I know, I know.  Everyone is tired of hearing about the snow.  But really, that's pretty much our life these days.  Each morning I look out the window and hope that it was a bad dream, but it's still all there.  It's all white.  It hasn't even had a chance to get to that "dirty snow" thing, because it never stops snowing.  There is always a new layer falling to cover up the exhaust fumes and slush piles.  Oh wait.  Slush would imply something had melted.  We haven't gotten that far yet since the temperature has hovered so far below zero that my brother-in-law in Alaska is feeling sorry for us.

Only one car is accessible in our single driveway, the other being tucked in the garage under.  I don't like having a car inside my house.  It's wrong on so many levels.  And it is sitting on a "donut" wheel anyway, so before we can make it go very far there is work involved and no one has the energy to do anything.  Commuting has become a tedious nightmare.  They say they have been working on the subway connections and that we should have full service tomorrow.  Maybe.  If it doesn't snow any more.  Which it always does.  One day last week I spent five hours on a round trip to a job where I work for eight hours.  And not a big job.  I'm no brain surgeon.  The pay is piddly, although the atmosphere is pleasant.  But come on, people!

I had tickets for community theater last night, but I was so spent I couldn't go.  It was snowing (again) and I'm getting over the flu, and I just could not move.  I was in my nightgown and robe by six o'clock.  On a Saturday night.  My grandparents used to go to bed at 7:30 and I would pity them and also laugh.  I'm not laughing any more. This is getting depressing.

If I weren't such a wuss about driving on ice and snow I'd go to the art museum. I find I am starving for color, for the sight of trees, for beauty of any kind that isn't white.  What I don't want to do is spent two hours at my open bedroom window, wielding a shovel which has been married to a broom handle through the magic of duct tape, trying to push snow off the roof of the porch below so that it doesn't collapse under the weight of the snow.  The curtains blow in my face.  The snow blows in my face.  And it looks as though I've done absolutely nothing when I've finished.

I'm getting so desperate that Himself invited me to join him at the gym and I'm going.  Just to move in a non-shoveling pattern.  Or drink coffee with strangers.  Or swim in the pool and pretend I'm in Bermuda.  Monday is coming up fast and I need to brace myself for the Herculean task of getting to work.  If you remember, for one of his labors he needed a shovel, too.

It was bound to happen.  I knew it the first time he picked up a rugby ball.  Yesterday a knee to the face resulted in a broken nose for my college senior, who has avoided serious injury (at least that he informed me about) up until now.  Luckily in this age of technology, even for Luddites like myself, Son Number One was able to comfort me long distance with a "selfie" which really didn't look all that bad.  I suspect that today there will be panda eyes and more swelling, but at least he went to the emergency room for treatment so he's been seen by someone who knows significantly more about broken noses than I, with my fairly useless degree in French.  To tell you the truth, that nose which started out like a tiny button all those years ago, has been looking a little "askew" for a while; not obvious, but just the tiniest bit crooked.  Mother is suspecting that this might be her baby's second broken nose, but who can tell?

The trial of the long distance Mom is to stay calm and supportive and let him handle it on his own, which he is quite capable of doing.  He even used his "Talk Her Off The Ledge" voice when he phoned to assure me he was fine.  I know it could have been a far worse injury. All those prayers and guardian angels I dispatch seem to be doing the job.   My idea of winning a rugby game is empty ambulances on the edge of the field.  This is football with no padding.  This is, in my humble opinion, nuts.

And so I absorb another exercise in "letting go", a class for which I don't remember registering.  Son Number Two is in Cleveland fencing for his university.  I hope he doesn't come home with a dueling scar across his cheek.  That test I would certainly fail.

I've been up since 4:30 this morning listening to the wind howl.  Son Number Two is flying home for Thanksgiving this morning in the middle of rain, wind, and thunder.  I've come to expect this.  There is never a trip to or from Ohio that is not fraught with peril.  If it isn't weather it's a missed connection.  If it isn't either of those it's the flu.  One way or another, that poor kid never catches a break.

He is a charmer, really.  He has a great smile, and a kind heart.  What he has done to annoy the Powers That Be is a complete mystery to me, but somewhere along the way he must have set them off.  I have a few days off from both jobs and will spend the weekend doing singing "gigs", four Masses, two funerals, and a Christmas tree lighting between now and Tuesday.  This is fun, and my preferred way to make money, although it won't pay the mortgage yet.  The best part is that it puts me (except for the tree lighting) in a place where I can dump my problem in God's lap and hope S/He doesn't stand up.  On second thought, I can (and do) do just that no matter where I am, but you know what I mean.

