What Gives You Hope?

 I try to keep my voice light even when, occasionally, I address difficult topics. So many of the world’s stories these days batter my soul and I need relief from them. I suspect many of you feel the same way and my topics often veer away from our troubling reality. Nevertheless, I watch the evening news every day. I read the newspaper every morning. I always wake up to All Things Considered on NPR. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment.

 I am so overwhelmed some days by what I read and hear that I just want to sit in my recliner and read some non-reality-based fiction. Fantasy is good, and I’m currently rereading the 14-book series The Wheel of Time.

 The first time I read it, I had to wait a year or two between books: the first year for the author, Robert Jordan, to release the hardback version, which I found too expensive to buy, and then perhaps another year for the more affordable paperback version to come out. In this way, over almost two decades, I completed the entire series. Michael read it, too, and it gave us a lot to talk about as we went along.

 Michael likes to reread books and he read this series so many times that the pages darkened and fell out. He accepted this loss for years, but around the time of Covid, decided he had to replace them and began purchasing them in boxed sets. As he finished a set, he would buy the next box of books.

 Michael is a very fast reader and it didn’t take him long to read every one of the 14 books again. I started thinking that I would like to reread the books. This is not typical for me. I rarely return to a book, no matter how much I like it. I find having it in the bookcase, running my eyes across the spine once in a while, and remembering my enjoyment is enough.

 Because I didn’t expect to dive into the series again, I didn’t mind when our son, Nick, asked to borrow them even though he lives in Brooklyn. On our next visit, Michael packed them all in a suitcase and surrendered them on Nick’s solemn oath that they’d be returned. (Details on the return were sketchy. Nick works and has a family, so we knew he wouldn’t be speed reading like his dad.)

 After Nick finished, his wife decided that she would take a turn with the 14 books. A working mom, Kate didn’t have lots of time either, so the months stretched into a few years. By that time, someone had decided to make a television series out of the story.

 It was an ambitious undertaking because the themes and multiple story lines of the Wheel of Time are complex and wickedly intertwined. There have been two seasons so far and Michael and I have watched both.

 They have high production values, lots of excellent special effects, and good acting. What more could you want? Well, I wanted them to stick to the story! The writers changed things, probably because the books are so dense that doing them faithfully would be a 20-year undertaking. But it bothered me.

I couldn’t remember plot details clearly — it had been decades since I read the books — and I frequently pestered Michael with questions about things that seemed wrong to me. Quite often, they were deviations, but not always. It frustrated me not to remember clearly.

 Sometime between those two seasons, Nick returned all 14 of the books. Michael reread the whole series yet again. I looked at them in their neat rows on a prominent shelf and started thinking maybe I’d read them too. But I didn’t start — until last week.

 Battered by news that made me cringe and cry and rage all at the same time, I decided to sink myself so deeply into fantasy that I blocked out reality. I’m almost finished with Book Two in less than a week, and these are 900-1000 page books.

 It isn’t working perfectly. I still know the horrible events of the world and of our country because I’m still connected to the news cycle. But when I’m reading, I am so engrossed in the complexities of that story that I get a reprieve from reality. And that’s all I want, a reprieve.

 I’m not trying to pretend the bad news and, frankly, evil, isn’t still out there and getting worse by the day. But in Jordan’s books, the good guys and the evildoers are battling on a cosmic level, and good seems to win somehow, even when things seem hopeless. It is encouraging.

 One lesson of the series is that this battle between good and evil is never-ending. It seems worse when we are in the middle of it, like right now, but it’s happened before and goodness has prevailed. Another lesson is that people are surprising. A good guy turns out to be corrupted; a bad guy has an epiphany and changes sides. What you think you know isn’t real until you see it happen.

 I have a bit of Book Two plus 12 additional books left to read in the Wheel of Time. That should take me through winter. By springtime, I’m praying that things in our world will be looking up as much as they improved in the Wheel of Time’s world. If not, I have several more fantasy series that I haven’t read in years. Good always wins in those books, too.

 What gives you hope and comfort these days?

What's in Your Basket?

