rolle2323's Blog

They were together all their lives. He loved her so much. He was so patient with her...so kind, so sweet to her when she became confused. It tore at my heart sometimes to see them together. He would sit in his wheelchair, and yet seem so strong....and he would reassure her as she sat on the bench next to him. That was when she could still walk. She didn't know where she was...or if her dinner was paid for...and he would tell her that everything was all right....and his tone...his voice....was so loving.

Even when she became impossible...he would watch over her....worry in his eyes....not ready to stand down from his watch...even at death's door.

And he did die.

No one told her. She was incapable of understanding. And yet somehow, she knew. Even though no one ever spoke a word...even though people assured her he was just in the other room...she knew.

She died one week later of cardiac arrest. The doctors diagnosed it as broken-hearted syndrome. Impossibly...she sensed that he was gone....and she went to join him.

Souer Sourire.

It's natural...it's beautiful...when the music takes you and moves your body all around...when your hips move to every beat...when you spin and turn...you throw your head back...you ARE the music....you laugh!!

I can look out my window at the park and see the old stone church tower. It is a beautiful view. There are no leaves on the trees. Winter has depopulated the branches. Time, that ravaging season, depopulates many things, and so the places that once bloomed with presences we loved to see are now bare.

We could not ask the old leaves to stay upon the trees...withered and damaged as they were...crumbling in place. How else, unless they fell, would there be room for the new leaves, in the springtime?

And so we must say goodbye. Goodbye. We loved you. We will miss you.

I went out on New Year's Eve Day....and it was one of "those" days. I have never seen quite so many people behaving so aggressively in the parking lots. At one point, I thought I was going to have to back up INTO the store to escape from a cluster of four SUV'S who decided to leave their parking spaces at the same time and rush toward me. I barely angled into a parking spot when the car beside me decided to activate itself....there was no safety anywhere.

I tried to drive to another store...and an elderly man could not decide whether to exit...should he? Shouldn't he? Stop...hesitate...pull out a bit..the man in the car in front of me decided at first to let him go....then he changed his mind.....then he changed his mind again and SLAMMED on the brakes and I nearly rear-ended him.

Inside the store, I needed a basket, so I exited the store to get one....and as I walked back into the store a tall man in front of me came to a dead stop and went into the zombie zone. I said to myself..."Surely he will wake up in a moment and resume walking.." I walked up behind him.....and he performed a 180 degree turn and smacked right into me.

At the cash register, my debit card was denied. Later on, I was to discover that my automotive insurance had arbitrarily changed the date of their automatic premium withdrawal. Oh, happiness, happiness, thy name is bureaucracy.

Blindly, I exited the store....perhaps entering the same zone as that tall man, before me....only to find that my car was on the opposite side of the store. I had a long, cold walk.

I was starving. My blood sugar plummeted....I kept ignoring my own advice ..."Go get a sandwich...go get a sandwich."  I would say to myself..."Shut up...I'm busy." (Well...not literally...lol!!)

At this point, I got into my car and everyone in the world became a donkey's rear end. There WAS no good person anywhere. No good drivers existed. Did low blood sugar color my world view? Were my coping skills compromised? Perhaps.

At last...I understood the Snickers commercial...I WAS the Diva.

Maybe a little bit...if he was a blonde....

I conducted the exercise class yesterday at the nursing home and I had to ask myself...is it Sweatin' to the Oldies or Sweatin' WITH the Oldies?

I spoke to my cousin last night, and she told me about a wonderful romantic moment that had occurred between herself and her husband.

Recently he has lost his job due to lay-offs, and he went through a knee replacement surgery week before last and is recuperating, and he has been keeping my cousin awake all night talking. Good-naturedly, rather than sleep on the sofa, (which is what I would have done!), she decided not to sleep at all and got up to work on the Christmas lights. She made a pot of coffee at 4 a.m.

Her husband got up and offered to help her, and they worked on the lights all the rest of the night.

And then my cousin told me they did a wonderful, romantic thing together that they have not been able to do in years, because he usually has to get up and leave for work at 4 am, and she works...and they both go to bed early....and they are both always so tired. She said they lay down in bed together and they watched a wonderful romantic movie on the Hallmark channel together until 10 am.

I had no idea...until she told me this story...how hard they have been working...and how much they have sacrificed out of their lives....so that they think it is a wonderful romantic thing to be able to take the time to watch a movie.

It makes me appreciate my life. It makes me so grateful for all that I have been given, both in the past, and now.

