Weeds and Weeders

May 6, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I got a new long-handled weed digger. The first one I had was advertised as tap root weeder. The prongs closed over the root when you stepped on the lever, and then you yanked the whole weed up, root and all. It worked well until the handle broke. (The handle came in two pieces that needed to be screwed together, and the weeder broke at the break.)

This new weeder I got is better built. The handle is a single piece, and it has a release button to push the weed out of the prongs. The only thing I don’t like is that the prongs don’t close. You just twist the tool once the prongs are in the ground, lift up, and release. It seems to work okay for most weeds, but I’m thinking of getting another weed puller like the first one I had since it was better for tap roots, though I would make sure the handle is one piece.

I’m also mulching with my grass clippings since my mower mulches the grass as it cuts (in other words, it cuts it into small pieces rather than leaving the grass blades long), so I’m hoping that will cut down on the need to weed, but so far, it hasn’t worked. The weeds around here are tenacious and laugh at my attempts to keep them from growing.

With my luck, I’d invest in another weeder, then the weed problem would clear up on its own and I wouldn’t need either weeder. I used the phrase “with my luck” ironically, meaning I have bad luck, but the truth is, I have good luck (that’s how I ended up here in this house — good luck), so it seems as if investing in a new weeder would solve the weed problem once and for all. Either I’d have a weeder for any type of weed, or I’d have no weeds and two unnecessary weeders. I know which one I would choose!

Oddly, some parts of my garden areas that were overgrown with weeds last year seem to be fairly weed free this year. I’d dug up all the weeds last fall when I cleared out the dead flower stalks, so perhaps that helped. Or maybe they are waiting to gang up on me in the heat of the summer when I really don’t feel like digging weeds. Other garden areas, of course, seem to have more weeds this year.

But that’s part of gardening, right? Figuring out what plants you want and how to keep them growing, and figuring out what plants you don’t want and how to keep them from growing.

It’s all about learning, and learning is one thing I’ve learned how to do.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

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Letting the Future Take Care of Itself

April 14, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I accidentally came across an article yesterday about how signs of neglect when it comes to the home of an elderly person, such as an overgrown yard or dilapidated house, can prompt an investigation and perhaps have their home taken away.

I say I “accidentally” came across the article because it’s not a subject I would ever pursue on purpose — just that brief scan gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’m not sure how true it is that signs of neglect can prompt an investigation, especially in an area like this where there are so many derelict houses (many owned by the resident slumlord), but it made me worry about taking care of my house and made me wonder what I was thinking when I put in the lawn.

I can take care of both the house and lawn now with no problem, but as I get older? Not so much. And it’s doubtful whether I’d have the wherewithal to pay for getting things taken care of. So there I will be, a frail old lady, with an unkempt yard and a house desperately in need of paint, and . . .

Nope. Don’t want to go there.

Actually, I do know what I was thinking when I put in the yard. I wanted a small patch of green in the front because I figured I could easily take care of that even if I got frail, but I ended up with the tag-end of someone else’s sod job. I worried that those leftovers wouldn’t be enough to cover the area I’d set aside for a small lawn, but the workers kept laying the sod and laying the sod and pretty soon I had a pretty yard that will eventually be pretty hard to take care of.

I did have to laugh at my tarot reading today. The Three of Wands said I had great skill in realizing plans and goals, but the Two of Pentacles warned that my goals are becoming incompatible with reality. Yep. Sounds about right. Especially when it comes to the yard. The whole point of creating paths and planting wildflowers that will eventually naturalize was to make things easier on me in my old age, not harder.

But I can’t be sorry about the grass. It is so pretty! I’ll keep it looking good as long as I can and try not to worry about what comes after. I did think, the other day when I was mowing, that I should have put the pretty lawn on the neighbor’s property. That way I’d be able to enjoy it without having to do the upkeep!

I suppose I’ll get used to the work when I get used to the tools (the next one I need to figure out how to use is my string trimmer), but for the next few days, I’m taking a hiatus, both on the worrying and on the work. I’m not even watering anything. It’s just too darn windy to be outside.

