That's the night that the lights went out in Jacko!

Last Sunday, Cairo and I carved a pumpkin ... well, when I say "Cairo and I", I actually mean that I did it and Cairo was nearby. Sometimes, that's the best I can hope for. I had thought she would participate, but she was quite happy to let me have all the fun ... and it was fun ... and I didn't want to ruin our good mood by making her join in. The final result wasn't my best, but it was good enough that I wasn't embarrassed to post a picture of it on Facebook.

Since we are only here on the weekends, I was worried the pumpkin would be dead by the time we returned. I had read online, if you want to prolong the lifespan of a carved pumpkin, keep it in the fridge. The problem with that is, our pumpkin was much too big to fit in there. He did, however, fit in the freezer. Ta-dah! I was thinking, "That's even better! Freezing it will keep it fresh even longer!" And I was right ... in a way.

My Mother is the Queen of Freeze. We call her Ms. Freeze. She likes to freeze everything. When we saw the movie "Mother" with Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds, the Mother reminded us so much of my Mom. In the movie, Albert Brooks plays John Henderson, a neurotic man, who, after two divorces, decides to move back in with his Mother, Beatrice, played by Debbie Reynolds. His desire is to solve his issues with her, and therefore, solve his bigger problems with women. It wasn't Debbie's scatterbrains or her sweetness that reminded us of Mom, it was her love of freezing. That woman froze everything, including these huge, HUGE, blocks of cheese.

John Henderson: I like my cheese in the ounces. When they start weighing as much as a Fiat, I get worried.

My favorite lines from the movie have to be when John wants some sherbet and Mother pulls a block of it from the freezer, and he is horrified that it's not just freezer burned but completely encapsulated in ice.

Beatrice Henderson: Oh, that is just the protective layer of ice.

She proceeds to scrape away the ice and gives him a bowl of the sherbet and he takes a spoonful into his mouth, then spits it out.

John Henderson: Blaaah! Oh God, this is horribly old! This tastes like an orange foot!

This Friday, we got down to the condo in Birch Bay about 5:00pm. We pulled in our groceries and bags, pulled out the bikes and herbs, and then I went into the freezer to check out the pumpkin. It looked great! It was frozen solid but in the same shape I'd left it. It hadn't aged at all, of course not, it was frozen solid! So I took it out and placed it on a chair on the patio. I figured it might be a little wet when it defrosted and didn't want the mess inside. All seemed well.

I closed the curtains since it was night and I hate thinking people are looking in at us through the darkness. I'm surprised at how many people keep their blinds open at night down here. It's the complete opposite from home where it always surprises me how so many people never open their blinds during the day. When I was a teenager, I rarely opened my curtains, and my Mother would always come in and open them. "Oh! It's so dark in here! How can you stand it like this!" and with a Whoosh, the curtains were pushed aside, and the sun would stream into the room. Even when I moved out on my own, Mom was still coming over and opening them for me. Eventually, it caught on, and I now can't stand to NOT have the light coming in. It drives me crazy to walk into my daughter's dark room. I just have to Whoosh those blinds up, "Oh! It's so dark in here! How can you stand it like this!" Funny how we're doomed to repeat the things we hated in our Mothers.

Saturday morning I woke up, put on the coffee, and opened the curtains, and saw my pumpkin .... Noooooooooo! How could I have been so stupid! I'm sure anyone reading this knew it was coming. I should have known it was coming. But like a big stupid kid, or a big, happy, panting Golden Retriever, I didn't think things through. I just froze it, and now poor ole Jacko has paid the price for my stupidity. He has completely deflated, his skull is all caved in, he is now just a big nasty mess. Thanks Mom! The protective layer of ice failed me.

Catching up and moving forward

It had been my plan to write in this blog daily, but it's been 13 days since my last post. I had been doing a pretty good job of it, but then a bad week put me off. Ironically, the two things that really help during tough times, writing and exercising, are the things I push aside when I am upset.

