Day 13: If we were sharing a bottle of wine

I haven't done one of these in a while. The original idea was for bloggers to write a blog post about what we -- you and I -- might talk about over a cup of coffee, but I write at night, and I don't drink caffeine. Also I do what I want. I can think of a few things I might talk about. Maybe you could write what you'd talk about in the comments.

I'm sitting on my couch in the middle of my living room as I write this. I pulled it out earlier and cleaned behind and underneath it. Yuck. Where does all that dust come from? I understand the socks, colored pencils, markers, and almonds, but the dust? It's disgusting.

After I finished vacuuming and mopping back there, I couldn't bear to put the couch back, because it looks so good. I will before I go to bed. I don't know what possessed me to do that at 11:00 at night, but I am glad it's done.

When I was a young Air Force officer's wife, I struggled with a dirty little secret called depression and anxiety. At the time I was awfully hard on myself about it, but looking back I can understand why that young woman struggled. It's not an easy life, being a military wife, and I was very young. I'm not going to talk about that though. Cleaning behind the couch reminded me of one of the things I did that kept me sane during my husband's weeks- or months-long  TDY's (temporary duty).

I'd give myself one job every day that was not a daily chore. Like cleaning behind the couch or sorting out the sock drawers, going to the commissary or alphabetizing the pantry. OK, I never alphabetized the pantry. But I might clean and organize it. Having that one job to do every day got me through some lonely days when college classes didn't take enough time and kids were in the future. It's a shame I wasn't better at building a life back then.

These days, I could make a list with 15 of those kind of chores on it every day here in my big old Victorian and never run out of days. How I wish I could split the work up more evenly over my life. Maybe that's why I rarely get depressed or anxious these days.

If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd ask you what you've done to keep yourself sane and above water. If you don't have any tricks, I have a list of chores you could help me whittle down.
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If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd tell you I miss some of the courtesies people used to offer each other. Coraline and I were driving home yesterday and we came to a traffic light that was green, but the cars who had the green light weren't going through. And the cars that had the red light were driving on through it. It was a funeral procession, of course, but since they didn't have a police escort, it took me a second to notice the little flags on some of the cars and figure out what was going on.

It was a long procession. We sat through 3 or 4 green lights before the last car passed by. A couple of people honked and tried to get the line of cars to go through the green light, but most either knew what was happening or didn't want to go against the majority.

When I was a kid growing up in a small town, people would pull over and stop their cars as a funeral passed by, but I don't see that very often these days. I'm not sure it's a thing any more. Letting the procession go through a light, yes. Stopping along the other side of the road, not so  much.

I miss it. And I think it's not a bad blessing: May your funeral procession be long enough to cause the  drivers in the cars going the other way to honk their frustration.
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If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd say my granddaughter Coraline and I are going to Iowa for my mom's 80th birthday soon. I wrote already that we're flying. It's her first time, and it's been so long since I've flown it might as well be mine too. I always drive, but my little brother talked me into flying so I wouldn't have to spend 24+ hours driving through Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. The I states.

It's been 3 1/2 years since I've been home. I always worry about the same things. I just know everybody is going to notice how much fatter I am than last time I was there. And I got a shitty haircut last Thursday that I need to try to get fixed at another salon before I go. It's hard to take the risk again with another new place, first because I could just get more shitty haircutting. And second because I hardly have any hair left to cut. Bitch really chopped a lot off. Also, haircuts are fucking expensive. At least on my budget. So I need to lose 40 pounds and get a decent haircut out of what's left of my hair before I go.

I also need to move my couch back against the wall, and I can predict with reliability which is most likely to happen.
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 It's not a joke, those 40 pounds. My 3-year-old standard poodle Crow Cocker is too fat, according to his vet. And I'm too fat. Hmmmm. Seems like we could work on that together, but one of us is too lazy and too busy, both at the same fucking time. Pour me some more wine, will ya?
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If we were sharing a bottle of wine, I'd ask if you've noticed things are so fucking serious these days. Remember when we could go days and not think about politics? I do. I tell myself almost daily I'm going to pull the fucking Facebook IV out of my arm and get my life back. But what I really want to do is take a break from politics. I want to keep the personal stuff that connects me to my friends and get rid of every political article on my feed. No offense to anybody who shares political articles. I do it too sometimes, although I've backed way off on that. It's preaching to the choir.

I've never had one of those vacations where you just lie around on beaches and stroll through quaint cities and other people take care of you. I need one of those.

I also need to move my couch back against the wall, and I can predict with reliability which is most likely to happen.
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Neither is a fuck buddy going to happen, although somebody commented the other day that I needed to write about that. Ugh. I will, but not tonight. I tried it once, mostly because my daughter Elvira insisted I needed to, and it wasn't as easy as you'd think.

By the time somebody makes a decent fuck buddy robot, I'll be too old to give a fuck. I can almost see the appeal though. Almost. OK, not really.
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I'm going to bed now. The wine is gone, and I'm craving potato chips. Sorry this has been kind of a boring ramble. I'm boring these days. I need somebody to entertain me .... and yes, I DO mean like that. Next thing you know I'll be trolling Craigslist again.

