You would not think that I am someone who puts things off until the last minute. I start prepping for Christmas in October. However, buried under that obsessive compulsive person who is ordering Christmas cards before the trick-or-treaters even show up at my door, lies a master procrastinator. My main area of procrastination lately has been writing my blog. Yes, Christmas is a busy time of the year, but I seem to find plenty of time to scroll through Facebook and read all the crazy AITJ (Am I The Jerk) stories. Does this give me any writing ideas? Noooooooo! It just keeps me from looking at my own foibles. Like most other bad habits, there is a redeeming side to procrastination that seems to justify it’s existence in my psyche. As I have gotten older I find that my reasons for procrastinating are more thoughtful and sometimes even purposeful. I call it waiting. Sometimes the issue just disappears if I wait long enough. There is a subtle difference between waiting and procrastination, however. It doesn’t work for things like putting off getting my hedge clipped until it’s starting to invade the driveway where I park, but sometimes it gives me space to let different possibilities bubble up. I always wait when I am writing. I put stuff down right away because a good thought can disappear very rapidly in my senior brain; then I let it sit and rest. Sometimes when I come back to what I have written, everything looks completely different. My rule is to write down the words and get the thought out, and then sleep on it. The emotions of the initial thought can cloud my perspective. I see my ideas through a different lens after a time away from them. I guess that’s what I have been doing about writing my blog. I have been waiting for the right idea to inspire me. Luckily, I did a little writing too, and even though I rejected it as not worthy of sharing with the world, it popped up again when my frustration with procrastination finally got the best of me. Ironically, once I decided to write about procrastinating over writing, my mind shifted and I managed to actually put down some words. They are not the words I was hoping to find by waiting for them, but they are the ones I needed to find. I miss my sister Linda. I thought I was writing about procrastination but it turned out that I was writing about the feelings I have been trying to avoid. This is the second holiday season without her. I thought the pain of loss would soften over time but it’s still there, just deeper. I want to escape, in a non-productive way. I want to ignore some of the more difficult thoughts floating around in my brain. Writing forces me into reality, the reality of my feelings and fears. The holiday season is full of sadness and loss as well as anticipation and joy. Expectations for a “White Christmas” experience are high but not likely to actually happen, particularly in California. There are no snow covered trees to lighten my mood. The dark, cloudy, rainy season is here and it makes me want to sit in my recliner with a blanket over my head. Even though I have been avoiding them, I know it’s OK to embrace these feelings. At least they are out in the world and not hidden under a blanket. Was it worth the wait? Yes. It opened up the possibility of seeing the beauty in a rainy winter day and the joy in the mixed feelings of old memories.
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I really like to decorate for Christmas, but I have to admit that I can be obsessed with it. I have a garage full of plastic bins loaded with everything imaginable to turn my yard and my home into a Christmas wonderland. I am aware that decorating can feel kind of overwhelming and stressful, but my Abby cat is helping me this year. I have collected a lot of Christmasy things over the years. My storage bins are filled with decorations that remind me of Minnesota and my Nordic heritage. I have a 7 foot fake birch tree with lights and a half dozen small lighted mini birch trees, as well as at least 50 little pine trees of different sizes, not to mention my regular artificial Christmas tree. Sometimes my living room looks like a forest during the holidays. I have more decorations than any normal tree can hold so I have to decide what NOT to put on the tree each year. I have a giant Moose made out of branches that my sister Lin gave me, and a stuffed snowman my sister Sue gave me. I have various gnomes with pointy hats, a multitude of Danish hearts crocheted by my Dad, and a Swedish Santa Lucia Crown with battery powered candles. I have Christmas bed linens, Christmas towels, Christmas pot holders and enough lights to last a lifetime. And that’s only about half of the stuff in my garage. I realize it’s a bit out of control, so over the last few years I have started to cut down on the amount of decorations I actually put up. This year I need to seriously cut back - because of my cat. Previously I have had cats that totally ignored all that extra stuff that magically appears in my home because of Christmas. They might have done a sideways glance at something shiny or chewed on a sparkly bow or two, but I never had to worry that my decorations would be assaulted. With my Abby cat it’s a whole new ballgame. Abby is a hunter and a climber. Today she climbed up my Christmas tree. I had put it up without decorations just to make sure she wouldn’t do this, but after