Shine son

I was out for my walk this morning, you know to help with that lofty goal to be out of bed and vertical for some portion of each day, and during the third mile I happened upon this view...

...something was happening in the sky that had the potential to turn the black and white photo I felt like I was meandering in a little more vibrant. I snapped the picture because it seemed like just the sort of fantastical thing I typically post on instagram.  (I can wait while you get right over there to follow me.) I was pondering what hashtags would be smart and sassy enough to elevate my power line and generally cluttered shot. Something about the sunshine, shine sun shine...son shine, shine son, sunny son. It was a fast leap, and I could not escape the parallels of how hard both were trying to shine as I looked on.

My son was one of the 2020 college graduates. It became clear rather quickly last spring that graduation was not going to be the much anticipated conventional affair, and the event was cancelled altogether before much time had to be spent trying to figure out what modifications would take place. We were well versed in what was not going to be happening, but not exactly sure what, if anything, we should try to conjure instead. There was talk about the school putting something together for fall, but I had a hard time mustering up any optimism, let alone enthusiasm, for that. I felt compelled to mark the day that was supposed to be, ON the day it was supposed to be. We asked my son to plan to be in our driveway at 6:30 that Friday evening, and gave little to no details beyond that. 

The rest of us got to work on what seemed like the important elements of a graduation. We were looking forward to the change of season, as my daughter and I planned what dresses we were going to wear for the occasion. People had started doing the drive-by birthdays, so why not a graduation? We spread the word to local folks inviting them to drive by that evening to shout/honk/whatever. I had been wrist deep in my mask making efforts right around then and decided that masks in school colors and tiger mascot prints would make good party favors. Cookies, there had to be cookies as well to give to car passengers. I don't know why I can never seem to give up on the notion of events having favors and cookies. Things were starting to take shape,  but also seemed to need more. I refused to celebrate his achievement for anything less than the big deal it was. I wanted something that resembled a ceremony, or at least what I thought were the important parts. My cousin graduated from RIT as well, so who better to be the speaker at our event? He put on his finery and taped a fabulous speech that we added to the video after some Pomp and Circumstance. I threw havoc to the wind and tracked down a favorite professor through the school's website (luckily there was only one with the first name I was looking for in the engineering department) and sent her an email asking if she could "present" my son with his diploma by doing a short video clip. I might have had a moment or two that I spent worrying that she would think I was off my rocker, but she could not have been more gracious. She went to the trouble of going to the school to get the full ensemble that she would have worn at graduation as well as a diploma cover for "handing" over in her video. That went on the video as well. 

The day came, and to say it was chilly would be a ridiculous understatement. The show was going to go on! We had a shindig planned for 6:30, and there was not an alternative to consider. We dragged a television outside for our videotaped ceremony, did a little decorating, set up a few chairs very far apart, and scrapped whatever nice dresses we were planning to wear and grabbed whatever finery we had in school colors. 

My mother and step-father were supposed to be on an overseas cruise, that was obviously cancelled, so this was clearly the next best thing.

He had made a commitment to not shave until quarantining ended...

...he did cave in July.

There was joy, there was cheer, there was champagne!

Luckily we started planning early enough to gather about forty video clips from nearly all of our family, his college friends and fraternity brothers, plus a few college staff members. (And luckily we watched that in a quiet moment earlier in the day and had stopped crying in time to see people.) Our boy had graduated. Not the way we imagined he would, but it still felt like something special happened that day...despite even that not being what I had anticipated as the weather prevented any foot traffic or neighbors wandering out (which meant we had A LOT of cookies and masks leftover) and we were all relatively uncomfortable in the cold. 

The next day? I was awash in disappointment, longing for the weekend we were "supposed" to have together with people we had spent five years cultivating meaningful relationships with, and did not want to do anything other than hide out curled up in the fetal position in my closet eating candy. (Obviously this was before I had my rad walking program in place.) My son though, he championed on. He was applying for jobs left and right with some degree of optimism. He looked good on paper, and not just with momvision. Resumes were being hand delivered by employees of some companies for jobs that actually existed, and then were not even acknowledged. Rejections came and more silence. 

