house | Bertram's Blog

Open Sesame

July 16, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Oh, frabjous day! So, I’m mixing my quotes — Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Jabberwocky — but I don’t care. My garage opener has been installed!

No more struggling with a car cover, no more sweating out storms to make sure my car doesn’t sustain any damage (as if even a bucket of my sweat would stay a single hailstone or slow so much as a gust of wind), no more announcing my away-from-home status by the absence of the vehicle. The bug is snug in its beautiful new home, and oh, how wonderful is modern day magic! I don’t have to say open sesame or crack a sound. All I do is press a button and . . . presto. The door opens by magic.

And the magic is all mine.

The wonderful magician who installed this magic apparatus understands me well — he double bolted the mechanism to two different trusses to make sure there is no way it will ever fall on my car. (Worrier that I am, that thought did cross my mind and even my lips.)

Sometimes I worry that I’m getting too caught up in the things of my current life, but how I can I not? It’s all so magical. Water comes to me with a twist of a knob. Wastes are washed away with the touch of a finger. Foods heat up without a flame. My non-nomadic abode requires no effort to put up or take down — it stays put. And the sturdy walls protect me from the elements and even provide my own microclimate.

Magic for sure!

When the installer left today, I took a short ride for no other reason than the thrill of opening and closing the door. The creepy, thieving, drug-dealing, loud-music-playing neighbor took that very moment to wander down the alley, which made me especially glad about the secure garage. It made me nervous at first, his seeing inside the garage, but maybe it’s for the best. This way he knows that he can’t easily get to anything in the building.

It would be nice if everyone in the neighborhood was as trustworthy as the rest of my neighbors, but I suppose any magic kingdom needs its trolls and trollocs, its devil toads and poison mushrooms, its evil minions. At least my nemesis is only human. But I’m straying from the point. Or not. After all, I’m talking about magic, and that includes the protective spells of locked gates and secure buildings that keep the crone safe.

Yep. Magic.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in home, house, life. Tags: building a garage, creepy neighbor, double bolting a garage door opener, garage door opener, getting caught up in things, providing my own microclimate, the magic of modern day living. 6 Comments »

Where I Want to Be

July 13, 2020 — Pat Bertram

A friend is on vacation, spending a week with her family in the mountains. I felt a twinge of envy when she told me, and then it dawned on me: I am where I want to be. I don’t need to go anywhere to find respite from life’s hassles or even from the heat. I have arrived at my place of respite.

It’s a nice realization to have made. For almost a decade, I didn’t want to be where I was but I had nowhere to go, no way even to decide where to go so I rented rooms and wandered, both on foot and in the car. I thought that’s what I wanted — a nomadic life — and I suppose, at the time, it’s what I needed.

And now I need something else.

If I were young, I’d probably have continued to embrace that sort of uncertainty because there is security to be found when one is comfortable with uncertainty in an uncertain world. There is still uncertainty in this new world of mine of course. There is always uncertainty, and it’s hard not to worry about being able to sustain this lifestyle. (I act as if I am financially sound, which is far from the truth.) But a person does need a place to live, and when one is on the cusp of elderliness, one needs a safe place to live.

That is what I am trying to create here — a safe place for the elder me. And, when I keep my worries where they belong — out of my head — I know I am doing the right thing.

Today’s tarot pick was probably the most apropos of the cards I’ve picked this month. I didn’t ask what I needed to know as I usually do. I just picked and, interestingly, it answered the question that concerned me yesterday about the wisdom of continuing to fix existing problems in and around the house considering that any money I spend now is money I won’t be able to live on later.

But the card, the ten of pentacles, says that everything I put my efforts into now will pay off in the future. It also says that everything will work out well in the end because I have always kept the long term in view. Other sources say this card is about seeking permanence, feeling secure as things are, creating a lasting foundation.

Although I’m not sure how much I believe in the cards, I do find comfort in finding this external assurance of my internal feelings.

At least it will help me keep the worries at bay and allow me to find enjoyment in creating a home for myself today and the self I will be tomorrow.

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Posted in home, house, life. Tags: creating a home, embracing uncertainty, feeling safe in my house, fixing up a house for an older person, my house, tarot card, ten of pentacles, trying not to worry. 5 Comments »

Snug as a Bug in a . . .

July 11, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Snug as a bug in a rug, you might be thinking, but no. Today the saying is: snug as a bug in a . . . garage!!!!

Look at that happy little car.

