Pat Bertram's Blog, page 35

Facebook Troubles

I don’t believe in ill-wishing anyone or anything, but if I were that sort of person, FB is the one entity I would ill-wish for all the trouble they’ve caused me. Luckily, if the rumor is true, they are doing it to themselves without any help from me. (What I heard is that they are having financial troubles.) I don’t care enough to check on the rumor to see if it’s true, but it makes sense. They have a terrible business sense, embracing those who do harm and all but destroying some who are totally innocuous. Like me.

First they banned my blog. They have labeled it spam, which is totally unfounded as well as totally nuts, and there is absolutely no recourse. Next, they banned any URL stemming from my blog. For a while, I let it go, just stayed away from FB altogether, but several friends I’m connected to only on FB told me how much they miss seeing my blog in their feed. And besides, my absence from FB killed all book sales. (That was the only platform that worked for me to sell books.) So I got around their stupid block by reblogging my blog onto another blog, and then posting that link. It wasn’t a total workaround, because very few people saw it, and of those who saw it, very few people bothered to click on both links (the link to the reblog and then to the original blog). Some people did comment on the photo, so at least that was good.

I have the reblog blog set to post automatically to FB, but now, FB won’t accept the automatic post. I have to reblog, then manually cut and paste the reblog intro onto FB (can’t post the whole thing because of the aforementioned URL is included) along with the reblog URL. Then I have to change profiles from my author page profile to my personal profile so I can share the blank space with the URL to an URL.

If you’re confused by now, I don’t blame you. I know what I’m doing, and it confuses the heck out of me! And that wasn’t the end of it.

The photo that from the original blog post stopped showing up on FB because of that devilish URL of mine. I’d post the photo separately for a while, and so did a friend, but that got to be a pain. So now what shows up on FB is a post with a big blank space where the photo should be.

To add insult to their injury, FB keeps sending me notifications of what other authors are doing on their FB pages, and asking why aren’t I? Sheesh.

So, views to my blog are down, limited now to those who go to my blog directly. And book sales never picked up again, and in fact are non-existent.

So, do I care that FB is having problems? A resounding NO!

***

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.

Anxious About Anxiety

Despite the title of this piece, I am not anxious about anxiety, or anything, actually. I just thought the title a clever one for an essay about worry at things and worrying about things.

In a comic strip from 1992, Calvin told his buddy Hobbes that he prayed for “The strength to change the things I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference.”

A blog reader sent me the link to that cartoon, and when I read it, I couldn’t help laughing out loud. It seems so apt, particularly now when I am trying to puzzle out my water meter situation. Actually, it’s not truly that situation I’m trying to puzzle out, but my response to it. Like so much else I have little control over, I tend to worry at such things, like a dog worrying at a bone.

I figure I have two choices. The first is to learn not to worry at things, though it’s not only a lifelong habit but also an inherited one, and those are hard to break. My dad solved his tendency to worry at things by writing notes to himself, and as long as he had those notes, he could generally let the matter go

His notes were sort of a running joke. My mother told me she found a note he’d written for himself after they were engaged with the date of their nuptials and the message to “Marry Stella.” (He used her real name, of course, not “Stella.”) It appalled her, so she’d asked him, “Do you really think you’d forget to marry me?” He said, “No, but I didn’t want to take a chance.”

Now that I myself write notes to get things out of my head, his note writing isn’t as amusing. But it does show that my worrying at things is honestly come by.

My second option, if I can’t break myself of the habit of worrying at things (and truly, “worrying at” things is a vast improvement over “worrying about” things) is simply to accept that it’s the way I am.

This situation has made me wonder what my old elderliness will be like. (As opposed to my current “young” elderliness.) My father was on anti-anxiety medications, and perhaps it might have been a good thing because although he didn’t seem anxious to me, he did worry at things a lot. This seems to be a characteristic of many old elderly — an inability to accept things they cannot change and the incapacity to distinguish those things from what they might be able to change. (Though with the oldest of the elderly, there is little they can change.) And since they also worry about death and dying, many physicians routinely prescribe anti-anxiety pills whether the person needs it or not.

I hope I am wise enough at that age (and in control enough of my own life) to forego the doctor’s interference with my worrying. As I thought when I found out about my father’s prescription, if a person can’t worry about death and dying at the end of his life, when can he? In fact, shouldn’t he be worrying about it? Or maybe not worrying, but thinking about it in preparation for the end? Apparently, not, according to my father’s doctor. A fretful old person is harder to deal with than one who is sedated, which I do understand. It really is hard dealing with someone who doesn’t comprehend the changes they are going through, can’t comprehend why their life isn’t totally their own, and can’t comprehend why they can’t comprehend.