The summer felt kind of like summer, but as fall approached, he was losing his spark. I felt helpless in the face of him feeling hopeless. I tried not hover or smother, but made every attempt to be available and keep communication open. There were awkward conversations with words like "depression" and that a time could come when help was needed, suggestions to put one foot in front of the other were made. (At least I practice what I preach sometimes.)  There was an eight week, seven interview waiting game with one company that consumed much of September and October, and then ended with no room in the company's budget for the position. Then there was a three month old job posting that suddenly needed somebody pronto and when he was told he would hear back the following week, he made some tactical error in believing her and now over three weeks later is still wondering. He did get a contract gig, but the catch is that it's over an hour away and who wants to sign a lease not knowing how long employment will last? He and his sister have basically been taking turns staying at her house near school since his job is five minutes from there. Somewhere in there he weathered the passing of my grandmother, hiding out from his sister and I having covid and the general malaise and exhaustion we all feel. The holidays recharged us a little, if only from the sheer amount of sugar consumed. He was then quarantined here for ten days after possible exposure right before New Year's. We all regrouped again, feeding our faces, watching football and playing a lot of Scrabble. 

He is still in a sort of limbo waiting to see what opportunities present themselves. I see him like the sun this morning...waiting, trying to shine. I know how bright it will be. I know he is under these clouds, and I think more importantly he knows his brightness will eventually burn through. It is going to be amazing to bask in the glow of my sunny son.

 

Lean on Me (weird but fitting)

In Order to Move

Let's pretend this is my first post of 2021. I am not sure if it will set things in any better motion than my last post, but I was super disappointed in myself when I realized that was how the blog entered a new year. 

I could have been lulled into a sense of security, but I had my usual level of skepticism when waltzing through the store the other day. Still, it was difficult to resist the belief that this pandemic might be about to start its final descent when I saw this...

... a clearance on toilet paper?!?!?! What kind of madness was this? 3-ply no less?! Nice try, but I refrained from buying party supplies to celebrate. I also could not have possibly bought enough double rolls for the absolute poop storm that was to come. There is no need to rehash that here, as it is not likely to help us move forward. The only way I know how to cope when life feels sideways is to try to restore order to something.

I was going to need to expand upon my current mental well-being plan. Oh wait! I haven't shared the details of that program yet. I don't have a patent on this beauty yet, so feel free to claim and use it as your own. Once covid left the building, and took my excuse to hide out holed up in my bed all day with it, I knew I was going to need a plan. First, there had to be a reason to throw off the covers and get out of bed to begin with. I had to think fast because each passing second that Saturday morning allowed my body to sink a millimeter further into my mattress. Keep it simple, just go for a walk, one foot in front of the other. You know what clothes to put on - spandex is clearly more for function than for your form, but your thigh rub will thank you. Just go with the two mile route you know. By day three, I enhanced my plan slightly by opting out of wearing a bra under the spandex to dissuade me from lounging about in my walking wear for the rest of the day. I lack the body confidence to inhabit our family room in my sausage casing finery to begin with, so lacking any other necessary support just sealed the deal for success with my plan. Things were going well with me up, fresh-aired and then dressed by 9:30 each morning. Okay, the timing might have been a slight flaw, but I was a creature with a habit. We don't need to address the panic that ensues whenever I run out of my frosted mini-wheats that I typically eat for breakfast. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So that is how I was coping with my own self, but what about days when we all feel the additional weight of a rather scratchy and uncomfortable blanket threatening to suffocate us? Feel free to share any strategies you have. I am always partial to those involving chocolate, but I have other rules about what time of day that can start (unless we are talking chocolate chips in the pancakes), so I started by tacking on an extra mile to my morning commute. If nothing else, that gave me fifteen more minutes outside to come up with a better plan. 

It may have taken that village set up to bring some joy to December, but I feared it was going to take that same village leaving to provide peace in January. I toyed with the idea of just taking down the actual Christmas tree and letting the scenic winter remain. The notion of what a tribute the set up was to my grandmother was pleading its case for staying power, but my need to restore order and move forward proved stronger. There was so much of my grandmother here for the holidays, from the cookies to the ornaments on the tree to the little santa cups filled with Junior Mints. It may have been time to put all of those things away, made easier by realizing how much of her is with me all of the time...always.

