A Birthday That Didn't Make Me Teary

Birthdays usually make me teary and in a hurry to get through, but yesterday's was fine.  I liked it, and I had my fill of chocolate.  I couldn't ask for more.

I went to off to the pool with my dear friends Anne and Val, and afterward they took me out to brunch, which for me consisted of French toast, bacon, and eggs, a real treat for someone who's more or less chained herself to Whole 30. 

Then, Jerry and I went to the hardware for garden clippers, which I desperately needed because I tend to lose them in piles of garden detritus. Today the first of two pairs of expensive sandals arrive for me to choose from.

After that, I settled in my chair to hand-stitch a label on a quilt for Pantry Kate, whose husband is in Berkeley for a few weeks and can take the quilt back to England for her.  When I finished, I realized I'd sewn it on the wrong corner of the back, top instead of bottom, but I said to hell with it, and it will stay where it is (Kate, if you're reading this, the quilt goes the other way round.)

Then dinner at Rivoli on Solano Avenue, where they gave us the best table in the house, in the far corner near the window, with a view of the garden. The food was delicious: portabello mushroom fritters and arugula (shared), sea bass (me), Dungeness crab risotto (Jerry), plus dessert (hot fudge sundae for me). The waiter also presented me with a ginger snap on a plate with a candle, and his boss sent over two complimentary glasses of dessert wine.  No singing.

Afterward, we drove out to the far reaches of El Cerrito to gaze at the little house we moved into in 1976 ($44,000), now worth $500,000, and discussed how much better life is now, even though we're old and decrepit and pretty much irrelevant except to people who love us, which is pretty good.

And that was it.  Home to the House of Bathroom Remodeling, where I inspected the day's progress in the twilight:

The shower now has a floor

One of my favorite gifts, from my friend Claudia M.  I've been admiring these yard signs all over town and wanted one:

Thanks for all cards, Facebook wishes, and e-mail greetings!

Updates: Another Remodel, Blue Apron Giveaway, Medical Developments

When you haven't posted in six weeks, it's like losing touch with a friend for a year and then scheduling a catch-up lunch. What do you leave out, what's even remotely interesting to hear about?

Item 1:   We're in the middle of another bathroom remodel, and this one's a doozy:  We've had to move out of our bedroom  and into my studio, which has meant drastically curtailing quilt projects. 

Here's the Before of the bathroom, which opens right smack off our bedroom, which is why we decamped to my studio.

Formerly a closet, the former owners converted it, c. 1960.  We added a counter in 1990.

I haven't used this shower since since we remodeled the other bathroom in 2014 

Now we have a barn-like space:

 Gutted.  I can tell where the medicine cabinet's going to go, anyway.

The master bedroom looks like this:

The plastic wall, which is hiding...

...lots of fabric, odd items of furniture, and who knows what

My studio in normal times:

My studio now: 

It's like living on a ship--very, very compact.  (The bed is brand-new.  Why not add researching, trying out, and buying a new mattress to the remodel mix?) 

This project is supposed to be finished in early May.

* * * * *

Item 2:  Some of you know that Jerry's son, David, was diagnosed with a rare sinus cancer last year.  After the most grueling treatment you can imagine--simultaneous chemotherapy and radiation--he needed to have surgery to remove the last of it.  That happened last Monday, and his doctors are confident of a happy outcome.  This is something Jerry and I have been worrying about since last spring.  David and his devoted wife, Michele, have pulled through what has been a very difficult time.

With David and Michele

Much more minor:  I'm still struggling with atrial fibrillation, despite meds.  In February, I had a stress echocardiogram that revealed a sluggish area of my heart wall, which could mean that I've had a silent heart attack.  The doctor wants to "suss it out," so next month I'm going to have a nuclear stress test that will show the blood flow in my heart.  My doctor told me last week that he thinks it's not coronary artery disease, which bucked me up.  Somewhat.

Getting old is the pits!  I've got friends who are sick, one with ovarian cancer (doing well post-surgery) and one with lung cancer (a very effective chemo pill that's working well). Yet another has been diagnosed with congestive heart disease.   Another friend has roaring in one ear and was just checked out for a blocked carotid artery: negative.

Hell's bells.  How on earth did all this happen?

