Day 20, More closet work

Friday, 12/21/2018

A drizzly morning so instead of the long walk I like to take on a Friday I drove to the Y and ran a half hour on the treadmill. Back home I revisited the problem of disposing of the “better” selection of Marian’s clothes — the four bags and several hanging items that Jean thought were too good for her church’s thrift shop, and should be consigned, with the receipts perhaps going to Stanford Women’s Basketball. This was a brilliant idea of hers.

However, I emailed two basketball friends who I thought might know about consignment shops, and they replied that they didn’t. So I started researching them. Actually Yelp lists second-hand and consignment clothing shops. A couple in Menlo Park, a couple in Los Altos.

From the sites for these stores I got a better idea of the kind and quality of clothes they want and how they operate. It wasn’t looking very promising, frankly. So I unpacked the four bags and did another division of sheep from goats, that is, setting aside only items with fine fabric (cashmere, silk) or brand names that I recognized as not being run-of-the-mill store or catalog brands. About half made the cut and went back to the closet: leather coats, silk or cashmere tops, a couple of other obviously fine items.

On Santa Cruz ave. in Menlo Park is the American Cancer Society “Discovery store” where donated clothes are sold to benefit cancer research. I took the two big bags of lesser items there. Then I checked out the two shops in Los Altos. The lady at one said she was overstocked, she might look at my things in January. The lady at the other was quite negative: people look for high-end designer brands (the only one of those that Marian had was a little blouse from DKNY); leather and faux-leather jackets don’t sell well; silk and cashmere tops are pretty slow. Welp, that just about eliminates my inventory.

Probably in January, unless another idea surfaces, I’ll take the remaining items to the ACS shop.

In the evening I finished playing The Return of the King and spent some time going through the bonus material on the third disc of this “extended edition”. As to the film, I was most impressed by the way Peter Jackson and crew created battle scenes. The seamless mix of live and CGI and model work to produce the chaos of a fantasy battle is amazing. I still don’t forgive him for discarding the chapter “The Scouring of the Shire”. He addresses this directly in one of the bonus talks: to him, the story was all about Frodo. He just didn’t see the wonderful possibilities for irony and humor in this closing chapter, or the importance of finishing the arcs of Merry and Pippin. It could all have been done in three minutes of film.

Day 15, Highs and Lows

Sunday 12/16/2018

This day started out with

A High

which requires some back-story. For mumble-mumble years, every Sunday morning Marian and I walked about a quarter-mile to the coffee shop in Midtown to read the Sunday paper and have cappucini and sweet rolls. Late last year, some quite noisy groups of friends started occupying the place Sunday mornings. This particularly annoyed Marian, so we switched to the much quieter (in fact, so quiet one wonders how long they’ll be business) Baron Barista, about 2 miles away. That meant driving, not walking, which was OK because Marian’s walking distance shrank steadily over that time anyway.

Last week I mentioned how it was quite an emotional experience to go back alone to the P.A. Café Sunday morning. Today I had the notion to go to Baron Barista instead; and then had the sudden notion, “Wonder if I could walk that?” A quick check of Google Maps showed it was 2.2 miles and 40 minutes, which seemed well within my capacities, so off I went, paper under my arm.

Swinging along it dawned on me, with a real jolt of pleasure, that I was doing something that was only possible to me as a bachelor. Even a decade ago, such a walk would have been out of the question for Marian, and so wouldn’t have occurred to me as a possibility. Here I was, doing a new thing that was possible only in my new life. Trivial though it was, it felt good.

Later, the Downers

Forty-odd years ago, Marian brought home a “pony-tail palm” (beaucarnia recurvata) which over time grew and grew until “Beau” towered nearly 7 feet above the rim of the pot, and had branched out like a menora.

Knowing that my time in this house was limited, I have worried about what to do with Beau for months. I wanted to find a new permanent home for this plant, and hated the idea that it might end up in a compost pile. Fortunately, Liz Shaw, a niece-in-law of Marian’s sister Jean, is a landscape gardener by trade, appreciates plants, and agreed to take Beau into her own home.

The arrangement was for her to come today and at noon sharp, she and her son Spencer pulled into the driveway. They very professionally staked and tied Beau’s branches, moved him out to the truck, and wrapped him securely in a sheet. They roped him him securely into the bed of the truck and he was off to his new home.

I had not expected this to be an emotional event; after all this was exactly what I wanted to have happen, had planned for, and marked the end of my responsibility for the plant.

But it was emotional, very much so. I had a hard time controlling my voice saying goodbye to Liz, and for half an hour after they left I wandered around the house, sniffling and wiping my eyes — closer to actual tears than I’ve been since Day 2 — and mumbled a couple of times, “Just shards of the old life, going away,” which was the best I could do to sum it up.

Up a little

So I’d had the plan (since Dennis wasn’t able to join me for The Green Book) that I’d go see Ralph Wrecks the Internet solo. It was time to execute, so I blew my nose and acted. I love modern movie going. I bought my senior ticket for Century 16 on Fandango.com, had the ticket sent to my phone, walked into the theater 15 minutes before showtime to wave my phone at the scanner, sat down in my reserved lounge chair and reclined it. Aside from the fact that they showed twenty minutes of previews after the start of the nominal show-time of 2pm, it was a good experience.

Day 5 cont.

Drove to Oakland for a very pleasant lunch with Darlene and Jessea. Talked about lots of things, their issues and mine. Back home, looked at

Another movie

Waitress got 34 minutes before I got bored. I’ve liked Nathan Filion since Firefly days, and it was fun seeing Andy Griffith as an old codger. This time instead of giving up I started skipping forward. Got to the ultrasound scene where out of nowhere Keri jumps Nathan for a passionate kiss. Nope, don’t believe it. Out at 52 minutes.

Think I’ll watch a few episodes of “The Great War” on youtube.