Where you are now

2/8/24

Do you ever think of me where you are now?

Do you miss me like I miss you?

Is it grand where you are 

Sunny days No storms

No crises that must be fixed by you

 

Are there pillows where you are

So you can throw your arms around one

And pretend that you’re holding me

Does the feel of my body live in your eternal mind

Am I as real to you as you are real to me

Where you are now

 

Is it blissful and peaceful where you are now

Do you have all the pencils

And pens and ink you need

Are the streets paved with gold

But gold doesn’t matter

Where you are now

 

Where you are now

Money doesn’t matter

Where you are there is no poverty

I cannot imagine what it’s like where you are

I hope you are happy and free

Where you are now

Animal Appetites

 

I was in my recliner having one of my favorite snacks the other night – potato chips. My orange cat, Brony, jumped up into my lap and sat down, staring at me intently. I’m kind of dense, so it took me a minute to realize that he wanted some of my snack.

I said, okay, but you won’t like it.

I broke off a little corner of chip and let him sniff it. He grabbed it and ate it right up.

Okay.

I broke off another piece – I’m talking about ¼ inch by ¼ inch, and he gobbled that down, too.

He took a few more pieces from me before losing interest, as cats are wont to do, and hopping down.

I was amazed that he liked potato chips. Not at all a cat food, I thought. So I went to Facebook and I posted: “Strictly speaking, I shouldn't know this, but - I have learned this evening that one of my cats likes potato chips.”

It turns out that I know diddly squat about what cats will eat. Many friends commented on my post about what their cats would eat:

 Bill Henley Cats are weird. I once had a cat that loved white bread. She would get in my lap when I was eating a sandwich and steal bites from “her” side.

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Bill Henley I really didn't believe a cat would go for Ruffles, but he sat on my lap staring at me and the chips intently, and I broke off a tiny piece, and he gobbled it down. Surprise!

Larry Burns If I eat anything with cheese in it, my cat Penny comes and demands some. She also likes butter. I should have her cholesterol checked! 8^)

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Larry Burns I had to make sure I didn't leave butter out on the kitchen counter with my last cat. I'd get up in the morning and see those cute little grooved tongue lick marks.

Liz Illg I grew up in a household that purposely left the butter out, in case the cat needed some.

Traepischke Graves-Lalor I had a cat that loved chips. Another that liked tortilla chips, and another that loved…jalepeño bean dip.

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Traepischke Graves-Lalor Maybe cats are not picky about their food. Maybe we don't give them enough variety to choose?

Traepischke Graves-Lalor I don’t know. My gigantic Siamese, Sasquatch, would climb you for avocado. I could never leave them on the counter to ripen because he’d steal them.

Anne Woodward My cat Taco would dive into the grocery bag if there was a cantaloupe in it.

Kasha Banko So does one of mine

Frances Hogan I read a post the other day by someone who showed their cat eating a doughnut. I thought that was weird so I looked it up. Turns out cats can't taste sugar. Also read in The Inner Life of Cats by Thomas McNamee that scientists have found that cats can chemically analyze their food--preferring foods that have the correct fat/protein ratio, even if the food tastes like oranges. Excellent book. Listening to via KCLS audiobook download, Libby.

Suzanne Sinclair I could not leave a cut piece of cantaloupe on the table or counter because my five-toed “tuxedo” cat named Maggie would eat it!

Liz Illg I've had a couple of cats that enjoyed cantaloupe.

Suzanne Sinclair to Liz Illg It surprised me because it wasn’t meat - meat would have been expected! 

Sue Weston I had a cat that was crazy for cantaloupe.

Frances Hogan Jenny-any-dots loved bread crusts. She'd find a loaf of bread and rip it open to get the crust before I knew what was happening. Once, I found her in the cupboard where I hid the bread. The door was closed and she was chowing down on bread.

Delinda Mccann I can just imagine the look she gave you when you opened the door and interrupted her communion with the loaf!