The opener hasn’t been installed yet so the door has to be opened manually, and the gravel hasn’t been laid in front of the apron so there was a bit of an impediment getting the car into the garage, and there are a few other minor things that need to be done, but the garage is otherwise finished. I’ll have to move the car when the builders come back so they can put on the finishing touches, but meantime, I’m delighted to have the poor thing out of the brutal sun. And wow, it’s been brutal. I had to turn on the air conditioner at 9:00am this morning just to be able to breathe. Luckily I have an air conditioner. (And grateful am I for that comfort!)

Even though the contractor volunteered to move my storage into the garage, I’ve been feeling guilty about lolling around while other people do the work, so I got started on the task this morning. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I overdid it a bit, but I’ll be taking it easy the rest of the day. I might be able to finish tomorrow if I haven’t redamaged my knee. Except for sorting through the conglomeration of things, it should be easy — I did all the heavy lifting today.

So, not only do I have my car in the garage, I also have all the boxes of storage items out of my house. The boxes that aren’t in the garage are in the enclosed porch, which is part of the house, but not. For as much work that has been done back there, and for as functional and attractive as the area is, it still has a porchy feel. But soon I’ll be able to reclaim even that room. Then, finally, I will be completely moved in.

And I’ll be as snug as my bug.

***

Posted in home, house, life. Tags: building a garage, enclosed porch, grateful for air conditioning, happy VW bug, moving in, new garage, snug as a bug. 2 Comments »

Getting Closer!

July 9, 2020 — Pat Bertram

The garage is mostly painted, and the shelves built. I might have had to wait for the shelves a bit longer, but the poor worker got tired of moving the heavy shipping boxes around, and since he found out he was the one who would have to build the shelves, he went ahead and put them together.

It’s amazing to me the things that people who know how to do things can do. A connecting part was missing, and he managed to find a way to bolt the two parts of the standards together. A new part has been ordered, but there’s a chance it will never be used because if there is one thing I have learned in life it’s that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary solution.

I’ve tried not to get too excited about the garage since it’s been taking so long, but now that it’s nearing completion and the time for moving my car in is getting closer, I find myself getting excited. Who knew I’d ever want a “dream garage”? But that’s what I’m getting.

It will be good to have a home for my stuff, too. Maybe when I see the totality of it, I’ll find a way to whittle it down. On the other hand, I have shelves! I might as well fill them. I know the current philosophy is that if you haven’t used anything in a year, it should be gotten rid of, but some things make me smile even if I don’t use them, and other things are left over from a previous life (lifestyle?) and someday I might find myself back in that same mindset. I figure that even though I’m getting closer to elderlihoodness, I don’t really have to downsize for old age’s sake for several more years. I can wait until I’m a middling elderly rather than a young elderly. By the time I’m an old elderly, I should be down to just what I can use. Or not. After all, I’m not the one who has to get rid of everything when I’m gone because I’ll be . . . gone.

Odd how sometimes practicality has a rather morbid quality, and today is not a day for planning the end, but planning a new beginning. And I am getting closer to my first garage. My own garage. Surely something to celebrate!

I celebrated with a delicious meal of home-grown bacon and fresh farm eggs, a gift from my contractor. I have a hunch he’s getting excited about the project being finished, too. But, there will be other projects . . .

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Posted in home, house, life. Tags: middling elderly, my dream garage, my first garage, nothing so permanent as a temporary solution, old elderly, shelves for garage, young elderly. 7 Comments »

Nature’s Fireworks

July 5, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Last night I went outside for a bit to watch nature’s fireworks — the immense show of lightning that so often shows up on July fourth in Colorado. Standing there in the unearthly light, I was reminded of another time I watched the show. It was decades ago. I stood on the roof of the apartment building in Denver where I lived, and watched the far-off jagged lines of light.

It seems odd to think of that young woman and all she hadn’t yet experienced. All that she couldn’t even have imagined that would eventually happen to her. I think it was right before I met Jeff, so he wasn’t even in the picture. Our life together, our great cosmic connection, was on the horizon, but she hadn’t an inkling.

In fact, she didn’t think she’d be alive much longer. When she was young, she could project herself into the future, but that future always ended when she was twenty-five. No matter how she tried, she could never imagine her life after that. She thought it meant she would die that year, but instead, it meant she would come alive because that was the year she met Jeff. It makes sense to me now, that lack of any sense of the future, because how could she have projected herself into a future she couldn’t ever have imagined?

