Day 105, Sunday drive

Sunday, 3/17/2019

Had a lovely sleep, waking only once around 5am and sleeping unusually late, 7:15. Began the day, as has recently become my wont, by walking to the coffee shop. Going and coming, as also usual, I was

pondering

the difference between the new life and the old one. We all live within constraints that bend our actions. Some constraints are imposed by the physical world and our bodies, some by society, but many constraints are voluntarily assumed. Marriage brings a thousand little constraints, so many things you wouldn’t do, or do differently, because your partner won’t or can’t do it thus; and all voluntary.

When the marriage is gone, those particular constraints are lifted, but it takes time to understand (in the gut, not just in the mind) that this is not a bad thing, not a loss, but only a change. So why are my eyes damp?

Walking into the yard I notice a little failed plant. Well, not a failure; it is still alive and in fact blooming. I don’t remember its name; it has the unusual feature of blooming direct from dormancy, little purple starbursts on straw-colored stems, without a leaf in sight. But the three of these have never thrived and even when in full leaf, look as if they are about to shrivel and blow away. So? Well, Marian selected these plants for those spots when the garden was remade in 2012, and she always watched them and worried about them. Now I am trying to resolve my feelings about the plants. How Marian felt about those plants is history. Does it have any relevance going forward? How should I feel about them, or, does it matter that I don’t particularly like them and don’t care if they live or die? I don’t have any resolution for these questions.

With time to kill I decided to

pull weeds.

In 2012 the reworked yard was mulched; no more lawn. And yards of mulch have been put on it since. Just the same, every winter the rains bring many little green shoots popping up. Pulling them is easy, and I used to regularly go out and spend an hour pulling them while listening to a podcast. This year until now I’d studiously ignored them on the basis of ISMISEP. Or as it should be by now, IFMISEP or even IThMISEP. However I realized that the sprinkle of little green things alongside the walk to the front door could make the place look neglected to potential buyers. So I spent an hour pulling up a couple hundred little green sprouts. During this a

neighbor

stopped by to chat. Steve, the doctor next door, and I hadn’t spoken in many months. He remarked how he used to see us sitting in the living room and wondered if Marian had had to move to some facility? He hadn’t heard she’d died. I thought all our neighbors knew, but I guess not. So we chatted a while about this and that; I think he was reassuring himself that his geezer neighbor was getting on OK.

At eleven, Suzanne’s pal

Louise

came to continue her evaluation of Marian’s jewelry. She is being incredibly generous with her time, putting many hours into this and promising to deliver a complete report on Friday, and not asking for payment. Louise has also remodeled her current house in Seattle, so we naturally ended up talking about the things Chuck thinks might be done to spiff up this house.

Like me, she doesn’t see any problem with having a door between the stove and refrigerator. But she had a great idea for the bedroom, where Chuck’s design consultant Amy wanted to put a tub and toilet. Louise agreed that people, as she put it, pay ridiculous sums in order they can go from the bed to the toilet in five steps. But she thought it would be better to make the current walk-in closet into a bathroom, with a European style shower, and then she remembered the right phrase, “a wet room”. A wet room (according to that link) is

a bathroom with an open shower… with a shower floor that is flush with the rest of the bathroom … generally completely tiled and water is handled through a drainage system that serves the entire space…

Such a room would fit nicely in the closet space, while the passage between the bedroom proper and the closet/wet-room — space I’ve used as my office for decades — could be furnished as an elegant his-n-hers closet area.

While Louise was working I started cleaning up my

MacBooks,

of which I have 4. I have fully moved my daily life to Godot, so there are two MacBook Airs, Marian’s old one that was getting flaky and the newer one we got for her a year ago, and my rather tired MacBook Pro that Godot replaced. So while Louise rated gems and tested gold, I created a bootable USB drive with Mac OS X “Mojave” on it, and did a disk erase and clean install of the OS on the newer Air and the Pro. There was a little qualm in finally erasing Marian’s machine, but I am confident I moved all significant files to the cloud weeks ago. I’ve needed to refer to nothing on it since December.

After Louise left I decided the weather was so nice — the second day of spring-like temperatures in a row — I should

get the hell out

of the house. I drove up Page Mill road to Skyline where there is a trailhead, and went for a mile and a half walk on Russian Ridge. I took a panorama from a hill but in fact, the best view came a little later, as I was driving North on Skyline. Behold the absolute essence of California coast springtime:

green_road

I don’t even know what that road is, or how to get to it. I was surprised to see a paved road when looking West from Skyline drive. (Edit: probably Rapley Ranch Road.)

