There's No Time to Waste

 Those commercials for personal alert systems—“Help!! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”—haunt me. I remember the flexible days of my youth and middle age, rising and lowering into the lotus position at yoga without any effort, powered only by my legs. I remember touching my toes without stretching into discomfort. I remember turning on a dime, pivoting without stumbling. But the memories aren’t reality.

 IRL, as we say nowadays, I struggle to get up from a squat. Just after Christmas, shopping the discounted cards, I had to hunker down to get to boxes on the lowest shelf. I found what I wanted there, but I couldn’t pull myself back up. For increasingly panicky moments, I tried to find a position that would let me leverage one leg to a spot I could rise from. The thought of calling for help in Walgreens mortified me.

 Fortunately, I did make it to my feet unaided. No one saw my struggle and my dignity remained intact, at least until this confession. But OMG, I don’t want that to happen ever again! I started looking into leg strengthening exercises and doing them, if haphazardly. I am better at rising now than I was in December, but not better enough.

 Some very happy news has made this topic—physical fitness for older people—even more important to me. Next year, Michael and I are celebrating our 50^th wedding anniversary by taking a month-long trip to Vienna Austria! We’ll have our own apartment, a cohort of fellow travelers, and a local guide/concierge for some activities. Otherwise, we’ll be on our own. The company that oversees the experience and makes the arrangements is The Good Life Abroad.

A requirement of handing over your hard-earned money and joining the group is that you can walk two miles on uneven terrain (cobblestones, etc) and climb two flights of stairs. (They do promise the apartment buildings will have elevators, thankfully.) So we are now on deadline to get fit. In 360 days, we will land in Vienna and begin our adventure.

 I will be ready, but I’m not taking it lightly. I’ve had several falls or serious stumbles in the last year, so I got my PCP to prescribe gait and fall prevention physical therapy. I’m doing that right now. The next step is to go back to the gym. I stopped going after I had a fall in my Silver Sneakers class last year, but I can’t stay away any longer.

 It so happens that, while sitting in the waiting room at PT today, I saw a slender paperback book titled Stronger Longer: An Authoritative Guide To Aging Actively by Jackie Bachmeier and Dan Ritchie. I skimmed a few pages and realized it was just what I needed. The other person in the waiting room said, “Oh. I go to that gym. Jackie’s great. She does personal training, group classes, and video classes.”

 Turns out ‘that gym’ is about 5 miles from my home. Could it get any better than that? It could when the PT receptionist says “We have more of those books. They’re free. Do you want one?” And to think I had already planned to plunk down $9.99 plus tax and shipping to get a copy.

 The other patient, my PT twin because the therapists always work with two people at once, continued to sing the praises of Jackie and her gym throughout our hour. If I didn’t have a firm commitment to being at my writing desk on Monday afternoon, churning out this blog, I would have zipped over there to check it out.

 I write with a group on Mondays. We are all memoirists who happen to live in different cities, so we gather online each week and check in, then write with the comforting knowledge that other people are also working on their manuscripts. Since my manuscript is done, I write my blog. It’s soft accountability that bolsters us. A tip of the hat to Cathy, Mindy, Penny, and Yvonne today!

 In addition to seriously tackling physical fitness, I started a German language course on Duolingo. I work on it every day and I am acquiring vocabulary, an ear for German pronunciation, and even some new-to-me sounds and letters. Did you ever see this letter before? ß, called Eszett and pronounced like a double SS in English. The German word for tall or big is groß (gross). German also has several vowels with symbols hanging over them that are new to me.

 It’s been tricky learning to read and pronounce these strange new letters. Like the strength and fitness I need to acquire, I only have a year to get ready. There’s no time to waste!

Tschüß (pronounced schuss with a long u, my new ciao)

 

 

 

In the Quilt Zone

The International Quilt Festival in Houston just completed its 50^th show yesterday. It ranks as the largest quilt show in the United States. I have gone to the show many times over the last two decades and the beauty of the quilts people make never ceases to amaze me. Often I have gone with my daughter Alix, or with a friend, but this year I went solo. There is a certain pleasure to that—no coordinating of whens and wheres are required—but the camaraderie of oohing and aahing with another person is lost, too.

