Winter Blues

(Forgive this little disjointed post-- I started it on January 18 and ended it on the 27th. Sometimes time is necessary for processing, finding some objectivity-- especially when one cannot take a little space from their own lives. Time is a great mirror, we search, scrutinize what's happened in the past to better inform how we go forward into the coming days.)


Yesterday, a not-too-rainy day, Joe and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by going out with Kiddo to play miniature golf. If that doesn't seem too romantic (although it was, because romance is where you bring it, my friend!), we did have lunch at Fleur de Lis with BLTs and a companionable running of errands afterward. Sometimes, a person just gets so overwhelmed that simple is the perfect solution for meaningful moments.

I almost posted this yesterday, as I was indexing our last month or so.... List of things which died recently:
1. A couple Christmas ornaments
2. My kitchen CD player. (this is more of a loss than one can know)
3. The oil furnace, leaking oil is not a good sign.
4. Timer on bathroom fan (which means if you forget to stop it, bathroom turns into Hoth)
5. Foot ligament strain (ouchy)

Overall, we're still fine, but dang!

First off, 'fine' is a misleading word right now. I'm pretty sure it's a lie. I mean, we're 'fine', like, I'm not going to go into this list with passing acquaintances, but I'm not fine. If I built a word cloud, words like struggling, adjusting, frustration, cranky and apprehensive would be prominently displayed. The breakage of ornaments, when seen from my current vantage point, might have been a bad omen we had ignored, a prophecy of the baubles, if you will. "You are going to want to go forward in your fun, but shit's gonna break" might have been the message. I didn't heed it, mainly because we swept up all the glass bits right away and laughed because they weren't any favorite ornaments. Little did we know.... The lack of the kitchen CD player left me with NPR and the jazz station on the tuner. Both of those have their prime moments, but when I'm cooking dinner and wanted to groove with Aretha or Charles Bradley, I have to do it from the living room stereo. Not the same. The drawer on the CD player got stuck shut, trapping Wayne Shorter in there for all eternity. The cost to fix it would likely be more than the replacement cost, which is a total bummer as it also has a cassette player built in. (Yes, some of us still have cassettes. You can't have worked at a record store for forever without at least one rack of them in the basement.) Because the news is lousy most days, I'm finding myself in more silence than I'd hoped. The good news is.... podcasts. Oh happy day... I've liked listening to them occasionally before, but have really dug in. The Maximum Fun website has tons of funny, great ones if you are looking for a new source. Kiddo and I can laugh at humorist Judge John Hodgman; I love Oh No, Ross and Carrie's debunking and exploration of fringe science, spirituality and the paranormal, and One Bad Mother makes me laugh and cry every time I listen to it. Sometimes, you need someone to tell you that you are doing a great job, and because of that, I'm now a monthly subscriber to the show.

This leads us to the furnace. It had started leaking oil and was condemned because it was so old. The last time we needed parts, they had to send them on the slow boat from Russia. Is that enough explanation? Being that it's winter and we have no central heat, we have four space heaters plugged in. While the electrical meter outside is spinning itself dizzy, indoors, it's a dicey proposition. Because of the weird wiring in this old house, an overload on one particular breaker--which was happening at least once a day-- plunges 3 rooms into darkness and turns off the house alarm. Only an insane person would have wired the attic, J's bedroom, the hall and bathroom, the basement lights, the alarm AND the washing machine onto one breaker. If it gets tripped and isn't flipped back within a couple short minutes, the house alarm goes off in a wild, shrill shriek. It only sounds once, but it will send your shoulders up to your ears and the cats scattering in a panic. Yes, we are a bit traumatized by this. Each time I plug things in or turn them on, I must do a mental inventory of everything else plugged in and turn other things off accordingly. My brain is tired having to think about this constantly.

The work is supposed to start on installing the heat pump in about 2 weeks and I'm going to be so happy when this period of my life is over. As previously mentioned, I have to also be aware when the bathroom fan is running so we don't turn it into a walk-in fridge. Damn, I need to go turn it off... be right back.

The constant cold has its physical effects. Because of it, I bought houseslippers instead of wearing my structured sandals with socks. I also bought microwavable inserts for the slippers to help. Sadly, my feet don't do well unsupported and I ended up straining a previously injured ligament. It hurt like crazy, but only for a minute. Nonetheless, I'm now wearing my ankle braces most of the time, which I've come to discover are de facto legwarmers. I have to wear my hard-soled shoes all the time, now, to support my flimsy feet. This isn't as comfortable as it sounds (do you hear me laughing as I type that?) but it's a small pain the butt compared to everything else. Plus, we decided to cancel our trip to the coast this weekend, mainly because there would be lots of stairs involved, but I wasn't excited about leaving the cats in a cold house alone for 3 days. Yes, that's how much fun I'm having. Sigh.

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I found, a couple weeks ago, that I couldn't continue this litany of misfortune. There comes a time when I'm so bored of hearing myself complain that I don't even want to write about it. What's happened since then? Not a whole lot. In three days, the contractors will start the work of getting our new heating system installed. My entire walking apparatus (feet/ankles) is still iffy, day to day, with the added bonus of cramps because it's 'that time'. I won't lie-- I've been depressed for the past few weeks. The highlight of this season was making some really good chocolate chip cookies out of a Swiss Chocobloc Dark bar and some hazelnuts and I had in the cupboard.

Yesterday, Joe and I went out to a later lunch at Genie's Too. We were going for a 'minimal kids' vibe. Lately, my senses all feel dialed up to eleven. I had a delicious veggie scramble and a gin and soda, which was thankfully strong. Life has been kicking me, hard, and having a loving, supportive husband listen to me for a bit was valuable. I asked for the one thing I knew we could do immediately: a new music player for the kitchen; we ordered it when we got back home. This one doesn't have a cassette feature, but the top-loading player will eliminate any further problems with the drawer-type player getting stuck. I am nothing if but pragmatic. Sometimes, the resolutions to our problems are quick, some are small, some take a long time. The mindfulness required in remembering what I learned in physical therapy a couple years ago for how to use my body is still a bit mentally taxing, but the small steps I take in this are what's going to pull me through and out of this. I'm coming to accept that my capability for my feet and ankles may never be 100%, but I do also remember a few days last summer when I was walking around with no pain,and so I'm going to try to hold onto that. That there will be good days, at some point. Right now, I'm going to work on being conscious of the good moments and collect them like Legos, see what I can build from them as I go. This is the way I can keep going. As my friend has said to me plenty of times, "you have to walk the path to know it"-- and that means stepping out and walking, even when it might hurt a bit. And at the very least, I'll have my music in the kitchen today. I'd rather listen to the blues this winter than have to live through them. The winter blues suck the life out of us, surely, but sometimes our souls need that mournful company... so Charles Bradley, up in heaven or wherever your soul rests these days, we've got a date as soon as that player comes. Sing to me....