Thursday, June 6, 2019

    The alarm went off at 6:30am, but I did not. I didn't budge. I fell asleep again before the alarm automatically shut off.  I woke up again shortly before 7, went to the bathroom, and headed back to bed.  I finally got up around 7:30.  First things first, I walked Elsa.  I still felt tired. I worked on walking in a relaxed way, using the minimal amount of energy I needed to walk instead of thinking of pushing myself. The physical execution wasn't difficult, just the way I felt about it. Because I wasn't doing Bikram, I walked all the way around the block instead of only to the end and back. I took a brown paper bag with me to pick up trash. There wasn't much of that, but I found two unidentified piles of poop to pick up.  Elsa and I came across a dog on the loose.  She and Elsa had no trouble with each other.

    I do want to sleep more than usual.  I can think of several reasons this might be true. Someone suggested depression. I am definitely not clinically depressed.  I am adjusting to a new reality. That alone takes tons of energy. I am making some radical changes to my body.  While changing my left foot's alignment doesn't sound like much, it affects every bone and muscle in my body. It's another huge change. The last possibility is something I can do something about.  I wonder if I'm getting enough protein in my diet.  I get protein in the Juice Plus smoothie.  I put a large number of pumpkin seeds in my salad; that's a protein source.  There is some protein in everything I eat, but I haven't been getting meat.  I am going to have to eat the other kale and mozzarella patty I defrosted, but tomorrow night I am determined to defrost and cook some meat.  I have a toaster oven on the counter, but I haven't turned it on yet.   In my conversations with Mike, he gives me hell about the way I eat.  I assure him I'm fine. He's not convinced. (For those who wonder: Do I really believe Mike is talking to me?  Yes and no. More importantly, as far as I'm concerned, the reality of his presence is irrelevant. If it helps and does no harm, I'm good with it.) 

    When I came home, I dumped the brown paper bag with the poop in the trash can. I thought of the paint cans I had set out about  6 months ago to dry out so I could toss them.  I keep forgetting about them. I want to drop one can in the trash each week for pick up. I got one of the cans and dropped it at the bottom of the trash container.

    I did my oil rinse, washed the dishes, made my two-days’ worth of Juice Plus smoothies, and drank my two cups of water and pretzels while I worked on the blog. My cell phone rang, and my first thought was, "It must be Mike." I wonder how long that will be going on.  When I forced myself to think that he is really permanently gone from my physical life, my heart feels heavy. Fortunately, I don't focus on that too much.  I have a life to live. Throwing myself on the funeral pyre is not for me.  I also know that I will have to deal with this sadness. There's nothing wrong with doing it slowly and piecemeal.  When it hits, I don't run away from it.  I sit with it. It's weird, but when I do focus on the feeling of my sadness for his absence, rather than feeling sadder, I feel Mike's presence in every cell of my body.  

    After I had my breakfast soup, I went down to the bottom of the property to pick limes. When I stepped outside, it was clear there had been a downpour. I missed this one. Knowing that I would get dripped on as I ducked under the lime tree to pick the limes up off the ground, I went anyway.  I came back up with 9 (nine) limes. When I went down last week with Sidney, I picked up 32.  Some change. It looks like it's the end of the growing season. When I looked in the tree, I could see several baby limes coming up. They're so green they're hard to see against the leaves, but they're there. It's not a lot, and it will be a while before they are ripe enough to pick for juice.  Also, there are no flowers on the tree.  It may not be the dead-end of the season, but close.  I will have to buy lemons at Costco on my next trip to fill in the gap between the growing seasons. They carry limes, but they are all green. The green ones look great and are suitable for slicing but not for juicing.  You have to wait till they turn yellow for that.

    I got a phone call from Pat, who's the CEO of Habitat, asking to meet me for lunch with Isobel.  I know this is a courtesy to Mike, but I'll take it.  Who knows, I may make new friends out of this.  Of course, maybe they will ask me to take a role with Habitat to do something to make up for Mike's loss.  I doubt that. I'm nowhere near being able to offer what Mike provided in his role for Habitat. 