It seems then, that there might be a third option in regard to my “worrying at” things: Learn to live with a whole lot of incomprehension.

As for the water meter situation: As it stands now, the water company guy insists it isn’t the meter’s fault. My contractor (who knows this house almost as well as I do) thinks the problem is at the meter. So, I wrote a note to myself about the situation in case the matter isn’t resolved, then I’m going to try to forget it and let those two men duke it out at high noon during a showdown at Bertram’s corral.

***

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.

Just a Kid

One’s concept of old and young seem to change as the years pass. I remember when I was very young asking my aunt how old she was. I think she was in her forties, but she answered, “Twenty-nine.” Then she and my mother laughed. I had no idea what the joke was. To me, back then, twenty-nine was unfathomably old. And now? Unfathomably young.

For many years, I looked young for my age, so the one time I asked for a senior discount that was advertised, I thought there might be a problem proving I was old enough, but the clerk (just a kid) told me she’d already given it me. What a come down that was! I never bothered asking for a discount again; I didn’t think my ego could handle it.

Now I do look my age, even to my age-adjusted eyes. Even if I didn’t look old, I’d know I was because people seem so dang young. I watch the news sometimes with the lady I help care for, and it seems to me that people reading the news are a bunch of children playing at being newscasters. They’re not that young, from mid-thirties to early forties but still, they look like kids to me. But then, to the woman I care for, I look young. “You’re just a kid,” she tells me.

Not that it matters, really. I once was young, and now I’m not. It’s all part of the cycle of life.

Oddly, unlike my aunt, I never told anyone I was twenty-nine. Even when I was twenty-nine, I doubt I told anyone my age. The topic just doesn’t come up. Or perhaps other people aren’t as rude as I was when I was young. Come to think of it, I don’t know what prompted me to ask my aunt her age. I really wasn’t at all rude when I was young. I’m not rude now that I’m not young, either.

This last part has nothing to do with age, but is a follow-up to my water meter dilemma. The meter reader was just here. He checked the meter, and says it’s working fine, that I have no leaks though somehow the meter shows another 4,000 gallons used in the past three weeks, which is impossible. Normally, one person uses about 3,000 gallons a month, and that includes, all indoor and some outdoor water usage, which is what I use in the summer. But it’s winter, and in the winter, I use half of that amount.

I suppose this is more proof that I’m not just a kid anymore; if I were, I wouldn’t have to deal with this mess.

***

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

Unresolved Issues

I tend to worry about things, especially those I can’t do anything about, which makes sense because if I can do something about an issue, I would do it and not have to worry. A case in point: this current situation with the water meter showing that I am using water at the rate of 1000 gallons a day. I’ve already set things in motion to find out what is going on, but I can’t follow through. It snowed for almost twenty-four hours straight, and we’ve been dealing with below zero temperatures, so there’s not a whole lot of probing for outside water leaks that can be done. Nor can anything be done about the meter until it’s been shown there is a problem with the meter itself (which the water company vehemently denies.)

So I worry, but not the anxious or frantic or agitated or feeling mental distress sort of worry. The worrying I do is the more insidious kind — pushing thoughts around in my head, continually going back to them to see if there is a different way of looking at them, and touching the thoughts the way one probes a sore tooth. When I do manage to put the thought out of my head, I feel it in my body, a sense of forgotten things left done.

But nothing changes. Nothing can change until the snow melts at least partway ant the ground warms up a bit.

Because of this tendency to worry, I’ve always been one to charge at problems. I don’t like unfinished things, the sense of having forgotten things, or feeling as if things are hanging over my head, so I try to do whatever I can to resolve these things. I don’t know if any of this — the worrying at things or the charging in to fix problems is good or bad, and I doubt it matters. Life goes on either way. (Well, life goes on until it doesn’t, but that’s a completely different discussion.)

I’ve been doing well keeping things out of my head and learning to deal with unfinished things since there are so many unfinished things to be done around the house and the yard, but this water meter thing has me flummoxed.

In the end, I’m sure, it will all work out. Meantime, it’s just one more unresolved issue in my life.

