Pat Bertram's Blog, page 33

How the Bob Has Affected Me

I’ve been saying that The Bob hasn’t affected me much at all. Even the stay-at-home mandates and quarantine times haven’t been a problem since they fed into my natural inclination to be a quasi-recluse. But as it turns out, The Bob has affected me, though so far, it hasn’t infected me.

Admittedly, it will be hard for me ever to get back into the socializing that I’d tried so hard to accomplish, but I don’t think it’s so much a lack of inclination (though there is that, too) but rather a hesitation to open myself to the possibility of getting sick. Because of The Bob, I am conscious of how disease spreads through even small gatherings, and I’m not sure I want to open myself up to that quite yet. It’s possible I’ll never again want to be that vulnerable, though never is a very long time.

Still, except for allergies (because of the winds, this is not a good area to live if one is allergic to dust), I haven’t been sick a single day since The Bob arrived in town. And oddly, it arrived here long before the P word was even mentioned. (P=Pandemic.) There was a horrendous flu that roared through here in late December 2019 before anyone had heard of The Bob. In retrospect, it seems as if that flu was The Bob, and is probably why this town seemed to offer a natural immunity for a while. I’d never understood how it got here, but I recently found out that a woman came directly here from Wuhan to visit a friend of hers, and so started that horrid pre-Bob flu season.

I didn’t get sick during that first wave, though I’d been around a lot of the people who got sick, and I didn’t get sick during subsequent waves, not even after I was directly exposed a couple of months ago, leading to a time of quarantine. Nor did I catch a cold or laryngitis or any of the other illnesses going around. This is the longest I’ve ever gone without even a cold, and I’m sure it’s because I see so few people. I suppose I should say so few different people. Because of my job, I do spend time with people, it’s just that they are the same people every day.

Not only am I leery of crowds, but I am leery of travelers. People who hang around where they live come in contact with a relatively small group of people (relative to the world’s population, that is), but travelers are within a couple of degrees of coming in contact with a vast number of people. (If you’re sitting next to someone on an airplane, for example, you’re not just in contact with them, but also one degree removed from everyone they have been in contact with, and two degrees removed from everyone those contacts had been in contact with.) And after all, that’s how The Bob originally spread, not just to here, but to everywhere.

When my sister reneged on a visit to come see me, I was actually relieved. Though I would have liked to see her, I wasn’t sure what sort of extra, unwanted baggage she would carry off the plane, and I was glad not to have to deal with it.

I’ve been taking care of a house for a friend who’s been out of the country for almost a year, and he called today to tell me he was back and to ask if he could stop by so I could bring him current on all that happened when he was gone. It’s not something I would have ever done before The Bob, but I asked him if it was okay if we waited a week. Although he’s not in quarantine (apparently, there is no quarantine for vaccinated folks, though they can still get sick from The Bob, and can still transmit The Bob to others), I couldn’t help but think of all those people he was in contact with during his very long and arduous trip from halfway around the world.

Luckily, he was okay with my request. Even more luckily, from my point of view, he has a lot of work to catch up on, so I don’t have to feel guilty about his being alone for the week. Of course, even if he wasn’t okay with my putting off our get together, he’d have to agree if he wants me to continue looking after his house when he leaves again. And, of course, because of how The Bob has affected me, not only do I not feel guilty, I don’t feel guilty about not feeling guilty.

[If you don’t already know, I call it The Bob because of a conversation in A Spark of Heavenly Fire, my novel about a novel disease. Click here to read that conversation: The Bob | Bertram’s Blog (bertramsblog.com)]

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

Too Concerned with Age?

People tell me I’m too concerned with age, and perhaps that’s true, but I don’t necessarily see such concern as a bad thing. It keeps me focused on what I can do now to protect myself later. For example, I do balance exercises, stretching, walking, knee exercises to strengthen my knees, and various other activities. There might come a time when I can’t do these things anymore, and so I do them now when I can, and when it counts. Exercise always counts, of course, but it’s a lot easier to maintain one’s muscles than to redevelop them after they have atrophied.

I am also cognizant of where I am and where I place my feet. I hear over and over again (and I see the proof in people I have known) that if you want to live to a vital old age, don’t fall. In fact, the last advice the orthopedic surgeon gave me during my final appointment after he’d done what he could to fix the wrist, arm, and elbow I’d destroyed in a fall, was, “Don’t fall.”

