Silver Anniversary (of 9/11)

 I’m in a somber mood, a little tired & strung-out after a week of puppy-sitting… Suitable for this somber “Silver Anniversary”, I suppose.

A little strange that I drove up to find P pulled off to the side of our road (about half a mile from our driveway) taking a phone call when I came home tonight, & he’s now left to show moral support to the firefighters who are putting on a display on one of the highway overpasses. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to ask him about that mysterious phone call? P & I will celebrate our own Silver Anniversary next year.

On 9/11/01, we were seriously involved - “exclusive” but not officially engaged yet, in what was probably  the easiest stage of our relationship since Peran was a Road Warrior at that time, generally flying out on Mondays & flying back home Thursday night or Friday… he had flown out to the East Coast, was subsequently stranded, eventually snagging one of the few remaining rental cars & driving home to Texas with a couple of his coworkers. Of course I had been worried sick & was thrilled to death to get him home safely. I remember the eerie emptiness of the skies during that time that flights were grounded - especially since my farm sits under the flight path for many inbound planes which are coming into DFW.

Z & V celebrated this week with another mini-vacay “Return to Vegas”. Once again, I am concerned at their escapades but I’m certainly staying the hell out of their business; I’ve got enough problems of my own! I went ahead & went in for my echocardiogram yesterday, not that I think it will yield much useful information: my next specialist’s visit will likely need to be to a pulmonologist, as the 3 different inhalers prescribed by my GP have seem to be of little usefulness in slowing down my progressive shortness of breath & this distressing “heaviness” in my chest.

Nevertheless I’m going to try, try again at my next nearby endurance event the first weekend  in October**. Next weekend I’ll be taking my girls to the state veterinary conference in San Antonio, where I am ominously thinking of all the walking which will be involved. Obviously I’ll need to set forth early, use my hiking staff & take as many rest breaks as I have to to get to where I’m going… I’ve ordered myself a fresh batch of Chinese herbs as I have no other bright ideas? Janay highly recommended her acupuncturist, so I’m debating whether to give that branch of Eastern medicine another try.

I also got some more somber news today, as I learned that Cyndi Davis, my friend & the lady who has brought her food wagon to many of our endurance events, has died of complications following her vehicle fire which happened in Colorado 5 wks ago. She was in transit to the beautiful Colorado ride which I opted out of** - I just couldn’t justify the time off or expense for no better than I’ve been doing. Several of my trail riding buddies are on a fun ride in Colorado this week - again, I couldn’t justify taking time off this close to the state veterinary conference.

** not to mention when I saw She Who Shall Not Be Named on the pre-entry list, that helped solidify my decision. My dear old friend Jennifer (who remarried 10 or 12 yrs ago & moved up to OK; time grows more slippery for me every day!) left me a voicemail as she was expecting me to be at horse camp when she saw the Jaffe name on the entry list. I had to call her back & say sorry, that’s the other Jaffe!

I will try to console myself with some puppy love now - we will figure out a hostage transfer for Theodore the Monster tomorrow (which BTW will be my mom‘s 95th birthday). I’m taking in a sandwich tray & a cake - it’s too disorienting these days to try to take her out of the facility so that’s the best I can do. (Feeling pretty rotten as a daughter these days also)

I need to reach out to Michele see how she’s doing (she organized the Go Fund Me); Dr M just sent a group text regarding the restaurant where she wants us to convene for our “family dinner” in San Antonio next weekend - now there’s something worth looking forward to!

No Free Lunch

 (which is admittedly tacky of me! I went to lunch yesterday with my old friend J, fully intending to pick up the check myself - when she grabbed it instead, I thanked her kindly & thought to myself, well that’s payback for all those text messages last week - “free veterinary consultation”, don’t **I** work cheap?!?)

