Update: Where Have I Been?

Just in case anyone's wondering, I'm still alive. My parents have needed a lot of help since the beginning of April. Dad was hospitalized from April 1 through the 18th. I've basically been helping them almost every day since then. Paul was in Missouri for six weeks to help. Neither of us could have gotten through these few months alone. I'm flat-out exhausted. Hopefully they are in a place, now, where they don't need me to care for them on a daily basis. There is still a load of work to do. Now that my shoulder's good and messed up, and all the joints and muscles in my legs, arms, and back ache, no more furniture needs to be moved. (Good, but not surprising timing, there.) But there's a lot of administrative work to do, financial, logistical, healthcare, etc.

I haven't been able to get billable hours, to speak of, for this whole time. So naturally, no time to blog. And I'm not ready for any kind of Jar of Goodness crap.

Except . . .

For all of those who helped me, and helped us, and helped my parents, these past months. Far too many to mention right now.

I don't have the time for gratitude now. I shouldn't even be writing this now, because I need to WORK. And I need to mow the lawn before it rains again. And so much more I need to do. I need to make dinner. The beat goes on.

In closing (for now), here's a gratuitous picture of Brenda sleeping on the sunporch. Gggggghhh.

P.S. Oh yeah, we still need to take down those storm windows and put up the screens . . . so much for my sore shoulder . . .

Jar of Goodness 3.9.25: Op Op Anniversary

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for this, the Opulent Opossum!

There have been sixteen years of the Op Op! If you want to start reading from the beginning, visit my humble first post.

Sixteen years. Looking back on that first year, goodness, I blogged a lot. Twenty-six posts in the first month alone! And in the first year, 206 posts!

The annual tally came down quite a bit starting in 2012, with annual posts equaling what I was posting weekly that first year.

From the start, my goal was to post something at least weekly. I had plenty of ideas. I was so enthusiastic. But these days, it’s hard to feel enthusiastic about anything. Okay: Coffee in the morning. The first truly warm days. Crocuses starting to bloom. Ibuprofen. . . . Things like that.

So, the Jar of Goodness concept keeps me plugging away, keeps the focus short and sweet. I guess I’ve gotten too lengthy in most of my recent posts. Too much to say on any subject. Too many tangents. But JOG keeps me on my toes.

But as always, I do have a list of things to write about and share here on the Op Op. I wonder if anybody really reads this. I don’t have a sense of my “audience,” because I don’t believe I actually have one anymore. Do I need to update my design, my masthead, my look? Do I need to animate the thing? Who cares about any of that? I don’t think my posts ever come up as results in Google searches; page titles and key word labels appear not to have any impact on that at all. Maybe it’s because I don’t “monetize” my blog? Do I really need to change the way I label my posts, to try to game the search engines? Look, I ain’t got time for that.

As I write this, it’s clear I’m experiencing another one of my “down” morning moods, so I’m going to stop while I’m ahead. Hooray for the Opulent Opossum! Sixteen years! Op Op Hooray!

Jar of Goodness 3.2.25: Journaling

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for my habit of keeping a journal.

Decades before I started this blog, in which I mostly share happy things (because I need to do it to keep myself out of the Slough of Despond), I started keeping actual handwritten journals. Bound books, in which I’m unfettered by propriety. I can write anything, draw pictures and cartoons (well, my pictures are all pretty much cartoons), and glue in anything that fits.

It’s a record of my life and my mentality. I keep notes. I can tell you with accuracy what I was doing and thinking the afternoon of June 25, 1989. A summer that changed my life. What my attitude was. If I only took photographs, it would be harder to revisit the moment, the mood, the magic. Or whatever. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t take photographs, because it forced me to take notes. Everyone around me seemed to have a camera, so why should I need one? I provide the background story to everyone’s snapshots.

And writing, I’m able to put it down, let it go, whatever “it” is. A frustration, a joy, a moment of magic. The pleasures can be immortalized, remembered. The angers, injustices are frozen in stasis, finished, banished into history.

And someday, my journals will turn up in a stuffy flea market, and some lucky buyer will have a helluva hoot reading them. (I know I’d buy someone’s journal collection if I found it at a secondhand store!)

Jar of Goodness 1.26.25: Cozy Mysteries

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for cozy mysteries.

“Whaaaat?” you say? “Julie, don’t you have a degree in English literature? Aren’t you a professional editor with fifteen years’ experience in scholarly publishing? Aren’t you just a little above mass-market, easy-reading, often-sadly-edited, formulaic, shallow, etc., etc. novels? What used to be called ‘dime-store’ novels? The successors to, say, Harlequin romances?” (Insert retching sounds here.)

Well, I’m coming out of the closet. It turns out I’m not above it. And I have my reasons.

First, I started reading these when Mom had gotten shingles and her vision was messed up. One of her great pleasures these days is devouring these cozy mysteries. (We can’t keep up with her in buying ones she hasn’t read yet. And yes, she says she remembers all the stories, so it’s not like she can reread them and like it.)

So while she was at rehab places, she was already in the dumps because she wasn’t at home. And naturally, we all strive to keep her happy, or failing that, contented. So I found her current book next to her chair at home, brought it with me to her room at Columbia Post-Acute, and read to her, starting a little before where her bookmark was. (This is quality time between us, see?)

It was kind of funny to pick up reading at the midpoint of the mystery novel. Who’s who? Why is everyone looking for whatever-it-is? Whatever does ice cream have to do with this—it’s in the title, right? And why are recipes added in here and there, the way a bad romance novel has sex scenes gratuitously sprinkled throughout the story?

As I read to her, I occasionally interjected: “OH! Mom, I think HE is the killer! He’s GOTTA be! Don’t you think?” Mom would just look at me, smile, and shrug. She’s read enough of these, she can probably figure out who “dunnit” by the time the murder occurs, usually by the end of the fourth chapter.

Anyhow, after we finished that one and started on another, Mom graduated from the rehab place and went home with her books. She got glasses that corrected her off-kilter vision, and since then, she’s reading books herself. (I might be misremembering: she’s been in and out of the hospital and rehab places, I might have read other books to her here and there. It’s hard to keep track of them. They’re like bunnies.)

Actually, I know more than a few professional manuscript editors who like to read mysteries (not necessarily cozies, however). I think it’s that the pace and the content—the puzzle—exercises a part of one’s mind that allows the editor to temporarily bypass the part that notices the sylistic inconsistencies, infelicities of grammar, typographical errors, misused homonyms, and so on. You just kind of gallop through a page-turner. You can enjoy reading again, as long as the book lasts.

I also like it that these sorts of books blot out whatever else is on your mind. Like what's going on in politics. How Mom is refusing to do what she needs to do to help Dad and allow me to keep a job. This form of escape is quite nice when you’re having trouble getting to sleep. I read until the type turns different colors or starts to wiggle around, and my eyes close, and the book folds shut on my hand. Blissful sleep.

Honestly, I haven't cared about mystery novels since I quit reading Nancy Drew books in about fourth grade. What's the point? After my preteen sci-fi craze, I quickly started devouring self-help books and nonfiction natural history books. But I kind of like these cozy mysteries.