By the time the wind dies down (according to the forecast, we’re in for a lot of wind for another couple of weeks), the last frost will have passed. I’m hoping the frost we had last night will be the last — it sure took a toll on my poor tulips. Luckily, I thought to take a picture yesterday when they were looking good.

Also, luckily, I am hale enough that I can still maintain myself and my property. That’s all that should matter today. The future can take care of itself.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in dealing with old age, gardening, home, house, life. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

Breezy Day

April 7, 2022 — Pat Bertram

It’s a bit breezy today, with winds up to thirty mph and possible gusts up to 60 mph. Surprisingly, despite the high-speed air movement (and if we don’t take into consideration any potential gusts), we are well within the “breeze” category.

Winds with speeds of 4 to 31 miles per hour are considered to be breezes, so a thirty-mile an hour wind, even if it comes with a high wind warning, is still considered a breeze. I always thought the term “gentle breeze” was redundant, but apparently not. What I considered to be a gentle breeze — anything less than winds of 4 miles per hour — is not even a breeze. It’s just light air movement. A gentle breeze is a wind with a speed of 8 to 12 miles per hour. A fresh breeze is a wind with a speed of 19 to 24 miles per hour. A strong breeze is a wind with a speed of 24 to 31 miles per hour. A gale is a wind with a wind speed of 32 to 63 miles per hour. My dictionary defines a gale as a strong current of air. Who knew Webster had such a sense of understatement! (In case you’re interested, a storm is stronger than a gale, and a hurricane strongest of all.)

I understand how important wind is — without wind, there would be no seed dispersal, no pollination, no long-awaited rain in dry regions. There would be few livable climates on the earth since winds help diffuse the air and moisture, making more of the earth habitable. Without wind, the ocean currents would die down. Entire ecosystems would disappear. Weather extremes would be huge, either intensely hot or penetratingly cold, either totally arid or mainly rainy.

Despite my knowing the importance of wind, wind is still my least favorite weather. It makes every other type of weather, be it snow or rain, sleet or heat, so difficult. Besides which, it’s dangerous, causing damage to people, animals, and property. Although I love trees, I am glad there are no trees nearby to cause potential damage. A tree limb fell straight down during a windstorm where Jeff and I lived, and the crash, just outside my bedroom window, sounded like an explosion. Felt like one, too. A couple of feet closer, and that would have been the end of me, so I am especially leery of trees in the wind. (A neighbor has a tree with a creaking branch, so I had a tree guy come and look at it to make sure that if it fell, it would be nowhere near me or my house.)

With any luck, later today the wind will finish its job — moving air around — and it will be calmer tomorrow. My frazzled nerves can use the rest.

***

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.

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Small Town Girl

March 30, 2022 — Pat Bertram

A friend asked me if I missed Denver, and I didn’t even have to stop to think to be able to answer that no, I didn’t. In fact, although I was born and raised in Denver and lived there during my early adult years, I was done the city long before I left it.

This (my leaving) was back in the “imagine a great city” era, where the first Hispanic mayor (a transplant from Texas because Texas already had an Hispanic mayor and Colorado didn’t) bought a name for himself with the promise of growth. And grow, Denver did, but so did graft and crime and various boondoggles such as the whole mess with Denver International Airport and the Silverado criminal activity. (I’m not saying that mayor was directly responsible, but it is interesting to me that two of the major players in the destruction of the Denver that I knew and loved were both Texans.)

I definitely don’t miss the city Denver was growing into back when I left. I don’t even miss the Denver of my childhood, though back then, it was a good place to grow up. The air was clear, traffic was light, there was no skyline to speak of, and almost everywhere you went, you could see the mountains. (Oddly, the ubiquitous mountain views masked my lack of innate orientation because although I can’t feel the compass directions as some people do, I always knew where I was in relation to the mountains.)

If there would be any things I miss, those are the very things I have found in my new town, such as the feel of the air, being able to walk everywhere (especially the library), knowing people, not having to deal with traffic, and the lack of megalithic stores. (My trip a few days ago through three of the major front range cities in Colorado left me feeling exceedingly claustrophobic. There was just too much of everything; too many people, too much traffic, too many too-tall buildings, too much pollution, just . . . too much.)