Alternative title would’ve been “can’t get no satisfaction”, which I know I’ve also used not too long ago…  Lunch was supposed to be a dual venting/cope session about our young adult children - it’s no joke that my son & J’s daughter suffered severe harm during our tumultuous divorce & custody battles. I think that’s why Z is “settling for less” in his marriage (desperate not to fail) while A talks about having “closure” with her ex-boyfriend who strangled her, beat their dogs & threatened to kill them all (he was convicted of felony assault, did a token amount of jail time & is now out in the free world again). While I don’t think the answer lies completely with J’s solution to push her out into the dating world, A does need to know there are some decent men out there…

Running short on time so I’ll post a link to previous history w/J, & this morning’s thought-provoking essay from "some dude on FB"

Quantum Physics & Fairytales

Ian Callaghan 

5h ·

AT 58, I DO NOT THINK THE FRIGHTENING PART OF AGEING IS DEATH. IT IS DISCOVERING HOW MUCH OF LIFE CAN BE SPENT IN THE WAITING ROOM WITHOUT ANYBODY EVER CALLING YOUR FUCKING NAME.

A Gen X discussion this week asked when people first felt “the shift”.

One line stayed with me:

The clock had been running the whole time.

That is it.

Not a sudden terror of grey hair. Not buying a motorbike and trousers with an optimistic waist measurement. Not waking up one morning desperate to climb a mountain, find yourself or start using the word “journey” while gazing meaningfully across a lake.

It is the quieter recognition that time was not paused during all those years spent earning, fixing, carrying, recovering and telling yourself the real part would begin once the current load eased.

We were not waiting to start life.

That was life.

Another discussion described modern life as one long string of putting out fires.

Work problem. Family problem. Money problem. Health problem. Roof problem. Car problem. Phone problem. A password problem created by a security system designed to protect the account you can no longer fucking enter.

There is always something demanding attention, and most of it arrives pretending to be urgent.

You deal with Monday so you can reach Friday. You get through this month because next month should be quieter. You delay the walk, the visit, the phone call, the trip, the book and the thing you have wanted to learn until life becomes more manageable.

Then another fire starts.

Put enough fires in a row and they become a life.

I understand load. I have carried enough of it, created some of it and occasionally tried to extinguish it with things that were quietly pouring petrol around the edges.

There were years when almost everything became maintenance. Keep working. Keep earning. Keep the plates spinning. Keep functioning well enough that nobody asked the question I did not want to answer.

When my own system finally broke, it was not because one enormous thing had landed on me. It was the accumulated weight of grief, isolation, unstable work, debt, poor sleep, alcohol, shame and the constant effort required to appear as though I was still managing it.

That is what load does. It rarely announces itself with a brass band and a formal declaration that you are now overwhelmed. It occupies the available space, one reasonable demand at a time, until survival has pushed everything else out of the room.

What I no longer believe is that life will eventually clear a polite space and invite us to begin.

There is no administrative end point at which every bill is settled, every relationship repaired, the body works perfectly, the house is finished, the inbox is empty and nobody needs anything from you.

Nobody is coming through the door with a clipboard to announce that you have successfully completed your responsibilities and may now start enjoying yourself.

If you wait for zero load, you will die with a beautifully organised list of reasons you never went.

That does not mean abandoning your responsibilities to “follow your joy” because a man beside an infinity pool has explained abundance while somebody else cleans his fucking kitchen.

Somebody still has to feed the dog, answer the letter, book the appointment, check the bank account and put the bins out.

The mortgage company remains stubbornly resistant to positive affirmations.

It means refusing to let maintenance occupy the entire map.

We have been trained to treat living as something we earn after completing everything else. Rest comes after the work. Enjoyment comes after the jobs. Connection comes after the emails. The thing that matters comes after the thing that shouts loudest.

Except the jobs breed overnight, the emails reproduce when nobody is looking and there is always another administrative bastard waiting behind the one you have just defeated.

You cannot complete life’s maintenance.

You can only decide how much territory you are prepared to surrender to it.

An hour outdoors is not a failed expedition because you did not summit anything or post a photograph from the top.

Cooking something properly is not wasted time because it did not become content, generate income or demonstrate personal growth.

Calling somebody is not less important than clearing another notification.

Learning, walking, laughing, cooking, making something, sitting with someone you love and occasionally doing something for no defensible reason whatsoever are not rewards issued after life has been completed.

They are the fucking life.