    When I called my lawyer yesterday to help find the estate distribution among our inheritors so I could apply it to the IRA, she told me that it was listed in the Trust document.  I couldn't find it in the Portfolio, but I remembered the distribution. I made a slight adjustment dropping one of the inheritors from the IRA while leaving her in to inherit money from the Trust.   Another piece in place. I wonder how long all these adjustments will go on. I know it will be at least another 4 months before we can close out the old accounts outside the Trust.

    My computer had been acting weird.  I called my Microsoft support service. They took over my computer and made it all good. I'm sure my grandson, August, can do the job too. 

    On an NPR show, there was a discussion on Orwell. I was particularly interested in his thinking about language. He believed that thought can be controlled through language.  This is tricky. I'm sitting here thinking about it. I believe language can control thought if the thinker is already inclined to think that way.  The correlation between language and what people experience has to be functional and have some bearing on reality.  If you're dealing with a highly structured collective culture, a common language supporting common beliefs is functional or at least can be. Then some individuals adopting the 'fake' language a good option because it helps them in some way.  My mom, for her own neurotic reasons, tried to control perception through language. How's that different? It really didn't work. I recently heard a survey of North Koreans reveal they don't believe the BS that is being shoved down their throats. Does that mean that no one does? Probably not.

    I sat down and went through all the credit cards.  I got distracted by the funeral and was dreading going back to this chore.  It winds up I had it fairly well organized to start out with and had no problem figuring out what I had left to do. There is a special department to deal with the accounts of the deceased, and no, it's not open 24/7.  I got the contact numbers for these departments and the times of operation.

    Dorothy called.  She is committed to calling every Thursday.  I deeply appreciate it. I'm trying to get family members to commit to a day to call. Damon has Sundays.  I spoke to Karin about it. She said she would try; I'm not optimistic. She's not used to thinking of talking to me regularly.

    I was going to wash the floor, but there was a kettle full of water I had heated earlier.  I reheated it and went outside and did some of the weedings. I was planning to do some on the back lanai. Then, I sat down and did some more work on the blog.   I finally washed the kitchen floor.  The vacuum cleaner has been sitting there for most of the week, reminding me what I had to do.  Washing the floor using the Rainbow vacuum cleaner to suck up the water takes all of 15 minutes, and it looks so much better. Why would I see it as a giant task and resist doing it?

    I have made a new discovery; I have discovered that I love sweeping with a broom. Now, this broom doesn't have those stiff bristles I remember as a child.  The bristles are flexible and a delight to use. I sweep the dirt out of the kitchen, down the hall, and out the side door. I sweep the pebbles off the tiles on the black lanai. I sweep my bedroom and bathroom, and the dirt gets whisked out the shower door, which goes right out to the back lanai.    Mike would have loved this development.

    Mike and I designed our bathroom.  The original one was much smaller. We knocked out a large closet to enlarge the bathroom.  We designed the room with our old age in mind.  The shower has universal access.  That means there is no lip at the edge of the shower pan, so you can slide a wheelchair right into the shower. There's no door between the bathroom and the bedroom. Mike and I were good with that.  The doorway is wide, also taking a wheelchair into consideration. Best of all, the outside wall was knocked out and replaced with an all glass, clear glass,  door leading right out to the back lanai. Most of our guests just love using our shower, but some are concerned about being seen.  No one can see.  I will go out to hang up my laundry on the line in my altogether, and no one can see me.  All sightlines are blocked one way or another. 

    I loaded about 80 CDs in the car for drop off on Saturday at the half-price bookstore. Then I walked Elsa before it started to pour.

    When I got back, I took a late afternoon shower, did MELT for my feet and hands, had dinner of a large salad, 3 small buttered slices of multi-grain baguette, limeade, and my pills. I'm sticking to my habit of eating on the screened-in lanai and reading while eating.