Oddly, I don’t miss the mountains, which formed the backdrop to most of my life, not just in Denver, but on the western slope where Jeff and I spent most of our years together, and the high desert of California where I lived for almost a decade after Jeff died. Admittedly, it would be nice to have a distant mountain view to keep me oriented, but it doesn’t really matter. I’m gradually building a map in my head of the area I now live, and can mentally turn it around to match what I am seeing, but even that doesn’t really matter. I just follow the streets, and they take me where I need to go. One thing I have here that I never had before was a next-door friend. The neighborhood I grew up in was mostly inhabited with older folks, and there weren’t any girls my age on the block. The neighborhood I now live in is also mostly inhabited by older folks, but it makes a huge difference that I am one of them.

A major reason for my not missing Denver has nothing to do with geography or politics or population or anything else outside of me. It’s that I am not that person who grew up in Denver. Sometimes it seems as if the woman I am sprang up full grown sometime after Jeff died, but I know (as do you), that any peace I have attained, that any growth — mental, emotional, spiritual — was hard won.

I am exceedingly grateful, actually, that I don’t have to live in Denver. Somehow, despite having grown up in a large-but-not-yet-great city, I turned out to be a small-town girl at heart. And metro Denver is anything but a small town.

***

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 being me, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Crazy Rich

March 17, 2022 — Pat Bertram

An Asian friend lent me her copy of Crazy Rich Asians. She really enjoyed the book, not just for the story and the humor, but because she knew many of the places in the book and had eaten much of the food, so it was personal for her.

I was looking forward to reading the book, but when I started, I realized I’d read it before. Admittedly, I don’t remember the titles of a lot of books I’ve read, so it’s not uncommon for me to get books I’ve already read, but I would have thought I’d have remembered the title. It’s certainly unique enough. But, no.

The first part of the book reminded me of the old regency romances, with all the gossip, the over-the-top wealth, the drive for titled or entitled parents to make suitable matches for their children, but as the book progressed, I felt suffocated by all the money, the shopping, the emphasis on trivialities, the snobbery. More than that, I could not empathize with any of the characters. Who needs that sort of wealth? Not me, that’s for sure. Not only don’t I need it, I wouldn’t want it.

The real riches (the material ones rather than the emotional or spiritual ones) are simple. A place to live with plumbing, heating and electricity. More than adequate food. Clothes to keep one covered and warm and feeling good about oneself. A car to get around. Books to read. Feet and shoes that allow one to walk and connect with the world on a fundamental basis. A computer to connect with the world on a broader basis.

I’m sure there are a few other items to add to that list, but truly, these are the riches. Does it matter if one lives in a 1,000-square-foot house or a 10,000-square-foot house? No matter how big the house, you can only be in one room at a time. The same goes for clothes. No matter how many (or how few) you have, you can only wear so many garments at one time. You can only drive one car at a time, eat only so much food. Whether the car or food or clothes are hideously expensive or cheap hand-me-downs, they serve the same function.

Not only do I have all the things one needs to be rich — at least rich compared to the past when there was no plumbing, no heating, no cars, no closet full of clothes — I feel rich.

When friends and I would talk about such things as winning the lottery, I’d mention that all I really wanted was enough money so I didn’t have to worry about money. It finally dawned on me that if that was the only reason to get richer, there was a simple solution: stop worrying about money.

So I did.

Not worrying doesn’t change the possibility of an impoverished old age, though it does keep me focused on what is important — working while I can, taking care of myself, learning to accept the vicissitudes of life. It also means stocking up on a few things when I can, for example, during my recent — and rare — visit to a big city with all the major stores, I bought some shoes, though I don’t need them quite yet.

I also think not worrying about my finances (or at least trying to not worry) helps to create an attitude of gratitude, which is important to one’s well-being, and adds to the feeling of being rich.