 I always ride mass transit when I go because I hate the traffic and I especially hate the astronomical gouging on parking. The lot near the convention center charged $35 to park this year! The cheaper the parking, the farther the walking; it’s easier to travel by bus and rail.

 There’s an express bus downtown two miles from my house that connects nicely to the train that goes right to the convention center. And hey, Houston’s Metro service is great: people over 70 ride free with a 70+ bus card. Who could ask for anything more?

  In my excitement, I over-estimated travel time badly and got on an 8:15 am bus that resulted in a 9 am delivery to the Festival. Doors didn’t open until 10! Oh, well. The people-watching was good. I saw a couple friends in the crowd and also had nice chats with a few strangers. Quilters are generally easy to talk to with.

  I also studied the show program to suss out my moves. There is so much to see between the quilts and the vendors that one really needs a plan. I decided to walk the vendor aisles first, eat lunch, and then walk the quilt aisles. Walk is a generous description of the start and stop, almost lurching, progress made amidst literal throngs of people. As shoppers accumulate tote bags full of goods, the traffic jams up more and more. And that doesn’t include the effect of scooters, wheelchairs, and walkers as impediments.

  I only wanted to buy one thing for sure, a tub of Karique shea butter. A fabulous product that soothes my abused hand-quilter’s fingertips without being greasy (which means it won’t rub off on my fabric), I prefer to buy it every year at the show because the one time I mail ordered it, the Houston heat melted the stuff into a mess. But drat, no Karique booth this year!

  I had no other shopping plans, but did that stop me from shopping? No. The big thing I got was a quilt display system that goes over a door and doesn’t require drilling holes or screwing anything into the wall. I had never seen one like it and I really wanted it. I went back and looked at it three times! Then I texted Michael about it. His response is why I love him. “Would it really be the quilt festival if you didn’t bring something home?”

  Here’s a picture of my purchase, set up on the door to my office/guestroom. The door faces our foyer, making it a nice view for visitors as well as a privacy screen.

 I picked up some other inconsequential purchases, a couple of pretty good freebies, and some candy before lunch. I ate my usual, an exorbitantly priced baked potato with BBQ beef, and then went into the show side of things.

  So begins quilt overload. A friend called it quilt blur. That is not an exaggeration. There are only so many quilts you can look at before they begin to run together in overwhelming beauty! With no partner, I didn’t spend a lot of time discussing details, which I ordinarily would do. I just looked, felt astonished and unaccomplished, and then walked on to the next masterpiece. I also didn’t take loads of photographs, which I have often done in the past, only to realize later that all those pictures were wasting space in my cloud. Since you can find any picture you want on the internet, there isn’t a reason to keep them in your own collection.

  I couldn't resist taking pictures of three special quilts. I hope you’ll open the photos up a bit and look at the details. They’re incredible. 

 

This one is a whole cloth quilt that is entirely hand-stitched. The thousands upon thousands of tiny stitches took the quilter over 2,000 hours to complete.

 

These two are the same quilt. The quilter created 680 individual little girls with unique umbrellas, rain boots, and outfits. Imagine the time that took!

 This quilt just tickled me, and I thought Alix would get a kick out of it, too, so it's for her. What great cat energy!

Another year, another Quilt Festival. I’m re-energized and it’s a good thing because I have a special quilt project looming. Next month, I am going to learn how to make quilted tennis shoes. While I’m at it, I’m going to make a matching quilted purse. I have to get the fabric quilted in advance of the class, so that’s my next task. Like, immediately next! When it’s all done, I’ll share the results here.

 Ciao

P.S. I'm still learning how to get the pictures situated and obviously struggling. Sorry!

