Day 11, city adventure

Losing a TV show

Last night I scrolled through the DVR list and sort of automatically started playing the latest episode of the cooking show, Cook’s Country. And quickly realized that I didn’t care about how Basque fried chicken is made!

Oh, this is so sad! Cook’s Country and its sister show America’s Test Kitchen were two shows that Marian and I could watch together and talk about. “We could make that.” “Nah, too many ingredients.” But now: I don’t expect to cook an actual entrée ever again. I don’t care about easy ways to make suppers. And there’s nobody to exchange snarky comments with about over-elaborate recipes. So this is the first TV show that I’m dropping because its main interest for me, was sharing it with Marian. Went through the DVR subscription list and dropped one other, Dancing with the Stars. The rest of them I have enough interest in to keep watching — even Top Chef , which is a whole different kind of cooking, a performance art, that I can admire without needing the personal connection.

Anyway, that was last night. Today (12/12/18) I went on

A City Adventure

The plan was to take Caltrain to the City, Lyft to the DeYoung museum, see an exhibit of works by Gaugin, and return the same way. But walking to the Caltrain station I was hit by lots of

Anxiety

I found myself again beset with formless anxiety—that feeling you might get when you realize there’s something undone, or overdue, or mistaken, but with no specific object or reason. I knew I was doing what I planned to do; knew it was a viable plan; knew I was ahead of schedule. Whence the fretting?

And realized that what was missing was Marian’s agreement in the plan! Here’s how it is with partners: One says “I think I’ll do thus-and-so Wednesday.” And the other, “We were going to such-and-such that day.” “Oh, well, maybe in the afternoon…” “When will you be back, I need the car by…” and so forth. Every activity gets cross-checked and tweaked to be sensible and efficient. Before, if I were to set off for the city for a day, it would be with the comfortable assurance that I’d shared the plan with Marian and her practical mind—the mind that had so often caught me in simple oversights—agreed that my plan made sense.

Don’t have that now! Rechecking all my intentions, I carried on with

the Adventure

Which all worked smoothly enough. I’d actually spent five minutes reading up on Gaugin before I left and learned more from the very nicely arranged and documented exhibit. But, meh. Not a fan of his paintings, except for one or two of the later ones, like Reclining Tahitian Women. But I kept wandering through the other galleries and quite enjoyed the room full of big landscapes, California and Hudson River School, and was quite amazed by some of the huge carvings in the collection from New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Had a nice lunch in the café and started back. On the train home, Maria from the Neptune Society called to say that the death certificates will be ready tomorrow. So tomorrow I need to get them, then visit the Social Security office and make that notification official. According to Jean, when she reported Bill’s death, she was given the option of choosing which payment to continue receiving, his or hers, and obviously you pick the larger, which in my case, would be Marian’s.

I have also uncovered an ancient IBM Life Insurance policy that might or might not mean I have $5000 coming from them. Not clear, but I will also be notifying them tomorrow or Friday, once I have the certs. in hand.

Day 5: root of the malaise?

Finished up Day 4 by watching a Midsomer Murders episode, the TV equivalent of comfort food, while applying leather conditioner to one of fifteen large leather cushions.

Sidebar: Fifteen cushions

Sometime in the late 1970s, we bought a Danish Modern set of sofa and two armchairs. Spare, angular wood frames supporting big soft cushions all the same shape, for seats and backs. Sometime in the early 2000s we realized the leather had dried and cracked and looked pretty bad. Shopped for a while but couldn’t find any equivalent seating that we liked. So we hired an upholsterer to basically rebuild all 15 cushions in new leather, dyed the same deep-green color. Now, 15 years on, that leather is holding up but looks a bit tired and stressed. I ordered a big bottle of “Leather CPR” two weeks ago, figuring the slow hand task of working conditioner into the cushions might be a nice project for “when I’m a bachelor”. Ok, starting that now. Anyway, back to today.

Thursday, 12/6/18

Walking, thinking

Walked to the Y, did my exercises, walked home. Thinking all the way, trying to isolate and examine this not-quite-constant feeling of anxiety, malaise. What is it that eats on me? I think I have a handle.