It’s just as well that I’m okay at not being crazy rich, very rich, or even just simply rich because it will never happen. And that, too makes me rich because from what I have read in this book about insanely rich people (Asian or not) is that being rich is hard work.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Posted in books, culture, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Lazing and Lolling

March 11, 2022 — Pat Bertram

Despite the end of winter coming in just over a week, there are very few signs of spring, though generally by this time the snow drops are coming up and the tulips are poking through the soil. There are no snow drops yet, but a couple of tulip tips were visible before this latest round of snow and single digit temperatures. (Last night, it got down to 7 degrees Fahrenheit.) From what I can see, those brave tulips are still green beneath the snow, but the sort of up and down weather we’ve been having is hard on spring blooms.

I suppose this kamikaze weather — warm spells interrupted every week by winter storms blowing through — doesn’t give the bulbs much impetus to wake up and be perky. Come to think of it, this weather doesn’t give me much impetus to wake up and be perky, either, but ever since I moved here, I can’t sleep past first light so, perky or not, I do get up. I’m hoping the bulbs will eventually do the same, though there’s not much I can do about it if the drought exacerbated by this peculiar weather pattern has killed their interest in waking up.

Surprisingly, the ground isn’t frozen. I went out in the mid-morning chill to loosen the ground around my newly planted trees, and I was able to get down pretty far. The person who planted them for me dug post holes rather than a big bowl, and I needed to loosen the dirt to give the roots an easier time of spreading when growing season starts. I might not have gotten down far enough to make any difference to the roots, but at least the loose dirt will help soak up moisture, which will then loosen the deeper soil. At least, that’s my surmise. It might not make any difference at all, but I worried about the trees, so I needed to make the effort to my quiet my mind.

That bit of digging made me look forward to gardening weather. The last frost here generally comes around the fifth of May, so I can’t do any planting until then, but there will certainly be plenty to do once the weather is consistently warmer. If nothing else, I can water my grass and my bulbs. The lilies (which may or may not come up depending on whether I planted them deep enough), like a lot of water in spring, and not so much later in the summer. I also still have a few patches of weeds to dig up. I wanted to wait until after the trees were planted, thinking the weeds would be dug up when the holes were dug, but that didn’t happen. Still, it’s a small area, and I got started on that today.

I’ve been rather lazy this winter, lolling about, reading and doing as little as possible (though come to think of it, I’ve been working a lot more hours at my job the past few months, so that cut into my lolling time). It makes me wonder how I will cope with having a lot to do when gardening season rolls around. I suppose I’ll do what I always do — do what I can when I can. Of course, I won’t know what all I’ll have to do until May when I see what comes up and what I need to replace or replant. Until then, I’ll continue my winter ways, lazing and lolling.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

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An Exercise in Hope

March 6, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I had a nice surprise today: snow! We haven’t had so much snow this winter that I’m sick of it, and anyway, it wasn’t much of a snow — just enough to cover the ground and my front ramp while leaving the sidewalks clear. But it was enough to make a day spent inside feel cozy, especially when accompanied by a book and a cup of lemony spiced tea.

More snow is expected for Thursday, along with frigid temperatures, but hopefully the intervening days will be warm enough for digging.

I’d planted three 6-foot- tall greengage plum trees at the beginning of last winter, which was supposed to be the optimum time for planting, so that’s when the nursery sent the trees. One of the trees did well, but two didn’t survive the winter, though sprouts did shoot out just above the graft mark. (I was hoping to get trees with greengage roots so the inevitable volunteers would turn the tree into a greengage forest, but I took what I could get.) I lopped off the trees just above the shoot, and one of truncated trees seems to be doing well, but still, the nursery said they’d replace both trees. (I had to pay shipping, which made those replacement trees rather expensive, but hopefully it will be worth it, especially since they won’t replace the replacement trees if there is a problem.)

They decided not to take a chance on the replacement trees not making it through the winter, so they promised to send them in March, which sounded good a year ago. Well, now it’s March. Those trees are slated to arrive tomorrow, which is why I’m hoping for decent digging weather. I can’t plant those trees by myself; even if I could dig the hole deep enough (which I can’t), I couldn’t hold the tree upright and fill in the hole at the same time. My contractor said he’d send someone to help, and I’m sure he will. Eventually.

