Interesting Times

 While I feel very blessed to have investments that should cover my commitment to memory care some years from now, I am kinda pissed off to have lost forty grand over the past couple of weeks. 

It cost me $1900 to have my taxes done, another mark that I'm well-to-do, as was the $295 charge to change a single name in my last will.

Note to MAGA: I just wish George Soros had paid me to be in the protest on Saturday.

My friend Carol had an idea of how to deal with all my friendship losses, including those from a quarter century ago that my grief therapist says I carry around like a big rock in my backpack.   Carol suggested a ritual and I think that's a terrific idea -- a ritual to release myself from caring about the people who don't care about me anymore. A ritual to remind myself that if people don't want to spend time with me, that's about them, not about me. I get to stop thinking about what a terrible, horrible, very bad person I am. And just laugh when someone who has told me they don't have time for me expresses concerns for my health to another person.  So I've been working out what would be a good series of actions and words to tell myself that if people don't want to hang with me it's okay and their loss, not mine.  Illegitimi non carborundum.

On the home front, I finally received the Vietnamese crocheted Will doll.  Sadly, it has black hair which I didn't notice when I reviewed the doll so I've had to paint the hair threads silver. Now this doll will help me watch new movies and old film noir without feeling so alone.

Bad Wednesday

So the day after I felt so good I went into a deep decline. Wednesday was terrible. After my workout I started crying and cried off and on for about an hour and I had a repeat of that later in the day, crying for a few hours.  

About what?

Missing my best friend.  Missing having anyone willing to check in on me regularly. Very narcissistic pains. Feeling alone in the world. Believing that I'm going to die alone and unwept in a city I despise.

I'd started off the morning thinking I would write about one of the great friendships I'd seen, admired, and envied.  A friendship I thought I'd be able to copy someday but never have.  The friendship of Bruce Loebs and Bob Swanson at ISU.  They had coffee together at Elmers most mornings through at least 30 years. 

Whatever it is inside a person that makes that kind of friendship possible, I've never had it, though I've hungered for it. 

Because I was thinking about him I looked up Bruce and found out that he died in 2022 and that his son Blake, a person I remember as a beautiful young man but hadn't seen since the early 80s, had preceded him in death. Bruce was a great boss and helped me get out of Pocatello. When I was first in the theatre department there, I was part of a group that teased Bruce by being noisy outside his office and making him run out and shush-yell at us. Then in my masters program, when I turned from Theatre (with its awful teachers) to speech, he became my thesis director and boss of my first teaching gig.  When I became a teacher,   I turned into the person who ran out of my office to shush people. 

And that's the kind of humorous insight I can have this morning. On Wednesday the mental pain was so severe that I could do little else but cry and walk the dogs. The mental pain was physical in that I couldn't stop crying -- the sobs came from my gut and wouldn't quit. But I didn't call anyone and I wasn't suicidal nor did I think about cutting myself. And even in those times when I have been self harming, I haven't really wanted to die or hurt -- I've just wanted the interior pain to stop.

On the plus side this week, I had coffee with another widow, got a nice note from one of my nephews, and had a good videochat with my friend Diana.  

I also decided to unfriend the folks on Facebook who didn't have time for me and not think of them as my friends anymore.  Both of them gave me nice presents in the past that I'm now going to take to the Humane Society because they just mean sorrow to me now.  One of the presents actually frees up wall space so I need to buy another picture of a Scottish loch.

Sage Advice Today

 I've been having a lot of sadness for the past couple of months ... lots of tears through February.  Sarah and I decided to go back to a once a week schedule. Today she gave me a lot of good advice some of which I could hear through my sobbing.  

Monty Python Pictures Ltd.

1. She reminded me that many others who grieve have the same problem with loss of friends.  It's true that misery loves company but that's mostly because the pain of ongoing depression and grief in a world which wants everyone to be happy all the fucking time makes one feel like an outsider.  I have felt like a truly terrible person because of my experience with friends not wanting to be friends with me anymore.  If I were a likeable person, wouldn't people want to be with me? I told Sarah about dead Kathy's advice to be amiable Sarah talked about advice she'd given other grievers whose friends no longer want to be friends with them.  "You are not terrible people.  But you [ed: and the pain you carry] ARE terrifying to people."

2. She said, "Decision-fatigue is a thing." I have gone from making decisions only in a few select areas to making decisions about all the things (like a normal person) and I get tired of having to be the one in charge of my life when there used to be someone else carrying the weight with me.  And I know that Jesus says "My yoke is easy and my burden in light" but I am actually finding being Christian these days is also challenging.  Thanks, Dan McLellan.

