Author: Sandy Webster

Every year one of Mary Jo’s friends makes her this gnome for outside her mailing business and coffee shop where I go five days a week. He is cleverly done, don’t you think? I decided to fuss up my entry way to the house and headed back to the shop in town to add more bits of artificial greens and lights so someone can find their way in after dark.

I will take a photo of it tonight when it gets dark. A neighborhood party had to be canceled tonight due to the flu so I have asked a couple of friends from this end to pop in for wine and meet the young couple from the opposite end. I don’t want to waste these spurts of socialization that surprise me every now and again.

I have spent the day finishing off sewing three pairs of pants, cleaning up and then baking Christmas cookies. Since I am way overdue for a blog post, I thought I’d better get to it. There is just not much new here. Amy, Patrick and Marla arrive Wednesday evening. I will have a cream of mushroom soup ready for them…and a crusty bread, I think.  It will require another trip to the store. Here is what I parked next to the other day…..constant reminder of how low the IQ has fallen here in the States.

I went to poetry meeting last week and had a successful read. I keep thinking they will make corrections or suggestions on my work. But the poet who heads the group called to tell me that my work needs no changes and to please keep it up. I will spend most of the winter writing so as to publish another book next summer. A friend in England bought several of my books for Christmas presents. Other than those buying Burke and Wills and the Stoat Story for grandchildren, I am not being told about purchases or reviews. I should probably go on Amazon to see.

First I need to take a walk…

Very little sleep last night with sore rotary cuff. My new neighbor (physical therapist) gave me some sensible exercises to help until I can lift dumbbells at the gym again. He told me that several women my age can not lift arms overhead. No problem here…just do not want to lift dumb bells that high. Not now anyway.

That’s it for today…Here is Sadie keeping me settled.

More later…

 

One of the fellows that I have coffee with in the morning thought I might like to have his copy of a biography of Oscar Wilde. So now it is mine to pass along when finished. Thoughtful of him.

Last evening was my time with a Manhattan and the legal pad. When I came out to head home with many new words on the pages I saw how lovely the lights are at dusk.

And then down into my neighborhood where the stops are all pulled out for some houses.

The cats were waiting for me by the front door.

Sadie gave me twelve toes on what I have written so far.

This morning with Oscar Wilde sitting next to me, this was the view coming onto the road home.

Seemed like a good day to continue writing but first I needed to get bookmarks for the three books waiting to be finished or opened. That led me down a memory lane of trips to Australia. The things I most often purchased were bookmarks and threads of all the colors I saw in that place. Darwin had a different palette of colors than Tasmania, Victoria from New South Wales…and so on. One of the bookmarks came from a fancy tea house in the middle of nowhere in Queensland while being driven to Brisbane to catch a flight back home. And that all led to fixing myself a cup of tea.

A little more Australia indulgence.

And then when I pulled out the tea infuser I remembered how labor-intensive weaving these were. Everyone at a Christmas dinner had one straddling their wine glass with their name on a tag hung from it.

I still have lee’s that he hardly used because he was a tea bag guy with only one type that he liked. Mine, as you can see is very tea stained and I feel like I am sharing tea with those favorite people who are no longer here in person.

Most of my Christmas presents have been wrapped and tucked away. Just a couple impulse ones yet to arrive. Speaking of which, I am wondering if I should buy the new Dyson vacuum that hangs in a charging station. Their ads even show a woman waving it overhead to vacuum her ceiling! Who does that?! But my old Dyson is really a pain to shove across the area rugs. I gets bogged down and requires a good shove and pull back. Plus the “wand” has to be pulled out and flung about until I manage to get it poked under furniture where the cats find a way to pack with their hair. This new battery charged one seems to want to go everywhere with very little effort. The family call is tonight so I will ask what they think and more importantly which one wants to take this behemoth off my hands.

Sitting in my studio writing I just saw the mail lady put something in my mailbox. I have convinced myself that it is something not only important but desired. I am going to take the less than one minute to get from here where it is warm, go out into the chilly afternoon, and return.

In the box was a lovely card from a long time family friend. And laying on the bench out front was one of the Christmas gifts I was waiting for.

I need to go for a walk but the wind and cooler temperatures are telling me to just walk through the house one hundred times. I will start with twenty and check my Fitbit.

I bought a pizza while I was out last night and will finish it for dinner. Part of me is happy not to have to face another bowl of vegetable soup!

Here is an excerpt from a new short story I am working on. It is supposed to be about the reclusive cataloger in a library but I am totally caught up in how those numbers get there in the first place. Trying to explain why I wanted to use the Dewey Decimal System in a short story to our local librarian was a real and present danger of a right brained person trying to get information from a left brained person. She rightly gave up on my notions of placement mattering to the books involved and sent me off with a couple of sheets of paper showing what those numbers and categories mean. It is quite helpful but falls short of the feelings that books might have about how and where they are placed on the shelf.

