My consciousness, that is. I was out walking this morning, pondering the universe as it my habit on such excursions. It is a lovely morning and I am on a staycation. My work of late has been so boring that the highlight of my day yesterday was taking the next six days off, which were preceded by four days off. The second highlight of the day was ordering brassieres online. I am so fuxing bored. The database has been sent out to be cleaned and it won't be back in action for a few weeks yet. That is compounded by a server migration this weekend and I just had to run away. So I have been spending my days at work taking online courses in Excel, which I now excel in, and updated suppressed records of records, CDs that is, and adding a note to an item record that...Eureka, I found it! or something like that. What I don't find I add to an Excel spreadsheet and let me tell you it was more excited ordering bras. Now once the database has been cleaned and pressed I will have work up the wazoo. But until then CDs.
What I have discovered in doing these CDs for our Rovi Colleciton (the largest media collection on the planet) is that there is some nice music out there. I can listen to some of the CDs and sample what is out there. The other thing I have discovered is that anyone who can carry a tune (or not in some cases) can put out a CD. Take that you amateur. There are literally hundreds of CDs in each Banker Box and a great deal of it is crap, IMNSHO. This goes back to my ruminations on the cult of the amateur. That everyone gets a trophy for just showing up. That anyone with a tune in their head can records a CD and, by extension, anyone with a thought in their heads can write a blog. Case in point...me. But you are still reading so on I go.
So I am out this a.m. doing a five mile loop around the neighborhood and then some. I walked past my past abode. The street is being torn up. I can't tell you how many time the water lines burst underground on that street and the subsequent repairs. But I digress. My point is the women who lived and still lives under the stairs. She who is a shut in by her own hand. Yes, she goes out to get her hair and nails done but anything else is a struggle with agoraphobia. I was her tech support as long as I was speaking to her. I mention this as when it came time to set a boundary I had to go back to therapy to learn how to "break-up" with her. She was so lonely that both Phyllis and I spent countless hours keeping her company. Phyllis in particular spent every Saturday night with her helping her send back packages to QVC or HSN. She ordered stuff compulsively and just as compulsively sent everything back. I think she had a misguided crush on Brandon the UPS Driver. Phyllis was the first to break off with her and I followed her lead about three months later. She was and is crazy and demanding and was one of the reasons I moved from the dorm the condo had turned into. This is one of my ponders this morning. She was quite ill, both mentally and physically, and her health was declining. I can't tell you how many times she would call crying hysterically over some misplaced item or emotion. I don't miss her just wonder what has become of her.
Getting ready for another walk. I have been getting in close to nine miles a day and have been topping Dan's pace. The next walk to to meet a buddy for lunch. Crunchy's, a good burger joint. I think I may be predisposed to stop at Biggby's and get a mango freeze which is not unlike a smoothie. I love mango and all this walking has made me thirsty. Or I may go after my lovely session of reflexology this afternoon.
I started getting weekly sessions with the reflexologist when I was panicking over the new house and had almost instant buyer's remorse as I looked at the interior of the house stripped bare of furnishings and in some cases the walls. I continue to get these sessions as, well, they feel so damn good. It has been helpful for me psychically and physically so I continue to get them.
So today is just a wonderful day. Five miles in before 9:00 a.m., fresh flowers on the table, lunch with a good friend, a mango freeze, reflexology and another post reflexology walk. Yes this is much better than appending "Rovi found" to item records. Still next Tuesday I will have to return to the salt mines and add those notes to the thousands of item records. Maybe when the boss returns from China we can begin processing those fifty-nine reports that we requested on the 8.3 million bibliographic record database we sent out for cleaning. Does the name Sisyphus ring a bell?
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
Thursday, June 23, 2016
The hoarder and me
In one of my many guises I provide tech support for friends. As founder of Capitol City Informatics I am endeavoring to turn that guise into profit. So with that in mind, I confess to being afraid, being very afraid, of my next assignment. I have to set up a wireless connection on a laptop at an acquaintance's house and download Windows 10 and this person in a hoarder. There is nary a place to sit down in the townhouse, much less swing a dead cat. And I wouldn't be surprise that along with all the other clutter there was in fact a dead cat. If it were I and I lived among such clutter I would be embarrassed to have another soul see my clutter. But she is afraid to de-clutter and is constantly gaining more clutter (Damn you Dollar General, 5 Below and all those other similar stores). She even tries to clutter my life with the detritus of her life. And since I have helped her in the past she expects me on Monday to set her up.
