LifePundit

It's Safe to Come Out Now

It's safe to come out now. Christmas is over. (Why do cats always hide under the tree? This is Izzie, the indoor cat. Pretend you can't see her, just in the spirit of the season.)

I loved every minute and hope you did, too. So much love. So much food. So much music. So much chocolate. God is good. (Theologically speaking, God would still be good even if he hadn't created chocolate, but the fact that he did tells us a lot about him.)

Here's Paul (my husband) with two treasures from his stocking. A pocket knife, which should go a long way toward helping him to become a Good Old Boy (he's a Yankee). And a potato, which I reminded him should be worn in the front of his pants, not the back.

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Actually, the potato is a different kind of addition to his manly arsenal. It's for the potato guns that Santa brought to each of them. Here they are in action. The smoke in the background is the smoking turkey, which Paul did and it was delicious. Plus we all get to smell like pioneers for a few days.

Santa (Lily) even picked out something special for Parker, the dog. He got a too realistic looking stuffed turkey and frolicked with it in the yard for hours, tail exuberantly wagging.

I even got chocolate in my stocking. Somebody really does love me.

My mother-in-law behaved, and I was full enough of goodwill to pretend I didn't hear everything she said or otherwise this post would be a rant. Easily triggered these days. Lily has a bad cold, so she could disappear at will and say she was resting. Paul had the turkey to tend to. And I had everything else, so I could be as busy as I needed to be. My father-in-law stayed in the kitchen with me and we had a nice visit.

I excused myself after dessert and went to see my mother, who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's. I found her dressed in a silky shirt and in a medical chair in the dayroom with the other residents. She looked good and was awake. "I'm Anne, your daughter," I said as I kissed her. She kissed me back. I could tell I may as well have announced that I was a seagull in from the coast.

"My daughter and son were already here," she said. I'm her only daughter. Somebody is showing up and I'm getting credit, for which I'm always grateful.

"I'm glad you had visitors. Here's a little Christmas something for you," I said, giving her a small but gaudily wrapped gift. My personal theory is that older eyes are weak and that bright colors are stimulating. (Just look at how some of them dress, if you don't believe me.)

"That's beautiful," she said, glowing. "I like all presents."

We literally talked nonsense, but she knew that someone who loved her was there and she was glad for the company. I rubbed her arm for a while in silence. In all likelihood, this is her last Christmas. I felt like it should feel important, moving, filled with meaning and symbols. Maybe it was. My mother was smiling for me, even if she didn't know who I was. I left and listened to beautiful music all the long drive home.

Lily and Paul were waiting for me. They knew who I was, and they were smiling anyway.

Christmas is wonderful. More wonderful still is when you are back home where you belong, with nothing left to do but love and be loved.

A Christmas Meme

Thanks, Sassy, for tagging me for a Christmas meme -- my first:

1. When people say “Christmas” you immediately think….

Depends on whether it’s October and I’m standing in Target noticing the Christmas displays (in which case it’s a stream of non-spoken profanity), or it’s the beginning of December and I’m feeling depressed and wanting to run away from home until it’s over, or it’s Christmas Eve and I’m all set and can’t wait to hear the church service start with, “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” It gives me chills and fills me with awe.

2. Favorite Christmas memory: I have so many. Probably one of the best was seeing my father, who was in his 60s at the time, ride around the neighborhood in his pajamas and bathrobe on the new bicycle my mother had given him on Christmas Day. (One of the worst was having my mother-in-law tell me I hadn’t peeled the potatoes correctly – a family tradition known as “The Potato Torture” – or making another guest, who happened to be Jewish (what does he think Christmas is about after this?) re-wash the crystal because it had water spots – or having to clean her bathrooms after Christmas dinner while others vacuumed and did other housecleaning jobs. We had to get take-out Chinese for supper because she threw out all the Christmas dinner leftovers because she didn’t like them cluttering up her refrigerator. I’m sure there are meds for this but we’ve found no way to get them in her system legally.)

3. Favorite Christmas song or carol: Old, old carols, usually by Anonymous. I love the “Lu-lay my little tiny child” one. I probably know all of them. When Lily couldn’t sleep as a baby (and older), I didn’t know lullabies but I knew Christmas carols so I sang them to her. She knows most of the verses, even some of the ones where I made up the words. (Lucky her.) By the way, I’m not a good singer. But I lift up my voice and make a joyful noise. Surely that gives God some pleasure. It’s sure fun for me.

4. Favorite Christmas movie: “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

5. Favorite Christmas character: Jesus, then Mary. Imagine being in her shoes?

6. Favorite Christmas ornament or object: A stuffed but plastic-headed Santa Claus my parents gave me as a child. He’s got a white beard (plastic) and yellow plastic hair like a baby.