Tell Your Story

 

“If an ordinary person is silent, it may be a tactical maneuver. If a writer is silent, he is lying.”    Jaroslav Seifert

 “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your story. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”    Anne Lamott

 

I found writing memoir to be a long and difficult process. First of all, you have to live the life in order to write about it. That takes time in the most literal sense. The consequences of actions play out over many years, even decades. The ability to look back and reflect on life experiences is one of the most valuable aspects of memoir.

 My memoir is essentially about the 35 years that a serious chronic illness disrupted my life and my family, and the concurrent 30 years that raising an adopted child with serious mental health problems affected all of us for better and for worse. Either topic offers rich material for reflection; together they often feel overwhelming.

 Reliving painful experiences is no less painful than the original incidents; it’s just a different kind of pain. Sometimes I couldn’t face the work for weeks or months at a time. Sometimes I wept while writing. And sometimes I laughed out loud, remembering joyful or hilarious moments.

 In 1994, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a very august, 100-year-old gathering of writers held in Middlebury Vermont each summer. We were newly adoptive parents to our youngest child at the time and did not yet appreciate the difficulties that lay ahead for us.

 Someone at Bread Loaf, who heard the unusual story of how she came into our life, very excitedly told me I had to write a book about it. I thought that might be a good idea and I tinkered with it for a bit, but ultimately realized that there wasn’t going to be that much I could say about the experience until we actually experienced more of our life as this newly constructed family.

 I put the idea away and spent many years writing essays about life as we lived it. I also filled journal after journal with my thoughts and ideas. Ultimately, 15 years or so down the line, my essays and thoughts began to take the shape of a coherent story about our life. That’s when I started writing my memoir in earnest.

  There are many phases of writing a book: concept, draft, revision, more revision, and even more revision. I’ve worked with structural editors and developmental editors. I’ve had chapters read and critiqued by other writers over many years. I feel sometimes like I’ve written ten books! The day comes when you can’t do any more revising. Maybe, you just can’t face any more revising. Nevertheless, it’s time to make your manuscript a book.

That’s where I am. My manuscript is begging to be a book. And, actually, people are asking me where to buy it. I wish I had the answer to that question. Selling or publishing a book is a whole different thing from writing it. And writing it doesn’t prepare you to sell it.

 If anyone has thoughts about this, I’d welcome them.
 
Ciao

Conflating Activity with Creativity: A Wander

 I belong to a women’s spirituality group that meets for an hour on Sunday mornings via Zoom. The group, Changing Women, which started at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, has been meeting for at least three decades. I used to be involved all those years ago when we were members at First Church, but when we changed congregations to get closer to home, I stopped going.

COVID has had more deleterious effects than anything I can remember in my lifetime. Oddly enough, it did have one positive effect, at least for me. Several of my organizations started using online meetings during lockdown and continued the practice afterwards. Changing Women is one of those organizations.

 A momentary detour into geography may be helpful because Houston is so much bigger than most people who are not from here can imagine. The Houston MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) contains nine counties, Harris County being the central entity. We live on the far western outskirts of Harris County in a community called Cypress. Down the road a few miles is Waller County, and up the street a few miles is Montgomery County. Our part of Cypress is in a corner that butts up against these other two counties.

 The cultural heart of Houston is the Theatre District downtown, followed by the Museum District in mid-town. Those locations are about 30 miles from us. Driving to the far end of Harris County from our house, Seabrook, is over 60 miles. First Church is in the Museum District, so the amazing opportunity to meet online versus driving brought me back to Changing Women a few years ago.

 The group is centered around the book Earth Medicine: Ancestor Ways of Harmony forMany Moons by Jamie Sams. Published in 1994, it is a collection of daily readings based on Native American spirituality, tied to the cycle of the moon. There are two companion books to Earth Medicine: Medicine Cards and Sacred Path Cards.

 As the name implies, each book comes with a set of cards, similar in size and shape to tarot cards, meant to be used with guidance from their companion books. Medicine Cards is about how animal totems can enlighten you; Sacred Path Cards delve into Native American beliefs about spiritual development and how people should live.

