Pat Bertram's Blog, page 27

Red-Letter Day

The term “red letter day” refers to the practice, dating back to the Roman Empire, of using red calendar numbers to signify important days. Although this was (and still is) a common practice for perhaps a couple of thousand years, the actual term “red-letter day” wasn’t used in print until 1663. Unlike so many words and terms that have begun to mean the opposite of their original meanings (bully originally meant a darling; harlot originally meant a goofy fellow; naughty originally meant having naught; nice originally meant silly; silly originally meant blessed), the meaning of “red-letter day” seems to have remained unchanged for centuries.

Despite this discussion of “red-letter days,” today is more of a “white blossom day” than a “red-letter day” because the blossoms are what make this such a momentous day. “What blossoms?” you might ask.

The blossoms on the greengage plum tree I planted last year. Those blossoms. And oh! They are so pretty, and such a sign of hope.

Flowers of all kinds seem to symbolize hope, of course, but fruit blossoms bring with them the added hope of someday having fruit. There might be too few blossoms to merit even a single plum this year, but still, it’s nice seeing the flowers.

Today is also a “black hat day.” My use of the phrase “black hat” isn’t used idiomatically to mean a villain, but is used literally. A neighbor gifted me with a beautiful black hat! A wonderful side effect of being known as “Pat in the Hat,” is that if anyone has a hat to donate, I am the first one to come to mind.

It’s also a grey cloud day, and a pink tulip day, and probably all sorts of other “days,” but all these important days can be found under the single umbrella of “red-letter day.”

I hope you’re having a red-letter day, too.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Too Much Television

I watch too much television

Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write since I don’t have television and only watch an hour or so with my client when I’m at work. It comes out to be four to six hours of television a week, and that, truly, is too much! I end up with jingles going through my head, as well as names of drugs.

Someone, somewhere, has done research on how to create the most memorable names for drugs, and it works, because those names get stuck in my head. Almost all of the names are three syllables, almost all contain q, x, or z, and none of them have any recognizable meaning. Nonsense, in its literal meaning.

Considering the cost of television commercials, it’s no wonder the most prevalent ads are for personal injury attorneys, window and gutter installers, vehicles, and of course, drugs. None of these commercials mean anything to me, especially not the drugs considering the long list of potentially lethal side effects. What gets me is that despite that shopping list of side effects, people still ask their doctors about those drugs. You’d think that listing the dangers of the drugs would make people stay away from them, but since they show happy families and now-healthy folks doing fun things while the horrors are being recounted, it’s no wonder ill people embrace these drugs. And anyway, most people believe that bad things happen to others, not them.

But that’s not what prompted this rather mild diatribe. What really stands out are the vaccine ads.

In the midst of all the pharmaceutical commercials with their long lists of side effects, there are the vaccine commercials. They don’t show happy people. They show determined people getting a shot. But what’s even more obviously missing is the recounting of side effects. Instead, they have representatives of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals saying, “Trust me.”

Huh? That’s it? Just, “trust me”? That’s the extent of the information they’re giving us?

It makes sense when you consider that vaccines are immune from product liability lawsuits. It doesn’t matter what the side effects are (and yes, there are possible side effects no matter what they want you to believe) because you have no recourse. The whole purpose of listing side effects is to limit the company’s liability because if they can prove a person knew ahead of time about potential lethality, then the person can be considered complicit. But that’s not the case with vaccines. So a simple “trust me” is all they need to encourage people to get the shot.

What makes me even more leery about the whole thing is that they now have a drug that supposedly knocks out The Bob if you take it in the first five days, so you’d think it would make the vaccine less important. But miss out on all that non-litigable money? No way!

Not that any of this makes any difference. It’s just that I’ve been watching so much television lately that I am familiar with what is standard in a drug commercial. And what is not.

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***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

When I left my parents’ house and was living on my own in an apartment, my father said he never worried about me. It wasn’t so much that he thought I could take care of myself. It was that when I was out of sight, I was out mind. This sort of philosophy has followed me much of my life. People always enjoyed being with me, but when I wasn’t around, they seldom thought to call. (When I was in my mid-twenties, I had a lot of friends who seemed to like me, but I got tired of being the one to carry the friendships, so one day I decided to wait until one friend called and then I’d check in with everyone. No one called. Not one person. Either they didn’t like me as much as I thought they did, or they succumbed to the whole “out of sight, out of mind,” mentality.)

