Stylin’
My sister Bec and I talk four or five times a week via FaceTime. She knows I’m awake when I post my blog on Facebook. I know she’s awake when she “likes” my blog on Facebook. Facebook should be proud. Yesterday morning, my iPad alerted me to a FaceTime call from Bec early, around 7 a.m. “I’m just calling to make sure I’m not the loved one to whom you were referring in the blog this morning,” she said. “I don’t want those pants.” She was referring to yesterday’s blog post in which I mentioned I was crocheting a Christmas gift and posted this photo…..

I assured her that the picture didn’t reflect what I am actually crocheting, and she wasn’t the loved one for whom I was crocheting. Still, she started my day off with a laugh.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside
The temperature in Denver finally dropped to more winter-like temperatures. Yesterday it got up to 55 or so, but the day before, it didn’t reach freezing. While I am not a fan of winter or cold weather, I will admit that I’m kind of glad to see it become more like normal. As usual, we will leave for AZ on Christmas Day, and I enjoy knowing I’m going to someplace warm from someplace cold. Lately the temperatures have been about the same in both places. Still, when Bec called yesterday at 7 o’clock, it was still dark, while the sun was coming up here in Denver.

Heartburn
When the temperatures dip, the comfort level of our house dips as well. We always keep the temperature the same, but some days it just feels draftier than others. I guess it’s because our house was constructed in 1972 when builders didn’t really worry too much about insulation. I was chilly all morning, and had to cover myself with a blanket as I crocheted. As lunchtime approached, I began dreaming in Indian food, something I often enjoy when it’s cold outside. So I ordered and had delivered food from a neighborhood Indian restaurant. Bill had his favorite chicken tandoori, and I had lamb vindaloo. I was a showoff and ordered the “hot” instead of “medium.” I ate it, but when Indian food is hot, it is HOT. As for Bill’s tandoori, for reasons I can’t explain, I detest the smoky smell of tandoori. When he was finished, I quickly cleaned up his plate and put the leftover chicken in the refrigerator. Still, the smell lingered. I lit a Christmas candle. Still, the lingering odor of tandoori filled the house. I finally went and got a pedicure. When I finally returned, I could still smell it, but it was much less odiferous. Next time we’ll go to the restaurant!

Breaking Up is Hard to Do
I called my hair salon to make an appointment for a haircut before we leave on Christmas Day. There won’t be much time for such doings when we arrive in AZ because we hit the ground running and my surgery is January 7. Much to my shock and horror, I was told that my hair stylist has moved to Tennessee. I was so sad to receive that news. My hair likely isn’t that hard to cut, but I don’t like to make changes when I have a stylist who knows exactly what I like. She promised me she wouldn’t ever leave! The receptionist said she has family in Tennessee. Family Schmamily!

Ciao.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time the past few weeks sitting in front of the television watching Christmas movies. I am crocheting a gift for someone I love (and now all of my loved ones are terrified they are going to open up a gift this Christmas that looks like this…..)

You will all just have to wait and see. But I will say that at this point in time, the only body parts that have any kind of strength are my fingers. I can’t hike a mountain, but I challenge anyone to thumb wrestling.

Anyhoo, as anyone who watches Christmas movies knows, there is basically one plot and they just use different actors to play the parts. However, my biggest takeaway from the numerous movies I have watched is that there is no fear of climate change when it comes to Holly Village or Snowflakeland or Reindeerville or any of the other always Christmas-themed-named towns being visited by the cold-hearted woman attorney whose heart is about to grow three sizes upon meeting the town lumberjack. Because, my friends, it’s always snowing in these towns. Large flakes. Huge piles of snow that women can somehow easily navigate wearing high-heeled boots.

There is also no concern about the use of electricity, because there are twinkling holiday lights EVERYWHERE. I watched one movie in which the rich businesswoman was walking in the woods with the man who makes a living carving ornaments and there were twinkly lights throughout the forest. Having struggled very recently with putting up lights, my first thought wasn’t who decorates a forest, but instead WHERE IN THE HELL ARE THEY GETTING THE ELECTRICITY.

Quite frankly, instead of cheering me up, these holiday extravaganzas are adding to my already deflating Christmas spirit. I know we all are tired of COVID. It’s a thing. With a name. COVID fatigue syndrome. Okay, I added the syndrome part, but it feels syndromy to me. Because a lot us have the same feeling.

