2019

I was talking life/politics with one of my like-minded friends.  I told her that it bothers me that I feel such pain due to the horribleness in the world: trump, floods, school shootings, trump, children caged and separated from their parents, racism,  trump, trump, trump.  Why can others just ignore the injustices of the world and pretend they don't exist?  What is wrong with them? Or should the question be, what is wrong with me?  So with this blog,  I decided to force myself to focus on things that made me smile this year, to realize that not all is trump-trash. Life can be good. So here goes.  In no particular order, a recap of the Happy of 2019.

1.  The Full Monty. This was the most exciting theatrical experience I've ever had. I actually sang a solo, on stage, in front of a big audience.  I was funny. I got lots of laughs and rounds of applause.  I held my own with theatre professionals, and hopefully earned their respect. I met new and wonderful people. At sixty-six years old, I accomplished a milestone when I thought all of my milestones were over.

2. Flowers.  I am still thrilled that my former student, Martice Huff, sent flowers to me on opening night.  I taught seventh grade; do you realize how long ago it was that he was in my classroom?  To have a former student remember me so fondly warms my heart which too often feels cold. And who can forget flowers on my birthday? Thank you always Ronnie and Lou. You're the best!

3. Hamilton.  How lucky am I that the Cohens had an extra ticket to this Broadway show and they chose me to go see it with them?

4.  Surgery. I had my thyroid removed this summer.  Surgery went well, recovery was swift, my sister took care of me, and I did not have cancer!!

5. Visitors.  My dear, dear high school friend and her husband came to visit. It has been at least ten years since I last saw Cathy Beaver, and yet, we were as close as if no time had passed.  It's FUN to show off Havre de Grace. They got a Barbara S. Special Maryland Tour, and it was wonderful. I realized as I showed off my hometown (well, technically I reside in Ceciltucky; but my heart resides in Havre de Grace) how proud I am of where I live. And, how lucky I am that this part of the world is where I landed.

6. St. John's Food Cupboard.  I work this Cupboard every Friday.  Sometimes I dread getting up and going over, wondering what problems are going to give me a headache that day.  I leave every Friday feeling so full for having provided real help for people in need. Thank God this project has given me an insight and a personalization of a problem that plagues our country. I have a genuine compassion for those in need, and a chance to help in a meaningful way.  Our clients depend on us, and know we will help. We treat them respectfully and offer them dignity that they rarely get anywhere else. They worry about me - my aching knees, my cold hands and ears, my surgery - and they pray for me. They make me aware of blessings that I take for granted.

7. Winnie Poo Poo. My new dog has helped to heal my broken heart. She's got me walking because she won't do her business without a walk.  She has allowed me to become reacquainted with my old neighbors and she's helped me meet new ones. They may not always remember my name, but they always have a big hello for Winnie.

8. Gambling.  Once a week I join two friends, Sheila and Edith, for an evening at the casino. We have dinner and beer...cold, cold yummy beer.  I do ok. Sometimes I break even, lots of times I lose, once I won $500.  I like the slots. I like the lights, the bells, the whistles, and the absolute positive escape from the real world.  It's numbing, which is sometimes just what I need. I enjoy talking to people who are there for the fun. Sometimes I am entertained just watching and rooting for the big spenders. Whatever. I am Barbara. I like to gamble.

9. Key West. My family (and our extended family friends) took its second Thanksgiving trip to Key West this year.  We are so lucky to visit this paradise of sun, water, friendly people, glorious sunsets, entertainment, and margaritas. No matter what else happens or happened this year, what a joyous way to begin closing it up.

Blessings of the new year to you. Look for the good. And celebrate it.

Memories

"Memories, may be beautiful and yet. What's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget." Cue Barbra Streisand and The Way We Were.

That song takes me back to Millersville State College, now known as Millersville University.  The movie came out in 1973, and it struck a chord with me. The frumpy, kinda loud, intelligent girl finally gets her man, the gorgeous blonde Robert Redford. However, they don't get their happily ever after. So damn unfair! The music always brings a tear to my eye. Ah memories.....  At sixty-six, I have more memories of adventures gone by, than I will ever have of adventures yet to come. Many of my fondest memories were of my college days and the people who wove that tapestry of my life. Often, I wonder what happened to these people I haven't seen in forty-four years.  So, I stalk them on Facebook. The guys especially, I stalk the guys.

