December 24, 2021

 December 24, 2021

 

  I'm in deep grief today. I miss Mike. Being with him was so easy. I loved and was loved. 

 How much better could it be?

     I went out to check on the Christmas lights decorating our front yard fence. Judy had asked about it. It had been a project of Yvette's in commemoration of Mike. He put the lights up originally. Mike loved to decorate for Christmas. Yvette bought all new lights and strung them. It was a good project. Last year they were on all through Christmas and beyond- and then they went off. I assumed Yvette had turned them off, or if there was a problem, she would solve it. However, it winds up she didn't turn them off. It just stopped functioning, and she didn't care. I checked all the connections. Everything was plugged in. Beyond that, I had no idea.

    Yvette called me for help closing the driveway gate. Ours is not automatic. It slides on a metal rail. The rail is bent and rusted. It has to be sprayed with WD 40 regularly. Scott is strong enough to move it on his own. Yvette and I did it together. Later in the day, I sprayed the mechanism. I couldn't budge the gate. I texted Yvette, but she wasn't up for working on it today. I sprayed it. It won't hurt to get another blast.

   I did some work on the updates. When my eyes gave out, and I couldn't see the letters on the computer screen clearly, I grabbed a pruning tool and headed down to the bottom of the property to clip dead wood off the orange tree in hopes of saving it. New green sprigs and a few leaves were coming out already. I clipped off whatever I thought was dead,  checking the ends of the branches after every cut to for greenwood. I think my tree will survive. 

   I texted Yvette to ask her to come up and sort out the bagels with Damon and Cyclin sent us. I had asked them to order Zabar's Kosher bagels from NYC and bring them with them when they came. They mailed them instead. They're not Zabar's. They come from the 2nd Street Deli also in NYC. Damon said these are as good if not better. Good thing they mailed them since they decided not to come. 

   I opened the package when Yvette came up. They sent 24 bagels of various sorts, everything, onion, sesame, plain and salted. We divided them half and half. This is a perfect gift for Yvette. I just learned the other day after speaking to Damon that she eats bagels every morning. 

   I picked out three with plain ones of taking them over to Judy. Yvette had seen Judy and Paulette next door at Mei's, cleaning the cars for her Turo business. I walked over there to deliver them. They were cleaning one of their cars for a drop-off at 2:30.  

    They usually park the cars and leave the keys under the wheel. They said they're having problems now. A record number of people have been flying here and flying out from here. The parking lots were full. Paulette said many cars were parked illegally. Because of it, they were having problems finding spots for parking their cars. They text the renter and tell them where it is parked; they leave the key under the wheel. They anticipated driving the cars down instead of dropping them off for a handover. Mei, Peter, and the kids arrived tonight with a three-year business visa. Now, they have to start applying for a green card.

    When I came back from a long evening walk around the block with Lutz, I found a container of soup and a bag of sweets with a Christmas card on the counter, left there by Judy. I haven't enjoyed the gift exchange for years. It seems so forced. I don't even enjoy them on birthdays. I tried to think if I ever enjoyed them. Yes, when I was a child. Maybe specifically when my dad was alive. As I write this, I remember one Christmas when my mother declared, "Why do you bother giving me gifts? I'm going to commit suicide anyway." Maybe that's when I learned not to like gift-giving. I don't remember it as a trauma. She was just being annoying. I couldn't conceive of her committing suicide, no more than I could have conceived of her giving me up for adoption, as she threatened when I was nine or ten. There were things my mother was simply not capable of. They weren't in her wheelhouse. Tormenting others was.