On the exercise side, I know well enough to get back at it, so I let 4 days go by and then pushed myself back into it. One class was all it took to make me feel better, and that led to the next class and the next and I was back on track.

On the writing side, I just felt overwhelmed with the need to write about all that had been missed in my blog. Each day brought more that I had missed and it just seemed easier to ignore it. That seems to be a big part of my failures in life. I put things off, and they steamroll into bigger and bigger issues, then I hide from the pain of my failures by immersing myself in something trivial where I can block out thought.

Today I am catching up. I'll make this my catch up blog, then move onto the new stuff starting tomorrow.

So what was it that threw me off track? It was a number of things. First Harold went away on a business trip that so far has played out like the whole premise of Gilligan's Island.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip

That started from our Birch Bay port

Inside our weekend crib.

Monday: Harold's first plane to Dallas had to land in Salt Lake City due to mechanical problems, where they had to sit all day and into the late evening.

The first, and second planes had mechanical probs,
The planes had to be tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crews
The planes could have been lost, the planes could have been lost.

Tuesday: They finally got to Dallas at 3:00am, where he slept a few hours on a cot, and then was supposed to board the plane to Little Rock at 6:00am. But this plane also had mechanical problems so he didn't get to Little Rock until much later that morning. He raced off to the office, to attend the meetings with some customers, but was soon pulled off to help out in a problem with another customer.

This same morning, I had a call from Greg, my ex-husband, telling me that he wants to have Cairo, our daughter, half time. One week with him, one with me. This was so he no longer has to pay me child support. I told him "No way!" He told me Cairo had asked to live with him, and he would take me to court for her. I slammed down the phone on him and texted Cairo, asking her to call me right away. She called on her next break and told me she hadn't asked to live with him, she had wanted to stay a week with him because she was in trouble with me at home, since she had sent 71 US text messages and downloaded 3 ring tones for an excess of $30 on her phone bill. This was the third time she had done this and I had made the mistake of calling her at Greg's. I will never, ever call her at his place, angry, again. I will wait until she comes home. I had to go to Greg's that afternoon to pick up the child support check 11 days late, and he tried to continue the argument. I left, my final words "Leaving you is the best thing I ever did in my life!"

Wednesday: I was at my Mother's house and looked at my phone and saw I'd missed a call from Cairo. Checking my voicemail, I saw it was a message from her crying and saying "Why can't I reach you when I need you?" I was calling and texting for a couple of hours and I had no answer, so Mom and I went down to her school where I was trying to have her paged and had to talk to the counselors and ended up crying and totally embarrassing myself. I left a message with them for her next class (after lunch) and went out to the parking lot to wait with Mom, and when the bell went we saw Cairo walking around the corner with some girls. I called her over and it turned out she'd been sick and thrown up but then after a bit felt okay, and she'd forgotten about me, and hadn't checked her phone.

Thursday: Greg called me to tell me he cut me off his medical early. Then Harold called me to tell me that he has to stay in Little Rock until next Wednesday.

Friday-Sunday: Cairo and I went down to Birch Bay for the weekend and had a good time together. We went home late Sunday night.

Monday: We went to Mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. There were 6 of us, Mom and Fernie, the Bob's, and Cairo and I. This would have been Harold's first Canadian Thanksgiving and I was really sad he was missing it, but happy I only had two days left before I'd see him again.

Tuesday: Harold called to tell me the problem isn't fixed yet. He has been working night and day, 24hours at a time, then go and sleep a few hours and come back again. They wanted him to stay until Saturday now. I cried and was angry, but knew he had no option. He had to stay.

No sleep, no home, no regular meals,
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
As primitive as can be. 

Wednesday: I skipped out of the gym, went to ABC and had breakfast and read the paper. I figured I'd go that evening instead but then had to drive Cairo to her youth group meeting. I went to Starbuck's alone and read for a few hours, then went back to pick her up, then had tow ait another half hour while they all went to McDonald's for a treat.