7. Plans for this Christmas: A wonderful time with my husband (who is hysterical) and daughter and animals, then an easy but delicious Christmas dinner (husband smoking the turkey) and my in-laws are coming over, then I’m leaving to go to the nursing home to sit with my mother.

8. Is Christmas your favorite holiday? Yes. Even though I have a love-hate feeling about it. It’s all too much. You’re supposed to be really happy and it’s all supposed to be wonderful, but that’s rare. Jesus’ life was filled with pain and suffering at times, and we need to just be “real,” like he was, rather than guilty when we can’t make our celebration measure up to past years or our dreams.

This year is the first without one of my favorite people, who died a few months ago. My mother is fading away, as is my father. There is both sorrow and joy at this season, and we need to feel free to acknowledge both.

I'm tagging:

Angry Buttons
Enola
Doug
Groovyoldlady

There's Always Something to Complain About

When the weather's been gorgeous all week (it will be in the 70s today), what do you do? Enjoy this nice little weather gift, or complain about it?

If you're my mother-in-law, you complain about it. (If you're my mother-in-law, complaining is your hobby and one you're darn good at.)

"This weather is just scorching. I'm so sick of it. I do wish I could escape to the North," she e-mailed me today. They moved down here partly because they didn't like the cold weather.

It was in the low 80s for several days and is now in the 70s. This is not scorching. They are having blizzard predictions for Boston over the weekend. Winter -- which means weather in the 50s -- will return next week.

I wish she could escape North, too. I resisted the urge to write her and suggest that she fulfill her wish.

I've really got to get a handle on dealing with this Most Difficult Person. Because you see, I'm turning into her. She complains all the time. And now I complain all the time about her complaining all the time.

Christmas Resolutions

I feel the dread of Christmas future. Christmas 2007. If I'm going to survive, I need to make some Christmas Resolutions.

We all know about New Year's Resolutions. We don't think about Christmas Resolutions. I think if we made Christmas Resolutions, we'd have a lot easier time come New Year's.

For one thing, we'd have fewer pounds to lose and fewer money troubles.

I realized the other night that I wish that I could just skip Christmas. It used to be my most joyous time of the year. Now I fake it for Lily's sake. I need to rediscover the joy of Christmas, because the celebration of my Savior's birth ought not to be something I dread.

This isn't going to be an essay about what's gone wrong with Christmas. There are things that can't be helped -- such as my parents' sad state of health or the pain of my mother-in-law's demands and manipulations (Boundaries, boundaries). But there are things that can be helped -- such as my attitude and my ability to say "yes" or "no."

I'm sure you have your own list of how you'd like Christmas to be different. Guess what! It can be. It's a decision you're allowed to make.

So I'm going to write down my Christmas Resolutions and carry them with me. I'm going to re-read them before I go into a store or any other stressful situation. (Yes, I find Christmas shopping stressful.) Why don't you do the same?

Here's my start:

1. Hallelujah! Jesus is born. You don't need to buy a thing.
2. Who are you trying to please? Remember that while Martha was busy cooking and fussing over the meal, Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet, enjoying the presence of her Lord. Be Mary, not Martha.
3. Food is available all year round. You can probably go to a Christmas party and have about three special things and be just as happy as if you ate the whole round of melted Brie with yummy stuff on top. Eat something healthy before you go to parties so that you won't be hungry and out of control. Find ways to celebrate other than food and drink. Like smiling and listening to carols and catching up with friends.
4. Cook everybody's favorite food for Christmas dinner. If it doesn't look like Martha Stewart's table, that's fine. Spaghetti goes fine with lobster and lobster goes fine with sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Honest.
5. Give what you can to the people who need it. I think I'll find an angel tree and buy some gifts for children of prisoners.
6. Don't spend more than you can, but don't be a scrooge. Have fun picking out toys for the children in your life. If you get lost and realize you're veering into buying some junky toy because you don't know what to do, get a gift certificate. Personal gifts are better but not worth going crazy over.
7. Send cards to friends you seldom see. It's a good time to stay in touch. If I see you on a semi-regular basis, don't look for a card from me.
8. Lower your expectations for yourself and everybody else.
9. Put on Christmas carols, get out the hot chocolate and have a fun time with your family decorating the house. This is not a contest. Do as much or as little as you want. Take pictures and look at old albums.
10. Go to church every Sunday. Keep focused on the reason.
11. Do something special for people who are alone or have suffered a loss in the past year.
    
