The Bright Side of Life

I feel petty writing about my own small life when so many are thrashing through profound hardship. The world is full of woe, with new horrors every day. Just among my closest friends there’s:

• The start of chemo for a different kind of cancer than the one last year.
• The sudden death of a son.
• Progressive, irreversible lung disease.

Just realize that, though my site’s tagline is “It’s all about me,” I’ve never for a second believed that, and underlying my self-absorbed posts is profound sadness about the plights of others, and not just my own. But I’ll keep going because Bloggy needs me and I need her.

And while I’m on the subject, let me also say that having to leave my house and the East Bay is as nothing compared, say, to the struggle of millions of refugees forced to abandon everything they know to make their way toward lands and cultures unknown and usually hostile. My life is a a relative piece of cake. I know that.

Except it doesn’t feel like it. My veneer of composure is thin and easily cracked. Criticize me for something that I didn’t do, or otherwise be needlessly unpleasant, and either my eyes will start to glisten or I’ll start to boil.

And boy do little things annoy me. Like every time I open the freezer door at the top of my fridge, gravity shifts, causing a barrage of heavy foods to hurtle sideways toward me off the horizontal shelf. Then gravity reorients itself and the objects plummet onto my unshod foot. Really, is this entirely necessary?

Each day I’m shocked to discover yet another massive expense required to sell my house. Come on, universe: you can’t have it both ways: make it impossible to stay, if you must, but don’t make it impossible to leave, too. I’ll get through this, but California real estate prices don’t make life easy.

Attitude Adjustment

I’ve always been a glass-half-empty kind of person, but today I’ll turn my frown upside-down, for every cloud has a silver lining. Let’s look on the bright side of life.

• The dental hygienist told me I have healthy gums. (I’m guessing that’s because said gums don’t have to share real estate with a lot of pesky teeth.)

• Soon I’ll no longer wake up gasping for breath at night because my new CPAP will keep me from sleeping.

• I’ll be so busy with selling my house and figuring out where to go that I’ll be distracted from my grief at returning my little girl to her parents in June. (Actually, no. I will be heartbroken no matter what.)

Oh, and I got an encouraging email from Vy Ti last week: “With regard to characteristic of the element, we can help.!! 635659262569356 !!”  And not a moment too soon!

It’s time once again for this reminder to laugh and smile and dance and sing:

For the sake of sanity I sometimes attempt a short, guided meditation using the Calm app on my phone. Mostly I listen to Jeff Warren’s Daily Trip. A few days ago he featured a challenge in what I guess you’d call “radical acceptance.” My task: tell every negative thought that floated into my head, “I love you.” 

Oh, please.

• “I love you, itchy nose.” 
• “I love you, noisy BART train.”
• “I love you, paralyzing hip pain.”
• “I love you, premature death of dear friends.”
• “I love you, steady drone of despair at leaving the area I’ve lived for nearly fifty years.” 

I just couldn’t. My brain started composing this blog post instead, and I bailed on the exercise so I could jot down ideas.

My Little One

What’s great (though certainly exhausting for this 68-year-old) is having my silly little Ember around. I summon my best self for her, suppressing angst to become the cheery, affectionate, calm, attentive Mama Ginna she needs. I bounce and wrestle and laugh. I show her my old Irish dance steps and sing made-up lyrics (usually about her) to existing tunes. She is a beam of light. The things she figures out about the world enchant me. Like this one: “Did you know that the brain named itself?” 

This brief exchange amused me:

Ginna: Wow, you spent a long time making that perfect part in your hair! And who can blame you!

Ember: Bob.

When I have to correct her behavior, I try to be gentle and encouraging. Mostly I succeed. The other night I offered a good-natured, “You’ve had so many good ideas. That wasn’t among them.”

Possessions

I come from a long line of collectors of things with little intrinsic value. I’ve always been acquisitive. As a young adult I’d attach colored sticky-dots with my name onto a variety of Mom’s and Dad’s treasures. Even before that, in my single-digit years, I laid claim to books that weren’t my own, penning my name on the inside covers. Apparently I favored collectible first editions. If it hadn’t been for my childhood greed, this copy of Misty of Chincoteague would fetch upwards of $600 now.

And of course I’ve started my own collections to keep company with those I’ve pried from my parents. I have hundreds of vintage postcards of sleazy motels, pigs fashioned from every conceivable material, and even, starting in the 90s, an assortment of domain names.

Now it’s time to say goodbye to a lot of it. I’ve reduced my snow globe count from 100 to 15 and my motion lamps from 25 to 3.

I continue to haul selected stuff to my basement where, eventually, I may invite friends to come and grab what they like.

Gainful Employment

It has been pointed out that my having a job might be a clever economic strategy. That’s not wrong. However, what I’ve learned after many years of searching is that geriatric workers are not in demand. 

Remember that position as a grocery delivery driver that I applied for, pre-Covid? Funny job to consider since I hate driving, but it was the only interview I landed after scores of attempts. I made my way during pre-dawn rush hour to San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood to meet with two impossibly young interviewers. After several minutes of friendly chitchat, it went like this:

Potential Employer: “Why are you interested in being a delivery driver?”

Ginna: [Something convincing.]

PE: And do you enjoy driving?”

G: “Well, actually, it’s not my favorite thing.”

Oops. Why did I think an honest answer was the way to go?

Here are some employment options for seniors that Molly and I discovered online. (Average wage: practically nothing.)

• Customer service representative: “Do you enjoy talking on the phone?” About as much as I love being hit over the head with a sledgehammer.
• Greeter: “Are you a real people person?” People aren’t my favorite thing.
• Bank Teller: “If you have cash handling skills.” I can handle cash fine. I just can’t count or hold onto it.
• Security guard: “Your job is to look out for suspicious activity.” I’ve raised teenagers. I’m so done.
• Childcare worker: “Help care for other people’s children.” I’d rather be a security guard.
• School bus driver: “If you want to spend time around other people.” You already know how I feel about driving and other people’s children.
• Housekeeper. Hahahahaha. Have I showed you my dust-bunny collection?

But wait! I’ve got it!

This even solves the lodging problem as well, since I could live at Nonnatus House!

Clay

In clay class I’ve been throwing wee things from a pound of clay each. Last week I slapped a 4.5-pound hunk of clay onto the wheel. Yikes. To make a bowl, I learned, you leave the outside blocky as you refine only the interior. After it dries for a week, you do serious trimming on the exterior. Tragically, it turns out that my clay wasn’t dry enough for this second step, so when I took it off the wheel, the perfect-ish rim bent out of shape. I tried to restore it to its former glory but the damage was done.

See the little horizontal streak in the bottom pic? It’s porcelain slip, which I hope will make the glaze lighter in that area, when I get to that.

And here’s one of my first glazed things, fresh out of the kiln yesterday. I thought it was going be green. Oh well.

It’s Ember’s new lemonade cup.