Anyway I came down 84 through Woodside, enjoying how the Prius plug-in charged 6 or 7 miles-worth of power in its battery on the descent. Now home, I am thinking about going out again for supper somewhere.

Day 103, many little tasks

Friday, 3/15/2019

Didn’t mention yesterday, that while I had planned to do the laundry today, I decided to start it last night, for no particular reason. Continued with the second load before sitting down to breakfast. Then out for a run, which went OK. On return, folded the two dry laundry loads and started the third one.

Sat down to do some desk work. Paid a credit card bill. Then edited and started the upload of the video I shot on Wednesday (and didn’t even mention in that blog post, I was so taken up with describing the FOPAL process). Anyway, the video is up and within an hour I had a comment, “another great video”, from one of my 150 or so subscribers. Yay me.

Got into the tax accountant’s workbook and I think I have entered all the data and uploaded all the 1099’s and other documents. I’ll hold off on the final click of “send to accountant” until after Tuesday’s meeting with the financial people.

Yesterday I got the official letter of acceptance from C.H. So I sent an email to Kim the marketing person asking when we should meet, and shortly got an invite to come in next Wednesday, after talking to my financial advisors.

Went out to ship that box containing the brown pitcher to Laurel, mail a letter, and pick up a couple of food items. Just love ticking off items on my to-do list!

Continued a productive day by scanning another batch of slides. Something happened here, and I’m not sure what. There was a train of thought where I was initially patting myself on the back for a good picture, and then realized that no, I could not have taken that, it had to have been taken by Marian. And some of the other slides were of trips we had taken in 1989, and 1992, and so on. And suddenly I was sniffling and for half an hour was not-quite-crying, in the strongest grief spasm I’ve had for a week or more.

I have a ticket for a play at Palo Alto Players for 8pm. It’s now almost time to depart, so I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Day 91.5 grief (again) (yawn)

In the afternoon I drove to a Best Buy store and walked through their wonderland of TV screens. Gosh, TVs are impressively good these days. Of course they program very contrasty, heavily sharpened material so the images jump out at you. Anyway, many of their demo TVs had sound bars attached. And there was even a setup with ten different sound bars and you could in theory switch from one to another to compare. Only in theory, because three or four of the ten didn’t make any sound, broken or unplugged, and as for the others, someone — customers? bored salesman? — had turned the volume up all the way so when you switched to one, it blasted you and made heads turn across the store. Main problem, the item I’d decided from trawling the internets was the most interesting, a Yamaha one, was not in the store anywhere. Apparently Best Buy doesn’t stock them. (Nor did Fry’s.)

So I made some food and burned off quite a bit of programming from the backup on the DVR. One glob of DVR space is the folder of saved episodes of the last season of So You Think You Can Dance. There have been 15 seasons of that show, and Marian and I watched all of them together. It was our favorite TV show, and sharing it was a pleasure. For several of seasons, I left the episodes on the DVR to watch again. We’d play them back and select a few of the very best routines, the ones that made us say “Wow!”. These I would record off the DVR onto the computer, and from there (with several hours of work) make a compilation DVD.

Sound like a nerdy thing? Something one of Sheldon’s flatmates might do? Yeah. Let me check: in my file of recorded DVDs I have highlight discs of SYTYCD seasons 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Don’t know what happened to 7, 9, and 14. It is season 15 sitting on my DVR now.

This sounds like the slides all over again. DVDs take up a lot less space! But the issue is the same: I carefully curated imagery, stored it, only to never view it again. Before I resolve that, I want to think about about

Grief (good grief, again?)

So I played back an episode of Season 15 and got the strongest wave of grief I’ve had in days. Why? Part of the answer is a couple of paragraphs back: watching SYTYCD was a shared experience, and I’ll never share it again. But there’s another aspect. The words going through my mind were, “She loved this so much…” and it’s that which triggers the emotion. The same thing happens when I stop to look at her favorite azalea in bloom — a few days back, when I was showing Chuck around the house and was going to mention the azalea I couldn’t make my voice work. Something about realizing that here was something Marian loved, and that she can’t enjoy again, is just a very powerful inducer of grief.

Well, what about those DVDs of past seasons? Would I watch any of them again? Could I watch them — remembering that they were specifically the highlights she most enjoyed? And what about the current folder of season 15? Is there any point to re-watching those shows, or making a compilation from them? I think “no” to all. I’ll mull it a day or so then probably throw everything out.