I once read, and I believe, that once you have a child it's like wearing your heart on the outside of your body for the rest of your life.  The vulnerability is painful.  There isn't a blessed thing I can do to protect them anymore except pray, and I do that, but I hold my breath until they are tucked into their beds, even if it's only while passing through from one place to another.  A dear friend from Wales has arrived bringing photos and gifts and memories of my other dear friend who passed away in February and after whom we named Son Number Two.  There is a picture of SNT at the age of about four, sitting on a high stool at the counter in the kitchen in Wales and laughing hysterically at something outrageous.  I'm sure it was a fart joke.  They usually were if they got that big a laugh.  He's a physics major now and doing very well, but he still hasn't lost that sense of joy and abandon. 

So, United Airlines, you'd better take care of the Joy Boy and get him home in time for turkey because Mom needs one more thing for which to be grateful, and that will be a beaut.

The neighbors are out there power washing their deck.  It's noisy, but it's almost 11:30 on a Saturday morning, and really, good for them.  I, on the other hand, sit here surrounded by so many things to do that I am doing the square root of nothing, paralyzed by the overwhelming size of each task.  This is my first day off in quite a while, and it's a lovely morning.  The temptation to sit on the couch and catch up with the last season of "Desperate Housewives" is strong.  Equally strong is the desire to gather all the old magazines which are creating teetering piles, the "Oprahs" and the virginal "Writers' Digests", and drive over to my doctor's office, scattering them throughout the waiting rooms in the building. Or to take Mother's clothes out of the front hall closet and donate them to Morgan Memorial, giving us more room, and me another iota of closure.  Or to tackle the mountains of laundry, clean and otherwise, which are taking over my bedroom like some monster in a Grade D film.  At the very least I should go for a walk or cut the grass.  But plantar fasciitis is tuning up, and by the end of a five hour shift at the mall I'm walking with a cane, and I don't bloody feel like it.  So I'll set the timer on the stove and do fifteen minutes of something.  Anything.  But first I'll have my tea.  And maybe a biscuit.
The fact is, with all this lovely weather and a day to myself, I am down in the dumps.  Finally I have time to stop and think and breathe, and the Bogeyman has caught up with me.  Griefs which I thought were healing are not, and will not until I sit with them, listen to them, maybe write a poem about them, and move on.  I'm disappointed in myself that finally getting back into the work force hasn't produced the job of my dreams, but one part time job which I very much like, and one in retail, which I very  much don't.  And the excitement of re-inventing myself has become the resignation to another round of "Aw well, it's something," but I was hoping for so much more.
So it's tea and a biscuit and something for now.  Because at least that much I can still control.

It's been "One Of Those Weeks".  I've worked the office job from 10 to 3 Monday through Friday (after working at the boutique on Sunday) and then Thursday and Friday nights I worked at the boutique until 10.  Saturday I worked from 11 to 3:30, and today it's 2 to 7.  Son Number One's girlfriend arrived (love her!) on Saturday morning at 1AM and I am, quite frankly, a tad fatigued.  The grass is almost peeking in at the window sill and sobbing for attention.  It will wait a few hours, I'm sure.  Plantar fasciitis is tuning up for a symphony in my left heel.  For right now I am enjoying sitting still.  The torrential rains have left, and this Sunday morning the windows are open for a cool breeze and birdsong to start my day.  There is a book at my elbow which is singing its siren song, to which I have every intention of succumbing.  Give me a hot cup of tea and I shall rule the world.
I don't know what I did during the fourteen years I was lucky enough to be at home with my children.  It certainly wasn't housework.  They had their music lessons and sports, karate black belts and play dates.  My universe revolved around their schedules and that was our choice and our privilege.  Most people don't have the option of walking out on their careers and taking an orchestra seat at life.  Getting back into it (not a "career", but a "job") has been challenging.
So much of how we define ourselves involves how we make money.  At a party, when approached by a stranger and asked "Who are you?" the answer often is "I'm a doctor" or "I work in computers" or "I'm a cashier at Walmart and a pole dancer on weekends".  I was stuck for an answer for a while, feeling a little guilty that my life was mostly driving the car and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  There was the embarrassment of not making a paycheck, but also an embarrassment of riches.  I had time with my children.  My friend Flanagan (whom I miss with a white hot heat) would call many days and be the only adult I spoke to between the hours of 8AM and 7PM.  He would chide me to "Be a human being, not a human doing!" and remind me of how blessed I was to be in my situation.  He would repeat the importance of the airline safety drill of "putting on your own oxygen mask before trying to take care of everyone else".
While the children were in school I would visit with retired friends, and eventually, with my mother in her last years at the nursing home.  I was free to spoon feed her lunch and amuse her cohorts with a song or a borderline-appropriate joke or two.  I got to learn what really mattered.  After a year of emptying out my routines, children off to college, Mother and Flanagan and Webb passing away to where they don't need me, I'm filling up my life with other things.  But I have learned to appreciate the sheer luxury of sitting with a hot cup of tea and counting my blessings.  And on this sunny, bird-filled day, I gently remind you to stop and do the same.