I started Capitol City Informatics to provide gentle technical support for the technologically challenged, hoping to turn a avocation to a vocation in my golden years or retirement, whichever comes first. I have all manner of computers, tablets and smart phones, a regular Techno-Slut am I. I can work in any given operating system and provide hands-on guidance. I don't merely show people how to do something, I guide them through it until they feel confident doing it themselves. I like to say I provide information technology with a human touch; in fact that is the verso of my business card. I have bookmarks, magnetic calendars, pens and so on. Bumper stickers should be issued.
My challenge has always been to let people see what they are capable of and letting them do it. This hoarder is a huge challenge and I confess to being a little, alright more than a little, passive aggressive with her. That is also my challenge. Being bipolar I never know if my initial reactions are overreactions of the psyche. I am afraid of "going off" on someone because of misfiring neurons. So generally speaking I tolerate fools gladly, even when that is the last thing I wish to do. The Hoarder, as she is now such, also expects me to know all her passwords and calls me at odd hours to get on her tablet when she has lost her connection and doesn't know how to reconnect. I have gently guided her through this process time and again, even getting a specific tablet to help her. It's maddening.
But I have set myself up as a functional expert and when I lose it I lose it big. So just going to her townhouse is going to be very stressful. She'd like me to come right away but I have a gig at the synagogue tomorrow night and that is causing me some anxiety so I put her off until Monday which I have off but the last thing I want to do is set-up a computer in the midst of that chaos. I'd like to have a few days to myself to rest and not be around people, much less clutter. I have been on the go for the last two weeks. I require some downtime.
The same is true of the Old Duffer. Passive aggressive am I. I bought him a new guitar tuner in the hopes that he could actually tune his guitar and keep it in tune. I have such great expectations. I try to gently tell him things about music but he puts on his professorial demeanor and runs roughshod over me. So I end up sending messages to the rabbi that say things like "just kill me...he is just killing me". Of course the rabbi is concerned and really he is the last person you should ask to kill you because the Old Duffer is making me miserable again and I lack the testicularity to say NO. I can't say no to anyone.
I seem to have problems setting boundaries which I attribute to the bipolar and my fear of over-reacting. So I just don't say no to anyone. That is ultimately what drove me back to therapy in the first place; the inability to set clear and healthy boundaries. Such was the case when I lived in the condo and the whole complex seemed not unlike a dorm with people pulling on me in all directions. I did get out of that situation but the problem remains. Two Old Duffers, one Hoarder and all manner of people to help.
And so it goes.
I started Capitol City Informatics to provide gentle technical support for the technologically challenged, hoping to turn a avocation to a vocation in my golden years or retirement, whichever comes first. I have all manner of computers, tablets and smart phones, a regular Techno-Slut am I. I can work in any given operating system and provide hands-on guidance. I don't merely show people how to do something, I guide them through it until they feel confident doing it themselves. I like to say I provide information technology with a human touch; in fact that is the verso of my business card. I have bookmarks, magnetic calendars, pens and so on. Bumper stickers should be issued.
My challenge has always been to let people see what they are capable of and letting them do it. This hoarder is a huge challenge and I confess to being a little, alright more than a little, passive aggressive with her. That is also my challenge. Being bipolar I never know if my initial reactions are overreactions of the psyche. I am afraid of "going off" on someone because of misfiring neurons. So generally speaking I tolerate fools gladly, even when that is the last thing I wish to do. The Hoarder, as she is now such, also expects me to know all her passwords and calls me at odd hours to get on her tablet when she has lost her connection and doesn't know how to reconnect. I have gently guided her through this process time and again, even getting a specific tablet to help her. It's maddening.
But I have set myself up as a functional expert and when I lose it I lose it big. So just going to her townhouse is going to be very stressful. She'd like me to come right away but I have a gig at the synagogue tomorrow night and that is causing me some anxiety so I put her off until Monday which I have off but the last thing I want to do is set-up a computer in the midst of that chaos. I'd like to have a few days to myself to rest and not be around people, much less clutter. I have been on the go for the last two weeks. I require some downtime.
The same is true of the Old Duffer. Passive aggressive am I. I bought him a new guitar tuner in the hopes that he could actually tune his guitar and keep it in tune. I have such great expectations. I try to gently tell him things about music but he puts on his professorial demeanor and runs roughshod over me. So I end up sending messages to the rabbi that say things like "just kill me...he is just killing me". Of course the rabbi is concerned and really he is the last person you should ask to kill you because the Old Duffer is making me miserable again and I lack the testicularity to say NO. I can't say no to anyone.