Yesterday, one of my FB groups shared the tune Midnight at the Oasis and I immediately shot back to Millersville, 1974, and Mark Q.  Mark was an English major and in a number of my classes.  He was imposing, a big handsome long-haired blonde guy in his denim overalls, a sailor's cap, and his bushy mustache. I called him Captain Kangaroo or The Walrus because of that mustache. He thought I was a good ole gal, and he laughed with me. We were good buddies. One of my dearest memories was the night before his graduation.

Mark was a good student, but a procrastinator. He had a paper to write and turn in by midnight that night if he wanted to get his diploma the next day.  He asked to borrow my typewriter.  I had the cream of the crop of typewriters.  It was electric. It had a ribbon with correction tape built in, a luxury not everyone could afford. And all the keys worked.  When he came to my dorm to pick it up, he was happy to learn that I came with it.

In his room, we worked for hours. Intense hours. But, for this English major nerd, fun hours spent exchanging ideas, debating what to write, laughing in exhaustion, and spelling difficult words out loud. English student fun.  Some of the time, he'd write a section by hand and turn it over to me to type.  When he was typing, I'd relax on his bed, pillows propped up against the wall as I flipped through his Playboy magazines.  Then I'd go back to typing.  Later, when he proofread the paper, he had to manually correct the number of times I'd typed Gertrude Skin instead of Gertrude Stine.  Fun times. Maybe you had to be there?

By 11:00 pm we were finished. Then off to the library to make a copy.  Time was running out. We jumped in his VW Bug and headed into Lancaster to find his professor's house. Those were the days before GPS, and we were lost. At ten minutes before midnight, we found the dark house, stuck the brown envelope with the precious paper inside his door, rang the doorbell once, and drove off high-fiving our success.

Back on campus, he walked me and my typewriter home. I carried a gift he'd given me, a lamp he'd made himself. If any of you are old enough to remember the masking tape covered Matuese bottles that were shoe-polished to look like leather then you can picture the lamp. I treasured it for years. Mark graduated. I met his parents the next day. He said many wonderful things about me and we parted for what I believed would be the last time I'd ever see him.  It made me sad.

By now you're probably wondering why Midnight at the Oasis triggered that memory.  Simple. That summer he told me he'd be working at a dive bar at the Jersey shore called The Oasis.  A few weeks into the summer, I asked my friend Kay if she was up for an adventure. We decided to go to the Jersey shore, have fun on the beach, locate the bar, and surprise Mark. She drove and I navigated. We spent the day, and then the real fun began, finding the bar. Finally, we found it tucked away on an iffy street. It was closed. I was crushed. My crush was not there, and I knew I'd never see him again.

Driving home was bittersweet. We commiserated like girlfriends do. Eventually we were laughing and singing with the radio. And then I saw it. A Volkswagon Bug that looked exactly like Mark's. I screamed for Kay to pass it, but to slow down enough so I could get a look at the driver. It was Mark. He was as shocked to see me in the car next to him  as I was to see him. I rolled down the window and hung out of it, waving and yelling. He was pumping his arm in the air, honking his horn,  and waving frantically at me. Was this Kismet or what???? Then, he turned off the road to go one way, and we stayed straight to go our way.  And, that was the last I saw of Mark Q.

Back to stalking guys on Facebook. I found him. He has had a wonderful life with a beautiful wife, two handsome sons, a home in Florida, and a dream job at Universal. He still had his moustache! He looked great. Except that he wasn't great. The messages on his public page were condolences to his family on his passing in May, 2018.  How can someone who lives so vividly in my memory be gone?

So it's the laughter we will remember. Whenever we remember the way we were.

Stubborness

I am stubborn, especially when I think I'm right.  I come by this characteristic naturally (Mom), and it's been a part of me for a long time.