    I did some more work on the blog before watching TV in the library and cataloging more books.  Cataloging them feels pretty good. I am not looking forward to emptying out that room.  The books are so Mike.  When we moved from Ohio, I tried to talk him out of talking his three thousand books, but he insisted. He said the two things that had to go with him: me and his books.  

    I walked Elsa at the end of the evening. She turned around early again.  Huh? When we got home, I  washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.

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Musings:  I’m putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.

    Heather, the Monday through Friday mornings Bikram instructor, said. "No matter who you are, no matter how broken, this process will help you." 

    The idea is that everyone can change and improve. But is that true?  I am sure that some are too afraid to go through the process of change.  I think all change involves learning more about ourselves, challenging ourselves.  When I encouraged Mike to change his posture, he would make an effort and make some sarcastic comments about how comfortable he felt.  No, change doesn't feel comfortable. Why are some willing to experience that discomfort and others not?  

    I know that the dance training I had in my twenties taught me there was a difference between 'good' pain and 'bad' pain. 'Good' pain signals a possible change, bringing me closer to achieving a goal. The body feels something unfamiliar but associates it with something good. 'Bad' pain signals some damage to the body, which will not lead to healing.  Does having this knowledge help? I don't know, but I have always been curious about the human psyche.  My curiosity about my own was because I was a readily available lab animal to examine. I had me to look at 24/7.  How neat is that? 

    I think healing always means accepting responsibility for our personal condition. That's the premise in all healing. Somehow we have to make changes in ourselves. We can have someone else make those changes through medical procedures, but that doesn't apply to psychological and spiritual changes.  For me, achieving physical change through chemistry or surgery is always a last resort.  I see many people use that as the first choice.  

    More confusing for me is people who want the world to change around them to make them happy.  Not that a change in the outside world is irrelevant.  Living in a Nazi concentration camp was an external circumstance that most people could not find a healing way to cope with.  I have no idea how I would have done, or possibility, giving the current political climate, I may have to do before the end of my life.  Victor Frankel demonstrated that inner healing can have a significant bearing on the outcome of even dire circumstances like that.  Do I think that change should all be internal and never external? No. It's just I have developed that pathway for myself and can guide others effectively using this approach.  

     I think it is equally vital that some work to change external conditions. Mike's first wife, my hanai sister, has spent 15 years working on prison reform. Do I think that should be done? Absolutely. But that's not what I'm called to do. That's not what I see as my channel for making a contribution to making this world a better place. 

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

  

    Today was my half birthday; I was 78 ½ years old.  I followed my usual morning routine without change and went off to Bikram.  I continued working on the outer edge of my left foot.  I can feel that the area right before the heel on the outside of my left foot does not make contact with the ground consistently the way the same area on the right foot does.  Also, the alignment of my left foot is off.  I believe these two facts are related. I have been working on getting better contact with my left foot. This triggers action in my left calf. We'll see. It's all one big experiment.

    It was trash pickup day. When I come home from Bikram on Wednesdays, I make sure to take the last of the trash out of the house and place the poop bags, which I have thrown next to the trash container during the week, in the trash bag in my hand. I went to my kitchen trash, and it was - empty. Then I checked the bathroom trash; the same thing.  Freaky.  Yvette had taken care of it. Very sweet, but very disorienting. 

    We don't have municipal pick up here; we have to hire and pay a company.  Those who don't do that have to take their rubbish to the transfer station on their own.  As far as Mike and I were/are concerned, the transfer station is a tourist site. We take our visitors to it. It's just fascinating.  We still take our recyclables down ourselves.  

     Rick from Raymond James had contacted me by email and asked me to call. I called him as I drove home from Bikram. I wound up being a good time for him. The issue is how to handle the combined IRA from Mike and me. They originally asked me to designate beneficiaries.  

Without thinking about it, I listed August (Mike's grandson), Sidney (Mike's grandnephew) and Sam (my grandnephew).  When I thought about it, that didn't seem too wise.   It would cut the previous generation, their parents, out of the loop, and, as Shivani pointed out, it would not account for other children that may come on the scene. I asked Rick if we just could put it into the trust and have that money distributed along with all the other money.  He said that I should find some other way to deal with the IRA.  