I seem to have problems setting boundaries which I attribute to the bipolar and my fear of over-reacting. So I just don't say no to anyone. That is ultimately what drove me back to therapy in the first place; the inability to set clear and healthy boundaries. Such was the case when I lived in the condo and the whole complex seemed not unlike a dorm with people pulling on me in all directions. I did get out of that situation but the problem remains. Two Old Duffers, one Hoarder and all manner of people to help.
And so it goes.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Today being the eve
Of my 62nd birthday I thought I might be a tad less reflective than usual. Oh, who am I kidding? Time for some birthday angst.
As I reflect on 62 summers gone past I must say that, aside from the broken leg of last summer (and even that had some positive moments as I finally let some people take care of me) I don't recall a period of time when I have been happier. Ah, the pleasant joy of owning a home. The puttering (did I neglect to mention I had two Xhose (those fabric lightweight hoses) burst on me Wednesday night necessitating a trip to the Ace Hardware wherein I purchased a heavy vinyl hose and lugged it home under my own limited powers only to have a neighbor offer up a hose (another Xhose) for keeps) in the yard. The vines of tomatoes offering themselves up to the sun and producing a mountain of marinara in return. My roses, my hydrangeas and all the other lovely plant life that makes the house a home. The cats seem to be thriving in the new abode. Simcha, the youngest, under whose ass you could set off a firecracker when he is sleeping and not get a rise out of him. Yankel, the behemoth and gentle giant, who is terrified of thunderstorms and takes shelter in the bathroom. And Gonif, the little guy who stole my heart, the beauty of an Ocicat, whose sensibilities are so tender that he is alert to my levels of distress, which, thankfully, are getting fewer and fewer. All these boys who sleep on the bed with me at night, at least when there is no thunderstorms.
And, as I teeter on the edge of 62 I have mortality issues. Looking back on wasted time and just being wasted. Looking back on sadness. My inability to let go of some past issues and move on. Why the hell was I so immobile that I could not move out of a home with a partner even after finding out how unfaithful they could be? Why I couldn't let go of mother issues long after she passed. Even now I hear her voice admonishing me for not calling more often (it's a collect call to wherever). My parents were so young when they had me. When I was 21 and about to graduate from college my dad was 44 and mom was 41. I recall now what a jerk I was at that age and finally cut them some emotional slack.
I recall a summer road trip to Florida (doesn't everybody go there in the summer?). We drove down in a Plymouth which my dad had outfitted with seat belts shortly before we left on the trip. I was 7. I had discovered the night before we left that I could "hear" myself think...As in "I think, therefore I am"...I spent much of the trip in my head enjoying the process of consciousness and an internal dialogue. I spent the rest of the trip wondering, as we weaved through mountain roads in Kentucky, that we were going to fall off the edge of the world. These thoughts I only shared with myself. Now, looking ahead, it is like that road in Kentucky: overlooking an abyss and hoping I don't fall off the edge of the world. At least not right now...another moment please. On that trip my dad bought me a live starfish which was in a plastic bag full of water. It disintegrated right before my eyes as we drove back. What else was it to do without food and more creature comforts. And my father full of whimsy, thinking what great sport it was to mess with my head when we were touring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Me, worried at 7 that the ceiling was going to come crashing down upon my head and dad's booming voice trying to make it so. Way to mess with a young one's mind...especially as she had discovered consciousness. Conscience would come later.
So now I have looked back and now I must look forward as that is the only way ahead. But they say the past is merely prologue. And that I believe to be true. I must process some ultimate truths in my head, like I do, like I do. Ii still am having that internal dialogue which I produce on these pages as if someone might be interested in what I have to say. What I really should do is forgive myself for the past and move on. For all those intolerable moments that come creeping up on me at night and haunt me so...just let them go. Maybe the lesson I have learned over time is that to be gentle with myself as well as others. Yes the past is prologue and it has gotten me to this point.
As Buzz would say "To infinity and beyond". And what a strange and beautiful trip it will be.
