#24 Bicycle and Blueberry Day

It was 87 degrees at noon today, and humid, but I decided to RIDE! anyway.  I took along a check to deposit at the bank, in case I actually got that far.   

I forgot that moving creates a breeze, so the heat wasn't so bad after all.  I headed south for the village, but by the time I'd got to the Elks' lodge (about half way), the combination of traffic on Rte 9 and my own ineptitude were beginning to scare me, so I turned in at the side road at the Elks, and headed north on the back roads.  That was really nice.  So when I got to where I could turn right, back to the house, I kept going, up to the road where Greig Farm is.   

As I passed Greig Farm, I noticed that the blueberry bushes were heavy with ripe berries, then I came to the "pick-your-own" shed, and stopped to talk to the lady there a bit.  The berries were $1.25-ish a pound!   I really wanted to pick some berries, but without a basket or backpack, I had no way to get them home safely.  So I rode on home, then got in the van and went back to the farm.   

It was so nice in the berry fields.  Rolling hills covered with berry bushes.  Nobody else nearby.  Sound carries so well across the fields, and I could clearly hear a woman and two children about 1/4 mile away, and an older couple who argued about politics for over an hour, but I couldn't see them.  I missed Jay.  I picked 9 pounds of berries (most of which I'll freeze).  I stopped only because the thunder in the distance was getting closer, and there were a few drops of rain.   

So now I have a tired bruised bottom, blue fingernails, and frazzled hair, but I am very content.

#23 How to Cut a Pipe

Well, I didn't get to ride my bike today.  I went to the basement last night and searched for the pipe cutter to cut the seat post.  I distinctly remember seeing Jay use one once - it looks sort of like a wrench, you wrap it around the pipe, and spin it around, and it makes a nice neat cut.  No luck.  Tried to find it again today, and finally ended up with a saw and some files to smooth the cut.  Then I sawed, and sawed, read a book, sawed, watched some tv, rested, sawed, sawed - and made barely a dent.  I got halfway through the thickness of one spot.  I think the darn thing is steel! (I think I had the right saw - skinny blade with tiny teeth stretched on a "c" frame, right?  And it seemed sharp.  Made a lot of sparkly sawdust.) 

At 7 PM I decided I needed some help.  No hardware stores open on this side of the river after 6ish, so I took the post (with the seat still on it) to one of those big home centers across the river.   Now, with age one acquires some bits of wisdom.  I didn't go to the hardware section and ask for a pipe cutter.  If I did, I'd have ended up with a pipe cutter.  Instead, I went to the plumbing section, and asked "How do I cut this?"  So the guy cut it for me.  He had to dig around, didn't have the right cutter among the dept tools - "Hmmm - this is gonna take a BIG 'un..." - ended up taking one off a sales rack.  Even with the "big 'un" it didn't look easy - he put some shoulder-power into it.  No charge.  Cutter went back into the package and back on the rack.  "Think maybe I ought to buy that?  I can't find the one I thought I had."  "Nah.  You probably won't need one that big again.  It's too expensive for something you won't need."

So, thanks to the gallant gentleman, I ride tomorrow!    

#22 I Think I'm in Love!

I finally got to ride my new electric-assist bike today, and I think I'm in love!   Even with all the weight, it's easy to pedal without assist on flat ground.  I went north on Rte 9 and then around the block where the deli is, and the assist didn't kick in until I forgot to shift once for a small hill.   With the assist on hills, it's very gentle on my fragile knees.  I needed full assist on that last .2 miles to the front door - that doesn't mean no pedaling, I had to pedal really fast to keep the assist going, but not hard.  So I was breathing hard when I got home, but my knees were fine.  I love it!  It's exactly the kind of exercise I need - aerobic but not stressful.  (Pedal fast with low resistance is aerobic = good.  Pedal hard with high resistance just builds leg muscle = not so good for me).

In middle and high school, I lived on my heavy old gearless Columbia - 20 miles, and up Red Rock mountain, was nothing to me, even without gears.  This is the first time in 30 years that I have ridden a bicycle with hand brakes and gears.  Before this, I had ridden a three-speed only a few times with husband #2, when we were first married, and finally I quit because he would just take off up ahead and not wait for me, and I kept falling into ditches because the bike was too big for me (think of the old guy on the tricycle on "Rowen and Martin", or was it "Laugh-In"...).  And the bike I used to take my daughter to the swimming pool when she was a toddler had no gears.    So ... I was worried about falling into ditches because I'd reflexively try to backpedal to stop, or pitching over the handlebars because I braked too hard, or that I'd hurt the assist by not shifting at the right time.

