Day 52, Grief blips

Monday, 1/21/2019

By and large my emotions have been pretty upbeat and calm for a while now. What earlier on I called grief spasms have not been a problem, and I haven’t been troubled by that anxious “day late and a dollar short” feeling for some time. Which is all to the good. But there are little blips of grief that pop up from two sources. One is doing something that we did together, now for the first time alone.

Today I went out for groceries and went to DiMartini’s fruit & veg place in Los Altos, for the first time as a bachelor. For the last several years we always made that the first stop on our habitual Sunday grocery round. Marian loved that they provide samples of all the fruit. She enjoyed tasting all the different varieties of pear, for example, to decide which to buy. I wanted to go to DiMartini’s because I’ve been stocking grapes and oranges to eat with my meal replacement drinks for variety, and I’ve been unhappy with the quality I got at our usual grocery store. But walking around DiMartini’s, sampling fruit, without Marian, was… rough.

The other thing, that pops up quickly and annoyingly often, is my instant, unthinking reaction when I see something that she would have enjoyed. One of the plants alongside the path to the door is going nuts, popping up a mass of new sprouts and already showing buds. (I’m embarrassed to say I don’t even remember its name.) Every time my eye falls on this over-achiever the thought, “Oh, she’ll love that” starts to run through my mind and bangs into a wall of reality. I’m afraid spring is going to bring more of these.

I went for a run this morning, it went well, 45 non-stop minutes of my pathetically slow pace. But it is a jog, not a walk, that I’m doing. Then shower and shave and dress and go for the groceries. While putting away the groceries my eye fell on the bottom shelf of the door of the fridge. This shelf is kind of overhung and shadowed by the larger pockets of the door where we put eggs and milk and salad dressing and such. I had cleaned out those pockets earlier, during the first week as it came home to me that I’d never be cooking a “real” dish again. I kept the capers and the mustard and the mayo, though, because I’ve been making myself tuna salad, but a lot of things like tomato paste and lime juice and so forth went out.

Now I’m looking at the bottom shelf and realizing it is kind of a black hole where little-used bottles went for retirement. I emptied it of six or eight bottles of stuff: maple syrup (been at least 2 years since we made pancakes), molasses (no idea when last used), hoisin sauce (what? must have had a recipe that needed it, but which, and how long ago?), karo syrup… Emptied them all down the sink with hot water and put the containers in the recycle. (There’s a whole closet shelf of canisters with various pastas and such that I need to tackle, but not today.)

Blog post, then out to do a docent tour; the museum is open this MLK holiday and docents were asked to please try to cover. If anything happens I’ll update or add to tomorrow’s entry.

Day 48, price of hot water

Friday, 1/18/2018

The Prius has been telling me it “needs maintenance soon” for a few weeks. It doesn’t, but earlier I scheduled it for an oil change today. Drove it to the Toyota place for its 8:30 am appointment, then walked the two miles back. Depending on what time they call that it’s ready, and on how I feel, I will either walk back to retrieve it or take a Lyft.

Meantime I put in an hour at my software project, adding another feature, which went in and functioned after only a few silly errors that took maybe 20 minutes to fix. Applied some time to another on-going project, starting a list of ILFs that I want to check out and scheduling time to go and do that. I’ll get a good inside look at Channing House on Saturday when I have dinner with Craig. But I want to take casual, outside looks at the some others, and make some notes, in order to decide which ones to request tours of. There are two on El Camino that I can easily eyeball on Sunday morning. I’ll be recording my reactions in this blog, of course.

About 1:30 the water heater guy arrived. After diagnosis, it’s the gas control unit. $415. OK, sure, do it.

Back on Day 38 I mentioned making an inventory of our basketball memorabilia, in particular items related to the San Jose Lasers professional team of 1996-98. Nobody I’ve talked to among the Stanford fans really wants any of it. I mentioned this to Greta, one of the CHM staff, and she suggested History San Jose. Great idea! So I took a few minutes to fill out their item-donation form with the particulars of the best items. Hope they want them.

