The Golden Years? My dying a**!

Let me see.  To bed at 9:00.  Awake at 2:00 AM to pee.  Back to bed to contemplate the fate of the world.  Doze off.  Up again at 4:00 to guess what? Back to bed to contemplate actually getting up and getting an early start on the day.  Oh, hell yes.  Like I am so busy I need to get up that early.  Sadly one of these mornings I will not even get up and who is going to know?  Oh, yeah, the dogs and that damn cat who have to eat several meals a day all home cooked and chuck full of fresh vegetables.  So at 5:00 I give it up as a lost cause and give the animals their treats.

Not that my animals are spoiled, but they need a treat for going to bed and a treat for getting up.  They also require treats throughout the day for simply going out to the bathroom, coming in after going out to the bathroom, for helping me let the geese either out or in, for staying home while I go to the store, or barking at the UPS man, or the trash man, or the airplane going over.  But this post is not about my spoiled rotten animals.  It is about my golden years and what a friggin' joke they are.

Gone are the days when I could actually cut my own toenails.  Gone are the days when my yard was always mowed and the roses were blooming and the weeds were under control.  Gone are the days when the car was clean and my floor was swept and the sink clear of dishes.  Gone are the days when I really gave a shit about anything.  My bones are stiff, my joints creek and I can not hear what you are mumbling about over there.

I have had some pretty sad days in my life, but the saddest one of all was about 2 weeks after my husband had passed and I was standing and looking at his picture on the wall and it dawned on me that I would never again be held by a man who loved me completely.  I would never be able to just turn off the stove and go out to eat because he just wanted to take me. 
No more fishing trips. 
No more running up to Cripple Creek.
No more peanut shells on the floor.
No more heated debates over politics.
No more watching me mow the grass.
No more walking up behind me and putting his arms around me and laying his head on my back.
No more anything.

I did start dating, but the first guy died.  The second one told me, "I always felt like I was standing in Kenny's shadow."  As it turned out, he probably was.  Mother always told me that divorces were easy, because there was usually hard feelings on both parts.  But when the partner dies, they take on sainthood.  You forget the little things that irritated you and the partner is remembered as perfect.
Mother was so wise. 

I miss sharing happy times.  I miss sharing sad times.  I miss sharing little victories I win.  I miss showing him what I did down in the sewing room and I miss cooking for him.  And I miss setting in the front yard with the animals and watching the world go by.  I miss him.

Well, I need to go down one level and pick up the mouse body.  Thanks, Icarus.  I really have nothing planned for today, but I know I have to get started on my day.  Put my memories away and mark another day off the calendar.

All I can say, is have a nice day and enjoy what you have while it is there to be enjoyed.  Matter while you can, because time is fleeting.  Time and tide wait for no man.

Writers block or at a loss for words or am I brain dead?

I love to write and usually I do a lot of it, but sometimes it is like everything above the neck is out to lunch.  I recall writing my first novel.  That was a piece of cake.  Then I started the sequel.  Then life happened and I wrote the one about Sherman and I that he had requested.  Then he died and I went back to the sequel, but 25 pages and 5 years later, it is still in the drawer.  Or some where.

I lay it my little bed on nights when I can almost get to sleep, but not quite accomplishing that feat, and come up with the most brilliant ideas in the whole world.  It is then that I fall asleep thinking that I will remember and find when I wake up the next morning that the brilliant thoughts have all flown.  I have thought about taking a notebook to bed and jotting down the ideas.  Right!  The next morning I look at the chicken scratches on my note pad and wonder what in the hell language I was writing.  If I can read the words the whole concept has changed and any thoughts that I jotted down are lost in the morning.

