See protected.  Sorry, nothing juicy.

What a productive day.  Rabookie got me all fired up about the piles on my desk and I’m no longer surrounded by clutter.  It’s over in seperate piles on the kitchen counter.  But that’s a huge accomplishment.  I threw away all the 3×5 cards with phone numbers I didn’t need anymore and notes I’d transferred to the computer and then I made individual stacks:  stocks, research for the hospital, notes for the book, internet writing, and household stuff.  I’ll take that up tomorrow and file it.  I don’t know why I let that pile up so long.  I even wenth through the newspapers I’d saved and clipped out the recipes I wanted.

Going through three months worth of “important stuff” — that’s what I tell my kids when they chide me about my desk — I coveted each piece of information.  The Journey Through Grief Class produced wonderful notes that will serve me a lifetime.  I found quotes that I put on my refrigerator and the brochure for that darling little girl who gave the lecture on aromatherapy.  I left a message on her machine saying I wanted to bring in some perfume and see if she could match it.  I wear perfume every day and when I was married I didn’t think twice about buying it but now it seems extravagant.

All these gems I came across, the fruits of my labor and the teachings of speakers at the herb shop or the hospital.  I read them all and felt rich.  Kind of like how I used to feel about the towels. 

While I was putting things in piles I was talking to an old friend.  He’s someone I used to play cards with when he was in between girlfriends.  I used to love going over to his friend’s house.  We’d all cook together and then drink wine and play this game I can never remember how to say.  It was something about sitting on the cards.  I surprised myself by not calling him back in time to get together this evening like he suggested.  I wanted to go through my treasures. 

His wife died of breast cancer so when I first met him he said he couldn’t risk going through that again.  I said fine, thinking he wasn’t really my type anyway and we ended up becoming buddies.  After a couple years, when it looked like I might live he would sometimes get overly friendly.  I ignored it but it was kind of fun.  Tonight I realized how much happier I am now, more content.  He couldn’t believe I wasn’t dating.  I was holding up a poem that I’ve posted here before, about living in the present.  We said good-bye and I read this excerpt:

     Peace is all around us, in the world and in nature and within us; in our bodies and our spirits.

     Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed.  It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of practice                   — Thich Nhat Hanh

I read this today and realized how much further along the path I am from when I first read it.

Ellen asked me what I cooked that was healthy.  I gained these ten pounds because of my annual infatuation with dessert.  It starts with the Halloween candy, which I manage to avoid.  But all that discipline goes out the window when the pumpkin pie, bread, and muffins show up. I’m a sucker for anything like spice cake or gingerbread, too.  Once those dry up I turn to chocolate but it’s not my first choice and I usually move from the pumpkin to lemon.  I like lemon bars, lemon cheesecake, lemon meringue but just long enough to clear my palate and then I settle in with the chocolate.  I like chocolate pudding and chocolate cake.  Oh, and brownies. I give those each a whirl and about that time it’s Easter.  I have a candy store I favor and I always get extra toffee and caramel and truffles.  But I eat those sparingly as I am typically watching my figure and writing down everything I eat by then. 

It doesn’t take me long to drop ten pounds because I actually prefer fruit and vegetables and the kinds of food we eat in the summer.  I quit with the bread and eat corn tortillas with humus and different goodies inside.  I skip the noodles and use a bed of lettuce.  But part of the transition is always soup.  I love soup.  I made minestrone yesterday and for dessert, carmeled apples.  I peel and slice thin a tart green apple and saute that in a little butter.  When it’s looking soft, I sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top and let that caramelize.  I’ve used white sugar, brown sugar and syrup, and it’s all good.

Several of you asked and I forgot to mention:  The sax player’s eyes, when he sang versus when he played, were like the difference I see when I look in my dog’s eyes versus my cat’s.  Although there are times when my cat looks lovingly at me, usually it’s this animal to animal exchange we have.  Whereas my dog seems to be more on my wavelength.  The ”flat” look I saw on him, I don’t think I’ve seen before in a person.  There was an intensity to it that was more about absence.   Maybe when he plays he moves inside to a plane I couldn’t interface.  I looked them up and they are a local band.  Oddly enough the guitar player is playing alone, right up the street from my house, tomorrow night.  If you knew how bizarre, how utterly unlikely that was, you’d be as impressed as I was.  I didn’t even think they had music there. 

The stock market treated me fairly well today, as it has all week, with the exception of a biotech stock I had to sell at a loss.  That was a long shot anyway. 

