As We Spin Our Wheels And Rage Out of Control This July 4th...

Goodbye, Tee!

The “player to be named later” has gone free agent. 

He came into the family in 2004, brought home from the vet’s office with his brother Alvin.  They’d been abandoned by their mother as tiny babies, and were bottle raised by the vet until they could be adopted.  We meant to adopt only one…but by the time we went to pick him up, Alvin and his little brother were the only 2 left in the cage.  We couldn’t take one and leave the other.  So we took them both—Alvin was the original draft choice, and Theodore was “the player to be named later.” For much of their lives with us, the boys were not really individual cats; each was half of the pair.  Salt and pepper.  Bread and butter. Yin and yang. "Ow" (Alvin) and "Tee" (Theo.)  

Theo was the sweet one.  His expression was always one of pure innocence and cuteness.  He had a loud purr and a quiet voice…he’d look you in the eye and open his mouth, and nothing but the tiniest squeak would come out.  He also had a stubborn streak a mile wide.  From the time he was a kitten, if he decided he wanted something, he literally put his head down and charged right after it.  No barrier we ever tried to erect between him and something he wanted was proof against his iron-willed head-butt.

He loved sunshine and soft pillows and snuggling with his brother and the rest of the crew on the bed or any available chair.  

He and Alvin had lived their whole lives in our house in Scappoose.  And more than any of the rest of them, the move was traumatic for Theo.  He hollered balefully for the entire two-hour drive from the old house to the new house, and hid in closets and behind furniture for weeks during the unsettling process of transitioning all our stuff—all his stuff—to the new house.  Though he did eventually seem to settle in well enough, I’m not entirely sure that the trauma didn’t weaken him to the point of being susceptible to life-threatening illness.  I read somewhere that cancer is a disease of opportunity, and that it can take hold when an immune system is compromised by emotional trauma.  I fear that may be what happened to our Theo. 

We’d had him to the vet to have some teeth and a skin tumor removed back in October.  He was fine for a couple of months, and then he seemed to have trouble eating.  He lost a bunch of weight.  I was convinced that the new vet we had chosen had somehow botched the tooth extraction, and that he now had a raging infection in his mouth and sinuses.  I’m still not sure that wasn’t the problem, but during pandemic hampered vet visits, as far as I know, she didn’t even look in his mouth or explore that possibility.  Hard to know when you drop the kitty off at curbside and they come out and get him, and try to communicate the exam by phone. 

It’s just as likely that the one suspicious skin tumor that was removed was cancerous, and the cancer had migrated to some vital part of his body.  In this time of pandemic, with the husband looking at the end of his 26-year job and our small business in pandemic-related hiatus, we could not afford a battery of tests and multi-thousand dollar treatments.  And I’m not sure I would have done them if we HAD unlimited funds.  I’m not much of a believer in prolonging life—ANY kind of life—at any cost.  We do that to our fellow human beings, and it doesn’t seem like a very positive thing to me, most of the time.  I can’t endorse inflicting our stubborn struggle against death on our companion animals.  When it’s time for them to give up their flesh, they should be allowed to do so, with as little pain and anguish as possible, of course.  But we need to LET THEM GO. 

So we did what we thought was enough.  We put him on antibiotics, pain killers and other supportive drugs, along with administering fluids from an IV bag once a day, for a little over a month.  We watched him rally, and we watched him wane.  He would eat well for a couple of days, then turn away from food for another day or two.  Every time I thought we would wake up to a stiff, cold cat body curled up in a corner somewhere, I’d open the door to the family room in the morning and he would come striding through, looking to take up his station by the water dish.  He took to spending his waking hours in the closet in Matt’s office.  I would bring him plates of blended cat food every 90 minutes or so…and if he managed to lap up a teaspoon or so at a time, I’d rejoice.  But no matter what we did, he didn’t get better.  We had to admit he was still on a steady downhill slide.  

And a few days ago, we lost the fight to keep our boy alive and comfortable.  To save him that last traumatic car ride and vet visit, we had a mobile vet come to the house and help him on his way.  With social distancing, mask and glove-wearing and staying six feet away from an outsider human, it wasn’t exactly a kumbaya moment... 

But he is free now to return to the Creator and play among the stars until we're together again…in another life, on another world, in another form.

Until we meet again, my Theo!  

  

  

...without comment

Memorial Day 2020

Sheltering in Place, Part 2

All that does seem rather dark and foreboding, doesn’t it?  How could two people who had become so distant over so many years, happily—or even bearably—cohabit under such draconian restrictions?  It’s understandable that we would be miserable…scratching at the walls, driving each other crazy, staging spectacular verbal battles, playing tug-of-war over household responsibilities; in general, just hating life.