3. She told me to get rest but easier said than done. I've been getting along on a broken sleep of about 6 hours when it's not 5 -- waking up most nights at 2:30 or 3.

4. One aspect of my sadness is my inability to know who I am and what I want and yet knowing that living in a place I hate so deeply isn't it.  Sarah came up with this visual metaphor.  She waved her hand in the air saying that "this is inside" scattered and amorphous. And then she dropped her hand like locking something down and said, "Yet you are imprisoned in Bend."  And that's it.  I feel stuck here.  imprisoned.  There is nothing for me here except a few people, my house, and a beautiful church.  But I can serve in any church. I have too much freedom in my head and not enough freedom in my life (because of my own fear).

5. She also reminded me, yet again, that I have been much more functional than I am right now and I probably will be again (whether or not I believe it).

6. She reminded me again that now that much of the initial feelings of loss have subsided, what I'm feeling is the requirement that I learn to live in the world on my own and that just still feels overwhelming to me and, after 50 years of bonding with another person until they became my ground of being, that's not so surprising.  "This is the first time you've been a widow." It's very hard for me to project further into the future than my next altar guild job.

 7. She also checked in to ask if I'd thought about cutting myself and I haven't had those thoughts. 

8. She also said that raising a dog, let alone taking care of two dogs on one's own is a challenge.  I had confessed that I don't love Sequel yet. I am caring for her but she hasn't been making herself lovable. She threatened me last week - teeth bared and everything. She is definitely not my baybe. But I am her pack leader and I made a commitment to her. But I know she would much rather be in a houseful of other puppies. Nevertheless, I don't want to send her away to dog sleep-away camp and won't give her up.

9. Sarah agreed that living in America during the crumbling of empire is exhausting all by itself.

Mental Breakdown

 I had a breakdown at the end of the service Sunday.

I made a mistake and read the wrong reading - totally my own fault. I practiced the right reading but the Liturgy was marked incorrectly (I'd marked it -- and somehow found the wrong reading in Exodus - totally sober). Then I apologized and had to decide whether to back up and chose the correct reading or go on with the psalm and I went on with the psalm which I got through correctly.

I sat down and was so embarrassed and started to feel like god was telling me to step down. I started hating on myself and missing Will and I fell into that deep well which usually only the people I feel closest to see and I was hiccup crying. My friend from the Tuesday group, Barbara,  came to me and told me that people care about me and "love" me but I don't feel the love of "people"  though I'm glad Barbara considers me a friend.  Then Susan and Nancy, her Mom, and Elizabeth the priest came over where I was picking up stuff to do my altar guild thing and they assured me that everyone makes mistakes. They finally calmed me down. Susan talked about her own therapist and her struggle with low self esteem.

Nancy gave me a hug and said not to believe "the enemy."  My friend Rev. Noah also uses that term.  Maybe it would be helpful to think of that force of self hatred as "the enemy." Maybe I'd be more interested in fighting it if it were outside of me.

I've been feeling really scared and hopeless about the world.  I keep thinking about buying a bigger, more dangerous gun.

Oh well. Protest against the Grifter this afternoon.  I hope that cheers me up. 

Missed Connections

 Dear Will:

A few events I wish I could tell you about, though I'm just as happy you're not alive to experience the era of the Grifter-in-Chief.  You were so scared when we came back to all the yellow ribbons in December, 2001. The McCarthy era gave you a bone deep fear of fascists.

The death of a lovely woman who was a terrible poet that you made fun of for years because I'd forced you to sit through a reading we shared. When one of my book group friends told me about her passing, I instantly felt a connection to you.

The final days of Marty's store. I remember when we joked for months about the billboard on Revere with her and her son in boxing gloves because they had the two different stores. And how delighted you were to get gossip about the son from Nancy W.

And in a happy circumstance, Sequel and I were walking the loop at Riverbend Park and near the metal draw horses we ran into an old friend of Birdy's! Not the dog ... he had gone over the rainbow bridge, but the female primate recognized me as Birdy's packleader.  She was also a long ago former student.  She understood Sequel's name immediately!

 And finally, I was thinking about Jim A.'s tomato comments and how much we laughed at them for years after the meeting in Chicago.

I'm more often able to miss you now without crying.