Sue and I recently reread Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, the one that parodies the “horrid” Gothic novels of her day. In it, although she pokes fun at people devouring stuff like Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (Sue and I read that too, and laughed at it even as it drew us in), she also mounts a spirited defense of the novel as a literary form. In the early 1800s, mysteries and such were viewed as primarily women’s reading, and lightweight, worthless, even degrading stuff. But in such books, Austen pointed out, “the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” Look, they are fun to read, and the best novelists have the ability to make their characters and plots seem absolutely real. It’s magic.

Mass-market cozy mysteries hardly contain the “best-chosen language,” or (superlatively) the “liveliest effusions of wit and humour,” but they do usually contain some well-crafted dialogue with a good ear for common speech, and the characters in them often are well-rounded and interesting. (Okay, a lot of them have characters that are flat “types,” but many of the books are in the first person, and at least the interior dialogue of the heroine is interesting and relatable.)

These books transport you, too. They all have a certain setting, such as a cheese shop in Sonoma, a candy shop in Ohio’s Amish country, a bicycle shop on Cape Cod, and a Granadian-immigrant family bakery in New York City’s Little Caribbean. I don’t think any are set in a grim apartment complex in a boring Midwest or southern city about a person who, say, edits online content, or works at Walmart for a living.

There are rules about cozy mysteries: no truly gruesome details, torture, or deaths; no slaughter of the innocents (all the victims are generally people who had it coming to them, so there are usually multiple suspects); no explicit sex scenes; the protagonist is almost always a female who is some kind of small business owner living her dream; male friends are platonic friends; male love interests typically don’t do more to advance the plot than be fantastically supportive (“you’ve had a rough day, honey; come home, I’ll make dinner, we’ll have a glass of wine, and I’ll rub your shoulders while we snuggle on the sofa and discuss the clues and suspects, and whatever else is on your mind”). The boyfriends don’t always “save the day”; when cornered or captured, the heroine saves herself through her own wits, cunning, and physical capabilities. There is actually a kind of feminist vision at work here.

You can see why these are so popular: it’s like grown-up Nancy Drew, minus insipid Ned Nickerson and Carson Drew rescuing Nancy and her chums. Don’t you wish you could own a popular breakfast/brunch diner–slash–vintage cookware shop in scenic Brown County, Indiana, and have all your workers and customers be your dear friends and neighbors? Don’t you wish you had so many dear friends and neighbors? Wouldn’t you like having a super-handsome boyfriend who doesn’t get jealous of your success and in fact helps you in all kinds of ways, anticipating your needs? Huh?

The first cozy mysteries I read were the “Spice Isle Bakery” series by Olivia Matthews (Patricia Sargeant), which has a flawed, insecure, self-deprecating protagonist and a family so well characterized they seem truly to live and breathe. The spunky, outspoken granny speaks in Granadian dialect, which is fun. As a culinary cozy, it necessarily includes lots of descriptions of foods and their delicious scents (in this case, Caribbean foods like currant rolls, coconut bread, curry and jerk chicken, and callaloo; and the bakery is always scented with nutmeg, cinnamon, coconut, and butter). And yes, there are recipes.

The series ended with three volumes, but I found I sincerely wanted more. More, more, more!

I’m trying not to descend into the same bottomless well that my mom is in, where she’s reading just about any cozy mystery she can find, that she hasn’t already read. I’m sticking to a few well-established publishers, because I don’t think I could tolerate self-published, poorly edited stuff. I’m also sticking with authors I’ve already read . . . like the ones in these pictures.

So, cheers to cozy mysteries!

Changes

The first snow of the winter of 2024–2025 came today.

I awakened at five and sensed something was wrong. As I grew more conscious, I realized I was smelling smoke. That’s never a good thing, unless you’re sitting near a campfire, or burning incense. And it was ugly-smelling smoke—not the pretty scent of someone’s fireplace or woodstove, wafting in the chilly air. No. It smelled like plastic, vinyl—acrid—nothing anyone should be burning, although we’ve had our share of neighbors who burn their trash in their backyards, in the early hours of the morning, trusting that no one will care about the smoldering dioxins and other toxins they inhale while asleep. Most of our neighbors smoke, anyway, so how would they even notice it?

But I was concerned. I tiptoed around our chilly house in my bare feet, making sure that all rooms on all floors were free of an obvious problem. I mean, we do have smoke detectors, but . . . Then I stepped onto the sunporch, which was colder still, and the attached “screen” porch (now with storm windows, of course, but still fairly open to the outdoor air, since we haven’t yet chinked the windows with insulation). And the smoke odor out there was much stronger. I moved back indoors and down the stairs to the front door, and stuck my face outside: again, smoky. Ugh. Whew.

This information led to another round of the second and third floors, this time with my glasses on, squinting more carefully out the windows. Is one of our neighbors’ houses on fire, or billowing smoke? Or is someone actually burning trash covertly? If the latter, I knew the fire might already be done with, even though the heavy, still air can let the stench linger for hours after the deed. But all I saw was a diffuse haziness in the direction of the motel on the expressway. (Hmm. And we need to clean our windows. Kind of late in the season for that, now.) Somehow, I managed not to awaken Sue with all this traipsing around at 5 a.m. (I also managed not to stub my toes on anything. Huzzah!)

Well, it turned out that around 2:45 a house had blown up on the east side of town. They haven’t yet announced a cause, but my money’s on a natural gas appliance or exhaust malfunction, possibly combined with electric space heaters or some such. It’s the first time this season that people’s heaters are running full-bore, and heating systems in poor repair are getting their dangerous shakedown this weekend. Yeah, while everyone’s observing Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and all that. Happy holidays.

And yes, if you know me, you know I’m too appalled about the results of the presidential election to feel very “thankful” this year. I live in a red state that was a purple state not long ago, before a Republican supermajority and gerrymandering, and toxic fundamentalist misinformation bubbles. I’m literally surrounded and ruled over by crazy, het, right-wing Trump-Jesus-gun worshippers. . . . And Thanksgiving? Are you kidding me?

Also, my parents are a grim situation all by themselves: it’s the inevitable collision between my mom’s unbending and increasingly unrealistic notion that she and Dad can continue forever to live in their home, with its staircases, and Dad’s flat-out exhaustion and increasing disability. He is her caregiver: he staggers and stumbles around their house; he fixes all her meals and carries them to her on a platter, brings her beverages and begs her to drink them, launders her clothes and bed sheets, supplies her with Depends and Poise pads, dispenses and tracks her (and his) medications, deals with all the house upkeep, pays the bills, everything. He exercises, does PT, walks, to stay in shape (“to keep myself physically fit . . .”). As she has for years, she sits in her puffy recliner and does nothing, not even the tiny amount of walking the doctors have been telling her for years that she must do if she wants to stay at home . . . and he’s simply exhausted. And so am I.

In retrospect, my brother and I should have talked them into moving a decade ago, and if they’d done nothing, at that time, we should have done it for them then. Too late for that now.