I had geared up for a fight, back in March, when I told him if he went to Portland, he should stay there for the duration.  For 26 years, the job has been his #1 priority.  It ALWAYS took first place, over me, over our marriage, over our home; over “joint” endeavors upon which we embarked with his full consent and commitment (or so I thought.) Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays—any day or time that could be construed as being personally important—were only celebrated to the extent that the job would allow him to do so.  When we lived apart, he’d let it be known the job was his priority and would always get the lion’s share of his time and energy, even when time or energy might be better invested into his home and marriage.  When it came to “our” business ventures, his interest/involvement would wax and wane erratically, depending on whether he was engaged and happy at the job, or frustrated and bored with it.

The job was the constant during all those years, all those ups and downs, all those attempts to break out and make a life together. It was at once his refuge and his purgatory.  It gave him something to cling to, and with both hands engaged in holding on to it, he couldn’t reach for anything newer, or better, or more rewarding, or even different.

As the years went by, I learned that if I wanted a life, I had to get my own.  In our younger days, we’d loved camping.  We’d taken weekends in vacation rentals in little tourist spots all over Oregon.  We’d invested countless hours and dollars remodeling every house we had ever lived in. Then we bought the restaurant, and everything changed.  Everything stopped.  Eventually, the restaurant chewed us up and spit us out.  But we couldn’t get our old life back. 

He withdrew from me and anything I had ever had anything to do with.  He hated camping.  A succession of travel trailers that I thought I couldn’t live without sat moldering in the driveway.  Getting him to take time off so we could go on a long weekend was nearly impossible.  He stopped caring about the house and the yard.  He’d come home from work, have dinner, and then sit in front of the television until he went to bed.  And all day Saturday and at least half of Sunday, he spent on the couch in front of the tv.  And I…well, I tried to get a life.  I invested time in what was now MY small business—which eventually led me to spending many hours in Eugene at the building I had bought to house it.  I drove hundreds of miles with my dog and my camera.  I took the trailers out for solitary vacations. I walked and kept house and decorated for holidays and escaped to Eugene by myself as often as I could.  To say we grew apart would be like calling the Grand Canyon a trickle through a ravine.      

So, yes.  I expected a struggle when I told him not to come back if he drove up to Portland on March 17 of this year.  After all we’d been through for a quarter of a century—more than half our married life—over which his work had always taken priority, I did not believe for one minute that even COVID-19 would able to loose the chains that bound him to that job.  There was little doubt in my mind that he would go anyway, and I would be left, as had become our habit, to get my own life.  Only this time, THIS time, he might not come back.  It would be up to me to conquer the debilitating anxiety, hold down the fort, maintain the house and the pets and the yard, alone.  I could do it.  I would do it.  I didn’t intend to beg, or cry, or threaten.  If he made up his mind, he would just be…gone.  It’s not like we weren’t mostly apart anyway.

But, to my utter astonishment, he didn’t go. With hardly a peep of argument.  It was hard for me to be properly dumbfounded, lost as I was in my personal hell of runaway anxiety.  I didn’t even consider how being together 24/7 was going to play out.  All I really knew was there was one less thing to be crazy worried about—he was not going to go out in the world and bring the disease back to our home.

For the first two weeks of our shared “social distancing,” I wouldn’t have been able to say how things were working out between us if you asked.  I had fallen so far inside my own head that all my waking energy was spent trying to keep myself from being completely swallowed up by that black hole.  

But as time went on, I noticed that I wasn’t fighting quite so hard.  This was partly because we’d been home long enough to have outlasted the incubation period if we had been infected.  But, more than that, it was because I wasn’t battling alone.  Life no longer consisted only of me straining to create a satisfying solitary existence while waging a lonely war against my anxiety, as it had been for most of the last twenty years.  Just having someone in the house to shoulder some of the burden of everyday life—mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, caring for the animals, planning grocery deliveries, working on household projects—was a godsend.  And having another person consistently within shouting distance, someone with needs and fears and challenges of his own, served as a life ring.  It dragged me out of my own head and pulled my attention to someone who was not me.

At some point, I noticed this, and sat and thought about it for a bit.  And what I realized was that I was hunkered down, socially distancing and sheltering in place with…my best friend.  After all the years of see-sawing commitment; of almost getting close enough then pushing each other away; of frustration and anger and hurt; we still liked each other.  I suppose if that basic fact were not true—if we were not on some level best friends through everything—we would not still be together at all. 

