No Such Thing

When will I learn that when an old item crumbles or won't come clean, it's time to buy new? Towels I bleach and bleach until they fray, or rubber gloves with two fingers fused with hardened LocTite are still serviceable, I say, and keep using them. Then the day comes when my eyes are opened, like people's are in the Bible. Today while lying on the folding mat that I loll on daily, indoors and out, a foam mat used for 25, maybe 30 years not only for lolling on rugs and concrete and grass but for exercise and camping and blissing out and suffering agonies (just the normal agonies of any lifetime, no big deal) and napping, I realize that little acid-green crumbs, the mat's core, are coming through the pink, and they're not bugs.

The thing has worn out.

 

I use the mat daily, often more than once. In summer it's hosed down, washed with soap and a scrub brush, and dried in the sun. It's thinning out, and the edges curl. I slept on this mat the night I moved into the Divine Cabin, before there was furniture. It was June. Warm breezes wafted through the screens. I was in such ecstasy I thought I might not sleep.

The manufacturer I assumed must be long out of business since their mats last 25 years. So I spent an hour looking at possible substitutes. It is thicker than a yoga mat, and its top is not sticky but sueded. (When I bought it there was no such thing on the market as yoga mats.) Those crash mats covered with vinyl; one can't loll on vinyl. I don't want one I must roll and unroll and tie. One (I guess literally only me -- there is no such thing even on Amazon!) wants a mat one can fling open the selfsame second one is seized by the impulse to loll or do push-ups.

 

Oh hell, I thought. I'll google the brand. Amazing: It's still in business! But they're down to royal-blue mats only.

 

I will take it! This pink one I will repurpose for gardening or seating.

What If I Said Yes?

I let errands pile up until I have four or five, then drive to town to do them, and yesterday, as the snows melted in the February sun, came an impulse to pick up a takeout salad. Oh, man, how I fought with myself, turning in the direction of the place, then turning away, then turning the car around and back because I could make salad at home. I shouldn't spend the money, because when I'm old and shivering I'll wish I'd saved it . . . But gosh, I can't ever treat myself? And the portions are big enough to make two meals . . . I overthought a Chicken Caesar salad. I wanted it all readymade, with potato chips and a cookie. It's been months since I've had a bag of chips or an oversized greasy coffeehouse cookie.

Thus they were made manifest, bagged, and passed to me through an open window and as the day neared noon and 60 degrees -- a full 60 degrees warmer than the previous week -- I thought it ideal for the year's first picnic. I added a plate of sliced apple and a beer. (Beer: It's not just for breakfast anymore!) My in-laws always know when they visit to bring a case of Wisconsin beer, and because they visit twice a year at most and less so this year, I hoard my beers for special occasions, like the first day of 2021 warm enough for porch dining.

Salud! Then I had a nap.

Preparing for Polar Air

In a log cabin the logs get chilled all through in deep winter and then radiate cold -- indoors. That's my least favorite part of living here. Then I use my extreme-temp strategies. There's no gym, church, coffeehouse, library, club meeting or anywhere to escape to this year, so:

 

• Wear over-the-knee wool socks and long underwear under fleece-lined sweats, and maybe leg warmers and headgear. Indoors. I do mean it.
• On the weekend, place the closed car or other vehicle in the sun (if there's sun). Let the sun heat it up real good. Go nap in it. Warms your bones.
  
  
• Eat higher-calorie food to sustain body weight. It is not healthy to "get thin" because of cold temperatures.
  
• Curtain or shade all windows, or tablecloth your window, as I did this morning. If possible, tape the curtain's edges to the walls. Science says a curtained window loses 25 to 35 percent less heat. 
• Take vitamins and eat citrus daily. I like water with lemon. Here are lovely honeybells (cross between grapefruit and tangerine. Their skins "unzip" very neatly).
• Make and consume soups and herbal teas and lots of water. That sounds counter-intuitive. It isn't. Single-digit temps and indoor heating bring very dry air, dry air means dry and vulnerable membranes. Intersperse intake of caffeine drinks or alcohol with glasses of water.
  
• Set and patrol mousetraps because furry company is likely to creep in seeking shelter.
• For the duration, forget economizing. Use all resources.
  
• Leave a stream of water running in the slop sink so the pipes won't freeze.
• Exercise will warm cold extremities.
• Find an active, distracting household task: Ironing, long recipes, repairs and alterations, dusting, cleaning the oven or the ceiling fan blades, shoe and boot care, and so on.
• Don't complain or call people to complain that you need spring or summer. Move to Florida if Missouri's too much of a challenge for you.
  