I have fallen since then, though luckily, I didn’t even bruise myself any of those times. I am aware, however, that such luck might not always hold. After all, it deserted me back when I took that horrible fall after a dance performance. (I was heading back to my car and when I walked between two cars, the motion-activated parking lot lights went off, and in the darkness, I tripped over a misplaced parking berm. Actually, the berm wasn’t misplaced. The idiots who maintained the parking lot repainted the lines for the parking spaces so that cars were parked in the open spaces between two berms.) Come to think of it, I was lucky back then, too. With all the damage, I could have lost the arm, but I didn’t, and I even managed to gain normal usage

I come by my wariness of falling through experience rather than advancing years, but I am still aware of how necessarily it is for a healthy old age to refrain at all possible from falling. Surprisingly, this awareness of a need for not falling doesn’t set me up for a fall, though you’d think it would. Like if you’re trying not to think of a pink elephant, that’s all you can think of. (I bet you thought of a pink elephant, didn’t you?) Because of this, I use my hiking poles, even though at times it makes me feel old, as if I were so feeble, I needed two canes. But better to use them when I can rather than when I have to.

To be honest, I don’t think I’d be so concerned with age if I weren’t a caregiver. When one is young, you never equate yourself with the elderly. You simply know that in the division of life, you are young, and they are old. But now that I am getting older, I see myself in these nonagenarians, and I wonder what I will be like at that age (assuming I live that old. Both my mother and her mother died in their middle eighties). Some problems are inevitable, but are all of them? I don’t know. But the question arises every day, and so I do what I can to hold back the growing tsunami of my years.

All things considered, I am doing well for my age. Doing well for a younger age, actually. A lot of that “doing well” is because of my concern with growing older, because despite what people might think, I don’t sit and stew. I do.

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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.

What Is Brought by the Wind

I heard a proverb the other day that is sticking with me: What is brought by the wind will be carried away by the wind. There seem to be various meanings for this proverb, such as “easy come, easy go,” or “what one hand gives, the other takes away” or maybe even “you reap what you sow.”

It is also similar to “what goes around comes around,” though in this case, it would be “what comes around goes around.”

Like many such sayings, at first hearing, it seems to be steeped with import, but on reflection, seems rather simplistic. Things come and things go. Ho-hum. “What goes around, comes around” as well as “you reap what you sow,” at least say there are consequences to one’s actions, though in real life, that’s not always true. People who are unkind are often treated with kindness, and people who are kind are just as often treated with unkindness. So, actions have consequences. But sometimes not.

Still, there is a comfort in believing such adages, to believe that whatever unpleasantness that randomly comes into our lives will just as randomly leave one day. Of course, it also means that luck won’t hold — anything good that randomly comes will also leave — so enjoy it while you can.

Whatever the metaphoric or figurative meaning of this particular adage, I do know for a fact that What is brought by the wind will be carried away by the wind is not literally true. On the open plains, for sure. Thing are blown into an area and then blown away. But in a fenced yard? Nope. Not in my fenced yard, anyway. In the fall, leaves from the neighbors’ trees are blown into my yard and there they stay until I rake them up. Same with trash. On windy days (which around here are frequent) trash of all sorts is blown into my yard, and there it stays until I can pull on some sort of protective glove to dispose of the debris

I never used to be wary of wind-blown trash of any kind, but ever since the onset of The Bob, I’ve been leery of barehandedly picking up food wrappers, masks, bottles, cans — anything that could have been dropped by a possibly infected person. Bottles and cans, of course, don’t get blown into my yard, but people do litter, and so there are often cans or bottles left on my property outside the fence.

And oh, yes. Winds also bring the seeds of weeds. Those seeds don’t blow away, but plant themselves and stay.

Still, I like the mysteriousness of “what is brought by the wind.” You never know what could suddenly blow into your life by the whim of the winds. Something good perhaps. Maybe even today.

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

Homo Unsapiens

I sometimes watch Judge Judy reruns with the woman I help care for, and boy is that an eyeopener! I know that the cases are chosen specifically because of the bizarre nature of either the problem or the people involved, so I try not to let that interfere with my concept of the world today, or rather my concept of the people in the world. (I already have a poor opinion of people in general, though individually, I like people just fine.) Still, I can’t help but be appalled by people and their behavior. It makes me wonder if, despite the already low regard I have for them, I have greatly overestimated the intelligence and integrity of humanity.

But, as I said, I try not to extrapolate any greater meaning from this small segment of the human population.

