Home Again Today

We laid my dear mother-in-law to rest on Sunday, with a celebratory service at her church of 30 years, Grace United Methodist. The pastor told stories of her zest for life, her infinite curiosity and interjected humor into the somber proceeding. He had only known her from his visits to the nursing home, so he seemed genuinely delighted to retell our stories of the Anne we had known.

A wonderful reception followed the service. Almost all of the family was there, in spite of the horrible weather and bad roads. The church ladies put out homemade cookies and cakes, coffee and iced tea. We supplemented with a large tray of fruit and another of meats and cheeses. We told stories, renewed acquaintances, and laughed much.

We then repaired to the Super 8 motel where we were staying, and then on to the Szechuan Palace, where our group of 20 chowed down on mega-dishes of Chinese Food. This family can certainly put away the food!

I spent yesterday with Bill, Bud and Carolyn. We seem to have a peaceful closure. Through the ceremonies we participated in, in the gathering of family and friends, it seems as though the last five years when she was functionally "gone" have now receded, supplanted by all the memories of the Anne we all loved and treasured. It is an unexpected blessing to have those memories back at the end.

Bill and Bud are down at the VA hospital in St. Louis this morning. Carolyn and I are driving down to meet up with them at Aunt Millie's house in Alton. Then cousins will take Carolyn to the airport and Bill and I will get on the road towards home.

Oh, and I got an email this morning that we have been approved as potential Malinois parents, whenever we are ready.

Blue skies and clear highways ahead.

Christmas Eve

I feel a bit bad about letting Christmas take a back seat to the arrangements for Anne's service on Sunday. Our Christmas Day will be spent driving up to Illinois--but maybe we can find some carols on the radio, and give our time over to a little laughter and cheer in spite of it.

This morning Bill has to go back to Johnson City to have his TB skin test looked at and pronounced benign. You'd think in this era we'd be able to take a digital picture and email it to them, but that has apparently not been thought of yet. Or maybe they think we'd photoshop the image? It's an annoyance.

I will do laundry and pack bags, and gather up all the stuff we need to take with us. I am amazed that I got all my errands done yesterday, and even got my tooth patched. The dentist didn't even have to numb me up, and the whole thing took less than 20 minutes.

The car damage is almost $5,600, but the insurance will take care of it on the offending driver's policy. We're slated for January 4 for that project.

Yesterday, the Malinois inspector deemed us worthy pet-parents, so we will be pre-approved for an adoption when I get back from the Orient. If that's what we decide to do. Sometimes, fate intervenes. Maybe the right dog will just appear when we're ready.

This time right now is bittersweet. Mom's passing, while a relief and a blessing, puts a damper on our spirits. It's another reminder that time is fleeting, and seizing joy wherever one can find it is imperative.

Happy Christmas to all.

More Details...

It seems as though all these days now are too busy. We still haven't figured out when we are leaving to go to Illinois, but in the meantime, here are some of the things on my list for today:

Order food trays for post-service reception
Download photos and print them for the picture board
Set up appointment for us with the lawyer
Make motel reservations
Take the Hyundai to the body shop for an estimate
Pay Bill's union dues before the end of the year
Find someone in Jacksonville to buy potted plants
Start packing clothes and stuff to take to Illinois
Go to work

Yesterday, Bill went all the way to Johnson City for his DOT drug test and TB skin test. I went to the Hyundai dealer, Office Max for art supplies for the photo board, Fedex to drop off packages, the hardware store to return a door closer, the pharmacy to pick up scripts, gas station, and Walmart. Then home to bake biscotti, deal with a no-heat problem at one of the rental houses and fix dinner.

My idea yesterday was to use potted plants instead of cut flowers at the memorial service, as the variety of "casual" flowers is limited this time of year. Anne was also not a stuffy person. Having big formal arrangements of cut flowers, cloying sprays of roses, etc., just wouldn't do. I'm not sure if I should do that myself when I get to Jacksonville, or delegate someone there to do that.

Bill's idea was to offer Pease's candy party squares (his mom's Christmas favorite) at the reception for family and friends. She used to send boxes of the precious treat, kind of a creamy bark-type candy with bits of hard crunchy candy imbedded in it, to us. A visit to their website and a call to Springfield led to the disappointing news that they "stopped making those" about a year ago. Rats.

Tomorrow, Bill has to go back to Johnson City to get his TB test read. The Dog Inspector, Dianna, is coming at noon. I have an appointment to get my broken molar fixed at 2:30. I plan on spending the evening making the picture board with photos of my mother-in-law.

