Blue-Footed Musings

My Uncle John died shortly before Christmas. He was a bit of a strange guy, but he had a good heart and a wonderful storytelling manner. My Aunt Gayle died a couple of days ago. She was kind and smart, and she reminded me of my grandmother. She had a way about her that put other people at ease, and all of her siblings looked to her when they needed advice. I didn’t know either my uncle or aunt well, but they were part of my world, always there, even if I didn’t see them often. Now they are gone, and I’m sad, but I feel especially sorry for my dad. It’s hard enough to lose one sibling, doubly hard to lose two so close together.

• Healthwise I am feeling better. I’m still a little congested and have a slight cough, but my energy levels have bounced back to near-normal. I’m able to go about my daily business without feeling like the effort might kill me. And though my knee is still totally messed up, I can walk without pain as long as I’m careful going up and down stairs. I have an appointment to see an orthopedist on Thursday.
• Moodwise I’m feeling much better, at least today. Perhaps it’s the anticipation of snow. We’re supposed to get our first snowstorm of the season overnight tonight. According to the meteorologists, we might get as much as 9 inches of the fluffy white stuff. How exciting!

I spent the last three days in bed with a nasty virus. This is not how I had intended to spend my week off from work. 🙁

It has been a bad year for the blog. I haven’t written much. I could blame it on being busier. My music composition lessons have certainly taken up a lot of my time. But, honestly, I really just wasn’t in the mood to write.

No, let me rephrase that. It went beyond “mood.” I stopped wanting to write. I stopped caring about recording the events of my life. I stopped caring about a lot of things. I don’t know exactly what “broke” me, but this year affected me in a way that I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to combat. My coping strategies weren’t cutting it.

Still, I like to think that, outside of the blog, I’ve put on a good act, and that I seemed perfectly normal, maybe even more energetic, because of my music lessons. I doubt my boss would suspect–I met all my deadlines! My kids might even have been fooled. Probably not my husband (he knows, even if he doesn’t know that he knows). But I knew, and I’ve been unhappy about the gaps in my blog this year. I will try to do better from now on, even if my mood continues to be so horrible.

So, here are my thoughts today.

• My son did very well on his first-quarter report card. What he didn’t mention was that he’d made high honors. I just realized it today, when I stumbled across the honor roll in the local newspaper. When I congratulated him, he said he was worried that he’d set too high a standard and that next time he might just be “ordinary honors.” I told him that “ordinary honors” would still be really good and that I was so proud of him. OMG, what a wonderful son I have.
• For Christmas, my daughter asked for some books that might be a little mature for her reading age. I bought them for her anyway, but they arrived late. I gave them to her today and told her that I believed her to be mature enough to handle them, but that if they made her uncomfortable, that she should stop reading them. I added that she could come to me if there was ever anything that she wanted to talk about. She told me that of course she would come to me if she ever wanted to talk about anything. OMG, what a wonderful daughter I have.

• Today I got a got phone message from Barack Obama, asking me to vote for Gabe Amo on Election Day. I was already planning to vote for him, but thanks for the reminder anyway, Obama. It’s always good to hear your voice, even if it’s just a recording. I’m not even being sarcastic. Your voice sounds so reasonable. So sane. As if adults are in the room. As if everything will be taken care of. As if the world isn’t falling apart. I wish you’d leave me a message every day, honestly.
• In my e-mail, I got an e-mail about a class-action suit against Shutterfly, inviting me to join the pile-on. Over the years I’ve been asked to join quite a few class-action suits. I never do, even when I’m thinking to myself, “Yeah, those guys suck!” But I have no beef with Shutterfly. They’re not perfect, but they’ve made some beautiful photo albums and Christmas cards for me, and I can’t imagine suing them.
• In the snail mail, I got some more medical bills. That really cranks my chain. IMHO, either I should pay for all my health costs and my health insurance (in this scenario, very cheap) should only kick when things get really bad. Or, I should pay for none of my health costs, and my health insurance (in this scenario, very expensive) should cover everything. But, as it is now, I pay most of my health costs and my health insurance is very expensive. What a shit system!

I sprained my knee shortly before Halloween. I wasn’t doing anything physically demanding, just taking a step up the stairs, when suddenly I felt a terrible twisting in my knee, followed by pain. I was on my way to bed when it happened, and it was too late at night for me to fuss over it. I just had to hope that it would miraculously feel better when I woke up. That didn’t turn out to be the case. It was stiff and painful, not so bad that I couldn’t go out trick-or-treating with the kids, just bad enough that it bothered me nearly the entire time.

Livia dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood. I would have preferred to buy a premade costume that was complete, but as is so often the case, the manufacturer’s costumes were all trashy looking, really inappropriate for a 12-year-old. I tried to find her an ordinary peasant dress, but hit various snags, including price and shipping times. Ultimately we had to settle for a German barmaid dress, the top of which I adjusted with some stitches and safety pins. The only cape we could get was full-length, so I cut it shorter for her (slightly lopsided, but not worth risking a worse outcome by fiddling with it). We found the perfect basket, and put Cubby (our stuffed-animal wolf pup) into the basket, which we thought was a cute touch and nicer than the bloody wolf’s head we had first considered. That led one person to think that she was dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, but Livia didn’t seem to mind. She was pleased with her costume and enjoyed showing it off.

Let it also be noted that Livia decorated the house with her own homemade Halloween decorations. She’s such a creative self-starter. The decorations were cute, and after the holiday was over, she took them down when she was asked to, no fuss no muss.

Marshall did not dress up for Halloween. I had resolved not to choose a costume for him. I gave him a deadline for choosing, and he didn’t get it done. So, he was wearing ordinary street clothes that night and did not intend to trick-or-treat. His aunt dumped a ton of candy into a bag for him at his grandparents’ house, which was fine, except that then she also encouraged him to trick-or-treat with his sister and cousin. All along the route, people were really nice about giving him candy, too. That kindness was a joy to witness. But, as a mom, I also saw that he was being rewarded for being too lazy to pick a costume and that he was getting far more candy than would be healthy for him to eat. Eventually I had to put my foot down and tell him that he had enough. So, that wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t entirely his fault, and I’m glad that he went out with us and had a good time.

All things considered, it was another successful Halloween. I’ll treasure it as I do all the others that came before. Will there be more trick-or-treating adventures for us in the future? I hope to get at least one or two more. But, it became obvious to me as we walked around that night that trick-or-treating is becoming a thing of the past. There were fewer kids trick-or-treating, and fewer households handing out candy. Later I discovered that it wasn’t just a local phenomenon. Apparently everyone’s doing trunk-or-treating instead these days. Trunk-or-treat seems lame to me, but no one asked for my opinion, and I guess I’m just happy that I and my kids got to enjoy trick-or-treating while it was still the big thing.