Observations on Fruit Flies

Fruit flies have a gestation period of ten minutes and give birth to eighty babies at a time. I didn’t look this up anywhere; it’s my own inference based strictly on observations made in my own kitchen. We try keeping a lid on our compost container, but it appears the little creatures not only possess incredible breeding capacity, but also are able to pass through impermeable Tupperware.

I’ve found a couple of strategies to put a dent in the fruit fly population. One is performing a magic ritual in which you clap your hands twenty times. Then you purify yourself with soap and water. The other is one weird trick from the Internet that actually seems to work, more or less. I left a shallow bowl out on the counter, filled with apple cider vinegar mixed with a drop of honey and a drop of dish soap. Several hours later, more than a dozen tiny corpses floated in the liquid. I was so excited, I called my husband in to take a look.

Courtesy of ronhudson.blogspot.com — image courtesy of ronhudson.blogspot.com

He couldn’t help noting the fruit flies gathered on the rim of the bowl, safely out of harm’s way, gazing upon their fallen comrades. Then it struck me. “We’re just winnowing out the slowest and weakest, aren’t we?” I asked him. “The ones left to reproduce are too smart and strong to get caught. We’re not eradicating the population. We’re breeding superfiles!” He couldn’t even respond, merely left the room, shaking his head.

Or maybe I need to use a bigger bowl.

And Then…

Update on the hearing aid situation:

The day after I posted about my delays in getting my mom’s hearing aid repaired I did, in fact, manage to get it fixed and back to her. Mad props to Columbia Hearing Center for excellent and speedy customer service, especially as the holiday weekend approached.

I delivered the working device to my mom with the satisfied feeling that comes from one less item on your to-do list. Only to have her say, “I got something in the mail. I don’t remember what, but I remember thinking you should look at it.”

I found the envelope the top drawer of her nightstand:

Jury summons

I looked it up on the state’s website. There is no maximum age for jurors. Apparently, residing at a skilled nursing facility is no automatic exemption, either. What can you do but laugh?

No worries. I contacted my mother’s doctor, who was happy to email a letter stating Mom should be excused from jury duty indefinitely.

It’s always something, rarely anything I expected.

Feeling the Sandwich This Week

Sometimes lately, I can breathe. Sometimes, now that my kids are young adults, I feel a little space opening, giving me fewer needs to meet, fewer conflicting priorities. But then I have a week like this one. This week, this is me.

grilledcheese

Not only sandwiched, but toasted.

Mom’s hearing aid needs repaired. I don’t remember the brand or know where to take it. But surely I can find time to pick it up to see the brand and then find a place that will service it. Um. That much is accomplished. As far as actually getting it to the place…I feel like the world’s most neglectful daughter.

My older kid found a job they want to apply for, which is way up there on the priority list and a major step forward, but they’re floundering in confusion and anxiety over creating a resume. Can’t wait forever to apply; got to get it done right away. Sure, I’ll help. Anything. Anything to help facilitate this step toward self-reliance. Conflicting priorities. I choose helping my firstborn over taking in my mom’s hearing aid. It can wait one more day. I should have a couple of hours after work and before the business closes.

Oh, but then my second-born has arranged to have his friends gather at our house as soon as I’m home from work. It’s the only time all summer they can make it happen, what with all of their various summer classes, jobs, travels and volunteer obligations. One of the boys in the group is leaving the country in a couple of days. These are good kids. Regardless, I’m not leaving a bunch of teenaged boys unsupervised in my house for any length of time.

I’ve also been prepping for a program at work that puts me in a role I haven’t played before. Ideally, this should only affect me during work hours, but I have so much anxiety about it I feel compelled to spend time at home refreshing myself on the details to know and remember.

I was about to call my mom last night and explain all of this to her, hoping she could hear my words of reassurance that she isn’t forgotten, when the tornado sirens went off. Have I mentioned the weather? We’ve been spending a lot of time in the basement lately. Fortune has spared us tornado damage, but not the imminent threats.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will definitely get to the hearing aid place. And hope they’re not closed early for the holiday weekend. Sorry for making you wait, Mom. I said SORRY FOR MAKING YOU WAIT ON YOUR HEARING AID.

