Day 82, FOPAL, haircut, groceries

Wednesday, 2/21/2019

Pretty routine day. Started with a run. Reviewed a couple of big slide groups. Not many left, now.

Drove to our long-time hairdresser, Chris, to trim my increasingly thin hair. Really not a lot left, but what there is, looks better for being cut. Chris said she had been going over her recipe file and had noticed how many of her recipes she had gotten from Marian. Over the years the two of them swapped recipes often.

Down to FOPAL a bit early so started sorting at 1:30 and didn’t leave until 4:30. Bought some groceries and was surprised when the bill came to $70, probably the most I’ve spent on food since December. Well, some stock items like a big brick of cheddar at $15 which will last two or more weeks.

Relaxing in my chair, the doorbell announces a visit from neighbor Pat, just stopping by to see how I am. We chat for a few minutes about this and that.

The evening’s entertainment is watching an episode of “Brokenwood Mysteries“, not on the DVR but streamed on Amazon Prime. I like that series and am pleased to see from that Wikipedia link that it has been renewed for another season. But with me watching streamed stuff, TV is stacking up on the DVR; I noticed this morning it is 55% full. Must watch or delete something. Oh, the burdens of being a responsible consumer of media. (jk)

Day 77, lunch and a game with friends

Friday, 2/15/2019

Spent the morning going through more groups of slides, still averaging about 1 in 50 to scan for permanent storage. I can understand why we took most of them: to document a moment or a place, or to try to capture something striking or beautiful, scenery or a flower or such. I can understand why we took the trouble to cull the slides and arrange them as a show, and project that once or twice for relatives or friends.

It is harder, now, to understand how we thought there was any point to cataloging and filing them for an indefinite future. It was just the spirit of the collector, I guess. OK, take Pioneer Day. In the 80s we bought a house for my parents to live in, in Paso Robles, near my sister. We often visited Paso Robles, and in particular in ’92 and ’93 we attended the Pioneer Day parade, when Paso Roblians parade their horses, cars, marching bands and old farm equipment down main street. OK, we shot 10 or 20 pics of the parade and us and our relatives each time. But when did we imagine we’d ever go back and look at them again, ten or twenty years along? I certainly don’t care now about some antique farm tractor, or some high school marching band, in Paso Robles 25 years ago.

Went to lunch with Scott and Bob Johansen (sp?). I didn’t known Bob well at IBM, and he I think didn’t remember me at all, but we had a pleasant lunch anyway.

At 5 I went around to basketball fan friend Harriet’s house where I watched Stanford vs. UCLA along with her and two friends of hers, and had a very nice dinner.

Day 41, flashback sad

Friday, 1/11/2019

Here’s a new syndrome: while I was filling my pill-cases and dressing this morning I had a mild feeling somewhere between disassociation and imposter syndrome: a vague sense that I was faking this independent adult life, that I was somehow putting on an act, a pretense, of being competent and capable. I hadn’t had that before, and it passed off quickly as I thought about it.

Later in the morning I set about doing a task I’d been putting off: taking a picture of my car registration and proof-of-insurance card. This because I’d seen the advice to do this, and to remove the printed cards from the car, multiple times. It seems that the registration slip and the insurance card provide good info for an identity thief; and police will accept a photo of registration on your phone.

So I got the two cards out of the car and was about to take the pictures when I realized that the photos app had over 1400 images. “That’s stupid,” I said, and started deleting pictures. Scroll scroll scroll to the top and start selecting groups and deleting them. Of course this takes me back to 2014 and on and pretty soon I am hitting blocks of pictures taken on various trips and outings. Italy, two years ago; New York City, 18 months ago; the WBB post-season trips only 9 months ago. Things I had done with Marian just last spring. A wave of grief just washed over me. So much intelligence, so much talent, so much good humor and courage and competence, ground down and extinguished by sickness. That it was all gone and over with seemed unutterably sad.

Yes, I know: Marian was just one of 154,000 people who died on that day of December. Probably most of them left survivors who feel as I do. It doesn’t help.

I did a couple of other things of a practical nature, then walked to the Stanford campus to meet up with Scott to see an exhibit and have lunch. The exhibit was We shot the war, photos from the archive of Overseas Weekly, an unauthorized alternative newspaper for servicemen. Lots of photos and stories of military life, fighting in ‘Nam. Scott has read a lot more than I of that war and filled in background. Afterward we had lunch at the Cantor museum café.

Home for a nap and a quiet evening.

Day 34, game day

Before the diary, a thought on the topic of

Not Screwing Up

The anxiety I’ve been having spells of this month? I’ve mentioned it several times. The best description would be the sinking feeling you get when you realize there was something you were supposed to do and you now realize you forgot to do it. Well, I had a bit of an insight on its source: I’m afraid of screwing up.

Here’s the thing: I, probably very much like most people, am prone to forgetting things or overlooking things. But for several decades I’ve been able to rely on Marian’s good memory and practicality to catch my mistakes or oversights before I make them. “Are you forgetting that…” or “You do remember we have to…” were common sentence openings for her, to me. Not so much the reverse, although once in a while I would think of some consideration she’d missed.

Now I don’t have that steady oversight. I lost my co-pilot; I’m flying solo. And apparently, it scares me. To a degree the fear is legitimate. I will screw up, forget things, drop balls. People do.

I find myself compensating, making lots of lists, checking my online calendar often, reviewing the upcoming hours to reassure myself that I have all my obligations under control. The extra efforts in home maintenance (treating the leather cushions, refinishing the table tops) are ways of asserting my ability to maintain in a general sense. Hopefully with time I will regain some confidence in my own wits.