two days of ignoring it, today she took the plunge. It was like she was exploring it, crawling through the branches and chewing on the plastic ends. She loves chewing plastic. I have barricaded the bottom of the tree by wrapping clear plastic shower curtains around the lower branches but she found the vulnerable bare spot and scooted right up the side of the tree. This does not make me want to spend a lot of time with decorations that will only add to the enticing appeal of Christmas tree climbing for Abby. I don’t want to spend the holidays repairing the damage I know she is capable of; it’s better to reign in the potential disasters now. For the first time in my life I have decided not to decorate my tree. I am going to wrap some more protective clear plastic shower curtain strips around it like garlands and that’s it. I like the way the lights reflect off of the plastic in the same way lights sparkle off of ice. Perhaps this could start a new minimalist trend in Christmas decoration. I am seriously considering other protective measures, maybe wrapping the nativity in plastic wrap so that when Abby inevitably jumps up onto the mantel she won’t create havoc in the manger scene. I will definitely think long and hard about putting up more decorations than are really necessary to create a festive environment. Thank goodness this is not my first rodeo and I have had years of happily turning my living room (and most of the rest of the house) into a Christmas Disneyland. I don’t feel the need to continue this year with a lot of my Christmas traditions. I think it’s time to take a break from excessive decorating and Abby is a good excuse. This could save me a lot of time and energy that I could spend lounging in my recliner with Abby curled up in my lap instead of contemplating which ornaments will not make it onto the tree. I feel relieved already. I love my Abby. She has been a big challenge for me but that’s OK. She adds a lot of adventure to my life. She is teaching me to let go of my desire to control the things I don’t have any control over, and to rethink what I really need to have a Merry Christmas. Yesterday I visited the cemetery, not because of Halloween, but because Lin is going to be buried this week and I wanted to make sure everything was ready for her. This is the place where my Mom and Dad are buried and also the final resting place for my sister and me.
When I was a child my family visited the cemetery in our neighborhood often. It was only a few blocks from our house and my Mom’s family was buried there. In the summer Mom and Dad would bring a large planter full of geraniums to put on the family plot. It was carefully maintained until the winter snows hit, usually about this time of year, and then it was stored in the basement until the next year. I loved exploring the cemetery when I was a kid. I liked to read the tombstones and plaques and imagine who these people were and what they might have been like when they were alive. This is a bittersweet time for me. It’s good to know that Lin will be in her final resting place, but it’s another step on the road to accepting the permanence of death and the deep loss I am feeling. I am happy she will be close. At the time my parents selected their burial plot we arranged for another double cremorial (that’s the cemetary's name for the bronze container with a plaque on top that they put your ashes in). Our ashes will eventually spend “eternity” together in this little box next to Mom and Dad. It’s a little weird seeing my name on the plaque with an empty space for the death date, but that is part of the process of aging. I have watched other people go through this deep acceptance of the fact that we are not immortal and that death is actually a part of life. I feel OK about it, not happy, not sad, just OK. Of course this cremorial only holds the dust of who we were. Our spirits will be someplace else. But there is something comforting about having an actual physical place to visit, like I did as a child when we went to see my grandparent’s and my Uncle’s graves. It makes me wonder if there will be people in the future looking for the stories on the gravestones the way that I did. Will they notice that my last name is the same as my parents and realize that two of their children are buried next to them? Will they figure out that Lin and I were twins, born in the same year but with different last names? How long will this burial place survive and what will the world be like when even this futile attempt at leaving something permanent disappears? We certainly won’t be studied like the Egyptian mummies. They tried a lot harder than us to leave something permanent and even their graves are a mystery. There isn’t much to be learned from the small piles of dust we will be leaving behind. Only the names on the plaque say something about who we were and they don’t say a whole heck of a lot. I’m good with that. I’m happy to just be on this planet right now. Tonight I will hand out cutie oranges to the handful of costumed kids that make it to my neighborhood, happily wearing my leopard ears and shoes and my tiger striped top. I am still a “cat woman” even though I am cat-less at the moment. It’s a good reminder that despite these mind bending realizations of what life and death are all about, life is good. Although the frost is not on the pumpkin in California, October