Open Sesame

I have been mired in a writing slump for the past several months.  The reason is diabolically simple: I only want to write about Annie.  However, I have made an agreement not to do so, because she is uncomfortable being the subject of my prattling.  Therefore, in an effort to snap out of my [writing] funk, I have decided to adopt the strategy that many bloggers employ during the month of April, and begin an A-Z adventure.  Today’s letter is D,  for door.   What?  It’s not April?  Sue me.

Open Sesame

Marguerite de Angeli wrote a novel for young readers called Door in the Wall.  I taught it for many years while working in the middle school.  Succinctly summarized, this novel used the “door in the wall” as a metaphor for overcoming one’s obstacles that are encountered in this journey called life.  Like most people, I have encountered my share of doors, once I emerged from childhood to adulthood, the most imposing of them, my experience in the military.

However, prior to militarily case-hardened, steel door, there is one other I’d like to touch on; rather, it was a group of “Doors,” headed by the late Jim Morrison, et al.  The rock and roll band, The Doors, burst on the national scene, circa 1967, ushering in a period of the music industry, arguably the most significant in history.  It is merely coincidental that both the Doors, and I, hailed from the Los Angeles area.  They could have easily emerged on the East Coast, or the mid-west.  The fact that I saw them in concert, in the Hollywood Bowl, sometime in 1968, is irrelevant, because a band on tour, would have been likely to make that stop, no matter what its city of origin was.

I loved The Doors and still enjoy hearing their music.  I mention The Doors, because the late sixties marked the transition from the early rock and roll of Elvis and other early sixties artists, to the more modern era, represented at that time by such diverse bands as Jefferson Airplane, Cream, The Moody Blues, Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Grateful Dead, and a myriad of others.  I was more than happy to charge through this door, into more contemporary music.

When I was drafted in 1972, the last year that the draft existed, I was a very sheltered kid, having been raised in a large family, with the blanket of security which often exists in this type of setting.  However, the nice drill instructors did not ask that we perform the necessary tasks to get through boot camp-they demanded it.  So I was prodded through this doorway into my future, whether I liked it or not.  The only other option available to me, was a route that went through Canada, and there was no way I could ever have done that.  At least I knew that if I could survive the drill instructors, my time in the military would be limited to less than two years.

For the next forty years, except for the G.I. Bill, when I thought of the military, it was with bitterness and contempt.  However, beginning last August, I have applied for Veterans health care, and have been astonished at the quality of care I have received.  Yes, it takes time to get that appointment to replace my bifocals, and yes, I have to take potluck, when it comes to getting an appointment for an immediate problem, but when one has no other options, the VA starts to look pretty good.  

It’s not as though I planned to have no health care; the school district simply does not provide insurance, longer than five years after one retires.  So the door that has opened for health care, is the result of that two-year period, that was so dismal, so long ago.  Who’d have thought it?

People create doors for a multitude of reasons.  By getting my teaching credential, to keep the little school house on the mountain afloat, I propelled myself into a career of teaching down in the school district.  Here was a door to my sons’ educational process, one that I cherished at the time, and one that continues to fill me with satisfaction, that I was able to be such an integral part of such a critically important part of their education.

I’ve had doors slammed in my face.  Haven’t we all?  But the ones that I have managed to pass through, have left me feeling as though walls were created to be accessed.  It’s part of the human experience.  So the next time you encounter a  locked and bolted door, don’t give up and walk away.  Get a Sherman tank and blast your way through.  You never know when that locked door will come back to provide you with a key to survival, as the VA health care system is doing for me.

California

I have been mired in a writing slump for the past several months.  The reason is diabolically simple: I only want to write about Annie.  However, I have made an agreement not to do so, because she is uncomfortable being the subject of my prattling.  Therefore, in an effort to snap out of my [writing] funk, I have decided to adopt the strategy that many bloggers employ during the month of April, and begin an A-Z adventure.  Today’s letter is C,  for California.  What?  It’s not April?  Sue me.

California

I was lucky enough to have been born and raised in in Southern California, and though I have since relocated to the northern part of the state, it doesn’t really matter.  California, for me, is the best place in the country, if not the world, to live.  

