Addendum to End of February

I just spoke with my husband. Thankfully he has a cell phone that usually works in the Adirondacks. The temperature right now where he is (at 6:30 PM) is 12 below zero. It was 5 above, both inside and outside camp, when they arrived mid-afternoon. It's only 52 degrees in the corner farthest away from the stove but much warmer near the stove. I suspect the temp deep in the Adirondacks will drop to -25 or more tonight. I love that man, but as I told him, it would take a significant emergency to get me up there right now!

The End of February

Jezumcrow, I am so sick of this winter. We've all had enough of snow, cold temps and gray cloudy days. Predicted temperature for tonight is zero. A big fat ZERO! And then tomorrow night into Saturday morning a "few inches" of snow is predicted. Someone please tell me just how many inches are a few?

Maybe composing in red will help. After all, action follows thought, and if I think bright red, happy thoughts, maybe I'll feel better.

Lots of colors available. Blue is my favorite, though not this particular shade. I don't have the patience today to play around with the colors offered. This will have to do.

My husband has gone to camp. I could have gone, but I don't do his type of camp. It's in a very isolated area of the Adirondacks, accessible only with snowmobile or boat. That's OK, but once there, there is no running water inside. There is no flushing toilet. There is no electricity. There is a hand pump outside for water. There is an outhouse, which by definition is outside.. LOL. There is a generator if they want lights. There is a lot of cold and snow. If it's going to be zero here tonight, it will be below zero up there. He and a friend have gone to do some snowmobiling. Yuck! I'm not a friend of things that make a lot of noise, not to mention it's cold just standing still. Imagine what it's like racing along the trails of the Adirondacks?

He returns late Sunday afternoon. I'll keep the home fires burning, making sure that this 216-year old house doesn't fall down in protest of the continued cold. The house has no insulation. Its frame is such that, literally, there is no room between the inside walls and the original clapboard for insulation. It's a big old house -- nine rooms with big hallways on the first and second floors -- with no insulation. The oil heating bill for the coldest month of the year is more than my total gas heating bill was for my two-bedroom apartment.

The one saving grace, as minor as it may seem, are the radiators. We have old fashioned iron radiators that generate heat long after the furnace has turned off. It's a wonderful feeling to plunk one's butt down on a radiator and feel immediate heat, which slowly rises upward to other body parts. It gives me the same feeling of comfort as a good macaroni and cheese does!

And now I'm smiling from thinking about the small comfort of instant heat. Didn't somebody say that if one looks hard enough, one can find the good in anything? Seems to be true.

Life changes - A year ago I was packing and moving from a two-bedroom apartment to this nine-room house with a heating bill that touches on a thousand dollars a month in the dead of winter.

Did I Say Spring?

Ha! Upstate New York is consistently inconsistent. The gorgeous sunny weather of yesterday changed overnight to a snowstorm. Wet, heavy snow has been falling for a few hours. We've probably got 5" in our backyard. The drive home from Em's was no picnic especially with the driver side windshield wiper having ripped about a third of the way into the 45-minute trip.

However, this snow is the most gorgeous stuff I've seen in years. I went for a walk into the woods out back of the house. It was a mystical experience. The old forest was silent and heavy with the wet snow. There were fresh deer tracks I could just make out in the darkening sky. The creek was no longer frozen, but the stones were covered with snow, so it appeared as though there were white islands in the middle of the water. I was in awe of the beauty. Hope you enjoy the pictures. And one more picture, of my best-for-me husband, is below. He's Santa Claus in a Ski-Doo jacket!

Life changes - One day it's spring-like. The next is back to winter.

An Ember Day

I'm at Em's today. (She's the child in the slide show to the right.) It's been a tough morning for this 2-year-old granddaughter of mine. She got so frustrated and p*ssed with me that she said, "Gama, you naughty. Time out for you!" All this because I refused to turn on the TV. I'm not a big proponent of TV for children. Pretty much I think it rots their brains and makes them dependent on being entertained rather than learning to entertain themselves. That's not to say I don't allow Em to watch TV when I'm caring for her. It means I very carefully pick and choose what she watches and for how long. Those are the keys: content and time.

Ember has little interest in Sesame Street, and I think I know why. It's boring; maybe she's not old enought for it yet. She is quite fond of the stuff coming out of Noggin (Nick Jr.). During the weekdays, that network has advertisement-free program for pre-schoolers, and it's pretty good programming. Even so, it's TV and it entertains them, even if teaching a lesson or a moral, and that means Em's brain is pretty much in "off" when watching it.