means that Halloween is just around the corner. It was always a special time for me. I loved the thrill of being out at night trick-or-treating and the massive quantities of candy piled up on the living room floor to be admired, sorted, and stuffed down. But most of all I loved the COSTUMES. It was an opportunity to be someone or something different. Mom made my twin sister and I matching costumes when we were little. One of our favorites was our rabbit outfits. Even after Halloween was long over we liked to put them on and eat carrots. As we got older we planned and made our own costumes. It was usually cold with snow on the ground when we went trick-or-treating. In 6th grade I decided I was sick of having to wear a winter coat that hid my costume but kept me warm as we plodded through the snow. So I went as Santa. Sure enough I was toasty warm, although I think it was confusing for the little kids. Being a teacher gave me a lot of opportunities to get creative with my costumes. I was never into anything scary. Even though I was from Minnesota, a Hockey mask did not appeal to me in any way, shape, or form. Usually my costume was a reflection of my internal image of what I wanted to be or how I was feeling about myself. I was a pointy hatted Gnome when my self esteem was in the basement and I felt short, fat, and small, and I was the Statue of Liberty after my divorce, a statement of freedom and power. Sometimes my school’s faculty had a theme for Halloween. When we did Harry Potter I was Hogwarts’ custodian’s cat, Mrs. Norris. I won “Best Oompa Loompa” the year our theme was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” I think I had an advantage being the shortest person on the faculty. I already had the stature of an Oompa Loompa nailed. Cats, of course, were always a great option for me. Besides being Mrs. Norris, I made a really cool three-dimensional cat hat that fit like a bonnet and wore it in several different versions with sweats or overalls. I also did a semi-sexy leopard outfit. I don’t have a cat-suit friendly body so I made a long flowy leopard print dress and matching cat ear headband that I wore to a couple of singles group dances. I still wear the ears when I hand out stuff for the local trick-or-treaters. Since retiring I haven’t really worn a costume, except maybe my cat ears to an exercise class. I sold most of my old costumes in a yard sale many years ago. I do miss the creative energy of deciding who or what I want to be. I guess I have been exploring my internal self and transforming in other ways. This year I think I would like to be an open heart. Costume GalleryValentine’s Day made me think about love and its many forms and faces; the smoochy eyes-glazed-over kind of love, the tender protective kind of love, the deep constant kind of love. Recently I went to a wedding. It was a small, private affair and it was very sweet and moving. It’s hard not to be moved when you see two people staring into each other’s eyes, pledging to love and support one another. There is hope too, that these vows will last through all the trials of life when the going gets tough. The hope is that romantic love will become enduring love. My marriage didn’t turn out that way, but I know it is possible because I have seen it in action with my friends and family. My parents were married for 65 years. Heaven only knows there were a lot of rocky times for them, but I remember my Dad, in the years after my Mom died, talking about the good times they had together way more than their struggles. We were not a huggy, touchy-feely family. A lot of that was the Scandinavian thing. Moderation in all things, including expressions of love, is high on the list of appropriate Scandinavian behavior. My Dad didn’t really say “I love you” or initiate a hug. The way he showed his love was by doing things for people. He certainly was that way with my Mom, taking care of her for years as she became more and more incapacitated with dementia. He was also that way with me. He was always there for me when it came to home improvement. He would patiently walk me through the details of how to fix a toilet or a light switch, having me do the actual work so that I would learn how to do things for myself. When I was still working I would often come home to find that he had dropped by and mowed my lawn. He loved plants and was always helping me in the garden and passing on his knowledge about how to make things grow. In the last few years of his life I had an opportunity to return the love my Dad had given me by doing things for him in the way that he had done things for me. It was challenging mentally and physically but it was also a gift. I remember watching as he headed for bed, shuffling down the hallway with his walker. It’s wonderful how such an ordinary and simple moment can be so profound. As I watched him slowly navigate his way towards the bedroom, I couldn’t help but think how amazing it was that he was still on the planet at 101. I was so grateful that I was able to be there for him, and that I had a chance to feel that kind of love for my Dad. It was vital that nothing could possibly be interpreted as indicating you might “like” a particular boy. This was especially hard if you real DID like a particular boy or if someone liked you but you didn’t like them. All of the sweet cute valentines we gave to the girls.