    Here's the problem: if it is distributed as part of the trust, it will have to be distributed at my death and taxed at a substantial rate.  If, however, I list beneficiaries, they can roll over the money into their retirement funds, and the rate of withdrawal will depend on their life expectancy, not mine.  At 70 ½ there is a minimal annual withdrawal amount.   Mike and I were required to do this, and I will be required to do this for the rest of my life. I pay taxes on that withdrawn amount. However, if I keep the IRA separate from the trust and list the beneficiaries, they will not be required to withdraw the whole amount at once and pay the attendant taxes. If they are younger than 70 ½, they will not be required to take that minimum annual withdrawal.    

    In the process of organizing for my tutoring student, I emptied one of Mike's folders on his desk.  I think it was one for the distance learning program.  I have been resisting this because it means he's really gone, and all his projects are over.  I think I'm slowly letting it in the reality of his absence. I'm in no hurry.  As I moved items around on his desk, I found the car registration which I have been searching of for days. Knew I had put it someplace absolutely sensible.

    My tutoring student arrived at 11:15. We worked on math. She is still having problems with procedure for double-digit multiplication.  She confuses the procedure with the one for addition.   She wrote another story.  It was a little easier to pull details out of her today, but she doesn't use standard English. I'm not sure how much of this is because she was raised speaking Pidgin or because she has problems with language processing.  Her aunt seems to speak Standard English. I'll have to ask her. 

    Pidgin, by the way, is the creole that came out of the mix of Hawaiian, English, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and English. Someone I know who went through the Hawaiian school system in the 80s said that his high school teachers conducted their classes in pidgin. Although it is called pidgin, it is not. It's a creole.  In linguistic terms, a pidgin is a language improvised and developed for purposes of commerce;  such a blended language becomes a creole when children start learning it at their mother's knee.  Hawaiian pidgin falls into the latter category.

    I had another long nap.  I got up for my before-dinner walk with Elsa.  The evening was clear, unlike the previous days, so I headed down to talk to Alexandra, a neighborhood high school girl,  about entering the books that weren't already in the site's collection.  As I walked down the street, I saw someone come out to pick up their mail.  I thought it was her mom, Olga, but as I got closer, I saw it was Alexandra.  Perfect!  She said she would be willing to do it, but wouldn't be available until next week because she was a counselor at a STEM camp for this week.  She was recently flown to the mainland for a STEM contest.  Her group developed some sort of rocket. They came in 20th for the nation. Now, that's not chopped liver.  

    I came home and started packing up the CDs.  Mike must have about 1,000 and he may have listened to one of two but no more than that.  He certainly didn't listen to all 1,000.  Again, I realize he was a neat hoarder. Our living expenses will probably drop just for that reason alone.

    I'm up to 2200 in the count of categorized book. That's probably not quite accurate. Some books have been counted more than once because I am an imperfect user of technology.

    For dinner, I had salad, buttered bread (I think I'm addicted), limeade and the last of a Thai tofu dish that Shivani bought. I have been eating dinner on the lanai with a view of the Pacific and the sunset more frequently than I have been eating dinner in front of the TV. I see the sunset when I look up from the book I'm reading at the time.  I think this is a much better solution to eating alone.

    I moved to the library/Mike's study to do the book cataloging.  The tv didn't work.  I couldn't get the remote to start it up.  I put a new set of batteries in the remote.  That didn't work.  I unplugged the TV. Sometimes, shutting an electronic appliance down gives it a chance to rethink its objective in life, and it comes back on when the electrical supply is renewed. No soap.  I was able to play the show I had been watching, Silent Witness season 8, on my TV.  But I had the problem of having to use the computer to enter books into the CollectorZ program and watch the show.  I did perfectly well just listening to it as a radio broadcast. If I got stuck figuring out who was who, I could switch it over from the CollectorZ site to Amazon.  Rather enjoyed listening rather than watching. 

    As I walked Elsa, she turned around early again.  Huh. When we got home, I  washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.