What is an eyeopener, however, is how often people who are in the wrong will sue their victim. It’s not as if they are trying to scam the person — they truly seem to believe as if they have right on their side. Several times, people who have tried to cheat the system by getting childcare costs or elder care costs they didn’t really qualify for will sue their accomplice for not turning over their share of the funds. (In a couple of cases, the defendant applied to be a certain person’s caregiver, even though they weren’t going to be doing the job, and the litigant wanted their share of the money.) Sometimes, a person who is getting childcare from the other parent of their child even though they share joint custody (in which case, neither parent should have to pay the other) will sue for additional funds. Or someone who is driving without insurance and who makes an illegal turn will sue the person with the right of way who ran into them so they can get the money to fix their uninsured car.

What interests me from a writer’s point of view, is the total belief in the rightness of their cause. I don’t often see this in books — too often antagonists make excuses to themselves (and eventually to the cops who catch them) for their behavior. If they truly believed they were in the right, they wouldn’t need to justify their actions. They would simply know they were the victim. (Even burglars who get shot at when breaking into a house don’t deny their crime; they just believe there shouldn’t have been any repercussions.) Every time I watch this behavior — the belief of the wrongdoer that they are the rightdoer — I remind myself to use this for a character in my next book (whenever that might be).

Another eyeopener is the constant and ubiquitous use of “had.” For example, “I had went to the store.” If all the “had”s were edited out of the show, I’m sure the shows would be at least five minutes shorter. It’s surprising to me that while Judge Judy feels compelled to scold people for using fill words like “basically,” idioms like “like,” and bad grammar, she never mentions all the “had”s. I suppose she picks whatever most offends her at the time. Or whatever seems most rant-worthy.

What amuses me most are the obvious signs that people have been coached. People who use such constructions as “Basically, like I had went to the store” simply do not use words such as “property” when referring to their stuff or “altercation” when referring to a kerfuffle.

It also makes me laugh to think that humans named themselves “homo sapiens sapiens” when there seemingly is so little sapience involved in human interactions. A better term, perhaps, especially after watching the people who come before Judge Judy, would be “homo unsapiens.”

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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.

Age Is Not Just a Number

Numbers are important in our lives. Or at least, we’ve made them important. Today seems a significant day, a rare Twosday — not only is it a day of twos (2/22/22), but it’s also Tuesday.

Dates are important to us; if nothing else, the numbers on the calendar make it easier for us to navigate our complicated lives. More than that, we give some numbers on the calendar a special significance. For example, we make a big deal about New Year’s Day (1/1) even though it has no real significance other than a change of calendars. In fact, the new year in other cultures starts on a different day.

Temperature numbers are especially significant to us. This morning when I got up, it was 7 degrees. I don’t really need the number to tell me that it is cold — a brief step outside would fulfill the same function — but somehow, knowing the number makes it official.

And yet, when it comes to age, especially an elder age, any concern a person might have about growing older is met with a dismissive, “Age is just a number.”

Age is not just a number. It tells us the time on our biological clock. We only hear about “biological clocks” when it comes to childless women nearing the end of their reproductive years, and yet time is ticking for all of us. We might not know the end, but we do know the end is coming, and the older we are, the more the end looms.

A friend who was about to turn seventy was really freaking out about her age, and she was embarrassed about her reaction to the birthday, but to me, her reaction was totally understandable and nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, seventy is a significant birthday and worth freaking out over.

All through their sixties, people can convince themselves they are still middle-aged — late middle age, perhaps, but still solidly in the middle years. Then comes seventy, and any pretense of still being young are gone. Especially now, with the pandemic and all, seventy-year-olds are stigmatized as “elderly.” True, they are elderly, but not as eld as they will become. That dang clock is clicking louder and louder as it counts down the last years of life. Oh, sure, they might still have two or even three decades left, but changes will be coming more rapidly.

There is not a significant physical change between the ages of forty and fifty. Nor between fifty and sixty. Or even sixty and seventy. But there is a huge difference between seventy (with the blush of middle age still on one’s cheeks) and eighty (which by anyone’s definition — except perhaps an eighty-year-old’s — really is old). An informal poll tells me that seventy-five is when most people notice a substantial change, but still, at seventy, there are signs of decrepitude. Mentally, people may feel the same, but physically, by seventy, most people are slowing down. Joints hurt. Doctor visits are more frequent. Medications aren’t just a quick cure but are a permanent fixture. The possibility of a frail old age, once unthinkable, becomes . . . thinkable.

When you’re young, old age is for other people. Youth is eternal. Until it’s not. And suddenly, there you are, wondering who the old person is looking back at you in the mirror.

It’s not really a surprise, then, that people want to believe that age is just a number. To think beyond the number is to accept truths that people might not want to accept. Still, when you’re at peace, when the aches and pains are momentarily absent, when the ticking clock silently recedes into the background of your mind, then you feel like . . . you.