No other state that I can imagine, holds the same promise as California.  Though I like to stay on the politically correct side of the street, I will just say that there is no other place which reflects the ideals and principles of life, that I hold most dear, than California.  People of all cultures and ethnic backgrounds reside in California.  My father worked in a steel factory during the formative years of my youth, and he told us stories of the other denizens of his worksite, consisting of mostly Mexican  and black men.  His best friend was a black man named Pete DeCarlo, and I remember visiting Pete and his family as a child.

Papa introduced tortillas and beans into the house in the early sixties, a result of being offered samples of these commodities at work, when he ate lunch with the guys.  This was many years preceding the advent of Taco Bell, or other fast-food Mexican outlets.  It wasn’t until the late sixties that the first of this type of restaurant opened in downtown La Puente, The Green Burrito, which my oldest brother Eric used to frequent.

The uptake of all this interaction with the men of the shop, was that Papa taught us from an early age, that skin color was irrelevant, when it came to deciding the worth of a person.  He had very little good to speak of, when it came to the management at State Steel, represented by, what else?  White men.  So I grew up with a healthy sense of appreciation for people of all diverse backgrounds.

While growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, in the fifties and sixties, we were within a half-hour’s travel time of the San Gabriel Mountains, with plenty of snow in the winter; we were within forty-five minutes travel time to the ocean, for either surfing or bagging rays; and we were within an hour and a half from the high desert, for hiking or just driving through for the views.  California had it all.

When I got to college-age, there was never any doubt that I would attend a school of higher education.  Though Papa was not an educated man, having settled for acquiring a G.E.D. at some point along the way, he was instrumental in instilling in all of us, that higher education was the only way to go, if we wanted to avoid a lifetime of factory work.  Of the nine of us kids, there are two P.H.D’s, at least three M.A’s, and the rest of us have degrees from four-year schools.

I began school at Cal Poly, Pomona, got drafted and spent twenty-one months in the army at the end of the VietNam conflict.  When I got out, I moved up to San Jose, where I then attended San Jose State until I graduated in 1979.  Then I went back in a masters program, for another two years.  So out of twelve years, I attended school for ten of them, all at the most ridiculously inexpensive rate.  It cost $359.00 per semester at San Jose State, not counting books.  The G.I. Bill covered much of it in the seventies, so all was well.

When I relocated up to Mendocino County in May of 1982, I was convinced I had found paradise.  We bought twenty acres of land in 1975, for the paltry sum of four hundred dollars per acre.  Only in California?  I don’t know.  I just know that there can’t be a better place in the Union, with people who are so friendly and accepting.  I have spent time in the Mid-West, and time on the East Coast, but there is nowhere that I have found the people to be so true, as the people of California.

Baseball Been Very Good to Me

I have been mired in a writing slump for the past several months.  The reason is diabolically simple: I only want to write about Annie.  However, I have made an agreement not to do so, because she is uncomfortable being the subject of my prattling.  Therefore, in an effort to snap out of my [writing] funk, I have decided to adopt the strategy that many bloggers employ during the month of April, and begin an A-Z adventure.  Today’s letter is B for what else?  Baseball.  What?  It’s not April?  Sue me.

Baseball Been Very Good to Me

To quote the old Saturday Night Live show, “Baseball been very good to me.”  Mind you, I only stayed up late enough to watch SNL once, because I just can’t do those late nights.  The only reason I stayed up that late is because I was staying at JT’s house and Jimmy Buffet was making an appearance on TV.  At least the majority of baseball games are over by around ten or so, or maybe a little later if Brian Wilson is closing out...

I have so much to say about America’s Pastime, that I doubt I will be able to do it justice, but with Spring Training opening up yesterday, in the Arizona desert, I feel compelled to try.  Most of my life, dating back to 1959, the year the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series against the Chicago White Sox, I have been a fan, the consummate fanatic.  In a world filled with plenty of chaos, baseball brings a serenity to my life, unlike any other I have known.  

