January 26, 2022

To quote a well-know cartoon character from my long-ago Saturday morning TV watching days, shiver me timbers!

Yes, it’s true, I have lived within about forty miles of this house I now call home for all of my life. And yes, I do know that winter is one of the four seasons that we get here, every single year. I even acknowledge that it is the one season that appears to have the most days in it despite what the calendar may indicate about season parity. As you know, the calendar says winter begins December 21 and ends March 21. I say it’s October to March, inclusive. That’s how it’s been in my mind since reaching adulthood, and I accept that as being a reasonable analysis.

But holy moly, Batman! I have to tell you that these “sub-zero days” as we’ve always called them never get any easier to handle (and yes that is about minus 10 Fahrenheit which was the measuring system that was in place when my brain’s synapses finished forming).

Two days this past week it took our relatively new furnace several hours to heat the house sufficiently for the thermostat in the living room to read 72 degrees. I awoke and then got out of bed at nine a.m. one day and saw that the temperature was 67 degrees. The furnace begins to work toward 72 (from an overnight setting of 65) at about 6:30 am. Now, one is not going to freeze to death in a room that is 67 degrees, Fahrenheit no matter what our inner whining imp wants to claim. By just after noon hour that day, the room was finally at 72. But it wasn’t a “warm” 72. It was, my inner whining imp insisted, a “chilly” 72.

The next day was a repeat performance, except the house was at 72 by ten-thirty. Our poor old house is missing some insulation in some outside walls and needs new weatherstripping for the back door. Now, as we’ve been renovating, we’ve done what we can about that. Also, the plans are in place to, at some point this year, finish insulating, and sheeting, our upstairs. That alone will make a heck of a difference in the building’s ability to retain heat.

In the meantime, however, we have an electric heater in my office, and plenty of blankets and heating pads, otherwise. I have sweaters, and fuzzy socks, and I still have several pairs of “leg warmers”. We even have an electric blanket which is big enough to share, which we haven’t yet resorted to but will, if needs be. We’ll survive just fine. I don’t deal well with being cold, so you can be sure I’ll do whatever is necessary to ensure I’m not cold for any longer than necessary.

However, as much as I truly do not like winter, it is a very good time of year for making comfort food—meatloaf, pot roast, and of course, home made soups, which are staples here these days. It’s good to warm up on the inside as well as on the outside. On Sunday, I created a nice cream of mushroom soup, and that made everyone very toasty and content on the inside.

The numbers of current Covid infections have been coming down slowly in our area, but they are still higher than they were for all of the pandemic prior to December 28, 2021, when this latest surge exploded. They’re still in triple digits and that is just way too high for our not very populated area.

Ontario ended in-restaurant dining a few weeks ago, and I could only shake my head that at that time all other indoor gatherings,  meaning private gatherings, were limited to five people. The reason for my reaction? Well, do you recall that a year ago I mentioned to you that we were going to have a small, very small gathering on the day after Christmas? And then, that was squashed when December 26, 2020 became the day that a long lockdown began here in Ontario. Well, this year, again due to the girls’ work schedules, family Christmas of 2021 was to be celebrated at Sonja’s on January 18^th – which ended up being just into the time during which these latest, new restrictions came into force.

What can you do?  Really, just go with the flow. There won’t be a large crowd that will gather for this, only 7 adults and 1 toddler. All but the baby have been double vaccinated, and 2 are awaiting reaching the six month mark in order to get their boosters. We don’t yet have a revised date for our small celebration, but it’s looking—at this point—like it’ll be sometime in February.

I should note here that the latest we’ve held our “family Christmas” was in April, and that was a few years before anyone had ever heard of Covid-19.

We’re expecting another few inches of snow on the ground before the week’s end. I’m just hoping that it doesn’t all come at once. The last snowfall delayed the pickup of our garbage, to the point that I was asked on Friday by my fellow residents to call the county office about it. I was polite, of course, and I can report that the next day, the problem was resolved satisfactorily.

Lately I’ve been musing that time doesn’t seem to work the same as it used to, and I think that’s because some of the solid, heretofore non-changing elements in all our lives have indeed changed. A friend recently said to me that she’d read an article that claimed we were all suffering, due to the pandemic and to one degree or another, from PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I think she’s absolutely right.

It may get worse before it gets better, but one thing is certain: we are all absolutely in this thing, together. Let’s take some comfort in that.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 January 19, 2022

I know I’ve often waxed damn near rhapsodically about the “good old days”, when the snow was so deep in the wintertime that driving down a plowed country road, one couldn’t see any of the passing scenery because the snowbanks were higher than the car’s windows.

Well, it wasn’t quite that bad on this past Monday morning, but it was close. By the time the plow went down the road clearing off the foot and a bit of snow we received during the night and into the morning, the cold white stuff was piled to a height that came to just at the bottom of the car windows. Fortunately, Monday was our daughter’s regular day off, and she hadn’t planned to go anywhere.