I'm feeling a little stressed with all the details -- the ones I know about, and the ones I haven't even thought of yet...

What a Day!

SNOW!

Just when I think things are too incredibly boring here on the rural mountain top, I have a day like the past 36 hours to remind me that excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be.

We started off at Oh-Dark-Thirty yesterday morning, driving off to Knoxville in the pouring rain and heavy traffic before sunrise. We got lost in downtown Knoxville. We turned around and got back on I-40, ignoring Mapquest's directions, and found our way to the gigantic UT Medical Center. We waited. Bill's orders were wrong (they hadn't included the flu shots, the DOT drug-screening or the TB skin test), and so everything was postponed while he contacted the powers that be and got it all straightened out. After a very long time (I knitted almost a full scarf), he came out with 6 holes in his arms.

We got back on the road to go home, still slick and raining hard but at least now it was lighter. Bill wanted to stop at Bass Pro Shop and I was hungry, so I dropped myself at the Cracker Barrel and told Bill to come have breakfast with me when he was done. I finished my breakfast. I read my book. I read some more and drank more coffee.

After two hours, I got up to use the rest room, and found Bill at the front desk, frantically talking to the hostess. He had apparently been looking for me for two hours, walking up and down the table aisles, driving back to Bass Pro Shop to have me paged, walking to McDonalds. They were getting ready to call the police and review the surveillance tapes when I came up behind him.

He kept saying "I thought I had LOST you!" (as he scarfed down my leftover biscuits and jelly). "Where WERE you?" (Right here, reading my book). I refused to take any responsibility for him not being able to recognize his own wife of 27 years. At one point the hostesses and Bill were standing right behind me, wondering where I was.

Now that our day's drama was done, (we thought--go ahead and read on), we finally got to laughing about it as we made our way home to Rogersville. As we came into town, the rain turned to sleet and then snow, and I remembered that I needed to go by the library to turn in my time sheet.

And there on Main Street, minding my own business, stopped and waiting to turn left into the library parking lot, some decrepit yahoo in a beat up pickup truck rear-ended me. I didn't even have time to take my foot off the brake and hit the gas to get out of his way. Boom. The whole tailgate of my new blue car (with only 7,000 miles on it) was smashed in, the bumper broke (but cushioned the crash beautifully, it was amazingly gentle even with him going 30 mph and me at a dead stop).

Bill got all the information from the driver, while I walked through the snow to go turn in my timesheet. Bill called the insurance company, who told him to go make a police report. So off we went to the police station to get that done.

At this point, the snow was really starting to come down hard; big, fat, wet flakes about the size of a silver dollar. By the time the police were done with us, we were wondering if we were going to make it home and up our driveway.

We did get up to the house, and Bill immediately put the red car down by the road. We snuggled in for a snowstorm. I heated up some leftover pasta and we were watching a movie and being thankful that the day from hell was over.

Not yet, however. At 6 pm, the power blurpped off. It went on. It went off. It went back on. At 6:30, it went off for good. We had flashlights and candles, but we finally gave up around 7:30 and went to bed to stay warm.

This morning, the power was still not on and the scene outside was a classic Winter Wonderland. The house was about 60 degrees, and we started working our way through our morning rituals without electricity.

First, there was the problem of water pressure. Without juice, the pressure pump wouldn't fill the toilet tank or keep a shower running long. Bill got a bucket of water from the tanks down in the basement to fill the toilet tank after flushing. I ran a bucket of warm water (the water heater is propane, so it was still hot) for "bathing." I got out the bottles of hand sanitizer for kitchen and bath.

Coffee was our next problem. We use a manual drip coffee pot, so all we had to do was light the propane stove with a match, and we could heat water. But we grind the beans fresh each time, and it's an electric grinder. A combination of a food chopper and then pounding them with a mortar and pestle made an acceptable, if weak, brew. Note to self: grind some beans ahead of time for an emergency stash and put it in the freezer!

Breakfast was accomplished by throwing a pound of frozen bacon on the griddle and peeling the strips off as they defrosted. Toast went on the griddle too. Eggs in the omelet pan.

Bill got the old propane heater in the basement going (once it was the only heat source for the house, before the heat pump was installed), but it was still pretty chilly upstairs. We ran around cleaning house (we had nothing else to do), and when Bill went outside to chainsaw the trees that came down in the driveway, I decided to clean out my pantry, something I've been procrastinating about for months.