Summer Fun, Making Memories

Summer

For several years, I dealt with the inevitable summer kid complaint of “I’m bored” by keeping a list of possible activities posted on the refrigerator. Some were solo ventures – blow bubbles, draw a picture. Others were group doings – board games, etc. Some could be done at home and others were of the out-and-about variety for times I was available. Dozens of times each summer, I’d say “Go look at the list and choose something.”

Now I wonder how many summers I have left with any kids still at home. I hope it’s more than one, but fewer than ten. I know the empty nest can be bittersweet, but failure to launch is not all roses either. While I still have them, I want to do more than get through my daily checklist of bare survival tasks over and over: get cavity filled, pick up denture tablets for Mom, go to work again, cook dinner again and again and again… Continue reading “Summer Fun, Making Memories” →

Last One Standing

One of my uncles died yesterday. He had been married to my father’s sister, who passed away last year. I remember at my dad’s funeral, this aunt lamenting that she had none of her childhood family any more. I come from a large clan on both sides. My dad was one of five children and my mom one of nine. Now, of the siblings and their spouses in my dad’s family, my mother is the last one standing. That’s one of the drawbacks of living a very long life. You lose a lot of people along the way.

On my paternal side, it’s an entire generation gone. Yet another milestone where I realize I’m supposed to be a grown-up now, in a big way. In taking charge of my mom and her affairs, I failed to anticipate one significant responsibility. I’m the bearer of news, the one who sits with her over another loss. I never feel I’m competent enough for this and find myself thinking there must be some real adults around somewhere who could step in.

My mom still has six surviving brothers and sisters, including one older the she is. They’re hardy stock. I have a greater than average chance of making it to ninety. But I can’t think this without thinking of my aunt who was the last of her family of origin. She was the youngest by quite a bit and so am I. You never know what life will bring, of course. People don’t always die in chronological order. In fact, I wasn’t even accurate earlier in this paragraph when I said I’m the youngest. There was one sister who followed me by two years and never made it home from the hospital.

People always want to live a long time, but who really wants to be the last one standing? It’s a conundrum.

I don’t know if I have an end point to this blog post. I simply felt like sharing the ramblings of my mind. Maybe I won’t try to come up with some neat concluding sentence. I’ll let it be a little incoherent and messy, like life.

Reclaiming My Space

Yet another birthday. Mine this time. Yesterday. And with it a goal for the coming year. I want to reclaim some personal space, both on my calendar and in my house. Whenever it comes to shuffling things around in an attempt to make life work, I’m often too quick to volunteer for giving up something of mine to make the needed room, whether an activity, a goal, an object, or my home office space.

This is supposed to be my office for writing and whatever else I want to do in there. It’s pretty messy at the moment.

Messy office

Our house was built around 1901. I believe this upstairs room was originally a sleeping porch. The house needed A LOT of work when we bought it. This room didn’t even have real windows, only storms. We installed windows, put in carpet (found an end roll the right size for $50!), insulated the ceiling, and painted the walls, so I could have a writing space. I started the project so full of hope and cheer.

But, letting my inner martyr take over, I’ve gradually allowed everything else to encroach on it. Might as well keep all of our paperwork in there, right? Paid bills, taxes, insurance claims, mortgage stuff. I’m the one who handles the finances, so it only makes sense. Then sometimes we have a box of random stuff with no designated place, and we’re cleaning the common areas because we’re expecting company. Oh, I can put that box in my office, out of the way, “for now.”

And eventually we moved my mom to town, into her little tiny half of a room in the skilled nursing facility. With her came multiple season’s worth of clothing and many items she couldn’t let go, yet has no room for. Hmmm..where to put it? I know! How about the writing salon turned storage unit?

Storage

Oh, but see the green container there on the right with paper stuffed in it? That’s a sign of progress. Of hope. See the filing cabinets? They had been so bulging I’d stopped putting things in them. The green container is a paper shredder. Those papers were shredded after this photo was taken. I’ve made a good start on transforming this jumble back into a usable office by purging my files of old utility bills and operation manuals for appliances we no longer own. Tax returns from the early 2000s – gone! I freed up a ton of space so I could start sorting and filing the more recent piles that have been growing.