 The reading for September 28 was Boredom. It told a story of one child who used time creatively and another child who felt aimless and bored. There were three questions suggested in the study guide for the reading. How are you creating beauty from what you have at hand?  What are you seeing in your mind’s eye?  How does boredom affect creativity?

 My initial reaction was kind of combative. I never feel bored. I mean, duh, books, right? Then a bit of reality slipped by my defenses. Uh, reels on Facebook? Email? Mindless games on my phone? Even when I read a “good” book (as opposed to pulp fiction), am it just masking boredom?

 This is a poser, for sure, but I have so far concluded that passing time is not creativity. Even making something isn’t necessarily creativity. I think I have been conflating creativity with activity. Shame on me for feeling so smug about my own cleverness!

 So what does constitute creativity? Two days is not enough time to devote to this question, but some things did pop up readily. Creativity requires the application of thoughtfulness and design to a problem or idea. Take making a quilt. What do I want my quilt to look like? What fabrics can I use to achieve the effect I want? How should I cut those fabrics and sew them back together to realize the image that’s in my brain?    

 Even if I use someone else’s pattern for a quilt, there are countless intermediate steps, starting with picking the fabric and ending with how to finish the binding, that require creative processes.  I have made two quilts for which the pattern and all the fabrics were pre-selected. I made them in Block-of-the-Month classes designed to teach technique and coach people through difficult quilt block execution. But at the end of these admittedly non-original, non-creative processes, I had to make a creative choice about how to finish the quilts.

 Option one, pay someone to quilt it on a machine. That’s minimally creative, assuming I pick the pattern. Option two, machine quilt it myself. More creative decisions required here. Option three, hand quilt it, which then requires several more choices about pattern, thread, and complexity.

 I hand quilted one of my non-original quilts with a fairly simple overall pattern because I had a time crunch. It turned out beautifully, BTW, and the recipient really appreciated it. I’m still working on the second one, years after I finished the top, because I picked a ridiculously complicated quilting design to hand quilt. It will be done one of these years and that’s okay.

 Most of the quilts I make now days are unique wall hangings, designed and executed by me, to express something special. Often, they are designed for particular people. Alix, for example, has a small reverse appliqué of a tree frog that I made for her because she loves frogs. I designed and made a reverse appliqué wall hanging of a monarch butterfly for myself.

Musing about boredom and creativity has led me to realize that I am spending precious time on activities with little or no value instead of activities that are fulfilling and expressive. And I’m really too old to be wasting my time like that. How about you?

 Ciao

 

 

Jonesing for Yellow Curry

     Do you have a favorite meal at a favorite restaurant? Something that makes your mouth water when you think about it? I do. In fact, there are several meals I love at different restaurants and I often make lunch plans with friends based on going to those places for those meals. One favorite is a Thai restaurant about 25 miles from home that serves a delicious yellow curry that I crave.

     It’s funny how I started eating it. A board that I once sat on would go out to eat after meetings and one evening someone suggested the restaurant Thai Spice. It was new to me. I consider Thai food generally to be too spicy, and this place was bragging about it right in the name. But I decided to try the yellow curry with chicken after the waiter assured me they could dial down the spices for my ‘delicate’ sensibilities.

     They delivered the dish in a soup pot — creamy yellow curry broth full of carrots, potatoes, and chicken. It came with steamed rice on the side. I dolloped a spoonful of rice into the broth and sampled the results, then had an OMG moment. The soup slid around my mouth like silk, rich and luscious. The chicken and vegetables tasted perfect, and I fell in love, victim of an on-the-spot addiction.

     We went back to that restaurant once in a while, and I ate the yellow curry every time. One night, I forgot to add mild to my order. The first bite tasted wonderful — just what I expected — until the curry bit me back. Oh, dear! My eyes were watering and my tongue was tingling, but I had gotten exactly what I ordered, so I could hardly send it back. Lured by the still silky and delicious taste of yellow curry broth, I soldiered through.