Excerpt from a story in progress titled, Joey.

“He picks up three books from one of the stacks and walks into the spaces between row upon row of books that have been coded to belong with others like them. It is important that none have strayed for too long from where they belong.

Each book has a code on a small white paper taped to its lower spine. This code of numbers and letters makes it clear where a book belongs and who its companions are likely to be. It is the book’s home, a place to feel closeness, to rub shoulders with those that are similar and so familiar.

Some will never leave the others’ side. Some are separated for brief periods of time, leaving a temporary space of emptiness. And some must adjust to being permanently parted when a more in-depth, detailed, knowledgeable book comes between them.”

So enough for today…better get pacing about the house.

Til later…..

In the last few weeks I have found the perfect, uninterrupted time and place to write what gets distracted here at home. It is the local cocktail bar when hardly anyone is there. And besides that, no one wants to intrude on an old lady with a legal pad and pen.

The respectful bartender brings my drink, a Manhattan, and then she leaves me to it. I have been working on a new short story and what the characters want to say comes easier for them in this setting. I can listen in here.

I needed to know how the Dewey Decimal System actually works. It is a curiosity that might play a part in the new story. So I went to the local library to ask. It is all decorated for the holidays.

I loved seeing all these different newspapers laid out for the patrons who come in to kill time waiting for the one they came in with to make a decision on who comes home with them. Anyway, the librarian and an assistant were very helpful with my questions. But as usual what happens most times is that too much information can dilute the passions of inquiry.

So here it is Saturday. A dreary Saturday. I am way overdue for this blog. I looked out the front door and found I still avoid looking at how close the houses are.

Lee’s ashes are on the way to the stone place. They will be returned in assorted sizes for us to place around as of February 2…Groundhog Day! I am all settled up with the funeral home and reminded the director that the next time he sees me I won’t be talking much but he now knows what to do.  I reached for his hand and was reminded again how hard their profession must be at times.

I was trying to tell someone recently that I am sorting my life into “then” and “now”. Just because so much is in the “then” does not mean it’s effects are not part of the “now”. It only means that I don’t live there anymore. My “now” place is filling up with the things I want to be involved with. New neighbors who are so much more interested in who and what I am. The other night I asked the new young couple, she, a doctor, he, a home care giver, over for red wine and pizza. So refreshing it was. Both interested in art and their new neighborhood. We plan on meeting up again over a nice red. I catch up with other neighbors on my walks or at tai chi classes. It is a nice place to be and so much more accepting than the “then” place left behind.

The other day, looking for my address book that has the contacts I send Christmas cards to, I found no less than three business card books of everyone Lee and I needed to count on to make our lives easier….repairmen, window washers, tax helpers, in fact loads of helpers. All of them part of the “then” , even the “way back when then”. Today I will not lose myself in those memories and thoughts of who might not be with us anymore, but will simply toss them out. The little desk Lee made for me when we were first married made an audible sigh of relief when I pulled them out.

When Patrick and Marla were here for Thanksgiving, I had them change a couple of boats on my shelves. I wanted The River Lethe closer so I could peer inside at the passengers and read their words, all in the past tense. I loved making this boat when Lee was first diagnosed with dementia. It is based on the Greek mythology of the river of forgetfulness, Lethe, flowing to the river Styx where the boat passengers would be taken onward to Hades for judgement. What I loved about the story was that the water from Lethe encouraged the passengers to forget who and what the were, where they came from… In my interpretation, the passengers enter below decks, dropping their baggage before going down further to find a seat. They have all drunk the water. But so has a rather forgetful ferryman who has lost track of whether he is coming or going, so ties the boat up and joins his passengers. All of them in a forgetful state of waiting for what comes next.

I just noticed that a small sculpture I did is directly on the shelf underneath. It is an old tin box with pages made from sandpaper sheets students in a woodworking class gave me when I was teaching at Arrowmont several years ago. They could not understand why I wanted sandpaper that was no good anymore. I told them it was for a sculpture titled, The Irritations of Aging. When a sheet is pulled out it scratches those next to it like dry old skin. On the back of each sheet are snips of writings on the subject of aging from my journals. Only one page has a small copper jingle bell to remind us that there is sometimes a bit of joy to be found in getting older. I rather enjoy fumbling through the pages.

I also took a picture of the autobiographical heads of right and left brain thinking. they gather and confer in the corner of the living room.

My last load of laundry has dried. I will fold, iron and put it away before spending the rest of the day filling the house with the smells of homemade soup.

Til later….