Here's my strategy:

Also the title of a very moving film I saw recently (Netflix)

Some days it works.

  * * * * *

Item 3:  Jerry and I are trying Blue Apron, the meal delivery service, and I have some free meals to give away (everyone who signs up gets to do this).

 FedEx-ed to our door

The fixings for three dinners arrive at our house every other Wednesday, beautifully and frigidly packed in sturdy cardboard, ice, insulating foil, and plastic covers, all very sanitary and fresh.  Well-organized recipes accompany this, and after working our way through them,  we two non-cooks have been surprised by very tasty meals we've produced.

Vegetarian pizza made with real live pizza dough (who knew?  We usually use Boboli.)

Chicken something-or-other, delicious

The down side:  You still have to cook, which involves chopping, reading instructions, and dirtying pans.  Every other week is all we can handle; deliveries once a week make the whole undertaking seem like a chore, and I get resentful ("What?  Another damned box?!").

The up side: It's been fun working together to see what we're going to come up with.    We're paying $20/meal, or $60 every other week based on our delivery plan.  Our grocery bill has gone down.  Occasionally, there are leftovers for lunch. 

I have five free meals to award to friends who might like to give it a go.  Let me know and I'll give Blue Apron your e-mail address, and they'll contact you with the particulars. 

The minimum you can order is for two people so I don't recommend this for people who live alone because it seems like too much food.  But y ou could always freeze the meat/fish/poultry and cook the meal later. 

Let me know.

What the Doctor Ordered

These days, I get up in the morning, make a big cup of black tea, and start reading Google News on my phone to find out what fresh hell Trump has stirred up.

Then I switch to the Washington Post, The New York Times, and sometimes The Guardian.  By breakfast, I am wired and outraged.    

I know I should stop.  But as my friend Debbie says, "I keep thinking I will take a day off, but then I don't because I'm scared to not know."

Me, too.  I'm scared not to know.   Take your eye off Trump for half a day and God knows what he'll do next.

Well! This morning I had an appointment with one of my doctors, a woman in her sixties who lives in Berkeley, so you can imagine the conversation.   She's incensed by Trump and just about ordered me (is it in my chart?) to join  Indivisible , an organization founded by Congressional ex-staffers who suggest ways to make your voice heard most effectively.  Apparently, you're assigned a pro-democracy, anti-Trump task  to do every single day. 

Among other things, the doctor wrote to Dianne Feinstein and told DiFi that she'd never vote for her again if  she didn't oppose the Cabinet nominees.  And what happened?  DiFi started opposing the nominees!  The doctor's very bucked up.

Then she wrote to Uber and told them she was quitting because their top executive met with Trump.  Haven't heard back on that one.

And the demise of the Affordable Care Act?  She waved that off.  Patients are being overcharged and insurance companies and hospitals are making millions.  She assured me that doctors were not.  We need single payer health insurance, and that's it.  She was very firm about that.

I came straight home and wrote to Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris. 

It's a start.

 Does he know this is for real?

* * * * *

I'm in one of those phases where I feel like I've physically aged several years overnight.  I squint at myself in the mirror and wonder what the hell's happened.  Crepey skin, more chin hairs, and a shocking web of wrinkles under my eyes.

 My ineffectual arsenal

More cream, more plucking, more exfoliating more, more, and more, and not much difference.    Maybe I should start an organization called "Invisible," because that's what women in their sixties are,  unless they yell loudly,  which is not a bad idea (see above).

My mental state has also taken a hit, and not just by Trump.  Last week I learned that a friend has a serious illness, another friend has died, and someone else has had a skirmish with a cancer caught at an early stage.  You reach an age where death no longer surprises, but it's still shocking.  

The other night, Jerry and I watched an eccentric movie called "Still Life," about a nerdy, fortyish Englishman who's in charge of tracking down relatives of people who are found dead.  He's not very successful, and sometimes he's the only person at the funeral, for which he writes a eulogy that a minister reads.  In the end, you realize that the message is kindness, and we are in so much need of it.  It's classified as "drama/comedy," but I'd call it black humor (Amazon Prime).

* * * * *

We're taking on another bathroom remodel, due to leaks, mold, inconvenience, and, yes, a "dated" look.