Sarah Colvin You are not alone… pretzels are a hit with all here

Buddy Logan The food item is not unusual, but . . .

My cat never messed with my food. Maybe because she was naturally polite. She would ask for permission before she jumped on my lap. It took very little for her to realize that tabletops and counter tops were off limits, at least when I was around.

I went to visit my friend Judith, where cats have no restrictions and no manners. We sat down to eat some chicken breasts. When I got up for a second to get something, one of her cats jumped on the table and made off with my entire chicken breast.

Mary Litchfield Tuel to Buddy Logan Wow! I've had dogs who pulled that stunt, but never a cat.

Trish Cobbin Macdonald My cat likes all crunchy salty snacks. She will steal them from me whenever she can.

Trylla Thurmond Esherick My dog likes asparagus!

Sonya Norton I had a cat that liked cheddar. In small chunks. She'd snag it with a claw or two and daintily nibble till it was gone. She was an odd one - lifted it to her face rather than holding it down like a mouse.

 

The Gifts of Old Age

 Gather around, children. It’s story time.

Sometimes I worry that I am too happy.

Understand – in my earlier adult years I planned to be a hard charging elder, still singing, still performing, still writing. I thought I’d drop with my guitar on. Just blink out in the middle of a song.

At that time, I had no idea what was ahead – that I’d cruise into my late seventies unable to walk without falling over, having to use a walker, and sometimes, on bad days, a wheelchair.

I’d say I didn’t see breast cancer coming, but I kinda did. I was in shock when that jagged little object showed up in a mammogram, but so many women get breast cancer that I thought it was simply my turn. The experience I had was not a big deal as cancer treatments go, but frankly, in my opinion, cancer treatments tend to be brutal. Even though my treatment was comparatively simple – surgery, radiation, no chemo, and the experience turned out well, still – it changed me. It changed my body. The experience left me tired, and it was almost a year before I emerged from the brain fog the radiation produced. We’ve all heard about “chemo brain.” Radiation brings its own challenges: “radiation brain.” Boy, was I surprised.

I also did not see in my early years that my husband would die so young. He was 68. From the vantage point of 75, that’s young. He’s been gone for almost ten years now. I integrated my grief into my life and have kept living, even though I have often wondered why, when it seemed like my functional life was over and most of my energy was drained by taking care of myself day to day. Once more I was asking the God I believe in, why? Why this?

After wrestling with the conundrum of why I was still living but not being productive, at some point a deep relaxation set in, and I became downright complacent about my non-productiveness.

“I did nothing today, and I’m okay with that.”

 I could not have imagined doing nothing all day when I was young. I was so driven by my need to prove I had worth, to justify taking up room on the planet, to prove I was not lazy, but now I have many days when I hang around the house and read, and play solitaire, and watch British mysteries and comedies and period pieces in the evening.

I talk on the phone with friends and family. A lot of my purpose now – my productiveness, if you will – is listening to people. I have always loved listening to people. I love their stories, and their spirits. I feel like listening to people is the best thing I do these days.

A bonus is that listening keeps me from shooting my mouth off and saying something incredibly stupid. Seriously, I almost always regret saying anything in any public venue. While I’m kicking myself for what I did say, as well as for what I forgot to say, it is exquisite agony. Why did I say that? Why didn’t I say this? Will I ever not feel like I don’t belong in a room?

Okay, I’ll tell you when I feel like I belong in a room: when I’m singing and playing with other musicians. I still worry about being off the beat or being flat when I’m tired and singing low notes, but mostly we’re all in it together and having a good time. The best time. Yeah. Doing music together is the best time there is.

It doesn't happen often enough anymore – the pandemic kind of threw us all off, and we’re still learning to congregate again, or at least I’m still learning.

I am learning that as the truth of this being in my last years and knowing death is not far away sinks in, I still want to be of some use in the time I have left. I still want to laugh with people – inappropriately if possible.

And I hate it that I’m going to die. I don’t want to leave this party. I am finally getting the hang of life, and many times I am more happy and contented than I have ever been before. This is one of the great gifts of old age.

