feel-good entertainment that we sorely needed.

 

Signs are everywhere

Winter’s icy grip seems to be loosening a bit now that March is underway. Subtle – and not so subtle -- signs are appearing here and there. A ferocious thunderstorm moved over our area last night – lots of thunder and lightening and torrents of rain, instead of snow. The wet weather spring was flowing this morning for the first time in quite a while.

Several varieties of crocus grow in my garden; some came up a bit too early and succumbed after about a week to a sudden hard freeze; but another variety is now starting to bloom and doing well. Yellows buds are forming on the daffodils, and the forsythia are starting to show a bit of yellow as well.

A few birds are singing.And a pair of blue birds has been house hunting.

He is trying to entice her to come join him, but she seems disinterested.

After about a week of very cold temperatures, small animals that do not hibernate were suddenly out and about in the daytime, no doubt very hungry after being kept “in” (wherever “in” is for them) during the bitter cold. Our cat went nose-to-nose with an armadillo that was rooting around in the front yard one afternoon. Of course, I had no camera at hand to take a picture of this hilarious scene.

The yellow-rumped warblers are mobbing the suet feeders I have hanging on two sides of the house.

They will leave soon for parts north, and perhaps they are building up reserves for the flight.

For several days running, this little fellow was also out and about in the daylight.

Then we did not see him for several days.

A few days ago as we left for our walk, I spotted him on the ground.

Dead.

We wondered what happened to him. It was like he was just walking along and collapsed and died.

I have been taking care of our pastor’s little dog for a couple of days while she recovers from having had some tests on her heart. She is stuck in Springfield for reasons I won’t go into, but this is a classic case of health care managed by insurance companies: The doctor always keeps his patients at least 24 hours after an angiogram – if for no other reason than to make sure there is no problem with the femoral artery access site --  but the insurance company says this is an outpatient procedure so he had to discharge her.

This little guy is smaller than the cat, and she is tolerating him surprisingly well. I am not sure what he is – maybe a Poodle crossed with a Bichon Frise. Our pastor found him running down the middle of the street while she was at a yard sale so she doesn’t know what he is either. He is mostly fluff. I have missed having a dog so much, and I am enjoying him, even though being around such a small dog makes me a little nervous. I put a collar on him that has a bell (it belongs to the cat) so I can hear him and not accidently step on him by accident.

I cooked two turkeys today, and he quickly discovered that amazingly good little bits appear magically (accidently and on purpose) on the floor.

The care and feeding of a blog

Yesterday we discussed in Sunday School portions of the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the idea of  “nursing” as it applies to nursing anger or nursing a grudge, or nursing bitterness, and what that can lead to. The aspect of “nursing” that I directed the class to think about was the idea of “care and feeding”, asking the women to remember what it was like “nursing” their infant, and what that involved. Reminding them that we have a choice about the sorts of emotions we choose to “nurse.”

Even if we never literally nursed an infant, we all know about the care and feeding of our bodies – indeed, many of us spend much too much time “nurturing” ourselves in this way and are made aware of it every time we get on the scale or attempt to button that pair of jeans that seemed to fit just fine last week.

I am particularly pleased with the “care and feeding” of my own body today. Last night before I went to bed, I put white beans and boiling water in our thermos, and sliced a lovely red bell pepper and an onion, and put them in the refrigerator. This morning when I got up at 5 am, I dumped the beans, which were still steaming hot and 90% cooked, the peppers, onions, leftover cooked red lentils, tomato paste, some wine, and some spices in the crock pot and turned it on so I would have something delectable to eat for lunch. Richard does his own lunch -- I had already tried Bulgarian Red Pepper Stew on him some time back and I have marked in the margin of cookbook “Richard hates this.”

And it occurred to me that I have not “cared and fed” this blog for a while. One of the songs I hear occasionally on the Christian radio station has something to do with “let’s go dance in the minefield.” The past 2 weeks have been something of an emotional minefield for us. I have been sort of reluctant to write about it, but there is another  reason also, which I will get to eventually 

We spent the week leading up to Feb 12 preparing for our son’s Celebration of Life, and because our church does not have equipment to project presentations or play DVDs, we created picture displays to honor the various stages of his life. Our son would have turned 34 on Feb 12, so there was the added remembrance of significance of that day for us… and then, also on Feb 12, some years back, our Little Dog died.

A minefield.

I mentioned to our bereavement counselor when we saw her on Thursday that I was feeling so guilty for still grieving about the dog in light of my mother having died a little over a year ago, and our son’s death a month earlier, how can I possibly be still thinking about the stupid dog, for crying out loud. And she stopped me and said… “You are grieving the loss of the relationship – a relationship that is gone forever – and that is a valid sorrow and you should not feel guilty about it.”

I have decided she is worth her weight in gold.