I'm loving the new job (well, one of them) and the people with whom I work are committed and focused.  It's an adventure going into Boston every day for the first time in fourteen years, and it's quite nice to watch the savings account grow just a little once every two weeks.  The learning curve, however, has become a lesson in humility.  My aged brain, while amazing in its ability to remember many many new names, is showing some wear and tear when I try to figure out the accounting system.  Or to put it another way, the people in the Accounts Payable Department are wondering if I am on drugs.  There's this spreadsheet, you see, with too many columns and codes and numbers and stuff.  There was a one hour conference call with the director of AP who just couldn't take it any more and had to try to pound it into my head herself.  And then there was the royal mess I made of it, which had me feeling inadequate as I pondered it at three o'clock this morning.
If I were my own best friend (which I usually don't manage to be) I would tell myself that I've only been there six weeks, that I should cut myself some slack, that it will come.  In my more enlightened moments I realize that while people are trying to learn to walk with one leg, and others are wondering where their next meal will come from, my feelings of inadequacy are rather small potatoes.  Still, one worries:  "Is it because I'm getting old and my brain can't hold any more?"  There might be something in that.  Or it could be lack of sleep.  I'll get it.  I'll make myself get it.  But it bothers me that I make mistakes that others can see.  Wouldn't you think after six decades I would have figured out how ridiculous THAT is?

Nothing ever turns out quite the way you expect it to.  For all my complaining about the Twenty First Century, it was a cell phone text message that restored my ability to breathe normally, and Facebook that allowed me to reassure my friends and family, who know that the Boston Marathon is my husband's "thing".  My husband is safe, but other people's loved ones are not.  There's an eight year old boy dead, and although I'm hoping it's a rumor, I heard that his younger sister lost a leg in the explosion.  There are all sorts of stories circulating, and as usual, some are fact and some are fiction.

There's a lot of flag waving and saber rattling, and of course the ridiculous Westboro Baptist Church has threatened to picket the funerals of the Boston Marathon Massacre victims, but really they bore me and who the hell cares?  There is a weariness in the air.  We've been through this too many times already.  We're getting used to chaos.

The closest I came to tears was when I heard that the Yankees were going to play "Sweet Caroline" at their game tonight, the signature song of the Boston Red Sox.  It won't help anyone, but it was such a sweet gesture that it moved me.  I was hoping they wouldn't get a chance to pay us back for having been equally nice to them after September 11.  But I guess the world is in such a state that at one point or another we're all going to have to learn to be compassionate and caring towards our "enemies" at least for a little while.  Then we'll forget and go back to the Yankees hating the Red Sox and the Red Sox hating the Yankees and I'll probably feel a little better then, because THAT at least is normal.  This quiet sadness is not.

I find the period after a "hit" physically exhausting.  Going to the boutique and pasting on the happy face as I deal with ladies buying clothes I couldn't begin to afford and which they don't need serves to distract me, but doesn't begin to deal with the issues.  I want a bit of quiet, but that doesn't seem to be on the schedule.

It has occurred to me that I need to start cultivating younger friends or I'm going to run out.  Since I was a child I have always gravitated towards "wisdom figures".  I wept bitterly on the last day of school from the third grade right through high school.  My teachers were my first real guides and friends.  After school I would sometimes stop by for a cup of tea and then work in the garden.  While I was in college I was the weekly housekeeper for my retired eighth grade English teacher, and we remained friends until I was well into my thirties when she passed away. 

My first priest friend fell into my life when I had surgery at the age of thirteen and hit it off with the hospital chaplain.  Since then I have met and added to my list of "inner circle friends" a number of priests.  I'm not sure why.  It's not a plan.  If there's someone in a sweatshirt and jeans at a party and we have a wonderful time talking about important things, at least six times out of ten I'll find out he's been ordained.  I guess I see the human being behind the Roman collar, and treat him accordingly.  And sometimes very irreverently, which we all need once in a while to keep our feet tethered to Earth.  My husband considers the clergy part of my dowry, and he and my children have become the family that some of these men never had.  It's "win, win" until you get to today when one of them leaves and then everyone is reeling in pain. I suppose that's true any time you open your heart wide to let someone into the inner circle.  The pain is in proportion to the depth of the joy received. And over the years this family has been blessed with great joy.