 Give me a basket of clean clothes, right out of the dryer, and I’m a happy woman. Since my oldest child was an infant — in the olden days of cloth diapers — I have enjoyed folding clothes. I became a single mom early in her life and suffered the same overload that single parents face today. There’s too much to do, not enough time or money, and something always seems to go wrong at the most inauspicious moment.

 During the overload of events in a normal day, sitting down to fold a pile of clean diapers gave me a welcome break. I was doing something that needed to be done, but it was simple, even mindless, and the feel of the soft fabric in my hands was comforting.

 Folding clothes has never been a chore for me. I know people who hate to do it, though. Some of them dress out of laundry baskets, something that raises the hackles of my anti-wrinkle sensibilities. I’ve given up ironing and use Downy Wrinkle Release when it’s really needed, but I don’t like to put on wrinkled clothes. That makes folding out of the dryer even more important.

 It also makes proper folding imperative. My husband thinks that my notions of proper folding are total overkill and he may be right. Perhaps there is a touch of OCD in the neat little bundles that I fold t-shirts into, but it’s really essential from a storage standpoint: if I don’t fold them just right, they will not fit into my t-shirt drawer!

 T-shirts are soft, like cloth diapers, and comforting to fold. But they present special problems. People give you tees with clever sayings on them and you have to keep those gifts. And you see beautiful, or funny, or whimsical tees that you fall in love with and you have to keep those. And there are the mementos of places you visit or events you attend. You definitely have to keep those.

 All these have-to-keeps mean my t-shirt drawer is stuffed with 55 tees. I counted them last night after I put away the freshly folded clothes just for today’s blog. 55. OMG, that seems excessive even to me. I think about culling them — curating them is a gentler notion — but I never want to give any up. Could it be an addiction?

 I bought a lovely tee in Ireland several years ago. After a few washes (and maybe a few pounds), it no longer fit. Did I throw it out? NO! I cut out the lovely image and appliquéd it onto a brand-new t-shirt bought for that express purpose. At least that was a zero sum transaction. If I get one more t-shirt, I will have to get rid of something because nothing else will fit in the drawer. Catastrophe!

 In order to get 55 t-shirts into a standard IKEA, dresser drawer, I have perfected folding them into 5X7 packets that may be anywhere from an inch to 3 inches deep, depending on the thickness of the fabric. They march across my drawer in three rows. It’s a bit harder to haul them out of the back row, but I manage.

 If I’m going to admit to my t-shirt OCD tendencies, I’ll add that I try to pull them out from left to right and alternate rows so all the tees get their chance to be worn. When I put away clean shirts, they always go on the right side of the row. It’s an inventory thing to me. Gotta rotate the stock.

 Beyond the nostalgia problem, what do you do with old t-shirts? I resist putting them in the trash because — landfills. My recycler won’t take them. Thrift shops don’t want them either. What do you do with an old Houston Ballet t-shirt from a dance program 8 years ago or a family reunion shirt from 12 years ago? They’re too worn to wear, too special to give up, and you can only use so many cleaning rags.

For now, I am trying not to acquire t-shirts. I have moved some into an archive of sorts with a dream of making myself a t-shirt memory quilt someday, if I live long enough. (One of those t-shirts is from 1966. Another is from the early 70s. They are truly memory keepers.)  As long as a few t-shirts are still in the dirty clothes, my drawer is manageable. The real crunch only occurs after I fold the clean laundry.

I find that, with t-shirts, it’s all about balance. What are you balancing these days?

Ciao

 

 

 

 

Worlds of Wonderment

 Our grandkids arrived from Brooklyn on December 26 and flew home again on December 31. After a fun-filled, busy, and — for us old people — fairly exhausting round of activities all over Houston, I came home from the airport yesterday, took a nap, and vegged out for the rest of 2025. Thus, my last blog post of 2025 has become my first blog post of 2026.

 An 8-year-old boy (Gabe) and a 12-year-old girl (Felix) seemed like a pretty safe bet for an unaccompanied holiday trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. They are not toddlers who get into everything, they can manage their own personal needs, and they are excellent communicators most of the time. Piece of cake.

 Because of the kids, Michael and I explored worlds of wonderment that old folks rarely visit. One day, we went to Artechouse, an immersive art and technology environment that was tremendously fascinating and fun, especially the interactive exhibits.