I cooked some wonderful meals today and I’m feeling extremely healthy.  Also I have recorded everything that’s passed through these lips since my first weight watcher’s meeting two Mondays ago.

The other thing I’m doing is dancing.  I’m practicing all the bellydance moves I can think of.  I know better than to get out my Middle Eastern music.  It’s too hard.  It’s much easier to dance to American music that’s got a 4/4 rhythm. 

I met Teresa at the dog park and we walked our dogs.  I think the cane freaked her out but my knee doesn’t hurt nearly as much when I get home from a walk, if I’ve used it. Something about the uneven terrain in the field is bothersome.

I was over by my mother’s so I gave her a call.  She didn’t want me to come over, said she didn’t need anything.  She managed to find out who I’d talked to; probably wanted to know if we all knew about the accident.  I guess the cop reported her to the DMV so now she’ll have to take the written, vision and driving tests.  Thank goodness.  I wonder if that letter goes to her immediately or if it’s the usual birthday notice you get, which would be October.  I will call tomorrow to find out how that works.  Because the sooner she figures out she can’t drive the sooner she’ll move out of that house and the sooner we can get it ready to sell. 

I’m having an Easter dinner that she doesn’t know about.  Hopefully we can get this figured out.

So what would you do?  My mother is 82 and going senile.  Or at least it seems that way.  You may have gathered that I am not fond of her, nor are my brother and two sisters.  The youngest just said she will pay any amount of money to hire someone; that she is emotionally unable to be involved in any kind of care.  She lived at home after she moved back from LA, in order to save for a house.  We totally understand.  My brother is the executor of my mother’s estate and her favorite.  Actually his girlfriend is the favorite, the daughter she never had.  Which is fine with us because then we don’t have to talk to her at family get-togethers.  Her mother is mentally ill so she thinks my mom’s not nearly as difficult.  Oh, and then there’s the separated Baptist sister who is probably the most benevolent but since she’s been in therapy for a few years she is quick to face my mother with the reality of her behavior.  My sister’s being difficult is how my mother sees it.  I am nervous about using names for some reason so I apologize for all these confusing “she”s and “her”s.

Here’s the problem.  My mother has had several altercations with the police lately.  The first was when an ambulance was coming from the opposite direction and she didn’t know what to do so she pulled off into the shoulder and just about hit a policeman who had pulled a car over and was giving them a ticket.  I’m not sure if she almost hit him when she pulled back out or what but he chased her down and issued her a hefty ticket.  In court she called him a liar so the judge offered to get the policeman to testify.  My mother declined saying she didn’t want to be any trouble.  Right. 

Last week she was involved in a hit-and-run.  She clipped a boat trailer when she drove into a truck hauling a boat.  How do you not see that?  For some reason she kept going and was headed back home when the car died in front of her neighbor’s house.  The guy had called the police and they got her.  She told my brother that she stuck her tongue out at the cop.  And he didn’t give her a ticket???????

This is just more two-year-old behavior we’ve noticed lately.  And we never would have known about it had my realtor friend, who I have coffee with now in an attempt to patch things up, not asked me about the strange car in my mother’s driveway.  What’s funny is that she and my mother hate each other.  My mother was a complete bitch to her when she was little and it came back to bite her in the you know what. 

We’ve been trying to get my mother to move out of her house and now we want her to stop driving.  Any ideas for how to make this happen?  Tomorrow I’m going to the DMV to see how to get her on the list of people who shouldn’t be driving.  Two of us think she should never drive again.  One of us wants to leave it up to her and one wants — Well, that’s the trouble we can’t agree.  Any idea?

Last night I went out with a woman from the cancer center.  She’s also single, and I see her every Tues, plus she’s taken bellydance classes so we have that in common.  When I sit at her desk, if she’s over in Integrative Medicine, I read the spiritual quotes on her wall.  I like the way she thinks. 

This was the first time I’ve done something socially with anyone from the hospital.  I was a little hesitant to go but I’m glad I did.  Another woman was supposed to join us but she couldn’t make it.  After dinner we went to this place they like, to hear a blues band. The second restaurant looked very posh, it was a prime rib place, and the bar had a fireplace with lots of room so the tables were spread out.  I especially liked the carpet, like it should be in the lobby of a grand, old hotel. 

People were making a fuss over these old men in suits, who I assumed were blues musicians.  Two white ladies in expensive pantsuits — They both looked to be in their 60s – were acting like schoolgirls around these men who were holding court at the far end of the bar.  A few upscale white couples, in their late 30s, sauntered in towards the end but for the most part it was neighborhood people my age, mostly white.  This was the second club I had ever been to where there was any kind of ratio.