There's been another tear in the tapestry of my life.  Canon Webb (aka "Uncle Jim" around here) slipped away quietly in his sleep on Sunday night after dedicating the new chapel in Saint David's Church in Mold, Wales.  Since my boys were tiny (indeed, before they were born), we would spend our summer holidays at the presbytery, using it as a launching place for exploring castles.  Every Saturday at 7:30 either I would call him or he would call me and we would catch up on the week.  There was never a birthday, Fourth of July, or Christmas that the phone didn't ring with a greeting.  We were family by choice, which, as I maintain, is the best kind of family to be. 

Scary at first, his Cambridge University accent, hard acquired after a childhood rife with poverty, could prove off-putting.  Then he would say something outrageous like, "One found that very amusing.  We laughed so hard the tears of mirth ran down our leg," and after doing a double-take to confirm that I'd heard what I thought I'd heard, we'd howl.  He introduced us to the phrase "tickety-boo" for use when things were just lovely.  The first time I saw the town of Mold I commented that it was much larger than I'd imagined it.  He replied, "Yes, but even in one's moments of most diminished sobriety, one would never mistake it for midtown Manhattan."

He was the friend of my high school history teacher, Rosemary, and I'd known him almost twenty years before we became friends.  She passed away two months after my wedding, and when he came to town to collect his things which he'd left on various visits, we mourned her death together and sealed a friendship that will last forever.  Himself and I named our second son after him, which delighted Uncle Jim.  My friends are carefully chosen and fiercely and permanently loved.  To take a third major hit in six months has been difficult.  I haven't seen him face to face since 2007, what with college tuitions and airfare costing what they do, but the bond has never faltered.  His face, intentionally stern and unsmiling, sits atop the piano and keeps me company.

Jim's funeral will be on Saint David's Day, which is Wales' equivalent of Ireland's Saint Patrick's Day.  He'll miss the field of daffodils which should be in full bloom in his garden by then.  But not a thousandth as much as we'll miss him.  Sleep well, my dear, dear friend.  And save me a good seat.

I have heard that when you have a child, you have decided to go through the rest of your life with your heart on the outside of your body.  The vulnerability to which we subject ourselves by loving someone so intensely is hardly disputable, but I never realized until Sunday how painful it could be.  Poor Son Number Two was just trying to get back to school in time for second semester of freshman year, when weather and bad airline connections stranded him alone in Philadelphia overnight without his luggage.  Thank goodness the boys had talked me into adding texting to their cell phones.  With Mom on hold with her cell phone, Dad on hold on the house phone, and both of us scrambling on our computers, we were able to book him on a flight the next day but not until 1:45 in the afternoon, more than 25 hours after his planned arrival.  We talked him down off the ledge via long distance, directed him to Travelers' Aid and a hotel room for the night, and gave suggestions on how best to position himself for standby possibilities for the 7:30AM flight instead.  It involved his getting up at 5:00AM, but he managed, and at 11:30AM I got the text that he was in his classroom and his professor's French accent was not bad at all.

We had taken him to the airport in ample time, hugged and cried and done all the things we'd promised we wouldn't do (OK...I did.  Himself was a rock!) and still it didn't turn out well.  Once again I was forced to accept that there are things in the Universe about which I can do nothing.  So I did what I always do in such cases.  I sent a "knee-mail" to God.  At 5:00AM, when my younger son was getting up alone in a strange city, I was talking to the Boss, turning him over with faith that he would be protected.  In less time than it should have taken my baby to get to the airport in Philly, I got a text from him that he had his boarding pass for the 7:30 flight.

I'll learn how to do the long distance college thing eventually.  I hate having my "baby" so far away, and it may involve sending him back to school before he actually has to be there.  He learned that he can cope in a crisis (even without a toothbrush) and I learned that he can cope in a crisis (even without me) and those were two important lessons.  Now where's the sherry?  I'm a wreck!

I don't like being the grownup.  The decisions we are stuck making just aren't fair.  Today I signed the form that stops my mother's feeding tube.  She is in the later stages of Alzheimer's and her body is forgetting how to swallow, so even the pureed mush she's been getting for the past year can't make it down her throat, and last night the food from the tube made her violently ill.  At 89 it's time to throw in the towel.