I did walk back to Toyota, so with some other incidental walking later, I hoofed about 4.5 miles today. After a bit of supper I headed out to Maples to see the Stanford women play UW. It was a nice game, early lead, up by 30 in the third quarter, lots of minutes for the bench players.

Day 46, taxes and books and a painting

After yesterday’s writing, I packed up two boxes of books to take to FOPAL on Wednesday. This consisted mostly of bird books and birding-related books. I had no idea we had so many books about birds and birding. Marian had accumulated them over the years; I recognized only a couple. I’ve no intention of ever spotting another bird; that was her hobby that I supported but didn’t really enjoy. So losing those books is another shard of the prior life, but not one that caused much emotion. Well, a little — when I riffled the page of her most-used birding guide and saw all the check marks and notes in her handwriting of what species we’d seen and where.

Another half-box was the books by and about Arthur Ransome that I mentioned back on Day 35. I received the two additional, $1 books that I ordered then. Now I arrayed them all on the table and sat down with eBay to see what prices such books were getting. And quickly realized that my collection was still incomplete, there was one more novel and at least two more popular biographies that I didn’t have. So much for selling a complete bookshelf. I put the books in the box for FOPAL.

Except for one. Most of the books are paperback, but one is cloth-bound, and on looking inside I realized it was a first edition, or at least a first American printing, dated 1942. Similar Ransome hardbacks are on eBay for $50 and up, so I took some pictures and put it up on eBay. We’ll see.

Got an email from Craig wondering if I wanted to visit Channing house or not. Very timely, given how I’d just put my ILF decision back on track, so in a quick exchange we agreed to meet Saturday afternoon.

The rest of the afternoon, I added yet another feature to my program, and to my delight, the new feature worked exactly right first try. So that wrapped day 45 nicely.

Wednesday, 1/16/2019

Went for a run, it was OK. Back home did some desk stuff. Paid a credit card bill. Created the folder to hold all the tax info for 2018, using the 2017 folder as a model. Key item here is to download the PDF copies of a total of eight form 1099-Rs, from all the various accounts we have that generate those (two Social Security, two pension, four brokerage). Made a checklist of all the tasks to do going forward with the taxes. That doesn’t really get busy until February.

Booked myself to attend the PAC-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament, in Las Vegas March 7-10. Bought one reserved seat, booked a hotel room, booked the flights. This will be the first time I’ve traveled anywhere as a bachelor, and indeed the first flight since… I think since October 2017 when we returned from NYC. Hopefully the gummint shutdown will be over by March?

In the mail: the official document from the Neptune Society, stating that Marian was “respectfully delivered to the sea” on January 10th. I have to say, the Neptune Society has been a class act the whole way, supportive, responsive, professional. I’m glad we signed with them all those years ago.

One of the items I want to get rid of is this painting: 4337722_orig

We commissioned this; it was actually painted for us; we met with Dean Linsky (click the link to see his website) in Yosemite Valley in 2004 and walked around with him pointing out features we liked. A couple of months later the painting arrived, and it has been on our wall ever since.

Looking forward I don’t want to try to house it in a small apartment. Linsky’s work is marketed mostly through New Masters Gallery in Carmel. I’d like to consign it there for sale, but I’ve been having a hard time getting any info out of them by email. So today I called up and spoke directly to the gallery owner, Bill Hill. I have to say, Bill’s telephone manners are abrupt. Although his gallery has been in business for years, he’s clearly not a salesman type. I emphasized how I would have to depend on his expertise to know what the painting would go for, and at his request sent a cell-phone shot of it again by email. Maybe this time he’ll look at it.

Anyway, off to FOPAL, taking two boxes of books. And home for a quiet evening.