When my sister was 35, she asked my mother, who was then in her seventies, how old she felt, and my mother said she thought of herself as thirty-five. My sister thought it wonderful that she and our mother were the same age. I don’t know how much longer after that my mother continued to think of herself as thirty-five. It’s not the sort of thing she and I ever talked about. But no matter how she felt, she did start having health issues, and she definitely showed her age. Then, a few years later, after my brother died, she suddenly grew old and ill and died within the year.

So, yes. Age is just a number, and yet it’s not.

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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.

A Small Life

It’s amazing how many hours there are in a day when one gets up early, like way too early, before the sun is even a hint in the sky. Already I’ve read, played on the computer, cleaned house, went for a walk, fixed a meal, and now here I am, trying to put together today’s blog.

For a change, I have plenty of time to write; it’s just a shame I don’t have anything exciting to write about. There’s just me, and that for sure is not exciting. I am not one of those folks who live large. I’m certainly not lavish or extravagant (though I did recently splurge on a winter coat that was marked down for clearance). Nor am I living in what is considered luxury by other people’s standards.

The truth is, I live small. I spend most of my time alone. Even before the whole Bob mess, I stopped going to restaurants or any place groups of people hang out. (Groups were never really my thing, anyway.)

And yet, my life seems luxurious to me. I have a lovely small house and a comfortable home. (Although in today’s world, “house” and “home” are synonymous, I don’t consider them so because you can have a house that’s not a home and a home that’s not a house.) I have a small job so I can afford luxuries like eating. I drive a small car that was paid for decades ago. I have all the books I want to read a small walk away. So, yes, luxurious!

Still, luxury in my eyes is not exciting to others by any means. And even though I mention such things as my house out of gratitude at this still-surprising upturn in my life, I fear sounding braggadocious if I expound too much. But basically, this is my life. A small life.

And yet, I do wish I had something more exciting to write about than me.

Maybe someday . . .

***

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

Strife, Strife, and More Strife

This is one of those perfect days: clear blue skies, bright sun, light-jacket temperatures, still air. Admittedly, there are a lot of such days throughout the year, but there’s something even more perfect about such a day appearing between two glacial fronts. You delight in the warmth when coming out of a cold spell, and you make a special effort to enjoy the day when more cold weather is on the way. (Tomorrow will another warm day, but desperate winds will be blowing in a new storm that will drop the temperature more than 60 degrees tomorrow night.)

In memory of the cold weather we just had and in preparation for the cold to come, I am making chili, which also adds to the perfection of the day. I like to cook but I don’t often feel like making big batches of anything, so there will be enough to last a while. Also, this is Jeff’s chili recipe. It took me almost a year after he died before I could make it (even the thought of the meals we shared made me sick to my stomach). It’s been two years since the last I made his chili, though I don’t really know why except that I haven’t been cooking much of anything that takes an effort.

I have also the windows open to air out the place. It never smells musty, which is interesting for such an old house, but the air coming in makes the house smell sweet and clean.

Considering the perfection of the day, it’s odd that my two-card tarot today was all about strife. The first card, the five of wands is about violent strife and contest, boldness, and rashness. The second card, which is supposed to temper the first card, is The Emperor, which in this deck is about war, strife, war, conquest, and ambition.

Admittedly, my question “what do I need to know today” is so vague the response is not necessarily about me, so although I am planning on taking care of myself and keeping calm so there’s no strife in my life today, I can’t do anything about what is going on in the rest of the world — strife, strife, and more strife. I’m not sure why I need to know this, but I do know it anyway. Even if I didn’t want to know (which I don’t) it’s hard not to learn of such things.

I suppose it’s possible the tarot is telling me to enjoy my strifeless time as I do the interval between two winter storms, because like it or not, there will always be strife.

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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.

House Responsibilities

Today I went to take one last look at the house I’ve been looking after because the owner is returning and I wanted to make sure everything looked okay. And it did. Nothing out of place, nothing broken, the roof fixed where the shingles had blown off during a windstorm.

At least, everything looked good on the outside. On the inside? Not so much. Although I’d merely agreed to check on the place occasionally, I’d tried to keep the plants alive, thinking it would be hard for him to come back to an empty house, and even harder to come back to dead plants. The plants did fine for ten months, then suddenly, whatever I was doing was the wrong thing, and several of the most expensive plants died. Too much water for some plants, perhaps, and not enough for others, though I’d stuck to the twice a month schedule that I’d been doing all along. I suppose the house temperature, set for 55 degrees in winter, could be a mitigating factor once the cold hit, but whatever the reason, those poor plants look awful. The way I figure it, though, if he was really concerned about the plants, he’d have given me specific instructions other than simply for me to check on the house once or twice a month.