Mom, psychologically increasingly like a toddler, expects me to quit my job and move in with them until they both are gone, which, given my mom’s genetics and lack of serious chronic illness, could be another decade, in her case. Well, actually, I don’t think she knows I have a job, because I’ve been so generous with my time with them. As a freelancer, I’ve been able to skip some hours of work in the past five years to drive them to their haircuts and doctors’ appointments, to pick up groceries, computer supplies, and what-not, but those demands have exploded in the past few years, with Mom being taken to the hospital, often with rehab, six times in the past two years, and Dad twice.

Dad had a stroke, and he needed outpatient PT after it, and he needed me to drive him there a few times a week. And there’s always the questions about the computer. Or, Why isn’t the phone working? Or, I think we might need a new water heater. Your Mom needs more Depends: this size, overnight, super absorbency. . . .

Wash, rinse, repeat. I know Dad remembers I have a job, but I’m pretty sure Mom doesn’t realize it—or if she does, she doesn’t respect it.

Talk about pushing my buttons. I try to just see it, acknowledge it, know that it’s old, old material, breathe, and move on without, like, yelling. Of course I’m not respected. And I don’t need her validation anymore.

When I tell her she can’t expect me to come take care of them at their house 24/7 for the next decade or so, she tells me that she and Dad will simply have an elevator added to their house, or they will just hire 24-hour in-home assistance. I recently sketched out the math for her: $30 an hour, times 24 hours in a day, is $720 a day; multiply that by 365 days in a year, and you’re paying $262,800 annually just for someone (some person or persons—who?) to be there to help you, in a home that’s not going to accommodate a wheelchair, which she will soon need to be in—it does not count food or food preparation, transportation, incontinence supplies, heating and cooling bills, water, house maintenance and property taxes, medical copays and drug costs, and the ever-loving cable TV and landline/internet bills. It’s just fantasyland.

In our family, the dynamic has always been to go along with Mom’s ideas, because she’s always been “the practical one.” The one good with finances. The one who takes care of the house, the bills, the do list. Balances the checkbooks. (Kind of like the myth about Republicans being good about the economy.) She was always the one to deal with the plumbers, electricians, and handymen. She used to be sharp as a tack, “on top of” everything. But those days are long gone, as she becomes more confused and lives increasingly in the past. Actually, they both are.

So it’s past time for independent living; it may already be too late for assisted living, for Mom. She’s hurtling toward skilled nursing; she doesn’t want to drink, so she gets dehydrated and gets UTIs, she doesn’t move around, she’s weak, her blood pressure tanks when she merely stands up. The idea of getting her up the staircases is a horror for me. She’s been hospitalized three times in the past six months. But she still expects us to treat her as if she knows best, and we all still tend to twirl around trying to make her happy. Of course, that is impossible. People like her will never be happy; this is how ninety years of untreated depression and anxiety disorder, with a little side order of NPD, ends up. And so we are moving ahead with plans for senior living for them both. Dad is ready. We simply leave her out of our conversations, which is easy to do since she only ever sits in her living room chair and has grown pretty hard of hearing.

So we’re in a race to get them moved into a good place where they can be safe, clean, fed, comfortable and hopefully find things to be happy about, to be entertained with; to have people to talk with; to maybe even find ways to still contribute to the world (Dad would like that, I think).

You know, I started this blog in a state of deep stress and depression. Hopelessness. Things that used to cheer me only made me feel like I’d been slapped. I was repeatedly contemplating suicide. I thought that starting a blog about the things—the few little things—that I can unequivocally claim as good would help me regain a sense that there is something still to enjoy, even when my life seems in shambles, when my career—hell, my whole life—seems a big fat joke, when I see myself as the center of all my problems. Even when I’m almost convinced that I don’t belong here, that I have no place or purpose.

I truly don’t have any goddamn time to be fucking around with a blog, or anything, anything, that is not related to my job, or with the needs of my parents. I’m not going to fuck around with Christmas cookies this year. (Well . . . maybe I’ll make a few kinds. To give to the elders who remain.) Christmas tree? Bah, humbug. I’m down on Christianity, too—all the white Christian nationalists have turned me off of religion entirely—in America and globally, the trouble, the evil, that religion causes far outweigh its so-called blessings. Overall, religion is still, always, eternally a way that greedy, mean, power-hungry people convince other people into doing horrible, selfish, mean-spirited things. I’m sick of it. Grow the fuck up and learn how to be a good person without having the imaginary threat of eternal damnation hanging over your head, okay?

But yeah, I think I’m gonna attempt another year of “Jar of Goodness.” Because I kind of need it. At least, let’s give it try before I call my doctor and ask to “up my dosage.” I’ve been doing a lot of journaling the past few years, and I have a lot I’d like to say about that. And there are several other half-baked posts I can complete and upload. Let’s keep a-goin’.

The Op Op Turns Thirteen

Ohmygosh, there’s a teenager in the room!

Happy anniversary to the Op Op! My first post was on March 3, 2009, which seems like just yesterday. Everything since 2000 always seems fairly recent. It’s kind of scary to think that kiddos born in 2006 will be getting driver’s licenses this year. (Little babies, driving? So frightful!)

And yet . . . the year 2009 also seems like it was in a different century. At this point, we have what’s become a historic era in most people’s minds called “The Before Times”: the lifestyle we enjoyed before the Covid-19 pandemic altered so many of the ways we do things, and even whether we do things at all. Like, I used to write a lot of posts about restaurants, because we used to eat out at restaurants a lot. Now, um, not so much. Will that ever change back to the way it used to be? I don’t know.

Meanwhile (and I might have mentioned this before), I took myself off antidepressants last year. I weaned myself off of ’em. Why? First, I had already halved my dosage in Nov. 2019 (with the concurrence of my GP doctor, who just told me to let her know if I was having any problem and wanted to return to my longtime, full dosage). And halving it didn’t cause any problem. I hardly noticed any changes in my mood, or my ability to rebound from emotional blows. And second, I was getting annoyed at the every-six-month checkup with the doctor to satisfy the needs of the insurance company and/or drug regulators and/or healthcare system before getting prescriptions refilled. (After years of accomplishing that with an annual checkup, switching to six-month checkups seemed like I was having to visit the doctor every time I turned around.) (And yeah, it seems that dumb and tragic people have found a way to abuse what I was on, no matter that it easily kills you if you try.) So as I was nearing the end of another prescription, I just said “aw, to heck with it” and gradually decreased my dosage, going from daily to every other day, to every three days, to none. (Can’t split ’em when they’re time-release.)

And I was really starting to think that maybe I didn’t need to be on that medication forever. I’ve always been skeptical of the healthfulness of taking any medication forever. Or even just for, you know, decades. You see enough news about class-action lawsuits against some drug company or other, and you can’t help but be skeptical.

All kinds of medications that we used to think were okay to use have been pulled off the market for some reason or other. You know? . . . Like, remember this?

I picked a great few years (the start of the Covid era) to remove antidepressants from my life, but so far, so good. I think being on them so long changed me. It gave me a break from what had been a lifelong emotional Möbius strip. It disrupted the cycle of depression. Or maybe I’ve just survived long enough, with that safety net in place, for my life circumstances (and hormonal influences) to change so that I feel more secure and have a sense that life is worthwhile again. And that ups and downs don’t “mean” anything. Anyway, I’m feeling much, much better now, thanks.