A good man shall be satisfied from himself.

Proverbs 14:14

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions
Are they lost or are they found
Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they’re gonna have to abandon?
 

All that foreign oil controlling American soil
Look around you, it’s just bound to make you embarrassed
Sheiks walkin’ around like kings
Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
Deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and to Paris
 

Man’s ego is inflated, his laws are outdated, they don’t apply no more
You can’t rely no more to be standin’ around waitin'
In the home of the brave
Jefferson turnin’ over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
 

Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
But the enemy I see
Wears a cloak of decency
All nonbelievers and men stealers talkin’ in the name of religion
 

People starving and thirsting, grain elevators are bursting
Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it
They say lose your inhibitions
Follow your own ambitions
They talk about a life of brotherly love show me someone who knows how to live it

(Excerpt) Bob Dylan
 

 

I am working with the elderly. Almost everyone I work with is confined to a wheelchair. Many of them have no visitors, and many of them have dementia.

What is universal is their need for love. They reach out for hugs and kisses. Those I can provide.

On EP many of the questions on the Q&A board have to do with love...finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend...finding the perfect one for the rest of your life...but we never consider that ultimately, we may be alone....and still in need of love...but trapped inside bodies less than admirable.

That is why I urge you to love the spirit of your potential partner more than their outward appearance...because eventually only the spirit of them remains...and that part of them needs love...your love.

The swan on the water is perfectly mirrored. He doesn't move, and I try to see how his reflection differs...how the hue of the water....just slightly brown...colors his white perfection. Beyond, framed by leaves and woven branches, the pond stretches to another shore, and I look at the mirrored images of the trees...green in the water, but on one side, breathtaking orange, with the swan in the foreground.

As I watch, entranced, two ducks emerge from the far shore in strange yet perfect motion, veeing toward me across the water, marring the mirror yet leaving trails of color and light showing where they have been.

The swan is disturbed, and sails away, majestically.

I walk to the arched wooden bridge now that the spell is broken, and stand above the pond, looking out at the two swans, now distant. Near the shore, two mallards in their teal beauty dip and dunk themselves repeatedly, until I burst out laughing at their antics.

The two males sail away together across the pond eventually.

And then a male and a female mallard pair arrive, and swim together beneath me. The female looks nothing like the male. She is brindle and drab to his male beauty. I watch them, and I notice that he follows her where ever she goes.

I look across the pond to the mated pair of swans, and I think, "Male and female, created He them".

And I am standing there alone.

I know I shouldn't go back there...but it's like returning to the scene of a train wreck...(plus I keep hoping to hit the end of the season dollar sale...) so I went back to TJMax. There were some cute things this time...but you DON'T want to buy anything Jones NY...apparently the people in NY are very depressed...probably because of the soda ban....the clothing looks like smog at the bottom of a subway.

I visited the dress rack. Polyester. All polyester...or polyester look-alikes. It was like....Sears.

Things will look better to me, I'm sure, when the prices are marked down to a dollar.

When things are particularly bad, you need to raise your spirits, and sometimes you can't find a positive thought to save your life.

That's when I bring out my inner puppy.

He's imaginary...and such a cute little fellow. He's a tiny yellow lab...not more than two weeks old. I can hold him in the palm of my hand.

I hold him up to my face, and I look at his adorable little puppy face. He is a bit sleepy, but he opens his eyes. Then I bring him in close to my cheeks, and he starts to kiss me with his tiny pink tongue...the sweetest, cutest little puppy kisses.

I can smell the puppy milk on his breath...his skin is a bit loose and floppy, and his paws are so big for his tiny body. His fur is as soft as satin.

I hold him close....and my heart eases.

My cousin called me today. Her son died two weeks ago, and today she finally felt well enough to call me.

She told me all about it, and the story was so difficult to hear, and yet she was so brave. She tried in every way to transform her sorrow into a life lesson, and a positive thing that could be carried forward, by her community, and her grandchildren.

She told me a wonderful story. Her mother, my Aunt, passed away last year, and she told me how much her mother loved flowers. She was always buying flats of flowers and planting them, and she had the most beautiful garden. My cousin said there is a children's poem about a beautiful garden that her mother used to tell her, and she remembers it well.

My cousin said that now she has a lovely garden in front of her own home, because of her mother, and it holds all sorts of lovely flowers, including a large bed of a  special variety known as four o'clocks, which only open up in the afternoon.