12. Catch your child's cheer and spread it to your spouse.
13. If you have difficult people forced on you, welcome them but don't let them disturb your peace and joy. Deflect, set boundaries and take a walk if you need to. In fact, it is a possibility that extremely difficult people can celebrate elsewhere. If you're not going to make them happy and they contribute nothing (or worse) to the household's joy, what's the point? Remember that that is always an option. Being a Christian does not mean you are a doormat. Especially if you've been a doormat for a long, long, long time and you are still not pleasing them and they are still not contributing joy.

I'm sorry about that last one. I'm going to think and pray on that some more, and if Paul really wants to have these people, we'll have them. Playing Christmas carols really loudly ought to solve a lot of the problems. The dog may need a lot of walking, too. That really is okay. It's not up to me to make unhappy people happy. In fact, I don't have the ability. I may just leave and go to the nursing home and be with people I really can make happy. Truly, deeply happy. Just by showing up with a smile.

This list is off the top of my head. What's on your list? I'll bet you have ideas I can use.

I Would Go Crazy but I Don't Have the Time

Life is giving me whiplash this week. I received word that Mama has quit eating (typical of the end stages of Alzheimer's) and they're bringing in hospice. That same day, I had to give lessons to someone young and wonderful on how to use feminine products that require the ability to aim. If you have to ask, just forget about it.

Today I had to take Lily to the dermatologist for microdermabrasion. I sure hope it helps. They keep putting her on stronger and stronger medicine. Acne is expensive! Her beautiful face is looking better and she is encouraged.

I did get a mid-day lift: a voicemail from Paul telling me how much he's looking forward to spending the weekend with me.

I talked to my father, who is back in assisted living but mad because he's lost his cell phone, they haven't delivered his oxygen, and why haven't I gone to his garden to pick the curly mustard and the turnips, which will ruin soon?

When I got home, I had two voicemail messages from my MIL. The first was an offer to take care of Lily when my father dies. (!!!) It was all about my father in the past tense, and it was well-intentioned, bless her heart. Then there was the second message from my MIL saying she was sorry, she had the wrong decrepit parent, but that the same things apply when my mother dies since my MIL misunderstood who was doing the dying this week. (Her language was much more euphemistic but that's what it meant. And I do give her credit for offering to help, though generally her help involves a lot of "isn't this just awful for you?" statements.)

By the way, I'm not expecting anybody to pass away anytime soon. They just continue to decline slowly, and some days it feels like I'm going with them.

I've been exercising more (great for stress) and my feet hurt this morning. (I have formerly broken foot bone and plantar fasciatis, so I have to take good care of my feet.) That means I've worn my shoes out, even though they look fine, so I got a new pair. Wonderful, cushy million-dollar things that feel like I've got clouds on my feet.

Speaking of clouds, on the way home from school Lily told me how much my mother is going to enjoy seeing her family (the deceased ones) and all of Mama's dead pets when she gets to heaven. Lily said, "Grandma will have figured out all the fun things to do by the time you get to heaven, so you will have a whole lot of fun when she shows you. And then you can show me when I get there."

Reasons to Like Halloween

Reasons to Like Halloween:

1. When people come to your house, they're not coming inside (no crisis cleaning needed).
2. Nobody is expecting you to cook a meal.
3. If your in-laws insist on coming over, you can give them a bowl of candy and leave them in the house while you go somewhere, anywhere. Perhaps a goblin will get your MIL.
4. If you have to a wear a costume, you can choose a baggy one and wear a mask if you don't feel like putting it all together. If you've just lost weight and look great, you can dress trashily to show it off and nobody but me will say nasty things about you. I'll talk bad about you from under my Halloween Burqua, but people in burquas are invisible so nobody will pay any attention to me.
5. You can be stupid and buy good chocolate candy, which will call your name all week long and you'll end up having to buy more if you give into temptation (plus you'll have to Trick or Treat in your Burqua), or you can buy non-chocolate candy and wonder why you're eating it when you really don't even like Sour Patch Kids candy all that much. I should've bought candy corn. I will not touch that stuff.
6. Your cobwebs will look like Martha Stewart Halloween decor.
7. Anything broken or needing repair on your porch or house will seem like part of your Halloween scenery.
8. You don't have to watch your husband wrestle the pumpkin into a stand, then realize it is too tall and scrapes the paint off of the ceiling. There's no reason to curse over a pumpkin. (Why I caved in and we have an artificial Christmas tree.)
9. You don't have to send Halloween cards, and if you did, please don't do it again.
10. You don't have to buy anyone presents.
11. The only thing you need to feel guilty over is whatever you ate.
12. Maybe a goblin really will take your MIL.