Thursday: I went to the gym, and worked all day on moving my web sites to a new server. That evening I took Cairo to Musical Theatre and then went to Greg's to go through our photo albums. He is moving in with Denise, his new girlfriend and this might be my last chance to get the photos. It was something I forgot when I moved out of the house. We stayed away from the topics that would get us yelling at each other, went through the photos and I left to pick up Cairo.

Friday: I was going to go down to Birch Bay early, but went to the gym first, and since it was such a nasty day stuck around to pick Cairo up from school. I hadn't heard from Harold in over 24 hrs and had left a few messages so was really worried about him. He called while I was waiting for Cairo, to tell me they want him to stay ANOTHER WEEK!!!!! I was really upset when Cairo got in the car and she was such a sweetheart about it. She asked me if I would like her to spend the weekend with me, and then called her father to tell him she is coming down to Birch Bay with me.

Saturday: That's now. I got up about 9:30am and have been wasting time all morning. I decided to bite the bullet and catch up this blog, since it is a nasty day and Harold had the clubhouse keys so we can't go swim or play racquetball. I'm about to head out of here, to run down to do some shopping in Bellingham. Hopefully Harold will be home next Friday, but I'm not holding my breath.

So this is the tale of the castway,
He's been there for a long, long time,
I'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb. 

The Greed of Seagulls

Yesterday we woke up and went for a walk around Birch Bay. We walked up past a house we are interested in seeing which has piqued our interest. We have an appointment to see it tomorrow morning.

Then we came back along the beach to pick up some shells. The south end of the beach has all the shells. That is where I would really like to buy a place, right there on the beach. We'd have a fire pit and bbq area and place to put our kayaks.

The fishermen chop up their fish and crab out at sea and dump the leftovers in the water, which end up being swept up onto the beaches. The seagulls swoop in to fight over the fish heads and skeletal systems and crab shells. They are so selfish and greedy. If they'd just share, there would be more than enough to go around. Instead, one grabs it, then another takes it from him, and yet another grabs it away. We saw one bird grab up a tail and fly off with it. A group of about six to eight followed him out onto the water where they ganged up and made him drop it. Another gull then grabbed it and the group bullied him into letting it go, and another gull grabbed it. After three or four goes of it, they lost it and it was washed up on shore for another group to fight over.

I was going to go into a discussion about how people are looking as greedy as the seagulls these days but I am out of time and need to finish this up.

After our walk, we went to CJWijn's for Wine tasting. They were sampling 3 whites and two reds. H liked the Russian Jack Sauvignon Blanc the best and I loved the Russian Jack Pinot Noir. The sun was so nice and warm, we sat out in our lounge chairs, drinking wine, and reading US Today.

We had lemon drop martinis while cooking pasta for dinner, Beringer White Zinfandel wine with dinner, and Frangelico with our coffee. Sure sounds like we drink a lot down here.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. - H.H. Dalai Lama

The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to - Friedrich Nietzsche

The plan when Cairo (my 14 year old daughter) moved to a new school, just out of our district, was that she would take the bus back and forth. She has a free bus pass that she was given because her father works for the bus company, it's good exercise for her to walk on both ends, and she is mature enough to handle it. Then her father told her he would change his work schedule so he could drive her, but that didn't work out. We went back to the original plan, but she asked if I could "PLEASE!" just drive her for the first week, until she felt comfortable at the new school. We started that, and other than two days after school, I have been driving her back and forth every single day. I really need to wean her off her reliance on my taxi service, since it's some of the only exercise she is getting.

As we were coming into the lobby of our apartment building yesterday, I told Cairo that I needed to go check my mail and headed over there while she pushed the elevator button. As I was leaning down to unlock the mailbox, I heard this voice from over near the door,

"Excuse me Miss, can you please help me?"

I looked over to see this older man, sitting on the bench, a bag at his feet, a cane leaning against his legs.

"Sure, what do you need?" I responded, walking over towards him.

"I don't seem to remember where I live. Can you please look on that board over there and find my name?" he pointed towards the alarm panel by the door.