Our grandson had hoped to come by and give us a hand with the snow removal. Unfortunately, his car was snowed in as badly as ours were. David got the snow blower out of the basement mid-morning and slowly began to go to work on the sidewalk and our small walkway. He used the shovel for the porch and the porch steps, as well as a bathroom path in the back yard because the snow was deeper than a couple of our dogs are tall. A friend who also has small dogs coined the phrase, “a path to pee-dom”. Kind of cute.

This snow blower is the only one we’ve ever owned. We bought it several years ago, and while it is electric, it is not self-propelled. It’s large and can be nearly unwieldly if the snow is deep and heavy enough. Using the blower is a bit better than having to use a shovel, but honestly? Neither are easy for my beloved anymore.

The work took a lot out of him, but I could see he felt good that he was able to do that much. He’d planned to wait for our grandson to come and dig out the cars—but that didn’t happen. In the end, since this is house stands on a corner lot, after supper time David used that snow blower once more to clear the area between the side street and the front of our daughter’s car. Hers was parked ahead of ours, so once that area was relatively clean, she was able to drive it out, and park on the plowed side street. Then she did the same with the car that we use as our own. The snow work and car moving was done by about seven in the evening.

Then the next morning, the plow came down early, about six in the morning, and cleared the snow that had been piled up next to our vehicles. When daughter came home at around one yesterday afternoon, she parked in her usual spot and then brought my car back to its place in front of our house (and behind hers). I had been told by both my daughter and my husband that I was not going out in the snow, because it was still deep in a lot of places and really, I would likely have ended up on my ass if I had tried. Since falls are to be avoided at all costs, I gave in to their wishes.

There are times when I want to just say, bugger this getting older crap. In my thirties and forties—before my heart attack—I was quite adept at cleaning off my own car in winter and digging it out if I had to. In fact, there were times in my past when I actually enjoyed the exercise. The country house I grew up in, and that David and I lived in with our children after my mother’s passing, had a driveway that if filmed from about fifty feet up by a drone would look like a hockey stick laying on its side. We all loved that driveway because we could pull in, drive to the end, steer to the right, back up, and then drive forward and park near the back door of the house with our vehicles facing the road, so that leaving again involved no backing up whatsoever. The driveway measured about one hundred feet with the turn around, making it a fairly long one.

And before I was a married woman, and a driver, I was a teen with a shovel and yes, snow days meant I had a shoveling assignment. As long as the driveway was clear by about 3:45 in the afternoon, when Mom came home from work, all was good.

There were a few times when I shoveled the entire length of that sucker in just a few hours. And a few blessed times when one of our neighbors (who owned the quarry and would in the future be my husband’s boss) came down with his loader and cleared that one hundred feet in about ten minutes.

The good old days indeed.

Every snowfall we’ve received this winter prior to the one on Monday has melted away in less than a week. I doubt this lot will be melting anytime soon. But one thing I do know, if I know anything at all is that you really never can judge how long the snow will last or what the weather will be, forecasts be damned. And since I don’t need to leave the house until the first week of February, I guess I’ll just sit back and watch out my window to see what happens next.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 January 12, 2022

I know it’s definitely winter when I dig out the few pairs of thick, dark blue men’s very fuzzy socks that David gave me a couple of years ago. Regular socks worn with high over-the-ankle slippers simply just don’t cut it when it’s deeply cold the way it’s been here the last few days. Thanks to the arthritis, when my ankles get cold, they don’t feel cold to me unless I touch them with my fingers. They just hurt.

I resorted to those socks on Monday when the temperature was “14 Fahrenheit but feels like minus 4.” They absolutely made a difference. I wore them again yesterday and I’m thinking that for the next few days at least, they’re going to be my new best friends.

With the arrival of January comes the return of a some good prime time television programs, so I have more than the option of watching the cable news networks in the evening—theoretically. I’m trying to focus on reading in my off-writing hours, and not watching so many doom-and-gloom cable news presentations. The constant hair-on-fire admonitions can really wear a body down!

When our kids were younger, weekends were a time when we’d head to Blockbuster Video, and each kid would get to pick a movie—and that was how we spent the weekend. We’d watch those movies as a family, and sometimes twice. But in the last, oh, ten years or so, I have lost my taste for watching movies. There are a few I’ve gone to the theater to see (pre-Covid, of course), and a couple I’ve watched since, but at home. But mostly movies just don’t appeal to me anymore. I wish I wanted to watch more movies. With all the streaming services available there are movies galore one could watch and never view a news program again!

In the interest of complete transparency, I must confess that there is currently one exception to that, and it’s not a movie, but a “live capture” of a Broadway play that’s available only on Apple TV plus. I know I’ve mentioned it to y’all in at least one previous essay. The name of the production is “Come From Away”. I’ve watched it, oh, maybe a dozen times since last September. It helps that it’s a musical because I always have loved musicals.

Lately, I’ve been more than a little annoyed with the propensity for people—people who I have to figure were raised better—to lie. And not just to lie to their neighbors and friends, but to the world at large, and on social media. But what I am really annoyed with is the way so many people seem to believe the lies being told. There is an entire massive chunk of the population that has not been blessed with what I consider to be a vital characteristic: discernment.

Discernment is an important attribute/skill/trait to cultivate. You don’t have to be born with it the way you do with a talent for, say, music or writing or making an inviting home. It can be gifted to you, of course, but you can develop it if you have a mind to.