I guess the reason why I’m associating this topic with my Op Op anniversary is because I started this blog during a really dark and hopeless period of my life. Indeed, that’s a main reason I started blogging; it seemed like one tiny thing I could do that didn’t remind me of the things I seemed to be losing, or failing at; that focused on the things that seemed good and authentic; that gave me a creative outlet where it didn’t MATTER if I was good at it or not. (Since who’s gonna read this, anyway?)

It looks like my number of posts is going to be way up this year (lord willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise), since I’ve embarked on the Jar of Goodness idea. It obligates me, yet frees me up for (indeed, demands) shorter, quicker posts. So already, I’ve done a dozen posts for 2022, which is more than I did all year in 2020, 2018, and 2017. And at this pace, I’ll easily have posted more than I did in the years 2019, 2013, 2014, and 2016.

And I have several ideas for new posts. Also, more old-new posts. I guess I'm always behind.

Not like I’m really counting. Blogger does that tally for me, because, you know, computers and data; “analytics”! I learned a long time ago that a journal that must be written in regularly is one that will be put aside and forgotten. At least for me, the better agreement is to cut myself a break when I don’t feel like writing, or it’s inconvenient. It’s like meditation, or anything else worth doing: If you get off schedule, or you get distracted, don’t give energy to the lapse. Just keep turning your attention to the thing you want to do. Just keep a-goin’.

I’ve often thought that my initial three years of heavy blogging was caused by a need to assuage my depression, but as I look back, I think I need to give myself more credit for reveling in the fun of exploring a new medium, relishing the good feedback I was receiving, and learning how to take pictures. Plus, I had a lot of territory to cover. Also, I was content to do rather short posts. (I’ve gotten much wordier in recent years. Does anyone really read this stuff? “Helloooo?”)

By now in the Op Op, I’ve written about most of my favorite hiking spots, my favorite restaurants, our Christmas traditions, and so on. There’s not much left to say about the storm windows, and I still make red cabbage the same way. See what I mean? And anyway, there are lots of better food blogs out there.

Still. There is a lot to share and celebrate. Plenty of stuff to share. Fun things I haven’t told you about yet!

And now that I’ve set up a YouTube channel and uploading videos is easier, I can explore posting more videos. Maybe some that will even be worth watching! And you never know what new fun things we’ll get into—such as last summer’s boat ramp excursions; who could’ve predicted that would become a “thing”? At this point in late winter, I’m yearning to go back to some of those places; we really had fun.

Looking at the amount of posts, my productivity was up last year, too. And looks are deceiving; although there are 31 posts for 2021, my actual output was more like 38, since I was shamefully/not-so-shamefully posting entries retroactively, even into previous years. I had several semi-finished posts that just needed finalizing and whose pictures just needed cropping, sizing, and uploading. (Yeah, the good ol’ “follow through.”)

So do you think that me taking myself off of the medication has anything to do with the uptick in blogging? Or do you think it’s the lifestyle changes wrought by the pandemic? I’m certainly not hanging out at restaurants like before, so I have more productive time for other things. Also, I’m not spending hours each week attending meetings for the various organizations I used to be active in, so more free time is gleaned from that. Well, anyway, it’s all seeming okay to me, more or less. I don’t think anyone’s really missing me from those organizations, anyway. Life moves on.

Oh, also, if you’ve read this far, you might take note that I’ve not been announcing every single new post on the Op Op Facebook page. Some of these blog posts have been a bit more personal, so I don’t want all the world’s hackers, spammers, and nutjobs to be attracted to my little corner of the ’net. You might have to just make a point of visiting the Op Op website on your own, or else, when you do see an Op Op Facebook notification, take a moment to see if there are other recent Op Op posts you’ve missed.

So, here’s to another year of Opulent Opossumness! Here’s to another year of celebrating the ordinary and the sublime. If you were here, I’d offer you a cocktail or other fun beverage to celebrate. But until we’re together again, a picture will have to do. Cheers!

Long Overdue Update: Good Riddance to 2020

Hi, folks, you’d think I’d dropped off the face of the earth, huh? It takes a message from Blogger or Google or whatever telling me I need to show some activity on my blog, or it’ll, like, disappear or something. So, here is a post.

Really, honestly, I should have been posting every damn day this year, considering that my original intent with this blog was to cheer myself up. I certainly needed it this year—me and everyone else, except perhaps Jeff Bezos. Back in November 2019, I told my doc that I wanted to try lowering my dosage of antidepressant—a dosage I’d been on for years, with no problems. I certainly picked a hell of a year to halve it!

The most recent grief has been the death of Lorie Smith, owner of Vines on Broadway, about which I've blogged. After a nearly year of pandemic-hampered business, she had to temporarily close, since the weather got cold and her customers could no longer sit outside in the fresh air. We hesitated to go very much as the year wore on, as so many people there were maskless. And the virus numbers were going up around here. And she was having heart trouble. So Vines was closed for over a month. She died soon after undergoing a procedure intended to fix her arrhythmia; apparently, the procedure led to blood clots in her brain, at least one of which was inoperable. She was only sixty. I’m devastated by the news; I’m still in shock.

I believe that at least 75 percent of the people who stepped foot in her business wished they could be the proprietor of such a cool place. I know I was envious. One of my friends walked in there for the first time and within two minutes of meeting Lorie said to me, “I have a big girl crush on her!” I’m hoping against hope that at least one of her many, many friends or family will find a way to continue the business, and keep her dream alive. It was very successful . . .

 

I could go on and on and on about how much Lorie and her business made our street, our neighborhood, our town much better. She influenced and improved everything and everyone she came in contact with. So much of Vines on Broadway was her. 

I have come to associate her, and Vines, with many of the fun things in life. Things like kicking back on a nice patio with a glass of wine; fixing up a nice, inviting patio to begin with; enjoying cordial, convivial conversations; noshing on attractive, tasty snacky-snacks; warmth and coziness and candlelight in the winter; chillin’ in the misters on the patio in summer . . . even friendship itself. Her disappearance from the world makes me afraid to face these otherwise very pleasant things; I feel as if those things will all come with a pang of emptiness and grief—if we ever even have them again. (When will we ever feel comfortable sitting close again?) If Lorie had been a grouch, or snotty or snarky, maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. But she was faultlessly kind and good-natured, with an easy, ringing laugh that still echoes inside my head and heart. Even though I only knew her for a few years, I can’t imagine how there can be a world without her.

 

And that’s only the most recent loss. The past year has felt jinxed. Sue’s mom passed away in December of last year, and we can’t help but feel she was lucky, in a way, to have left the world before the pandemic changed everything. Living as she did in a studio apartment in an assisted-living community, she wouldn’t have had company for months; the loneliness would have been excruciating for her (and nerve-wracking for us). And the nurse assistants and other staff would have had to wear masks around her, and with her hearing loss, she wouldn’t have been able to understand much of what people were saying. And then, also, she tended to suffer badly from respiratory ailments, when she got them, so . . . it’s almost like she knew, somehow, when to go.

She always was very intuitive, with a strong faith in her ability to sense things that are not physical; maybe her departure from this plane was an example. Who knows.