Over the course of the past fifty-two years, I have done most of my baseball imbibing via the radio, the last five years notwithstanding (Dish TV, you know).  The ebb and flow of the games, has allowed me to pursue a multitude of endeavors, from chopping/moving/stacking firewood, to writing complex term papers for school, to grading middle school papers, to simply lying down and napping.  One of my earliest memories was that of lying out under the stars, circa 1960, and listening to Frank Howard of the Dodgers, blast a ninth-inning home run to win a ball game for the home team.

And, of course, we played marathon games in the empty lot directly across the street from our home on Fellowship Street, gathering the neighborhood kids together after morning summer chores were done, and playing through the day until dinner.  I won’t go into detail, except to mention that one incident when my poor sister JT, got nailed by me with the baseball bat.  So much blood, but she forgave me, and we settled in to listen to the Dodgers on the radio.

Wait a second!  The Los Angeles Dodgers?  What’s up with that?  I am still savoring my beloved San Francisco Giants‘ second World Series triumph in the past three years.  How do the Dodgers thrust their motley presence into my thoughts?  Very simply stated, I bled Dodger Blue for the first twenty-two years of my life, until I moved up to San Jose in 1974, after being released from the Big Green Machine.  Being so heavily addicted to the game, and unable to get reception for the Dodgers any longer, in the pre-internet days of yore, I began listening to the San Francisco Giants.  

Ironically, while growing up in Southern California, following the Dodgers, the Giants always seemed to get the upper hand.  With the two Willies, Mays and McCovey, and superior pitching, the Giants were a habitual thorn in the side of the Boys in Blue.  After moving up to the Bay Area, and listening to the Giants on the radio, I switched my allegiance to the Orange and Black.  After all, it is virtually impossible to listen to a team on the radio over the course of a season, without gaining an appreciation for, and a love of, that team.  Make no mistake, I do love the Giants.

Having made the switch, I now saw what seemed a turnaround in the outcomes of the games played between these two opponents.  The Dodgers always seemed to be able to pull out the tight games, and went to the playoffs far more frequently than the Giants.  Overall, in head-to-head franchise competition, the Giants have prevailed in the win column, 1190-1166.  That’s twenty-four victories’ difference, between two teams, involved in what has frequently been called the most storied rivalry in professional sports history.  

However, the last time the Dodgers were in the Show was 1988.  Those are sweet words to these old ears.  More importantly, the Giants, as I mentioned, have won the whole enchilada, two of the last three years, using phenomenal pitching, timely hitting, and employing a young catcher named Buster Posey, the Heart and Soul of the Orange and Black.  Listening to the four best announcers in baseball, whether Jon and Dave on the radio, or Kruk and Kuip on the tube, is the ultimate summer entertainment.

With the San Francisco pitchers and catchers reporting to Scottsdale yesterday, (Have you checked out Timmy’s new “do?”) the 2013 baseball campaign is gearing up, and the Giants are primed for another run at the title.  Of course, the pundits will inform us that the Dodgers are the favorite to take the division, with their 230 million dollar payroll.  

Well, I am here to tell you, payrolls don’t win baseball games, guts and determination-not to mention pitching-do.  The Dodgers can buy some of the best players available, but they can’t buy a pennant.  That has to be won on the diamond.  I am here to tell you that I’ll put our starting lineup against any that the Dodgers can trot out, and sit back to listen to/watch 150-plus games, and in the end, we’ll view the Dodgers from our rear-view mirrors, as they once again shake their heads in disbelief.  

Grab some pine, Bums, as Kruk would say; you’re out of here.

Brother, Can You Lend Me a Hand?

I have been mired in a writing slump for the past several months.  The reason is diabolically simple: I only want to write about Annie.  However, I have made an agreement not to do so, because she is uncomfortable being the subject of my prattling.  Therefore, in an effort to snap out of my [writing] funk, I have decided to adopt the strategy that many bloggers employ during the month of April, and begin an A-Z adventure, beginning with the ever-present concept of aging.  What?  It’s not April?  Sue me.

Brother, Can You Lend Me a Hand?

Aging is a good-news, bad-news proposition.  The bad news is I’m getting old; the good news is I’m getting old.  Yes, it’s a double-edged sword.  I have always maintained that a person either gets old or dies.  Not very profound, but at least it helps to recognize this fact, when struggling to merely stand up, after being seated for a spell, or when trying to get one’s boots on.