She spent most of the day sleeping, but when she woke she was cheerful and glad to see us (whoever she thought we were).  I'd like to think she recognized me and my sisters and their families, although I'm not really sure.  But I sat next to her bed for six hours knitting a totally unnecessary and poorly-executed scarf for my son, and as I knitted I had a lot of time to think.  I remembered her sleeping across the foot of my bed when I was seven and had the measles.  I remembered her throwing her fake fur coat over my bed in the winter because we didn't have central heating until I was fourteen.  I remembered her dealing with the deaths of her two sons and her firstborn grandchild and her husband. I watched her cope with legal blindness for the last twenty years.  This is a strong woman.  It was so hard to realize that she's been strong for long enough.  It is selfish for me to wish to prolong her time with us.

Is anyone ready to let go of a mother, regardless of age?  I am lucky to have had her for so long, I know, with all her quirky ways.  Death could come in a day or maybe a week, but it's coming, and I am leaning on all my faith to face it.  And unlike Dylan Thomas with his father, I pray that she will "go gentle into that good night."

Oh dear.  Back in the emotional sludge. The lack of sunshine isn't helping my already dour mood, I'm afraid.  Sometimes it is just all too much.  There's not much to do except lash oneself to the mast and ride out the storm.  The squeeze of being between the generations is one of the hardest challenges facing the Baby Boomers.  Our parents need us desperately, yet so do our children, and somewhere in there we are supposed to take care of ourselves, but that seems to get pushed off to last on the list.  If it makes the list at all.

I'm trying to keep a sense of humor through everything that is going on, but it gets harder and harder.  I feel inadequate to every task.  A patch job is the best that I can manage at the moment, and it feels as if I'm trying to put pantyhose on an octopus.  Just when I think I have things covered, something pops out somewhere else.  Is Thanksgiving REALLY less than two weeks away?  I can't wait to hug my children, but I'm already dreading putting my younger son back on the plane on the Sunday after the holiday.  That's just dumb.  Tonight I get to take care of my mother-in-law for a few hours on my own while Himself and his brother-in-law take Dad out for a Veterans' Day dinner.  It's a lovely idea, but I'm not sure I'm equal to the task.  It involves walking in circles for hours on end.  She never naps, watches television, or sits except to eat.  While feeling very sorry for her, I also wind up feeling sorry for myself and praying that I never get to that point.  Everything feels sad.

The bright side is that I feel a poem forming.  When the hurt gets to the point of bursting it usually comes out in the form of words, and the sharper the pain the brighter the images.  Everyone has his/her bag of rocks to carry.  I'll get through.  Humor, faith, and poetry in no particular order.  What a mighty arsenal!

Nothing has changed.  There are still daily trips to the nursing home to see my mother, and every evening when he comes home from work Himself and I drive eight miles to make dinner for his mother who is also suffering from dementia, and whom his dad insisted on bringing home.  Flanagan remains dead.  I remain unemployed.  The boys' rooms are still empty while they cram their heads and souls with high-priced knowledge.  The air-conditioners are still in the windows as Hurricane Sandy approaches.  I haven't been to Weight Watchers in three weeks. Christmas is less than two months away.  Why, then, did I wake this morning with such a peaceful heart?  The weight which was crushing my spirit just a few days ago has been lightened and I can only think of one explanation.  Somebody out there is praying for me.

In polite society we're not supposed to talk about religion, politics, or sex.  Well everyone seems to be blithely violating the second tabu with a vengeance, so I'm not uncomfortable with shattering the first.  For those of you who don't believe in the power of prayer, I'm sorry.  It happens to be real, however, so for today you will have to cope.  Or skip this blog.  I can tell when someone is praying for me.  And if you get quiet enough, a difficult thing to do in a world like this, you will feel it when someone prays for you.  So whether Romney or Obama wins, we'll be fine.  And something about Dear Flanagan's passing has moved me from "believing" that our spirits don't die to absolutely "knowing" it, although I couldn't tell you why.

I don't believe in fairy tale endings.  Life is probably holding another nasty ace or two up its sleeve, maybe as soon as today, so whoever you are (and I suspect there is more than one) please keep those prayers coming. They make a difference.  I feel them.  And I need them.  We all need them.  I'm sending mine up for you as you read this.  Thank you.

Some days it takes a Herculean act of courage just to put one foot in front of the other.  The forces of the universe just seem to conspire and almost everything that can go wrong does go wrong.  Notice I said "almost" because I don't like to challenge God.  S/He can have a quirky sense of humor when challenged.  I know it can always get worse, but could a girl catch a break here?

You know the days.  You're paralyzed with how much there is to do, so you get nothing done.  You try to hold your feet to the flame to tackle the one project against which your soul shrieks and find yourself gasping for air.  The Stress Monkey sneaks up behind you and gets you in the dreaded choke-hold until you run for the front door, car keys in hand, on the way to anywhere.  Just OUT.  I'm having one of those.