Maybe I am trying to hard!  That just dawned on me.  I made an omelet a little earlier.  First I chopped up asparagus in the skillet.  I cooked it a little bit and then put 2 scrambled eggs  on top to cook.  I sprinkled cheddar cheese on it when it was almost done.  Then I got out the sirachi  (however you spell that) and it went on top.  I should have stopped at the asparagus and eggs.  What I ended up with was the asparagus that I love tastes like...  well, not asparagus.  The cheese hangs in strings and really adds nothing to the taste except calories.  The Sirachi  has a taste that overpowers everything else.  And that is what my writing becomes.  It is not at all what I started out to write.

I started out to write about one thing and end up writing about something else altogether.  I call it rambling, but it is not that.  What it is seems to be is that I am just flaky and have no discipline at all.  Perhaps I would be better served if I picked a topic and stuck to it!  Along those lines ....well, shit!  I just lost that thread that I was going with.  Which reminds me, I need to get the patches sewn on that Letter Jacket or there will be no pay day for me this week.  And speaking of "week" I need to make an appointment with my dermatologist before my face falls off.  And speaking of face I need to pick up those little wet wipes to clean the baby's butt with since I used them all yesterday.

Now where was I?

If I had known then what I know now!

My Mother was wise.  Very wise.  She taught me that no good deed goes unpunished.  She also taught me that you can not judge a book by it's cover.  All this was woven in with the 10 Commandments that are written in stone and I am sad to say that over the course of my life I have probably broken every one of them, some of them repeatedly.  Well, maybe not the murder one, but the covet for sure and in my drunken stupors of bygone day I was never real sure whose bed I might wake up in.  Neon lights were my favorite.  My life is a billboard for what an education can do for you and honey, I graduated Magna Cum Lade from the school of hard knocks.

I was moving a cabinet a little while ago and that entailed cleaning out drawers.  I happened upon poems I had written years ago and I would like to share one with you.  For some reason the working title of this was "Abuse".  I am not sure just what kind of abuse, but here it is:

Mother, may I please go out and play 
In the forest by the house today?

May I take my dolly with the broken arm
Deep in the forest so dark and warm?

You see the sun is shining bright,
But in the forest there is little light.

I promise that I will take care
While in the dark cool forest there.

Dolly needs to rest and mend her arm
And the forest holds a magic charm.

I'll make a bed of pine boughs sweet
And lay dear dolly at my feet.

I'll lay her gently; Her eyes will close,
And she will be in sweet repose.

The forest nymphs will gather round
As dolly rests upon the ground.

Then you will see her arm will be
As perfect as it used to be.

Then daddy can if he but will
Take you to the forest still.

He'll lay you down 'neath sky and tree
Then bring you safely home to me.

For I can see you growing weak,
I can barely hear you speak.

So Mother dear I can but plead
Rest in the forest is what we need.

I often find stuff I wrote years ago and wonder why I turned out like I did.  I guess life got in the way.  Sam sent me a picture of myself when I was a Freshman in Nickerson High School and I wonder where that slip of a girl went and more importantly, when did she leave?  I flash back to days gone by and try to put my finger on the day I lost all that naiveté and became calloused.  Or was it a series of days...and nights.  I would like to blame it on someone, but who?  The first husband?  When I became a mother?  Second husband?  When did I learn to be a waitress?  A cook?  An accountant?  A widow?  When did I learn to sew?  Weave?  When did I turn into an activist and a compassionate woman?

I used to tell my mother that I wished I could do it all over again and this time I would get it right.  There would be one husband.  2 kids and a puppy.  We would live in a nice house and have money in the bank.  We would go to church every Sunday and donate to charities.  If only.  And Mother always told me "Hind sight is 20/20....looking back.

So here I set a withered up old woman trying to tell the new generation how to do it and they laugh at me.  Tape player?  What is that?  Manual transmission?  $100 bill?  Phone stuck to the wall?  That is a pisser.  It makes me sad that the old days are gone.  If I had it to do over again I would most definitely take pictures of the old wringer washer with the Kodak box camera my brother sent me from Germany.  I would have a pair of dad's overalls tucked away some where.  And I sure as hell would not have thrown my first diamond wedding rings in the river up by Concordia.

Live and Learn.