For 45 years, Marian and I formed a tight little mutual support group of two. Psychologically siamese twins. For most of that time, the act of walking home from the gym had the context that I was walking home to where Marian was. This fact of being part of a couple was the basic context (or milieu or background) for every act. Yes, I went to the gym and returned on my own initiative, I didn’t have to, I chose to. But in the deep background, whatever I did, I did in the context of being part of “Dave’n’Marian”. It didn’t supply “meaning” exactly, but was the water in which we goldfish swam.

And that’s gone; the context, the background stripped away, leaving all actions isolated in space. The practical reasons for going to the gym, or going at that hour, are exactly the same as ever.

And yet, because there’s no context except me and my choice, it seems to call the act, every step in it, into question; seems to demand justification, or re-verification.

Hopefully this will fade as I begin to establish a new context for myself as “Dave the Bachelor”. Toward this my friend Wally is a model and an inspiration. He lost his wife a decade ago, and now leads a very interesting, confident, self-sufficient life. When we met for the Jake Shimabukuro concert Tuesday night he mentioned how he was just back from New York City, where he’d seen the Rockefeller Center Christmas special. I, figuring he had business there, said, “Great, so why were you in New York?” “For that!” he said, “And for some art galleries and things.”

That’s the kind of bachelor I want to be: one who goes out and gets experiences for his own sake.

Day 4, busy busy

Wednesday, 12/5/18

Went for a run this morning. Then did a lot of fiddly work at the desk. Before describing that, I want to talk about

Vague feeling of malaise

Yesterday I wrote about the sudden, acute grief spasms. This is different. I’ve noticed it off and on since day 2: a slight nervous, stressed-out feeling, as if there were something I should be doing but aren’t, or somewhere I should have gone to but didn’t, or as if I were running late for something important.

But none of that is true. I know when and where I have to be and what I need to do — god knows I have enough TODO lists across the desktop. But my mind knows that something’s not right, and is flogging me for it. Not sure what to do about this; only if it goes on too long I will surely suffer some physical effect of the stress.

OK, back to the

Fiddly work

Called Goodwill, verified that they would accept the wheelchair. It’s almost new, I doubt if it has rolled a mile yet, and cost $500. I suppose I could try to flog it on eBay, but suppose I did sell it for $300-400. Then I’d have the pain of figuring out how to ship such a big unwieldy thing, and getting it shipped. Give it to Goodwill, get a receipt, call it a $400 charitable contribution next tax time.

What else? Called the service number for Marian’s Alaska Air credit card to close the account. Called Wilderness Travel, where we had put ourselves on the wait-list for a solar eclipse cruise in 2019, with a $1000 deposit. Asked to get off list and deposit back. Had to then send them an email saying the same thing. Then: reimbursement will be to the same card we used to pay the deposit. Oops, that card was reissued with new numbers a couple of times since. No problem, they said, the credit card company will work it out.

Wrote to Dennis suggesting a movie for the weekend. Wrote to Darlene & Jessea suggesting lunch. Then began the task of cleaning up the file drawer in Marian’s desk. Pulled out a lot of stuff that is no longer relevant, emptied a number of pendaflex folders into the recycle bin. She had beautifully-organized files on our garden plants, for instance: botanical names, care instructions, etc.

I don’t care, because,

ISMISEP

That’s my new watchword with regard to anything related to home maintenance. Dishwasher is old, and washer/drier older, refrigerator older still? ISMISEP. Plants should be fertilized in the spring? ISMISEP.

It’s an acronym for “In six months it’s someone else’s problem”. If I’ve not closed escrow on the sale of the house by June, I’ll be surprised. If ISMISEP is not true, then I’ve decided to stay on, in which case I’ll be spending upwards of $15K on appliances and several times that on a bathroom remodel. Nope. ISMISEP.

Now going to take a nap, then take the wheelchair to Goodwill and some stuff to sister in law Jean.