Mine reached its peak when I first heard the words omicron variant. Mother of our sweet Baby Jesus, will the variants never cease? How many variants do we have to have before we all get vaccinated? I am dead serious: If they told me I would grow a second head in 10 years if I get the vaccine, I would do it. I DON’T WANT TO WEAR A MASK ANYMORE.

In very grinchlike fashion, I was complaining about this to my daughter-in-law Jll. She told me that their minister expressed the same opinion about COVID fatigue in her recent sermon at their church service. She said that even the word pandemic was dragging her down to the ground. She had a simple solution. She was no longer going to use the word pandemic. Instead, from that point on, she is calling it a pandy. She said the word pandy is so much more cheerful than pandemic.

Friends, she is absolutely correct. I assure you that if, in a couple of years from now, there is a Hallmark movie that takes place in 2021, Candace Cameron Bure will be referring to it as The Pandy. She will be a candy maker who falls in love with a visiting stock broker who hates Christmas. Her homemade Pandy Candy will change his life forever.

Last week, I wrote a blog in which I admitted that I had written the words why do I do that thing that I hate in the notebook in which I write blog ideas and had completely forgotten what I meant. I was sitting in church this past Sunday, half-heartedly listening to our pastor’s homily. He is an excellent homilist, and normally I am transfixed by his words. That day, however, I was more transfixed by coming up with ideas for Christmas gifts for my grands. As various gift ideas wandered around my mind like the Israelites wandered around the desert, I suddenly heard our pastor say, “Why do I do the things that I hate.”

I snapped to attention, and realized he was referring to St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, 7:15, in which (according to my Catholic New American Bible, which can’t be that new because I’ve owned it for most of my adult life) Paul says, What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.

And as quick as can be, I remembered that a few Sundays ago, our New Testament reading had included exactly that passage. The priest had simply shortened Paul’s always lengthy prose to something we could more easily remember. Why do I do the thing that I hate.

I also recalled that the reason I wrote it down had nothing to do with my blog. The words simply captured me, and reflected the way I feel much of the time these days.

I’m pretty unforgiving of myself when I err. I find this ironic, because I forgive others pretty easily. I don’t however, cut myself much slack. My daughter-in-law Lauren told me recently that whenever I am ready to get mad at myself, I should think about what I would say to my sister or best friend had they made the same mistake. Her suggestion has made me cut back on the number of times that I tell myself, “You are so stupid.” I would never call a friend or a loved one stupid.

The thing about which I am hardest on myself is my role as Bill’s care partner. He is such a model of excellence in the way he handles having PD. I couldn’t be prouder of him. But in the same way that Bill suddenly learned he had to live with a difficult disease, I learned that I suddenly had to be his care partner.

I remember the first time I was alone with my son Court when we first came home from the hospital. My husband went off to work. The door shut. I looked down at Court’s sweet face and thought, “What in the hell am I supposed to do now? No one trained me to care for an infant.” That’s kind of what I feel very often these days. I am wholly unprepared for this journey.

And yet I’m not. Because as the phrase suggests, Bill and I are partners in his care. And he’s an excellent partner, and I believe he thinks the same of me. If I forget to remind him to take his pills, the world won’t end. So I shouldn’t do that thing that I hate, namely, blame myself.

A couple of weeks ago, we had Court and his family over for dinner. We were discussing some of the trials and tribulations the world is facing these days (I’m looking at YOU, omicron variant). At some point, 13-year-old Kaiya proclaimed, “Well, you know, we can blame it on Jeff Bezos. In fact, we can blame all of the world’s problems on Jeff Bezos. It’s a conspiracy.” We all stopped talking and looked at her.

I’m happy to say that she was joking, although it did make me wonder just what the teachers are planting in our young peoples’ minds these days. For one thing, when I was 13 years old, I knew little of what was going on in the world and a lot of what boy was the cutest and what was the number one record. I’m not claiming that is a good thing, but just sayin….

The fact that she knows who Jeff Bezos is isn’t surprising. While I don’t think Mr. Bezos is responsible for all of the world’s problems, I do think his company has impacted the world about as much as any company ever has. I thought about this yesterday afternoon as I did some of my Christmas shopping without leaving my house. I shopped Amazon of course.