For this, we're going to have to move out of our bedroom and into my studio,  which means I'll have to find another place to quilt.  Afterward, I'll have a sleek new bathroom in a former closet (converted by the last owners).

 Where will it all go?  Haven't dealt with that yet.

* * * * *

This rose bush will not give out!  I keep thinking I've cut the last bloom, and it produces another.  A rose in the winter of our discontent, etc.

Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! The Oakland Women's March

I almost didn't go because I had a cold, but on Saturday morning I felt I couldn't miss it.  I had to show up.

Drums, banners, bells, signs, chants--it's been so long since I went to a march (2002),  I'd forgotten what it's like.  We'd shuffle a couple of steps forward and stop and wait.  We'd take a few more steps.  Camaraderie, yes.  Forward motion, not so much.  Funneling 84,000 people through the streets of downtown Oakland takes time.

 The vibe was good.  Everybody you can think of was represented:  every ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age.  There were old people with walkers, small children in strollers,  and the full spectrum of genders and hair color.   Even a pair of topless young women (shiver). 

The youngest marcher I saw was eight months old:

Me to the mother:  A girl?

Mother:  Well, that's how she identifies now, but who knows?

A sampling of signs and people:

 

I went with my friend Claudia, and we ran into a Berkeley dorm pal, c. 1970-71. 

 Thea and Claudia, who hadn't met up since c. 1972

Getting down to Oakland was no picnic.  Jerry dropped us off at the El Cerrito BART Station, which was mobbed.

Everyone managed to push on to the next train, which was crowded to start with. It zoomed to the North Berkeley station, where there was also a mobbed platform, but few could get on. After that, virtually no one could board the train, even though the platform in every station was swarming with waiting marchers, all through Berkeley and into Oakland.

We finally got off at the Oakland 12th Street Station and hoofed it to the starting point of the march at 9th and Madison.  That was the last time we walked more than three steps in a row until we peeled off an hour and a half later near the Oakland Museum.  We didn't finish the march because despite all the enthusiasm and outrage, we simply pooped out.   Four blocks in an hour-and-a-half!   But our hearts were in it and we showed up.  News helicopters circled the march intermittently and everyone would would wave and shout.

 My own pussyhat, knit by my friend Debbie, another 1970-71 Berkeley dormie.  She knit eight pussyhats, which were worn in marches around the country.

Judging from social media, many of my friends went to marches: LA, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland,  Sacramento, Fort Bragg, Pt. Reyes Station, and Albuquerque. 

Hey,  hey, we're here! 

Floating Along in the Kitchen Cabinet of Jeff Sessions, Plus a Good Read

In 2013, we took a cruise up the Inside Passage of Alaska, seven languid days of being waited on and seeing some truly beautiful scenery.

 In our usual mode of Antisocials at Sea, we talked to almost no other passengers, but kept to ourselves, which was just fine.  Shipboard socializing isn't our thing (although we make exceptions for Aussies and Brits, especially the ones we meet in bars).

 The Anti-Socials at Sea

But one morning as the ship cruised the Tracy Arm Fjord, which is startlingly beautiful, dotted with floating blue chunks of ice, we chatted with a pleasant American couple with accents that betrayed them as Southerners.  They seemed smart and funny, with a winning irreverence, and eventually they invited us to join them at lunch on a terrace where we could watch the action.

 The pale blue ice of the Tracy Arm Fjord

Everything went along fine  until the end of the meal, when the husband mentioned that he was in the kitchen cabinet of Senator Jeff Sessions.

"He goes to our church," added the wife, by way of explanation.  That would be a church in Mobile, Alabama, where they live.

I thought, Wait, that's one of those awful southern senators I shout at every time he appears on TV.  Wow.  

They went on to say that Sessions was "such a nice guy," and so principled that he wouldn't let the husband, a chemical industry consultant,  pay for a cab the two of them shared,  because it might look like a conflict of interest.

At this point, I assumed another layer of social insulation.   We wound up saying good-by very cordially, but we never chatted with them again.  Later, Jerry asked me why I thought they'd brought up an association with a Republican senator.  They knew we lived in Berkeley.  Hadn't they ever heard about Berkeley as a bastion of liberalism? 