As I reflect on 62 summers gone past I must say that, aside from the broken leg of last summer (and even that had some positive moments as I finally let some people take care of me) I don't recall a period of time when I have been happier. Ah, the pleasant joy of owning a home. The puttering (did I neglect to mention I had two Xhose (those fabric lightweight hoses) burst on me Wednesday night necessitating a trip to the Ace Hardware wherein I purchased a heavy vinyl hose and lugged it home under my own limited powers only to have a neighbor offer up a hose (another Xhose) for keeps) in the yard. The vines of tomatoes offering themselves up to the sun and producing a mountain of marinara in return. My roses, my hydrangeas and all the other lovely plant life that makes the house a home. The cats seem to be thriving in the new abode. Simcha, the youngest, under whose ass you could set off a firecracker when he is sleeping and not get a rise out of him. Yankel, the behemoth and gentle giant, who is terrified of thunderstorms and takes shelter in the bathroom. And Gonif, the little guy who stole my heart, the beauty of an Ocicat, whose sensibilities are so tender that he is alert to my levels of distress, which, thankfully, are getting fewer and fewer. All these boys who sleep on the bed with me at night, at least when there is no thunderstorms.
And, as I teeter on the edge of 62 I have mortality issues. Looking back on wasted time and just being wasted. Looking back on sadness. My inability to let go of some past issues and move on. Why the hell was I so immobile that I could not move out of a home with a partner even after finding out how unfaithful they could be? Why I couldn't let go of mother issues long after she passed. Even now I hear her voice admonishing me for not calling more often (it's a collect call to wherever). My parents were so young when they had me. When I was 21 and about to graduate from college my dad was 44 and mom was 41. I recall now what a jerk I was at that age and finally cut them some emotional slack.
I recall a summer road trip to Florida (doesn't everybody go there in the summer?). We drove down in a Plymouth which my dad had outfitted with seat belts shortly before we left on the trip. I was 7. I had discovered the night before we left that I could "hear" myself think...As in "I think, therefore I am"...I spent much of the trip in my head enjoying the process of consciousness and an internal dialogue. I spent the rest of the trip wondering, as we weaved through mountain roads in Kentucky, that we were going to fall off the edge of the world. These thoughts I only shared with myself. Now, looking ahead, it is like that road in Kentucky: overlooking an abyss and hoping I don't fall off the edge of the world. At least not right now...another moment please. On that trip my dad bought me a live starfish which was in a plastic bag full of water. It disintegrated right before my eyes as we drove back. What else was it to do without food and more creature comforts. And my father full of whimsy, thinking what great sport it was to mess with my head when we were touring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Me, worried at 7 that the ceiling was going to come crashing down upon my head and dad's booming voice trying to make it so. Way to mess with a young one's mind...especially as she had discovered consciousness. Conscience would come later.
So now I have looked back and now I must look forward as that is the only way ahead. But they say the past is merely prologue. And that I believe to be true. I must process some ultimate truths in my head, like I do, like I do. Ii still am having that internal dialogue which I produce on these pages as if someone might be interested in what I have to say. What I really should do is forgive myself for the past and move on. For all those intolerable moments that come creeping up on me at night and haunt me so...just let them go. Maybe the lesson I have learned over time is that to be gentle with myself as well as others. Yes the past is prologue and it has gotten me to this point.
As Buzz would say "To infinity and beyond". And what a strange and beautiful trip it will be.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
The thigh bone connected to the hip bone...
Twelve years ago my left hip managed to fracture itself after a prolonged period of time on Prednisone. Seems that stuff causes osteoporosis, which it did in my case causing the hip to shatter one Sunday night and my having to crawl to my couch from my kitchen, a journey of fifteen feet which took over two hours. The good doctor decided that at 50 I didn't require a hip replacement so he put four very looooooong screws in place. I was off of work for six weeks and rehabbing for another few weeks after that. Fast forward those twelve years and I now have a lovely cyst surrounding those screws and both will have to come out. Putz is what he was and who. The pain from the break was the worse pain I have ever experienced and the morphine drip did little to cut the pain levels.
Now with the cyst it hurts to walk; not like it did before but enough to make me gimpy. A CT scan has been ordered and the next step is up to the new orthopod, the good doctor with the impossible to pronounce last name. He did show me the x-rays and I thought I had a white spot on my hip but it proved to be the mouse pointer. I did however see the cyst surrounding the screws, those mighty screws, and right now he feels like it might be better to take the screws out and fill the holes with super bone gel and get rid of the cyst altogether. I am on board with that idea but wonder how long I will be sidelined. So as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to opine "it's always something".