The way these porcelain pieces fit so snugly into their styrofoam homes is comforting to me. 

Is there anywhere you feel as protected as these folks appear? I guess this is why Packaging Science is an actual college major.

We gave this Cocoa Works to my grandmother for her eightieth birthday as a tongue in cheek acknowledgement of her alleged allergy to chocolate. She said eating the confection made her scalp itch, but that was apparently not a high enough price to pay to give it up. 

The endeavor to pack up the village also gives me a slight thrill...

...as I do not have many other opportunities to exercise my tetris game style puzzle skills.

In a moment of what can only be described as weakness, I let my son bring his Christmas legos upstairs for the season as well. Maybe I was considering that this could be his last year living at home, granted those legos will probably be living here with us for a bit even after he moves out. Maybe it was his way to honor my mother-in-law who gives him the holiday set each year (top right elves' clubhouse was 2020). I knew she would like to see a photo of the setup! Who was I to squash a village of any sort? Who was I to decide what could bring joy this year?

That was far less enjoyable to put away, and not just because he looked at me like I was the Grinch when I told him I was moving it back to the basement. None of the four shelves it sprawls out on down there were empty, as he had left some odds and ends behind in his enthusiasm to get things upstairs before I changed my mind. I was venturing into territory that I am not typically allowed to mess with, but we both knew there was never going to be a time either of us actually wanted to take on the project. I just needed an empty surface back so I could collect things hiding around the house that used to belong there.

The place feels a little bit lighter, making it easier to breathe and hopefully a bit easier to move. I hope you are finding your way, heading toward the light...wait, not THE light, just something brighter than darkness. Keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Draft Day #2 - Snow it goes

When I clicked on this draft (click here for Draft Day #1 post) that was sitting on the list, I was sort of surprised to see that it appeared rather lengthy. I wonder what else it could have possibly needed? Let's see what I was pontificating about back on December 6, 2013...

We live in Central New York-where winter comes. It always comes. There may be a variety of temperatures, snowfall amounts and arrival dates, but make no mistake that something resembling winter is going to take hold of this geographical region at some point. For some reason the fickleness and unpredictability of the changeover from fall makes our family feel challenged to a big game of chicken.

When the kids were younger, there was many a year we were caught with our snowpants down by the first snowfall. Two known facts collided with mixed results: no way were any of the boots from the previous year going to fit the ever-growing feet of children under ten and no way was I going to be able to keep those children inside after that first snowfall. Whether the snow started overnight or accumulated during the day while everyone was at school did not matter. I never saw it coming and ran out for proper attire that properly fit. It almost became more of a tradition for them to spend that first frolic in the fluffy white with their feet crammed into boots that barely fit, hand me downs, and possibly mismatched mittens. It never mattered. Maybe they would come inside quicker because there feet hurt, or maybe they stayed out longer because their feet were numb.

The years that teaser snow came in October, we paid it no mind. You couldn't even really make a decent snowball out of that mere dusting that left all of the blades of grass sticking through. That was not a snowfall and therefore did not require much beyond staying inside, or just quickly grabbing dribs and drabs of cold weather gear.

This year, we actually had autumn weather and I know there must be others like myself who just sort of stopped looking at the calendar and took each day for what it was. Thanksgiving is falling so late that it has just been like a really long October, despite the fact that Halloween should have actually served to clearly mark the end of that month. Maybe it is just a really long November, and without Thanksgiving poking its stuffing out, we just think the days are passing very slowly, as if it is still the first week or so. You would also think the Christmas lunacy at every store and mall might be a sign, but since those decorations appeared almost comically early, they were easy to ignore.

I have a few bins of apples on our front porch, as well as the drilled Halloween pumpkins, all of which are now covered with snow. The garage has been readied for two vans to fit inside, but the basketball hoop is still standing dead center in front of the garage door. I typically try not to complain about someone else’s strategy for getting the garage cleanout under way, but I am pretty sure if my van is sitting in the driveway with inches of snow on it, the method failed.

Um, okay. It appears I was having some trouble beyond just monitoring the passage of time and basic calendar reading skills. Where was I headed with this? If I could decipher that, perhaps I could give this poor post the closure it deserves. I will say that this year was not the first since little feet stopped growing and fashion entered the equation that used to be more rooted in warmth. We had a family fun evening where I dumped all of the hats, mittens and scarves on the floor and insisted we keep only that which we intended to use. We shared yarns about the yarns that had been hand knit or crocheted by my aunt, mother and step-mother. It's amazing what passes for entertainment during these times.