How many of you recall a time when mom or dad would get after you for following along with some lamebrain thing that one of your friends did, with an admonition that sounded like: “And if Ted jumped off a cliff, would you follow him then, too?”

That was your parent’s attempt to help instill discernment within you.

But from what I’m seeing with regard to societal trends especially with regard to social media? There are a whole lot of people lying and a whole lot more folks willing to follow those bad actors off every kind of cliff you can imagine—metaphorically speaking.

Now, I earn my living through the sale of eBooks. I owe a lot to this online medium, this internet, I really do. But there are times when I wonder—would it really be so bad if we suffered a major CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) and this technology went poof?

Of course, that’s just my irritation talking. Since it would, in fact, be bad—there are likely so many everyday things that are built on the back of the internet and its attendant technology that if that went for a dive, we’d all be in very real trouble. So, no, I can’t pray for the internet to vanish just to stop the rabid spread of horse puckey and bull hooey on social media. (Although there is a part of me that wishes I could because, man, that stuff is getting deep.)

Thus, it’s up to me, and me alone to monitor my own intake of mind-waste. And since I do have a healthy sense of discernment, separating the wheat from the chaff in life isn’t a particularly difficult thing for me to do.

It is however—and especially lately—an onerous, boring, never-ending task.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 January 5, 2022

Last Monday marked the 59^th anniversary of my father’s death. I was eight and a half years old at the time. I always think of that as my age then, eight and a half, which is how a child thinks of their age. Adults don’t say I’m sixty-seven and a half years old.

This tells me that when I think of my father, and of his death, I’m back there, in the mind of that child who lost the one parent who would hold her and hug her and tuck her into bed at night. The one who read her stories and craftily slipped her soda and potato chips on a night when she snuck from her bed, certain that everyone was having a party without her. The soda and chips confirmed that long ago four-year-old’s suspicions.

I remember having a discussion with one of my supervisors several years ago. He had lost his father as an adult, and he said that had been the hardest thing he’d ever gone through. Far worse, he proclaimed, to lose a parent when one was an adult as opposed to when one was “only a child”.

I didn’t voice my disagreement with him on that because it wouldn’t have registered with the man.  He was one of those arrogant types who believed that only men truly mattered in life. Yes, there were still some of those in the early 2000s. Probably still are today, but since I am blessed enough to work in a solitary profession, I no longer have to deal with any of them.

I have met some people who’ve never lost a close family member. I think they’re lucky, in some respects, not to know that kind of pain. And by the same token, because it is the truth that all who live must die, I feel sorry for them. They will eventually be devastated by a loss that will cut them to the bone. That will be a new experience for them, and maybe in that regard, my former supervisor was correct.

New experiences are not always as welcome, the older we become.

We’re currently at the end of a several days long cold snap here in my neck of the woods. But even more worrying than that, we, along with just about everyone else on this continent, are in yet another Covid surge. I’ll tell you one thing and it’s this: when the infection numbers get high enough (they are 4 times higher here than they were at their previous all-time high) you rediscover the fear that you first discovered in the beginning of this pandemic two years ago. And you decide that, okay, I can stay home, isolate, keep everyone away, if I have to. No problem!

Of course, we know that we’re relatively safe, because we’ve been vaccinated, and boosted. We know that although catching the virus is possible, that we’re protected from serious illness and death by that vaccine. Still, we don’t wish to go through that if we don’t have to, so we will be careful and just stay the hell home.

David continues to work on his current renovation project. It’s going slowly, and that’s fine with me. He’s put a door into the wall that exists between our bathtub and the outside wall with the window (on the west side of the house). You see, on the other side of this wall, as one is facing south, is (or I should say was) our bedroom closet. When all is done, instead of walking forty-five to fifty steps one way from my bed to the bathroom, I will be able to make the trek in about ten steps.

And looking to the future, the door is wide enough to accommodate my walker, something that the door from the front hallway into the bathroom is not.

Of course, the color scheme of the bathroom is going to be different. Shortly after we moved into this house, about thirty or so years ago, we painted the bathroom. David and a then teenaged Jennifer went to pick out the paint. I had wanted a soft, pastel pink. What we ended up with was a pink so bright that at times I felt I needed to wear sunglasses just to go pee.

This time, we’re thinking of a pastel green. The plan is to have tile board from the floor four feet up, all around the room, and in the shower area, and then paint the color above it. Where we’re at, today? David is going to be putting the dry wall paint onto the new drywall and the parts of the walls that used to be pink but are now wearing a coat of flat white.

He’s still in the process of looking for that tile board, and of course, with new restrictions in place with regard to shopping in this province, it may be some time before we get that. And despite the fact that our preference is for a pastel green on the walls, I did suggest we wait until we get that board purchased and delivered before choosing our final color. Because his original suggestion, that we get just a plain, blinding-white tile board?

My knee-jerk reaction is that’s not going to fly. I told him that sounded far too institutional looking to me. We may end up in an institution some day, but until we do, I can see no reason to live in anticipation of that time yet to come.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury