Tag: home

Pensées du jour

Published on by Grace10 Comments

I’m a bit tired of fighting with frying pans. You know that brand of cookware I mentioned, Hexclad, well, dear reader I bought them.  On the website and on Amazon 3 saute pans with lids are $399. But  while reading (even more) reviews I discovered that Costco also sells them. Popping over to Costco’s website I discovered they had – On Sale – a 7 piece set for $349. Now who could resist that, not me obviously.

I don’t buy shoes, purses, clothes, jewelry, we don’t eat out, we don’t drink – hell, a little indulgence to make an onerous task easier I can justify that.

While hardly a pollyanna, and far from being one of those positivity people, I often can see the upside to the downside.  My husband’s recent lengthy hospital stay, with me at the hospital 10 to 14 hours a day, certainly upset our self-defined schedules. Or rather my husband’s schedules that I had to follow because even tho I was always the one doing the work he had set the schedule.

Such as – laundry on Monday and Friday morning. Several times I did the laundry in the afternoon and he got all twitchy about it. He had no hand in doing the laundry why would be care when it gets done? Yet – he did care. It bothered him when I changed the schedule. Same goes for vacuuming, grocery shopping, changing bed linens, washing dishes – the list goes on. He never did any of these things – why did he care so much when they got done? I asked him, he said he doesn’t know, it just does.

Those schedules are all trashed now. Being at the hospital for so many hours, things got done when I had ‘early’ days; some things didn’t get done for weeks; dishes stayed in the sink overnight – I just didn’t have the energy or the time for arbitrary schedules.

Since he’s been home – I still don’t have the energy and the schedules have been tossed.

Meds and exercises on schedule? Of course. Laundry? No.  Everything gets done but – when it needs to be done; when I feel like it. And my own crazy obsessive habits? Some of them have bitten the dust too. I would never leave dishes in the sink or the drainboard overnight – not even a spoon. Now? Who cares. Not me…

What a wonderful upside to a dreadful downside!

 

I’m so excited!

Published on by Grace19 Comments

When my husband became ill at the beginning of the year and I was totally overwhelmed with caring for him and having no family or support system here our daughter brought up that perhaps we should think about moving closer to her. I mentioned that I had been looking at CCRC’s here and she suggested looking in Vermont near her.

Then she brought up the possibility of she and her husband buying a house with an in-law suite. I LOVED that idea. We talked about the financing and that is not a problem since my husband and I could put down a substantial down payment and pay half the monthly mortgage amount or close to.

She and her husband own a home but it is way out there and the commute is a killer and they really want to move closer to Burlington.  We all like this idea – it’s a win-win for everyone plus of course having a built-in babysitter (me!)

With my husband’s diagnosis still in flux the whole project was put on hold. Well, my husband’s MRI came back with nothing to worry about so I immediately texted our daughter that if she still wants to do the house thing, health-wise it’s a go for us.

So the search is on! It’s gonna take a while but it seems we will be moving! Yay!

Granted Vermont is not my first choice of a place to live but Paris is out of the question and needs must. At our ages and health challenges we need some sort of support system. Since our daughter offered we would be fools not to take them up on it. I may be a lot of things but stupid isn’t one of them.

I’m so excited!

Yes it's true

Published on by Grace8 Comments

My comment to Ashley in my previous post (regarding her post on irritability) struck a chord with Melissa. She intends to use the phrase “I was born irritated” from now on. (Edit: It seems I was mistaken, it was Rory who made the remark I was referring to. Comments from people who don’t use Blogger only come through as ‘anonymous’. Blogger and WP do not play well together. Apologies to both Melissa and Rory.)

What I said was “Hell, I was born irritated plus I’m a New Yawker – we are always irritated and make no bones about it.”


Now then the dictionary definition of irritated is “aroused to impatience or anger”. And the definition of irritability is “the quality or state of being irritable” And the definition of irritable is “capable of being irritated”.

Does that help you at all? So let’s stick with ‘aroused to impatience or anger’. 

I haven’t lived in New York City since 2000, that’s a long time to be away but I’m pretty damn sure that the NYC sensibility hasn’t changed much – have you ever been to NYC? Impatience is a permanent state of being. 

NYC is a place of too much. Too many people, too many cars, too many things to do, too many places to go.  All that too-muchness means that rather than fast, everything moves slower than molasses going up a hill on a rainy day. At least it feels that way to those of us who have somewhere to go in a particular amount of time (as opposed to those who have nowhere to go and all day to get there). 

New Yawkers are vocal in their irritability, for example – I would walk Lexington Avenue (going North) every night to get to the subway to go home. Just about every night, walking along the curb, going South, would be this disheveled old man waving his hands about and shouting “Walk on the right, walk on the right”.  