In a way I should be glad of such issues — it gives me something to blog about. Otherwise, all I’d be discussing is shoveling the snow and it’s bad enough having to do the work without having to talk about it.

***

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.

Water Saga

I was a bit disappointed when I moved here and saw my creepy basement because I’d imagined a finished room. Instead, I got a dark dungeon-like space with a rotted floor from too much flooding, crumbling half walls, and spooky nooks, though no crannies. (A nook is a corner or other small space; a cranny is a gap or a crack in a wall.)

Above and beyond the walls shown in the photo are deep crawlspaces with all the pipes and ducts and other arteries of a house exposed.

As it turned out, the new garage with plenty of storage space precluded any need for basement storage. Still, I had the basement cleaned out, the floor concreted, the walls painted white, all of which made the place look a trifle less like a dungeon and a bit more like what it is — a utilitarian space for the water heater and furnace, as well as those “arteries.” It’s still not pretty any way you look at it, but it does the job.

The best thing about the basement turns out to be the thing I really didn’t appreciate — the visibility of all those pipes and ducts (visible in real life, that is; they’re not visible in the attached photo). When I got my water bill with the hugely inflated water usage, it was easy enough for me to go down to the basement and look for any drips or flooding. I didn’t see anything. A worker who came to help me find the leak didn’t see anything, either.

This is a basic house, fairly simple with not much hidden besides the buried pipes leading to (and from) the house — the gas line, the sewer line, and the water pipe. So, if there is no leak in the house, no water running anywhere in the house, there are only two places for a leak — where the buried water pipe connects to the meter and where it connects to the house. The pipe itself should not be a problem — the old lead pipe was replaced before I got here as a condition of the sale. (I even have the receipt somewhere.)

Unfortunately, with all the snow that was dumped on us, as well as the frigid temperatures we’re going to be treated with the next few days, no one will be able to get out here to probe for water leaks. But that’s beyond my control. What I can do — I did: go down to the basement and look for leaks and listen for water movement through the fully exposed pipes.

***

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.

Interesting Days

This is another of those interesting days where a problem looms that takes a lot of time on the phone to resolve. Yesterday it was my water bill — apparently, 19,000 gallons of water have disappeared on my side of the meter. After talking to six people yesterday, I finally found someone who will probe for the leak. The problem is that if they can’t resolve this today, it will continue for the next week or so because a major storm is coming through here tonight and tomorrow, with subzero temperatures and six inches of snow.

Today, I got a message that PayPal had paid my virus protection renewal bill even though it doesn’t come up for renewal for another thirty-five days. I also don’t have money in the bank account associated with the PayPal account to pay for it (I always keep that account almost empty in case of such problems), so that’s another issue to deal with. The virus people were supposed to email me before they renewed, but didn’t, so I didn’t get a chance to stop the auto-renewal. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but after I signed up for the services, I found out I got the same service free through my internet provider, and I certainly don’t want to continue paying for something I don’t have to. I would have stopped the auto-renewal months ago, but they made it sound as if they would immediately cancel all services, and I didn’t want to take a chance. Instead, they decided not to take a chance on me and renewed early.

I called the virus protection people to have them issue a refund, and because of a language problem, they didn’t understand what I wanted. Finally, the word “refund” got through. Now I only have to wait for a few days to make sure that if/when PayPal takes money from my account, it will be refunded, though perhaps there won’t be a problem because the refund went through before the money was debited from my bank.

When all that is taken care of, I will have to contact my internet provider to set up the new protection plan (which actually is the very same one I just discontinued). I don’t want to get started on that until I have a lot of time at my disposal because nothing to do with the computer is ever easy. It should be, but it isn’t. There always seems to be a problem.

These “interesting days” will be continuing, not just because of the switchover for the virus protection plan, and not just because of the water issue, but because of the winter weather advisory and all of the problems that will arise from the storm, such as shoveling the walks and getting safely to and from my job.

But it will all work out, one way or another.

***

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.

Meter Mystery

I’m dealing with a bit of a mystery today. I got my water bill in the mail, and it showed that I used 19,000 gallons of water more than I did a year ago, and 11,000 more than last month when I was watering every day. (I didn’t water at all during this billing cycle.)

Apparently, when the billing people saw the hefty usage, they sent a meter reader here to check the meter to see if there was leak somewhere, but they meter wasn’t spinning, which showed no water being used. At first, I thought they were referring to the extra water I was using to water my grass, but when I got the bill, I saw what they did — a huge amount of water being used. Also, I found out today that when they reread the meter, just a couple of days after the first reading, I’d used an additional 3,000 gallons, which is more than I generally use in a month.