Luckily, it will be cold enough that the trees shouldn’t come out of dormancy if they have to wait a bit. I suppose if worst comes to worst, I can do the planting myself over several days, but I doubt that will happen. I have been so patient with this contractor that generally when something is time-sensitive, he figures he owes me and he gets it done. (Oddly, these extra things he does so quickly for me are more in the line of favors since they are handyman jobs rather than typical contractor projects.)

As always, though, any gardening project is an exercise in hope. I hope the trees get here safely. I hope they get planted in time. I hope they grow. I hope they blossom. I hope someday to eat plums picked off my own trees.

A lot of hope!

But first, the snow.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in gardening, home, house, life. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

Water Update

March 4, 2022 — Pat Bertram

It’s been so warm here the past few days, I thought it would be a good idea to water my grass. I’m sure it needed the moisture — this has been a very dry year for us, with only a few piddly snow days — and it also gave me an excuse to spend time outside in the sun as well as reacquaint myself with my yard. A few sprouts are showing — mostly the larkspur that I’ve been trying to naturalize, which is good. What I mean is that it’s good there are a few sprouts and it’s also good that there aren’t more of them. The last frost typically comes the first week in May, so there would be plenty of time for the weather to kill off any baby plants that were so foolhardy as to show their faces. (Larkspur aren’t foolhardy, just hardy. They don’t seem to mind the cold as much as other new sprouts do.)

In other water-related news, I received my water bill yesterday, and this one is as mystifying as the pervious bill that showed a 19,000-gallon usage over my normal winter usage. When the people in the office saw that high usage, they sent the meter reader out to read the meter again. (It’s a fairly new meter, an electronic meter that was installed at the end of summer.) When he took a new reading, he said the meter was working perfectly and that there were no leaks, but the meter had already shown a usage of 3,000 gallons since the previous reading a few days before.

I called the office, of course, and they said the meters were guaranteed to work perfectly without error, and she told me I had to have an intermittent leak, like from a toilet that didn’t shut off. She wouldn’t listen when I explained that there was no problem with my plumbing, but a week later, she did send the meter reader out again. He shoveled the snow off the meter (this was right after the only real snowstorm we had all winter), took another look, and said the meter wasn’t running, which indicted there were no leaks. He had me go inside and run the water for a minute, and the meter showed a gallon usage, so he decided that meant the meter was working fine.

He suggested that someone might have stolen the water, but there was no outside tampering, no digging to get to my water pipe, and if by chance anyone had used one of my outside faucets (which I’d sealed off with insulation to keep the pipes from freezing), I would certainly have heard 20,000 gallons of water moving through my pipes. For that much water to be missing, they would have had to run the water continuously for days, and that simply had not happened.

Meantime, my contractor sent someone out to check my plumbing, and they found no leaks, no water, no anything to indicate what had happened to the more than 20,000 gallons of water that were now missing.

So nothing was done. The people in the office insisted the meter was working fine and that I must have leak. The meter reader said the meter was working fine, but there was no leak. The contractor said there was no leak, the problem was with the meter. I paid the inflated bill anyway, because the only thing worse than excess water would be no water.

So, fast forward to the latest bill.

This time, the overuse was about 3500, all of which had occurred between the time of the original reading to the time of second rereading. The last ten days of the billing period — from the second rereading to the final reading — showed my normal winter water usage of about 30 gallons a day.

Now I’m stuck without any recourse, because obviously, whatever set the meter off somehow self-corrected. My surmise is that the first subzero cold spell we had made the electronic meter go haywire, but who knows what the truth is. All I can do is hope that the meter continues to work properly and to monitor the situation in case it doesn’t.

I have taken away a lesson from all of this — if the people at the water company are not concerned about a hypothetically missing 20,000 gallons of water in a drought year, then I’m not concerned about wasting water by watering my lawn in the winter.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in house, life. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Changes

March 1, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I’m getting over a rather severe allergy attack that kept me idle all weekend — a lot of rest punctuated by ginger-lemon tea and reading. Normally such an attack comes when I’ve let the furnace filter go too long without changing it, but that wasn’t the case this time, so I didn’t think it was the culprit. I changed it anyway. As it turned out, the filter was dark with dust, darker than normal, but I’d changed to a filter with a higher MSR (Micorparticle Performance Rating), so perhaps this filter does a better job of collecting dust than the previous one I used. Maybe, now that the filter is changed, my allergies will settle back down and give me a respite from the aggravation.