I told someone a couple of weeks ago that this “difficult” time we’re living through has actually given me the opportunity to tend my relationship with my husband, with whom I have “really needed to reconnect.”  During the days, he “works” from home, on what is left of his work, and I fuss around with house and/or yard projects.  In the afternoons, we work on projects together, or go for drives, do online shopping, or do our little one-mile “walk-at-home” workouts together.  In the evenings, we settle in and binge-watch several episodes of our favorite reruns on tv.  One night a week, we declare “no tv night,” and after dinner, we play cribbage or Racko until bed time. At the end of every evening, I fill up the kitchen sink and we do the day’s dishes together (our “new” house came without a dishwasher.  But who needs one?)

We’re so comfortable in our isolation, that I almost feel guilty to be so blessed, when so many others are suffering so much pain and loss during this dark time.

In the mornings, when I go outside to feed the outside animal life and drink my coffee, I salute the four compass points and honor the Spirits of East, South, West and North from whom I have sought guidance for years.  And I make it a point to express to each Spirit that I am grateful, SO grateful for the blessings and the guidance that have been so freely given to me and my household during these hard times. 

I’m pretty sure there are still difficult times in store for us, financially, at least.  His job will be over by the end of July, and our small business is in a state of limbo, without festivals, fairs and markets at which to sell our wares.  Income and health care are looming worries.  But the Universe has continued to show such care and love for our little household that I can’t help but rest in it, confident that, as always, we will be provided for, one way or another.

Sheltering in Place, Part 1

In an online article, a writer described the quasi-post-apocalyptic Twilight Zone that we are living in as “the darkest time of our lives.”

Yes…I guess one could call it “dark.”  And frightening.  And uncertain.  And tedious…yet hyper-stimulating.  In a very bad way.

For the first couple of weeks after I fully began to understand the lay of this new pandemic land, it was all of those things. I was scared almost out of my wits.  Every morning I dreaded getting out of bed, because I spent every waking hour in crazy fear; any time I had an ache or got cold or sneezed or coughed…that was It.  I had It.  I was going to die.  I couldn’t even think about my sisters or husband or in-laws coming down with It.  It was a death sentence for my loved ones that I could not allow to enter my thoughts.  As it was, just obsessing about my own health, I was nearly paralyzed with terror.

After a week or two, I knew that I couldn’t go on like that.  I was literally going to kill myself with stress and anxiety.  And the thought occurred to me that, hey, if you’re worried about dying, THIS is not living.

Long ago, back in my bible-thumping days, I learned a verse that went something like, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” (Never let it be said, by even the staunchest non-believer, that the bible does not contain nuggets of extraordinarily simple wisdom…)  I remember reading that verse for the first time…and feeling my saner, more logical self peering over her spectacles at my anxious, crazy-with-worry self and saying, “Hmmm.  Good point.”  Countless times in the intervening years, I’ve used those words to throw a wet blanket on the raging anxiety that has threatened to incinerate me.  I’ve calmed myself to a kind of wobbly sensibility, and kept walking forward.

The upside-down, inside-out world in which we now find ourselves required a repeated dose of that verse…along with several sessions of self-smudging while boldly beseeching the Creator for healing and calming of my distressed spirit. 

And, it worked.  I can get through a day without spending every minute hyper-aware of every change in my body, real or imagined.  I’ve learned the benefit of staying busy to provide distraction from obsessing about my health.  There are countless little projects to work on around the house, and the sense of accomplishment that goes along with getting things done has served to considerably lighten the load. 

As well, I must admit that, for me, the “social distancing” quotient of this weird and unsettled time has not been a particularly heavy burden.  I have never needed to be around lots of people.  And since so much of our connection to other people these days is virtual, I don’t understand how staying at home and haunting electronically-enabled communities is so different from what our 21^st-century lives have been. 

(I will state for the record, however, that my view on this might be significantly different if I was 30-something, suddenly without a job or forced to work from home, and had to simultaneously juggle that AND entertaining/educating my kids, for whom I had heretofore enjoyed what amounted to state-funded daycare; which I never considered could disappear in the wink of a pandemic, and in the absence of which, there is no “plan b.”  Many lives have been pummeled and scattered to the four winds.  My life has shrunk into…a slightly more compact version of what it already was.)            

When it comes to the loneliness of social distancing, I’m kind of immune. Which is not to say that I’m not well acquainted with loneliness. 

A small handful of trusted people have been as much “community” as I could ever handle.  Unfortunately for me and for those people, when they get close enough to be “trusted,” I sink my talons into them and hold on for dear life.  Most people don’t respond well to that.  As they have unhooked themselves from my grasp and backed away to a safe distance, I’ve been left mostly on my own.  So loneliness has been a constant thread throughout the fabric of my life.