One thing they suggested (because their electronic readers supposedly have an accuracy rate of 99.9%, so it can’t possibly be a reading error) is that I have an intermittent leak. Huh? I’d think you either have a leak or don’t. Leaks don’t repair themselves temporarily. They also thought that perhaps someone was stealing my water, though I don’t see how that is possible, either. I only have two outside faucets, both of which are attached to hoses (because I thought I’d need to water my grass occasionally this winter). I also have the faucets wrapped in insulation, so it wouldn’t be easy to get to them to turn on the water. (It’s not even easy for me to get to them!) Besides, with the snow we had, I could tell no one had been in my yard. Their third suggestion was that the 19,000 gallons came from the faucet I let drip on the subzero nights, but I know for a fact that uses less than five gallons, not the thousands they said it could use.

I eventually ended the call, leaving her as bewildered as I am. She said she will check with the meter reader again (as well as tell him where I’d stashed the tool he left behind when he read the meter) and see if he can think of anything, though basically, all he can do is read the meter again.

Luckily, I have a contractor on call. He’ll send someone over this evening to see if they can find a problem I might not be able to see.

I did think of one possibility for him to check: the dishwasher water lines. I haven’t used the dishwasher for a couple of years, and I recently started again, partly because I wanted to make sure it would still work, but mostly because it’s easier to stash the dishes in the machine than to dry them by hand. I only use it every five or six days, so if somehow there is a 3,000 gallon per use leakage rate, that would add up to the extra 19,000 gallons. But still, wouldn’t I hear all that water swishing through the lines?

One way or another, the contractor will help me figure this out. Meantime, I have a dishwasher full of dishes that I’m afraid to wash.

***

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

Stitches of Togetherness

Small talk — conversation about unimportant or uncontroversial matters — is a staple of my life now. When I visit with friends, we talk about small town life, ourselves, their pets and children and grandchildren, people we know. The only time I have a conversation about something more vital is if I know they more or less feel the same as I do because I simply have no energy to discuss anything anyone feels passionate about. Their passion for their beliefs about the “issues” of the day exhausts me.

For many years, I didn’t engage in small talk. At least not that sort of small talk. Jeff and I talked about everything that was important, both in our lives, in history, in health, in myth, in the world. We generally agreed, and if we didn’t, we’d discuss things, listening to each other without interruption, until we came to a middle ground. Mostly, though, through the decades, we formed our ideas in tandem. These ideas weren’t based on feelings but on in-depth reading (thousands upon thousands of books) on a multitude of subjects, including many things we didn’t necessarily agree with but wanted to know more about.

Then there was the other sort of talking we did. Small talk so small it wasn’t really small talk, more like the stitching that holds two lives together. You know the sort of thing I mean. Things said more or less in passing: “We didn’t get any mail today.” Or “I saw so-and-so today.” Or “They were out of something at the store today.” Or “I’m home!” Nothing of importance beyond the moment.

Several years ago, I wrote that one of the collateral aspects of losing a life mate was having no one to do nothing with. Although Jeff and I worked and played and talked for more than three decades, we often did nothing together. We were just there, a presence in each other’s lives. I’ve found other people to fulfill some of the roles he played in my life, such as someone to do something with, but I have no one to do nothing with.

I’m now realizing it’s the same with talking, and why I so often talk to his photo. I have people to talk with, both small talk and sometimes larger talk, but there’s no one around for the smaller than small talk. If I am sad or lonely, I can call someone, or I can go to the library and chat with the librarians while they check out my books, or I can do any number of things. But there’s no one around for the sub-small talk. I can’t call someone to say, “I didn’t get any mail today.” Just the effort to call would turn the idle comment into something it wasn’t meant to be and would give my not getting mail an importance it didn’t deserve. And yet, a shared life is made up of these passing comments, these “stitches” of togetherness.

Those stitches are another of the many things no one really notices until they are gone. In my case, other things were so much more overwhelming — not just the pain and angst of his being dead, but the silence of my life, the yearning for one more word or smile from him, the lack of someone to do nothing with, the stark aloneness of being alone (it’s completely different having alone times in a shared life than being alone in an unshared life).