She couldn’t have imagined any of her life with Jeff. She couldn’t have imagined — though she dreamed — that she would learn to write and would become a published author. She couldn’t imagine how much something called a blog would mean to her (back then, there wasn’t even a hint of such a personal use for the computers that were just coming into renown).

She couldn’t have imagined Jeff’s death and the grief that would all but destroy her before it rebuilt her. She couldn’t have imagined that anything would ever get her to take care of her father when he got old — it was the one thing she was determined she would never do. (Even at a young age, I knew I was the “designated daughter,” and Jeff saved me from that. For a while, anyway. But fate came calling.) She couldn’t have imagined living in California and especially not in the desert — she never liked California, and she hated the heat. And she could never have imagined finding peace and hope in the desert, or taking dance classes, or making so many friends. She never imagined that two of her brothers and both parents would die. (Though logically, she knew her parents would die at some point, but they were still in their middle years and a long way from the end, so she never thought about it.)

She could never have imagined traveling by herself, camping by herself, hiking and backpacking by herself. She could never even imagine having the self-confidence and courage and boldness such adventures would demand.

And especially, she could never have imagined owning a house.

All that was in her future, and it seems so strange that the young woman standing on the roof watching the lightning storm hadn’t even a glimmer that any of those momentous things would occur.

And yet, there I was last night, on the other end of that life, looking at what seemed the same storm, and knowing all that the young woman would experience.

Suddenly, the sounds of a war zone brought that reverie to an end. I had never lived anyplace where fireworks were legal, and oh, my — hours and hours of the sound of gunfire all around me. At one point, I looked out the back door because it seemed to me as if the sounds were coming from my yard, and I was shocked to see huge falls of sparks landing on my garage and house from the fireworks nearby neighbors had set off. Luckily, the long dry months had come to an end a couple of hours earlier, so there was no danger, but it still made me nervous.

Today, although all is sodden, it’s quiet. The war is over. The lightning that brought the flash of memory has receded into the past.

Or into the future.

Next year, or the year after, or ten years from now, perhaps I will again watch nature’s fireworks on the fourth, and I will be marveling at happenings I can’t imagine today.

***

Posted in house, life. Tags: designated daughter, experiencing grief, imagining the future, in the future, life experiences, lightning, lightning show, remembering the past. 4 Comments »

The Joy of Fences

July 3, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I don’t like being fenced in by ideas, by people, by expectations, but I love being fenced in by . . . fences.

I had my whole property fenced in before we realized that the old garage was not much good for anything, not even a shed, and that it would have to come down.

Then, when the shock wore off, I reluctantly let go of my travel funds because I decided that a garage was more important than that one last epic road trip. So most of the fence along the alley had to be ripped out. Not that the fence did anything to keep out trespassers — one snowy morning I woke up to find shoe prints all over my yard. A lock on the gate took care of that problem, but then, so did the fence being gone. If there was no gate, of course there would be no gate for people to open. (A joke of sorts.)

For all these months of construction (or rather, non-construction), I used blue plastic fencing, similar to the blaze orange fencing used at some construction sites, to block off access. It was more of a psychological barrier (at least, I hoped so) rather than a physical barrier because the stuff is rather flimsy. Luckily, there have been no snow storms, so I didn’t have to be frantic about trespassers since I could see no sign of them, though dogs did worry me. Too many the people in the vicinity don’t walk their dogs — they just turn them loose to do their business. It’s bad enough when the dogs are ankle biters, but pit bulls? Yikes.

But yay! Today, the fence was reinstalled. Instead of the fence going straight across the alley as it once did, it now jogs in toward the garage, giving me a huge area to pull into my garage or even a parking space if necessary.

But sigh. I’m still not able to use the garage. It’s getting there, though. The attic insulation is in, the ceiling is up. Wall insulation and OSB boards have been delivered, as well as the garage door opener but have not yet been installed. (One guy has been doing most of the finishing work by himself, and there is no way he can install the opener without a helper.)

Meantime, I am grateful for the gift of this day and will enjoy being fenced in.

***

Posted in house, life. Tags: building a garage, fence me in, finding footprints in my yard, installed fence, letting dogs run loose, love of fences, temporary fence, trespassers. 4 Comments »

Leaving Well Enough Alone

June 20, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m one of those people who can’t leave well enough alone. In fact, until just now, writing “well enough,” I didn’t even understand what those words mean. Well, yes, of course I knew what they mean, but it’s such a common phrase that I’ve never actually stopped to contemplate the meaning in that particular construct.