I’ll be glad not to have to worry about his house for a while. Taking care of my own house is enough of a responsibility, without worrying about anyone else’s. (My water meter situation still isn’t resolved, for example.)

I have a hunch I’ll be back taking care of his house again in another month or two, because once he gets his papers in order, he’ll be rejoining his wife in Thailand. She’s doing well, but apparently not well enough to travel, though to be honest, I can’t imagine anyone being well enough to handle such a trip — talk about planes, trains and automobiles! Buses, too. Yikes.

I feel sort of mean, but I won’t stop by to see him for a week or ten days until he’s out of quarantine. So, not only will the poor fellow be coming home alone to a house full of dead plants, he’ll continue to be alone for a while until he’s safe from catching and spreading The Bob. (Other people, though, might be friendlier and less picky than I am.) Even worse, he’ll be coming back during one of the coldest spells we’ve had all winter. Tomorrow and the next day we’ll be getting up almost to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, but then Monday night, temperatures will drop more than sixty degrees into the low single digits. The daytime highs for the following few days won’t get out of the twenties. Brrr!

Luckily, I’ll only have to worry about my own house, so although that won’t help him at all, it will help me get through the winter blast that’s coming.

***

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.

Leaping Into the Breach

A couple of years after I signed up with my current internet provider, I discovered that a subscription to a virus protection program came with the service. As it turns out, it is the very same protection plan that came loaded on my new computer. After a year of free service through the computer seller, I’d received a good deal on a renewal of that plan because I signed up for two years (though obviously it’s not as good a deal as it would have been if I’d signed up for the protection plan with my internet provider). Even after learning about this benefit from the internet provider, I kept the original program for a while. I didn’t want to lose the money I’d already paid, of course, though it really wouldn’t have mattered since either way, I wouldn’t have to pay any extra and would have still had the same service, but even more than that, I didn’t want to have to download the new program because there are always problems.

I had it marked on my calendar to cancel the original plan this month, but that company decided to auto-renew early via PayPal. I don’t know how that was possible because I didn’t have any money in the bank account associated with PayPal, but it still created an aggravating morning as I got all that straightened out.

Meantime, I’ve had a note by my computer for a couple of weeks now to switch protection plans, but I simply didn’t want the hassle. I also needed to make sure I had a big chunk of free time to get it done so I could solve any problems that might show up. Well, yesterday, I finally girded my loins, faced the music, bit the bullet, sucked it up, leapt into the breach, crossed the Rubicon and seized the opportunity. All those idiomatic expressions are to emphasize the great trepidation I experienced when I finally hit the download button on the internet provider’s website.

After a rocky start (I couldn’t open the downloader and my computer shut itself off out of frustration), things went smoothly. Unbelievable! Even more unbelievable is that after a year of having this whole thing hang over me, it’s finished. Well, finished as long as the internet provider continues to provide the virus protection plan.

Still, it makes me feel good that’s it done. It makes me feel even better that I didn’t have to pay the extortion rate the protection plan company wanted to charge me.

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

Restless Sleep

A friend sent me a cartoon of a woman reading in bed, with the caption: I tried everything to get to sleep last night. Well, everything except closing the book and putting it on the nightstand. Let’s not get too crazy.

I had to laugh at that because oh, it’s so true! At least some of the time, anyway. Last night was not one of those times.

I did close my book and put it on the nightstand, tired physically and tired of the tiresome story, but I still found myself too restless to sleep. My allergies were acting up, which exacerbated the touch of insomnia, but the problem was mostly external. I find that when a storm is moving in, I get restless and unable to sleep. The same thing happens with a full moon. And last night, there was both a snow storm and a full moon. I’m lucky I managed to fall asleep at all. Or maybe not. I woke up stiff and sore, so whatever sleep I did manage to get wasn’t exactly relaxing.

Fortunately, even though it’s very cold today, the clouds are moving away. And the moon is on the wane. I shouldn’t have a problem sleeping until the middle of next week when another storm hits the area.

It has been an interesting winter so far, with the middle of the week becoming very cold, warming up to a relatively nice weekend, and then dropping back into the midweek cold spell. Spring will be here in four and a half weeks, and it will be interesting to see if this same pattern holds true, though spring around here doesn’t really mean a whole lot because the last freeze doesn’t come until the beginning of May.

Still, change is in the air, but hopefully not too much change. It would be nice to get a good night’s sleep tonight. Who knows, I might even get crazy enough to close my book and put it on the nightstand earlier than usual!

***

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.