I have aches and pains associated with getting old.  I have heard about this process all my life.  My esteemed mother (now ninety years young and still going strong in her apartment in Willits) used to tell us when we were small, that we would come home from school one day, and find that she had turned into a pile of bones, right in the middle of the kitchen floor.

One of my most vivid recollections of my eighth grade school year, is having my father take me and JT aside, and having him inform us that, unless we pitched in and helped her, Mama would not survive her pregnancy, a condition that produced my youngest brother, Kevin.  Papa warned us that Mama had a heart condition that robbed her of her strength and was likely to result in an early demise, unless she got the help she needed.  I remember re-prioritizing my life, so as to help JT do the breakfast dishes every morning, before we left for school.  Mama turned forty-four that year and I have no doubt that Papa firmly believed that what he told us was true. 

Now, as I travel through my sixtieth year of life, I experience the pitfalls of the aging process.  Having retired from teaching in the middle school in 2006, I have found it necessary to return to the construction industry, in order to keep financially solvent.  The irony is that I worked in this field from 1982 until the start of my teaching career, and only stopped because of the toll being taken on my body.  I suffered from back issues, which cropped up frequently enough to require that I seek employment in a more sedentary manner.  Hence, I returned to the classroom and obtained my teaching credential.  

Now that I have been back pounding nails for several years, what about those issues which caused me to stop in the first place?  Have they magically dissipated?  What do you think?  I am twenty-four years older and immersed in a young man’s game.  I am not going to regale you with tales of youthful vigor and enthusiasm.  One does what one has to in order to get by.  I am only going to assert that there is plenty of work, and that with Casey, my thirty-year-old son, I have made a strong comeback, with modifications.

Modifications?  indubitably.  For instance, I rarely work more than six hours a day, and frequently it’s more like four hours.   When I work with Casey, he has my back, and does not allow me to do the heavy lifting and toting.  When I am working by myself, I take the necessary precautions to allow me to get through the time I have set aside, without injuring myself.  It seems to be working out pretty well.

Yes, my knees give me grief; yes my surgically repaired right shoulder is cranky; and yes, my left hip reminds me constantly that I am sixty years old.  The up side is that I am now maintaining two households, our home up here on the mountain, and an abode in the city of Willits, an hour to the south of Bell Springs.  I derive a great deal of satisfaction, knowing I can still accomplish that which needs to be done, in order to provide for the needs of my sweetest of apple blossoms, as well as my own.

You either get old, or you die.  Right now, I am enjoying the ride too much to bail out on life, so what the heck?  I will keep plugging along until my time arrives.  Until then, you will not hear me whine about getting old, or how much my body hurts.  No one wants to hear it, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it anyway.

Hey, can you grab one end of that twenty-foot two by six?  It’s so green it must have been milled this morning.  Thanks, I needed that...

   

In the Trenches

In the Trenches

The San Francisco Forty-Niners will win the 2013 Superbowl for three primary reasons: the offensive line, their defense and history.  If that sounds arrogant on my part, so be it.  No one from the Baltimore Ravens will ever see this post, so it can’t come back to haunt the Forty-Niners.  Normally I would not be so bold as to state the obvious, for fear of upsetting the football gods, but the fact remains that only one team can emerge victorious, and the Niners are the better team.

Begin with the offensive line.  The Niners drafted Anthony Davis and Mike Iupati in 2010 and they have started every game since.  General manager Trent Baalke traded up two spots to draft Davis with the number eleven overall pick, while Iupati was chosen number seventeen, overall.  When a team uses number one draft selections for offensive linemen, you have to figure that these guys are for real.  

Jonathon Goodwin is the center for the Forty-Niners.  He is one of four Niners to start a Superbowl in the past, having played for the champion New Orleans Saints, in 2009.  Joe Staley, named to both the 2012 and 2013 pro-bowls, is the fourth member of the offensive line.    And let’s not leave out six-foot-eight Alex Boone, who plays right guard, and holds down his position with tenacity.  Together these players dominate a game, and dictate the terms upon which the Niners’ success depends. 