And we had a rough summer, traveling three times to Ohio (despite the worry of COVID) to go through things at Sue’s mom’s house. The lifetime accumulations of two people. Furniture. The antique railroad lantern collection. The kitchen treasures. And on and on. As if all that that wasn’t going to be difficult enough, we experienced some shocking interpersonal strife with one of the family members, and because of that, our final trip there—for just a few days, solely to be there when the movers came—really felt like it could be our final trip there.

In September, we lost Patches, the original Opulent Opossum. She had lived with us for seventeen years and was probably eighteen. In recent years, we had made every accommodation for her sweet, elderly self. She had become deaf; and she put the “cat” in cataracts; she also had that old-cat kidney disease, so each morning we puréed special canned food with extra water, just for her. I burrowed my face into her neck and hummed little tunes, like the cadences of my speech, so she could feel the vibrations of my voice. She would purr in response, and burrow her head against mine. She was a good friend, for a long time, and I still miss her.

As I review this stupid year—a year when every trade group’s cheesy annual convention theme was gonna be “2020 Vision,” dontcha know, and a year about which we’ll all be seeing reviews cleverly headlined as “Hindsight 2020” in the coming weeks—I’ve actually been okay, for the most part. I recently saw a thing about how Gen X people like me are perfectly prepared for lockdowns and solitude; how we effectively trained for this from a young age, how we know how to wait and wait and wait, and how we know many ways to entertain ourselves and survive on whatever’s in the cupboards.

But I’m basically lucky in other ways. I’m lucky I don’t work in at a job that requires me to interact with people all day, or even work in an office place among other people (don’t get me wrong: I’d still love to have benefits, like group health insurance). I’m also lucky that this freelancer lifestyle is something I’d already gotten used to way before everyone else had to adjust. Lucky that my major client still wants my services. Also, lucky I’m a pretty okay cook. Apparently, the food I fix is healthier than what we get when we eat out; I’ve actually lost weight this year, without even trying. It certainly isn’t any increase in exercise.

So, this is the end of the calendar year, but it’s certainly not the end of this merry-go-round of pandemic and the political mayhem that will no doubt persist for the foreseeable future even though we will be getting a psychologically stable new president.

Tomorrow night—December 31, 2020—we’ll be eating as many good-luck foods we can find. Pickled herring, mutzens, hoppin’ John, grapes, you name it. We’ll make an outrageous amount of noise at midnight, to frighten away the evil spirits that have pursued this year. I feel like building a huge, round-eyed Jagannath icon and carting it down High Street, with fireworks going off on all sides. Take that, 2020! Good riddance!

 

In reality, the plan is to make our mutzens first thing in the morning; let them cool a bit for transportation, then drive them to my uncle and aunt’s house and to my parents, along with a bunch of goodies for a New Year’s Eve party: some decorations for them to hang up, some Prosecco to sip at midnight, stuff for a veggie plate, including some dips, some black and green olives, samples of nice cheeses and sausages, pickled herring, shrimp and cocktail sauce, crackers and sliced baguette, and so on. A party to-go!

Then, Sue and I will come back home and let the weather do whatever it wants to do. For a long time, it was looking like it might snow on New Year’s Eve, but that seems unlikely now. Anyway, as we did at Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’ll have our own festivities, just the two of us, and we’ll make phone calls to the people we wish we were partying with.

Should you wish to do the same, on New Year’s Eve, the appropriate way of greeting someone you’ve just called is “Hey! This is the neighbors! Keep it down over there!”

This post has already gotten too long and has said too much that I ought to keep to myself. But whatever—as long as the whole blog doesn’t disappear into nothingness.

Because that would really bum me out, too.

I Can’t Miss It

Hi there—it’s time for another post; just an update, really. It hasn’t been a good month, much. Sue had a sudden, literally debilitating attack of sciatica—something she’s never had before—and she’s been gradually feeling better. But there have been doctor’s visits, tests, and a cortisone shot, and things are looking up at this point. But that shock set the unsettling tone for the month.

I.

But there’s more. All of last week—a week that began with pleasantly cool, fall-like weather—our friendly neighborhood slumlord got busy with some of his projects. Right across the street, he had a plumbing company tear out a section of sidewalk and part of the terrace to fix a water main that had been leaking water into the street for about a year.

You’d think that was a good thing, right, people fixing stuff up? But no, I’m going to complain about it: They didn’t fill in the hole. They made a little bit of an effort, but there’s still a big gouge in the terrace (you can see severed tree roots sticking out of it), and no one’s made any moves toward filling it and seeding it with grass. (We know from experience that this slumlord never bothers with such things—the ground remains uneven, with nothing but erosion to smooth the edges, and weeds eventually fill in on the surface.

We see this every time we look out our front windows: An eye-catching, big, ugly, brown hole. I can’t miss it.

II.

Also this week, this same slumlord had a tree cut down on one of his properties. But this wasn’t just one of the trash trees—hackberries, mimosa, white mulberry, Siberian elms, box elders that predominate on his rental holdings. It was a huge American elm (yes, the kind that you will never see large anymore because of Dutch elm disease). The slumlord never trimmed it, ever, and the limbs hung over its house. Sure enough, a long but smallish limb finally fell on the house (miraculously, it was a glancing blow and did not apparently cause any damage serious enough for the slumlord to bother with)—but this was the impetus for the slumlord to finally cut the entire tree down.

It was solid. It was a solid, huge, healthy American elm tree. Hard wood. It took the company nearly all week, with two big cherry-picker trucks, to cut it away, piece by piece. For days, I heard the growling, undulating whine of their chainsaws; the screams of the big chipper machine, instantaneously destroying all the small branches and green leaves; and then there were the huge thumps of the log sections hitting the ground.

Surely there’s a place in hell for tree cutters who agree to remove perfectly good, solid, American elm trees, when a trim job would have sufficed.

So, now, the front yard of that house, everything but the sloped terrace, is covered with firewood. It’s stacked all along the roadside. I guess the slumlord is thinking people will take it away for him. I suppose that’s cheaper than hauling it. And people in Jefferson City know what to do with things that are visible along the side of the road, that aren’t locked down. . . . So it just lays there, what’s left of that huge, rare tree.

I’d take a picture of it for you, but I don’t want to burn the sight into my memory. It makes me sick to see it, or to smell what fresh-cut American elm wood smells like. You’ll have to just imagine what a solid, 3-4 foot diameter core of a genuine American elm tree looks like. You’ll never see one again.

So every time I drive on our street, I have to pass by this obscenity. No matter how much I want to, no matter how much I try to look away, I can’t miss it.

III.

In an attempt to handle all this grievance, Monday night I finally got around to weeding our front “flower bed.” I put that in quotes because an infestation of field bindweed has made gardening in that quadrant of our yard a depressing, Sisyphean endeavor. Whatever grows out there gets covered with it. So I’m resigned to just keeping that flower bed trimmed, disinfected, the way Nazis and other evil captors shave the heads of their prisoners to kind of reduce the depredations of lice and fleas.

So with my anger, I decided I could do some yard work, and pulling weeds with my bare hands usually helps me let go of rage and frustration. But in this case: My heart stopped. Glancing at the corner of our house, I suddenly realized that our knusperhexe—our garden gnome—great-grandpa’s knusperhexe!—wasn’t there.