"Hewwo... Gama." Em's down for a nap only it's not taking so she's reaching out to me. Her bedroom is in the back of the house with the door closed. Hence, they still use a baby monitor. It allows us to eavesdrop on all she says and does. She's run through her numbers -- counting from 1 to 15 -- quite a few times. I've heard the ABCs a couple of times as well as a rendition of "Tinkle tinkle widdle stahh," as only a 2-year-old can sing. Interspersed with the entertainment is her calling me. "Gamaaaaaa. I neeeedddd you." "Gama, I yuv you." "Gama?" "Gaaaaaamaaaa."

A grandmother who is also a caregiver doesn't have the prerogative of being an old-fashioned grandma who loves and spoils at the same time. Two days a week I spend eight to nine hours a day with Em. I would kill for her without compunction, and I love her with all my heart and soul, but I can't spend just two hours with her going to the park or for ice cream and then drop her back home. I have to introduce and reinforce what I and others are teaching her, such as: counting, letters, music, sharing, listening, being nice to the animals, saying please and thank you, not running into the street, controlling herself when she's angry, washing hands before eating and brushing teeth after. We dance, we use chalk, we paint, we read, we sing, we play with blocks, we play with her dollhouse. We play in the snow. We run around and get tired so she'll nap (seems it didn't work today!! lol).

It's wonderful; it's fun. But some days it is soooo tiring and downright boring. Parenting is for the young, and at 58 years of age, I am not in that category. Would I change it if I could? No. Well, I wouldn't mind leaving for home at 3 PM instead of 4, but that's all I'd change.

Life changes - I loved, taught and raised my son. I am helping to do the same thing with his daughtger. Again, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This time, though, I feel I'm being given a second chance to do right what I think I did wrong with my son.

Daffodiils and Other Signs of Spring

It is a beautiful day in Upstate New York. The sun is shining. The sky is blue. If one ignores the cold temp, snow on the ground and the bare trees, one could think serious thoughts about spring.

In today's mail, I received the newest edition of one of three magazines to which I subscribe. On the front cover is a bouquet of bright yellow daffodils. Daffies are my favorite flowers. They are bright and cheerful and most importantly, they come in spring.

On April 21 last year, I remarried. It was a smallish wedding with a smallish reception, but the flowers were abundant. The yellow daffodils and multi-colored tulips filled each dragonfly-decorated vase to capacity.

So today's magazine cover is a very welcome sight because it sings of spring and reminds me of our wedding. Come true spring -- not what the calendar says -- but in another 6 to 8 weeks if we're lucky, the daffodils in the garden will be as beautiful as those in the picture above. If anybody is reading this blog and likes daffies as I do, look for a post of pictures of our daffies toward the end of April.

Life changes - Just when I think I will go stir crazy because of the long, gray winters in Upstate New York, I am reminded that spring always returns. I just have to hang in long enough to see it!

Grocery Shopping and Food in General

The end of the month often means I'm scrambling for something to make for supper because no matter how many meals I plan, I always underplan hoping we'll go out more. Ha! I also think about grocery shopping for the upcoming month by putting together meals and starting the shopping list.

I hate to grocery shop. I also hate to cook. The whole process of doing something with food -- making out lists, shopping for it, putting it away, and then having to handle it again to make it into something to eat -- really turns me off. Therefore, I grocery shop as seldom as possible -- like once a month for major shopping with a few interim trips for perishables and the few things I forgot. Unfortunately, I can't cook just once a month.

Grocery shopping is a big deal when done once a month and having to travel 25 to 30 miles to boot! You see I live in a small town which boasts a grocery store, but also boasts that it has the highest prices, as well as the poorest produce, in this area. Seriously, my overall grocery shopping trip costs less, even considering the amount of money I spend in gas (at today's prices), than if I shopped in the local store with its outrageous prices.

So today I got serious about WHAT TO EAT in the month of March. If I had my way, I'd have popcorn and orange juice once in a while for supper. Soup and sandwich is also good. Pizza much more often is also my preference. My darling husband, and he truly is a wonderful man, likes REAL food. Go figure. He's a real meat and gravy kinda guy. Gravy? Yuck! I can make a decent gravy, but prefer to do it only on major holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. He also likes vegetables. Double yuck!

