A Clean Fridge is a Sign

The fridge back in Iowa was almost empty. I remember Rob being appalled at the lack of just about everything when he came to stay for the first time before our trip to Arkansas. The fridge in our home here was stuffed and mostly with items of questionable edibility. Vintage describes a lot of things and many of them were in our fridge. But today all that changed because a very affable Hindu repairman arrived at our home just before lunch and fixed our broken down refrigerator, scoffing at the very idea that his phone diagnosis was incorrect. By the time I returned home later that afternoon, not only was there a chilling freezer and fridge but a clean one. Really clean and not just empty as Rob had returned home from his only afternoon meeting (hand holding as he put it) to finish up the job he began yesterday. All foods and condiments and no longer identifiable were disposed of and all surfaces within scrubbed.

So now the fridge looks like the one back in Iowa but for the fact it is way cleaner. What could this mean? First, it means we don’t eat much by way of variety anymore. Allergy- induced semi-veganism has really limited the products purchased and consumed by all of us. Second, it means we are really moving. Really. No one cleans a nasty fridge without an intervention by the universe and when the move wasn’t seeming real enough for us, destiny stepped in. But, that is not all that a clean and newly repaired fridge means. It also means that I have a pretty great husband.

-28C

It’s freakin’ cold out today. The drifts are up to my knees. I have cat starving in the garage, a kid to take and pick up from school because buses aren’t running, and a car that isn’t happy about starting. Not to mention shoveling. And I shouldn’t mention that because when Rob reads that I shoveled, he will not be pleased. Shoveling, aside from being the man’s job, is fairly hazardous in this types of temps (and I am not talking wind child stuff but real minus degrees). I know this personally because the winter that my late husband was first sick I ended up with frostbite on several toes trying to keep up with the shoveling. It snowed quite a bit and was a colder winter than we’d had in a while. Will’s uncle was always telling me to leave the shoveling for him but then it would snow and he wouldn’t show up. So, I would leave Katy inside with Will (she was about eighteen months old and he was going blind and had dementia) and go out and shovel as fast as I could (two car drive but mercifully very little sidewalk). I’d be in and out checking up on them but not enough to save my toes. I had crappy boots though and no money for new ones as I was just paying the bills we had and feeding us without Will’s income.

Texas, I am told, doesn’t have winter like this and I know that is why many people head south for the winter or to live permanently. I bet they get ice though. Ice is worse than frigid temps and snow by a very long shot in my opinion. People in colder climates are barely able to navigate it with any amount of sense but down south there should just be a general ban on travel when ice comes.

But, I really miss my garage today. My attached two car garage. I’d never had one before and spent not quite four years with it and now I am feeling hooped not to have one.

WordPress, Cell Phone Novels and Me (again)

Okay, so because I haven’t joined nearly enough blog sites (MSN-Spaces, dot.mac, LiveJournal, Blogger, Blogher, NaBloMo) or have blogs enough, I went to WordPress the other day and started a whole new account and am rebuilding this site essentially at WordPress. A really neat function allowed me to transfer all the stuff at Blogger (which are the same posts as here) to WordPress. I called the site Anniegirl1138 which was my “handle” at the YWBB. In my first post there I explained the story behind the name too. While most people at the widow board tend to create monikers based on their loss, my name was all about me. What an selfish little thang I am, eh? But I saw being there as being about me anyway. Not Will. I was there to see if I was normal (found out that normal is a bit more relative than I had believed it to be) and to rant (as I had no outlet for it in my real time) and I wanted to find people who were coping, internalizing and moving on - which is what I was more than ready to do. Rob was teasing me a bit this morning about naming my site for myself as he is grappling with what to call his on site. I named this site Second Edition because it was the second blog after my Widowed:The Blog at MSN-Spaces, literal name and boring, but I like the idea of my blog being christened with my online persona.

WordPress is a bit more complicated and I am still playing with the free features before I upgrade (which I think I will have to do to get the cool stuff) but I think it will eventually be my permanent - and only - online home. I want to continue this blog there and also have a page for my writing and a page of resources for widowed people - just cause I want to help and I haven’t much of an outlet for that right now.

Cell phone novels are a big Japanese thing right now. I went to look at a couple of blog articles on them and wondered if I could do something like that myself. It made me wonder too if I could, or should, put some of my own fiction online. I used to write fanfic in the long ago. It was fun to get feedback and have an audience that was so immediate. It reminded me of when I was a sophomore in high school and I was writing a soap opera satire that all my friends (and even kids who weren’t my friends) were asking to read it. I couldn’t write fast enough. I love writing for people. How did I lose that? Why did I forget that? Oh, yeah - I was told I wasn’t quite good enough when I tried to go back and get into the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa. Now if that happened I would chalk it up to a problem with the source but then I was twenty-seven and very insecure.

Rob and I have talked more about the Texas move and my working and my writing. I am being silly to worry about what feminist society thinks about my role. Shouldn’t my role be whatever I choose for it to be? I choose to be a writer who does the stay at home stuff. Men are practically applauded for that but women are selling themselves short and up shit creek at the same time. As Rob has pointed out on many an occasion, who decided that career and all its material accouterments were the be and end all? If everyone let fear of failure or loss of status or society’s aversion to living a scaled -down material life get in the way of the pursuit of one’s true talents, interests and dreams what a real shit-hole this life would be.

Seven Months Ago

Rob and I were married seven months ago today. I find it interesting that we count the months. I was never much for month counting. Not when I was first married to Will or when I was pregnant with Katy (though the count is generally by weeks for that life event). I had to stop and count when people would inquire how old Katy was even. Consequently, I have never numbered my days as a widow. It was actually quite a relief to be beyond the first anniversary and able to just count in years. So, it’s interesting that I, Rob too, counts the months of our marriage. Perhaps it’s just that this time we are so fortunate to have seems to precious not to keep track of very minute of it. Maybe that is even part of what drives my blogging. I want this on the record, so to speak.

We are “celebrating” by taking our old sofa to the dump. Neither Rob nor I can bear to sit on it since the nephew and his lice lounged all over it. And, it isn’t coming with us to Texas anyway. Rob hasn’t been able to pawn it off on either of the older girls. So to the dump. Then it’s on to the mall for walking shoes. I finally talked Rob into starting a walking program with me on the two nights of the week that the gym offers child-minding. In between we need to make yet another library run, returning dvd’s, cd’s and finished books. I love that we are establishing library time as a family with Katy. When I was little, I loved our trips to the library. I want Katy to see the library (and bookstores) as fun and wonderful places full of adventure and a place to exercise one’s imagination. After that it will likely be dark and time to come home.

It’s staying light longer now. It was after five before dusk hit in earnest yesterday, but it’s still a short day in terms of daylight and sunlight isn’t plentiful yet. I will so miss the long sun days. I loved being able to watch the sunset at 10:30 or 11PM. The day we were married my mother was amazed to see the sun only just setting when back in Iowa it would have been dark for hours already.

We are planning a sauna for later and perhaps a movie. A comedy. We tried comedy last night, the Aniston flick about the family who were the real Robinson’s from The Graduate. We kept our widowed character steak alive as the dad in the story was widowed in his mid-thirties.. Rob assures me that widowhood is not a theme in tonight’s pick.

But it’s a beautiful day. Not quite 2C (mid-thirties for you American folk) and we are set to enjoy it as they are predicting our first brush with -30C on Monday and Tuesday. It’s a good day to hang out and be a family and remember it’s our anniversary.