The sun is shining.  The meeting at the nursing home this morning about my mother's condition was predictable and pleasant enough.  I know what I'm cooking tonight for my in-laws.  I have a piano lesson at one.  Why do I want to scream?  Panic is setting in about finding a job at my advanced age.  I'm missing my sons with a white hot fury.  I'm surrounded by well-loved but utterly depressing women nearing the end of their lives and well past the end of their trolley tracks.  The clutter in my house is an accurate symbol of the clutter in my soul.  And I'm missing many too many friends.

It's sad not to know what you want to be when you grow up when you're over 60.  I feel all this potential and I'm terrified that if I pick the wrong thing I will blow my last chance at  finding out what I can really do and who I really am.  Writer?  Administrator?  Singer?  Speaker?  All of those and more, but how does that translate into a position someone would pay for?  So while I ponder these very serious and scary questions, and before the Stress Monkey chases me out the door again, I guess I'd better start the vacuum.  Because on days like this it's important to see that you've accomplished something.

It's always a mistake to wait until the end of the day to write.  In the  morning my intentions are so good, and the day is so full of promise.  There are a million plans waiting to be executed, each one sure to make a difference in how I feel about the world and myself.  By the time dusk starts to creep in I realize that I've blown it again.  I didn't run.  Heck, I didn't walk.  I didn't get as much laundry done and put away as I'd hoped.  I didn't send out enough resumes to find the perfect job.  The list goes on and on.

There were things I did do, of course.  I played chauffeur for my college son.  We went to visit my mother and fed her lunch to her, bite by unappetizing bite.  We went to Town Hall to get a flu shot (which apparently isn't offered until next week....I really should start reading signs), and we got Himself's car to the shop so that it no longer sounds like a Sherman tank as it zooms down the highway.  The list isn't nearly as impressive as I would like it.  There is time to get something else done, of course.  Another load of laundry, dinner, the Board of Directors meeting for my theater group.  Mostly I would like a nap, but the likelihood of that is dwindling fast.

So, like most of the human race, I fall a bit short of my target pretty much every day.  At least I still have a target most days.  And tomorrow morning, assuming I am granted another day (which most of us blithely take for granted, but I've learned better), I'll give it another shot.  Maybe that's what matters most.  That we don't just shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's just the way it goes," because I am not ready to settle for that.  Are you?

Nursing homes really are not funny places.  I should know.  I'm visiting one an average of five days a week to see my dear Mom who is 89, wheelchair bound and dealing with Alzheimer's.  But why is it that I so often want to write a sit com for some brave network about the residents?

All of my mother's neighbors have their "quirks".  There is the one who puts her makeup on with a shovel and flirts with everyone.  There is the one whose dentures really need adjusting and who sends her teeth flying when she gets yelling, which is fairly often.  There is the debonaire guy with severe arthritis who rolls out to the nurses' station every day at the same time to get his two cigarettes which he then takes down in the elevator so he can smoke them in peace outside.  There is the guy who does amazing bird calls....all. day. long.  And then there's Snoopy.  That's not her real name.  I won't tell you her real name.  But you've probably met her.  She hangs on every conversation, especially the ones in which she is not a participant.  From another table she will chime in with her two cents on any subject.  She asks unbelievably personal questions, and is guaranteed to make at least one very unwelcome personal observation in the course of a week.  "Geez, you've packed on a few pounds," she will tell you, whether it's true or not.  "Your mother's hair is getting thin.  It's the medicine," she kindly offers, even though Mother could probably have lived without the information.  It goes on and on.  The nurses have moved her to another table for meal times.  It's not for my mother's sake.  It's for mine.  And for Snoopy's safety.  Because one of these days I'm going over the table and strangling her.  I'll just snap.  I can feel it coming.

I realize that she can't help it and that she is bored out of her mind by sitting in the same place all the time.  I do know that I represent "the outside world" and that she is starving for conversation and company.  Sometimes I even try polite chit chat with her, because I'm not a monster.  I have a heart.  The foibles and weaknesses of all the other residents I view with patience and compassion.  The nearest I can figure out is that she represents all the traits I see in myself which I like least.  And if nothing else, she does help to keep me humble.  Because for all my smugness about what a wonderful daughter I am, I am truly ashamed of how often I dream about hitting this poor old lady right in the smacker with a large cream pie.

I could tell you I'm not sulking today, but chances are you wouldn't believe me.  You're no fool.  Rejection is not easy for anyone to deal with at any age, in any field.  Whether it's in work, love, or writing, being told that you just don't quite make the grade "stinks on toast with a twist", as my friend Maggie used to say.  I had the shopping spree planned for the new wardrobe!  And it was going to be really cute.  Sigh.  Back to the drawing board.