In second grade, a friend (Joan Nobile) gave me some little figurines right before our bathroom break.  I took those little guys with me, had a seat in the back stall, and played and played and played. It was a while before I discovered that I was alone.  I sheepishly walked into the classroom where my classmates were engaged in a workbook activity. The teacher, Mrs. "Nasty" Norris was furious  and after yelling at me for what felt like an eternity, she sentenced me to stand in the corner during recess for one week.  The next day was rainy so the class played indoor games.  Carol Marshall ( the Nelly Olsen of my day) taunted me endlessly, and I decided that would be my last day in the corner.  The next day was rainy again, and I joined my friends playing a game. Carol was furious that I could be so defiant, and she ratted me out to the teacher who hadn't acknowledged the empty corner.  "Aren't you supposed to be in the corner?" asked Mrs. Nasty. I stared her down and said nothing in response.  Either my look to kill or her realization that the punishment was excessive caused her to back down and she said, "Oh that was last week, wasn't it?"  I still refused to speak to her, but I nodded yes, went back to playing, and laughed to myself when the teacher shut Carol down and threatened her with a week in the corner for tattletaling.  I was glad the incident was resolved so easily because I knew I wasn't standing in that corner again and my second grade brain was frantically trying to figure out my next step.

In ninth grade my typing teacher, Mr. Storti, brought a sick student to the Health Suite and jokingly called himself "Super Sam."  He didn't know I was in the back room. So when I wrote a gossip-type column for the school newspaper, I hailed him a hero and shared the moniker with the school.  He was livid, and rather than talk to the teacher who oversaw the contents of the paper, he yelled at me in front of the class and assigned me a detention for the following day. Shades of second grade!  I wasn't serving that detention, no way in hell.  Two days later he made me stay after class and questioned my not showing up. I told him I was never going to serve that detention. He was flummoxed.  I was a good student, I did what I was told, and he knew I meant business. He sent me on to my next class and treated me horribly for the rest of the school year. I'm stubborn and he wasn't getting away with it. I bided my time.  When I graduated from high school with a college acceptance into Millersville's teaching program, I wrote him a letter that explained my desire to be a teacher and how my experience with him would guide me through the years as a prime example of what I would never, ever, ever do to a student. We crossed paths once after that letter, and he couldn't look me in the eye.

I don't know if I ever treated a student in a similarly unfair manner.  (If I did, feel free to write me a letter. I will grovel and apologize.) But,  my first year of teaching was  such a nightmare that I've blocked out many of the memories. I had no classroom management skills and learned on the job from my many mistakes.  Had I not been stubborn, I could not have survived that year. Dead bird in a baggie in my desk with the misspelled note "your next." Back the next day.  Called into the office to apologize to a student I sent to the office for his nine hundredth unexcused lateness. Back the next day.  Breaking out in hives when the kids hid my car keys that I sobbingly searched an hour for with Russell Barnes, our beloved custodian.  Back the next day. Birthday gift of a bag of garbage wrapped like a present and left on my desk. Back the next day. Called to the office to watch the assistant principal return a student's pen knife because he said he did not carve his initials into a desk, and she chose to believe him. Even though the initials were on his desk! Even though the whole class saw him! Back the next day. I was too stubborn to give up.  Too many young and naïve teachers don't survive their first year. Failure was not an option for me, so I stuck it out. I'm so glad I did!

I am now involved in another test of wills with my new dog, Winnie the Poop.  For eight years, she was allowed to do her business inside her owner's home on a pee pad.  I told her that those days were over, and I swear she said, "It's on."  Every day, four to eight times a day, the call of "Go pee" can be heard coming from my yard. Twenty minutes this morning, before coffee, in my nightgown and winter coat, we played Go Pee. She didn't.  I watch her constantly. She has a favorite spot by the back door.  My sneaky Stealth Shitter leaves me little logs proving that she is in it to win it. I have started giving her treats when she goes pee outside. She loves them, but still hasn't yet made the connection. She is the only dog I have ever walked who does nothing on top of the other dogs' scents.  I dread the days of nice weather when my words "Go pee dammit" will float into my neighbors' windows and send them running to the bathroom. This stubborn dog is a challenge, but I will win.  I have many more years of stubbornness on her. I taught middle school for thirty long years. Chew on that Winnie because you will learn to "Go pee" and you will like it.

Life post Trixie

It's been three weeks now.  Three weeks since a vet appointment for a consultation turned into a final goodbye. I guess I'm supposed to be over it, but I'm not.

