Month: March 2025

Holy Cow It is March 30th

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And it is soon to be March31st.

Debbie, et al. is stuck in the great state of spring break. Allegiant air has disappointed them by changing days for their return flight. Oh well, that is part of the excitement of breaking. She went there with two kids and three grand kids. She is still there.

The universal flight constant was out of alignment with their travel plans.

There are many of these constants constantly cramping various plans humans make for themselves.

A cynical comment is “Man plans. God laughs.” It has several variations but always ends with god laughs. I find it disappointing to believe in a creator who laughs at you. I much prefer a creator who laughs with you.

The universe did not laugh at us when Cheryl and I imagined our future full of travel and good times. A future that was full of family and mirth. A trip hoped for and planned for to Alaska had a little rain and funny towel sculptures. Life had birthday parties and grand kids graduations, dance competitions and valedictorians, surprise visits. We laughed together. We had fun together. Laughed with.

The universe has a vision. Details are in the pixels. Finite divisions of the view are defined by various constants.

Many, many years ago I took a couple photography classes. One of the things we talked about was how color images and black & white images are printed. Tiny little dots (pixels) are used to do this. Our own eyes do this to convey information to the brain and it constructs a view of the world which is remarkably uniform and complete. Our brains are complex and rapid computers. The details are in the pixels but the brain extrapolates that discrete information into our view of the world.

We have vision. We should stay focused on the view. Universal constants realign with the vision. And the universe although unraveling, is doing so as it will.

Debbie et al. will be home soon. The flight tracker app shows her little airplane in the air over the gee in Georgia. The universe is laughing (maybe giggling is a better word) with me. She will be home soon.

Carpe Diem.

Questions for God and other Thoughts

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The Grief Share topic for this meeting was “Questions for God.” For me I was grateful that the universe accepted Cheryl back into its keeping. I am sad, of course, for the loss of her companionship and love but there is no value to complaining to God and cursing the existence of the universe. It just is. It (or He) has no grievance with our existence. Why should we wonder why? That concern uses a lot of time but adds nothing.

The video makes early reference to the Book of Job (which I have always heard as joeh-B long O). This sent my mind off into the task of reading the Bible and its stories. In the Book of Job, the first of the poetic books, in my New American Bible is spelled j-o-b and Job did a good job at the beginning of the story and at the end of the story. In the middle he did not waste any breath on cursing the universe that he knew as God for all the unfortunateness that happened to him. Shit happens. He said, “When one door closes, another, maybe better one opens.” I paraphrased. Because he had that attitude, God chased away Satan and did not smote his asses any longer.

God even accepted Job’s praise and forgiveness of his drinking buddies Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar after they told Job, of course God crapped on you. You crapped on us. It is good to have friends to explain alternative truths and help you to think about things. In the 28th verse, Job talks about how it is easy to dig ore and smelt metal and grow crops but getting wisdom is a bitch. It takes time and patience and then one still does not attain wisdom (smarts about life.) It is like reading Michael Lewis talk about markets and baseball.

I think I get a different take on stories I read in the Bible. (… Kish said to Saul, “Take a servant with you and go out to find your asses…”) Find an older copy of The New American Bible – 1 Samuel 9:3

Mom would have said, “Pull up your socks!” about Job’s predicament but she did not write any books for the Bible. It took me much of my life before I understood what she meant by this phrase. My interpretation of her thought is, you can pray about it but you have to help. Job says much the same thing, albeit, with a lot more words. In Job 40:7 “ Gird up your loins, like a man. I will question you and your will give me answers!” These days we would say, “Get your shit together, Dude! Grow a pair!”

Job lived to be 140. Mom lived to be 95. Both were intelligent loved people.

Sorry, I have wandered off the beam – the video makes early reference to the Book of Job but the discussion is the questions that many ask after death, Why? Is my faith shattered? Is there an afterward? An afterlife? Is there a reincarnation? The Bible tells all. It also has a lot of great war stories and poetry.

I do not wonder why Cheryl died. She was very ill for a long time. If anything I wonder how she hung on for so long. I do not wonder why she became ill. Many people become ill and eventually die. Everyone dies eventually. I personally just hope it won’t hurt much.

I hope our spirits will connect again somehow.

Do I miss her? Absolutely everyday, I miss her. These days, I have a new person in my life to aim my love at. She is off vacationing with her kids and grand kids. I miss her also.

We are destined to miss those who touch us and connect with us in life. It is a source of heartache, home-sickness and bereftness. We miss those to whom we have a strong connection. It is love with no place to go.

Carpe Diem.

The Last Service to Her

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I finished filing our income tax stuff today.  I had put it off for a long time. I knew I (we) would owe this year. She helped me by keeping her Met Life stock in an account I had forgotten about. It was enough to cover what we owed.

Curiously as I was finishing up the state return it (Turbo Tax) asked for her state ID number. I found her purse in the drawer it’s been in for a year and fished out her ID. I suddenly realized that I was not going to need this information any longer. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that this is the last thing that I needed to do for her. This is the last time we file jointly. I became suddenly sad and I am still a little as I write this. It is a grief ambush. They pop up every now and then.

Part of that sadness came when I had to fill in the date of issuance and the date of renewal. Cheryl did not make it to her birthday last year. This nuance reminded me of a conversation I had with her youngest brother a week or two before her death. I cried at both of these thoughts.