Friday 1/4/2019

Started with a run. Exchanged emails with Scott about where to have lunch. Put in 90 minutes on one of my programming projects. Met Scott for lunch. Chilled out for the afternoon. In the evening, went to the Stanford WBB game against USC. Will tell the results tomorrow.

Day 33, a full day

Yesterday evening, coach Amy Tucker came through in spades, saying comp tix for my party for the Sunday game would be at the player window. I’m sure my relatives will be impressed with their seats. But somehow this exchange got into my brain and kept me wakeful much of the night. Anticipating this party, completely inane and unreal worry that I’d offended Amy, who knows? Worry worry and toss and turn.

Thursday 1/3/2019

The middle of the day is filled with my first cataloging shift at CHM in over two years. I’ve spent many hours over the last decade cataloging objects, but stopped doing that activity in favor of leading tours. A few weeks ago I was invited to schedule myself for cataloging sessions again. So today I was to show up at the museum’s Shustek Center at ten. One little problem: I’d been to the Shustek Center only once before, for a tour when it first opened a couple of years ago. I knew it was near Milpitas, but couldn’t remember exactly where.

Well, no problem, I’ll just get it off the CHM website. Um, no, I won’t; the site absolutely does not give that info. I’m pretty good at using search engines, and I could not find the address of this building. After an hour I did turn it up, using the online equivalent of brute force. I opened the online PDF of the Museum’s glossy annual magazine for the year the Center opened. There was an article about the creation of the new site, and buried in it was the address. Apparently that PDF wasn’t being indexed by Google.

Everyone at the site was very welcoming. I did some good work cataloging a rack of 1950s-era plugboards for IBM unit-record machines, and enjoyed lunch with a cheerful group of 8.

Back home by 3pm, just time for a little rest before heading out for the day’s second activity. One of the Stanford WBB fans, Harriet, had organized a group to go to Pinewood high school and watch a Stanford recruit, Hannah Jump, play. Five of us met at Harriet’s house for a good, simple meal at 5, and then off to the Pinewood campus in Los Altos Hills. I rode in Arlene’s Tesla, the first time I’ve ridden in a Tesla. We were all impressed by the quality of play in the game between the Pinewood Pumas and Sacred Heart Prep: the girls are fast, athletic, and intense. Pinewood won, and Hannah looked like a college-ready player.

Back home at 8:30 to find lots of watchable TV programs on the DVR. Quite a nice day.

Day 29, little grief, some dinner

Sunday, 12/30/2018

Started the day walking to the coffee shop on the old route. Maybe not such a good idea, because… Well, let’s back up to 5:40 AM when I woke up in a sweat with that something’s wrong, something’s undone, anxiety. Took a while to go back to sleep, but did. So two hours later, walking to coffee on the old route, the route we’d have walked a couple years ago when Marian was still healthy, and grief and regret swelled up in the back of my throat.

“Regret” is maybe not the word; is there a word for strongly wishing things were not such? For me, “regret” has links with guilt, or at least responsibility, but that’s not accurate here. I regret that my life is how it is, but I don’t rue that, it isn’t my fault; it just is the case and I would it were otherwise.

As I tried to work out that train of thought, my logical brain finally produced a little comfort with the thought, “Well, how would you have things be instead?” Followed by the realization that there is no credible alternative to how things are. Would I have it that Marian had not died four weeks ago? But what then? Four more weeks of the really miserable, feeble condition she was in? How is that desirable? Or, suppose I had a time machine and could go back to the start of this year, when presumably the cancer hadn’t blossomed in her pancreas? There would be nothing anyone could do, even with perfect knowledge, to prevent that. (Imagining a sci-fi scenario, a person from the future pops in and tells an apparently healthy woman, “You need to start a course of chemo, stat!” Right…)

So that helped a bit, actually quite a lot: to work it out that, despite how much I wish things weren’t as they are, there is no other believable way they could be. So… what? Blow your nose and soldier on, I guess.

Afternoon, I did a docent tour. Fortunately today there were two of us so I had a reasonable size of group, about 20. In the evening, I was invited to dinner with Nancy, Don and Kate. Everybody is being very nice to me, for which I am grateful.

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 27, socializing

Friday, 12/28/2018

Went for a run first thing. Ordinarily my Friday exercise is a long walk, but I’d shirked exercise both Tuesday and Thursday. Passed the time unproductively until 1pm when it was time to go to the Museum to lead a docent tour. The Museum was unusually crowded and I was the only docent who’d booked for the 2pm tour. Ordinarily there’d be two on a holiday weekend, so we can split the tour crowd to manageable size. Not today; so I started off with over 40 people in tow. That’s too many; there’s just not standing space around the exhibits I want to talk about, and the people in the back can’t see. Well, the visitors solved that for themselves by just peeling off and leaving. At the end of the tour I had about 20 still with me, which was just fine by me; but I regret the other 20-odd having a frustrating experience.

In the evening, met Su for dinner at a restaurant (hi, Su!). A lot of the conversation revolved around retirement facilities: what we want out of them, what we know of them. That was fine (and informative to me). At least we did not talk about that perennial subject among elders, our medical problems!

Emotionally this was a pretty calm day, and at times I felt quite comfortable in my new skin. I’m only slowly grasping that this is really my life now, and it’s up to me to run it. You’d think I’d’a figured that out during the months of anticipation, and I did, at an intellectual level. But there’s an emotional settling-in taking place now which is quite different (and hard to describe).