I am so proud of myself!   I walked the bike down the driveway, and almost lost control of it because it's so heavy it actually started to drag me, until I used the brakes walking it down, but after a few test runs up and down the first little hill on the street, I was brave enough to try riding up and down the driveway, and it was easy to control the speed!   As for shifting, the turn-the-handgrip 10-speed shift has little pictures of "bike on flat", "bike on moderate hill", "bike on big hill", so I didn't get confused which way to shift, and as for when, if I can't figure it out myself there's a light on the control panel that says "shift now you idiot".  I love it!  

The seat is still an inch or so too high, even with it at the lowest setting, making it a bit awkward to get on and off (when I stand straddling the bike, the point of the seat is almost at my waist - I practically have to jump on) so I'm going to take a hacksaw to the post later this evening.  (I did verify the safety of this with the bicycle service guy who put it together.) 

I'm already anxious for good weather tomorrow - can't wait to get out again.  Today's ride was at  5:30 PM, and traffic on Rte 9 was scary, so I'd like to go into the village tomorrow, maybe late morning or early afternoon.  The bicycle man in Rhinebeck says I can't have baskets on the back because of the special junk wrapped around the rear axle, and I don't like front baskets - weight in them can unbalance the steering.  He recommended a backpack for trips to the PO or store, which doesn't thrill me, but I can get an easy-on-easy-off little trailer that will fit.  I'll have to check that out.  The bike store in Kingston has them.  And, final wonderfulness, the bike fits perfectly in the body of the van, without my having to take the passenger seat out.  

I also need to find out if the battery should get hot when it's being charged.  I suspect that's normal, but it would be nice to know for sure.  The book that came with the bike is very good, so mostly I'm worried because the book didn't mention heat when charging.  

#21 Snarl

Sometime many years ago, perhaps the mid-70s, my mother was in tears because one of my siblings (Janice, I think) was in some kind of psychotherapy, and "they always blame everything on the mother.  It's not fair!"  Her complaint was that the therapists always encouraged the clients to "blame all their problems on inadequate or bad mothering.  No matter what they talk about, the therapist always brings it  back to the mother.  Everything is the mother's fault."  And the mother is not allowed to hear any of the complaints, much less respond to or defend against the charges, even when the charges are based on faulty memories, misunderstood comments, or overheard adult conversations a child couldn't possibly have interpreted correctly.  But as the sessions go on, the kid is more and more clearly angry with the mother, obviously has lost respect for her (at least until a resolution is reached), and the mother doesn't know why, and if she doesn't understand what's happening, it hurts her enormously, and drives her crazy.  My mother was normal.  She was frantic.

Well, I know from my own experience it definitely was like that back then.  Dr. K. wanted to put everything on my mother, and I had to keep dragging it to my father.  I was talking with a teenager a few days ago, and she said she had quit therapy because the therapist kept bringing everything back to her father, and it finally just ticked her off, she loved her father too much to care to hear it any more.  So I guess it still happens, but maybe the focus is allowed to change now.  Equal rights and all that.

Now that I'm older, I guess I see the utility in it.  Perhaps it's just another duty of the mother.  We carry for nine months, give birth, carry for another two or three years, lug around bags of supplies, sit up all night when they're sick, fight for them when they're not getting what they need and deserve, try to anticipate and head off booboos and kiss the ones we couldn't deflect, worry and cry and hope, allow them to fail occasionally for their own good then cry in secret because it's so hard to allow them to fail, try to teach them everything they need to know to survive, and all the time we worry whether we did it right, because it's all brand new and we get only one chance with everything and then that moment is gone and we can't do it over.   And we all know our own mothers didn't do it right, or so we've been told, so we don't even have an example.

So when the child gets to the point where she feels she has a weight on her psyche that she can't carry any more, I guess it really doesn't matter where it came from, I guess it is still the mother's job to allow the child to put the burden on her.  It can't stay on the child, and there's nowhere else to put it that it will stay.  Everything and everywhere else is so nebulous.  Anywhere else she puts it, she's tempted to take it back.  Mother is solid.  Putting the weight on mother, and mother's accepting the burden, allows the child to stand up straight again, flex her aching muscles, and stride away.  The final burden of motherhood.  The weight of her own mistakes mixed with all the extraneous detris.  The moraine. 

(In my opinion, any child who doesn't do this or something like this, to some degree, is totally brainwashed and has never separated from the nest.)

When this shifting of the burden happens through a therapist, the mother never will find out what that burden is, what it is made up of, unless the child chooses to tell her (never a good idea, because the mother will be tempted to pick through the bag and refuse to accept the uglier rocks), but on the other hand, the therapist is a professional and knows exactly what is going on, will hold everything in confidence, and will (if he/she is any good) be smart enough to not form an opinion of the worth or morals of the mother based on only these battered rocks.  That's all ok.