“Well enough” is good enough for most projects, though I never aim for such a low expectation. Although I tend to aim for perfection, I am willing to settle for something a bit less. The problems come in deciding what that “less” is. If something offends my sense of balance or perspective, for example, I keep trying to even things out until . . . oops. I go too far in the other direction and have to scrap the whole project. For the most part, I’ve learned to do one attempt at fixing whatever it is that bothers me, and then let it go.

But I couldn’t let my bench project go (the design seemed wrong, somehow), and I didn’t want to ruin the bench, so I photoshopped the photo I posted of the bench to see if a fuller border would work. Then I printed the photo, and played around with different designs for the center, so that when I painted, I wasn’t winging it as I so often do.

I think it turned out well.

At least that inner critic is silent and if it ever raises its voice to me, I’ll ignore it. The silly thing is, that often what offends disappears into the background, and I never even notice it. For example, when I stuccoed over the dog door in the corner of the house, I thought I did a terrible job. So I stuccoed over the stucco patch and made matters worse. I did leave it alone (though sometimes I wonder if I should try again), and I hardly ever notice the patch. It’s just . . . there.

Well, soon the bench will be “just there” too, and it won’t matter that I spent so much time on redoing the design. It I’ll probably never actually see it again except in periphery. Or in case I purposely look at it.

Still, I’m glad that in this case I didn’t leave well enough alone. At least, I think I am.

***

Posted in home, house, life. Tags: accepting less than perfection, bench, decorating a bench, inner critic, leaving well enough alone, offending my sense of balance, stucco patch. 3 Comments »

Anatomy of a Bench

June 19, 2020 — Pat Bertram

A long time ago, perhaps fifteen years or so, Ace Hardware set benches out front with their logo on the seat back. Just “Ace” without the addition of the word hardware.

For some reason that I never understood, my brother called our father “Ace.” (Maybe to keep from calling him “Dad” or “Father. I suppose I could ask, but it seems too personal.) Anyway, when my brother saw the bench, he tried to buy it from the hardware store, but they wouldn’t sell to him. He kept at it, going around to several stores, and managed to get a bench. It sat in front of my dad’s house all those years, and by the time I finally saw it, the sun had bleached off the “Ace” and the bench itself was pretty much of a mess. But since it was still functional, there it stayed.

After my father died, my brother came to help get rid of some things, and while he was dismantling the bench so he could throw it away, he asked if I was aware it converted to a picnic table. When he showed that the bench back lifted up to become a table top, I was delighted. It just seemed wonderfully clever. So of course, I had to keep the bolts and framework just in case I’d ever have a place where I could put a bench.

Last year when my brother came to help me fix up some things around the house, he brought new wood for the bench and put it together. He kept the same colors, the white table and red seat, and I considered putting the “Ace” back in honor of my father, but that didn’t seem right. I’ve been trying to figure out a different sort of decoration, and today, I finally got around to painting the design.

It looks odd to me because I got used to that stark white, but what the heck. It’s finished. And even though it doesn’t say “Ace” on it, it is a nice tribute to both my father and my brother.

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Posted in house, life. Tags: Ace, Ace Hardware billboard bench, bench that converts to a picnic table, remaking a bench, tribute to father. 8 Comments »

Shooting Troubles

June 17, 2020 — Pat Bertram

My second bedroom, which is more of second living room because it’s where I have my computer and where I read, has doubled as a storage area ever since I moved in. (A huge stack of boxes in the corner off to the right, boxes under the bed, more stuff under the tables I use for a desk.) Even though the garage isn’t done, it is inching along, so with the hope that someday it will be finished, I’ve been sorting through storage items and reboxing those that need it.

What would normally have been a task that took no more than a day, has taken me weeks because of my knee. Not only have I not been able to lift things or even stand much, I also had no energy since all my energy seemed to go toward healing the knee.

Well, today I woke up with energy, so I finished carting the boxes to my dining room. I know it sounds silly, just moving stuff around, but it’s been nice claiming the room at long last. Surprisingly, it’s a good-sized room with all the extraneous stuff out of there.

After that, I tightened all the bolts on the daybed because it’s been doing a lot of creaking and clacking, and found one screw missing. Finally, when I cleaned the room, I found the bolt several feet away from where it had fallen.