Time to Bake the Cookies

Cookies. An event wasn't truly celebrated without them. The presentation changed slightly with a different platter or frosting colored to coordinate with the event - weddings, graduations, christenings, and of course Christmas, the high holiday of baking - but the stars of the show remained the same. My grandmother's cookies.

I was a casual observer of my grandmother's baking process. Her kitchen had a small counter top peninsula where the magic happened amidst a stand mixer and cookie sheets. She had banged up pink metal measuring cups, and some odd assortment of measuring spoons that she cast aside preferring to use silverware. The only involvement I really had as a kid with her baking, aside from wandering past the cooling cookies more times than necessary, was getting to use the typewriter or my fancy cursive writing skills to update her recipe cards. There was no "helping" my grandmother bake. My suspicion is that she anticipated the potential mess that likely would have occurred, and did not even entertain extending the invitation.

As an adult, the first cookie recipe of hers that I borrowed was for a simple delight called Italian Cookies. These were the favorite of many and most often requested. I was apprehensive about trying to make the cookies on my own because her reports often detailed the dough giving her trouble by being either too sticky or too dry. The only problem I had was the sizing as I had not accounted for any rising, and I am not sure if cookies being too large even really counts as a cause for alarm.

This year I made them almost too small

One of my grandmother's last Christmases living in her home, I was trying to go through some motions of holidays gone by, so figured we would make some Italian Cookies. I was hoping to get a few pointers as I expected something to click once all of the ingredients were out, or at least once the dough mad been mixed; a sort of muscle memory type of thing. I was mistaken. We got through the task together in a bittersweet fashion. 

It seems like each card I pull out of her recipe box looks simple enough, but I get jammed up every time I try one. My grandmother never struck me as an infinitely patient person, but she must have found some sense of satisfaction and peace in what strike me as the most tedious of tasks. I remember watching her finely chop any number of ingredients. My first swipe at the date bars? I almost bailed at the first step trying to work my knife through the sticky mess I was making. I tried to remember what her process looked like and could only come up with a vision of a much larger knife than I typically allow myself to handle. 

My grandmother's passing left me even more drenched in nostalgia for the holiday season than my fairly saturated base level of the past few years. Cookies, there had to be cookies...more cookies than usual, more of her recipes being made, more people being reached, individual favorites accounted for. 

Walnuts? Did everything she made call for walnuts? Mincemeat? Let's not get crazy! (That being said, I have eyed that big old Nonesuch jar my past two trips to Wegmans. I also nearly put the $16.99 tin of Charles Chips in my cart. The comfort of memories is a dangerous game.)

I was ready for the dates. Big knife, take your time...

...just keep chopping! Maybe a bigger cutting board next time. On to the chocolate crumb bars! Checking things off the list, pretending these were done once out of the oven...

...pay no attention to the corner missing on each as I procrastinated actually cutting the bars!

Oh how did she decide how big to cut the cookies, and what knife did she wield so it wasn't a glorious mess?! No point dwelling as there were thumbprints to make!

That's not what hers looked like, and why was the thumb part so difficult? Why on earth did she not want help? (Obviously because she probably had a better system and I only would have been holding her back.) My mom made the nut tarts (more walnuts) and the Mexican wedding cakes snowballs Russian Tea balls (or whatever your family calls those powdered sugar coated walnut balls, yes, MORE walnuts). My daughter then had to weigh in with what have become her own holiday baking traditions of peanut butter blossoms and spritz cookies, and then we do like those chocolate crinkles, and how about some molasses because nobody else here likes gingerbread so I settled. (She also makes herself chocolate chip snowballs, but does not allow those to be given away.) How about some caramel corn to fill in any blanks! We still have cut outs to get through for the one person on our list who would probably turn down a cookie platter without them.

Then what? Well then comes the part where I don't even know how to give away the cookies. I don't know how many to set aside for the four of us to have here because any other year we would just nibble for days on what was left after company departed. This year I am trying to ration and worry I am failing at being generous about it. What if I give away too many cookies? I couldn't possibly just make more in January of whatever I wanted. 