 One night, we went to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s holiday program at Bayou Bend, a gorgeous estate that was decked out with what looked like a million lights and lots of activities for families. I particularly liked the building that came to life through the magic of video technology. The animated antics were very realistic, even though you knew they were impossible.

 We took several shopping trips to various locales where the kids spent their Christmas money. I have permission to walk in my boot, but the outlet mall sorely overtaxed me and I may have gotten a little crabby about all the walking. The kids did find good stores, though, like Earth’s Ology, where they bought rocks and uncut gemstones for their collections.

 During their five days here, we also managed pizza night and a game night with Aunt Alix and Uncle Adam. And we saw the new Spongebob Squarepants movie, my first opportunity to actually experience the Spongebob phenomenon. Wow. I had NO idea what I was missing — but I’m totally okay with continuing to miss it.

 At home, we had several distractions that fascinated the kids. Number one: Frankie, the elderly cat I wrote about earlier this year. Although Frankie has blossomed from totally timid to almost outgoing in the year since his housemate Baby died, he is still quite reluctant to meet new people, especially children. (Our toddler grandson AJ terrorized him on a regular basis the six months he lived here.)

 Felix and Gabe are nice kids and did not terrorize Frankie except for the fact that they were breathing in his vicinity. The administration of excessive treats persuaded him to accept the calm petting Felix bestowed on him. Gabe got in a little petting, too, but he’s allergic to cats, so not very much.

 What Gabe got that THRILLED him was guns — toy guns, to be clear — a shotgun and a kind of Gatling gun/pistol combo. Why do we have two such toys, you might ask? A gift from Alix and Adam years ago, they were intended as an encouragement to playfulness.

 We never really warmed up to the idea of gunfights, though. We did shoot them for the cats, who loved chasing the nerf bullets, but, as cats do not fetch, hunting bullets all over the house quickly lost its appeal. We put them in a game cupboard and forgot about them. Gabe found them seemingly within minutes of arriving at our house.

 In between all these activities, the kids played various loud and raucous games that may have been tag. They spent some time outdoors, a relief for old ears, and Gabe was delightfully willing to fetch mail and the newspaper for his hobbled old Grandma.

Electronics filled in empty spots, with Gabe playing on our antiquated Wii system and Felix on her tablet. Those were the only quiet moments and I’m glad there weren’t too many of them.

We had fun with the kids and are very glad they visited us. Last year they came with their parents and that was nice, too. We’ll have to see what next year brings. In the meantime, happy New Year to you all!

Ciao

Busy, Busy, Busy

 December and the beginning of January are busy, busy, busy times at our house. Michael and I got married on December 21, not realizing—sweet young things that we were—that children would bring school events that crowded our anniversary almost to oblivion. School pageants, and later band recitals, for two or three kids often left us eating our anniversary dinner in January.

 Christmas is frenetic with all the shopping for and wrapping and hiding gifts. Fun, but time consuming. On Christmas Eve, we are in the habit of going to our church for the evening candlelight service, replete with carols and good cheer. Then we go home for a special meal: cheese and crackers, sausage, fresh fruit, and Christmas cookies, along with obligatory Irish coffee.

 The Irish coffee is served in beautiful goblets that are embossed in gold and green with lines indicating how much sugar, how much whiskey, and how much coffee. You’re on your own for the whipped cream serving, but I think that frothing over the goblet is just right. We received the Irish coffee goblets as a wedding gift in 1976 and we have toasted Christmas Eve with them every year for the last 49 years. Kids partake too, with the whiskey adjusted appropriately.

 We used to open presents on Christmas Eve after dinner—hence the easy to make and to clean up meal— and Santa left gifts for Christmas morning, but, as a family, we decided to go full Christmas morning for gifts after I became ill with lupus. We needed to streamline our traditions to make it easier to manage. The ‘new’ way worked well enough that we’ve kept on doing it for about 30 years.

 Now that we’ve gotten through our anniversary, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day, you’d think a little peace and relaxation would descend on the house. Wrong—I’m still busy. December 28 is Michael’s birthday. Since it’s right after the holidays, I always try to make him feel extra special. And because I am a dedicated sale shopper, I almost always buy those gifts in the after-Christmas sales, so I have to duke it out with the crowds.