I didn’t see that coming, either. But I will take it.

 

 

 

The New Computer

 I was getting complacent about my old computer, which turned out not to be wise, because it started blacking out on me. Solid black nothing for a few seconds, and then it came back on. I was going to live with it, until I realized that the blackouts were happening more frequently and lasting longer.

So I decided to get a newer, non-blacking out computer.

Which I have done. Now I’m on the new computer learning curve.

This is an all-in-one computer, so it’s a monitor and a keyboard, and somewhere under or inside the monitor is where the computer innards live. It’s taking a little getting used to. My old computer ran on Windows 10. This one runs on Windows 11. There are little differences to which I need to become accustomed.

So far so good, right? I will reach a point where I’ll feel like this computer is as comfortable as old shoes, but I am not there yet. It has properties and abilities of which I am not even aware. My main uses for a computer are email, watching reels of gorillas and monkeys on Facebook, and playing solitaire. Windows computers have always been good for playing solitaire.

In fact, Mac aficionados have cast a lot of shade on PCs because they believe Macs are superior in every way. They might be right. I don’t know. I only know that I can afford to buy a PC, and the price tags on Macs are way out of my ballpark. I know they are good machines – I started on Macs back in the 1990s, believing they were superior. I had at least three – a Performa, an iMac, and an iBook. All worked fine, until they didn’t, and then I had to take them off the island to a Mac repair shop. About 2004 I purchased a Dell laptop because the newspaper for which I wrote used a PC platform.

I discovered almost immediately that I like PCs better than Macs, for a few reasons, but the main reason is that PCs are language based, and Macs are visuals based. Language is my wheelhouse, and I was happy to start using the dolled up DOS system upon which Windows was based. It felt more natural to me than the Apple products.

Also, for a few hundred bucks I could get a computer that did everything a much more expensive Mac did. The other reason I like PCs is that I don’t have to leave the island and find a repair shop every time something goes caca. Nowadays, you don’t even have to defrag computers once a week.

I used to enjoy the colors that came with the defragging screen, I admit. But I don’t miss the process of sitting here waiting for the computer to sort itself out. Soon the defragging process was changed to an unsupervised process that automatically took place in the night. You could pick the day and time. Now defragging is not even mentioned. I wonder if computers defrag anymore.

One of the properties of growing old is realizing how fast your life went by. The pace at which computer technology and usage has grown parallels that speed. You can get the best and most modern version of a computer, and in a blink there are machines coming out that do more, faster, and your computer is a dinosaur.

A dinosaur is what I feel like these days. I really enjoy talking with members of my cohort – the early baby boomers – they get the references and jokes that I get. Whenever that meme comes up on Facebook that says, “If you remember more than 10 of these things, you are older than dirt,” I say, ten? Heck. I always remember every single one of their examples from bygone days. Wringer washing machines, little wax “coke bottles” with sweet syrup inside, candy cigarettes, and meat from the butcher shop wrapped in brown paper and string. We reused that string, too.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, new computer, I feel like a dinosaur, and my printer won’t work yet. It will, I know, if only because I have three boxes of ink cartridges for it and I don’t want to give up on it until I have used up that ink.

So here I am, trying to figure out this spiffy machine’s workings. I’ll get there.

Miscellaneous notes from piles of paper and a little family history

Dear Hearts,

I am at a stage of life when I am trying to divest myself and my house from all the crap I have accumulated the last 45 years or so. The trouble is - and I know many of you have the same experience - as I go through the old piles, I have to stop and read the writings, and look at the photos, before tossing anything. This blog entry is miscellaneous notes from a little notebook I came across, and then veers into Litchfield family history. 
It starts off useful, with a recipe for making yogurt

Making yogurt

1/3 cup yogurt

Heat quart of milk to 180 degrees

Cool to 115 degrees

Mix in yogurt

Wait.

I haven't tried this yet. 

 

Notebook pages

1.