What is interesting and heartening is the support that has been springing up from unexpected sources.  Friends on Facebook have been wonderful, of course, but I have been getting phone calls, offers of lunch, and (my favorite) a comment on this page from someone I've never met.  People are basically very kind and caring.  Don't believe what you read in the papers (or see in the Vice Presidential debates).  The fundamental purpose of life (at least according to me) is to help one another get through the tough bits, holding hands like kindergarteners on a field trip, until we get to the end.  If somebody falls, you pick them up.  And as long as we don't all have our breakdowns on the same day, this system works pretty well.  A friend of mine who recently lost her wonderful husband much too soon, and whom I've been trying to encourage and comfort, sent me an e-mail last night that said, "You may not have 'a job' but you are certainly doing important work," and I was very moved by that .  It is more important than getting a particular job.  Still, there are those pesky tuitions that need to be paid, so I suppose I'd better stop sucking my thumb and get back to work figuring out what I want to be when I grow up ...as if!...and sending out resumes.

To all the kind people who are sending love and prayers my way, I feel them.  And when you fall down on our "field trip", I'll be there for you, too, with an outstretched hand.

Did you miss me yesterday?  I missed you!  And why?  Because someone somewhere cut a fiber optic cable and there was no internet from 9 o'clock yesterday morning until sometime in the wee hours of this morning.  You know the kind of panic THAT sort of thing engenders.  When did I become such a cyborg that I cannot take a deep breath without checking Facebook, or comments to this blog, or the weather once an hour?  At what point did my cell phone become the equivalent of a pacemaker, so that I have anxiety attacks when I realize I've left the house without it?  This is just silly.

As I lay awake this morning I pondered these and other weighty issues.  How many years have these electronic invaders been running my life?  What did we all do in the days when we relied on the telephone and GASP! the hand-written note to communicate?  Remember when it took effort to keep in touch, so we only kept in touch with the people we actually cared two hoots about?  If I remembered your birthday it was because I wrote it on my calendar in ink, and at the end of the year I transferred it onto my new calendar because you were a person who mattered in my life, not because a pink wrapped box popped up in the top right screen to tell me today was your big day.  Well, here's a bulletin:  I still write it in ink on my calendar, because you do, indeed, matter.  Oh, I send out a "HBTY" to acquaintances, but the friends who go back (and I am grateful that there are so many of you) know who you are.  I don't need a reminder.

My sons were worried about "missing their high school friends" when they went off to college.  Hah!  They play video games with one another across the country.  They chat face-to-face on a regular basis, and get constant updates on every trivial event.  And it requires zero strain on their part.  I think they're missing out on something.  The effort is part of the gift of friendship.

Don't get me wrong.  I love being able to catch up with so many more people than I used to, and I can't tell you how much I miss my almost daily e-mails from my Dear Friend Flanagan.  But at some level of my soul I was calmer yesterday.  I worked on the extremely imperfect scarf I'm knitting for Son Number One in his school colors.  I played the piano.  I read.  It was a mini-vacation.  Perhaps it's one I should take voluntarily more often.

I've heard about the "sandwich generation" who are torn between taking care of elderly parents and taking care of their children, but I haven't felt the intense pressure of it until now.  My mother is 89 and has Alzheimer's.  I won't say she "suffers from it" because for the first time since 1967 she seems at peace and charming.  That was the year my older brother died in a car accident after returning from Viet Nam with a Purple Heart, and my mother hated the world and everyone in it until she had a fall in her bedroom almost two years ago and broke her hip.  I don't know who this new lady is, but she is much easier to deal with.

I try to get to the nursing home about five to six days a week and I always come at meal time.  There is nothing to discuss besides food and how sleepy she is.  She calls me a "Deah"  and a "Dahlin" (this is Boston, after all) and some days I think she knows I'm her youngest daughter, but most days I think she thinks I'm a REALLY attentive aide.  "Why are you so good to me?" she asks at least twice a week.  "Because you're my Mama and I'm your baby girl!" I reply.  The answer is usually, "Well, I'll be damned!"