The cruel trick is that the things we postpone are often the things that would have helped us carry the load in the first place.

We remove movement because we are busy. We sacrifice sleep because there are jobs to finish. We stop seeing people because we do not feel like good company. We eat whatever is quickest because we are exhausted. We abandon curiosity because it cannot justify its place on the spreadsheet.

Then we wonder why the system feels increasingly brittle.

This is not an argument for pretending consequences do not exist. Some people are carrying brutal loads with very little choice about the matter. Money, caring responsibilities, illness, grief and survival cannot be solved by booking a pottery class and purchasing a motivational water bottle.

But even under real pressure, the question remains:

Has the load taken everything, or is there still one part of your life that belongs to you?

Not eventually.

Not when work calms down.

Not when the children need less.

Not when the body is different, the bank balance is healthier or the house finally looks like the one in your head.

Now.

At 58, I am not interested in pretending the clock is not running.

I am interested in no longer helping it rob me.

I have postponed enough of my life in the belief that there would be a cleaner, easier and more appropriate time to live it. Experience suggests that time is a fictional administrative department with no staff and a telephone nobody answers.

So I will deal with the fires that need dealing with.

I will carry what is mine to carry.

But I will not spend the rest of my life sitting obediently in the waiting room, clutching a numbered ticket while the clock keeps moving and nobody calls my fucking name.

What have you postponed for long enough?

Name one thing you refuse to push into another year

Drinking from a Cesspool…

  … yet you expect none of it to splash back or sicken you?!? It is REDDIT, after all!!! You were just damn lucky that neither of your previous “Girl Dinner Diary” entries caught anyone’s attention.

If only my poor little ol’ iPad were cooperative**, I would copy & paste but I’ll have to do it on the desktop mañana. ** this device has more sense than you - it won’t even link up to Reddit anymore!

Let me wring my hands in glee as the evil Boomer boymom. I freely admit I don’t approve of my DIL & it’s not because no one is good enough for my boy - I didn’t want to type so much backstory that people gave up on reading it, but “I have my reasons” with my Piscean intuition being first & foremost. (AI my ass - no, “those boomers just write like that”! you mean, in a literate manner??) I’ll suppress my evil cackling as I say AckTuaLLy, I am an old Gen X’er; maybe even Gen Jones dependent on how fine you want to split them hairs!

*************************************************************

I haven’t had good feelings about my son‘s GF/fiancée/new wife from the get-go. (they’ve been together for 4 yrs, engaged for 2.5, married 6 mos ago)
From what I could see, their relationship seemed supremely unbalanced: with Z turning himself inside out to please her, yet never quite measuring up?
I flat-out told him a few months ago that V seemed to have an unrealistic view of what their life should be: very few can live life as an unending sequence of nice vacations, elaborate shopping trips, & fine dining. Between the two of them, they have amassed a crushing load of credit card debt…
Then Z laid down The New Rules: basically I must wait for an invitation & let V take the lead in establishing our relationship. Understood! Last night I got a taste of what this new configuration will be - Z called me to invite me to a movie which was starting in 45 minutes. The problem is, I live an hour away. Whoopsie! Z dangled the possibility of catching a movie this evening like you’d tease yr dog w/a toy, but subsequently backed out.
So I can foresee how this is going to be: last-minute invitations can mean that V gets credit for “trying” & can plead confusion thereafter when Things Just Aren’t Working Out…
In a way, this is a relief bcz there has been lots of drama - gotta let these young adults handle they own lives, amirite?!?
Nevertheless, I’m soothing my anxiety with Tex-Mex

[LET THE PILE-ON BEGIN!!!]

(I'll start with the favorable comment:)

Girl, you picked the worst forum to share this lol. The only thing this forum hates more than middle aged and elderly women is middle aged and elderly mothers of boys and men.

There is nothing you can do about this. It's his mistake to make—let him have at it.

[After that, most of it was clueless youngsters decrying me as the MIL from Hell, aka the Evil BoyMom]

Yikes. Girl...Um....I need some context.