1.        3/12/15

People who are better than I am

People who don’t watch television every night,

Because, you know television makes your brain liquefy and drip out of your open mouth.

People who are better than I am

Don’t play solitaire for hours,

Trying to make impossible plays or win once, at least.

And their homes are neat and tidy

And their diets are healthy

And they don’t feel guilty when they sit back to relax

Because they aren’t doing the vacuuming, or putting away the dishes, or folding the laundry,

Or any of the other chores I mean to get around to

Because people who are better than I am

Have balance, and structure

And equilibrium in their lives.

But they are not perfect,

For all their tranquility and order

They’ve been known to

Split infinitives

Sometimes they go out and spend money that was meant to pay the bills

Sometimes they lean over a garbage can and yell,

“The world can go to hell!”

So even though I know

They are better than I am

I kind of like them

Just fine.

 

2.

07/22/22

So I cooked

This evening

An artichoke, and some leftover chicken from the freezer.

In all too typical fashion I let them cook dry and burn

And the aluminum cladding on the bottom of the stainless steel pot

The artichoke was in

De-laminated and left part of itself on the element

And a few more drops of itself on the counter

When I lifted the pan off.

I was not expecting that.

That old pot – one of our wedding presents from 1979 –

Is headed for the landfill now.

And the knife I used to cut off the top of the artichoke

Is quite dull after all these years.

I know Rick was with me when I got that knife at the late, lamented, 

Bed Bath and Beyond, around 2007.

It was $30, more or less.

I can’t say we didn’t get our money’s worth out of it.

So

I need

A new knife (15 years)

A new pot (43 years)

A new stove (free discard, age unknown) *

And maybe

A winning lottery ticket.

Time to go shopping.

*This stove miraculously manifested itself and is working just fine.

 

3. 

09/11/23

I don't really have a story to tell. I'm just old, and a lot has happened and I thought should write some of it down. My cousin Charlotte is always telling me to write a book about our family. I haven't done it yet, though there is a story or two there.

When I was in the fourth grade, we were learning about Manifest Destiny (yes, I know now that that was about the eradication of the civilization that already lived here, and stealing their land, but that's another essay) and the brave settlers who came out west in wagon trains. I asked my father one day if our family came west in a wagon train.   He laughed. No, he said, our family waited until the railroad was built and then came out west.

Okay, so the Litchfields were soft, right? They waited until they could buy a ticket and travel in the relative comfort of the train. Well, that's what I thought until I came across the historical family record. Some Litchfields had come out West individually, by horse I imagine, or maybe even around the Horn, and settled in the Central Valley of California, in what is now Manteca. There they farmed, and married, and multiplied, and wrote home to the relatives in the Midwest about what a great place California was. The climate and the rich Delta soil made the living comparatively easy compared to the Midwest's harsh winters and hot summers.

So when the railroad was connected between the West and the East of the United States, a Litchfield family did take the train out west to Manteca. But the train was not made of passenger cars with padded velvet seats. Nope. This was the second train to convey people to the West, and the people rode in boxcars. By the time the Litchfield family arrived in Manteca, one of their children had died. So it wasn't the easy train trip my father made it sound like. It was uncomfortable, and dangerous, and fatal to one of their children. It was common to lose children in the 19th century, but I do not believe that people mourned any less for their children then than people do now.

So that's how the Litchfields from which I descend came to California. 

In the 1880s, my great grandparents, Chauncey and Belle Litchfield, moved from the Central Valley over to a valley in the foothills of the Coast Range. Belle and their eldest son, Percy, my grandfather, could not tolerate the tule fog in Manteca, so they moved to the Coast in hopes of it being a healthier climate.

They settled near Watsonville, in what was and is Green Valley, and planted 100 acres of apple trees, and they prospered and multiplied.

To be continued.

My great grandfather, Chauncey Litchfield. He was named for his grandfather Chauncey. 

The Fifth of July

 It was quiet here on the 4^th of July, because King County, where I live, has banned all fireworks. For some reason that worked. I heard nary an explosion all day and all night.

