Friday, March 18, 2022

 

Friday, March 18, 2022

 

  I’ve had one good night’s sleep after another. I found a way to conquer my negative thoughts and racing mind. First, I remembered that most of what I was feeling was grief. And then I found something that partially relieves that. I say to myself, “I love you. I think you’re fun. I love being with you.”   That’s the way I feel about most people. Someone has to go out of their way to offend me for me to feel otherwise. Even then, it isn’t because I don’t think they’re interesting and fun to be with.   They have to be either unrelentingly negative about others or me.  

       After posting the day’s blog for March 18, 2021, I went to the garden, got on my hands and knees, and tried to clip back the dead heliconia stalks. Neither of my clippers worked. I called Judy to see if she had a better one for the job. As I suspected, she told me to call Paulette. She did most of the manual labor on the property. Paulette loves to do that work; at least, she likes it better than Judy. 

    I signaled for Elsa to follow me to the car, and we drove up to Judy and Paulette’s house. Paulette did have a tool more suited for the job. I tested it on a single leaf. Then Elsa and I went to their lanai, me to work on the puzzle, and Elsa to make herself comfortable. Judy came down. She had to leave to have blood work done in preparation for a periodic cancer checkup.  

   Judy said she could pull her car out of the garage without hitting my car. I confidently looked for puzzle pieces with Paulette. She made a point of working with the puzzle with me whether she wanted to or not. Paulette lost her husband years ago. She fully sympathizes with my loss and loneliness.

   I told her stories about Mike, stupid things he did that never annoyed or angered me. How wonderful to love someone so much you can feel that way. One story was about our move to Princeton from Park Slope in Brooklyn.

   We had hired a local movie company that was local. We lived on a single-lane one-way street with cars parked on both sides. When the truck arrived, the driver couldn’t find a space in front of the house. He drove around the block. On the way, he had an accident. That was for openers.

   When he did get to our house, he managed to park. I can’t remember how. The workers presented Mike with papers to sign. Mike chose that moment to renegotiate the contract. The men called their boss. The guy said, “Forget it! They’re done!” 

    The men left us standing there with all our possessions neatly packed and no way to get them to Princeton. Mike groaned, accepting responsibility for his stupidity. We sat on the front steps of the house while I comforted Mike. Come to think of it, if he had railed against the men instead of accepting responsibility for his actions, I might not have been so forgiving. But he did, and I was. 

    Two of the three-person moving team walked up the street as we sat there. They told us they felt sorry for us. (Yeah. They wanted their day’s pay.) If we rented a U-Haul, they would pack it and make one trip to Princeton. They couldn’t get a full-sized truck, but they got most of our stuff in it. 

    Once they unloaded the truck in Princeton, it was goodbye. There was no way Mike would have driven the truck back to Brooklyn to get the rest of our stuff. That wound up being my job. I don’t think I would be as confident now as I was then. As we drove up our street, the kids all cheered us. 

    We managed to load all the rest of the stuff in the truck. It was a mere fraction of what the men had packed in. We barely fit it all in; we didn’t have their skills. I drove it back to Princeton; we unloaded it and took it to a local U-Haul to return.  

   Mike had other potentially annoying traits. He couldn’t turn off gas burners or close the refrigerator. I always found his behavior funny. I never got angry at stuff like that. There was behavior that did make me mad, but not often.

    Today, I had dealings with a lawyer. A frustrating experience at best, made worse by the lawyer. I requested she call me to explain something to me, something she should have explained upfront. I answered the phone, and the call dropped. I called back. Hello, “You just called me. Who is this?” She said, “It’s Carol,” in an annoyed voice. I said her full name with a question mark; she corrected my pronunciation with annoyance. I have no idea why she would think I should have known it was her. 

   When I got home, I used the clipper from Paulette to cut back the dead heliconia stems. Eh! Better than mine but not perfect. Everything would work better if the plants weren’t half-decayed already. 

    I watched another episode of Brokenwood Mysteries. Nice.