 The cake is baked, the gifts wrapped, and his special dinner is cooked. Now can we get some peace and quiet? Heck no. It’s New Year’s Eve and fireworks are blasting the night skies all over our neighborhood. Fireworks are legal in Harris County. It’s mayhem.

 Okay, New Year’s Day has arrived, a quiet day for most people. But most people don’t have a son whose birthday is January 2^nd. We do. He has had some doozies when it came to birthday dinner requests. One notable year, he asked for pepperoni pizza and for everybody to get two cans of soda! Now that he’s middle-aged himself and lives far away, we’re off the hook for the extra sodas.

 As a special added attraction, our Brooklyn grandkids (8 and 12) are coming solo for a visit from the 26^th to the 31^st. Fun is planned, tickets are purchased, and it’s coming together. But there is a lot to do to get ready.

 In the past, January also contained my grandmother’s birthday on January 3. And three of my brothers have birthdays on the 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th. Those birthdays require virtually nothing of me nowadays, although we did travel to Arizona for my oldest brother’s 80^th birthday two years ago. A fun time, totally worth the travel bother!

 But new birthdays have happened: our two granddaughters’ birthdays are on December 3^rd and 5^th! So, let’s count it up. From December 1^st through January 9^th, my family (including family of origin) celebrates 8 birthdays, a wedding anniversary, two major, multi-day holidays that require gift giving and out-of-town company for five days. Is it any wonder that I’m exhausted thinking about it?

Who am I kidding? The joy of celebrating with family and friends far outweighs the hassles of the season. Even when I’m falling behind, and I get slower at this stuff every year, I love the outcomes.

 However many events you may be celebrating this season, I hope your life is as overflowing with love and fun as mine.

 From our busy, busy house to yours,

Ciao

 

 

It Starts with Befuddlement

 My daughter Alix and son-in-law Adam recently discovered a slowly leaking pipe. It had flooded their kitchen, essentially destroying it from the inside out. Hearing about their disaster caused a set of awful memories to resurface for me.

Over the last 10 years, Michael and I have experienced three floods inside our house. Yes, that’s three and yes, inside floods, not nature-caused floods. “How could this have happened?” you might ask. Short answer: in 2015, a faulty toilet in our bathroom overflowed while we were taking my mother to dinner on Valentine’s Day; in 2019, the infamous Texas freeze, as in “when Hell freezes over” struck and 6 of our copper pipes froze and split; and, in 2023, the valve on a pipe in our guest bathroom cracked and spewed water while we slept.

 Most people never get to experience an event like this, so I thought I would walk you through the experience. Flood discovery, I have found, follows a script. The initial squelching step into unexpected water is the WTF? moment of befuddlement. The experience is so unique (at least the first time) that you can’t comprehend it. This is quickly followed by the “oh sh*t” moment of panic, when comprehension kicks in and you realize there’s water where water should never be.

 Remember the old Marlon Brando movie A Street Car Named Desire? There’s a scene where he bellows in desperation, “Hey, Stella! Stella!” This Stella moment is the next step in the flood experience. You yell frantically for your spouse so they can share this astonishing moment with you.

 Once the shouting is over, reality sets in and the second moment of panic arrives. How do you stop the water? Where is the water even coming from? Do you need to shut down the whole system or just a local pipe? Where is the shut-off valve for the house? Where would that local pipe shut-off even be?

 When your partner joins you, you have the opportunity to re-experience the WTF? and “Oh sh*t” moments through their eyes as they take in the scene in shocked disbelief. However, instead of becoming an occasion of solidarity, it becomes the “Do something!” moment where your spouse expects you to fix it. This is similar to being the person who finds the dog pooh, the hairball, or the child covered in peanut butter. You found it, you own it.

 While you are attending to water shut off, you get to give your partner their own personal hell. “Call the insurance company!” Now they can have a moment of panic. Who do I call? What’s the phone number? Where did I put the policy? Who did we even buy insurance from this year?

 It will seem like forever, but before long the water will stop flowing and the insurance carrier will be alerted. If they’re good, they’ll have a remediation team on the way within hours, even if it’s the middle of the night. If you aren’t lucky this way, it may be a few frustrating days before a remediation company shows up. We’ve had it happen both ways.