Apparently, despite the spectacle I make of myself with my fifty-year-old iconic car and my fancy hats, I am forgettable. Though he denies it, my contractor forgets me, which is why, when I haven’t heard from him in a while, I text him to remind him I am still here and he still has work to do on my place. The text doesn’t get the work done because as he becomes involved in other things, I slip from his mind again. (Though to be fair, he did send someone out last week to pound down the metal edgings along my pathways without my reminding him.)

My car mechanic is the same way. Every week for the past few weeks, I’ve stopped by to find out what he’s doing about getting the part for my brakes, and every time he says he’ll drop by my house to take a photo of the necessary part. (The part he ordered didn’t fit, even though it was supposed to.) And every week, as soon as I left, he promptly forgot me.

I’m being halfway facetious with this “out of sight, out of mind” scenario because I could nag the poor workers until they finally showed up. But maybe they wouldn’t show up anyway. Considering how busy they are, even if they didn’t forget me, they probably wouldn’t be able to fit my atypical jobs into their schedule. And in a way it’s okay since this gives me a lien on their time, so that when emergencies arise, I feel comfortable calling. And they are very good about taking care of emergencies.

Are my brakes an emergency? They could have been. With all the nearby fires last week and all the evacuations, I would have been in a pickle if I had to evacuate. Of course, my neighbors would have offered a ride (if they remembered me), but then I’d have to leave my car behind. Generally, though, the brakes not working don’t qualify as an emergency since I walk to do local errands, and I go with a friend when she hits the “big city” to stock up. (We joke about the big city, but it’s merely a slightly bigger town with a Walmart.)

Today, as usual, I visited the mechanic’s shop, and he seemed a bit embarrassed when he realized that he’d spaced me again out last week. So he promised to come for sure today.

And he did.

Now that he has a picture of the part he needs, it’s just a matter of finding it. I did tell him about an air-cooled-VW parts place that has a help line, so if he can’t find the master cylinder, they might be able to help him get one. You can buy all the parts necessary to build your own classic VW Beetle from scratch, so it seems rather strange that something as important as the brakes would be hard to find, but what do I know. Even though I’ve had the car for fifty years, I still don’t know a whole lot about how it’s all put together. (I’ve actually learned quite a bit over the years, just not how to fix anything.)

The mechanic doesn’t need to remember me to order the part; he just needs to look for it, and I’m sure he will do so since a part is probably more memorable than I am.

Once the VW bug is fixed, maybe I’ll start bugging my contractor more frequently to see if we can get some of the work done around here. Maybe.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Treasure Hunt

I went on a treasure hunt of a different kind, today. Last fall, I’d planted a few pink echinacea, and that area of my garden, next to the new grass, had become so overgrown with crabgrass and weeds (probably because of all the watering I had to do to keep my new sod alive through the winter), that the echinacea disappeared. I knew vaguely where they were, but the new growth made the area seem so much like foreign territory, that I didn’t know for sure, and I was afraid to just start yanking unwanted vegetation in case I also yanked the wanted plants.

I finally noticed that one plant, a bit farther from the sod than the others, had broken the surface. I figured if the other plants survived the winter, they should also be visible now, so that’s what my hunt was about — looking through all the weeds to find the echinacea. I think I found them all. I carefully dug up the thick clumps of weeds and crabgrass to give the echinacea space, and then drove stakes next to the plants so I wouldn’t have to go searching for them again.

There is still a lot more cleaning up I have to do, but until I can identify more of the baby plants, I don’t want to start digging lest I remove some seedlings I might want. Many plants look alike when they are young, such as larkspur and wild mustard, and it’s too easy to pull up the wrong thing. In fact, the mustard grows among the larkspur, making the whole patch look as if it might be mustard, so when the plants are big enough to differentiate, I have to be very careful to only pull the weeds.

I tend to think most of the small unidentified seedlings are weeds. I don’t see anything that looks as if it might be the beginning of a wildflower field, so either it’s too early or the birds ate the seed. The birds did seem to be inordinately interested in my little garden patch this winter despite a full birdfeeder just a few feet away in my neighbor’s yard, so who knows what, if anything, I will end up with.

What’s nice about having work to do outside is that it gives me an excuse to be out in the open air, especially on nice days. Although today wasn’t particularly warm, it qualified as a nice day because the horrid winds we’ve having took a brief break. I did enjoy that!

If the ten-day forecast is anything to go by, it looks as if we are heading into frost-free weather, so I could start planting if I wished. But I don’t wish. The wind, you know.

