Pat Bertram's Blog, page 35

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.

Adventurous Trek

I was awakened when the day was just breaking by the beep-beep-beep of construction trucks backing up. I have a hunch they wanted to get in some work before the snow got heavy, though it never really did. The good thing is that they were fixing the sewer lines, so it wasn’t something I had to pay for, at least not directly.

Although you can’t tell from the photo, snow was falling lightly when I took the picture, and it continued most of the day. Temperatures hovered around freezing, so whatever snow fell melted right away, leaving mud and puddles behind, which made walking to work a real adventure.

Although it’s only two blocks to my client’s house, there was no way to get there without making a mess of my shoes, unless I wanted to walk several blocks out of my way. The sewer dig went straight down the alley and across the street (they’d had a machine out here a week or so ago that chomped up the tarmac, leaving the strip unpaved). Because of the snow and the digging, that ten-foot-wide strip turned into pure mud. Just as bad, the way they do the storm drainage around here is to hump the middle of the street, creating a ditch on either side of the road, which fill with water because it was an inefficient concept for drainage. The good thing is that I was able to wash off my muddy shoes in the puddles. The bad thing is that my socks got wet, and I didn’t bring a second pair of socks as I usually do during wet times. (I can’t blame myself for forgetting the socks because we’ve had so little wet weather it was easy to forget my wet-weather routine.) I did remember to bring dry shoes, a sweater, and my lunch as well as all my regular staples such as phone, water, and a variety of small emergency items.

With all the stuff I bring, you’d think I was going on a major expedition instead of a mere two blocks!

I mentioned yesterday that when I’m at work and the client is asleep, sometimes I read, but sometimes I also play games on my phone. I get tired of the one I have (a word game where you unscramble a bunch of letters to form words of various sizes). I deleted most of the other games that came with the phone because they seemed boring, but it would be nice to have another game or two. The game I have inundates me with ads for other games, but although some sound interesting, I don’t have a clue what to get. Do you play a game on your phone? If so, do you mind telling me what it is? (I hesitate to ask because the games we play seem so personal — they tell more about us than we might want others to know.)

Luckily, the weather will improve for a few days to let the mud dry out, so I only have one more hazardous walk to deal with until the middle of next week when icy weather returns.

***

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 Privilege of Being a Caregiver

Occasionally, I have time to read at work when the woman I take care of is napping, but I can’t read anything involving since I need to keep one eye (or ear) open in case she wakes and needs help. So I’ve been reading the forty-year-old Reader’s Digest Condensed books I found on her shelves. I read most of the books in unabridged book form when they were originally published, though I can’t recall many of the stories — that was about 15,000 books ago! I remember the covers, though, as well as the titles and authors, so that’s something, I suppose. Still, whether I’ve read the books before or not, reading them now gives me something to do.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother with the condensed books — it doesn’t take me very long to read a full-length novel, and though I can’t tell when reading the condensed version what has been edited out, I can’t really get into the story. The things that are left out must be the sort of thing that pulls me in and keeps me reading a book at a single sitting, because the condensed versions certainly don’t do that. Sometimes I go for weeks without a chance to read at work, so one of the stories I’m reading can sit there for ages without my being compelled to find out how it ends.

Normally, I wouldn’t have anything to say about condensed books because they simply are not a part of my life, but now they are. Sort of. In the same way that the news and commercials have crept into my life because sometimes I watch Judge Judy or the news with the client, which means lots and lots of commercials.

The good thing about the condensed books is I don’t end up with earworms or brainworms or sticky music or stuck song syndrome from them as I do from the commercials. You know what earworms and all those other terms are: they are all names for the bits of ditties that get stuck in your head that you can’t get out. The term earworm was created over 100 years ago, so apparently, this is an ongoing problem — one I got rid of after I stopped taking dance classes and before I started elder sitting. Oddly, the earworms that most infest my brain are from commercials for various drugs. No wonder people can remember what drugs to ask their doctor about — a whole lot of time and money is spent creating those earworms.

Sometimes I mute the commercial, but that is such an unfair trick to play on the elderly — they have no idea what happened when the sound suddenly stops. So I deal with the earworm, and the condensed books. They are such a small price to pay for the privilege of being a caregiver.

***

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 Repeat of Today

This was a strange day weatherwise. It started out cold, hovering around thirty with still air and sunny skies, but as the morning progressed, fierce winds blew in clouds and colder temperatures. By midafternoon, the temperature had dipped even further, and a few flakes of snow fell. It snowed half-heartedly for a while, dropping perhaps as much as an inch, though it was hard to measure since for the first hour, the snow melted when it hit the ground.

By the time I walked home from work, there was a layer of ice beneath the still falling snow, but the snow was so lackadaisical and the clouds so low, it seemed more like a foggy evening than a snowfall. I made sure to step carefully because of the iciness, though with the heavy tread on my shoes and the help of my trekking poles, I wasn’t in much danger of falling.

A bit further north (more than a bit, actually, perhaps 90 miles due north), the towns got dumped on. Two feet! Amazing what a difference a few miles can make.

We have a respite tomorrow then a repeat of today on Thursday. I mean a repeat of today’s weather, of course, though I wouldn’t mind a repeat of today in other respects, too. It was a nice, easy day — no traumas, no dramas, no . . .

[I paused here to check Google to see if there were any other appropriate words that rhymed with drama and trauma to keep the rhythm going, but I couldn’t find anything except words like mama and llama and comma, which would not make any sense in the context I wanted. However, immediately below “what rhymes with drama” I saw, “What word rhymes with Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?” I’m cracking up here, wondering why anyone would need to rhyme such an obscure term that supposedly refers to a lung disease caused by silica. For a poem about lung disease? For a bit of poesy in an otherwise prosy essay, such as I was trying to do with my drama/trauma coupling? It boggles the mind!]

I hope your day was as nice as mine. I also hope it included a new word as well as a chuckle or two.

***

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