Other than that I am having a lovely week. Bored at work without my traditional authority work to do, waiting for some records to be loaded, I fill my days with computer courses and unmulvering records that should have never been mulvered in the first place (sorry for the specific library jargon). It is mind numbing work and I live for the afternoons when I can take those online courses. And walks. But with the ache in my hip I have to push myself to walk. I did get a steroid injection in the offending hip yesterday but the groin ache is still present. But walk I will. I barely got in five miles yesterday but I did. Not the ten miles I was able to do Sunday but at least the five. And that on a gimpy leg. Call me Sore-us Gimp. No, call me Ishmael. I see a wail in my future.
Now with the cyst it hurts to walk; not like it did before but enough to make me gimpy. A CT scan has been ordered and the next step is up to the new orthopod, the good doctor with the impossible to pronounce last name. He did show me the x-rays and I thought I had a white spot on my hip but it proved to be the mouse pointer. I did however see the cyst surrounding the screws, those mighty screws, and right now he feels like it might be better to take the screws out and fill the holes with super bone gel and get rid of the cyst altogether. I am on board with that idea but wonder how long I will be sidelined. So as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to opine "it's always something".
Other than that I am having a lovely week. Bored at work without my traditional authority work to do, waiting for some records to be loaded, I fill my days with computer courses and unmulvering records that should have never been mulvered in the first place (sorry for the specific library jargon). It is mind numbing work and I live for the afternoons when I can take those online courses. And walks. But with the ache in my hip I have to push myself to walk. I did get a steroid injection in the offending hip yesterday but the groin ache is still present. But walk I will. I barely got in five miles yesterday but I did. Not the ten miles I was able to do Sunday but at least the five. And that on a gimpy leg. Call me Sore-us Gimp. No, call me Ishmael. I see a wail in my future.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Today
And I was just thinking...Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Geez, I thought I came up with that gem but no, it was Dale Honest-to-God Carnegie. Next I suppose I will find out that my dad's gem "To be a king is not worth it" was spoke or spake by someone of the same ilk. I have Googled both and can only find the quote by Dale Honest-to-God Carnegie. So maybe my dad was an original thinker. But I do so enjoy Mel Brooks who once opined "it is good to be king" and I tend to follow that line of thinking more. My dad was not an uber achiever so I can well believe his catchphrase of not being king was his way of minimizing the hurt of not being more than a Willie Loman-type salesman and I his Biff.
I was playing guitar with the original Old Duffer 1.0 and as he was leaving he was telling me his children were estranged from he and his wife. I was on the other side of this fence as I was once estranged from my parents, or rather my mother, who had no gems of her own other than what she wore. Her line that "she gave me life and she could take it away..." scared the hell out of me but then I found out this was somehow against the law and she couldn't or wouldn't do that and by the time I was 16 I was really a psychotic mess. So when I left for graduate school in 1976 I rarely went home after that. My mother had a breakdown the first semester I was gone and was hospitalized. I came home to be with dad and my mother's mother only to find out mom had checked herself out of rehab AMA to be with me. She was an awful sloppy drunk and for years I never went home. I would on occasion sneak home to see my grandmother and her sisters but not the parental units. And my mother refused to come up to see me as the mountain should come to Mohammad on those occasions.
Mother died in 1994 at age 59. I was a mere child of 39. My dad and I had ten good years together after that. He would come up to visit this mountain at least four times a year. When I had surgery for cancer he delayed his own cancer surgery to nurse me back to health. He died of cancer that following year. But, as I said, we had ten good years together. That is not to say I wasn't a bit abrasive to him at times, a little bitchy as it were. And, yes, I regret that. But I digress.
Old Duffer 1.0 is estranged from his two children. Maybe that is why he feels a bond towards me. Someone to play with and commiserate with. Or, maybe, just maybe, he is in cahoots with the rabbi and it is a ploy to bring me more firmly into the fold of the congregation. Whatever. The Old Duffer 1.0 is saddened by his children so if I can help to explicate the estrangement from the child's point of view maybe that will ease his pain. Old Duffer and Mrs. Old Duffer are lovely people but I can see how the professorial Old Duffer might be an annoyance. It takes all my patience and good will to suck it up and play with him for two hours at a stretch. Now he wants me to join he and his wife at the community sings and play along with Mitch, or rather Sally. I doubt that will happen this month but maybe in the future.
Actually they want me to play and that is a compliment of sorts. But the mere thought of listening to others flail at the sing-along makes me quake. I think this month this orphan of the storm has too much going on to engage with these good folks. But the thought, just the thought, of doing this and giving up my childish things and joining the ranks of Duffers leaves me cold.