After my treasure hunt and the clean-up that followed it, I spent some time wandering my paths, enjoying both the landscape and the hardscape that’s been laid down, and thinking about someday having my own private park, when everywhere I turn, I’ll see a different aspect of the yard. For example, the lilac bushes are all still young (the big plant in the corner of this garden photo is a baby lilac), but when they are grown up, that part of the yard will look completely different.

As with everything else in my life, I’m trying to not look too much to the future, trying to keep my eyes on what is rather than what might be or what will be.

And today, what is, is a garden spot that still looks nice, weeds, and all.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Momentous Day

This is turning out to be rather a momentous day. Shortly after I woke up, I heard banging. I kept looking outside at the neighbors’ houses, trying to see what was going on. I even stepped outside for a minute to peek across the alley, but I couldn’t see anyone doing any sort of work.

The banging continued, and then I heard the sound of a pipe reverberating near my house, which made me realize the banging was in my yard. So I went back outside and walked around the house, and there was one of the people who has been sporadically working on my property. He was pounding in the metal edging between the path and the grass to make it easier for me to mow. It was supposed to be done anyway, so it wasn’t a special consideration, but still I was thrilled to see him doing the work today. It’s been a while since anyone stopped by to anything. (The last time was when they came to check the plumbing to make sure a leak didn’t account for my exorbitant water bill.)

He did a few other minor chores while he was here, and we talked about some of the work that needed to be done (apparently, this worker is one that my contractor trusts to do my work). He says he’ll be back, and I’m sure he will . . . some day. Still, I’m delighted that a bit of work was done!

My tarot reading amused me today since it seemed to reflect the work he did: “What was accomplished up to now gets an even greater boost.” A secondary meaning to my reading was: “Everything grows and becomes more abundant.” For sure!! Weeds, anyone? Lots and lots of weeds are growing everywhere.

Adding to the momentousness, today is the birthday of a tree in Denver’s City Park near where I grew up. Shakespeare’s Elm, a tree planted from a scion taken from the tree on Shakespeare’s grave, is 106 years old today. The tree was always special to me. In fact, a friend and I threw birthday parties for the tree many years ago. We’d sent out invitations to friends as well as the media and some city bigwigs, but the only people who showed up besides those we knew were a couple of cops. We made them welcome, gave them green punch and tree cookies, but they weren’t really there to party. They were scoping out the gathering, thinking perhaps it was . . . I don’t . . . some sort of drug rendezvous. Anyway, after about a half an hour, they looked at each other, and one said with amazement in his voice, “They really are having a party for this tree.”

Back then, it was a forgotten historical monument, but over the years, there have been several articles in the Denver newspapers and magazines showcasing that amazing tree.

So all in all, a momentous day, and it’s not even over yet!

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

The Courage to Start Over

Two characters in the book I am reading are talking about why they moved to that particular small town. One was born there, moved away, then returned for as yet undisclosed reasons. The other said she just wanted to start over. The first woman said, “I think it’s admirable. A lot of people don’t have the courage to do something like that.”

Is it true? Does it take courage to move to a new place to start over? Or is it that sometimes we’ve lost so much there’s nothing to lose by doing so?

I know several widows who moved out of their homes, and then took off, looking for a place to settle. A couple of them bought RVs, traveled across country, and eventually found a place they liked well enough to stay. Others just . . . wandered. It might have taken courage, but I have a hunch it was simply easier than staying and living with the memories and the ghosts of things past. Some people who are left behind do stay in their once-shared home and that, perhaps, takes more courage than heading out to look for a new place.

In my case, after Jeff died, I moved to a different state to take care of my father, and when he too died, I wandered. In between road trips, I’d rent rooms in people’s houses. Then three years ago, I bought a house sight unseen (though I had seen photos), in an area I’d only driven through once. At the time, I knew no one in town, though I promptly rectified that little matter. Did any of this take courage? Not particularly. Does it take courage for a stone that was catapulted into the air to land somewhere? No. It’s just the way things are. It’s the same thing when you are catapulted out of your life — you eventually have to land somewhere. It’s just the way things are.

Come to think of it, that’s not the only time I went looking for a new place to live, though the other times were with Jeff. We were fed up with the growth of Denver and the attendant problems like crime and pollution. We were also without work. So we just took off with no destination in mind. I don’t think that took courage; it was an adventure, and to be honest, once we left everything behind, it was the freest I ever felt in my entire life. The problem with such an irrevocable act is that eventually you have to find a place to live, and that search destroys the feeling of freedom.

It’s a good thing this place is working out for me because I don’t have another move left in me.