Still Life

This rare (of course!) neurological thing lets me walk and sit just fine but my legs tremor when standing and they demand I lean on something or sit down. At last I know why hour-long exercise classes wore me out, why I leaned on walls at parties. Mom had a more common and disabling tremor; fortunately she didn't live to see mine. I can stand for a while, more with a cane, but then the legs tremble and I widen my stance (this is called "the Frankenstance"), and widen and widen until I either have to start walking or sit down. I carry the cane to show folks I'm not drunk. It does not hurt, nor is it fatal. Neurologist (my first ever! He's really nice!) can only give stupefying anti-seizure drugs. There is almost no research because no public figure has anything resembling this except Germany's former chancellor Angela Merkel.

Well, I never wanted to stand in lines anyway. So I carry a collapsible stool or wheel a handsome, top-of-the-line  folding rollator (a rolling walker with built-in seat) that I have named The Bolt, or carry a featherweight aluminum folding chair I took fishing. On hikes and mushroom hunts I can sit and rest and then keep going. It was news to me, but the act of standing takes big bandwidth in the brain, and one tires easily.

There are some benefits. People are helpful and kind. If I must seat myself at the hardware store while discussing what wrench I need, the clerk will squat so we're face to face. When I unfold the portable stool in the checkout lane people ask why didn't they think of that, or where did I get it because they need one too, and they tell me why. And in the woods today while sitting for a minute I saw a perfect little still life of oak leaves and the side of the acorn cap that looks like the iris of an eye, and one tiny hopeful green February shoot.

Another doctor prescribed physical therapy, and the exercises increased my strength, balance, and standing time. Exercise holds this thing at bay. If it thinks I am an easy mark, it's mistaken.

My Retirement Party

I cannot resist a sign saying "Pond" with an arrow pointing the way; "pond" is one of my favorite words. It snowed yesterday, about two inches. It snowed four weeks ago, two inches. That is this winter's total snowfall. Today, a quartz-crystal, unworldly January day, about 31 degrees, I took my first real exploratory hike in many moons.

After months of calculations and arrangements today was the first day, after 50 years, I no longer have to work, although I will continue to work because I like it. So I'm not "retired," but merely began drawing on retirement savings, easing up a little. My feelings were quite new and mixed, as if this were not an end but a beginning. I phoned my sister to sort it out. She said God's timing is perfect.

"The money should be in your account at the end of the business day," the money man had said, music to my ears. Back at home, lunch. Then what? Ideally I'd give a party. Can't in a pandemic, and if you live on rural roads no guests will come to a party in January anyway. Yet I desired to do something special. Chose a hike at a once-familiar place not visited for more than a year, maybe two. Thought as I trekked about how a year from now I may fish in Missouri without a license. After half a mile of beaten trail mine were the only footprints in the snow. I saw the word "Pond" and the arrow and walked uphill to a pond with the sun thawing a thumbprint into its ballroom of ice.

It remained only to give myself a retirement gift. What I have (embarrassingly) wanted ever since somebody gave me an insanely delightful three-month subscription 20 years ago was a full subscription to Fruit of the Month Club. I couldn't think of any reason why this would be bad.

On the Beach

Never cared for taking almost all my clothes off by the waterside, joining a bunch of strangers similarly undressed and all either yelling or playing dead. Can't swim and don't care for tanning. Given a beach (I have seen some marvelous lake and ocean beaches) I, in long sleeves and long skirt or pants, will hunt for shells or fossils, or take photos, or watch birds or other creatures. This on the shore of the mighty LaBarque, at one of its bends, is my ideal beach. It's private, the sand is soft, its crystals rounded; it doesn't stick to my parka and winter hiking pants when in January -- secretly overjoyed that the wheel of the year is turning toward spring -- I beat the bushes to get to my white sand beach, look for fossils on the water's edge for a while, sit down, sigh, and lie down on the sand that contours perfectly with my frame, viewing the sky up through the bare trees. Then shutting my eyes. Ahh.

Did this two days ago and attracted a big buzzard that flapped noisily away when it saw I was alive.

Lost: One Appetite

Slicing into my favorite bread, freshly baked so as to tempt myself, I put the knife down, turned away. Nah, I think, I don't want it.

-Here's butter. Have as much as you like.

Don't want any.

-Here is your favorite vegetable soup: pepperpot, heated up nicely. Come on, you have to eat.

I don't feel like it.

-Can you smell and taste? Maybe you caught the Covid?

I can smell and taste.

-How about a slice of cheese on that black bread? No? Drive-through burger and fries -- your favorite junk food? Or just the fries. Or -- ice cream?

Couldn't face it. Can't imagine. The idea makes me queasy.

-There's a special-occasion steak in the freezer.

Meat, I definitely could not eat. 

-What's wrong?

Turmoil and violence in our country. For no good reason. Totally unnecessary. Meant to desecrate what so many of us love and honor and fought for, in some cases died for: democracy, the democratic process, our country's principles, our Constitution.

-Let's cut brush all day and caulk cracks in the walls all evening, and that will stir up an appetite for sure.

Call me back after January 20.