I long to see my grandmother's freezer stacked high with tins filled with cookies waiting to be delivered or picked up. Having a better understanding of what went into that end result is fascinating to me, as once again, this was not a woman who had infinite patience or an affinity for messes. Maybe the key is that for that time she was baking, she put everything else aside. I know her house wasn't a mess to begin with, so that wasn't hanging over her head either. She probably didn't have a daily meltdown over what to make for dinner. I think she took her time. What was that like to feel like you weren't rushing? I need to try harder to remember her lesson to slow down once in awhile, or at least keep my house in better order on a regular basis (literally and figuratively).
 

Before I end this ramble, I want to update you on the villages from this post! Our cousin posted a photo of her village, that my grandmother contributed to, on the blog's facebook post...

...my cousin posted a picture of hers there as well...

...and then my aunt set up hers!

This filled me with such joy!

Just a quick random

The next time you are upright, dressed and feeling relatively reasonable about yourself, I hope my husband doesn't hand you a fanned out display of hair color coupons. So subtle. 

Truth be told, but I am reluctant to say "in his defense", I did end up using one of those coupons, and after turning our bathroom once again into a low budget crime scene, the "washes out in 28 days" color apparently washed out during the rinse process. This was a new and different occurrence, and one I am obviously not pleased about! Let's move on to party tips from Crispix cereal...

...as I am left to dispute whether I would call a gathering successful if I was only offered two snack options. I am not disrespecting snack mix of the Crispix or Chex variety, but I need more than one other bowl of something to make leaving my house worthwhile. (Let's not even get into the fact that right now all I can ponder is trying to sit alone in a corner across the room from my host trying to cram seasoned dry cereal from what I hope is my own personal baggie into my mouth behind a mask.)

And now, a brief moment of silence for the fallen lawn inflatables...

...and perhaps another moment for whatever I am guessing a bird swooped down and carried off?!?!

I have never seen tracks like that before! 
 

I guess now I should try to finish up the other post I was working on, after thinking about starting it for three days. I am almost positive it will not reflect the effort made.

*After seeing that coupon larger, I just want to confirm that I do own emery boards, and understand how they work.

The Home Away From Home

This post is merely a brief summary to help get you caught up on some of what went on around here. There will be other equally scintillating tales to follow.

Sometimes I need a distraction. I am going to go out on a limb and guess that at some point in the last nine months you have needed one (or far beyond double digits) as well? It was June, so three months into bumping into the same four walls and three people. We were one month past my son's bittersweet driveway college graduation and knee deep into his unsuccessful attempts to put that newly minted engineering degree to work. We had become more proficient at the weekly zoom calls with my grandmother, but longed for the simplicity of just sitting next to her. I had tried to restore some order around the house in a Tazmanian Devil type of frenzy. Sewing masks had become disenchanting as the fabric started to lose its charm as the novelty wore off. I panicked. 

My temporary job at an insurance company was drawing to a close, and while I had applied for a permanent position there, I was having a hard time mustering up any enthusiasm about it. I needed to feel more useful in the face of the pandemic, put a different skill set to work maybe. I applied for a position at a nursing home as an activity leader, including a very matter of fact cover letter that explained how my life experiences positioned me as qualified for the job in ways my resume may not have conveyed. I was quickly granted an interview, and offered the job hours after that meeting. It is almost amusing to me now as I look back on just what my state of mind must have been when I accepted the offer...for less money per hour than if I was starting at Dunkin Donuts, that would necessitate being tested for covid once a week, working every other weekend and some holidays, in a germ factory, oftentimes surrounded by a general sense of hopelessness. 

Maybe I thought I was going to save the world, or at the very least, my sanity? In an ironic twist, I was assigned to the dementia unit. I was able to accept that none of the residents were my grandmother, but that did not mean that I was not willing to play the part of their granddaughter. I found people who would tolerate my singing, be content just walking hand in hand with me, comment on my weight/hairdo/outfit with no filter. I gave my best. The rewards were typically small and personal with no gold stars, but I was convinced that I had found something I was good at. I was not blind to the parallels running in my life, and not just because I literally had to drive by my grandmother's facility on my way to work. In some ways it just made me want to run even harder trying to not only find joy for myself, but to bring whatever spark I could think of to my newfound friends. I also kept trying to find the humor, no matter how dark it could be, to bring those stories home to my family since I was the only one leaving the house. I kept wanting to share the stories here, but often worried I wouldn't be able to translate them well to print.