But I am getting off the theme of “courage.” Although I have done many things people say take courage — such as dealing with grief, my solo road trips, buying my first house so late in life — I didn’t particularly feel courageous. I did endure, however, and I did persevere despite having lost so much, and I tend to think that counts more than mere courage.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Passively Active

I was busy doing yardwork before I went to work today, and I will be busy again when I get home, but this close to the 1000th day of daily blogging, I’m not about to fall on my sword and break my streak. (I am less than two months away from meeting my goal.) I was wondering how to accomplish my blogging task for the day, when I remembered I could send in my blog by email.

It has been years since I blogged by email. I think the last time I did so was on my cross-country road trip in 2016, so I hope I am doing it correctly. If not, well, I’ll figure out another way of posting something today.

By the way I talk (or rather, by the way I write) you’d think I lead an active life, when the truth is, most of what I do is passive. Reading is passive. Blogging is passive. Watering is basically passive. I stand with a hose in my hand and let the water pressure do the work, or I set the hose in the front yard, then set the hose in the back, then amble to the front again and move that hose, then back to the back yard. Lots ambling back and forth! Visiting with neighbors is also passive. I stand there watering, and they stop to chat. (A lovely break from listening to my own thoughts, especially when the conversation is accompanied by compliments. One neighbor loves my tulips, another says my grass is looking good, a third said I looked good and wondered if I’d been going to a spa, though I don’t know of any spa around here.) My job is mostly passive, too, except when it’s not.

One of these days, perhaps when the wind dies down (if it ever does), I’ll stop being so passively active and become actively active. Weeds and crabgrass are sprouting up and growing like … well, like weeds. But for now, I’m just glad I am able to keep my grass and other plants alive. A few spindly lilacs didn’t make it through the winter, but most are doing well. Some of the lilacs I transplanted from a neighbor’s yard (with his permission, of course) look as if they might have flowers this year. My newly planted plum trees seem to be leafing out, the larkspur is taking over some garden spots, and a few more bulbs have made an appearance. (If all goes well when I send this post by mail, a photo of my hyacinth should be attached.)

All that growth adds to the illusion of my being active, when in fact I passively wait for the plants to do whatever it is that they do.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Growing Things

First mosquito bite of the season! Somehow it doesn’t seem fair that we pay for warmer temperatures with wind and mosquitoes. It seems as if the mosquitoes (one, anyway) are out earlier than usual, but I don’t really remember when I got my first bite last year. I do remember it was right below the eye, just like this one.

One of these days when I have plenty of time and the air is still, I’ll have to mosquito-proof my clothes with permethrin. That seem to help prevent bites as does wearing light colors (Mosquitoes are attracted to black, though I don’t know why. I wonder if dark colors remind them of murky waters beneath the reeds in stagnant pools.) Of course, even though the clothes help repel the ravenous creatures that so love me, I still have to use some sort of repellent on hands and face. (Lemon eucalyptus oil seems to work.)

I haven’t worried too much about side effects from the repellent because the previous summers I was only out every other day watering my plants, but it looks as if this year, I’ll be out every day. There’s twice as much area to water, and I can’t manage to do it all in one day. At least, I couldn’t today.

I find it ironic that my plan was to get the yard to where it didn’t need any work, so that I wouldn’t look as if I lived in a derelict house when I got too old to care for my place, and yet here I am, adding to my outside labor each year. Still, I’ve decided not to worry about the future, at least not in this regard, and I’ve decided not to worry about the water usage (even though it does make my conservationist heart cringe) because that green, green grass makes me smile. So do the tulips that are still bringing cheer to parts of the yard that are still winter-bleak. For so many years after Jeff died, I thought I’d never smile again, and yet here I am, smiling at just the thought of my yard.

Of course, along with wanted plants come the unwanted ones, like wild mustard and others I haven’t yet learned the names. But for now, while the weeds are so young I don’t even know for sure they are weeds or what to do about them, they add to the lushness of the yard.

It doesn’t look as if there are going to be any more below-freezing nights, so I could probably plant the seeds I have, but I don’t trust the weather forecasters. So, I’ll wait. I have plenty of growing things to enjoy right now.

Well, except for the mosquitoes. I don’t enjoy those particular growing things at all.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Bloggers and Bloviators

A fellow I read about mentioned that he hates “bloggers and bloviators” because he thought they do more to exacerbate problems rather than to help. I didn’t take offense at the “blogger” comment, because although I do have a blog, which technically makes me a blogger, I’m not a capitalized Blogger. (I actually meant I wasn’t a major blogger, a blogger with a capital B, but it is also true that I don’t capitalize on my blog since I don’t make money from it.)