I do attract the Old Duffers of the world. Mrs. Shankland across the way, or street as it were, has bonded to me on a strange mother/daughter sort of way. She constantly comes over and checks out my garden and gives me extended visits where she talks non-stop about things that interest her, like Old Duffer 1.0 and I, like a good child, cajole and listen. And such is the nature of my relationships with the Old Duffers of the universe. To cajole and listen raptly.
I suppose this makes of me an Old Duffer aficionado. I do so loves me a good Old Duffer. My dad was a premature Old Duffer and really grew into the role when we spent a few weeks together in my tiny condo as he stayed with me post kidney surgery. That last six months when we both had cancer diagnoses was the closest we had been in a long time. Not since those summers when he beat me at tennis as he refused to chase the ball and insisted that I hit it back to him without reciprocity were good years. And I last time I saw him I think I had a foreshadowing of his passing, which he did a few weeks later. I knew when the neighbor called me that Monday night that he was gone, even before she found him laying dead in the family manse.
And now I have Old Duffer 1.0 once a week, grooming me for the community sings. Gotta love Old Duffers.
I was playing guitar with the original Old Duffer 1.0 and as he was leaving he was telling me his children were estranged from he and his wife. I was on the other side of this fence as I was once estranged from my parents, or rather my mother, who had no gems of her own other than what she wore. Her line that "she gave me life and she could take it away..." scared the hell out of me but then I found out this was somehow against the law and she couldn't or wouldn't do that and by the time I was 16 I was really a psychotic mess. So when I left for graduate school in 1976 I rarely went home after that. My mother had a breakdown the first semester I was gone and was hospitalized. I came home to be with dad and my mother's mother only to find out mom had checked herself out of rehab AMA to be with me. She was an awful sloppy drunk and for years I never went home. I would on occasion sneak home to see my grandmother and her sisters but not the parental units. And my mother refused to come up to see me as the mountain should come to Mohammad on those occasions.
Mother died in 1994 at age 59. I was a mere child of 39. My dad and I had ten good years together after that. He would come up to visit this mountain at least four times a year. When I had surgery for cancer he delayed his own cancer surgery to nurse me back to health. He died of cancer that following year. But, as I said, we had ten good years together. That is not to say I wasn't a bit abrasive to him at times, a little bitchy as it were. And, yes, I regret that. But I digress.
Old Duffer 1.0 is estranged from his two children. Maybe that is why he feels a bond towards me. Someone to play with and commiserate with. Or, maybe, just maybe, he is in cahoots with the rabbi and it is a ploy to bring me more firmly into the fold of the congregation. Whatever. The Old Duffer 1.0 is saddened by his children so if I can help to explicate the estrangement from the child's point of view maybe that will ease his pain. Old Duffer and Mrs. Old Duffer are lovely people but I can see how the professorial Old Duffer might be an annoyance. It takes all my patience and good will to suck it up and play with him for two hours at a stretch. Now he wants me to join he and his wife at the community sings and play along with Mitch, or rather Sally. I doubt that will happen this month but maybe in the future.
Actually they want me to play and that is a compliment of sorts. But the mere thought of listening to others flail at the sing-along makes me quake. I think this month this orphan of the storm has too much going on to engage with these good folks. But the thought, just the thought, of doing this and giving up my childish things and joining the ranks of Duffers leaves me cold.
I do attract the Old Duffers of the world. Mrs. Shankland across the way, or street as it were, has bonded to me on a strange mother/daughter sort of way. She constantly comes over and checks out my garden and gives me extended visits where she talks non-stop about things that interest her, like Old Duffer 1.0 and I, like a good child, cajole and listen. And such is the nature of my relationships with the Old Duffers of the universe. To cajole and listen raptly.
I suppose this makes of me an Old Duffer aficionado. I do so loves me a good Old Duffer. My dad was a premature Old Duffer and really grew into the role when we spent a few weeks together in my tiny condo as he stayed with me post kidney surgery. That last six months when we both had cancer diagnoses was the closest we had been in a long time. Not since those summers when he beat me at tennis as he refused to chase the ball and insisted that I hit it back to him without reciprocity were good years. And I last time I saw him I think I had a foreshadowing of his passing, which he did a few weeks later. I knew when the neighbor called me that Monday night that he was gone, even before she found him laying dead in the family manse.
And now I have Old Duffer 1.0 once a week, grooming me for the community sings. Gotta love Old Duffers.
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