     There are almost always leftovers from this meal. The restaurant is generous, and I get full, so half of it goes home to give me a lovely lunch the next day. Two-for-one, who could ask for better? I've found the spice level is more intense after reheating. More teary eyes, a runny nose, but always, I soldier on. The curry is just too good to waste.

     Eventually, I stopped asking for adjustments to the spice level. A person who would never willingly eat a jalapeño or add red pepper to my chili, who doesn’t like the spicy taste of banana peppers or use Tabasco sauce ever, here I was, eating spicy curry at my favorite Thai restaurant whenever I could get there! And I still am.

     My friend Cathy lives near the dining spot, and we usually eat there whenever we lunch out, every couple of months. Fortunately, Cathy likes Thai food and has never complained about going there all the time. The lunch menu is a bit different from the dinner menu. You are served soup, a small egg roll, and a small salad alongside your smaller serving of the yellow curry, for, of course, a lower price than dinner. I think it’s a bargain. By the time I eat the appetizers, I’m full enough that I still can’t eat all the curry and I get to take home leftovers. Win-win!

     It has been a while since I ate yellow curry at Thai Spice in the Heights. I think about it anytime my mind turns to food. Literally, I can find myself jonesing on yellow curry at the drop of a hat. I beat back my cravings by remembering that I can go there if I want to; just get in my car and drive! I don’t need a lunch or dinner partner or an excuse to indulge. I’m a grown-up who owns a car, has a debit card, and can do it right now!

     I’m going to hold off though, at least long enough to see if Cathy is free for lunch soon. And I mean soon!

Ciao

    P.S. The restaurant changed its name for reasons I don’t understand, but everything else is the same. If you want to try the yellow curry — I recommend with chicken — you can find it in the Heights under the name ZapVor by Thai Spice. I’m told that ZapVor means “Super Yummy” in Thai. There's no arguing with that.

How Many Old People Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?

    How many old people does it take to change a light bulb? Apparently, more than two, because Michael and I haven’t succeeded yet. The bulbs in question are actually tubes — fluorescent tubes — for the main fixture in our kitchen. Everyone has one, right? About two feet wide and four feet long, with four tube lights that provide most of the functional illumination in a kitchen.

     The four long neon tubes in ours have been faltering for a couple of weeks now. At first, they would dim and flicker occasionally, then settle down and illuminate just fine. Recently, one tube died and the kitchen got darker. When we got down to a single working fluorescent tube light, I hated working in there at night. I asked Michael to fix them: it was really too dark, even with the over-the-sink lights and the laundry room lights turned on. Michael turning on the microwave light as I complained did not much help either the lighting or my mood.

    Coming home from an event one day, I found the ladder in the kitchen and the cover off the fixture. Good, I thought, we’re going to have light again.” One tube had been removed; none of the other tubes worked at that point. I tracked Michael down in his office and commended him for working on the lights.

    “I’ll need to run to the hardware store for bulbs,” he told me. Easy enough, Home Depot and Lowe's are both within two miles of our house. Of course, one has to work up the motivation to soldier on and actually go to the store, so the ladder and cover got in the way in the kitchen for about a week.

    The next time I left Michael home alone, I returned to find new bulbs on the dining room table, one two-pack opened and loose. “I’m going to need some help with these. I couldn’t get them seated correctly by myself,” he said. “Fine, just let me know when you’re ready.”

    And so today, a Monday some days after his first attempt, he got back to it, but without waiting for me to finish lunch. Before I could join him to give whatever help he needed, I heard a crash, followed by appropriately loud cursing. The very thin glass of a fluorescent tube had scattered everywhere, and it took both of us sweeping in both the kitchen and the dining room to clear away the bits.

     “What can I do?” I asked. 

    “I can’t get the bulb to seat in the ballast,” he said. “If you could work on one end while I work on the other, that’d be great.” 

    So I dragged out the stepstool and climbed up, ready to insert and twist. I mean, that’s really all there is to it, right? Over 48 years of marriage and several different homes, we have replaced fluorescent tube lights numerous times. Mostly, Michael has replaced them, but I do know how to do it.