Day 39, Consultation

Wednesday, 1/9/2019

Had a good run, that is, one where I didn’t need to stop anywhere. Then headed out to

A meeting

as arranged, with Alan Brauner of Senior Seasons, a referral agency for senior living facilities. Alan turned out to genial, frank and seemed to be well-informed on all the local facilities. We went over my particular desires, and he promised to get back to me with details on several places he thought would suit me.

One thing I learned from this talk was the two classes of facility. One is the “buy-in” type, where you pay what he referred to as an “exorbitant” fee, effectively purchasing your unit, as you might a condo. The advantages of this arrangement are two. One, you have purchased some form of a real-estate property, and in theory you (or more likely your heirs) can sell that when you don’t need it. His experience with the buy-in home that his parents retired to, however, was that the contract was so written that the facility kept a good share of the capital gain on the sale. When his parents died, their estate realized only a few percent more than the initial purchase cost.

The other advantage of a buy-in is that you lock in a monthly rental — oh yes, despite buying in, you still pay a monthly fee in the thousands of dollars — which will not increase even if you need a higher level of care. Channing House, where my distant acquaintance Craig lives, is a buy-in facility. I mean to contact Craig and get a tour, and if it seems appropriate, I’ll grill him a bit on what he paid and what he gets for it.

The other style of facility is month-to-month. You make no commitment other than to give 30 days’ notice before moving out. (Well, I imagine there are longer leases available.) You are renting an apartment with full services (“like being on a cruise”, Alan said) for a monthly fee. You don’t own anything, so there’s nothing to come back to your estate; and while some are “continuing care”, that is, providing various levels of assistance, the monthly charge goes up with the level of service needed.

I headed home to

Kill the freezer

What? Well, for several nights I have been annoyed by the noise of my refrigerator, which is separated from the bed by one wall. The circulating fan in the freezer has developed a buzz. The fridge is old, in fact (referring to our Home Inventory spreadsheet) we bought it in 2000. (All of our appliances are of similar vintage. ISMISEP!) I had replaced the fan in the freezer several years back; now it was buzzing again.

When it was keeping me awake around 4am, it suddenly occurred to me: why am I keeping that freezer compartment going anyway? There’s nothing in it but ice. Previously we’d “cook for the freezer” a couple of times a year, filling it with containers of home-made soups and stews. Then we’d take an entrée from the freezer once a week or so. Well, those were all gone, and won’t be replaced. Marian kept a couple of gel-pads in the freezer to use on her back, but I tossed those old pads in my semi-hysterical clean-out on Day 1. The freezer compartment is empty except for a few odds and ends of leftovers that frankly, I don’t want to eat.

So, back home from my meeting, I put the the food items from the freezer in the green recycle and turned the freezer thermostat to off. I strongly suspect my electric bill will go down. I know I’ll sleep better.

Then it was off to FOPAL for a sorting shift. Wow that is a workout: on my feet and continually moving for 2+ hours, shifting heavy boxes of books around. This weekend is the first of the bi-weekly sales of the year. Most section managers have loaded their shelves and declared a “hold” on their subject, meaning that when a box of “History” of “Nature” books fills up, we can’t take it to the sale room as usual. It has to be stacked in the sorting area, the center of which is now dominated by a mountain of boxes, leaving less and less room to walk around. People showed up at the door with more books every few minutes. Three sorters could pretty much keep up with the flow.

On the way home I stopped at Goodwill and handed in a bag with the last remnants of Marian’s stuff and a few items of my own I’d culled from my side of the closet.

By 5pm I’d received an email from Alan, listing seven facilities he thought might interest me, with details on their costs and amenities. Well, as I emphasized to him, I’m in no hurry. I’ll look at those maybe this weekend.

Day 38, Social Security

Tuesday 1/8/2019

I started the day with a brisk walk to the YMCA and my (short, perfunctory) round of strength exercises.

Today was the day for the long-anticipated appointment with the Social Security that I’d been given on Day 12. Then I’d been unable to complete the process because I hadn’t brought proof of marriage. I’d been worrying about whether the government shutdown would be affecting SS offices, but no, everything was operating normally. I only had to wait a few minutes, and in fact I think my name was called within a minute or so of 1pm, my scheduled appointment time.