Making the box for people to drop the valentines into was a big deal too. A shoebox was preferable. We would cut a slot in the lid for people to shove their valentines through. We used a lot of white paper dollies and hearts made by folding red colored paper in half. This school valentine thing must have been a very old tradition because I remember one of my Mom’s stories was about making valentines in school. Her brother was older but in the same classroom. He was very artistic and made great valentines. Mom was mortified when he gave all of them to her. It was not cool to have a whole box full of valentines from your BROTHER. This year a friend and I decided that we would each get a Valentine to give to ourselves as an exercise in self-love. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. At first I couldn’t even force myself to go down the card isle. When I got up the nerve to actually do it and started looking through the cards it was way harder than sorting through valentines in elementary school. I couldn’t find anything I would even want to give to myself. I didn’t want a card that was too mushy or romantic or that had a list of qualities that I am not. I finally settled on a minimalistic card that simply said “Love You.” It doesn’t even have an “I” in front of the “Love You.” It cost a whopping $6.95. That’s probably more than all of the cards I gave out in elementary school put together. Minimalism can be quite pricey. It is one of those textural cards. The words are spelled out in 3-D stitching and there is also a stitched heart-shaped balloon. It appeals to the home economist in me. Inside it says “Simply wonderful . . . that’s you.” Is it a little too mushy? Will I get the wrong idea about myself? Does giving myself a Valentine mean I have stepped over the “Little Old Lady with cats” line? Wait a minute! The whole idea of doing this in the first place was self-love not self-flagellation. I will proudly put my nice minimalist valentine where I can see it. And I think I'll get myself a balloon too. It's the new year. Nothing has changed of course because it's really just another day. I see one of the cats has left a gift, a lovely regurgitated fur ball, on the bedroom carpet. This is not the way I wanted to start the New Year. How DO I want to start the new year? It looks like I’m starting it by writing. There is a part of me that is afraid that if I commit to continue writing my blog I will doom myself to losing interest in it, so I’m just taking it one blog at a time. In the last ten months I have passed through the intense stage where ideas were bursting out of my head, to times of fear and loathing that I would ever come up with anything worth sharing, to a kind of habitual desire to keep on writing. I’m hoping that if I do keep on writing I will actually develop some kind of focus for my life – or not. Who knows? It appears that I will also start the new year by taking a walk. Friends I would normally walk with are busy today but I was told that the state parks all have New Year’s Day walks. Each one is unique and a different level of difficulty. The two hour leisurely stroll through the redwoods is being led by someone I know. When she told me about it my initial reaction was “Hell no!” At least that’s what my brain was saying, but my mouth said “Maybe,” in a polite way. I have learned from past experiences that when my brain says “Hell no!” in that adamant way that this is a challenge I should actually take on, so I have decided to go. My fears are that (a) I will not be able to keep up, even on a leisurely stroll type walk, and (b) I will not know anyone except the leader, who I don’t know well, and I will feel isolated and uncomfortable. These are not fears that I should listen to. I am not going to die on this hike. The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day, I can wear my new comfy Christmas boots, I can do this. I need to do this. In my head I was imagining that this day would be a day in which I would start off the new year by whipping through all the things I have been putting off while I managed my way through the Christmas season. It is not a realistic plan. I probably need to pick a couple of things, like doing the laundry and cooking some chicken breasts I have marinating in the fridge, rather than cleaning my entire house