You can regale me with many reasons why Colin Kaepernick will win with both his arm and his legs; you can ramble on about Frank Gore, and his franchise-best rushing yards; and you can list countless reasons why tight end Vernon Davis and wide-outs Randy Moss and Michael Crabtree will dazzle defenders.  However, without the offensive line doing its thing with force and experience, the rest is just a crapshoot.  Football games are won in the trenches, and the Niners have the warriors to handle the havoc of the trenches.

The second reason the Forty-Niners will win the Superbowl is because of their defense.  Yes, the Baltimore Ravens have Ray Lewis.  I have heard a lot about the power and inspiration of this single player, not to mention the forty-five tackles he has registered in the three play-off games this season.  Yes, he is an impressive and inspirational player.  But he is only one guy.  Oh, Ed Reed is also there, and it was Cary Williams who intercepted the second of Tom Brady’s picks in the AFC title game, but they’re not going to be enough.

What the Forty-Niners present is a group of individuals, fused together to function as a unit, bent on dominating games, to allow the Forty-Niners to emerge on top.  I am aware of the seventeen-point deficit that the Falcons accrued in the NFC title game, and the 28-point comeback that Tom Brady engineered on that Sunday night, only six weeks ago.  But when push comes to shove in the NFL, no defensive unit is capable of producing the kind of havoc that the Forty-Niners have demonstrated, throughout the season.  They are truly indomitable.  

They never panicked against the Falcons, even though that seventeen-point deficit actually materialized twice, both instances in the first half.  In the second half, the Niner defense stiffened up, and they threw a collective shut-out against Matt Ryan, and the highly-touted Falcon offense.  That’s what I’m saying/talking about.  

Much has been written about Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman, the two punishing linebackers of the Forty-Niners.  Add to them Dashon Goldson and Donte Whitner, the two starting safeties, and you have a nucleus of incredible talent, to spur the Niners to defensive success.  Opposing wide receivers start out games with great fanfare, but after being tackled by the Niners’ hard-hitting safeties, they begin hearing footsteps.  It helps explain how Atlanta’s Julio Jones accounted for eight catches for148 yards in the first two-thirds of the game last Sunday.  After being lambasted by Whitner, he was able to garner only two catches for ten yards the remainder of the game, when it was most critical.

Finally, there is history.  There are those of us who witnessed the Niners netting only two victories per season, in back-to-back years prior to a 6-10 season, and then their 1981, 13-3 season, followed by franchise-first Superbowl victory.  If they make it to the “Show,” they will not back down.  No other team, which has been to more than one Superbowl, is undefeated.  The Forty-Niners have five Superbowl victories to their credit, with no defeats.  Those who are too young to remember these events, have had ample opportunity to read about them.  Do not sell the Niners short; they don’t shoot blanks.

The Price of Admission

The Price of Admission

I like JT’s post this morning.  She asked what made 2012 valuable and what surprised her readers.  I responded that it would take a long time to accomplish writing about this year, and I would need therapy at the end of it.  Since I am already in therapy, I guess that’s a moot point.  However, if I attempt to abbreviate matters, and I leave my sweetest of Apple Blossoms out of it as much as possible, I see value in the exercise.  So here goes, a month by month score-card, as it were.

January opened with blogging being the center of my universe.  I was communicating with folks all over the country, as though I had known them all my life.  The writing was effortless, and stimulating.  Then came the 24th, and the shocking murder of my former student and good friend, Jamal Andrews.  This propelled me onto an emotional roller coaster, during which time I made commitments that I was later unable to fulfill.  This tumultuous time made it obvious to those around me that I had a mood spectrum disorder, what old-schoolers would call being bipolar.

February began with my Apple Blossom deciding that my moods were too challenging for her to deal with, so she left me, out of sheer self-preservation.  When she returned, it was to try and gently transmit to me her concerns and those of my family, that I was ill.  I was (of course) clueless, but I read everything she sent my way, and found out by taking a simple quiz, that there was a great deal of truth in her assertion.  I had originally protested that the manic side of things was accurate, but not the depressive side.  Then I began to examine the last few years of my teaching career and concluded that those around me were accurate.