I’d left early and stopped to pick up some kind of lunch at a Safeway store across from the SS office. When checking out there I had realized to my great chagrin, that I didn’t have my wallet with ID and credit cards. I had carried it on my exercise outing and neglected to transfer it from my shorts to my jeans when I dressed. Well, no biggie, I knew right where it was, on the dresser, and shouldn’t need it, right?

So what is the first thing the very nice and helpful SS clerk asked for when I sat down? My ID, of course! God damn I felt like a… like a forgetful old fart, is what. But he said smoothly, “No problem, I’ll just ask you some security questions,” and proceeded to grill me about where I was born, mother’s maiden name, and a few other things. After some more interrogation he told me that my Survivor Benefit would have the effect of raising my SS payment by about $400/month. Mentally I calculated that would mean I’d be getting about the same amount that Marian used to get, a bit over $1600/month.

In the end, the net effect of (a) the end of Marian’s IBM pension, (b) the end of her SS payment, offset by (c) the increase in my SS and (d) some reduction of monthly expenses (I’m paying way less for groceries than before, for example), is a drop of about $3500 in the monthly household income. In the past we lived comfortably off our combined pensions. Going forward, it is clear I will have to begin to dip into the nest egg on a regular basis. Fortunately the nest egg is pretty chunky and can survive many years of dipping. (Actually, now I think about it, just raising the “required minimum distribution” out of my IRA somewhat above the minimum will come close to covering the shortfall.)

Back home and with my wallet back in my pocket, I made out the check for the first quarter estimated tax payment and mailed that. When Marian did our taxes last spring, she had prepared the federal and state quarterly estimated tax vouchers, each with its mailing envelope and a big post-it note with the date by which it should be mailed. Today I mailed the federal one with the “1/15” post-it. One remains, the state one to mail before “2/1”. And that will be the end of Marian’s carefully prepared tax materials. I’ll have to step up for the next cycle. Me, the guy who walks out of the house without his wallet.

Suli, our cleaning lady, came today. I showed her the remaining items in Marian’s closet and she said she’d take them all, “for my mother”. OK, fine. And when I got back from the SS, that side of the closet was empty at last. I moved my collection of hats to the upper shelf on that side.

I spent some time inventorying our collection of basketball memorabilia. We had a number of items relating to the short-lived San Jose Lasers professional team: sweatshirts, signed team photos, etc. I emailed a friend, another Lasers fan, with the list. She’s very well-connected into that fan base and will forward the list. Hopefully somebody will want some of these things.

Day 36, Stanford Memorial

Sunday, 1/6/2019

Went to the nearby coffee shop to read the paper, but had to leave early because someone had brought in a very cute lad about 7 years old who, though full of energy, was coughing, hoarsely and continuously, hrrroorrkkk! He had been taught to cover his mouth but he was being perfunctory about it, barely swinging his forearm in front of his face as he hacked, so there was plenty of room for his germs to get out. I bundled up my paper and beat it away from the little germ-ball.

Around 11am Dennis arrived, then Jean, then Darlene and Jesse, and off we went to Maples Pavilion for the WBB game against UCLA. Coach Amy’s comps were in kind of a corner, but at least we were all together for what turned out to be a very exciting game, Stanford falling behind by 20 at one point before clawing back into the game and taking a firm lead only in the last 6 minutes to win.

Then we moved across the arena for the “Behind the Bench” talk, which opened with a very nice tribute to Marian. The pictures I’d supplied looked great on the Jumbotron, and announcer Betty Ann Boeving read a short, clear tribute. After the similar tribute to DeeDee Zahwaydah, Tara ad-libbed a couple more sentences about Marian. It was very nice, and nice for Jean and Darlene to see the regard she was held in there.