Watching her fade away a little at a time is strange.  I still have my mother, but I don't.  There has to be a bubble of protection around me when I visit or the sadness will crush me like a bug.  She had her hip repaired, but has been in a wheelchair since January of 2011 because she's too afraid of falling.  She has gone from regular meals to ground food, to puree.  I ask sweetly which lump she'd like to taste first, the green one, the beige one, or the white one?  Sometimes there's gravy.  None of it looks appealing.  She takes a mouse-sized nibble of each and then announces that she's full.  She has been on a gastric feeding tube overnight for a long time.  The coughing is starting, even though I always remember to put the thickener in her coffee.  She always wants her coffee.  They tell me that once she forgets how to swallow (and it's coming) they will rely on the gastric tube for all her nutrition, and then eventually her body won't be able to process that either.

Knowing what to pray for is getting more difficult.  I feel guilty if I want the end to come more quickly.  Part of me really doesn't want to be an orphan, even if I am 60.  But she doesn't participate in the music, or the "activities", because she is legally blind along with everything else. It doesn't seem fair to pray that she hang on for this life.  The next one is bound to be an improvement and she deserves the rest.  For the moment, I'm glad that she is not in pain, either physical or emotional, and that she has no clue that she is in a nursing home.  Because if she ever figured it out it would kill us both.

Tomorrow I will do something I haven't done since Jimmy Carter was President of the United States.  No, not "wash the kitchen floor," although that was a good guess and I can see where you might come up with it.  I am going on a job interview.  That's right;  after sending out fifty resumes and pleading cover letters, I got a call.  Actually, I got two calls, one for next Tuesday.  The interesting thing is that they are in two completely different fields.  This is the time in life where I get to re-invent myself.

For thirteen years I've been juggling piano and violin lessons, soccer tournaments, karate classes, and basketball, not to mention the gruelling schedule of the high school musical (both my boys love the stage and they're both great).  But the nature of work has changed significantly since I left the wacky world of local television.  There is no such thing as videotape anymore.  Everything has gone digital.  I don't want to go back to television anyway.  But since I had been in "the biz" for 22 years, everything from finding leads to how to write one's resume has changed.

I took a course on interviewing.  There is a wonderful non-profit group in the Boston area called "One Life At A Time" which helps people who are re-entering the workforce to catch up with what the world has been doing while they've been elsewhere.  I re-wrote several forms of my resume, I did mock interviews which were recorded and critiqued, and I learned the culture of searching on-line for job openings.  A dear friend of mine even gave me a three-piece suit for my birthday so that I could look professional on interviews.  Luckily, it will be ready at the tailor's today.  I told you I was short.

Now all I have to do is figure out what I want to be when I grow up.  Substitute teacher?  Concierge?  Town official?  Office administrator?  Writer?  Voice Over actress?  The number of possibilities before me is almost enough to paralyze me.  Another one of the gifts from my dear friend, Flanagan, is the sudden realization that I don't have all the time in the world to live my life.  None of us knows how long he has.  So I'll dust off my sensible shoes and go see what the world has to offer me and try to make them realize that I am just the right fit for whatever it is.  Because once they meet me they have to love me...who wouldn't, right?  But it's tough to get your foot in that door.

I'm off to research the companies I'll interview with (that's very important, I'm told).  But first I think I'll go wash the kitchen floor, because you were right.  It really is time.

I don't indulge myself all that often.  I went through the entire summer with embarrassing toes peeping through my sandals, but yesterday I so needed a little pampering.  So while Himself was at work and after visiting my mother at the nursing home and trying to spoon in her lunch (whatever it was) I decided to go for it.  The immediate result was toenails that are a deep rose and look rather fashionable with my black sandals.  It was the feeling surrounding it that took me by surprise.

Like most women of my generation, I have  habit of putting myself last on the "to do" list.  The family comes first.  Himself, and the two boys, my mother, my mother-in-law, the local church, whatever.  They all seem to get my attention long before I do.  So when I actually got around to sitting down in the big chair with the massaging rollers making their way up and down my back and having the sweet Vietnamese teenager gently massage and tend to my feet I was a little surprised to find myself in tears.  You'd think it would be a pleasant experience, wouldn't you?  And you'd be right.  Except I realized that I'd been traveling at warp factor six away from the things that were bothering me.  I tended to them.  I took care of them.  I just didn't think about them.  When I stopped for a moment there was a massive highway pile up of stress.  I'm nervous about finding a new job.  I miss my two sons who are away at fabulous (expensive) schools.  I'm not nuts about watching my mother fade like a picture left on a windowsill too long.  And Flanagan went and died on me without saying "See ya!", the jerk! There's a lot going on and I need some tender attention from myself.  Flanagan always admonished me to "put my own oxygen mask on first" so I could take care of everyone else and I always waved away the suggestion with a "yeah, yeah, I know", but the truth is I need someone to remind me because I forget.  We all need to take care of ourselves first. 

And how are YOU doing on that score?  I have rose-colored toenails.  It's a start.