The saxophone player stepped down off the stage and slowly made his way in our direction, playing as he walked.  There was an empty table next to us, and he eased down into the chair across from me, the notes getting softer.  I had been sitting, facing his table so that I could see the band.  We were now knee-to-knee and he proceeded to play the nastiest, baddest riff, to the point where the woman sitting behind him, on a bar stool, looked at me and started fanning herself with a look that said this guy is HOT.  I closed my eyes, moving to his rhythm.  Oh, my God.   

The guy was black, maybe 45, could sing like he played and had eyes that — actually they freaked me out.  There was something flat about them.  We both had our eyes shut but when he started to move, to get up, I looked up and he looked right through me, playing low and hard.  The next song my girlfriend and I went out to dance — It was all women dancing with the men sitting out — and I got right in front of him.  Same eyes until he started to sing. 

All those years of choreographed dance, to music of my choice, spoiled me.  The few times my ex took me dancing, and it was always this dive bar at the beach, there were only a few songs I wanted to dance to.  I do sort of a mix, half Middle Eastern, and I like a certain tempo.  This guy played just that tempo, and the way he drove the rhythm, it was the way I wanted to move. 

I’d had a couple drinks — I know I said I wasn’t – but I was very careful of my knee so nothing happened.  You have no idea how excited I am to know that I can dance;  that I have a friend to go with and that this place exists.  It was just like the old days at the Green Onion, this Middle Eastern restaurant I used to go to every Thursday night.  There would always be a bunch of dancers there to watch whoever was performing. In between the three performances, we’d get up and dance.  I loved the band and I had learned most of their songs.  There was a buffet with great food so a lot of nondancers would come with their dates and sometimes they’d get up and dance with us. 

When I moved out my lawyer told me to quit going out late at night.  The first Thursday night after the divorce I went back to the restaurant but it had closed.  My cabaret teacher used to perform at this Persian restaurant, with an even better band, but unless she were there I couldn’t really go, as we were the only Americans.  Actually, I think they didn’t know she was American.  She moved away so that was pretty much the end of my late nights out.  Dancers usually perform around midnight and it would be so fun to get dressed up and leave the house at 10:00.  That had a lot to do with the dissention in my home over bellydance.  My family acted like I was going to a strip club or something.  If they only knew how formal that place was. 

Even though I never became friends with any of the dancers I was part of the community.  And that’s what that blues club felt like.  I have a feeling I’ll be back. 

Edited to add:  More odd laughing.

I was at the river, thinking about nothing I can remember, when I suddenly started chuckling.  Not in response to anything in particular, and as there was a couple coming my way and my dog was nowhere in sight, I thought this seemed more bizarre than talking to one’s self.  You know when it’s inappropriate to laugh and you need to stop, how you can’t?  Well, it wasn’t like that because I didn’t really give a shit what they might have thought.  Well, I must because I took a quick detour off the path to look down at the water.  By then I was doubled up laughing at I had no idea what.  This has NEVER happened to me but it had momentum that seemed like a burp; it just came up out of nowhere.  When I finally regained my composure I looked down and there was a cormorant perched on a steel rod, protruding from the riverbank.  A sudden burst of sun shone on the back of my knees and the whole scene brought back memories of the many afternoons spent on my lot next to the heron rookery, only this time I didn’t miss it.

Something remarkable happened this morning.  I woke up, went in to brush my teeth, and when I grabbed a towel something had shifted.  Six years ago, after I left, my lawyer told me to go get what I would normally buy and furnish a new household.  I had no idea how much money I’d end up with and when I went to buy towels — three girls go through a lot of towels — I bought some average-priced towels but I also bought six luxurious towels.  And I thought to myself these would have to last me a lifetime.  It’s not that I use the patterned ones any less regularly than the others, those solid colored blue or purple towels, most of which are tired and bleached or at my daughter’s houses, but when I use them I am conscious of shortening their life span.  I’m like this about all my expensive linens or clothes or shoes.  I lived, so long, with anything I wanted that now that those items can’t be replaced I am careful to make them last.

But I let go of that feeling this morning.  I could have taken that towel and put it in Bridget’s crate, the one in the car that gets filthy.  And I started laughing.  I’m not one of those people who is easily amused so going down the steps I surprised myself, laughing at the ease of a life without stuff.  I don’t know how I got there, maybe it was reading about no silverware.