When my first husband and I divorced, and my teenage son grew up and joined the Air Force, pretty much concurrent incidents, I swore I'd never cook again, and that any man in whom I became interested, and vice versa, who did not accept my "No cook" decision, would not be the one for me. But ya know, I never ever thought I'd love like I do and be loved like I am. I was happy and content dating -- or not, depending on what was available. I was happy not sharing the remote and, most importantly, not having to cook if I didn't want to. Then wham! I meet this great guy and to share a life with him, I compromise by volunteering to cook most of the time. Thankfully, other than wanting something more than popcorn and OJ, he is very easy to please.

So here I am, writing about something I hate to do in order to avoid having to do it.

Life changes - Never say never or if you do, be willing to change your mind when a good thing comes alone.

Snow Again!

Yah, it's still winter. It's still February. It's still been too long since I've seen green grass and flowers, and since we've sat in the swing we have on the terrace during nice weather.

We had about 5" of snow down here yesterday. Farther north, in Albany and its suburbs, about 3" of snow fell. It's also very cold, with night temps going down into the lower teens. I'm tired of being cold, and I'm tired of having to wear boots, a heavy coat and mittens.

Nothing much is happening today. I woke up sleepy and energyless. My plans to do a few chores went out the window with this feeling of being lazy. My husband has been gone for the afternoon to a fly fishing event. That works for me. I like to be alone sometimes and today is one of those days.

I'm not even cooking -- which really works for me because I don't like to cook. We're getting a pizza, and if I have my way, we'll go to a local restaurant and eat there rather than bring it home.

I was going to knit on the baby blanket I'm making but the arthritis in my left thumb has been acting up because of the knitting, so I'm giving it a rest.

Life changes - Apparently today is a do-nothing day because I feel like doing nothing. Sometimes there are no changes and nothing special to talk about.

Being Young and Snow

I could talk about my granddaughter ad nauseam but usually refrain because I know she's not special to most people, just to those of us who love her.

I take care of Ember twice a week while her parents are working. Her maternal grandmother takes care of her the other three days. I'm a two-day caregiver because I live 35 miles away and her other grandma lives four doors down the street from her. I get up at 5:50 and am ready about 6:50 to do the commute. Her dad, my son Tony, is usually home by 4 PM, and I'm back in the country in about 45 minutes.

Today was an Ember day. It was also a snow day. When you're one month shy of 2 years old, you love snow. "Nopants, Gama, peasssss." At almost 2, Ember can't always say "s" or "r" or "l" and though her vocabulary lacks certain letters, it doesn't lack the words. Snowpants, boots, jacket, hat, mittens, and then for me, boots, jacket, scarf, mittens.

The snow was light and airy, just the right consistency to toss in the air or be swept away. Some people use shovels or brooms to clear the walks. Ember uses her mittened hands. She walked up and down her front walk, bending over to sweep the snow away and loved every minute of it. Her hands got cold and wet; she didn't care. Her nose ran; she didn't care. Her cheeks got red and cold; she didn't care. She sat on the snow-covered stairs of the house next door and offered me a seat. "Sit down, Gama." I declined because I wasn't wearing snowpants. "Sit down, Gama!" Again I declined with the same explanation. "Gama, sit down...peassssss," in a voice that was not happy with my declinations of her hospitality.

Ember makes me laugh. It's all so simple to her. "Peasss" is a magic word that usually gets results, but denying her request, for good reason, even with the magic word, is a lesson taught.

Life changes - I was once 2 years old. My son was also. I'm now 58. He is 26. His daughter is now the 2-year-old. If becoming a mother and a grandmother aren't changes, what is?

The War

Remind me again why we are in Iraq. Why is it that governments, and our government in particular, under cover of "We are protecting the people of our country and democracy," think they are protecting us and have the audacity to think they know how another country should be governed?

I read an editorial in my local paper today, originally printed in the Boston Globe, written by H.D.S. Greeenway titled "Vietnam's Lessons Still There to Learn." It made me cry because surely as I'm sitting here on a cold February day, our country -- our government under guise of doing what's good for "the people" -- has yet again made a mistake just as it did in Viet Nam; a mistake in the name of protecting democracy.

Life changes - History repeats itself. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The editorial can be read here: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=665465 If the link no longer works, I've copied and pasted the editorial below.


By H.D.S. GREENWAY First published: Thursday, February 21, 2008
Forty years ago this week, as twilight fell over the Republic of South Vietnam, I was lying on a stretcher in the rain outside a military hospital on a base near Hue. There were so many casualties that day that we had to wait our turn for overworked and overwhelmed doctors to attend to us. First came the wounded who could be saved, putting aside those who could not. Triage, they called it. Then came the lesser wounds, such as my own, which could wait their turn.