"I don't think they have names on that ..." I trailed off as I wandered over to the board and looked at it more closely, "Nope, this is the alarm panel, I'll go outside and look you up in the directory. Is anyone home there?"

"It's Steele and my wife is home. She is expecting me up there."

Pushing open the door, I walked outside to look through the directory. There were lots of names starting with S, but not one Steele, not a derivative of the name, or anything close.

"Your name isn't in there, could it be something else?" I asked.

"S-T-double E-L-E, Steele, that's my name." His eyes were confused and sad, his voice was so sweet and almost childlike.

I was beginning to feel stressed, unsure of what I was supposed to do with the old guy.

"Do you have a wallet ... any I.D. with your address on it?" I asked, sitting down beside him, as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and started going through all his cards. There weren't that many, and the two that had addresses on them were from his previous address. I was thinking that my next step was to call the police, when this older lady came walking up to us, looking at me strangely.

"Hello?" she said to me, looking down at the cards in my hand, then darting her eyes to the man beside me, and his open wallet in his lap, and back to me again.

"Hello ..." I answered back, wondering who she was. "Do you know..." I began.

"Oh ..." the man paused, as if trying to figure out who the woman was. "That is my wife!" he suddenly exclaimed, and I felt a wave of relief wash over me, to be replaced with horror as I suddenly wondered what it must look like to see me with all her husband's ID and credit cards.

"Your husband was lost. He forgot where he lived and we have been trying to figure out what to do." I quickly explained, wanting to disappear quickly.

"I was wondering what was taking so long." she replied, looking less accusatory, turning to her husband "You said you knew the number now..."

My part in all this ended, I made my escape "Well, you are found now! That's a relief." They both thanked me and I left them there, thinking she really needs to give him a card with his address on it, and also contemplating when that sort of forgetfulness will be a part of my own life.

I have always prided myself on my extremely good memory. I remember every person I ever met, since I was a small child. It frustrates and embarrasses me that most other people don't have the same memory as I do. Every time I meet someone who doesn't remember me, I feel insulted, as if I wasn't as memorable or as important as they are. There have been so many times when I have pretended not to remember someone to protect my own self esteem.

Just last week I was talking to a friend I hadn't seen in a few years. I remembered all sorts of facts about him, and he could barely remember a thing about me. Oh sure, he knew who I was, we had been part of the same group for years, and even dated at one time. But here I remembered what his company name was, and what they did, and where they were. I knew what his kids' names are, and how old they are, and where they lived and I had never even met the younger child. He couldn't remember what my business name was or what I did.

I am also well organized, and like to have things in their place. I pride myself on knowing where things are, and enjoy being able to say exactly where to find something when someone needs it. It gives me a thrill to be asked where something is and to go right there and pull it out, my "Ta-da!" moments.

I live with a man who has a bad memory for people, at least, in my opinion, he does, and that has helped me to relax a bit about my feelings surrounding the subject. I know he doesn't just love me, he adores me, and if he forgets something, it has nothing to do with his feelings for me. I do my part by reminding him about who people are, when important dates are, what we are doing, where things are, and when he needs to call people, or make appointments.

I have noticed in the last year that my memory isn't as good as it used to be. I still remember people but I have missed a few appointments and there are times when I can't remember a word or what I was just about to do. I sometimes can't find my keys, or run up the stairs to find I have no idea what I went up there for. Just last night, I was laying there on the couch, and suddenly thought of something I had wanted to Google earlier. I sat up immediately and shook my mouse to wake up my laptop, input my password and bring up the Google page, and then stopped.

"What was it I was going to look up?" I thought to myself, and thought, and thought, and thought.

"Okay, just wait a second, it will come to me." I sat, and sat, and sat.

"Well, lie down again, do what you were doing when you thought of it." I laid my head back down, and laid, and laid, and laid.

But it never came back. I still don't know what the thought was. It just vanished. And it's made me start thinking ... like my eyesight, my memory is getting worse ... one day it might be me sitting on that bench unable to remember where I live.