On return to the house I invited Darlene and Jesse to make free of the remaining items of Marian’s clothing, and they each took a top, more from politeness I think than real desire. Next week the remainder goes to the ACS shop.

Day 28

Saturday, 12/29/2018

To-Do list:

Drop off Marian’s knitting
Drop off canned goods
Buy a belt

Explanations. Early on I collected all Marian’s knitting supplies — a fat sack of assorted hanks and balls of yarn, three nice cloth binders each holding dozens of knitting needles, some other knitting doo-dads — into a basket. I offered the collection to a friend who had often talked knitting with Marian, but she said no thanks, she had all that stuff. So now the collection needs to go to Jean, who will take it to the Church thrift shop. So I went through the basket again before putting it in the car, and spent the next half hour sniffling. She worked so hard at that hobby, enjoyed the challenge and even the frustrations (“Oh no, I made a mistake three rows back!”), created nice things. And of course had all her tools perfectly organized. It’s just deeply saddening to see it go.

The canned goods? Two bags of unopened tins and jars from our pantry. I cleaned out the pantry a week ago, dumped a lot of partly-used stuff (I expect never to use panko crumbs again, or the opened box of cake mix, or a half bottle of balsamic, etc. etc.), but I set aside the unopened items, meaning to donate them to some food bank. I had a notion there was a donation barrel at the local Safeway, but there wasn’t. So this morning I googled food banks and have the address of the nearest, coincidentally not far from Jean’s where I have to go anyway.

The belt. My weight dropped significantly over the past months. Per my PAMF online records, it was 185 this past August. Sometime in November I noticed my weight was just under 180 for the first time in several years. This week it has been bouncing between 176 and 178. That’s not an unhealthy weight for me at all, and not unprecedented. Back in 2009 we both did calorie-counting for several months, and I see by the PAMF records I was at 176 then for a couple of visits, before climbing back up into the 180s. (For the record, my high school weight was 165.)

Anyway, the result of being smaller is that I’ve been having to hitch up my jeans often. My belt is in its last hole and isn’t doing the job; it needs to be one hole shorter. I could punch another hole, but the belt’s at least ten years old, so why not buy a new one, sized to fit me in the middle of its range?

To-Done

Mostly. The food bank (at the Mountain View Community Center) wasn’t available; Center closed for the holidays. Got a nice belt. Dropped off knitting stuff. (Later Jean emailed to say she would offer it to another relative who’s a knitter. That would be nice!)

Then did a thing I’d written on the list with a question mark: “Campbell?” Looking ahead to where to live, I place a high priority on being close to, or actually within, some walkable town center, so I can easily stroll to shops and restaurants. I had a vague recollection that Campbell had such a center, so I drove down to look at it. Campbell does indeed have a compact, interesting and “Historic” town center. I walked around and was impressed by the dozen or more attractive restaurants, a couple of coffee shops, and lots of people strolling.

Back home and then off to a

Basketball Game

where I had an awkward moment when two fans, Fred and Cheri, asked “Where’s Marian?” I thought everybody we knew among the fans would have heard, at least from the banner that was on the fan website for a week, but nope. I wonder who else I know hasn’t heard? It was awkward; and taken aback, I just baldly said, “Oh, you haven’t heard! Marian died just earlier this month.” Which was rather a shock to them, and I apologized for being so blunt, “dumping it on you like that” I think I said. Making lemons out of lemonade. Well, so it goes.

Day 26, out of town visitors

Thursday, 12/27/2018

Today I had a long-planned visit from Joanne and Brad. Joanne is the daughter of Marian’s college roommate and long-time friend Lolly. Marian liked Joanne and Joanne shared Marian’s interest in birding. Joanne and Brad planned this visit back in November, expecting, of course, to see Marian. When that sadly did not work out, they came anyway and I was glad of their visit.