One thing I was remiss in changing is my water filter. I always let it go a couple of extra months because there is just me drinking the filtered water, and I haven’t been doing a good job of imbibing the stuff straight. I just use tap water for making tea, which I think is okay. The water here has a pretty good rating now, though once upon a time it was terrible — terrible tasting and terribly high in naturally occurring radioactive particles as well as contaminants from agricultural runoff. I hedge my bets by drinking tea with tap water, filtering the water for drinking, and occasionally buying bottled water (mostly because the bottles are easy to stow in a pocket or a purse). A water pipeline bringing water directly from the mountains has been in the works for decades, which is great, but by the time it gets all the way out here, I’ll be gone.

Since I’m talking about all the things I’ve changed today, this first day of the month, I might as well mention that I’ve changed tarot decks, too. This deck, I Tarocchi delle Stelle, is much more pleasing to me than the one I used last month. The cards have a good feel — both physically and psychically — at least compared to last month’s cards, and even though they are much larger than playing cards, I can still shuffle them without too much trouble.  The instruction booklet is written in an archaic dialect of Italian, which seems a bit ludicrous since the deck was published in 1991, but I can use the meanings I’ve collected from various sources to interpret the cards.

To my amusement, when I googled these cards trying again to see if I could find a translation of the booklet, I found a previous blog post of mine: I Tarocchi delle Stelle | Bertram’s Blog

In case you’re interested, today’s cards are the seven of wands and the king of pentacles. The seven of wands is about obstacles and overcoming opposition. The king of pentacles indicates that the way to overcoming is by being practical and methodical. (Actually, even if you’re not interested, those are still today’s cards.)

These are all the changes I’ve made today. So far, anyway. Most of the day is still to come.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Posted in house, life, tarot. Tags: , , , , . 4 Comments »

Upcoming House Anniversary

February 28, 2022 — Pat Bertram

One week from today will be the third anniversary of “wedding” my house. It seems a weird way of describing the purchase, but the house offers me much that has been missing from my life since Jeff’s death — stability, a home, comfort. It also offers safety and security, at least as much as is possible in turbulent times. Of course, it can’t offer companionship or conversation or love, though it does give me something to love and care for, which is important when one is alone and hasn’t any inclination for pets.

Because of this upcoming anniversary, I feel as if I should get the house a gift, though the house is spoiled enough as it is, with all the money I’ve lavished on it — not just a new foundation for the porch, but a basement floor, landscaping, sod, a garage, and a whole slew of minor gifts.

Still, if I think of something, I might consider getting something to honor the occasion.

The traditional third anniversary gift is leather, though there isn’t anything of leather my house and I need. Come to think of it, I can’t even remember the last leather thing I bought. I doubt there is even a single strip of leather on my shoes.

The modern third anniversary gift is glass, but even though I do have and do use things of glass, I don’t need anything beyond what I have. I wouldn’t mind another goblet to add to my collection of miscellaneous goblets, but there isn’t room in the cabinet, and besides, I seldom use stemware. My water receptacle of choice is an old glass peanut butter jar because I can put a lid on it to keep from spilling and to keep bugs out in the summer. (Too many times at night I’d reach over for the glass of water on my bedside table and miss. By the time I got out of bed and cleaned the mess, that would be the end of any chance of sleep. Even worse are the times I accidentally drank a bug a night. Eek.)

In the end, I doubt I’ll get anything to mark the occasion. After all, I celebrate this wonderful house and home every day.

I did get a present from my sister, though, which is very nice. She thought these bowls would make me smile, and they do. The house has yet to let me know what it thinks of our gift.

***

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 grief, home, house, life, relationships. Tags: , , , , , . 3 Comments »
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