I mean—it wasn’t there—it had vanished—my heart stopped again, and so did my breath. Somebody had stolen it.

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I finished the weed-pulling, numbly, with sweat burning into my eyes and making my vision blur. This was definitely not helping me release frustration and anger.



The knusperhexe—grandma always pronounced it “knisperhexie”—has sat on that corner of the house as long as I can remember. So, for at least about fifty years, it’s gazed benignly out at passersby, adding a grandfatherly, elvish charm to the property. Before that, it was in other locations in the yard. I guess it’s been in the yard for about a hundred years, or at least since the thirties. For a while, in the forties, I guess, my great-grandfather had perched it on a strange piece of granite overlooking Broadway.

Look, I can’t even call it “my” gnome—like the house, like the Christmas tree—it is the family’s, and we are only the present caretakers. In a fit of naive happiness, I blogged about him in one of my earliest posts.

The front of the house looks bare without it. Characterless, incomplete, like nobody cares. In fact . . . it’s starting to look like the other houses on our street, which are all blighted rentals. Hey, we’re starting to fit in!

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Naturally, the theft has influenced the way I view my neighbors, and anyone who goes by on the street or sidewalk. People who drive by on the street. Ragpickers in their pickup trucks filled with junk. Where did they get that junk?

My first action was to approach neighbors, show them a photo of the missing gnome, and ask if they knew anything or saw anything, begged them to keep an eye open, told them I’d pay to get it back.

This activity was depressing in itself. Our closest and most decent neighbors, sitting and smoking on their front porch, just stared at me blankly and blandly: “Nope. We didn’t see anything. Sorry about that. Huh. If we see anything, we’ll let you know.”

The next people were the ones who have the American elm tree now strewn all over their lawn. (I had to actually walk through the remains of that noble tree in order to knock on their door. Or what’s left of their door; they’ve been really hard on the house.) After some moderate knocks, I eventually beat quite loudly on the door. Two females eventually stood in the doorway—but blocking the door, so I couldn’t see in—and spoke with me. The second woman blurted out, “Oh did someone take your garden gnome?” before she’d really had a chance to see the picture I’d brought with me. They, too, tried to seem sympathetic but shook their heads and couldn’t offer me anything. (Uh-huh, right . . .)

I had walked around their lawn for a few moments before knocking—since we had caught their children numerous times in our backyard (which is fenced), and we’ve caught them stealing from our backyard (an old birdhouse, thank goodness, nothing we truly care about) . . . it seemed like a good idea to just look around.

But it was a bad idea—filth! Greasy old rags, all manner of garbage, wrecked furniture; their backyard is a hellhole. Stench. And I didn’t see our gnome.

I realized something: Those people didn’t deserve to live in the shade of that beautiful American elm tree. It occurred to me that maybe that American elm committed suicide—dropped a limb on the house out of sheer exhaustion and sadness, knowing that it would trigger its execution. “Time for me to go away from here.” If a tree has a spirit, who could blame it?

I won’t go too much further into my notions about our neighbors. You get the idea. If any of them took our gnome, I could never find out, since it could be indoors or in their backyards, and judging from what I’ve seen of these people, I believe I could be shot if I went snooping around.

Next, of course, were the pawnshops and antiques stores and malls. Talking to these people educated me about the tremendous value that “vintage” yard statues can carry. Like those little yard donkeys, “lawn jockeys,” and cutesy Dutch kissing boy and girl. Vintage, vintage, vintage.

We’ve been to a lot of antiques malls in the past few days, and this vintage stuff, and the market for it—the high prices, the anonymous, questionable sources—has become increasingly disgusting to me. Somewhere, there’s a good chance that our family’s heirloom knusperhexe is in just such a place, having gone from our yard to some dirty fleabag scavenger-thief, to some antiques seller in an antiques mall. “I got this at the estate sale of an old lady who kept it in her yard all her life . . .”

That’s how the descriptions read on eBay—but where do they really come from? I think about how heartbroken those old ladies would be if those yard statues had been stolen. How would you know? When you buy a treasure at an antiques mall, how do you know your purchase doesn’t represent the theft of a treasure, a broken heart?

----------------------------------

But I am making an effort to recover our gnome—I don’t think I could stand myself if I didn’t try. In addition to talking to our neighbors, and going to pawnshops and antiques malls in Central Missouri, I have:

—Filed a police report. Ha! From too much prior experience, I know this is probably the longest shot of all, the biggest waste of my time. Police don’t do anything except take notes and nod, and give you a report number. (Shit! At least, they could give you a cookie, or a candy cane, or something, besides that damn useless number!)

—Posted notices about it on Jefferson City Facebook sites. Why not?

—Put up a sign in our front flower bed where the gnome used to be, and another on the utility pole on our street corner: “GARDEN GNOME. Reward: $250. Please help us recover our family heirloom.” . . . I’m actually kind of hopeful about this, because last night I saw a truly suspicious-looking woman walking rather slowly west along Elm Street. She was pasty white, blond, smoking, wearing sunglasses at sunset, holding a cell phone, and looking into everyone’s yard, on both sides of the street, up above the terraces near the houses—as if she was looking for something. “Good Vibes” read her black T-shirt (isn’t that an adult toys company?). Anyway, what a classy-looking lady.

It’s possible that she was looking for her dog, or looking for her own stolen yard statue—because apparently thieves go through areas stealing from lots of properties at a time . . . but maybe, if she’s the thief, she’ll come by again and see our sign, and “just happen to recover” our statue. “Hey, look here, someone left this statue in our yard and I don’t know where it come from. I think it’s yours! Can I have the reward money?” After suppressing an urge to clap her with a brick on the side of her skull, I would indeed cough up the money, because I really want our knisperhexe back, even if I have to pay a ransom.

------------------------------

But then . . . I know it’s an impossibly long shot. The theft, we think, for detailed reasons I won’t go into now, probably occurred at the very end of July, leaving at least three weeks before I noticed it missing (remember: the first few weeks of August were a crisis here, with Sue’s pain and disability, and weeds grew up, obscuring where Mr. Knisperhexie sat—all my fault, but still . . .).

I know I have to accept that I’ll never see our house’s guardian gnome again. I acknowledge it: He was stolen under “my watch.” I should’ve known he was “worth something.” I should’ve moved him into the backyard, or even into the house, a long time ago. But I kept a naive faith in the goodness of people, blah, blah, blah . . . And so we lost him.

But I can’t bear to miss him like this. For a week, now, I’ve been unable to sleep. I read and read, late into the night, trying to distract my mind and tire myself to sleep (I’m reading boring stuff, too—Samuel Johnson, even), until I can’t keep my eyes upon anymore, and as soon as I shut them I see the knusperhexe, sitting there, with that benign smile on his face . . . my stomach lurches, and I’m awake again, to gnaw away at Dr. Johnson, the Great Lexicographer, some more.

(Unable to sleep, that sick, lurching feeling, the downward spiral, unable to stand myself and my thoughts: it’s been a long time, but this is my major depression coming back to bite me.)

So what can I do now? How can I stop missing him? How can I glance at the corner of the house and miss the sight of his gaping absence? I can’t miss it.