It was bliss.

A friend who lives in a different neighborhood on the island tells me that the ban had no effect there, and he and his dog were cowering until three in the morning while the explosions went off around them. I was sorry to hear that, especially considering how much I enjoyed the quiet here.

Look, I ooh and aah at fireworks, same as anyone, and have enjoyed many fireworks shows over the years, and enjoyed setting off fireworks with the boys when they were little. I enjoyed that a little too much.

Rick and the kids really got into their fireworks. One year when the boys and I were in Sonoma for the 4^th of July, watching their fireworks display over a cow pasture, Rick built a little cardboard house here with the specific intention of putting action figures in it and blowing it up. Which he did. And videotaped the destruction to show the kids when we got home.

After years of enjoying pyrotechnics and my own pyromania, I don’t know, something changed. I think it was having my dog, Marley. She hated loud noises. Thunder made her crawl under the bed or go into my closet under the clothes and try to escape to Narnia. She did not want to be held and comforted. She wanted to get as far away from the noise as she could.

My husband Rick was not at all attracted to firework shows, perhaps a legacy of his time at war on a guided missile frigate. I remember the story of the misguided missile that got loose and went wild, flying between the masts of the ship. Everyone aboard thought they were goners until it went into the ocean and destroyed some sea life. If there was any left in the Tonkin Gulf. Oh, and that never happened, by the way. If you ask the Navy.

Rick stayed home with our previous dogs and then with Marley on the Fourth of July. He would have stayed home anyway, but his staying home had the bonus of him being there for the pups. There were a lot of kids setting off fireworks in the neighborhood in those days. After Rick died, I stayed home with Marley on the Fourth of July, trying to comfort her as the explosions went off.

Then, after Marley was gone, I found I’d lost interest in fireworks displays.  I have never been in a war zone, but I felt like I was in one when the fireworks were exploding and whistling through the air. It did not feel congenial. So this year, with all personal fireworks banned in King County, I enjoyed the quiet here.

It was such a tradition to buy fireworks and have a little show for the kids on the Fourth of July. When I was a child, I always had sparklers for the occasion. It wasn’t until I had children that I looked at sparklers and thought, oh my god, those little red hot pieces of wire are dangerous. Somehow, I never got burned, and I don’t think my boys did, either. They still have all their fingers.

Every Fourth of July for a few decades I spent the day at Becky and Roy’s house. They had the grill going and there were plenty ofeats, and drinks, and family and friends. There were fireworks there, which the children couldn’t wait to set off. As the kids grew up the gatherings got quieter, but about 9:30 or so we’d all bundle into our cars and head down to Jensen Point to watch the fireworks show.

Sitting down there on the grass we’d watch the blossoming of extravagant showers of colored fire, all building up to the grand finale, when the rockets were going off in profusion, a huge bouquet of sparkling colored lights, a dozen or two all at once. It was quite a show. It was emotional. When the show was over, you could hear people cheering, and car horns honking, all around Quartermaster Harbor, in appreciation of the fireworks. It was a grand community occasion.

Meanwhile … dogs and cats and horses, cows, sheep, goats, and other livestock, and war veterans and small children, and the people who loved them, tried to escape the noise.

I can’t imagine how a combat veteran might feel about fireworks. I have heard that when commanded to attack someone, you are told to, “light ‘em up!” I think there is some substance to that rumor.

How do you walk away from those experiences? Rick was certainly scarred by his year aboard ship in Vietnam. He talked about it every day for years.

Summing up: it was quiet at my house on the Fourth of July. And I loved it.

Now. If only I could find my car keys.

My sweet pup Marley

 

 

 

Becky Denton Bumgarner May 19, 1949 – February 3, 2023

Having lemon sherbet in Ballard on the day her grandaughter Lulu was born. June 14, 2018

 Becky and I were friends from the time my son Drew met her daughter Maggie, in their second grade class at Burton Elementary. They bonded as best buds. So did we.