EDIT: I'm questioning whether this post is real or not. It sounds like boymom ragebait fanfiction ngl. Okay. I just saw her previous posts/comments on her profile This post is a bit more believable now. Oh boy.

Yeah, it reads a lot like a typical overbearing mom who is leaving a lot about her behavior out. The kids are grown. Let them live their lives. The DIL and the son can read her dripping contempt a mile away and are acting accordingly.

[The 'dripping contempt' with which I have tried to advise & support them, alrighty then!?!]

This person actually does make a few good points:

YOUR son is choosing this. Your son chose that woman. Your son spent that money. Your son. Your. Son.

This woman isn’t doing anything except being the woman HE CHOSE.

You only have the option to drive him away or play ball girlie girl. My husband didn’t talk to his parents for two years because they didn’t like me. That’s her husband now. It’s their lives. Let them live it and find out where you fit in.

[I will be bookmarking this post to see where we stand in another year or two]

Begin Again

 (I realize I’ve used some version of “restart” multiple times as a title for previous posts)

Thankfully, I feel as if I’m beginning to emerge from that black sweltering cloud of depression I’ve been encased by over this past week - accompanied by an uptick in COPD symptoms which I hope have been aggravated by this hot, dry weather & seasonal allergies (worsened shortness of breath & a “heaviness” in my chest which isn’t exactly pain, but isn’t exactly comfortable either). I attended my final session of PT last Thursday; I now need to commit to some sort of gym for “accountability” since I don’t seem to be consistent enough, trying to do exercises at home…

But my Monday is off to a good start: I awakened at 6 AM & instead of grumpily rolling over & bedding down with the little dogs for another hour, I rolled out & did a little light yoga which is wonderful for ye olde mood! I expected next-to-nothing** from DS & that’s exactly what I received, although admittedly I was a little disappointed to have a small flag of opportunity dangled before me which was then snatched away…

** Z called me around midday on Saturday & seemed a little perturbed that I had carried on with my plans to take friend Toni to her grandson’s Pee-Wee football game - “Call me when you’re done Mom”, which I did. I called him at 5 PM; he was finishing up grocery shopping & said he’d call me back. Z then called me at 7 PM to invite me to a movie at 7:45 - the problem is, I was about an hour away! I offered to jump in the car immediately - I theoretically could’ve gotten there just as the previews were finishing, but Z changed lanes & said maybe we would go tomorrow (i.e. Sunday). Then of course, when I called him mid-afternoon yesterday to see if we potentially had any plans, he backed out. So I see how things are gonna be - a last-minute invitation still counts, don’t it??

“Relax, don’t do it - when you want to go to it“

                                                      Max & his SuperFootball Mom Emilie

 "Max's 3 Noni's" - admittedly I am an Honorary Noni; I lean more into my Auntie Val persona! You can see Toni sticking close to that narrow band o' shade provided by the power pole...

The Next Phase

 The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can, too.

Here Val goes again, drawing inspiration from old sci-fi… (and now I’ve messed up my usual font but I seem to be unable to fix it so I’ll carry on)

I know I’ve made references to sawing through that gnarly ol’ umbilical cord for quite a while now, but Zach beat me to it. Last week I traded in my little baby Buick which was getting to “that age” when more repairs would be piling up. The strange thing is, Zach & Victoria had been entertaining themselves by test-driving some vehicles a couple of weeks ago, but he found a couple of prospects for me. So I suffered through the interminable ordeal of buying this car last week, but unfortunately the dealership did not configure my LoJack anti-theft system! I had to go back up yonder yesterday - since I would be “passing through the neighborhood” I decided to stop by to see Zach…

I beat Zach home by a bit, only to hear these timeless words after he got home & we observed the pleasantries: “Mom, I have some things I need to tell you”! I’ll spare you the tedious blow-by-blow, but Queen Vic is holding some grudges against me for past transgressions, which include feeding the snake in their bathtub (this is an incident that occurred 3 yrs ago, before I bought Mila her new habitat), & intruding without an engraved invitation (I’ve always called or texted, never dropping in unannounced although admittedly - especially when I’m delivering gifts or supplies! I have given them admittedly short notice so mea culpa on that). Bottom line, sounds as if future social interactions will be by (their) invitation only. Even though part of me is annoyed, another part is relieved as all this recent “drama” has been frustrating… Being forced to step back is actually a relief - I need to let Zach figure out these grown-up problems on his own. “A son is a son till he takes a wife”, indeed!