    But not today. He got his end in fine, but mine would not for the life of me insert far enough into the slot to twist in place. “Something’s blocking this side. It won’t go in all the way. Let’s switch sides, maybe you can do it.”

    Michael climbed down, I stepped across to his ladder, and he walked around to the stepstool and climbed up. All right, we were ready. It was going to work this time, I knew it. My confidence lasted right up to the moment I felt Michael’s end slip and heard another tube break. Fortunately, I still had a grip on my end, so we only had half a broken tube to clean up.

    At this point, Michael suggested that it was time to get track lighting for the kitchen. After all, fluorescent tubes were a thing of the past. I couldn’t agree more, but there is one thing special I want on the new track lighting for our kitchen. An installer. 

Ciao

Don't Look a Gift Bag in the Mouth

This afternoon, someone left a plain, navy blue, paper bag hanging on my front door. To say this was unusual would be a gross understatement. It’s been since my childhood — when people left May Day baskets of candy and treats on doorsteps — that any unexpected goodies appeared out of nowhere at our house. But the bag was meant for me: a handwritten note attached began “Ms. Devereaux [sic].”

(Point of clarification, there is no A in our Irish version of the surname Devereux. The sender obviously doesn’t know me well or doesn’t pay attention to nit-picky details. But kudos for getting Ms. right!)

 A quick perusal of the note revealed that the Salvation Army had delivered this bag as a thank you for completing a recent survey they emailed to me. Imagine if every one of the multitude of companies that bombard you daily with requests to complete their surveys sent gifts afterward? Responses would skyrocket.

The bag included flyers about their estate planning/future giving program and a handful of treats: two Halloween-sized bags of Skittles, one gummy and one regular; a retractable red measuring tape suitable for a sewing room; and two miniature red Salvation Army bells like the ones wielded over their Christmas kettles. The bells had split rings attached, presumably so you could slip them onto a key ring. I immediately put one of them on the font drawer that hangs on my office wall and houses a variety of tiny treasures I love. The other is beside my laptop awaiting deployment.

I am a big fan of the Salvation Army. In 1973, I was a pregnant graduate student whose husband had left her with no visible means of support. It took me a bit to get my life in order, take a leave from school, find an interim job, and support myself until Alexandra was born several months later. During that lean, mean period, the Salvation Army gave me groceries and I have been grateful ever since.

Every January, when we distribute our charitable contributions for the year, the Salvation Army gets a chunk of money. I have been giving to them faithfully for literally decades.  And I will continue to give as long as I can. I don’t say this to brag, just to explain why I might have been picked to get an unexpected gift hung on my front door today. And why they might have included some brochures encouraging me to continue giving after I die.

My immediate reaction to this lovely, unexpected token of appreciation was, “Why are they wasting money on this?  Why don’t they use the money to provide services to needy people?” Munching my way through both bags of Skittles, I did a little research on donor premiums, as they are called in the solicitation business. (Aside: Skittles gummies are surprisingly tasty!)

According to 2018 research by three Texas A&M professors (It's Not the Thought that Counts: A Field Experiment on Gift Exchange and Giving at a Public University | NBER), donor premiums do not generate more money for the organizations that give them out. In fact, they cost more money to give than the amount they generate. But charities must think that showing appreciation to donors will benefit them in the long run or why would they do it?

I do admit to feeling some warm fuzzies when I look at the tiny Salvation Army bell. I kinda wish I had a little kettle to go with it. And the gift did prompt me to write this blog, which might get them a smidgen of notice from a few people. Possibly, I will look over their brochure before I recycle it — not promising.

Maybe the Salvation Army likes me as much as I like them. Maybe they’re happy that my life turned out well enough that I could become a donor. Maybe I am WAY over thinking this and it’s time to stop looking a gift bag in the mouth. (Forgive my abuse of a venerable adage, but I couldn’t resist.)  Time to just say thank you, Salvation Army, the treats were lovely.

Ciao