The power came back on around 1:30 pm, and glory behold, stayed on! I quickly printed labels for my eBay buyers and used Bill's deer carcass cart to wheel them down the snowy driveway, hoping to beat the mail carrier. When I walked back up to the house, I quickly washed dishes, took a shower and ground some coffee beans, getting ready for a possible round two.

Life is returning to normal. When the furnace kicked back on, it was 50 degrees in the house; Now, it's back up to 64. Thousands of people are still without power, but we're doing fine. A mere 18 hours without electricity reminds me of all the things I need to do to be prepared for "an emergency." This wasn't hard, but it prompts thoughts of what we need to do better next time.

Off to the Big City

Bill made it home safely late last night. Now it's time to get up and do it again. I've decided I need a trip to the traffic and bustle of the big city to let me appreciate my sleepy, small town life. So we're going to Knoxville together--Bill to get his shots, me to knit and enjoy his company. He's done enough driving in the last few days.

I think the rush of eBay buyers has finally subsided to a few auctions per day. Those who have planned ahead have made their purchases. This week, I'll cater to the procrastinators. And the week after Christmas will be the wives who got "get what you want off eBay" from their husbands and the people who received money to spend on themselves. I'll probably shut down the operation when Bill goes to Singapore and take a vacation from auction madness for awhile.

This period of time feels like limbo. Waiting for Christmas, waiting for the trip to Illinois for the service, waiting for Bill to leave, waiting to buy my ticket and go too. There is plenty of planning to be done, but until the waiting time is over, nothing can be done.

Details...

The service for Anne will be held on Sunday, December 27 at 1:30 pm at Grace United Methodist Church in Jacksonville, IL.

Bill has done a super job getting everything organized, and plans on coming home on Friday via Knoxville, where he has to stop at the University of TN to get about 12 innoculations in preparation for his trip overseas in January. Cholera, yellow fever, typhoid, MMR booster, pertussis, tuberculosis skin test, polio booster, hepatitis A & B...the list is awesome. Because he does not have his childhood shot record, he has to get them all again so as to be documented. He'll then hurry home with his sore arms to meet the Malinois rescue inspector Friday afternoon.

I am off to see Mr. Acupuncture today. I have been experiencing a return of pain at my scar sites, and want to nip this inflammation before it has a chance to take hold. I also have to get to the dentist--the one tooth I didn't have crowned this year broke yesterday, so the repair is now critical.

Life is getting complicated.

Elsie Anne Valentine Plemitscher

Bill's mom died quietly at the nursing home yesterday afternoon. It is hard to feel the overwhelming grief that one expects at the death of a parent, mostly because she left us several years ago due to senile dementia.

Anyone who knew Anne in the past five years or so would not know what a vibrant, curious and energetic woman she was before her mind was stolen by disease. One only has to look at my husband to know her strength of character, her humor, and her practical, common-sense outlook on life.

I met Anne for the first time in the summer of 1981, when she was 52. She was a factory worker at Capitol Records' pressing plant, in the days when they still made vinyl LPs. She was also taking classes at community college, active in her church and many community organizations. She knew things--about gardening, raising livestock, how to use a grind-stone, how to compost. She recycled (before recycling was cool)! She knew how to de-tassle corn and how to get to a chicken dinner--starting with a live chicken. She was an enthusiastic Girl Scout leader; at one point her troop consisted of five blind girls, because, she declared, "they deserve the chance to be Scouts too!"

She read constantly, clipping articles of interest and sending them to friends and relatives. She bought a Nordic Track and started exercising everyday. Her drive was to constantly self-improve, and whether it took the form of canoeing in the deep woods in Minnesota, taking a class to learn how to write a story, doing the vocabulary exercises in Reader's Digest, dressing up as a clown for the hometown parades to entertain children, or playing dominoes with her grandchildren, she was always ready for action.

I remember driving with her up from St. Louis one night, in a car whose radiator leak suddenly became worse. I was all for calling Bud and having him come and rescue us, but Anne insisted we were just fine. We stopped every 5 miles and knocked on doors, begging water to refill the radiator. Anne knew how to charm even the most suspicious farmers in the dead of night.