 Meanwhile, you will spend frantic hours picking up the God-awful number of items that are on your floor, in the water or threatened by it. You will struggle to remember what this stuff is and why the hell it’s on the floor in the first place. Don’t even try; just pick it up as quickly as you can. Many wet items can be salvaged. Sadly, others can’t be. It’s amazing how quickly water can erase years of living.

 There are moments of grief and loss coming, but don’t get ahead of yourself. You have to stay focused on rescuing whatever you can and working with the remediation company on an action plan, because once the loss part hits you, you will likely be too depressed to do anything except the bare minimum.

 When I spoke to Alix after they discovered their flood, she expressed the very same stages of disaster coping that I experienced. I think this process is universal and applies to all kinds of disasters, but I can’t prove it. I was happy, though, that I could tell her about the end of the flood disaster cycle, something she won’t see for several months I’d guess.

 When it’s all over, you do not have a return to normal. No, you have brand-new stuff. The walls are rebuilt and repainted. The flooring is new and spiffy. The cupboards that you have banged around for 10 or 15 years are new and have features that put the old ones to shame, like pull-out shelves. Damaged furniture is replaced.

 You have had a significant remodeling job done and your insurance company footed most of the bill. Yes, the deductible is a bear, but it’s not as much money as a new kitchen or living room or bedroom or take-your-pick would have been. There, doesn’t that make you feel better? Not yet? Give it time, happier days are just around the corner.

 

 

The Season of Dread

 It is the season of dread for anyone who has to send gifts to another city for the holidays. Not only do you have to decide on the gifts you want to give, wrap those gifts and package them up, but you have to relinquish them to the not-so-tender ministrations of the US Postal Service or another carrier to get them to their destination. And those mailing or shipping services cost an arm and a leg these days.

 Over the years, I have mailed Christmas gifts to people in Minnesota, North Dakota, California, New York, Oregon, Missouri, Arizona, and Texas. Probably some other places that escape me at the moment. I have sent a LOT of packages into the void. Most of them have arrived, but it isn’t guaranteed.

 A package of gifts for my granddaughter Heaven, who was three at the time, was waylaid at a post office 60 or so miles from her small Texas town. Because of holiday closures, she got her Christmas gifts on January 3^rd. It’s heartbreaking to try to explain to a toddler that the presents really are coming … someday.

 A package to my friend in Minneapolis got misplaced by USPS one year. She received the package weeks after Christmas. This occurred before package tracking became a thing, and neither of us knew what had happened. Plenty of frustration over that, although the package eventually arrived.

 Another package, sent to my brother, made so many circuits around the country that by the time he received the box of candy, it was a huge, misshapen lump of chocolate in the corner of the manila envelope. The box it started out in had been beaten to a flat pulp as it was thrown from truck to truck, sack to sack.

 A greeting card with a gift card inside, sent to a granddaughter in Oregon, disappeared completely, the generous gift spent by a postal thief. I stopped sending gift cards after that, deciding that no one would know if I slipped a check inside a card. Just the other day, I heard on the news that I shouldn’t do that either – bad actors were stealing them for check washing scams. I guess we’re down to electronic payment apps now.

 Amazon (and other online ordering) became the apparent answer to these holiday mailing and shipping woes. Yes, the relatives on the receiving end would have to do the gift wrapping for us, but the gifts would get there quickly for the most part and free for people like me with Prime accounts. Yay, maybe.

 Last Friday, my Brooklyn granddaughter turned 12. After several conversations with her and with her parents, we identified two gifts that she’s really like that fit our budget. Six days before her birthday, I ordered them from Amazon and happily learned they would be delivered in three days, plenty of time for the parents to get them wrapped before the big day.

 I got an email telling me that the package was out for delivery on the appointed day. But it never arrived. Although Amazon’s tracking persisted in telling me the package was out for delivery for days after the specified date, my order record online said simply, “Your delivery is running late.” It still says that a week later, while the billing information claims the order is complete.

The annual ordeal may be different, but it isn’t gone. Now it is the dread of trying to get help for an online purchase from a system so unresponsive and convoluted that it’s almost impossible to solve anything. You can’t connect with a person right away ever. I embarked today on a quest to locate my granddaughter’s birthday presents by asking the Amazon AI for help.