Love always,

kake

 

BLECH Taxes

When I took in a folder of 1099s and other documents to my accountant today, I joshed with Dan, the administrative assistant.  He said the banks were slow getting the 1099s out and I said "Who knows if there's going to be a government in April or even if we'll have to pay taxes ever again."  Jk.

The Tribute Money by Peter Paul Rubens

 Back in the day, pre-2012, when Will did our taxes, every year was a struggle because until I actually did the taxes myself, I didn't really understand the process.  In the two years I was actually in charge of personally doing the taxes, I made mistakes each year, once in the government's favor, once in ours.  Now, because of the complexity of my finances (those two trusts), I have an accounting firm.

Nevertheless, I still need to collect the data of all my donations (sometimes given when I'm high) so I actually need to roll through my four main email accounts and my Paypal. (Used to be going through my checkbooks.) I no longer keep track of mileage to the doctor and Costco, however.  That's just a bit too much detail.

Looks like I've got good medical deductions this year since I no longer have dental insurance and had three major dental events. My donations were under 17 grand I think, though I'm not completely finished figuring them out.

This year my accountant's business has a new online program to help folks work through what they need to think about.  There are a lot of questions, some of which I have to leave up to the Ed Jones folks to answer as most of what goes on in my investments happens while I'm not watching.  For example, I know I have foreign investments but I don't know what they are or what they're doing (unless I actually read my portfolio). I trust the people who watch out for me.

Other questions focused on all the various things that might count as deductions. I found out that I hadn't paid two of my estimated taxes (I thought I had but the online machinery I used didn't work).  So paid those late. There was also a question about "gifts" and I found out that while no gifts under eighteen grand are counted, the IRS was interested in any amount of forgiven debt. I forgave an eight thousand dollar debt this year so I reported that but I'm not sure, from reading the rules, whether or not the forgivee will have to pay taxes on it. I don't think there are any tax associated implications for me.

I still have a few more documents to get in before Thursday, my deadline.  And then, if I've behaved as I have in the past, there will still be a few things missing and Chelsea will have to email me a list. 

I wouldn't be quite so annoyed by the whole business IF MY STREET WERE SNOWPLOWED. I know -- has nothing to do with the feds or the state but still, it's my most annoying relationship with any government agency.

Oh well. "Whose picture is on the coin?" Caesar's. So send all your fucking coins back to the dude.

I used to have a friend who protested government actions by not paying his taxes. I'd like to think I'd never do that but who knows what the future holds as our empire crumbles. Sometimes I think the Grifter in Chief is just chickens coming home to roost for a country that spent a century destabilizing other countries. I'm happy well Will isn't here to see what's happening but he'd be proud of me for continuing to take care of my few responsibilities.

 

Snow Business

 Dear Will:

You would have been amused at Sequel yesterday. She saw the snow monster and started barking at it!  You liked to point out the snow monster, both when you were you and when you had the dementia.

What I am missing about you today is our shared jokes, shared life references.  “Ebow.” “Puttin on the Ritz” “Hey hey, my my …” one of our earliest. The places we traveled and returned to in food and conversation. The year after visiting New Orleans when you made a habit of cooking some meals with “three peppers for the whole mouth treatment.” The year after England when we had tea.

But I lost you before I lost you. Before you lost the connections to our shared life, you sometimes asked, “Where have we traveled?” Or “What countries have we traveled to?” And I would list them and you would try to remember and you would remember fewer and fewer as time rivered our shared life to its finale.

But here in the present in multiple ways you are still with me. As when Sequel saw the same thing you did and barked. So she has a connection to you. You share a pareidolia.

And sadly, her bark also means I need to work harder on her being so talkative. I have the "no bark" tool. I need to remember to carry it.

I don’t know if you would like Sequel. She’s very alpha, unlike sweet Princess Birdy. She will not allow me to lie on her or hold tight to her to assert my dominance. So we’re working out our pack relationship with my using a lot more treating than I did with the princess.

Oh, and last weekend. The three shiny pennies right where I would see them - one beside my parking space at Newport, one in the house, one at the mailbox.  I’ve never given much weight to this particular superstition but I’ve known about it for decades (mostly from the occasional letter to Dear Abby. And last weekend I had a horrible embarrassment:  a brain fart and awhile reading the psalm. Ack!  So I need help from above after my horrible mistake … thanks you if you were responsible for my copper finds.

I miss you each day and yet I am entering my fourth year of your absence with Snake Energy. This will be a more functional year for me. Even Brezsny says so.

 

Love you always,

 

Kake