I’ve decided I have to move on; I need to find a way to conceptualize this so that I’m not flat-out hating everyone I see, not wanting to drop a brick onto people passing by on the street, not wanting to blow up our ratlike neighbors and their houses. Not wishing the darkest evil on our friendly neighborhood slumlord, and not wanting to puke on the invertebrate city leaders who could never do anything that might impose on a landlord’s convenience or profitability.

It’s a good thing I’m not a magical creature, a gnome, because a lot of folks would be suffering right now, and not just me.

These thoughts led me to a new, more expansive consideration:

Maybe there is something magical, mysterious, about these elderly garden gnomes. Maybe, like I fancy with that American elm, our gnome somehow decided it was time to move on, get away from this blight. Maybe his magical work here was done. Maybe some other person or family needs his presence more than we do. Maybe someone will buy him for $200 at a flea market and treasure him like crazy. Maybe, in his second century of existence, he will be more beloved than ever before. And for us, maybe it’s time to have a new yard sprite around here—kind of a “changing of the guards.” . . . I think I’m open to that.

But if we do get another gnome, he’s going to preside over the back yard. Which we will soon be fencing in the rest of the way. No one will get to see our backyard anymore.



And that’s what’s been going on around here. I know I started this blog to get away from depressing subjects, to celebrate things that make me happy. And usually, I try to be upbeat about our Munichburg neighborhood, and its gradual progress up from slumland, but these last few weeks, we’ve been fantasizing about moving far away from here. This time, I just couldn’t miss the bad stuff.

Where I Am Right Now

I guess it’s happened, folks: I haven’t felt like posting recently. I mean, I’ve been writing blog entries, but I haven’t been sharing them with you.

No—it’s nothing to do with you. It’s me. I created this blog, in part, as a way to help jockey myself out of my depressive mind-set. The idea is, I’m trying to focus on things that I like, or even love, and maybe that will help me to like my life—myself—better. Feeling depressed is a habit, I know, so writing here, regularly, is a way of retraining myself to see the “bright side” of things.

But recently it’s been kind of rough, and I’m having a hard time feeling clever or hopeful or optimistic.

Those of you who know me well know that I’ve more or less been able to keep blogging even while I’m “slogging,” and for the most part I’ve been able to keep the tone celebratory here in this virtual space where I can indeed be virtually upbeat.

And I apologize for polluting my lovely, happy blog with my whining. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something happier to write about.

Usually I’m not the kind of depressive person who gets especially blue over the holidays—though I know a lot of people do. But no: usually, Christmas and New Year’s are okay for me—maybe it’s because it’s a time of year that I generally know what to do (apart from my usual anxiety about trying to figure out what to give people on my list—my giving is usually more in the form of “doing” as opposed to shopping, so I’m a huge failure when it comes to buying presents).

(This year it’s especially hard, with my “freelance” business being worse than usual. Also, both of the checks I was anticipating this past month got held up somehow. These were for projects that kept me busy for months with all pay deferred to the end. And to have both of my invoices somehow not even get “into the system” until this week? Ouch. I feel crapped on, even though I know it’s nothing personal against me. But hey, being broke at Christmastime is just not . . . optimal. If you’re wondering where the “annual lebkuchen post” is, well, take a look at how much candied fruit costs!)

So all my self-doubts are back again. What am I good for? Apparently not freelancing! And in the job market, I find I’m breathtakingly inexperienced in anything “computer” and simultaneously way too old in a market filled with fresh college students. I’m thinking the only job I could get is at a grocery store or something. Phi beta kappa! This should be funny, right?

I’ve been profoundly sad the last few weeks. I’m sure my close friends are all sick of hearing me complain—indeed, I’m sick of this, too. I’ve tried doing the usual Christmassy stuff, such as attending Christkindelfest, but I couldn’t even stay there very long. I couldn’t sing. I choked on the lyrics “joyful and triumphant,” and I decided to just leave. If you went, I hope you had a good time; there are always so many delicious goodies there to buy . . .

Anyway.

When I’m having a hard time figuring out what to write, when I’m feeling behind and need to get “caught up,” when I feel like my stories aren’t reflecting what I really feel, I usually can rely on “Here Is Where I Am Right Now” to get me back in synch with reality, so I can move on to something current.

So here is where I am right now: I’m sitting in the living room typing. It’s really cold. I just got finished cleaning up some stuff in the basement, including the cat boxes. Soon, I’ll see what I can find in the fridge for lunch, and I’ll try to figure out what to fix for supper. I will clean and straighten the second floor today—the part of the house that company sees—in preparation for putting up the Christmas tree. Also this afternoon, I will check the mail, again, to see if any paycheck has arrived.

And that is where I am right now.

Sunshine: Keep It Coming, but Come On.

I think February is probably my least-favorite month around here. The “fun” parts of winter, like Christmas, New Year’s, and those lovely magical snowfalls, are long past, and what we’re left with is crumpled brown grass, brittle gray trees, grit and grime anywhere within view of a road, and yet still plenty of freezing weather. Nothing has greened up yet.

But it’s more than just these proto-springtime blues.

We had an ugly surprise last week. After we’d had snow, and it had melted some, then refroze, then started to melt again (repeat for days), we discovered water dripping through the window frames on our sunporch. It was coming from the ceiling and the soffits. It was soaking through the plaster and stucco. It soaked the wooden windows. It got on the floor. It ruined the exterior paint, which we’d had done the year before the roof. We will lose thousands of dollars repairing these damages.




This had happened before, a few years ago, but the reason we were surprised last week is that we thought we had had this problem fixed. A friend had suggested a handyman who could assess and possibly fix our situation, and by the time he left our house two years ago, I thought the roof was okay. We were planning this spring to launch into the thousands of dollars of repairs and repainting.

But obviously it wasn't fixed. There’s no quick fix when an entire section of shingles have to be torn off, the incorrect padding removed, and ice-and-water shield (which should have been used in the first place) put on, then the whole section reshingled. This is why it’s leaking again.




The company that put on our roof in 2006 totally ripped us off. The roof isn’t even four years old yet, but we’ve been “repairing it” ever since they left. (Don’t ask. It’s a long story. Just a tip: Make sure such folks actually sign their guarantee before they begin work.)

The discovery of the renewed leak of course put us in a sour mood, and the long, overcast, rainy spell we just had only made things worse—the leak, and our attitudes. It was simply pouring there for a while, outside and inside, literally and figuratively.




So I made the mistake of posting a sour comment about this time of year on Facebook for all my Facebook-friends to see, and in return I received flowery, “inspirational,” Pollyanna-ish comments from a few of my friends. “Oh but don’t you know, this is when spring is just about to arrive! The sap is rising, the plants are preparing for growth, and the male goldfinches are starting to acquire their brilliant yellows!”

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. (Graduate degree in natural sciences, remember?)

But their candy-ass happiness angered me. In part, I blame Facebook and our mutual laziness as friends: Facebook gives you the impression that you are connecting with one another, but that connection is actually very superficial, and here’s a case in point. We’re out of touch with each other; we don’t talk anymore as friends do.