Oh please yes, if you ever are a tourist in NYC – Walk On The Right! Funnily enough in the Washington DC metro system there are huge signs above the escalators and stairs that say “Stand on the right, Walk on the left” – tourists MUST be reminded to stay out of the way of the natives. 

(Hey, I just thought of something – all this “stay to the right” business – is this what is affecting our political/social climate? If that’s the case I think I’ll start walking and standing on the left. Just sayin’)

Another Only in New York description that I do believe I coined is “All New Yorkers have a license to kvetch. It’s right there in the fine print on on your birth certificate.” 

So there you have it, my kvetchiness is a birthright and my permanent state of irritation is due to me being a little Italian girl from Da Bronx.

My personal take on Libras (nope this is not about astrology – read on…)

Published on by Grace10 Comments

 I don’t know if this is an original thought, probably not because I don’t have original thoughts, but I’ve always said give me (a Libra) a blank piece of paper (or room or just about any blank thing) and leave me alone for an hour and when you come back the paper (space or whatever blank thing is involved) and it will still be blank BUT put one dot on that paper (or one thing in that blank space of whatever) and an hour later the blankness will have been filled with something wild and creative (or useful or, just filled up). 

Today Ashley had a post “How has your blog changed over time?”. I quickly started formulating a response but didn’t post it as a comment. It wasn’t relevant but it made me think. I’ve actually written about that recently. I was even thinking about it this morning – of perhaps changing my blog name to “Miscellaneous Mishegoss” because that’s what I usually write about. My blog hasn’t really changed much (aside from the name and the URL) tho I do believe the content used to be a lot better – deep thoughts on many occasions, just all round better content and writing. Plus, of course, lots of kitty pics and videos. 

Then Peggy just posted on a variety of topics but the one that caught my attention was a paragraph about her feeling homesick for Northern Virginia (which is where I live now but no we never lived in remotely near one another). She recently retired and moved further south and she is not feeling at home just yet. 

It got me to thinking that I have moved approximately 21 times (probably a few more than that especially if you count temporary housing while looking for permanent housing) – and it was sometime ago that I wrote about being unconnected and home-less. I still feel that way. 

She talked about missing her “tribe” and I often talk about finding my tribe – I think she meant her neighbors and friends and I mean people like me but then I don’t think I have ever had a tribe which goes to my being unconnected. 

(All of a sudden I got a picture in my head of me floating in space in one of those space suits – unconnected to anything.) 

Life is so temporary, so ephemeral. So floaty and gauzy. Or that’s how I’m seeing it at this moment. 

Sometimes your first thought is your true thought

Published on by Grace

We, all of us, ask ourselves questions. Big questions – about who we are, and why we are who we are, and how we feel about that.  This self-questioning goes on for years on the same topics. Sometimes the answers change from year to year, decade to decade (once you have enough decades under your belt).

We can make ourselves crazy looking for answers, for a definition of self. Answers to why we feel the way we feel and more disturbingly why we don’t feel the way we think we ought to.  Or rather, the way we have been told we ought to feel.

Perhaps we are spending too much time thinking and re-thinking. Perhaps the first thought, the first answer that came to us was the right answer all long. Our true answer.

Today Rory posed these questions: “What animals do you feel a special connection with and why?” and “If you were able to allocate an animal mascot to each of the rooms of your house which rooms would you give them and again, why?”  These were the end point of his post concerning his new home and that, among other things, that he is naming each of the rooms and spaces in his new home and assigning each space a personality via a mascot. I find that whole idea charming and fanciful and totally UN-relatable.

I quickly reacted to the post and questions and in re-reading both the post and my answer I realize I completely misunderstood what he was asking.  I answered with MY concept of ‘home’.

Now then, through the years I have pondered on the concept of ‘home’ and belonging somewhere. I have written about it – a lot.  The vagaries of life have had me moving often and in each instance I had to establish myself in the new place bearing the weight of outsider.  Oh yes, I was always an outsider, in some places people thought me quite exotic.

A few years ago I finally, and with great peace of mind, discovered that life had given me the ability to be at home wherever I was, and to belong wherever that home was.  Wherever I hung my hat was home! Wherever home was, I belonged.

Home is not a building. A building is an inanimate object with only the qualities that someone assigns to it as their imagination dictates.  It can be beautiful to look at and a marvel of human skill and ingenuity but for me, a building is a convenience and I do prefer to occupy buildings that are particularly convenient for me.   The space I occupy, reflects, for the most part, my personality.  And when I and my things are removed and replaced, it will become a reflection of someone else’s personality.

My comment on Rory’s post just poured through my fingers to the keyboard. Instantaneous. And that first thought is my truest feelings –

“I’ve learned that everything thing I need, especially a ‘home’ is within me and I carry it with me – I don’t inhabit it, it inhabits me.”

And there is MY truth.  I didn’t answer Rory’s questions but I answered mine!