Today my neighbor was walking her dogs. I stopped to chat a bit and pet her babies.  I told her that Trixie was gone, and she was very sad for me. I cried all the way to the grocery store. And, then I had to sit in the parking lot before I could pull myself together enough to run into the store for my snow storm supplies. I got all teary again in the pet food aisle. I had turned down there by habit.  Fifteen years of habit is hard to break.

My other neighbor has two dogs. I'm in love with the bulldog, but I'm not allowed to pet him anymore.  He wiggles under the fence for continued attention, and his owner gets pretty annoyed with me when his dog takes off. So, I just wave at his smiling, slobbering face.  And I go into my quiet house.

This weekend I went to my sister's house for the first time since Trixie passed.  I expected her two dogs to look all over for her, wondering why she wasn't with me. They didn't. My nieces have never even acknowledged that Trixie died. That's not surprising since it's a constant coming and going of pets in their house.  But I felt horrible the whole weekend. Looking at the kitchen couch reminded me that Trixie spent Christmas hiding under it and pretty much telling me her time was coming to an end. The back bedroom is cold, and I missed Trixie snuggling up to me to keep warm.  Helen's cats hate me, so no cuddles from them.

I hear noises in the house. I used to shrug them off and attribute the sounds to the dog. Now, I'm always wondering, what the hell's that?  I haven't figured out where to put her bed and bowls. Or maybe, I just won't hide them away because maybe, just maybe, another dog will use them.

I don't want another dog, or so I tell myself. I don't want the expense. The commitment. The mess. The work. All that responsibility. The possibility that I'll need to leave my home for a place that doesn't take dogs. The possibility that while she's healthy now, she is, after all eight years old....

I guess I should mention that I look at Petfinder all the time.  One of the dogs keeps calling my name.  She's eight years old, housebroken, loves kids and other animals, the whole bit.  She was well-loved and given up by an older woman who couldn't care for her anymore. But, she's a Pomeranian mix and looks like Trixie.  I stop there. There's no substitute for Trixie. I keep waiting for some family to snap her up, but every day she's still a picture on a computer screen. Her name is Sandy. She needs someone, but I don't know that it's me.

My heart is so broken.

It's hard to be old and alone.  Poor Sandy.... I hopes she gets adopted, soon.

So this is Christmas?

It hasn't felt very "Christmassy" this year. Maybe it's the rain. This has been the rainiest year on record for our area. We've had cold rain, warm rain, flooding rain, misty rain, blowing rain, pounding rain, monsoon rain. Snow is what makes me want to play Christmas music, bake cookies, and write Christmas cards. Not rain. I got a few Christmas cards written. I feel sort of guilty because the cards I received are from people who did not make my list this year. Honestly, I apologize. I don't really have a list, I just write 'em as I go along, usually alphabetically through my address book. Until I just stop. My dog has been sick. Really sick. She has dementia. Most of the time, she has no idea who I am. She bites me if I try to cuddle her or simply pick her up. I can't let her outside to do her business because she runs away and gets lost. Then I have to trudge through the mud to rescue her. I now put her on a retractable leash and stay outside with her as long as I can stand it in the rain. She runs all over the yard, and then comes inside to do her business. I haven't decorated this year, but I have spot cleaned my carpet over and over again. I did not make the arrangements to have lunch with two teacher friends I have lunched with every December for at least twenty years. How did that happen????? Television usually gets me feelin' the season. But not this year. Today I was hoping to watch classic Christmas movies all afternoon. After all, it is the Saturday before Christmas. Nothing! No Scrooge, no Natalie Wood discovering Santa, no George Bailey teaching ZuZu about angels, bells, and wings. Nothing except repeated repeats of the generic Hallmark holiday movie. Even the commercials are disappointing. Where are the heart-rending service people coming home to surprise their families who are drinking their morning coffee? Where are the young couples and their angelic children decorating their curmudgeonly neighbor's house with the goodies they bought at Target or some place like that? Where are the singing and dancing chunky women from last year's uplifting Big Lots commercials? It's like businesses are afraid to make a big deal out of Christmas for some reason. Not all businesses though. If we were to believe the ads this year, everybody is getting a car or two for the holidays. I have to admit, I rarely get invited to Christmas parties. So the dearth of dress up events doesn't surprise me. But heck, I haven't even seen a lot of pictures on Facebook of all the parties I didn't get invited to. Are you all not partying this year? Thank goodness for my trivia team; at least I had the chance to wear my new-to-me ugly Christmas sweater to our last competition. We came in first. I must admit that felt like Christmas after our losing season. In a couple of days I'll be at my sister's place. She has decorated her house, put up a tree, and baked my mother's snowball cookies for me. We'll do our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and a movie at the theater. There will be a full house of people I like on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. My nieces are a lot of fun, and shopping for them was easy. Reba wanted gummy bears and maraschino cherries. Billie texted me the link to the shirt she wanted. Easy peasy. I'll get to meet their new cat. Yes, they have a third cat because, hey, you can never have enough pets. Hopefully, I'll be able to blame some of Trixie's accidents on one of her two dogs or even on one of the three cats. I will enjoy reading their Christmas cards and not feeling guilty because none of those people expected a card from me. I'll eat turkey and my mom's twice-baked potatoes. Yum! Christmas food....Hey, I'm starting to cheer up! Happy HOLIDAYS to all of you!! Best wishes for a healthy and blessed new year!! And may the Mueller investigation make 2019 a year to celebrate!