My plan, my small, specific, tangible goal for this next year of my life is to reclaim my writing office and begin using it again. I’m going to work on it at least four days a week, even if I only have ten minutes. Take a look at the progress I made this afternoon.

Bookcase

I’m talking about the bookcase. See how half of the top is clear of paperwork? That empty spot represents an hour of work on my part. There had been a huge, tottering pile next to the smaller stack that remains. Some of it got filed, some shredded. About half of it is on the floor there in the photo, but has since been moved to a recycling container. I also returned the clothes hanger to a closet. I’m not sure how it made its way to the room to begin with.

This will happen. I’m tired of the sad, discouraged feeling of loss I have when I look into this room. I will have my writing space again within the year.

What Dreams May Come

I dream a lot. Always have. Vivid, detailed, complex, Technicolor dreams. Sometimes (okay, often) they’re bizarre – I won a trip to the Mars Colony, which totally existed. The biodome looked like an abandoned warehouse, and I was upset because I’d forgotten to bring my pedometer. I’d been planning to live-blog how many steps I was taking on the red planet. Sometimes they’re boring – I dreamed I had insomnia. Sometimes they’re a jumble of all of my anxieties – I’m late to work, while somehow 30 miles away and I can’t find my car. Also I discover the denture tablets I thought I’d bought for my mom are really kittens that need to be fed.

Sometimes I have a dream that’s a wake-up call, so to speak. In the early days of my marriage I dreamed I had died and was a ghost. I couldn’t go beyond my house. Only my husband could see me. He said it was okay, he’d stay married to me. But I knew I had to go “on” for his sake. What kind of burdensome,unfairly limited life would that be for him? As I mulled this over the next day, I realized it was a message from the part of my mind that had noticed I was depending too much on my spouse to be everything to me. I was living through him and it wasn’t healthy for either of us. I was at risk of losing my own life and of tying him to someone who wasn’t a fully realized person. I made some changes after that one, I can tell you.

I experienced another dream of this variety a few nights ago. I had time-traveled back ten years on accident. I’m not sure how. But I was stuck there. It wasn’t one of those time travel adventures where you risk running into your earlier self. It was more of the Peggy Sue Got Married variety, where you have to go back and relive an earlier time in your life. I was a mess. Ten years ago, I had the same employer, but a different job. Our building has undergone some changes in that time, so the layout is different. So, I was trying to do my work and act like nothing was wrong, as if I didn’t have tons of foreknowledge about changes that were to come – Facebook, co-workers who would have babies, or get divorced, or die, all in the next few years. I had to hold myself back from taking care of things that weren’t on my list of duties then, but are now. I couldn’t remember where things were back then or the procedures for any job tasks. And I was full of worry over not remembering what time my kids would be getting out of elementary school, or what exactly was going on in their daily lives. What could I say to them when I picked them up without tipping my hand? Then I fretted about all of the things I knew were to come for them – major surgery for the younger one, the older one being bullied at school.

So many times I’ve wasted my energy on regret. Wishing I’d done something differently with my kids. Other times, I find myself missing their younger selves, feeling nostalgia for the days when I was a much bigger part of their lives and we’d do fun things together. Playing on the tire swing at the park, sledding in the snow. You might think, given the opportunity for a redo, I’d look forward to doing the things differently, heading off my mistakes, that I’d revel in the opportunity to relive the fun and closeness I remember and long for. That I’d relish being ten years younger and therefore having an extra decade to live. But I felt none of this in the dream. Like Peggy Sue, I only wanted to get back to my now life. I missed the kids I have now. I missed the job I have now. I was downright incompetent in my old roles.

Once again, I woke up realizing a part of my being had been noticing some things about my life and felt the need to hit me over the head with them while I slept. This is the only way I can get my own attention sometimes, I guess. Do I genuinely wish I could have the chance to do things over and enjoy them again and make better decisions? I mean for really real? No. I’d make a mess of it. I can’t be who I was then. Okay Brain, I get it. Stop worrying about things that are done and over with and unchangeable. Take pleasure in the good memories, but appreciate what I have now while I have it. Enjoy who my kids are at this moment, who I am at this moment. Seize the day, because even if it came again, I’d wish it hadn’t.