Late on the morning of her son's funeral, she left her house to go to the church, and there, in front of her house, ALL of her flowers were in bloom....including the four o'clocks, blooming at a time of day when they never normally bloom!!!    !!!!!!!

My cousin says she just knows that was a message from her mother, who loved flowers so much....that she was looking down from heaven on that day, reminding her that she was with her.

This was such a special story, I asked her if I could share it.

The Manufacturer, Sunshine Megastore, does not wish to send me the missing part...(D). They say I should have told them it was missing within 14 days...however, I didn't get round to opening the box that quickly, and I never read the fine print when I ordered the dashed thing. It didn't occur to me it would be defective.  I did, however, notify them within 30 days. That's not good enough. I want to send the cabinet back to them...but I want them to pay for the shipping...it weighs over a hundred pounds. Alas..they refuse.

I notified Amazon of my sad story and they denied my appeal. Apparently it doesn't matter that the manufacterer shipped out a cabinet missing a large panel...as long as I failed to notify them of it within 14 days.

I notified my bank. I had to fill out paperwork called an Affadvait of Fraud...which will likely not succeed. Very likely they will take the refund they have given me right out of my account again, because of this 14 day thing.

In the meantime, my bank told me they had to cancel my ATM card since that was the card used in the transaction, and they didn't wish the vendor to charge the card again. I have been charging my groceries  and my gas on my credit card. It was so inconvenient not having my ATM card to use. The new card was to have arrived here within five business days. Today has been seven business days, and still no card has arrived.

I called my bank. I discovered that they failed to cancel my ATM card the first time. OH!!! But they ARE going to cancel it now! (Grits teeth). It will be another five business days before my new card arrives.

I am simply waiting now to discover that all of this nonsense has been for nothing...that I own a cabinet that is simply missing part D and that there is nothing that I...or anyone...can do about that...because they said I had to notify them the part was missing within 14 days rather than 30....and they can get away with that.

I went shopping yesterday at TJ MAX , and I was appalled. I looked at rack after rack of pig ugly designer clothing until I began to talk to the clothing...something I do when I'm particularly upset. I told the clothing., "I've never seen shirts as ugly as you. They want us to wear this stuff? WHAT are they thinking about?"I saw  shirt after shirt made of mud ugly fabric...smears of brown ....mud brown and orange, and it looked like someone had squiggled monkey vomit green in there somewhere..THAT WAS ONE OF THE PRETTY ONES.. The ugly ones looked like a sick snake had shed it's skin in some see through fabric,,,or they were BLACK WITH WHITE DOTS or just boring beige, I found one pretty shirt out of all of them...completely see through, which meant it couldn't ACTUALLY BE WORN.

I stepped back to just get a good look at the rack and racks of womens clothing...the browns, the oranges, the monkey vomit and the navy blue, the plum hematoma purple and the overwhelming ugliness of the  fabrics....and it hit me all at once.....these fabric designers are in collaboration with these fashion designers in a conspiracy against women.Looking at the clothes it was as obvious to me as the nose on my face.....these designers DO NOT want the women who buy these clothes to breed.

Each shirt I looked at was a form of birth control in itself.We don't have to worry about family planning, or birth-control.They just have to dress the women like that and overpopulation will be a non-issue in ten years.

I read about her on Yahoo news tonight, and she looks fabulous. I mean...really fabulous!

She is eating next to nothing, according to the article,,,10 almonds, a couple of egg whites, 1/2 slice dry toast and 1/2 an apple or something like that. If I tried to diet like that, I would be attacking shoppers outside the grocery store. I would waylay people after they came off the line at MacDonald's. No one at Taco Bell would be safe.

I looked at her muscular, flat tummy and I said to myself, "I go to the gym. I do crunches. Why doesn't MY tummy look like that?" I'm not really overweight, as she was, but I certainly wouldn't look the same as she does in a bikini.

But then I remembered that I have only been to the gym twice this week....and I only did 50 crunches each time....and I haven't been to the gym for almost eight months prior to this week.

My gym card looks good, though. It's almost all filled up. I only have to go around four more times and I'll have filled one whole page.

Insert part A into part B....then....it looks as though you are supposed to....what are those arrows doing? I think you are supposed to take part C and hold it up in the air....no...wait...part C is a screw....so I screw in part C and THEN I hold part D up in the air and bring it DOWN onto parts A and B....that's right.

But I can't. Because part D is missing. Part D is a large wooden panel. I search through all the other large wooden panels. It looks just like J and K....and C....but it isn't...and it most definitely is missing.