She knew how to be a friend, and once you were her friend, you were friends for life. She had many friends, especially school friends and the Girl Scouts with whom she grew up. Every year in August she went to Woman’s Own, a camp for adult women who had been Girl Scouts. It was held over at Camp Robbinswold on the Hood Canal on Labor Day weekend. It was the highlight of her year. Those were her people.

She was always buying things – guitars, books, clothes, routers and router bit sets, books, garden tools and other tools and yard equipment, sewing machines, books, furniture, books, and wheelbarrows and raised bed surrounds, and more – and then not really using them. Stuff was piled in the yard, and inside the house. The books went on the shelves she bought, and everything else went on the floor. Every surface was packed, and God help you if she saw you touch anything or try to do some tidying up. She would shriek, “NOOOOO! Don’t touch that!” We saw piles. She saw projects, and plans, and stuff that would definitely come in handy. Everything she brought home was a fabulous find.

She did use the garden tools, in her “jungle renovation” business, which she really enjoyed, both the work and the friends she made of the people who hired her. Her “Tool Talks” at the Vashon Garden Club meetings were legendary.

She was a fabulous storyteller, and wrote the “Blackberry Bear Tales,” which are full of wonder and wizardry. She meant to publish them, but that hasn’t happened. Yet.

At the end of Woman’s Own last September, Becky rode with Maggie to Maggie’s home up in Lake Forest Park. That night Becky was sleeping on the big couch in the TV/computer room, and in the middle of the night realized that she needed to go to the bathroom. She tried to get off the couch but couldn’t stand up. Like most hard-headed women, she was going to make the best of it and tried to crawl to the bathroom without asking for help, which did not work out. A couple of days later she was in the hospital diagnosed with cellulitis. After that and a stint in a nursing/rehab home, her husband Roy brought her back to the island, and she continued recovering at home.

One afternoon we were going to have a girls’ afternoon out. I went down to her house to pick her up, and found a tree had fallen across their driveway in a little windstorm the night before. She managed to come as far as the tree with her walker, and we talked to each other over the tree, but neither one of us was able to climb over or through it, and we certainly could not move it. We decided we could not have an outing that day, and promised each other we’d do it sometime soon, after the tree was cleared. That was the last time I saw her.

Down at Lisabeula, summer 2022. She is explaining how an airplane flies.

We talked on the phone once or twice a week. I knew she was spending a lot of her time on the couch, but she would tell me, “I walked out to the mailbox!” or some other milestone. We spoke on Groundhog Day, just a regular check in, chatting and oohing and aahing at pictures that Mags had sent to both of us on our phones of Maggie and Ben’s new baby boy, Isaac.

Becky told me that she had eighteen medical appointments coming up – I don’t know if that was the precise number or if it felt that way to her – the wound clinic, the endocrinologist, etc.

She had a serious heart attack a few years ago. She was hauled into Swedish by ambulance, received two stents to open her two totally blocked arteries, and was feeling better by that afternoon. She made a story of it and loved to tell it:  She was in the aid car, thinking that she’d had a good life, wonderful daughter, wonderful friends, she was okay with this, and then – she met God, who said, “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here yet.” She told him if that was the case, he needed to send her right back, otherwise she was going to go have tea with Mrs. God, and he would be in trouble. He sent her back right away, and she was in the aid car again.

She said after that experience that she was not afraid to die.

She passed on the morning of February 3, in her sleep. She’s gone now and she ain’t coming back. No one is going to call me after 10 o’clock at night anymore or call to tell me, “The Kingston Trio is on!” every time the PBS pledge weeks run folk music specials.

She spent a lot of her time on the couch towards the end, entertaining herself with various screens. That’s how Roy last saw her. He said she was looking at Youtube videos at 3:30 in the morning. When he got up later that morning she was still in the same spot, and she did not answer when he asked her if she wanted breakfast, so he went over to see how she was doing and realized that she was gone.

I hope she’s having tea with Mrs. God.