Anyone familiar with recurring themes of this blog knows that “the café years” irrevocably damaged my relationship with my husband.  But in fact, it was well on its way to being damaged years before that…from about the time my sister passed away in 1995.  We were still in the first half of our four-decade-and-counting partnership then.  We had only been married 19 years.  Up until then, we’d been hiking along, hand in hand, on the trail of upward mobility.  I got a great job.  He got a great job.  Then I lost my great job AND my sister, within 6 months of each other.  Suddenly I was lying by the side of the trail, broken and hurt.  He stayed beside me for a time, but I didn’t get better.  So he kept going…dragging me along, for awhile.  Then leaving me behind to get strong and catch up with him when I was well.  Ten years later, I had just about reached him.  We were inches from clasping hands and resuming our journey together.  Then we bought the restaurant.  And by the end of that five years, he had balked and run so far away from me that I couldn’t even see him.  And I believed I never would see him again.   

Twenty years spent trying to puzzle out exactly where he and I stood with each other.  And bobbing and weaving, and slapping and ducking, and giving up and striking out on my own; before coming to the eventual painful conclusion that doing stuff alone is not only no fun…it might not even be possible for an anxiety-ridden, emotionally exhausted sexagenarian.

That is the platform from which we dived into “social distancing.”  I was holding down the fort in our new, mortgage-free digs in Eugene while he lived in a succession of seedy motels three days a week, because…job.  Then the virus invaded, with its fear and uncertainty and economic upheaval.  The only imperative that echoed through my entire being was, “Stay home.  Stay safe.”  In mid-March, I told the husband if he left the house to drive up to Portland that week, he should stay there. 

He didn’t go.

So.  From a place of emotional truce facilitated by leading largely separate lives, we came fact-to-face with the prospect of inhabiting an 8000 square foot piece of property upon which squatted 1200 square feet of indoor living space.  Together.  Alone. 

This story is getting quite long.  I think I'll break it into a couple of parts.  Part 2 coming soon...I hope.         

We Must Hope...

COVID-19 Gallows Humor

I didn’t make these up...they came from somewhere on the interwebs. But we could all use a little comic relief these days...

1. Half of us are going to come out of this quarantine as amazing cooks. The other half will come out with a drinking problem.

2. I used to spin the toilet paper like I was on “Wheel of Fortune.” Now I turn it like I’m cracking a safe.

3. I need to practice social distancing from ... the refrigerator.

4. Still haven’t decided where to go for Easter ... The Living Room or The Bedroom.

5. PSA: Every few days, try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believing all is well in the kingdom.

6. Homeschooling is going well. Two students suspended for fighting and one teacher fired for drinking on the job!

7. I don’t think anyone expected that when we changed the clocks we’d go from Standard Time to Twilight Zone

8. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came into the house, told my dog...we laughed a lot.

9. So, after this quarantine, will the producers of “My 600-Pound Life” just find me or do I find them?

10. My body has absorbed so much soap and disinfectant lately that when I pee it cleans the toilet.

11. Day 5 of Homeschooling: One of these little monsters called in a bomb threat.

12. Day 6 of Homeschooling: My child just said: “I hope I don’t have the same teacher next year.” I’m offended.

My Self-Isolation Quarantine Diary:

Day 1 – I can do this!! Got enough food and wine to last a month!

Day 2 – Opening my 8th bottle of wine. I fear wine supplies might not last!

Day 3 – Strawberries: Some have 210 seeds, some have 235 seeds. Who Knew??

Day 4 – 8 p.m.: Removed my Day Pajamas and put on my Night Pajamas.

Day 5 – Today, I tried to make hand sanitizer. It came out as Jell-O Shots!!

Day 6 – I get to take the garbage out. I’m so excited, I can’t decide what to Wear. 

Day 7 – Laughing way too much at my own jokes!!

Day 8 – Went to a new restaurant called “The Kitchen.” You must gather all the ingredients and make your own meal. I have no clue how this place is still in business.

Day 9 – I put liquor bottles in every room. Tonight, I’m getting all dressed up and going bar hopping.

Day 10 – Struck up a conversation with a spider today. Seems nice. He’s a web designer.

Day 11 – Isolation is hard. I swear my fridge just said, “What the hell do you want now?”

Day 12 – I realized why dogs get so excited about something moving outside, going for walks or car rides. I think I just barked at a squirrel.

Day 13 – If you keep a glass of wine in each hand, you can’t accidentally touch your face.

Day 14 – Watched the birds fight over a worm. The Cardinals lead the Blue Jays 3-1.

Day 15 – Anybody else feel like they’ve cooked dinner about 395 times this month?