Coming Tuesday or Wednesday:  The Maco Light.  A real ghost story, and I have seen the lights. Scared me to my tingly toes.

I'm Sure the Walrus Took My Bucket

I'm too pooped after the horseshow yesterday to do anything other than rant about my mother-in-law here. I've written two rants about her latest and deleted them because I don't think they make me or the world a better place. One day I may assemble all of her wacko, rude and unintentionally funny voicemails and post them somewhere. But not today. So I'm going to put up the post from today's smellshorsey instead. I hope, if you don't already know about lolcats and lolrus, you'll get a laugh here. I'm deleting the horse show results part because if you wanted to know about them, you would have already gone to smellshorsey.

But yesterday, like most horse show days, I felt like the lolrus. If you don't know what a lolrus is, thank you. I just found out last week and have been laughing ever since. A lolrus is like a lolcat, and if you don't know what a lolcat is either, thank you. I thought I was the last to know. I just found out last week and am now addicted.

You can read The Complete Walrus Bucket Saga here. (The star walrus/seal died last week, which I'm sure won't stop his search for his bucket.) If this link doesn't first make sense, read this first.

You've probably seen lolcats. I've had them e-mailed to me. Some were immediately funny. Some I didn't get at all. Now that I have been to I Can Has Cheezburger, I Get It! And I think it is Extremely Funny. (It took a while for me to follow what was going on. Click around and you'll figure it out.)

Anyway, back to the horseshow. No, even farther back than that. Let's go back to when Lily joined Pony Club.

Pony Club is a great organization and I wish that Lily could participate fully. The monthly meetings are sometimes a couple of hours from here (you have to trailer your horse to meetings) and the rallies even farther (geographically -- and they take a weekend). The meetings are sometimes too hard to get to for a Sunday afternoon but very valuable if you can make it. I hope one day she can be an active member again. 

Pony Club teaches children (and their parents) how to do things Exactly Right. This requires that you have All the Equipment. For one of Lily's first meetings, they sent a list of the things she needed to bring. Included on this list were FOUR buckets.

Four buckets for one pony? I'd kept two horses here for several years with two buckets. And I suddenly needed four buckets to take one pony to one meeting? What the heck. It's just a couple of buckets, though when you go about needing to have double of what you already have horses can get expensive. So I went to one of my local feed stores to buy two more buckets. I ran into a man there having to buy a lot more stuff for his daughter to take to the Pony Club meeting, which was probably easier for him since he was a bank president.

I picked out pretty blue buckets, very much like the one the lolrus had. We wrote Lily's name on the buckets along with the initials for her Pony Club chapter. Too bad the lolrus didn't have fingers and a paint pen -- he would have had a much better chance of hanging onto his bucket.

For the record, I don't know why Lily needed four buckets. I figure one was for food and one was for water. That's reasonable. She said one of the other buckets was to keep water in in case there was a fire, so she and the other children could keep the barn from burning down. I find this alarming. A 9-year-old armed with a bucket is not a firefighter. I'm not sure anyone knows what the fourth bucket was for. Maybe the lolrus.

These two new blue buckets are our favorites. And it seems that everyone else loves them, too. Because every time I go somewhere and take one of these buckets, somebody takes it.

It has her name written on it. About three inches high. But somebody always takes the bucket.

Mind you, they are not stealing it. Though it is full of water and parked within Buddy's reach as he waits for his classes at horse shows, somebody always thinks it is their bucket. We do a bucket search and rescue at every outing. If Lily's name weren't on it, we would have lost it long ago.

It disappeared TWICE yesterday. So that meant that twice during the show Lily and I were fanning out across the show grounds looking for a blue bucket.

Lolrus, I feel your pain! I has bucket! Somebody taked my bucket!

Lily found it the first time, several trailers over. She dumped the water out of it and brought it back. Whoever had it probably thinks somebody stold their bucket.

The second time it went missing, I found myself following a woman I slightly know as she carried a blue bucket across the show grounds. It's always awkward accosting someone over your bucket. You feel small, petty and suspicious. "Excuse me, is that my bucket? Excuse me, I think you have accidentally stolen my bucket."

You gots mai bucket. I wants it now.

Turns out is was HER bucket. Oops.

Next time I buy buckets, which at the rate these keep disappearing may be soon, they will be a color no one wants. Not a pretty blue. They will be the most ghastly, garish buckets I can find.

We found the bucket. It had gotten mixed up with a riding school's batch of buckets. I didn't leave it out for Buddy anymore. I hid my bucket.

Mai bucket. Keep hans off.