In March I began to see a psychiatrist over on the coast and was shocked when he prescribed Seraquel, an anti-psychotic drug, with side-effects described in the accompanying literature, that so terrified me that I never ingested a single capsule.  They remain in my bathroom cupboard, a mute testimony to my fear.  Though I benefited from the therapy, I never trusted the good doctor again, and eventually decided it was not a fit, and sought therapy elsewhere.

April precipitated a burst of creative writing, which saw me write more than fifty short pieces of fiction, which I had hoped to start publishing in cyber space, but have not been able to, because I cannot penetrate the technological wall of knowledge required to do so.  I was shocked that I could successfully write short stories, and disappointed that publishing them has remained unattainable.  My writing in this genre continued well into May.

May brought about a resurgence of my carpentry career, something that I thought would no longer be possible, because of the physical challenges incurred the previous fall, when I spent time up at Island Mountain, from which I spent the entire winter recovering.  I built a twenty by ten, two story addition to my workshop, a multi-purpose facility that has proven invaluable since it was completed.  It took all of the summer, being finished by the start of September.

June began with our making two trips over to the Central Valley in three days, to attend both the wedding of a nephew and the graduation of my youngest son from Cal Fire’s engineering school.  Both venues reinforced me with the knowledge that my lifetime of panic attack syndrome was over.  That is shocking all by itself.  June also saw me switch therapists to a man who works in Ukiah, and has proven to be a very good fit.  He was instrumental in helping me, individually, and later, in helping me and my Apple Blossom contend with the critically important challenges of trying to put our thirty-year marriage back on track. 

July remains the single month during which I can safely assert, I was almost normal.  I kept meticulous track of the ebb and flow of my illness, continued working, and thought I had the whole thing conquered.  July was the calm before the storm.

August began with a weekend excursion up to Eureka, which culminated with a precipitous journey from Eureka to Willits, because we thought my Apple Blossom was passing a kidney stone.  She was savagely attacked by pain and nausea, and it was eventually determined that she had a tumor the size of a softball, enveloping one of her kidneys.  Simply stated, she has cancer of the kidneys, and the infected one was subsequently removed.  Unable to contend with this adversity, despite my best of intentions, I was unable to provide support for her, so she once again left me, this time indefinitely, with no time-frame in place, a fact which left me reeling, emotionally and physically.  

September was crushing in its totality, with me inconsolably depressed and lonely.  I was not permitted in the arena where the surgery was performed, and not allowed to be in the same venue as my Apple Blossom.  September was as bleak a time-period in my life, such as I had not experienced since January of 1972, which marked the first month of my incarceration in the military.  My wife and my life took an apartment in Willits, an hour to the south, leaving me by myself on our mountain.  I was despondent, with no hope for the future, but I was also determined to keep her household afloat financially through my construction efforts.  Being so into time, I could not view life rationally, without any hope of reconciliation in the near future with my Apple Blossom, and the net result was one of the most shocking transformations in my life.

In no order of importance, I decided first to stop ingesting marijuana in any form.  Now, I had stopped for the first five years of my teaching career, and for up to as long a time as two years later on during that same time period, but now I was motivated by a different reason-the return of some semblance of normalcy.  I also stopped all alcohol consumption, though I have never been much of a drinker; I stopped all caffeine and cut out all processed sugar.  I also made an appointment at the veterans facility in Ukiah, with the resident psychiatrist, and began taking the medication she prescribed for mood spectrum disorder.  

I did all of these life-altering actions, without consulting my better half, in the hope that she would take note and reconsider her departure from my life.  It just proved that I never knew or appreciated what I had going for me, until I lost her.

October was an extension of September, with all of the changes in place, and I proceeded with a fierce determination to make an impression on my sweetest of Apple Blossoms.  I included time up at Island Mountain, just to prove that I was still willing to go to any lengths to provide income for two households.  The one bright ray of hope came when we started to see the therapist in Ukiah together, to try and work out some of the impediments to a resumption of our married lives together.  That, in and of itself, gave me some hope.  I also reinforced my personal philosophy that whining doesn’t solve anything.

