A Drift of Diary Pages

Outside, snowdrifts.  

March 17^th

I feel a bit guilty about not acknowledging St P. today. But not very guilty. I did consider wearing of the green, but on further thought realized that I do not have a single green garment. JG has green shirts in plenty, but his chosen shirt for the day was sort of moss coloured and could not really be said to count. Nor did I launch into making green iced cookies as I have, in the past, done to celebrate. I did make a pie on Pi Day, but it had a plain crust. In fact, I have been negligent in many ways of marking the days. If I were to be really honest, I would say I am marking time, waiting for the snow to go and the birds to come.

March 20

I am, however, continuing to downsize and, with the help of a wonderful neighbour who is coming in one day a week to do the things I can’t manage, I got rid of a lot of stuff yesterday. A lot. All the extras spare bedding went, and a good deal of similar goods, like cushions. When we first got the final furniture for the living room and tv room (both with couches that make into double beds) I bought small couch cushions and fabric to cover them co-ordinated with the armchair. I never made the covers and so unused cushions plopped into the recycle pile. In a chest I found a little blanket that JG’s mother and grandmother had made for one of our girls. I kept it and will mend and wash and, possibly offer it for the new step-grandchild if the ‘girls’ (um, both close to sixty and sleeping in beds) do not want it. The wonderful helper stuffed many, many bags of this pelf into her truck and trucked it all off to our recycle store. I keep one spare bed made and still have enough bedding make up three guest beds - using the couches - if I have to, and that will do me, thanks.

I can now see the counter in my laundry room. Ms Wonderful cleaned it, besides. There are two terrible jobs left in that room though. One is sorting the drawers and the cupboards. All my sewing stuff and painting stuff and wrapping stuff and cleaning stuff is stuffed into those containers. The other Herculean task is is making an inventory of what is in the freezer that lives in there with the laundry machines. I just made up a check sheet, doubled, which I will date and keep one page at the freezer and the other upstairs. If it works. If I do the work. And so, goodbye for now as I stump off with my lists. Report later if this actually works.

March 21^st.

Happy Solstice to you. Well, we tossed a lot of containers, some with labels. Some not, but I spotted the lasagna and we are keeping that. I have not done the inventory yet. I did exhume one drawer, and in it found all the pieces for a baby sweater, not made up. I intend to make it up and give it to the step-grandson and his wife for their baby girl. Not sure if there is such a thing as a step-grand, but I watched this boy and his brother grow up, They spent half time with their mother and half with my ED and her man, whose sons they are, half brothers of my granddaughter therefore, and I am fond of them. The YD keeps referring to her father as the ‘grandpa’ of her dog, much to his annoyance. Relationships are sometimes fraught, eh?

I read an article the other day about loneliness in old age that has me thinking quite a bit. When we first moved from the city to this very rural home a long hour’s drive outside of it, I knew I would have to make connections and get involved if I were to be happy here. JG got an early retirement and we were both in our fifties. I had lots of energy and it was easy to find things to join and do. Line dancing, board memberships, socializing with the neighbours, giving dinner parties – and going to them – all worked well for me. I went on trips with the YD. JG and I also did a lot of travelling, both in the states and overseas. I was in my early sixties when the grandkid came along, and I drove into the city to babysit as needed. I was busy and content.

And then, crunch, what I was convinced was a bad back turned out to be a bad heart and I ended up in hospital getting bypass surgery, plus surgery on my aorta, plus, subsequently, two knee replacements. Driving vacations and a lot of my activities were no longer possible, for various reasons. The bad back was also real and it was a long fight to get mobility and the basic homemaking chores back to being doable. Now, in my 83^rd year, I am losing dexterity, even though I have had both carpal tunnels fixed, losing hearing acuity, losing concentration ability and, some days, losing my temper all too easily with JG’s loss of ability to either hear what I tell him or remember it.

I note in passing that this situation occurred in my parents’ household and my mother said that on occasion she wrote something down and insisted that her husband sign it and date it.

Yes, I can identify that I am lonely from time to time.

I just opened the drawer of my desk to look for cuticle scissors and found myself picking up my grandmother’s pretty china thimble from the tray. It is a silly thing to keep since it does not fit any finger of mine except the smallest one, but I can see her sewing me doll clothes and that thimble flashing away and I want it, for the link I guess. This was my mother’s mother and the grandmother that babysat me as necessary. I, philistine that I was, took her entirely for granted but I did, one day as an adult, turn on a tape recorder and get her talking about being a wife and mother and housewife and I love to play a bit of that tape now and again. It has my mother’s voice on it as well.

I wonder what my grandkid will take away from her time with me. Not a flashing thimble, that is for certain. I appear to have made the body of the sweater mentioned above from one pattern and the sleeves from another, and I am struggling to remember how to finish the neck. Beyond annoying, how my skills and positive personality traits are leaving me.

And, drat it, it is now almost March 24^th and this nonsense is getting posted. Feel free to have skipped a lot of it. And I don't with all the wool stuffed into those drawers, have one that is a good match to mend the little blanket. Grumble. Grumble.