Peanut butter and hibernation

Reticula attended a fanfuckingtastic production of Hairspray this afternoon. When she went home, she considered taking a nap, knowing she should go for a bike ride on the first lovely day of fall. Knowing a nap would only slow her metabolism down, but a bike ride would do all kinds of wonderful, positive things. So instead of writing a nap into her story, which would only give her dreams to write about, but not real life, she wrote a bike ride into her story.

And not one damn thing happened that would be of interest to any of you. So much for that story. (If this makes no sense to you, read the post before this one.)

Tonight I posted on Facebook that I needed to write something, but the first day of fall was making my brain want to hibernate. Two readers posted ideas: peanut butter and hibernation.

I've never heard 3 words that have as little to do with each other as peanut butter and hibernation. I'm going to have to split them up and write about each.

I eat too much peanut butter. I'm making up for the years I didn't eat peanut butter because I thought I was allergic to it. I got really sick from peanut butter cookies I made years ago -- that kind with the Hershey's kiss on top -- and after that I was afraid to eat it. I knew it wasn't the peanut butter, but the flu, because my son Drake had it too, but I still couldn't eat peanut butter. Let me just say the story has to do with throwing up in the Kansas City airport while traveling with a toddler who also had it coming out of both ends. I had peanut butter trauma for years.

At some point I started eating it again, but only Kroger brand natural crunchy peanut butter. I love peanut butter on apples. And ants on a log. And a big scoop to lick off a tablespoon.

I have never had sex with peanut butter. Chocolate, of course. Whipped cream, which is for beginners. But never peanut butter. That should probably go on a list somewhere. There are still things I intend to try in the decades of life I have left to me. If that idea interests you, call me at 1-900-reticula. I prefer crunchy, and smooth really doesn't appeal to me, so take that into consideration.

Hibernation is an appealing concept, especially because I live in the midwest where we really do have gray, dreary winters. I'm a chilly type, so I have to wear layers, and sometimes they drag me down. It would be easy to burrow into the couch with a fuzzy blanket and refuse to come out until the daffodils bloom.

I don't dare do that. It would make me insane. I've tried it. I became insane.

I'm one of those people who is so extroverted, I'm an 11 on the Myers Briggs E/I scale. If I go more than 2 days without human contact, I start planning my own suicide. (Come to think of it, that's redundant. You can only plan your own suicide. If you plan someone else's, that would be murder. Interesting.) The longer I go, the lower I go.

All it takes is a quick trip to Kroger for natural crunchy peanut butter and a 2-minute conversation with a friendly checkout clerk, and I'm reset for the rest of the day. Coffee with a friend can hold me for 2 days. A party .... again, I can only go 2 days.

Anyway, this is one reason I would never want to relive my 20's. I didn't know myself in my 20's. And having grown up in a small town where I knew everybody all my life, I didn't know how to get out there and make friends after our numerous moves. I got depressed. Super depressed.

And the more depressed I got, the more I isolated myself, which made me more depressed, and so I isolated ..... It was a wicked cycle.

And it couldn't be broken by busyness. I was always busy -- creating, writing, gardening, reading, painting, sewing, canning, cooking, walking my dog. It could only be broken by human contact.

It took me a few years to realize I can never hibernate. No matter how cold it gets; no matter how deep the snow gets; no matter how gray and unappealing the dragging dark days of winter get, I force myself out there and act like it's summer.

Because, while I honor the seasons and I honor the concept of embracing the dark, the intuitive, the pain of life, I don't want to kill myself. I embrace the dark with other people.

I would make a terrible bear. Or Eskimo.

Last winter I suffered through a nasty case of food poisoning. Not to get too graphic and make you suffer too, but I couldn't leave the house for several days. I had my internet and my smart phone. People called, texted, messaged, Faceboooked, emailed ... I listened to part of a concert over Alex's cell phone and the band yelled "hi, Reticula!" to me .... yet by day-3 my kids were ready to hold an intervention (which would have had to have taken place in the bathroom). I went a little crazy.

But it helps to know myself. It helps to know what's causing it and what I need to do. Because depression lies its fucking ass off. And this is serious. Depression is only eclipsed by addiction and alcoholism when it comes to lying.

Depression tells me I feel too shitty (no pun intended) to go out. I just can't take talking to people. I'm too tired. I'm too anxious. Loud noises make me jump. I'm better off alone. I suck. I'm too depressed, and nobody likes me anyway.

(globalpost.com)

That's why I'm glad I know myself well enough to say to depression, "I see you there, trying to make me hibernate here and go crazy with you. I don't care how exhausted you make me feel, I'm going out. And I will fake it until I make it ... without you, you fucking liar."

So, no hibernating for me, no matter how cold and gray and snowy the days. I'll be the one digging out -- both the snow and the blues -- and finding a friendly smile to fill my heart. Maybe it will be yours.

How about you? Peanut butter: crunchy or smooth? Hibernation: healing or depressing?

I just realized the only thing that tied these 2 topics together takes place in a bathroom, hopefully out of ear-shot of anybody else. There you go. In the end, this turned into another poop post.