Casual Chic

I have two sets of relatives. My father's side lives in Toledo, Ohio.  They are all either dead or in jail. I know because I paid some internet site $20 to let me look up their arrest records.  We haven't seen them since childhood.  My mother's side lives in Philadelphia, so we see them a little more often.  They are the wealthy side of the family.  My cousins are big-time lawyers and very important in their fields. I know because they attended a garden party in London hosted  by Her Majesty the Queen and her son. (Prince Charles and my cousin made small talk about their similar-in-age sons.) My cousins' sons are also highly educated and very successful. The younger son is CEO of his own clothing company. And he's the reason for this blog.  We were invited to a party to congratulate him and his wife-to-be, a well-known actress/singer whose first name rhymes with the Spanish word for day and who shares the second part of her name with a much beloved First Lady.  I can't wait to see the relatives again and meet my famous cousin-to-be, but there is a dress code for this event and I don't know if I can meet it.

Casual chic.  What the hell does that mean?  I know what it means for those who travel in my cousins' circle.  Expensive pants, most likely jeans. Fancy and very expensive blouse or sweater of some kind.  Maybe a very expensive jacket.  The kinds of clothes my cousin sells where one piece of casual chic costs anywhere between $200 - $1000+.  All of this is topped off by high heels, preferably the kind with bright red soles. The impression given by a casual chic outfit should be expensive, slim, fashionable, slim, carefree, slim.  Yes, that's casual chic for the Philadelphia crowd, but what about me?

I mostly shop the clearance racks.  I look at the price before I decide to try something on. Then I look above the rack to see if there's a sign indicating a further discount. I've purchased some very nice pieces that way.  In fact, I found a number of things in my closet that I considered wearing to the party. I have a beautiful gold blouse with a mandarin collar. I love it and wear it on special occasions. In fact, I've worn it for the past fifteen years of special occasions. I have it on in the picture for this blog.  I have a few other beautiful seldom worn blouses that might have fit the bill if they weren't  between ten and twenty years old. I recognized that I would need something new for this event.  But what? My clothing style is "small town teacher."  Most of you are familiar with that style; recognizing it helps you pick the teachers out of the crowd. That can be a fun game to play while people watching. But I digress; today I went shopping.

At my favorite store for finding something chichi and elegant, I was beyond disappointed.  They've gone the casual route, but not the casual chic route.  I did find some pants, and that's a major achievement for me since I am only 5' tall and probably about as round as I am tall.   I treated myself to a sweater with cardinals decorating it, and I paid full price (oh what a spendthrift desperation turns me into).  I debated a particular blouse for the evening event.  I couldn't tell if it was pretty on me or something pretty a ninety year old would wear.  It was on sale, so I bought it of course.  I'll ask my niece what she thinks of it. She's brutally honest about my ugly  clothes.