When Juli was 10 weeks old, I flew out to see her. She immediately plopped us in the pickup truck and drove to Chicago to see the Petersons, then on to Wisconsin to see Aunt Carolyn, then back to Illinois to see her mother, Ruth, all in the stifling heat of summer, without the benefit of air conditioning (which she considered a wasteful, unhealthy invention). She and I hit every rest stop and truck stop for breast-feeding breaks, and she fixed everyone who seemed a little too curious with a gimlet eye, daring them to stare. I learned very quickly to follow her attitude, and became comfortable nursing Juli in public places without embarrassment.

After her retirement in the 1990s, she started her own business. She and Bud traveled the Midwest summer fair circuit, selling hot dogs and shave ice out of a trailer named "My Place." I first noticed something was off in April, 1998. The kids and I were on a driving trip to the West Coast, and stopped at Granny Annie's for Easter. We got up in the dark for sunrise services, but after driving around the cornfields for an hour, Anne announced that she was lost, and couldn't find the church. Bud was working in Florida, and I passed it off as isolated distraction because her husband had been gone a long time.

She started slipping away, and she didn't realize what was happening to her. After many tests and several years, no one knew definitively what was wrong. It wasn't Alzheimer's, it wasn't any other diagnosable dementia, but she was having auto accidents, wandering away in the night and losing touch with reality.

In November of 2005, she became a resident at Golden Moments Senior Care. At first, she recognized and conversed with everyone who came to visit. But over the past two years, she became more reticent, and eventually she stopped speaking all together. Where she had initially gained quite a bit of weight when she came to live there, she suddenly lost it all this year and kept losing. In the last few months, her diagnosis was "failure to thrive."

I knew and loved my mother-in-law. And I know positively that she would have hated the life she was held prisoner in. I would not be surprised if somewhere deep in her limbic brain, she decided that enough was enough.

Rest in peace, dear Anne. You had a wonderful life filled with people who loved you. We will remember you as you were before, and will not despair over your passing. In this case, it was truly a blessing, and I know this is what you would have wanted.

Another Rainy Day...

I'm not even sure why I got out of bed this morning. It's so rainy and gloomy again, I just feel like curling up and taking a nap, even though I've been up for less than an hour. Enough already! The pond is full, the basement is damp, the well isn't salty, so we don't need more precipitation right now.

But rainy weather is fine for things like wrapping Christmas presents and baking cookies. Bill misses the "Cookie Exchange." In NY, our group of friends would each bake batches of 3 or 4 different treats and then swap them, so everyone got a plate full of joy with a dozen or more candies and cookies to see Bill through the holidays. I won't get quite that ambitious, but I always enjoy trying a few new recipes each year, and I want to tuck some gingerbread into the packages for the kids, just so they can taste Mom's love from afar.

When I was 10, my great-grandmother "Ma" came to our house and made raviolis, noodles and an Italian cookie called "gesh-pel" (Sorry Mom, I know I'm not spelling it right, so I went for the phonetic representation). The cookies were simple rolled out rectangles, slit in the center and then one end was pulled through the hole. They were fried in Mazola oil until bubbly and crisp and then sprinkled with powdered sugar.

The raviolis took a lot of preparation. Ma brought a traditional filling of brains and spinach (at 10, I thought this was gross) that she had made in her home, and I think we also did one with the usual ricotta cheese too. The stiff dough had to be rolled paper-thin. I remember being amazed at my ancient great-grandmother's arm strength! With her one pass of the wooden rolling pin, you could see your hand through the dough, while I struggled with the springy blog and failed to make any progress. There were special tools--a frame to make the little pillows and a zig-zag cutting wheel to separate them (my default job, after the dough debacle). The dough scraps were made into noodles, which we draped on clean cloth towels to dry over the backs of every chair in the house.

While we were busy with the ravioli/noodle asssembly line, a big pot of my mother's tomato sauce was simmering on the stove, filling the house with the smells of garlic, oregano, fennel and basil. I loved the smell, but I didn't eat the sauce. As a child, I ate my pasta "naked," as my mother's sauce was always too spicy-hot for my young taste buds. And as I recall, my dad didn't eat pasta at all, except for the special occasion of Christmas raviolis. Mom must have despaired over both of us!

I pull these memories out in December, spooling them through my mind, and trying to remember the tiniest details. Replaying the visual pictures of long-gone, much-loved family and happy times of cooking, laughing and of course, eating, makes this time of year very special to me.

Animal Welfare Comes to Call

A few weeks ago, I signed us up to become "pre-approved" for eventually adopting another Malinois. Our initial references checked out, and now we are gearing up for a "home visit" from the ABMC inspector.