And backtracking a bit, there is Valentines Day. Richard is the sort of guy who simply goes out and buys what he wants when he gets the idea that he wants it. So when you ask him, is there anything particular you would like for Valentine’s Day, he can honestly say, “No, there isn’t.” What the heck do I do now? Get him nothing? A box of candy which neither of us needs because we have both gained back quite a bit of weight in the last couple of months?

A minefield.

Well, it happened that just before I left to go to town for the aerobics class, there was an interview on National Public Radio with this lovely British cooking person, Nigella Lawson, who I have heard several times, and she suggested making a really wonderful steak at home instead of going out to eat. 

And an almost unbelievable thing happened. I stopped at the store and there, marked down tremendously in price, were two beautiful packages of $6.99/lb steak that I was able to get for about $3.00 for both of them. It was one our better Valentine Day experiences. I did not actually prepare the steak like Nigella suggested because I didn’t want to mess with the sauce, but we each put on a bit of “Claude’s Western Style Barbeque Sauce,” which has almost no calories, and it was wonderful.

But at any rate, I have had a difficult time drumming up the energy to write for this blog, and I have worried about it just sort of withering away and dying for lack of attention (which happens to some infants who are not nurtured), and those few followers that I do have wandering off to greener pastures. A weird sort of God-thing happened. During the last 6 weeks of our son’s life, almost all of my work dried up. I had just enough to keep me busy, but not once during this time did I have to make a decision about whether I needed to stay home and get the work done or miss a deadline, or leave and stay with our son at the nursing home. Thus, I was able to spend about 4 hours a day with him. In the last 2 weeks, however, the flood gates have opened, and the work has poured in. I have been a bit preoccupied. That’s it folks. I am not fallen off into the “Slough of Despond” like John Bunyon’s Pilgrim. Just busy…

Sittin' tight...

Nothing warms the cockles of my heart quite as much as waking up to 6 inches of fresh snow on the ground with the knowledge that I do not have to immediately leap into my car and race to the post office so I can shovel the sidewalks in front of the building so someone doesn’t slip and fall and sue the post office.

I worked for that venerable institution for about 15 years. I started out as the contract cleaner. In addition to keeping the inside of the building clean,  in the summer I had to mow the lawns and also wash windows – and there are a lot of huge windows on the building – and in the winter, I had to make sure the sidewalks in front and on the side of the building were clear of ice and snow.

They loved me so much that they offered me a job as a temporary worker, and so for almost 1 year, around 1990, I was a substitute mail delivery person.

Indeed I did deliver the mail – through rain and sleet and snow – just like the motto says. And I got to drive a jeep with the steering on the right side, just like in England. 

I have not fond memories of one particular morning when I had to struggle through about 1 foot of snow with a thin crust of ice on top, and negotiate icy porches to put mail in people’s boxes.

I did actually make an attempt to become full-time employee when a position opened up, but I got beat out on the test by a woman who scored lower than I did but got 10-points added because she was a disabled veteran.

So, I went back to being the contract cleaner. And on 6 days a week I showed up there faithfully, year after year after year. And then I decided to do something different in my life – mainly we both felt were just getting too old to do the job. We? Yes, Richard is very happy too. Because I ended up getting him involved in several projects there because I could not manage them myself­— and the last time we had to strip and refinish the floors it about killed us. So, the time had come…

And so now on a snowing morning, I can sit and watch the flakes come down and feel very happy inside that I can stay inside and I don’t have to go anywhere, if I don’t want too.

A frozen alternative...

Several days ago Richard hauled out a 10-pound bag of chicken leg quarters from the freezer because said we were out of room and I needed to cook it so it would take up less space.

So after it had thawed sufficiently in the refrigerator, I put about 5 pounds of it in the crockpot and started cooking "Two Meals for Four People", a recipe from my Mennonite cookbook that results in chicken stew for one meal and then a very hearty soup for another meal.

The other 5 pounds got liberally sprinkled with a Jamaican-style jerk spice and went into the oven to bake.

So after all of this chicken was cooked, I took everything off the bones, and packaged it up, and all of the the went into a pot on the stove and boiled some more, and so by early evening I had a nice kettle of  very hot and very flavorful chicken broth.

I decided to set the whole deal outside on the porch to cool off a bit so the fat would rise and it would be cold before I put it in the refrigerator. As the evening progressed, I totally forgot it was out there (naturally) and so it sat outside all night and until midafteroon yesterday when I couldn't find the pot I was looking for and suddenly remembered  I had forgotten to bring it in.

I guess the only reason why the whole mess wasn't spilled all over the porch was that it was too cold for the raccoons to venture out and help themselves. At any rate, it was 5 degrees outside yesterday when I looked at the thermometer and it didn't rise much over about 15 degrees for the entire day, and so when I brought the broth in, it was frozen solid.

The porch just might make a handy-dandy freezer on the odd occasion when we are plunged into the deep freeze. Which somehow reminds me of the wonderful story I read a few years ago about the woman doctor in Antarctica who ended up operating on herself for breast cancer because there was no way they could get her out. Seems to me they slept in portable freezers to help keep warm...