 Here are the opening words of every single response the AI made to me today: “I understand your concern…” “I understand your frustration…” “I completely understand your urgency…” I understand your concern…” “I understand your concern…” “I understand your frustration…”  “I understand you’re looking for more information…”  Its answer to every one of my questions ended with some version of “Would you like me to process a refund?”

 After seven “nos” from me to the refund, and many additional questions from me trying to elicit useful information, the chatbot finally said the magic words “Looks like we need to get more help.”

Segue to the human agent.  

 I won’t bore you with the list of unhelpful, nonsensical, or redundant words the agent subjected me to after we connected. I suspect English is not their native language. The agent finally assured me that the estimated delivery will be tomorrow. Okay, phew. Tomorrow is great. Before I ended the chat session, the agent gave me this final sentiment: “Thank you for your patience and understanding. If the item will not showed tomorrow, please contact us back so that we can check our availbale [sic] options in here.”

 Yes, it is the season of dread for gift givers—because no matter how we send them, the gifts always carry a little gamble.

Ciao

The Decision that Never Goes Away

Over the last 49 years, Michael and I have had to ask ourselves some very difficult questions.

       ·       Should we get married? (Obviously, yes.)

·       Should we accept the transfer and relocate the family? Should we do that again? And again? And again? (Phew, we finally landed in Houston and stuck!)

·       Can we afford this house? This car? This vacation? (No, but we mostly bought them anyway.)

·       Are we doing everything we can/should do to raise happy, healthy kids? (They seem to have turned out okay.)

·       Should we adopt a child in our middle age? (No, but we did anyway.)

·       Will we survive this crisis? And this one? And this one? Etc, etc, etc. (We did, but never without collateral damage.)

·       Will our retirement savings last through our old age? (Hopeful, but remains to be seen.)

 I’m not saying we’re special. Everyone faces difficult questions, often many, in the course of their lives. But of all the questions we’ve faced, none has been as persistent—or as maddening—as the one that greets us every evening: what’s for dinner? It is the most fraught question in our relationship and we have to face it down every day.

 In a recent Progressive Insurance commercial, Mara—the perennially grumpy insurance agent—terrifies graduates by reminding them that they can look forward to deciding “…what’s for dinner every night for the rest of your lives.” Kudos to the copywriter who came up with that line: they hit the jackpot!

 Now, some of you are thinking to yourselves, why don’t they make a weekly meal plan, then they’d know what’s for dinner  every night. That has occurred to us periodically and we’ve even occasionally tried it for a few weeks at a time. But ultimately, that only compounds the problem. Asking “What are we going to have for dinner for the next seven days?” is more than seven times more difficult than facing tonight’s meal.

 We have tried to find a permanent solution, with no success. One can tiptoe into it: do you have any thoughts about dinner? Or: how hungry are you? One can boldly go: what do you want for dinner? One can sidestep: what do we have for dinner?

 Occasionally, one of us makes the sacrifice and offers an idea. That usually means offering to cook as well and usually results from a personal craving or burst of energy that may flag before the meal comes to fruition. Too bad, offer accepted, you’re on the hook.

 The impasse that results when neither of us has any idea what to make or the gumption to make it, usually resolves in a free-for-all. Then you’re on your own to scrounge through the fridge, pantry, and/or freezer for sustenance. I mean, there’s usually cheese, eggs, bread, and the odd can of soup in the house.

 It may also lead to a fast food run. If we’re feeling momentarily flush, it might mean going to a restaurant. The beauty of eating in a restaurant is that there will likely be left-overs, which assures a future meal. Unless someone sneaks into the fridge at midnight.

 I haven’t mentioned breakfast or lunch. We gave up on those years ago and they are strictly free-for-all meals at our house unless we have houseguests. Long ago, when we were responsible for feeding children, I know that we did this better. The kids did get regular meals and there was pre-planning because, duh, working parents. You couldn’t wing it without potential disaster, peanut butter sandwiches and cereal excepted. Back then, dinner was a duty. Now it’s a negotiation.

 So if you’re still wondering what’s for dinner tonight—join the club. We’ll be asking again tomorrow.