The surgeon who eventually operated on me was furious -- furious that he had been told to treat Americans first, leaving our South Vietnamese allies out in the rain.

It was the Tet Offensive, the turning point in the war. For it was Tet that brought the United States to sue for peace, and President Lyndon Johnson to give up running for another term. Negotiations dragged on and on, and seven years later it was all over.

Today, there is a school of thought that says Tet was a terrible defeat for the Communist Vietnamese, that it should never have caused us to flinch, that the war was basically won by 1972, and that if we had only stayed the course we would have won it. Henry Kissinger has said as much, whole generations of soldiers were told that, and, it seems, that many around President Bush believe it as well.

When Iraq became the quagmire it is, I used to wonder how we could make the same mistake again so soon. But then I realized that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were in the Oval office with President Ford when Saigon fell. Perhaps they, and the worshipers of American power, felt that, this time, we would get it right.

In a strictly military sense, Tet was a defeat for the communists. But as the Prussian military strategist, Karl von Clausewitz, said, "War is a continuation of policy by other means ... a real political instrument." And politically, Tet showed there was no light at the end of the tunnel, and that to fight on in an endless war was not something the American public was going to stand for. Vietnam showed that we could win every battle and still lose the war. And if I am not mistaken, we have never lost a battle in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Lewis Sorley's book "A Better War" is the most persuasive account I've read advocating this revisionist theory. It is filled with statistics to prove its case. But let me cite two examples of battles that I observed. In 1971, operation Lam Son 719 was an attempt by the South Vietnamese, with American air power, to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Sorley's statistics would have you believe that it was a success. But those of us who were there, and saw the South Vietnamese coming out of Laos beaten with their tail between their legs, know differently.

In 1972, during the Easter Offensive, Sorley recounts how the South Vietnamese held the line on the My Chanh River, north of Hue, with the help of American fire power, but not American troops, who had mostly gone by then.

I remember that night, with the terrifying sound of North Vietnamese tanks in the dark, and the calm voice of an American adviser speaking softly into his radio, saying, "Lend me your assets." And in the assets came, fighter bombers from Thailand, B-52s from Guam, naval gunfire from the South China Sea, and the South Vietnamese held.

But Sorley is too honest not to mention the other side of the story. The North Vietnamese failed to overrun the country, but the Easter Offensive ended with huge swaths of South Vietnamese territory lost. And the cease-fire that followed did not, and could not, require the North Vietnamese to withdraw back across the border. South Vietnam, even with our air power, could hot hurl them back. Thus was South Vietnam fatally outflanked, awaiting the next offensive. And with the North Vietnamese there would always be another offensive.

Sorely points to the success of pacification efforts in the South. But when I drove through the Mekong River Delta, after the cease-fire that left opposing forces in place, village after village that we had on our maps as pacified had raised the Viet Cong flag. I met with a Viet Cong leader in the forest who told me that South Vietnam was a hollow shell that would soon collapse of its own weight. He turned out to be right.

In the end, the South Vietnamese leadership could not inspire the way the communist nationalists did, perhaps because the South seemed to be fighting for foreigners. For the United States, as for France before, it was basically a colonial war, not that vital to our national interests. For Hanoi, it was everything.

When the end came in 1975, and my helicopter lifted away from the American Embassy in Saigon, with the ammunition dumps blowing up in the gathering dark, I felt that we had betrayed our allies -- not because we were unwilling to continue the war, but because we had gone to war there in the first place, unnecessarily and foolishly, understanding nothing, only to cause more death and destruction than could ever be justified.

There is little to be gained in saying but if only this, or only that. Constant surges won almost all our battles, but it was never enough for the South Vietnamese to stand alone. The revisionists have forgotten their Clausewitz.

H.D.S. Greenway writes for the Boston Globe.

Cleaning

Cleaning house, cleaning life. It's something I like to do, but not on the same day. Today I'm in the mood to clean house and chose to do the upstairs. What's the big deal? It's a big house, and it's an old house. Truly it is never sparkling clean, partly because I'm not one to scrub anything on my hands and knees, but mostly the reason for not being sparkly clean is that the house is old. It was built in 1792. That's not a typo -- 1792 -- after the Revolution and before the Civil War. I live in a house that has a New York State historical marker in front of it. Wow.