Day 86, flat tire and a game

Sunday, 2/24/2019

I tried something new for my Sunday morning coffee. Going to a coffee shop on Sunday morning to read the paper was a ritual for Marian and me for decades. I’ve written earlier in this series about the experiences, both positive and negative, around doing it without her.

A constant so far has been that I would do the NYT crossword at home, before going out for coffee and to read the rest of the paper. But that sequence was a consequence of the fact that Marian liked to sleep in, and I didn’t. So I would get up and spend an hour doing the crossword and futzing with the internet; then when she got up we’d go out.

So, um… I’ve no reason to wait now. So today I got up, dressed, and walked to the coffee shop at 7am, where I read the paper and did the puzzle in comfort, with a scone and a cappuccino. Not exactly an earth-shaking revolution, but still, one more break with the past.

At noon I went out to go to the final SWBB game of the year, and found that the car’s left rear tire was flat. I had noticed a low-tire-pressure warning yesterday, but I looked at the tires before I went in to the movie yesterday afternoon, and they looked alright. I’m glad it held up for the return trip from San Jose, 75mph up I-280 last night.

But, what to do now? The plug-in hybrid has no spare (no room because of the large battery in the trunk) and anyway I wanted to get going. So I called a Lyft. At the game I met with Harriet and her visitor, Bridget, who were using my pair of tickets while I sat in her single seat. She agreed to give me a lift home.

The game was against ASU, and the Sun Devils are usually a tougher opponent that the UA Wildcats who came so close to beating us Friday night. But this game went Stanford’s way early. They had a modest lead at the half, and in the third quarter blew it up to 20+ points and cruised to the end.

This was Senior Day, the last home game of the season (ignoring the fact that Stanford is almost certain to host the first two games of the NCAAs) and I had a bit of trouble controlling my emotions. I kept remembering how Marian had hoped to last out this season, and how pleased she’d have been to reach Senior Day and applaud Marta, Shannon and Alanna who she’d watched grow up for four years. So I couldn’t have talked coherently for a while, but fortunately had no reason to talk.

After the game Harriet wanted to show Bridget the outside of the Cantor Museum and the Rodin sculpture garden, so I walked along with them to that. Then she drove me home where I made an appointment for a mobile tire repair outfit to come tomorrow afternoon, then had a pleasant evening watching TV.

Day 81, real estate and baseball

Tuesday, 2/19/2019

For no reason I can fathom this has been a hard day emotionally. I started with a brisk walk (brisk because the air was chilly, but the sun was bright which makes all the difference) to the Y and a little workout. Then I reviewed some more slide groups while waiting for Chuck to arrive to talk about selling this house. Maybe something in the slides? No, even before that I was just awash with, I don’t know, call it grief. I’m sure the Norwegians have a very precise term for it. Walking around the outside of the house with Chuck, I was going to point out Marian’s favorite azalea in mad bloom, and I couldn’t get the words out, my throat just locked up. Oh well.

Chuck is an old friend and, as I think I wrote on Day 78? he was also our agent in two prior real estate transactions. Today he looked over the house and the neighborhood, considered the size of the lot, and so on. I have to say, looking over the house with a third-party’s eye, its age really shows. But no matter: ISMISEP, baby. That’s our mantra.

Chuck went away to research comparables and think about whether the house will most likely sell to a developer who’d scrape it (always my and Marian’s assumption), or someone who’d want to remodel it and live in it. What depends on this is whether, or to what degree, the house should be “staged” before being shown. If the owner/occupant option is what to aim for, “staging” might go as far as remodeling the kitchen and bath, expensive stuff. A developer, however, only cares about the size of the lot, the location, and any impediments to construction — take for example, the two protected oak trees that they would have to work around.

Chuck also mentioned he works with a designer who plans his staging. I sat up at that, because a designer is exactly who I’d like to consult with, in planning the layout of a hypothetical unit at Channing House. Later in the day I obtained the floor plan for the one available unit there, the jumbo studio, and emailed to Chuck with the request that his designer give a ballpark idea on whether it could be made a livable unit with spaces for working, reading, watching TV and sleeping. Maybe nothing will come of that, but.

I started scanning some slides and was surprised and disappointed with a couple of the ones I’d selected for their pictorial quality, as I saw it looking into a hand-held slide viewer. When actually scanned and on the big monitor, however, both these turned out to be soft, not properly focused. One is a lovely composition of a water bird (a male Smew, actually) moving through the water. The light was perfect, it made the water look like liquid glass and the bird is posed just right. Except, damn it, the bird’s head and eye are not in focus. The sharp focus was just past the bird, on his tail and the water. Looked fabulous in the hand viewer, but in detail it’s a complete miss. I’m sure when we projected that slide back in ’95 we jointly lamented the bad focus. But still we kept it. Sentiment.