I think I started to get burnt out about four months in. The schedule was not great, the families were growing weary as the virtual visits fell short of filling the void, sundowning started even earlier with the time change and less daylight, and even figurative bright spots in the day were quickly cast over by shadows. As one nurse simply stated, it was sucking the life out of us. I hate cliches, so it bothered me to feel like I was falling into, or becoming one. I tried to rally with some autumn craft ideas, and then tried to keep my game face on when the supplies started to disappear less than an hour after I put them on tables, or the bulletin board was disheveled after one swipe by somebody in a mood. I did not want to give up, and could not fathom how I would walk away.

When my grandmother died, there was a part of me that wanted to march right back into work and make a valiant attempt to do SOMETHING for SOMEONE, but there was also a part of me that wanted to run screaming from the building. One week after my grandmother's funeral, I was on my way to work when I got the phone call that my covid test for that week had come back positive. Maybe some of those mild symptoms the week before that were easily explained away by stress and allergies amounted to something. I had no choice but to turn the car around and go home to hide under my covers in "isolation". I had to stop. I had to sit with the fact that my elderly dementia person was gone, and maybe it was time to close the chapter of my life, at least temporarily, that dealt with that diagnosis.  I did not return to work, and I am strangely okay with that.

*It is my assumption that I contracted covid at work as it had finally entered our facility, and I had spent time with some of those residents, while wearing a mask, before their test results had come. I had been able to overcome most of my fears and felt adequately protected until that phone call came. Having to tell my family, especially my children who I am supposed to protect, that I tested positive was awful. My daughter tested positive as well (she had been home from school a mere twenty-one hours for the funeral). We both had very mild symptoms, and I am grateful every day for that. It was very scary and I did not think I could go back to work and keep that risk factor in my life, as well as attempting to appropriately grieve while doing so.

Draft Day #1-Malted random

I confirmed that it is in fact Tuesday...the eleventy-seventh (or actually eighth) of a 'ber month. No need for specifics. I checked my phone for any questionable items that needed sharing, and didn't come up with anything urgent. I am afraid if I don't at least mark this space, I will fall out of the blogosphere again, and the truth is I rather like it here. I decided that I could still do something a little random today, so I looked at my list of "draft" posts. I guess they serve as sort of placeholders for thoughts I may have that made it farther than others that were far too fleeting. I have seven such drafts, and 1053 actual posts, so apparently these pieces of unfinished business are rare specimens. Please do not mistake that as my suggesting they are fancy or of such magnitude that they could not possibly have been completed. I did not view each one, as that seemed like it would spoil the fun, so let's just bite into this one from October 29, 2016...

...that's it. It was just these two photos hanging out. I remember intending to document my quest for the malted milk balls of my youth, while voicing my disappointment in the ones I was finding. Does anyone else remember when they had more of the malted center? Look at that beauty up there! That was fancy candy store merchandise there. Certainly there was going to be a bounty of powdery goodness in side? But alas, ew. Can you taste the disappointment? What is that layer in between the inside and the outside? I should have never trusted something so shiny. 

Every now and then there is a Whopper in the box that comes close to what I am looking for, but without the carton, the experience falls short right from the beginning. Plus, there is also usually a ball of disappointment in the box and then you have to search for a better one to end the session with. The Robin's Eggs at Easter are the best option in my opinion, but I am not sure they have gone the way of the Cadbury Mini Egg and dressed themselves in other colors to be available at other times of year. Is this a mission I want to sign up for, a trail I want to pick back up? I know, and if you've been here for awhile you know also, that I can get pretty passionate about candy, but I think I am going to put a pin in this one until the new year. It is not just because I have been drained of nearly every last ounce of optimism, but I also just found the bag of Harvest Mini Cadbury Eggs I purchased, which is distracting, as is the fact that I fell of the wagon with regards to peanut m&m's.

Thank you for being here! I'll be back soon!