The people who responded to me have absolutely no idea about what’s going on with our roof, or about the whole suite of unhappy things on my mind, ranging from financial concerns to friends struggling with serious illnesses, and much more. None of these things go onto Facebook, or even this blog, for that matter. (Okay, today is an exception.) Like most people, I suspect, I don't broadcast about my various demons.

In other words, these friends really don’t know my underlying issues. I’m sure if they knew how I was really doing, they would have responded differently. (At least I hope they would. One of them is studying to become a doctor, for heaven’s sake.) My response was to retract; I blocked their posts.

Indeed, the two chums who countered me with gushing optimism don’t even live in Missouri, so they weren’t here to see the soggy ground, the mud, the clouds for days. They don’t see or remember what it’s like when the snow is reduced to icy, gritty mounds, the whole winter’s accumulation of soiled, damp litter revealed along the curbs. It’s just ugly, and when it’s not sunny for days, and then you’re looking at thousands of dollars sunk into that damned roof—well?




But I still wondered about my downright angry response to their optimism—why should I spurn the sunshine and lightness that I crave?

Then it hit me: I wasn’t at all craving their response, which amounted to “lighten up, you grumpy Gus! :-) :-) :-)”

No one who is depressed wants to be told to “cheer up and look on the bright side!” Their flood of happy-dappiness seemed unreal, silly, forced. Such light-hearted cheerfulness is truly beyond the ken of someone in my position, emotionally. The contrast only accentuated the great distance I was feeling from “happy.” At those times, it seems like years since I’ve felt that happy. (Maybe I’ve never felt “that happy.”) —See what I mean?

And I felt like I was being argued with. I think that’s what bothered me most.

I realized that what I really wanted was to be understood, heard, empathized with. I wanted someone to take my side. I wanted to hear something like: “Yeah, Julie, this has seriously been a long winter, and I’m sick of these gray, cold, rainy days, too. But if we can hold out for just a few more weeks, we’ll be seeing undeniable signs of spring, and that will make a huge difference! Until then, hang in there, my friend!”

That’s what I wanted to hear.




. . . Meanwhile, I have to admit—those daffodils are pretty relentless.

What Can Happen in the Woods

I haven’t said too much about myself here in this blog, because I’m not sure how “safe” it is to do so. Or sensible. I mean, if I write about my broken foot, will fetishists read my words for reasons I don’t intend? . . . But then I can’t live my life in a box, and neither can I avoid writing about myself. And anyway, why hide it? It’s no huge secret that I recently lost my job through downsizing, after having held the position since 1995. The experience shook me up.

Before the trauma of job loss, I had a long recovery from a broken right foot. (Google “Jones fracture” if you want an idea of what I went through.) There was no driving or walking for about five months. That experience did a lot more than shake me up; it got me off balance, figuratively and literally.

When you feel like the floor has dropped out from beneath you, when your footing is unsure both metaphorically and literally, you desperately look for things that make you feel grounded again.

And one of the things that has helped me recuperate from the last few years of struggling has been “getting out in nature.” I was reminded of the connection this month when I read Jeanette Winterson’s column, in which she writes,

I think that the really bad time of my depression was when I could not find that happiness in simple things. I devised a ritual to help myself through it, and to re-make the connection with the natural physical world that gets lost in depression.

What I did was to sit outside, quietly, raining or not, and concentrate completely on a leaf or a flower or a stone, feeling it, looking at it, putting it to my face, sometimes in my mouth, until I recognised it again, as both separate from and part of me. At my worst I just lay in the rain, or sometimes even the snow, until I could feel something not in my own head.

I am not sure this would work for everyone, but I know that finding the way out of the dark labyrinth has to happen in connection, in relation, and can’t happen in the head alone—where the monsters are.

Reading this, I was reminded of how I felt the first time I hobbled into the woods after being on crutches so long. It was April 2, 2008, and I had just experienced a peak of frustration in my healing process: Six months after my fracture, I was still wearing an Aircast for most of my so-called walking, the doctor was gradually moving me into a stiff-soled shoe, I was finally driving again, but the X-rays still showed abysmally slow healing of the bone.

Emotionally I had hit the wall; I had lost faith in my body’s ability to recover and the doctors’ ability to heal. I had been helpless and cooped up all winter. It was spring, yet the docs hadn’t been able to see any improvement for months. And if anything, my foot was hurting more and more, the more I used it. I hope you never have to know what this feels like, physically or emotionally.

Anyway, on April 2 a year ago, in the midst of all this, I went AWOL at lunch and drove myself to Gans Creek Wild Area, where I encourage you not to go, because the place is overused and trampled and that breaks my heart. Because it is my favorite place to go hiking myself. And by myself.

Something in me was throwing a tantrum that day. So I decided I would take my “inner brat” for a walk. I worried about my foot: “Is this really okay?” But an inner rebel answered: “Who’s telling me no? Who’s giving me any direction in this process at all? It hurts almost as much to walk in the Aircast as it does to walk in this shoe.”

I struck a deal with my internal voices: “I will go slowly and steadily and carefully. As soon as I get any sign of being tired I’ll turn back. I have plenty of time. No one cares where I am right now. It’s all right. Let’s go walking.”

It was an incredibly sunny day, and I felt like a prisoner on his first day back in freedom. I immediately started feeling better, on that well-loved path, hearing the birds singing, the chorus frogs clicking at a nearby farm pond . . . the smell of the cedars, which all seemed intensely alive and green. Tiny, brave, tender blades of grass poking up like bristles in the middle of the trail, where I was trampling them with my lumbering limp.

I decided I was getting tired of limping, so I stopped for a minute, lined up both my feet, carefully distributing my weight evenly on them both, and then resumed walking, slowly, focusing on trying to move smoothly and without limping. “Naturally,” the way I vaguely remembered being able to do.

It was very hard, but not for the reason I had thought: It was hard because limping had become a habit, born of favoring my hurt foot out of fear.

I only got as far as what is called “Shooting Star Bluff” on the maps (sadly, the shooting stars are almost all eroded from the little glade area by now); and I reclined on a big rock, stared up at the intensely bright blue sky, watched a turkey vulture or two glide around up there, closed my eyes, and began to weep tears of homecoming and relief.

On that day I became my own health advisor. That hour in the woods brought me all kinds of revelations; about the toxicity of being around computers too much; my need to be alone on a regular basis, preferably in the woods; the quality of nature that enables me to hear my internal voices (the wise ones) clearly.

I have realized that—contrary to my constant experiences in home, work, and yard, contrary to my internal struggles, my emotions, doubts, and endless confusions—in nature, there is nothing that needs my attention; everything is exactly where it should be (not counting trash or graffiti or stuff like that). Nothing needs “doing” out there. There is no “to-do list” on the trail.

If sticks and fallen leaves clutter the ground in vast disarray, it’s all perfect just as it is. If the detritus of rotting heartwood spills messily from an opening of a thick, senescent tree, that’s okay; in fact, it’s part of natural perfection. I don’t need to do a damn thing. If pretty ferns grow from the base of this rock but not from that similar rock over there, it’s not inconsistent, it’s just a sweet surprise. The woods remove me from my stressed-out, anxious, overwhelmed, day-to-day reality, and I need it.

. . . I’m really looking forward to hiking tomorrow.