For those who live in relatively new houses, let me tell you that nothing but nothing grows cobwebs and creates dust like a house 216 years old. Everything falls from above via the cracks in the old floors.

So today is upstairs cleaning day, which doesn't happen as often as it should. Nobody comes up here unless they're first-time visitors who are enthralled with a house this old and want to see everything. Therefore, a little dust (or a lot) pretty much goes unnoticed by me for a couple of weeks, and my husband does not care if I clean once a week, once a month or once a year.

Life changes -- would I ever suspect that I'd be happy and content being a "housewife?" I never was before; so before I wasn't. At this age, and being deliciously retired, it's more than being a housewife. It's being able to organize my life pretty much the way I want to. Clean today? Maybe. Do laundry tomorrow? Probably. Blog, knit, read, play Pogo games? Yep!! The limitations I have are those I place on myself.

Time on My Hands

Now that the immediate cancer scare is over, my husband and I are again relaxed together. He's feeling better because the catheter he's had since Wednesday was removed today. I'm no longer in a caregiver mode. We're acting like lovers again; like the newlyweds we can still claim to be because our one-year anniversary is two months away. These are precious times. Carefree hours that I cherish and for which I'm greedy because life changes in an instant.

We played three games of cribbage tonight. He beat me two out of three games, an unusual occurrence because I am a better player. He got the cards to play so he deserved the games, or maybe it was because he used the silver pegs I always use while I had to use the gold ones that are his. My distant Irish ancestry isn't too far away when it comes to superstitions.


In a few minutes, I'll join him in the TV room and we'll work on the current jigsaw puzzle together. He could do them for hours on end, if he had the time. I like them, but get antsy sitting in one spot for very long.

Life changes - I'm 58 years old and have had many experiences over the past decades. Truthfully I never thought I'd be happy and content being remarried, watching TV and doing jigsaw puzzles, but I am. This life I've moved into is a gift.

Nothing is Ever Certain

These pictures were taken in early January this year. New snow is breathtaking, especially when looking from the terrace out to the backyard and woods beyond.

Today it's a warm February day with the temp hitting 50. A taste of spring to come. The yard and driveway are terrible messes of mud, soggy grass and leftover ice. This beautiful place in the spring, summer and fall is a horror for most of the winter. If it's not snow and ice on the uneven slate steps leading down from the terrace to the driveway, it's mud and deep puddles of water. I never leave the house without workboots, a fashion statement much different from that of my previous life, before I remarried and moved to this small town south of Albany, NY.

So today the weather is unlike winter, not unusual in this climate of upstate New York where there are always changes and nothing is ever certain.

Life changes - Likewise our health can never be taken for granted. At some point in our lives, we can't be sure what the next doctor appointment will bring. My husband has a history of cancer, so we are never certain what changes will happen to his health. The scare brought about by the cancer we thought had returned -- about which the doctor was certain had reoccurred -- has temporarily been laid to rest with a negative biopsy report from the pathologist. Original tests of a different nature than a biopsy, though, showed cancer cells, hence my reservation about jumping for joy and my feeling the good news is temporary. Two weeks from now another specimen will be sent to the lab and so we will wait, for what may be another life change.

First Post

It's not as if I have a lot of time to write, whether it be emails to friends or pen & pencil letters. Why do I think I'll have time to write a blog? I'm hoping that this forum will draw me to it easier than I'm drawn to writing emails, and thus be somewhere I can put down thoughts, questions, ideas and maybe solutions. It will be a journal, perhaps of the journey that is the rest of my life...filled with changes.

Thursday as I was talking on the phone with my sister, my husband snapped his fingers to get my attention and pointed out the window to the back yard. One, two, three and soon four deer were there. I haven't seen deer in our backyard -- or anywhere on our 12 acres -- since right after hunting season started in November. They looked healthy: plump and alert, and they were foraging on the upper terrace garden, eating what leaves and twigs were surviving the cold and more ice-than-snow February we're experiencing.

The sight made me smile as I shared the scene with my sister, who is a great animal lover, and then I laughed as one very bold four-footer approached the bird feeder, filled with sunflower seeds, and proceeded to suck and lick out the seeds from the tiny holes I thought only a bird would find tempting! Luckily s/he lingered long enough for me to get a few pictures.

Life changes - The cycle of life brings the deer back from the deep woods, unafraid because hunting season is long gone. I often feel as if I've come back from a far away place, a place I chose to go to and from which I chose to return.