November brought Veterans Day, and with it the glorious reconciliation for which I worked so hard.  Again, I must point out that I was not asked to quit the reefer and I was not asked to start taking the medication for mood spectrum disorder; I did these things on my own, and that was a big factor.  Though we still live apart for much of the time, never more than three days pass before I am able to be with my Apple Blossom.  I do not dwell on this because it makes her feel guilty.  I know she feels badly, and it stresses her out to have me complain, so I don’t.  She can no longer deal with the hardships of winter on the mountain, and I have responsibilities up here that I cannot shirk.  Thus, it remains what it is so I revel in the time we spend together and stay busy the rest of the time.

December brought with it a diminishing of my childlike fascination with the Christmas season, something that needed to happen forty years ago.  It’s just not the same thing when you spend much of your time by yourself.  However, December also brought about a thaw in the impasse between my number two son and myself.  We have managed to get past our differences, and I spent Christmas day with him and his awesome wife, enjoying a scintillating day of bridge and the company of family. 

Why anyone would care to read this entire passage is incomprehensible to me.  However, I have rarely written for others; almost all of my prattling is merely a way of expressing those thoughts which lodge within me.  That being said, if you made it this far, take a deep breath, and know that I am very happy-very content with life at the end of this tempestuous year.  I have learned much and remain committed to keeping my frame of mind open and uncluttered with the complications surrounding my illness.  

The price of admission for this topsy-turvy roller-coaster ride was nothing, but the result has been monumental.  Just know that I am madly and passionately in love and have acquired some valuable tools for helping me cope with my illness.  What could be sweeter than that?  After all, love is the greatest power.

No Business Like Snow Business

No Business Like Snow Business

That used to be my mantra, when I was younger.  Simply put, I thought snow was the epitome of all that is wonderful about Mother Nature.  Silly me.

Judging from the posts on FaceBook, I am in the minority.  However, to me, snow is the guest who overstays her visit.  Snow is beautiful; I will grant you that, the way it drifts down through the oak trees.  But when a person lives on a mountain, and the snow makes a grand entrance, it impinges on every aspect of one’s life.

I must keep both stoves going full-blast, simply to keep the house from freezing.  That involves bringing in vast, unlimited quantities of wood from-where else?-outside.  Back in the day, when I was teaching, I kept a four foot-wide, by four foot long, by four foot deep woodbox, which I then proceeded to pile up about six feet high with wood.  That was all well and good, until it came time to fill it.  Then it took about six wheelbarrows-filled-to replenish the wood.  

My reasoning was simple.  We left for school each morning, still in darkness, and we got back up on the mountain, while it was once again dark.  Therefore, that woodbox lasted all week long, and I could refill it on the weekend.  Now, to bring in that amount of fuel, is prodigiously difficult.  So I got rid of the woodbox, and replaced it with an iron ring, which holds, at most, two milk-crates of wood.  That just means that I must continuously bring in armloads of wood, all day long, in order to keep the home-fires burning.  It’s a pain, but infinitely better than the grueling task of loading up all of those wheelbarrows filled with oak.

The primary reason for being less than enamored with snow, is the simple fact that every outdoors experience is fraught with danger.  To let the chickens out, to start the generator (there is no solar power when the panels are covered with snow), or to venture outside for ANY reason, is to tempt fate.  Icy conditions for a sixty-year-old, pose a constant threat.  If this makes me sound curmudgeonly, I can only protest that it is self-preservation that motivates my line of reasoning.

After all, old bones are far more brittle than young bones, and I am not getting any younger.  A common occurrence is to see the snow pile up, and then have a warm front pass through.  If there is enough rain to melt the snow, all is good.  Unfortunately, what frequently occurs, is that the rain settles in, the storm passes, and the temperature plunges below the freezing point, and the snow turns to a deadly ice coating, making difficult walking even more treacherous.  Ach tung, Chucko.  Watch your step!

So when I hear people chortle with glee, or even worse, hear about people venturing up on a rooftop in sub-freezing weather, with a hose in tow, to spray water out onto the front yard, in order to create “snow,” I have to wonder about their mental state.  

As for me, I want to book passage on a warm bus to Anywhere, USA, as long as the word snow is associated with cones, and the available flavors are cherry, orange, or lemon-lime.