When grief started leaving me, I became engrossed in other activities, such as dancing and traveling, moving from place to place and trying to figure out what to do with my life. So many of those activities are no longer a factor. I’ve bought a house and moved to my perhaps final home, so now the subtler and more permanent aspects of living alone after the death of a life mate are making themselves felt.

And apparently, this lack of “stitching” is one of those aspects.

***

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.

Special Day

Today was a special day. Actually, all days are special in their own way, even those filled with agony and anguish, though I don’t know why they would be special except perhaps that painful days tell us we are alive, even though momentarily we might wish we weren’t.

But today wasn’t a day of body aches or heartaches. It was an easy day, pleasant, special in its uneventfulness.

It was a lovely day outside, which gave me an opportunity to stretch my legs. So often in the almost two years since I damaged my knee (while sleeping, of all things!) I took small steps to keep from damaging the knee further. Lately, though, I’ve been reminding myself to use the whole sphere of my being.

We live in a personal sphere, the space taken up by outspread arms and legs. As we age and become more fearful of missteps, and as we try to protect painful limbs as I did, we shrink into the center of our spheres, shortening our stride, hunching into ourselves. Grief was that way for me, too, pulling me into my center as if to protect me from further blows. It took me many years to finally straighten and open myself up to my whole personal sphere. And to open myself to life.

Striding out has its own problems, I am sure, such as a tendency not to pay attention or to pay attention to the wrong things, so I use my Pacerpoles to help with my stride and my safety as I walk. Unlike most trekking poles or walking sticks, the action of the Pacerpole is more natural, with the emphasis behind the trunk instead of in front. (Similar to using ski poles). These poles make me feel more like a regular person than like an old lady who is so feeble she needs two canes. They also make the walk more of a full-body exercise, which is good, as well as taking some of the weight off my knees, which is even better.

But I am getting away from my point about this being a special day. As I said, the weather was lovely. My main meal was tasty and relatively easy to prepare. (I added chicken and vegetables to a broth I’d previously made.) Although the book I read was rather weird (I’m still not sure what the point of it was except that it was a different sort of ghost story about soldiers lost in Cambodia during the Vietnam war), I was delighted to have the time to finish it so I could start another one by a different author that might be more to my liking. (Interestingly, the first book was called The Reckoning the second The Great Reckoning. I liked the serendipity of those titles.)

And now I am here, talking to you about this day that was special in such an unspecial way, and that’s nice, 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.Posted in blogging, culture, life. Tags: alone but not lonely, living alone, no one to care when I leave 

Living Alone

As I was leaving the house this morning to walk to the library (in nineteen-degree weather!) it suddenly struck me as strange that no one cares when I leave. No one cares when I get home. No one cares if I stay home or stay away. Obviously, I care, at least to an extent, but for the most part it doesn’t matter because wherever I am, there I am.

A lot of people care, not just about me but also that I am safe and well and that we can visit occasionally, but for the daily comings and goings? No one.

I’m surprised it took me this long to realize the strangeness of this situation, though it really shouldn’t have been a surprise. The first couple of months after Jeff died, being alone didn’t seem strange, just so very, very sad. I couldn’t stand coming home to an empty house, not because it was empty, but because I forgot it was empty. I’d unlock the door as always, ready with an “I’m home!” and then it would strike me . . . again . . . that he was gone, and full-on grief would slam into me.

For the next few years, I took care of my aged father, and when he was gone, I was so busy clearing out the house and getting it ready for sale that I didn’t really notice that no one cared whether I came or went. When the work was done, that huge house was so empty that I noticed the echoes but not much else. Also, by then, I was involved with dance classes, so my dad’s house was mostly a place to spend the night.

The years after I left my father’s house were spent traveling or renting rooms in other people’s houses, and I was blogging about my activities, so I didn’t notice that no one was around to pay attention to my comings and goings.

When I bought this house, it was such a new and wonderful experience — both owning a house and making a home in a new place — it didn’t really strike me that no one particularly cared about when I left the house.

But now, it’s been almost three years since I bought the house. Although the thrill and the feeling of being blessed isn’t gone, I am more aware of being alone. (Not lonely. Just aware of aloneness.) That awareness could be why I talk to Jeff’s picture, and why I tell the photo when I am leaving, but a photo doesn’t care.

Now, almost twelve years after his death and all the moves I’ve made and all the things I’ve done, I’ve suddenly realized how strange this living alone is. It’s nice, of course, being able to do what I want and go where I want without regard to anyone else. But it’s also . . . not sad, exactly, but . . . strange.

***

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.