 The Ashland Place Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, attended by Jeff Sessions and our cruise-mates

Now that Sessions has been nominated to be Attorney General and he's all over the news, I'm learning that he's even worse than I thought, the epitome of a rigid, old-time southern stalwart, with a history of opposing civil rights (and gay marriage and abortion rights).

"You won't find a nicer guy," protested a friend of his who was interviewed on NPR this morning.  "He's courteous and respectful."

"Of whom?" I shouted at the radio.

* * * * *

I just galloped through a novel I read about in The New Yorker, and I recommend it highly:  The Spare Room by the Australian writer Helen Garner.   A woman in her sixties invites a terminally ill friend to stay with her for three weeks.  The narrator's empathy, anger, and exhaustion are beautifully articulated, I thought.

* * * * *

For anyone thinking buying the  hand cream I recommended recently:  It's much cheaper on Amazon.   My nails are still doing well.

* * * * * *

Thanks to everyone who sent e-mails or called about my post on atrial fibrillation.  It was heartening to hear how many people live for many years with this affliction.

So much of life is figuring out how to manage it (meaning: life). This diagnosis threw me for a couple of weeks, but I think I'm making peace with it now.

   

One Resolution, Anyway...

But I am, by God, shooting for a sugar-free January.

Last night in our staid N. Berkeley neighborhood, there was actually NOISE on New Year's Eve.  The House of Millennials next door (seven banding together to pay the $7000 monthly rent) had a big party, and I could hear them counting down the seconds until midnight, when they let off a bunch of fireworks.  Thumping rap music, shouting, and then, around 1 a.m., silence.  This morning: the massive the clatter of bottles being dumped in the recycle bin.

We were tucked into bed at midnight, Jerry snoring and me wondering if we were going to have to put in a bomb shelter under our driveway to cope with Trump.

Onward.

Hang On and Help Out

At least they're color-coordinated

Not to rain on anyone's New Year's parade, but honestly, hasn't it been a wretched year?  Or is it just the year?  If we're honest, isn't aging, which occurs every year,  a bitch?

I say this as a person who was diagnosed last week with something called atrial fibrillation, which I never paid much attention to as an illness when I was young and well, although I did notice that there were lots of ads on the evening news for blood thinners that had something to do with AFib.

Now I know.  Palpitations that I thought were an occasional bother, turned out to be caused by an electrical storm in my heart.  And the storm can cause blood to pool, which can cause clots, which can cause strokes. Oh, boy. 

All this I found out when a cardiologist called me on Christmas Eve (I knew it wasn't going to be good news).  He'd analyzed output from a monitor I wore for two weeks, and on the very last day I wore the monitor I had an episode of AFib.

Not to whine, but this was the same week I found out I'm allergic to a glaucoma med, plus I had  to have yet another bone scan to monitor my osteoporosis.

I told the cardiologist this when I met with him on Tuesday.

"All these things going wrong!" I said.

"Well, it's better than the alternative," he said, cheerfully.   He looked about 40 and very fit.

"What causes atrial fibrillation?"

"In your case, aging," he said.  "Now let's talk about blood thinners."  He got very involved in the merits of various meds they advertise on the evening news, which must have a geriatric audience.

Wait until you're 66, I thought.  Just wait.  You get chipped away at.

Yesterday, sitting around a table with my quilt mini-group for our annual Christmas party, I surveyed my friends and catalogued what these 60+ year-olds have gone through:  breast cancer (2), knee replacements (3), lung cancer (2), and now AFib (1).  And these are active, healthy, middle-class people who take care of themselves.   I see clients at the Berkeley Food Pantry who are my age, according to their driver's licenses, who use canes or who have come straight from the hospital after heart attacks.   Poverty seems to accelerate physical decline, which is entirely unacceptable.

We older peeps have gotten wiser with age, and many of us have more money than we did at 25, but there's illness and even tragedy around every bend, if you have your headlights on.   The AARP shows us slender, happy couples in sweats jogging around their retirement community, and God knows happy times are still possible, but let's get real.  At least one of those people is taking blood thinners to avoid stroke.  These decades are booby-trapped.

Anne Lamott says we're here to see each other through,  and I agree.  All we do is hang on and help out.

Anyway, happy New Year.  There are still rewards to be had.  I think.