Besides Joanne and Brad, there were their daughter Sierra, and Ria, a visiting student from Thailand. As I had planned, I gave Joanne a silver and onyx pendant that Marian had made when she was learning jewelry-making in her 20s. The pendant is kind of large and clunky, but Joanne seemed to think it was quite wearable.

Then with some trepidation I invited the three women to look at the remaining items in Marian’s closet, those “better” items that consignment stores didn’t want (see Day 20). I thought they might flip their way through the hangers and see just old-lady stuff, but in fact they seemed to enjoy looking at everything and critiquing each other’s taste, and took away several items each.

Then as planned we went to look at the Stanford campus, although since the trip was planned Sierra has decided not to apply to Stanford. After a short walk around the quad and a bit of a drive around, they dropped me at home and headed off to meet another friend. So that was a pleasant and warming visit.

In the afternoon I spent another couple of hours on a programming project and actually made some progress.

In general I think I am feeling more comfortable in my new life. I haven’t been bothered by that low-level anxiety for several days. It’s easy to trip into spasms of grief of course (I nearly broke down explaining the provenance of the pendant), but on the other hand I’m noting little satisfactions. Every partnership requires compromise, and when the partnership ends, those constraints are removed. I mentioned in passing on Day 9 that I’d gotten rid of three ferns that I’d never liked. That was one compromise eased. Here’s another: I stopped at the grocery store yesterday and among other items, bought a loaf of bread — bread of a brand that we never had in the house because Marian didn’t like it. I did like it, and now I can bring it home when I want. Trivial, but a tiny up-side to the process of fitting into a new life.

Day 25, Boxing up shards

Wednesday, 12/26/2018

Began the day with the customary run. (Marian often complimented me on doing something for exercise every — well, almost every — weekday morning. I accepted the compliments but felt awkward, as if I didn’t deserve credit for doing something so simple. I really do it out of fear; I’m scared by prospect of how fast my body will turn into a blob if I don’t keep it moving. Twenty years ago, when I was still cycling, I was “off the bike” for six weeks because of a persistent pneumonia. I’ve never forgotten the shock, when I could get back on the bike, of how feeble I had become in a few weeks, and how long it took to get any sort of condition back.)

Then I took care of a loose end. I’ve been keeping Marian’s laptop going just so I could check it each day to see what mail she’d gotten. Boy, was she subscribed to a lot of lists! But after a couple of weeks of clicking “unsubscribe” — and changing the contact email on a number of financial accounts — I’d gotten it down to almost no incoming mail at all. But in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago, it had dawned on me, doh! why do I not simply redirect email to her gmail account, into mine? There must be some way to do that. Today, with only 15 minutes of fiddling around reading Gmail help articles, I found out I could sign in as her, then designate me as a “delegate” who could read her emails and reply or delete them. So I set that up.

Now I can let her laptop sit on a shelf until such time as I can get up the nerve to reformat the drive and sell it. Opening it to see her familiar messy desktop littered with files she’d created… I can’t. Not yet.

I spent a couple of hours on a programming project, or rather, an hour rummaging through system documentation trying to figure out how to do something, and then encountering a bug that kept me from running a test case, then an hour googling for solutions for this bug. Programming. I do it for fun, I tell myself.

Shards

As 2pm was approaching and I’m due to help sort books at FOPAL today I pulled down another shelf of books to box up and donate. Here I hit a couple of “shards”, bits of the old life that is going away, which hurt quite a lot as they peel off.

One is a box of bookmarks. We were both readers and until, say, ten years ago we had several books apiece in progress. So we needed bookmarks, and we’d grab free bookmarks wherever, and after a while Marian set up a box on a handy bookshelf to hold bookmarks so it was easy to grab one. There are bookmarks in the box from several decades of reading. Bookmarks from bookstores we’ve been in: Powell’s in Portland, Davis-Kidd in Knoxville, the Tattered Cover in Denver, Munro’s in Victoria. Dozens.