I've deleted the email from the original shipping order. Thank God I ordered the danged thing from Amazon. They have all the history of all my orders for the past goodness knows how long....and I can write to the company from whom I ordered the object and beg them to send me...part D.

In the meantime, parts A-T are scattered all over my living room, and can't be repackaged, as they were packed carefully by tiny little elves, and can't be returned to the box without chipping the paint. I wonder how many months it will take before I receive part D?

Today is my birthday.

YAY!!!! I am probably the luckiest woman in the world. I JUST missed being born on Friday the 13th by 13 minutes.

Thanks Mom....thanks for clamping down so hard.

I wrote a story called "Maybe a Little Weird", documenting the fact that on at least a couple of occasions, I've run into signs that say "Life is Good".

At present we are going through  the most horrific heat wave. The temperature in my bedroom has gone up to 92 degrees, and I have been unable to sleep. The humidity is thick. Driving down the highway the other night, I could actually see rolls of steam looping up off the road.

My body prickles with it, and my temper is uncertain whenever I have any task to perform, because of the sweat that pours into my eyes and stings.

Finally, unable to endure it any longer yesterday, I decided to break down and buy an air conditioner. I priced them on the internet, and headed down to Home Depot to see if they had any portable floor units, figuring that would be the easiest for a lone woman to install.

JUST as I walked in the door, a couple of workmen in red Tshirts walked past me, carrying a portable floor unit!!!

"That's exactly what I'm looking for!" I cried. "Where did you get it?" They pointed me to a display quite close by, and I went over to it....there were only three air conditioners left of the small size I needed....and they were on sale!!! Even so, the box was almost as big as I am....and I dragged it toward the door. I couldn't get anyone to help me....and then a nice customer asked me why I didn't go and get a cart. I explained I was afraid someone might get my air conditioner...it was one of the last ones....

He gave me a look....and grabbed the air conditioner from me and dragged it the length of the huge store for me to the cash register, and then he got me a cart. What a nice man.

I wrestled the behemoth into my trunk....the car was parked on an incline so the cart tried to roll away while I was loading it, but I managed to stop it with one foot while balancing the giant box with one hand....and grabbed the cart handle with the other.

Eventually I made it home, and used my collapsible dolly to load the huge thing into my house. I was saying some rather bad things, and glowing profusely. I got the box from Hades into my bedroom, clipped open the packing straps, and opened up the top, and tipped the box, and the whole thing fell out of the bottom.

Let's not talk too much about what followed. I would just like to mention that the panel in which the hose was to fit into my small window was 1/8" too big to fit the window, and that my windows are spring loaded, and that it really takes an awful lot of duct tape, and a lot of very, very bad language to install something like that. Well, I got it in.

Success! I went to plug it in to my only outlet....and there was some sort of pesky plug in the outlet, and I had to unplug it to make room for the air conditioner. I didn't know what it was, but it made a musical noise when I unplugged it.

Cool air....sort of.

The temperature went down to 85. It seemed almost like heaven compared to 92.

I went and sat down at my computer and...no internet!!!! And....my phone wouldn't work! And....I forgot to charge my cell phone!!!! What was going on?

I got in my car and drove to a friend's house. He was kind enough to let me use his phone to call the phone company. I discovered that pesky plug I had unplugged had been my internet.

Home I went....plugged everything back in....up and running....happy as a clam...for a few moments...until the compressor on the air conditioner kicked in. Then the internet died, and so did the phone.

It seems my new AC could not be located in my bedroom. It was going to constantly blow my internet. OFF came the duct tape.....and everything rolled into the living room....so that it could be installed in another window. At this point, the language being used was....a bit foul. I'm so glad the neighbors couldn't hear. My friend had checked in with me...and hearing my dilemna, decided to rescue me.

At 11:30 at night, despite my protests, he came over and installed the air conditioner....properly, this time, without using a bit of duct tape. I believe he even looked at the directions.

Now, you would think that was a happy ending.....

However....the air conditioner....even though set at 62 degrees....never lowers the temperature below 85. It is a piece of crap. Not only that...I wanted it for my bedroom, so that I could sleep. My bedroom, where I am sitting now, is positively steamy...and not in a good way.

I decided to call the manufacturer this afternoon, after paying for the damned thing to run and run and run and not receivng my money's worth of cool air.

Imagine my surprise when I dialed the toll free number and the recorded voice said, "LG....Life is Good"