early morning ramblings

Last night I was bone tired, so I went to bed at 10, and 5 hours later, just like I could predict, I was wide awake. I laid in bed for another half hour, and t hen got up. That is why I rarely go to bed “early.”

I’ll be up till about 6, then I’ll go back to bed and sleep another couple of hours. It will work out alright.


When I woke up I had just had a dream and it was all twisted and turned like dreams, but it kicked up my thinking. What will it be like in 15 years? I am healthy enough, and baring an accident or an opportunistic disease, I’ll be around and be in pretty good health too.

My grand kids will range from 26 to 40. Miriam will likely be gone, and I will be alone. I will be living some where near a daughter, some way. It could be here and it could be there, but it will all be different. I might be living in my RV or I might be living in a room at the back of the shop. That part is not predictable.

I go see my doctor Monday. Miriam has Alzheimer’s and sees the doctor once a year, I am the caregiver and for a while I saw my doctor every month. Routine stuff, but she wanted to make sure I was staying healthy as the caregiver. The last time I was there she said I was in “remarkably good health.” This visit is routine too. I hope it is boring!

So I will likely be around, but I cannot help wonder about my family and friends. One person suggested that you make young friends regularly along the way so when you are old you will still have a few friends left. Otherwise It could be pretty lonesome I fear.


This week we had some apples that were “short dated” meaning they going bad soon. Miriam asked what should we do with them: make a pie or apple crisp. I have always preferred the crisp, so I told her to get the apples pealed and I would make an apple crisp of them.

She pitched a fit about me and my bossiness and how she was capable but how I butted in, and so on. I backed off gracefully, and said she could go ahead, and she did.

It was not too good. For some reason apples baked in hunks without any liquid do not cook well, and she used too little toping, and to make up for that shortage, she put a layer of cocoanut on top. I ate some for breakfast ( with a bit of granola it was pretty good -- but it was a good sized dish).


We have a potluck tomorrow, so I looked at that ¾ dish of apple crisp, and I decided to "repurpose" it. I added some apples to make up for those I had eaten. I made a new batch of topping. I baked it until the apples were soft, but I wanted a bit more of a brown on the top so I put it under the broiler and browned it a bit.

Last night after I slowed down, Miriam decided that I had burned that top layer, so she painstakingly picked off each tiny fleck of what she thought was “burned.” I was hoping that it looked bad enough I could bring a good bit of it back to eat with a bit of ice cream! We will still see how this all works out.


It seems that life is pretty well what you make of it. Some of us are dealt more bad cards than others, but few are dealt a really hot hand. I would do anything to not have Miriam with this disease, but with a lot of humor and a bit of love and patience we are doing fairly well, but that could be a self perpetuating fantasy as well.

But in 15 years I will be in my mid 80’s What will be different? Maybe almost every thing.

Hmm.

nobody

I have been thinking a lot about our new president.

OK, our president elect. He has 12 days then the problems of the world settle on his head. We all wait to see how he acts or reacts to this or that.

But it was not long ago he was a guy from a rather confused family, who though very bright, was unheard of outside his circle. Even a member of the state government does not cause a big following.

I live near the capital of our state, Linda (daughter 4) used to live there and we would visit her often. For a while she owned a retail store down town. I have walked down the street and greeted the mayor of the city, and watched the Governor drive his Suburban away from the capital building.

They are known but not really adversely so. Shucks the guy who represents me in state government lives a block away from my house. He will probably hold that position for a long time, he just retired from his “regular” job a few years ago! In my state we do not pay our legislators a whole lot, nor do we expect too much of them. It is a wonderful retirement job!

So I watch the hubbub about our new president. He has gone from a regular guy who would ride his bicycle around his town, to the most guarded and protected guy on the planet.

More than even he could imagine his life will be forever changed. I am not talking about power and all of that stuff. I am talking about privacy, the ability to walk down the street and be ignored.

A lot of us would like to be famous and maybe even rich, but we have no idea of what that would involve.

So as I watch the ceremonies of the change of administration, read about the appointments and the decisions, I also see a little kid who had one grandpa who was white and one who was black. He did not grow up in wealth, luxury and power, but lived much of the time with his grandparents, sometimes in an apartment.

I wish him well, we need good leadership, the whole world does, but as I watch I am so glad I can walk down the street and no one cares. You can drive right up to my house, in fact you can walk up to my front door and ring the bell. Leo may bark, but at 13 pounds he is pretty harmless.

I like being nobody.

and more

It is winter after all.

More snow last night. December one of the snowiest winters here in this valley.

We need a convergence of cold weather and moisture to get snow, and we don’t always get both at the same time. More snow is predicted each day this week.

Some years back I bought a box trailer to use in my work. The trailer box is 12 feet long and 6’ wide and a bit over 6’ high inside, so it is not a tiny trailer, for sure. Right after I bought it, we had a snow storm, 5 or 6 inches of snow.

I hooked the trailer to my trusty Chevy pickup and went off to work.

The trailer did not have brakes and it was not easy to stop or start or to keep moving in a straight line. I brought it back to where I bought it and had them install brakes. What a difference that made.

I have pulled it through a good number of snow storms since then. But that was then, today is another day of retirement for me and I don’t expect to leave our acre. I’ll take the dog out, shovel a bit of snow, and spend the day in my cabinet shop working on a portable work desk for inside the house.

While I have a nice small studio, in the winter I hate to spend money to heat it. I figured I could do a lot of work here in the house, so I set up a card table in a corner behind the stove and set up shop.

It has worked out well enough to encourage me to build this desk. It is quite low, with doors that open on the lower section. The doors support the drop leaf from the top cabinet, giving me a good work space, AND the ability to put it away fairly easily.

Don’t push the put away too far. It is behind a door and I intend to work there, and not clean there.

In the long run I need to be working more toward systems where I can be with Miriam and enjoy her company as well as be her caretaker.

It is snowing hard right now, Leo thinks he wants to go out, but he will want to come back in very soon.