This impending visit begs the question, "what would cause someone to fail" a home visit? Twenty emaciated dogs in an unfenced yard right on the highway? Yep.

But it also brings to mind the needs we have in a future dog. We need a dog who does NOT chase cattle. That would be a death sentence, as we are surrounded by people who make a living raising beef, people who would not tolerate someone's pet running weight off their cows. We need a dog who can do stairs. Echo never went up and down stairs when we lived in NY (she would just leap over the porch steps), but when we moved here, she had to learn to negotiate the treehouse nature of our new place. At the end, she could no longer navigate the stairs, and we had to walk her slowly around the back and down the sloped driveway. She also could no longer come up to the loft to be with us while we worked.

I think this is a great process and am looking forward to meeting someone who agrees with us that this is a special breed, deserving of a good environment. I haven't seen "our next dog" yet on the site, but hopefully when we are ready, we will have all our approvals set up in advance.

I think I'm starting to understand...

Living in the land of "all deer, all the time," I've learned to tune out most of what Bill has been talking about for the past month or so. But this morning, I had a REVELATION.

It's all about being male. Deer hunting has all the essential boy elements: Sex, Competition, Toys, and Bragging Rights. The goal--shooting a deer--is secondary to the process. If I had the task of filling the freezer with venison, I would treat it as another chore to tackle and complete. I would choose the most efficient method of completing the task. I'd put a pile of corn in the backyard, a gun by the door, and while I was vacuuming or cooking dinner or folding laundry, I'd check out the window, and blast the darn thing when it showed up to feed.

Bill says this is NOT the way to hunt deer. Yesterday, he explained the foreign concept of "fair chase," meaning, you must figure out where the deer are going to be, track them, look for signs that the males are in the rut and looking for mates (that's the sex part), buy all sorts of stuff (guns, stands, clothing, doe urine, no-scent shampoo and soap, etc.) to stalk stealthily, get up in the dark and sit in the woods for hours on end, come home to the little woman cooking breakfast, spend the rest of the day sleeping, and then go out again before sunset to do it all again. It's a game.

Why this game is interesting is beyond me. Here I thought the object was to bag a deer and move on to the next thing. Apparently, drawing out the process, obsessing about it, worrying about where they are, talking about it (before, during and after), is what it's all about. The journey, not the destination. I would find this highly frustrating.

No wonder we women go to the store and buy meat in packages. The hunt is just too time consuming for goal-oriented multi-taskers.

Winter?

"You have a jacket on!" Caroline sounded shocked, when I came back from dinner break yesterday afternoon. While everyone else wears sweaters, scarves and ear muffs at the library, I am still in short sleeves and light pants or skirts.

But yesterday at 3 pm, it was in the 30s outside and looking like snow--and I broke down and put on the light spring jacket I keep in the car for such emergencies. Yes, even I was a tad chilled on my trip to the post office. It didn't last though.

While we spent the evening at the library doing our normal library things, we also decorated several trees, strung lights and dressed our environment for the holidays. Caroline brought out several hats (she was wearing the Dr. Seuss Cindy Lou-Who number) and asked, "do you want the reindeer horns, or the Santa?" I chose the Santa, and even managed to carry off the festive look for about 15 minutes, when suddenly my ears turned bright red and sweat started pouring off my face. I had to ditch the hat, or risk self-immolation, right then and there.

Snow is indeed predicted for tomorrow. It seems a little early to me, but it is December--in New York, I'd be looking at below-zero weather this month. At least if I start burning up here, I can go outside in my T-shirt and chill out without turning into an ice cube.

Poor Neglected Blog...

Where have I been for a week? Here, just slogging through life.

Thanksgiving was just the two of us, so there was no giant 28 pound turkey, children running through the house, oldsters sleeping in chairs or other holiday traditions. I roasted a chicken for Bill and myself, burnt the stuffing when he came home late from deer hunting, steamed some broccoli, and forgot to put cream in the onions. A total lackadaisical Thanksgiving. We had a nice meal and watched football together.

The rest of the week has been a blur. I'm listing auctions, going to work at the library, doing the first of the month chores like changing furnace filters, checking salt in the water softener, dosing the septic system with bio-spores. I cook, whenever Bill shows up home from the woods, cold and hungry. I knit, I read, I sleep. Just ho-hum life.

I'm gearing up to wrap Christmas presents and send them out to my far-flung family. I expect Christmas will be as quiet as Thanksgiving was.