into sparkling submission. Oh yes, I don't want to forget there is a fur ball in the bedroom that needs attention too. Just another day in a new year I hope will be a good one. I wanted to write about “Peace On Earth” for the Christmas season but I got bogged down in frustration over the lack of it, so I made pea soup instead. In a small way I am contributing to global understanding by serving pea soup to my houseguest who is from Austria. It’s warm, it’s comforting, it’s welcoming, it’s the best I can do right now at contributing to positive international and personal relationships. It seems that peace on earth is something everyone wants, but it is impossible to attain. I don’t want to bury my head in the sand and pretend conflict and pain don't exist, but I don’t want to live my life in fear either. I found two videos on YouTube that expressed my frustrations and my hope. My Austrian houseguest showed me this song by U2. It says what I can't say about the frustrations and irony of wanting peace on earth. When I was in the 6th grade chorus, we sang a song called “Let There Be Peace On Earth.” It was one of my favorites. My 6th grade chorus was not even in the same league as this group of kids from PS22. Watching them pour their hearts out in this song gives me hope. It makes me feel better than a nice hot bowl of pea soup. Don’t tell Santa but I have already opened one of my Christmas presents. It actually wasn’t from him anyway, it was from my sister. I had put a new pair of boots on my amazon.com wish list and I knew they were under the tree. The other night when I was feeling chilled and in need of something warm and cozy I rifled around and found a box I was quite sure contained the boots. I carefully peeked through the wrapping and there they were. I unwrapped them and slipped them on my feet. Instantly I was transported back to my junior high days when I got a new pair of boots that I loved. I remember they were fur lined and the front opened up in a “V” shape with a little collar of fur around my ankles. You could also fasten them so that they covered your ankles, but the fashionable way to wear them was to leave them open so that the fur was visible. I had been sooooo wanting those boots. By junior high we had graduated from the kind of boots you wore over your shoes to the kind that fit directly on over your socks. All the girls carried a “shoe bag” on their wrists like a purse as we walked to school so that we could change into our shoes and put our boots in our lockers once we got to school. Unfortunately, although the boots my parents bought me fit over my socks, they LOOKED like the kind of boots you wore OVER your shoes. I was mortified in the way only junior high aged kids can be mortified. I hated those boots to my core. A year or so later when I got the new boots I was in heaven. I remember walking around the house in them staring at my feet. I didn’t want to take them off. That was how I felt in the boots my sister just gave me. I wore them around my house like slippers. They are Sketchers. Not only do they have memory foam insoles like my other Sketchers, but they are also lined in fake fur. They feel like puffy clouds of warmth on my feet. I’ve been wearing them night and day since I first put them on. Today I went for a walk with a friend in my new boots. They were perfect. They cradled my feet in comfort and toastiness. It’s been a little crispy in the mornings (although nothing like the below zero weather I grew up with) and I felt all snuggly as I strolled along. Not only are they beyond comfortable but they are ADORABLE too! What more could I ask for except for a couple of cats in my lap and a roaring fire. Even though we won’t be able to be together this Christmas, I feel like I just got a big hug from my sister. |
Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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(from an entry posted on 5/1/2015) “I definitely fit some of the characteristics of a little old lady with cats: Retired - check, Single - check, Like to knit - check, Have cats - check. . .I do not want to get stuck in my Little Old Lady persona, however. In fact, this blog is a risk taking experiment in exploring and redefining what I want my retired life to look like.” Categories
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