The Snail Mail at My House These Days

Typical snail mail day at my house:

My son gets courted by colleges. I get courted by life insurance companies. One would suspect we are in different demographics.

Light

Light. It’s the primary reason I will never move north of my current home in Missouri, USA. I don’t think I could bear shorter winter days than I endure now. This year, December has been especially gloomy, with many overcast days and little sun. I’d pick up my son from school at 4:05, car headlights already on.

The longer I live this northern hemisphere existence the more I appreciate the inclusion of some celebration of light in most winter holiday traditions. I know folks who have a bonfire to mark the solstice. Then there are yule logs, the seven candles of Kwanzaa, menorahs, and good old Christmas lights. One of the things I like best is that other illumination needs to be dimmed in order to fully experience any of these. The presence of a light in the dark, rather than a bright overhead fixture to make it seem like daytime, helps me feel welcoming toward night.

Last year we bought LED lights for our Christmas tree and it’s been transformative. Because they’re not running up the electric bill (much) and they don’t get hot, I leave them on all night. Most mornings I’m up before the sun, assuming we’re even going to see it that day. This is dictated by schedule and not by choice. I’m a person who needs to ease into full wakefulness. The multi-colored fairy glow that greets me when I come down the stairs helps me transition less grumpily than I otherwise would. So far this season, we’ve avoided our traditional middle-of-the-night crashing of the greenery that usually comes with Christmas trees and cats. I have to wonder if keeping the lights on is keeping the felines at bay. Any excuse, really.

I had a “be still my heart” moment the other night when my two teens actually liked my suggestion to pile in the van and drive around town looking at Christmas lights. This was our ultimate destination:

But we took a lot of side streets to get there, turning down any block that looked well-decorated. I’m grateful to my fellow residents for their efforts. In the middle of the busyness of shopping and wrapping and holiday logistics, our little outing was the equivalent of a deep, relaxing breath.

The holiday lights will be coming down in another week or so, but it’s okay. The days are getting longer again. Until then, whatever holidays you celebrate or don’t, I send out thoughts of light and love to you. Yes, I mean you.

I Sang Along, Y’all

I know some people will hate me for this, but I love holiday music. Almost all of it – traditional carols, sacred hymns, pop/rock selections, novelty numbers. Just about anything except that one about the kid picking out Christmas shoes for his mom to die in. I spend the month of December belting out the lyrics of myriad winter celebration songs. Any time I find myself alone in my home or car.

I fondly recall the days of my childhood when I’d participate with enthusiasm in school choir programs, sing along with the radio in front of anyone, and generally enjoy the sound of my own voice. Back before I realized I was kind of terrible at singing.

By the time I reached my teen years, I kept my not-quite tune-making to myself. Other teens are not ones to let you keep your delusions of adequacy. In church, where everyone was expected to make a joyful noise, I lip-synched behind my hymnal.

During my young adult years I didn’t sing and didn’t sing. And I missed it. I missed being able have fun with a song for the simple pleasure of it, with no worries about how good I was, with no self-consciousness. For me, singing had become all self-consciousness and no pleasure. Then I had babies.

I sang to my babies while rocking them, and they didn’t criticize me. They even seemed to find some comfort in my voice. And as they got a little older, we sang Christmas carols and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Old McDonald” and it was a blast. When I volunteered at preschool, I sang along even though there were other adults present, because I wanted to set a good example around embracing music without embarrassment. I *felt* embarrassed, but I tried not to show it. Singing was once again part of my life. It was a great unexpected gift that came with motherhood.

Then the kids got even older and we stopped doing any of that. I’ve spent the last few years keeping my vocal efforts a solitary activity. Secret even. Back to treating it as a shameful activity.

But today – today I went to the Christmas party at my mom’s nursing home. We had carols. I sang along, y’all. I was surrounded by 85 and 90-year-olds, many of whom suffer ailments that have pretty well trashed their voices. But most of them were giving it their best shot, so why shouldn’t I? Besides, my mom is one person who never said a negative word about my singing, no matter how it made her suffer. Some of the aides might have looked at me askance, but I had a good time. I think I even hit the correct notes a few times.

This was huge for me. I sang along. I didn’t hum, or stick to smiling and tapping my foot just off the beat. I sang. I’m ready for my participation award.