In the afternoon something reminded me of baseball, which reminded me I’d been talking (to myself) about getting a Stanford Baseball season ticket. Well, why not now? And I did. It was only $220 for a 35-game season and what I know is a good seat at Sunken Diamond. I compared their schedule to mine and printed out the tickets for the games I think I’ll be able to attend (about half of them).

Then I sat down to watch Gene Kelly in An American in Paris.

Day 65, laundry, mulling, and Superb Owl

Azalea Grief

I was so busy involved in getting my notes on Webster House straight that I forgot to mention a major grief spasm, the first after several days of calm. As I left the house to head for my meeting, my eye was caught by the azalea under the front window, which is covered in pink blossoms. This was Marian’s favorite plant, selected by her and carefully nurtured for many years, and its blooming — which always seems to come unexpectedly, one day bare and the next day blazing with pink — delighted her every year. I was just swept with a wave of pity and regret that she couldn’t enjoy its blooming now. I tried to talk it out to my steering wheel as I drove to my meeting, and couldn’t keep my voice from breaking. Still feel it, as I write.

Home Court

At the game, Stanford rolled over Cal, winning by 25. This seemed to me like a great demonstration of the power of the home court advantage. Based on the record this season up until this week, Stanford should be about a 10-point winner over Cal every time. Cal has lost to several teams Stanford has beaten. However, playing at Cal, the teams played virtually even, were tied several times, with Cal finally winning by a single point on a buzzer-beater. Cal shouldn’t be that good, nor Stanford that bad! Then, at Stanford, Cal conceded a 10-point lead to Stanford in the first two minutes and lost by 25. Cal shouldn’t look that bad, nor Stanford that good! Location and crowd support would appear to provide a 10-15 point swing in favor of the home team.

That said, following the game Tara talked to the crowd and, asked about the difference, said approximately this: “We watched a lot of film of the last two games [both were losses] with the team, and pointed out all the places where a little more effort would have made a difference, and I think everybody stepped up today.” So, you know, maybe coaching has something to do with it…

Sunday, 2/3/2019

Stripped the bed and sorted and started the laundry before heading out to coffee. Tried a new coffee shop, Mademoiselle Collette, which had been pointed out to me by Joan, as a feature of living at Webster House. Meh, not impressed. Well, impressed to this extent: they actually know what a macchiato is, and a cappuccino. Pastries ok. But the place is too small. All the four(?) small tables were in use when I arrived at 8:15. I had to sit at a narrow counter in the window, not very comfortable for reading the Sunday paper.

Back home I did a lot of inconclusive thinking and shopping. This will be boring for anybody but me.

Thinking about TV

First shopped for a TV. Looking ahead at The Transition (see yesterday), how much of my aging home theater setup should I carry over? Practically none. I’ll be dropping DirecTV for whatever the chosen ILF has (probably Comcast), so, different DVR. I’ll probably drop the receiver at the center of the system because, (A), I only use it to switch between the DVR, the Blu-Ray player, and the laptop; and new TVs all have at least three HDMI inputs, so can do that. And (B), its other purpose is 4-channel sound from various devices, which I don’t really need; a modern sound-bar unit driven by the TV will do just fine. So a new TV can do all the useful functions of the receiver. Good, one less box. The TV itself? It’s ok but there is better new tech. However, the really good new TV tech, OLED, is only available in sizes 49in and up, about 5in wider and 2in higher than the present TV.

Suddenly I realize that very likely, I want to take the TV stand/room divider piece along to the new location.

Thinking about a laptop

Second, shopped for a replacement laptop. My 2013-era Macbook Pro (MBP) is aging; there’s an annoying little split in the cover of the screen and the keyboard is acting wonky, and so on. The house is full of macs, two iMacs and two Airs and this laptop to which I often seem to be joined at the hip. (How many of them go to new location? Just one iMac, the “big” (27in) one, and one laptop. The others can go back to Apple for credit.)

Anyway, in 2017 Apple screwed up the design of the MBP with a redesigned keyboard that is pretty universally reviled; by replacing the row of function keys with an illuminated “touch bar” that nobody likes; by dropping the USB, HDMI, and SD-card ports; and by dropping the “magsafe” magnetic power connector. New ones have only USB-C, aka “Thunderbolt” ports for power and connectivity, which means you need a “dongle” to connect to an HDMI cable, another for your old USB devices, another to plug in an SD card to get photos off your camera.