And after that, I tried troubleshooting my printer connection. For some unknown reason, after more than a year of compatibility, this computer decided it didn’t like the printer anymore. It would show one document pending, then a few seconds later, would show 0 documents pending. But no document printed. No matter what I tried (even doing some things in the command prompt that made me nervous), nothing worked. So I dragged out my old computer to print the document, but since I let my security program lapse, I had to install a new antivirus protection so I could download the file I emailed to myself.

As wonderful as computers are when they work, they are horrible when they don’t. I have a hunch this printer problem has to do with a Windows update, but since I don’t know which one or how long ago, all I can do is wait and hope the problem will fix itself with subsequent updates as sometimes happens (when further updates don’t make things worse, that is.)

So now I’m exhausted.

Because of the isolation, everyone I know has their system — their physiological system — screwed up, particularly their sleep/wake cycle. For most people, this means going to bed later and getting up later. For me, it’s the opposite: getting up with the sun and going to bed with the sun, so now, early afternoon feels like late evening.

What does one do when one gets up so early? If you live on a farm or a ranch, obviously, there is plenty of work waiting, but for a sedentary person? Not so much.

Well, except for today. Today I sure found plenty to do!

This wasn’t at all the way I thought this day would go. I’d planned an excursion to see if I could find a few plants to plant, but fire warnings and high winds scared me off. (And I was hesitant because of the knee anyway, but apparently that wouldn’t have been a problem.) By the time I finally get around to getting any plants, there probably won’t be any left and anyway, it will be too late to plant, if it’s not already.

There’s always next year, though.

I’m trying to find the theme in this particular offering because without a theme, blog entries so often sound like a child’s diary entry. And this one definitely does!

Maybe the theme is troubleshooting. My knee, my room, my daybed, my computer, my yard certainly are all causing (or have caused) troubles that needed to be shot.

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Posted in home, house, life. Tags: computer and printer don't work together, fixing bed creaks, getting up too early, healing knee, printer doesn't work with this computer, sleep/wake cycle, trouble shooting. 8 Comments »

Life, Death, and Tarot

June 16, 2020 — Pat Bertram

According to what I’ve been reading about the tarot, there are infinite meanings to each deck, each spread, even each card depending on how it falls and how the reader reads it and what s/he reads into it. Such a lack of logic and unpermutability offends my sense of rightness (though it shouldn’t since in my own life I rebel against absolutes and allow myself to live however my personal wind blows).

If I ever do learn to use any of the decks, especially as they are supposed to be used — as a way to look inside oneself (at least that’s the impression I get for their true use) — I will need that intuition because some of the instruction booklets that come with a few of the more esoteric decks are written in Italian. Online translation programs help, but not when, as in one case, the booklet is written in an archaic version of the language that no one seems able to interpret. Too bad — it’s a lovely deck, with beautiful imagery, and all sorts of mystical symbols on the cards that are missing from other such decks. In another deck with an Italian instruction book, the suits are completely unfamiliar (lasers and scarabs. light and the void.) And one deck has an additional suit, which makes for an unwieldy stack of cards.

I’ve been spreading out the decks themselves, instead of the individual cards, to see if I can learn anything about the brother who collected them. I know he was interested in a world of things, both practical and mystical, and yet, since he was homeless, I have to wonder if he ever got a chance to use any of the things he collected, or if they were all for a future he never got to live.

The timing is right to be thinking about him — next month, it will be two years since he died. It’s not just his death that gives me pause, but that the death of this homeless man was instrumental in my gaining a home. (A change in my attitude, perhaps, from never wanting to own a house to thinking it would be a good idea, from believing it was impossible, to finding a way to make it work.) And then there is the age difference I mentioned a few days ago: growing up, he was always older and more knowledgeable, and no matter how old I got, there he was . . . a year older, too.

Well, he’s not getting any older, and I am. I’ve now lived a year longer than he did, and knowing that I caught up to him and beyond brings me no comfort.

Oddly, though, he does. Bring me comfort, I mean. Despite my being ambivalent about what if anything besides energy survives after death, I sometimes sense that he is watching out for me as he wanted to do in life but never quite managed. Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether it’s true or not, but this feeling allows me to live fearlessly in a house by myself.

It’s hard to know the truth of oneself, let alone another person, but here I am, moving the tarot decks around, trying to see . . . something. This is the second time I’ve done this — the first time was a couple of years ago when I first got the cards. Maybe this time — or the next — will bring enlightenment. I hope so. It would certainly be easier than actually learning how to use the cards.

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