Deciding to step up my game, I went to Macy's.  I tried on all the sale items that might have worked.  They didn't.  Then I found it, a 2-piece shell and jacket the color of birch trees in the sparkling snow.  It too was on sale, $160 reduced to $xxx.  I can't remember the last time I spent that kind of money on a shirt.  So I scoured the store, determined to find something spectacular for 2/3 the cost.  I learned that spectacular doesn't come at 2/3 the cost and I was lucky to have found what I did.  For fifteen minutes, I debated buying it because not only was it too expensive, but it had shoulder pads.  (I had nixed anything in my closet with shoulder pads as giving away their time period, the days of TV's Dynasty.)  Here was something brand new and it had those damn shoulder pads.  I bought it.  I will take them out and hopefully not destroy the lines of the jacket.  And while I won't be a 2018 version of the girls from Sex in the City, I'm hoping I'll be chic enough not to look like the county bumpkin I am.

I doubt we'll be invited to the wedding.  That will be a Hollywood extravaganza filling a few pages in People magazine.  The stress to find something to wear in People magazine would probably require me to hire a stylist. And that is definitely not in my clothing budget.

My Old Dog

When my little Lucy Dogge died, I didn't ever think I could have another dog. The pain of putting her down was agonizing.  However, three months later I adopted Trixie.  We've had a wonderful fifteen years together, but I am girding myself for the inevitable.  My old girl is just that, old.

She's  had quite a few health scares.  One night she got drunk on my airline sized liquor samples.  Back in the old days, you were given (for free) more booze than you could drink. So, I would bring them home to drink later. Later never happened, and  Trixie had a one-dog party during a PTA night. Then I had a night of running her outside every time I heard that earping sound.  Another time, her love of anything peppermint caused her to devour my dental floss. The first time it happened, I got home (from another PTA night) to hear her choking.  Just in time, I was able to pull the floss out of her.  It was similar to how a magician pulls a string of handkerchiefs from his pocket.  I thought that line of floss would never end! Since neither of us learned our lesson the first time, Trixie once again had access to my dental floss. This time she ate it, container and all, resulting in surgery and thousands of dollars in medical bills.  Since then she's had Cushings disease diagnosed and she also lives with congestive heart failure.  Neither of those conditions seemed to slow her down, but old age is a different story.

Dogs get skinny when they get old.  Trixie eats, and she eats well.  I buy her a roasted chicken once a week.  But, she doesn't put on an ounce.  My girl should weigh between twenty and twenty-two pounds; she barely weighs in at thirteen. Getting her groomed turns her into a walking skeleton.  She is arthritic and those old bones hurt her.  When she shows me her pain, I give her the pain pills the vet has provided. They bring her relief. I hope.

She seems to have dementia.  I have actually watched her walk into a corner and be unable to turn herself around.  She will sit motionless and stare into the hall at nothing. Well, nothing that I can see. She will pace endlessly until eventually she settles down, only to get up and pace some more.  It is annoying.  It is unnerving.  But it is really heartbreaking when I go to pick her up, and she is confused as to who I am.  She tries to bite me.  She struggles to escape my hug.  She is confused. She winces when I approach her to pet her head.  I think that's because she can't see. Or hear. I hope it's not because her head hurts.

She sleeps in the bed snuggled up to me.  I've had to put pillows in the gap between my bed and the wall because she falls off and can't get herself out of there. And she cries when she falls, so the pillows soften the blow.  I think she takes up more of the bed than I do, but she hasn't fallen lately. In the morning, I've started carrying her outside as soon as she wakes up because the old girl doesn't always find her way to the door in time. 

I am no longer able to board her. She's so frail, the confusion could/would kill her.  So Trixie and I will be spending Thanksgiving together here in Maryland while the rest of the family goes to the Poconos.  I'm sure she'll enjoy some turkey (or cashew butter and jelly) as much as she does her chicken. 

Yes, she's old, 105 in human years. But, she still gets excited when I come in the back door.  I could be gone for as long as it takes to get the mail, and she greets me as if I'm returning from a long journey.  She knows when I'm yelling at the television, and she sits at my feet to calm me down.  She actually jumps for joy because she loves me that much, well, me or the morsel of food in my hand.   Nobody else loves me that much. She still has spurts of energy when she runs across the lawn like a puppy.  She's still happy to greet visitors to the house.  Yes, she's still happy.  Lucy taught me how to be a loving mom when the pup is no longer happy.  The day's coming, I know that.  But it's not today. And I know that too.