I pushed send in the Turbo Tax website and got in the car to go visit Cheryl and report that the taxes are complete. Next year I will not file jointly. It is the last thing that I will do for her and that fact makes me a little sad today.

This has been a year for lasts. This has been a year for firsts.

It is the first year of my life without Cheryl. Sometimes that hits me hard. I am a work in progress.

Carpe Diem.

Daffodils and Forsythia

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I think of these as two of the basic food groups of the Spring flowers. The picture included here is immediately behind my little condo on the next property. Some kind soul who is probably no longer with us on our journey planted this bush and the clump of daffodils near it just so Wisdom could show me the beauty of nature.

This particular forsythia had its ruffled skirt trimmed off by my neighbor upstairs who felt that it was unfurling too invasively across the meager lawn covering last season. At that time in my life I was preoccupied with the end of Cheryl’s life and my own stupidity after a bout with too much vodka one evening. I did not speak out in behalf of this fine example of nature’s finery. This year I feel better suited to defend its propensity to thrive into its natural shape both ungainly and glorious though it may be.

We humans have a propensity to modify, adjust and change the world to our own design. Why is that? Are we unable to accept nature in its natural form? I enjoy formal gardens as much as anyone but I also enjoy woods and flowering plants in their natural habitat. With Cheryl gone almost a year I am slowly and considerately adjusting my living space to me and my habitation of it. The view of this forsythia and its companion daffodil clump are very special to me. They shout, SPRING IS HERE. I can hear them.

Soon our landscaper folks will show up to tune up the gardens around the building, spruce up the mulch and generally trim things. Rigor will be added to the plantings. The forsythia will be ignored, thankfully, because it is on another’s property. We do not own the woods next door.

Further down the property others have cleaned out the forest floor to plant and maintain various gardens and “improvements” to nature. I will not. But I will trim up my little space around my patio after the landscaper does his thing.

Rains come down, daffos dil, sun shines, birds poop and honeys suckle. The landscape is unfurling as it can and should. The vernal has had its equinox and light is returning to our part of the planet. Wisdom speaks again.

Carpe Diem.

Toaster Ovens

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Far be it from me to criticize the American appliance industry but I often wonder what jumped into the engineering head of folks who decided a toaster oven was a much needed appliance.  Having a small oven is handy in its own way but why call it a toaster? Why temp us toast lovers with the ability to get warm morning toast when one actually gets the stale bread a week later.

Indeed toasted bread can be achieved in several different ways with one critical ingredient, great heat applied for a short or relatively short period of time. Toaster ovens are unable to do either. Generally they fit into the vast category of “Almost A Great Idea” or AAGI (aw-gee) for short. At one time in the past we owned a toaster oven which also had the ability to roast a chicken. It had a built in rotisserie gizmo to spear the chicken with and rotate through the meager heat source. (aw-gee) After much trial and error we determined that the timer needed to be able to set itself to much more than the 45 minutes on the dial. The heat source warm up is include in this time since it is not instant on. (Alas and aw-gee)

Many devices fit into AAGI. Instapots and Airfriers might be two more. But often it is fun and necessary to use a device with a small heat source that supplies invaluable cleaning expertise and practice.

Microwave ovens supply this valuable expertise as they are able to rapidly take water from liquid to gas in a rice-sized pocket spreading soup or any other suitable substance over the entire inner surface while keeping the rest of the bowl at the temperature of a standard refrigerator. They are remarkable devices. If you ever require rubberized eggs for any recipe, a low wattage microwave is just the perfect solution.

All of these thoughts came to over the past several days as I pondered another stale bread morning in my nephew’s beautiful, quaint and cute little bungalow in Port St. Joe, Florida. My sister and my girlfriend and I spent three wonderful days there this past week.

We drove in my car so we did not have the wonderful packing experience of making everything fit into one suitcase. We took our time. We stopped occasionally to look for best toilet facilities. We visited Bukee’s in Alabama. No soft serve ice cream at Bukee’s which is a sad state of affairs. (aw-gee) We stopped at the Shrimp Lady which claims to be restaurant-ish on Google Maps. It is not but we bought 2 pounds of shrimps as big as my thumb that came off the boat 20 – 30 minutes previously. Over the next couple of days we ate them as shrimp and cheesy grits, and shrimp with garlic, onion, green pepper and spaghetti with marinara and generous Parmesan cheese.

Did the two most important women in my life just bring me along to cook and drive the car? It was a great trip.

Back to the toaster oven. It is a fine device in its own way but entirely unsatisfactory for making toast in the morning. The Nespresso Virtuo, however, makes excellent coffee one cup at a time, every time, as long as the special pods and a water source are nearby. Foamy luxurious coffee.

We are back home in Ohio. The forsythia in the back is just opening itself. The daffodils are poking up and wondering what the forsythia can see that they cannot. The forest view through my window is greenish against the browns and grayness.

Daylight saving? Time is here. And as Debbie says, “the light is returning to the planet”

I am off to ponder a method of saving the daylight and fold the laundry from the trip.

Carpe Diem.

More To The Story

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Cheryl was very supportive through this period of my life. When she came home and found me frantic in my desperation about something as silly as a job she yelled at me. “Yell” is my term for her showing a great deal of concern. She was very worried about me. I was stuck in my own bad situation and needed to get out of it.

Looking back through the lens of thirty years it is easy for me to notice how I slowly let myself get trapped in an untenable situation. That will not happen again.

Carpe Diem.