Zach is lucky that his mom is the “slow burn” type; I don’t want his marriage to fail, but he may find things are harder than he predicted when:

A.) Mom doesn’t immediately answer nor return texts & calls right away. The newlywed rollercoaster has been a little “too much”! I immediately dropped what is probably an annoying habit in Z’s eyes (even if he didn’t complain about it): sending him & occasionally V interesting or noteworthy links from my perusings of the news & social media. Here’s a good one concerning Trump’s latest idiocy…

B.) Z is way overdue picking up the tabs for his cell phone (!!!), car insurance & multiple streaming services. The newlyweds have built up quite an impressive anchor of credit card debt as they are preparing to return yet again to Vegas for Labor Day weekend. Again, Z will have to figure this out… My son “may” have a gambling problem.

C.) This makes me seriously consider changing my will, since part of Z’s long-term plan seems to be counting on a substantial inheritance from Yours Truly. I made the mistake of informing him a while back that “All This Shall Be Yours” even though I will, of course, allow Peran to live on the farm as long as he wishes to if I predecease him (a “life estate”, if memory serves). With what feels like the worsening state of my health these days, these are true concerns.

In other news, I do plan to make at least one more attempt at an endurance event the first weekend of October. A successful completion would do my mood a world of good!

Today & Tomorrow

 There is nowhere to go but onward - my obsessing about the past will never resurrect it.

This morning Katie-mule failed to come up for breakfast - when I went out looking for her,  I found her dead in the bottom pasture, stretched out peacefully with no signs of a struggle. She had a minor episode of colic last month - I’ve been mixing up rice bran water for the ponies, but it isn’t as if I can bring them into the AC to rescue them from this oppressive heat; it’s already 95° & climbing at 11 AM this morning.

I had given consideration to taking a short ride by myself to lick my wounds from yesterday’s rejection. Karen had texted me about a juvenile red-eared slider brought into their clinic yesterday morning - the corner of his shell was cracked clear through (a glancing blow from an auto tire). We both needed to go by the feed store, but when I suggested that we grab a bite she accused me of “always looking for an excuse to eat” - ouch! Mea culpa for finding pleasure in socializing over a meal, but Karen & I had not met up for several weeks - to me it seemed like a good chance to kill two birds with one stone!

I realize she’s been incredibly busy: helping to raise her granddaughter, mediating the conflict between her  young adult daughters (I think Karen displays a marked preference towards Teen Mom Melissa but that’s a subject for another post!), but “I Yam what I Yam” - my predilection toward restaurant meals ain’t gonna change this late in the game! It’s too damn hot to cook anyway - last night I made a pot of rice & whipped up a nice Diane sauce for some leftover steak, yet I almost had to vacate the kitchen, all puns intended… There was no where to go to get out of the heat that’s for sure!

But regardless of my self-pity, I’ve got to go check on my tiny patient & get a few things done, despite this devitalizing heat. September is right around the corner - where did August go??

We Couldn’t Save the Cheerleader

 I was saddened to hear of Hayden Panettiere‘s death yesterday. Zach & I whiled away many hrs working our way through the “Heroes” saga back in the day - I liked it so much I even bought the set of DVDs…

 A prophetic tweet:

Oh my god, bad things happen. People cheat, spouses die. Sure this path led to divorce, but who is to say some other one would have had a magical happily ever after? 

My aunt married the love of her life, had two kids, and he abruptly died of cancer at 42. Should she have chosen someone else who wouldn’t get cancer? 

It is the same concept. People change, they fall out of love, they make bad decisions, they sometimes just die. Nobody gets a magic do over, so what is the point in wasting time lamenting the decisions that were made? It is over! It happened! There is only today and tomorrow. 

I can’t change what was, and there is no way whatsoever to know if a different decision would have led to a better outcome. It is all just fantasy.