I don’t have much of a following because I tend to write about simple things and stay away from the topics that attract masses of readers: politics, sex, celebrities, clothes, food. The one really important thing I write about — grief for a spouse, life mate, soulmate— is only helpful to a small segment of the population, and certainly isn’t a topic one reads for its entertainment value. And now I seldom write about even that. Mostly I write to write — for the habit of it.

As for bloviators: according to Wikipedia, ‘bloviation is a style of empty, pompous, political speech that originated in Ohio and was used by US President Warren G. Harding, who described it as “the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing”.’

Admittedly, I often say nothing of any import on this blog since, as I mentioned above, it’s more for the habit of writing than because I have anything significant to impart, but I am definitely not pompously political. Or even non-pompously political.

What I do like is the alliteration of the words “bloggers” and “bloviators,” which, of course, is why I am going through the motions of pretending I have something to say on the subject. And since apparently I don’t have anything to say, I’m going to cut this short lest I run the risk of becoming a bloviator myself.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Accidentally Noticeable

When I was outside today, checking on the weather, someone walking by stopped and commented my yard, saying I have the greenest grass in town. (Not surprising since most grass around here hasn’t started greening up yet.)

It seems odd to me how often people stop to look at my yard, or comment on my hat or my car, as if I’m so very different from everyone else, and perhaps I am, though I never planned to be so noticeable. Each one of the elements of my persona (for lack of a better word) started almost by accident.

The first thing that catches people’s eye are my hats. The sun tends not to agree with me and sometimes even causes small hives on any skin left bare, so I always cover myself on sunny days. Long sleeves are a must, as are wide-brimmed hats. I used to just wear a plain straw gardening hat because it was cheap. When that disintegrated in the sun (better the hat than my head!) I started using a straw cowboy hat that Jeff had bought and never used, and then as that hat wore out, and as I found new ones, I started stocking up. People seem to have such a distaste for “hat hair” that hats have so fallen out of favor they tend to be hard to find. The decorations on my hats were also . . . not exactly accidental, but not planned, either. Several years ago, I set my then current hat next to an ornate bow I’d taken off a gift from my sister that was too pretty to dismantle. The juxtaposition seemed serendipitous, so I slipped the ribbon over the crown of the hat and oh, was it pretty! And thus “Pat in the Hat” was born.

My distinctive car is also something that happened by accident. Back when I bought my Beetle, it was the same as half the cars on the road. Nothing special. What is special is that years after the majority of those VWs disappeared, I still have mine. Over the decades, it became rather a mess, and I wasn’t sure it was worth keeping. A few car guys salivated over my bug, telling me that if I bought a new car, in five years, I’d have a piece of junk, but if I restored the bug, in five years, I’d have a little gem. In the end, it was the potentially huge automobile insurance bill that would accompany a new car that made me decide to keep — and restore — my bug. As it turned out, it was a good thing (at least until recently and the problem of getting the right part to fix the brakes). It certainly made my cross-country trip memorable because of all the people who sought me out to talk about my car and to tell me their VW Beetle stories.

The most recent thing that has set me apart is my lawn, which truly was accidental, and the attention truly surprising. I mean, it’s just grass.

But apparently not. As the passerby today said, no one in town has grass as green as mine. It’s so emerald-bright, that it’s hard to miss. The funny thing is, I had no idea what type of grass I was getting. My contractor had told a landscaper that I was interested in sodding a corner of my yard; not long afterward, the landscaper contacted him and said he had a couple of pallets leftover from a job. Even though I didn’t think it would be enough for the small square of lawn in the front corner of my lot, I said I wanted it. Well, it turns out there was about four times what I needed, so they kept laying down the sod and laying it down until it was all gone. And wow! So much green!

The rest of the landscaping, such as the path meandering around my yard, was also somewhat of an accident in that I never planned it. My contractor, knowing I was trying to elder-proof my property, suggested the paths, and I agreed to let him do it. Even the red of the path that offsets the grass so well was his choice. (Or rather the landscaping company’s choice since it was all they had in stock.)

It’s amazing how accidents and happenstance turned me and my life into a spectacle of sorts, which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad thing for someone as self-effacing as I am. Any of these things gives people a reason to stop and chat. And even if they don’t stop, they for sure know who I am.

It does make me wonder what the next thing will be that adds to my persona. I’m certainly not planning on being any more noticeable than I already am, but then, I never planned any of these things. They just . . . happened.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.