If, however, the child throws rocks at the mother with a nonprofessional, over coffee, the nonprofessional is likely to form a very low opinion of the mother.  And if he's stupid, he's even likely to let that very low opinion, that total lack of respect for her as a mother, show when he meets her.  It can be so bad, so bad with no details, just the disdain, that the mother has to wonder what the child said about her.  (Let alone what the nonprofessional has said to others.)  The disapproval of the nonprofessional can be so clear that the mother can wonder why the child even bothers to maintain any relationship with her at all.  Maybe just for a safety net?   Maybe that's why it's so hard for the child to be civil to her sometimes, why she interprets everything the mother says or does in the most negative possible way, never sees the positive.  Why her immediate reaction to her mother is always defensive.  Finding out through some relative stranger what your child really thinks of you can have you crying on the side of the road on the way home.  It isn't a load shifting done that way.  It's just some a-hole sitting there on the deck lobbing rocks at you.  Rocks your daughter gave him. 

 I am angry.  I am very hurt.  I don't want to do it any more. 

#20 The bird did it?

  "They" are blaming that big fire in California on a raptor that hit a high tension line, and fell to the ground in flames.  That makes me angry.  It is not the fault of the bird.  The bird is not "to blame" for anything.  It was the high tension line that started the fire.  Human hubris.  We screw with Nature, then blame Nature when it does what comes naturally.  The bird is as much a victim as anyone or anything else that burned.

A high tension wire is like a huge lit match just waiting to zap something.  What the heck are they doing passing through forests?  And then you clear the land around and under the wires, encouraging rabbits and other raptor-bait varmints.  The bird had to hit two wires to "burst into flame", so why weren't the wires farther apart than the wingspan of the largest birds that the cleared area would attract?  Blaming this on the beastie is like setting a lit candle on the sill of an open window, then blaming the curtain when the house burns down.  

(And how did they determine a flaming hawk "started" the fire, anyway?  His charred remains were probably near a charred bush.  Maybe a biblical burning bush started the fire.) 

#19 Jay Didn't Lie!

Had lunch with May and NJKC yesterday.  NJKC was going to a political fundraiser today, so the conversation got around to light political topics, and I mentioned the letter from the Republican National Committee that had arrived for Jay, that implied that he was a past member and donor, and my concern that he had misled me.  May said she got the exact same letter about the same time, and she knew for a fact that she had never been a member and had never donated.  ...And then it went off to other political fundraising topics.  I don't think May realized how powerfully her offhand comment affected me.  So Jay didn't lie.  The RNC did.  The (fill-in-your-favorite-epithet)s!  (But now I've got hurt feelings again.  If Jay got the letter, and May got the letter, howcum I didn't get the letter?  And I want to be called for jury duty, and almost everybody I know has been called within the past year or two, but I haven't.  I feel invisible!) 

#18

Some actor was interviewed on TV today, and he said that the hardest thing about working (on several movies in succession) was maintaining a personal relationship, which I thought was very perceptive of him.  Then the reporter said that the woman the actor had been dating is an interior decorator.  And then I thought "Oh, good.  Has a chance of succeeding.  She probably has more control over her time, not like another actor ("actress" seems to be no longer "PC").  That's why relationships between two Hollywood-types never seems to last.  Neither of them is able or available to work full time on the relationship.  I'm not convinced they ever had the time to learn how to work on it, anyway."  

Then I had the feeling that what I thought was somehow not right, that I had, in thinking that, betrayed some feminist rule.  "There's something wrong there.  I'm uncomfortable thinking that."

Well, I was right.  You both need to be available to each other, not on a schedule, but as needed.  When it's celebrity+celebrity it's awfully hard even to know when you're needed, let alone be available.  When it's celebrity+noncelebrity, if the noncelebrity is willing and able to take a bit more of the load, to be more sensitive to needs, more willing to communicate needs, and able to make the availability happen, then it has a better chance of succeeding.  Doesn't matter which is male or female.  So I wasn't thinking that her career was less important than his, only that she might be in a better position to give more.

Where my disconnect came in was from my old resentment against an ex-husband who informed me something like two months after the 1970 wedding that field experience in his division would enhance his career, so we were moving.  It didn't matter that I liked my job, or that I was on a fast track where I was, or that my division had no positions "out there".  It also didn't matter whether I wanted to go or not.  In the early 1970s, if a husband accepted a work transfer and left for another city, and the woman refused to relocate with him, she was guilty of desertion, not him.  The family home traveled with the man.  Not just legally, also socially.  It was a way of thinking.  Women didn't really have careers.  So I comforted myself with the thought that our marriage was already showing signs of very big trouble, and it was up to me to make this sacrifice and maybe save it.

So when I was uncomfortable with my thought about the actor/decorator, I think I was actually afraid I was thinking that I wanted her to do what I did.

No.  Not at all.  She doesn't have to give anything up.  I just thought she'd have a better ability to be aware.  