Now, here’s the thing. Starting a decade ago, we pretty much stopped buying physical books and moved to reading on our laptops: stuff on the web, or books on Kindle for Mac. We typically had one (1) bookmark in operation, in whichever book we were reading aloud from at bedtime. Everything else was on a screen. So these bookmarks have been gathering dust, unused, for years. The newest is from a hotel in Normandy from our 2012 trip there.

Unused, unregarded bookmarks. They should be tossed. But it definitely hurts to do it.

As I was boxing books from this shelf I hit three map books from our days touring the UK: a road atlas for Ireland, the AA road atlas of Great Britain, and a book that was absolutely essential to us for several years, the Master Atlas of Greater London. You see, children, there was once a time when we didn’t have GPS or a phone that ran a map app. We were utterly dependent on maps printed on paper, if you can imagine something so crude!

These handsome volumes have no use whatever now or in the future. The maps are out of date; before today they literally haven’t been off the shelf for 20 years; it has been literally forty years since we used the London Atlas. On my first day of sorting at FOPAL I learned that travel guides printed before 2000 are not kept; they go straight to the recycle bin. These books need to go into the recycle bin right here at home.

Along with the bookmarks.

And it hurts.

I can imagine a sympathetic person saying “Well, why don’t you keep them, then? Or a couple of bookmarks anyway.” But that just puts it off. I’d face the same issue when packing to move to wherever I go next spring. It’s just more possessions to be responsible for, and really useless ones at that.

There’s the contradiction: these objects have a triple nature:

To me, they are powerful symbols of a life I once lived.
To anyone else they are meaningless.
And for me, they have no practical use in the life I am moving into.

There are a lot of objects in this house that have this contradictory nature. How many do I keep?

Day 21, what will I do with myself?

Saturday, 12/22/2018

9am: In my Google calendar, today and the next two days (through Christmas) are blank. The first un-eventful days since… I don’t know when. How will I fill them? There are many possibilities… I’ll update this post later.

For a start, I made an errand run, first to the hardware store to turn in three fluorescent bulbs for recycling, then to Whole Foods for some groceries. I supplement the meal replacements with fruit, cheese, avocados, occasional bacon or sausage. Stuff that I can prepare in 5 minutes or less. While making this run I was hit with a couple of waves of deep sadness, not triggered by anything specific, just… sad.

Putting the groceries away turned into a further clean-out of the pantry. I’ve been nibbling at the edges of this job off and on. Threw out two more boxes of breakfast cereal that were lurking up there. Box of cake flour: out. I’m recycling these food items: the food itself is poured into a bio-bag and put in the green recycle bin; the box is flattened for the blue bin. I set aside quite a few unopened cans and bottles; I mean to find a food donation box for them. Saved a container of baker’s sugar because it will work in the hummingbird feeders. But I wonder how long the cake flour and baker’s sugar had been up there? I can’t remember the last time Marian did any baking.

Brought in the hummingbird feeders and filled them. The feeders tend to get patches of a nasty black mold inside and have to be thoroughly cleaned. We’ve been supporting several hummers for a couple of years now. I feel obligated to feed them through the winter, but come spring when blossoms appear, they’ll be on their own.

Finished painting the little tables. There are imperfections but I’m done. They look better than they did after 40 years of neglect.

I have several “real” projects, projects that might have meaning beyond my domestic room. Two software projects, two books. I haven’t “laid a finger” (to use a phrase of my mother’s) on any of those worthwhile projects in weeks. This afternoon I spent two hours re-familiarizing myself with one of the software projects — rereading the code, editing the comments, getting back into it. Two hours is about all the concentrated thinking my brain can stand, but I did that much, and it felt like progress.

Watched the rest of the Return of the King DVD special features, all about the making of that huge project. They wrapped in 2003, 15 years ago. Wow.

Went out for a burger at Gott’s, then to see Bohemian Rhapsody. So quite a bit of stuff in this empty Saturday. Just to make sure tomorrow isn’t empty, I scheduled myself for a docent round at the Museum. And so to bed.