For good or for bad, I can’t imagine life without Amazon. I recall the “olden days” when I had to actually leave my house and enter a shopping mall in order to purchase, well, just about anything related to Christmas. Timing was everything. Too early and your loved ones hadn’t given you their list. Too late and you had to deal with the crowds.

I remember one such visit very clearly. I had forgotten to purchase a present for someone important. My plan was to buy a gift card from a big department store. No problem, except you couldn’t buy the gift card online in those days. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem, except for the fact that it was Christmas Eve Day. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had forgotten to purchase a present. I recall circling the Park Meadows Mall several times without seeing a SINGLE AVAILABLE PARKING SPOT. Park Meadows Mall is huge, as is its parking lot. I finally decided to go to Plan B, though I was clueless as to what Plan B looked like. It took me 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot.

As it turned out, Plan B was Amazon. While I couldn’t buy a gift card to wrap up and put in her hands, what I could do, even as far back as then, was to go on Amazon and email a digital gift card.

Thanks Jeff Bezos.

I don’t know what all of us would have done during the quarantine without Jeff Bezos’ brilliant idea. You can buy ANYTHING at Amazon except a kidney. They stopped allowing that particular purchase years ago. Shipping is free, and now I get annoyed when the package ships in two days instead of same day.

By the way, you know how our grandkids wonder how Baby Boomers can rule the world when we are so dumb? I didn’t hear the end of it from Kaiya when I pronounced Mr. Bezos’ name Bee-zos instead of the correct Bay-zos. Perhaps one of her gifts will go back!

The other night after Bill and I ate dinner at a neighborhood restaurant, we decided to forgo driving straight home, instead driving around to look at holiday lighting displays. “Let’s go where the rich people live.”

So we drove around Cherry Hills Village to look at the lighting displays of people like Jake Jabs, who clearly spent more money on Christmas lighting than I will spend on my pretty red CR-V.

Still, the holiday lights made me smile and I’m glad they’re willing to spend their money for my pleasure. And a lot of other people’s pleasure judging by the number of cars circling the Village.

Have a good weekend.

Bill and I sat down yesterday morning to go over our calendars. We do this on a regular basis because, as I like to say, between the two of us, we have one working brain. This may or may not be true, because I’m not sure mine is ever working. Anyway, he can remind me of some things and I can remind him of others. Our goal is to end up together in the same place and at the right time.

At my sister Jen’s urging, I now keep a paper calendar. Her urging likely came from living with me for a couple of months in AZ last winter, and seeing how I struggle with technology. I like to call my paper calendar a day timer because that seems to make it sound like I’m a realtor instead of a technological nincompoop. I also keep a calendar on my laptop, on my iPad, and on my cell phone. These three pieces of technology are supposed to synch. Sometimes they do; often they don’t. The reasons they do or don’t are inexplicable to me. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is because I am doing something incorrectly. I likely — though inadvertently — set it up to only synch when there is a full moon.

Paper calendars don’t synch, but the information doesn’t mysteriously disappear either. Perhaps more important, when I go to a certain date in the calendar to find out the time of an appointment, it is always there. It isn’t impacted by daylight savings time. It worries not about synching with anything. And there might even be an inspirational quote at the top of the page.

As Bill and I began talking about our calendars, it became abundantly clear that social appointments were simply SMOTHERED by health-related appointments. This is true even if I include all friends’ and family members’ birthdays, something I do to both remind me and to fool myself into thinking I have a social life. Reality dictates that even if Great-Aunt Gladys is celebrating her 89th birthday, it doesn’t necessarily mean I will be celebrating with her. Still, it makes me feel better.

The truth, however, is that the first week in January, Bill has two surgical procedures and I have one surgical procedure. It appears 2022 is going to be a hit for the McLains. None of the procedures are serious, or even very interesting. Bill is starting the process to acquire dental implants and then moves south on his body to have a mole removed. I am moving even more south as I am having bunion surgery. His procedures won’t cause him much angst. I, on the other hand, will have to be non-weight-bearing for a minimum of six weeks. I’m looking at YOU, crutches.

Yuck.

Since I won’t be running the Phoenix Marathon, I might take the time to study technology. No I won’t. But I might do some doodling in my paper calendar.