#17 DBA

Got my DBA ("Doing Business As...") today.  As usual, the legal terminology is not so straightforward - they don't officially call it a DBA.  They call it "an Assumed Name", which sounds kind of shady.  "Hi there new customer.  I'm doing business under an assumed name.  Wanna see what's in my car trunk?"  Another thing that made it seem shady was that the county clerk's office doesn't stock the application form.  I was sent across the street from the court house to a deli/newsstand to buy the forms.  They had XXX magazines out in plain sight (I startled a browsing lawyer-looking guy when I rounded the racks looking for the form).  I finally had to ask for the form at the counter next to the door, and the woman pulled a folder out from under the counter.  They must be XXXX, huh?

#16 Another day without incident?

I turned the TV on after the bath, and was actually surprised to find that nothing had blown up. 

#15 Do Contributions Corollate to Votes?

While I was in the bathtub I read an old news magazine and found a site you can go to, to find out who donated how much to which presidential candidates.  At FUNDRACE.ORG you're supposed to be able to search on either name or address.  So, naturally ...

Name didn't seem to work at all for me, but address was interesting.  I put in "a" for the street address, and then some interesting zip codes.  The local area folks donate small amounts - like $250 each.  But if you head down to the next (small) city south, the donations are entirely $1000 to $2000 per.  Military types donate a consistent $250 each.  Bushies almost always donate at least $1000, most give $2000, but there seem to be a lot more people donating smaller amounts to Democratic candidates. (Many of the Democratic candidates have since dropped out.)  The pattern seems pretty consistent throughout my small sample.  Republicans are getting more money, but Democrats are getting more people.  I wonder how significant this is. 

The site gives name, address, amount contributed, and to whom.  I find that scary.  (Maybe it's the military upbringing.  I wonder if all those folks at APO addresses are aware that everyone can find out who they support.) 

 

#14 Back Out

I don't remember Thursday or most of Friday.  My lower back went out, so I couldn't sit at all, and could barely stand.  The nerves that work the lower belly were apparently afflicted, so I had horrible cramps if I stayed upright too long, and was pretty constantly nauseous.  It wasn't just the lower back, I had pain just above and just below the shoulder blades, where the old injuries are, but they alone wouldn't have knocked me out.  There may have been something else going on;  I had muscle pain everywhere, and I may have had a slight fever.  I did manage to drive the van down to the mailbox every day.  Very strange.  I don't remember doing it, but ... the mail and newspaper are here ... and I couldn't possibly have walked that far. 

Everything is fine today.  I finished Skeletons on the Zahara while I was flattened.  It did get better about halfway through.  The characters became more dimensional.  Perhaps less strictly true to the original journals, though.  I guess sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice truth for the story. 

Dad Kolb called while I was writing this.  He's trying to get his telephone and address lists corrected.  He sounded very confused.  (He had been very sharp when I talked with him on Father's Day.) It took almost 15 minutes for him to write down and read back the phone number correctly - and HE called ME! (Apparently after a few wrong numbers - when he got me, he wasn't sure it was me.)  Carolyn and I have corrected his lists several times over the past five years, and he is still using the old list we thought we'd destroyed.  Carolyn has moved since the old list, and Marybeth and I have had our RD boxes changed to street addresses and our area codes changed.  It's very frustrating that he keeps finding the old list, but can't find the new - and we put it everywhere!  I suspect that he does find the new list and rejects it because it "doesn't look right".  Alzheimer's tells him the old familiar addresses are the right ones, so he keeps searching until he finds them.  Luckily, my local PO people have been kind enough to deliver his mail to me regardless of how it's addressed (which is amazing because it's sorted right down to the carrier level in a monster sorting center God knows where!  Plus he always leaves the last digit off the zip code).  He has 24-hour home aides now, and I don't understand why the women don't help him more with phone calls and addresses.  (On the other hand, I do know him, so maybe I do understand.)

Thursday I ate nothing - just diet iced tea, water, sugar-free fruit juice, and asprin.  Friday I had 1/4 cup of creamed spinach and 1/4 cup pureed cauliflower (from Tuesday's doggie-bag).  Saturday, I had 1/2 a baked potato, two peanut butter crackers, and about 1.5 cups of coffee ice cream, but the ice cream doesn't count because when I brushed my teeth that evening it ...um... left me.  Nothing yet today - I'm just not hungry (or maybe I'm just afraid my food will reject me again).  And yet, when I step on the scale, I haven't lost an ounce!  That used to be the one good thing that would have come out of an illness - a flat belly that would stay flat for a week or two.

Well, after several days in bed, I am in great need of a nice long bubble bath, with book.  The CD "In the Garden of Souls" is 62 minutes long, so I'll put that on and soak for an hour.