But wait: I have adequate USB and SD card connectivity on the big iMac. All I really need from the laptop is to connect via HDMI to the TV screen, which I used to do fairly often. But wait, I only did that so Marian and I could both watch a streamed basketball game. If I am not sharing the experience with anyone else, I can watch a video stream on my personal lap. The laptop screen, on my lap, is the same size as the TV at eight feet. Doh, maybe I don’t even need one dongle!

Still, I hate the touch bar and am suspicious of the latest keyboard. So option one is to buy a refurbished 2015/16 MBP off eBay; ones in “mint” condition are about $900. Or, two, to buy a new Macbook Air, the latest redesign of that model; it doesn’t have the touchbar. $1400 for a new one. It comes down to the latest keyboard; can I tolerate its feel? If so, I think I’d rather have the newest machine. I need to go and put my hands on one at the Apple store.

Well, the laundry is finishing up. I’ll wrap that up then drive to the Apple store; then it will be time to watch the superb owl.

Later: bought a MBP

Went to the Apple store, tried the current Air, didn’t like it. I could use one if I had to, but the keyboard has very little travel, half the travel of the one I’m typing on. The trackpad also has extremely small travel on a click. In both cases the machine provides a “haptic” click or tap feeling to reinforce the feeling you’ve typed or tapped. But the impression is of being very stiff, yet highly sensitive. There’s no play in the keys; the tiniest random pressure from a fingertip and you’ve typed a letter. So I came home and ordered a refurb 2015 era model.

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 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 35, quiet Saturday

The Stanford Cardinal edged out the USC Trojans. The game was close with SC sometimes ahead until the fourth quarter, when Stanford took a decisive lead and held it.

Saturday 1/5/2019

Quiet start to the day, with a grief-spasm. Scott had urged me to contact Craig, another ex-IBMer who lives in one of the retirement communities I’m considering. So I did email him, and since he wouldn’t have known, I included the link to Marian’s obituary from the PostHope website, the one I wrote back on Day 1. Which meant re-reading it, which led to quite a bit of emotion for a while.

Went to the museum to lead the 12:00 tour. Talking to my dashboard on the way, to get myself settled down and ready to meet a group of people who know nothing (and want to know nothing) about my personal life, just want to have fun learning about computer history. Had a large crowd, more than 40, which is awkwardly big, but I managed to keep at least 30 of them with me to the end and got a nice round of applause.

Back home, in the mail I received the package I’ve been waiting for from

IBM Benefits

They say Marian had a life insurance policy with me as beneficiary in the amount of $5000. I have to return a form and a death certificate to claim it. Also it contained this rather peculiar note,

Marian was receiving a Settlement Benefit from IBM and designated you as his [sic] Joint Annuitant. Therefore, you will receive $4.58 monthly starting January 01, 2019 and continuing for your lifetime.

Huh? I don’t know what this “Settlement Benefit” could have been. Anyway, $4.58? Why bother? Doesn’t it cost at least as much just to process it?

I am going to call the representative whose name is on the letter and find out if I can possibly, (a) get a lump-sum settlement (it comes to $55/year; gimme $500 and I’ll call it quits), or (b) get it paid annually so I won’t see $4.58 showing up in my bank statement every month, or (c), can you combine this with the $300/month pension I get from IBM, or (d) you just want to forget about it, I promise not to sue.

Anyway that’s some paperwork I will handle on Monday.

Swallowdale

In other news, in October I was going over my bookshelves with an eye to throwing stuff out or selling it, and found my collection of books by and about Arthur Ransome, the British author of children’s classics such as Swallows and Amazons. I thought I had all his books in Penguin/Puffin paperback editions I’d bought while in England in the 1970s. I also have books about him and about the locations he used for his stories (the Lake District, the Norfolk Broads). Looking over the collection I was surprised to find I was missing Swallowdale, the second book of the series. I’m sure I owned it at some time, but now it was just not there. Which rather squelched the idea I had at the time, to sell the collection on eBay.

So on this quiet Saturday it crossed my mind to find out what it would cost to get that edition of Swallowdale. I opened abebooks.com, clicky clicky, boom: price $1 plus $5 shipping. Hey, one month of IBM Settlement money covers it! On that basis I ordered it. When it comes, I’ll try selling the collection; if it doesn’t move, I am sure the FOPAL children’s sale will appreciate it.

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.