SAD SHOPPING

 They say never grocery shop when you are hungry.  I have learned it is very expensive to grocery shop when you are feeling sad.

When I feel sorry for myself I spend $153.00 on things like:

1. Pate (2 kinds)
2. A nicely shaped pot I can put mosaic tile on even though I have 3 at home waiting to be similarly  adorned.
3.  Four sweet indulgences which I hope will last 2 weeks until I shop again - they won't.
4. Shrimp - because no shrimp packing plants are under siege - yet.
5. Three kinds of cheese even though I already have 2 kinds in the frig.
6. A $2.00 avocado - which will never be worth what I spent. 
7. Three kinds of berries not on mark down. 
8. Green onions to replace the 2 slimy bags of green onions I removed from the frig.

I also bought some ground lamb and chicken - because meat packing plants. Four greeting cards which I need to swear off because they are ridiculously expensive. I have been saying that for about 2 years now, it is an addiction.

I couldn't buy any Lipton Tea and a few other things on my actual list.  There were many more empty shelves throughout the store than I have seen before.  My cupboards and refrigerator are full - no more shopping just for something to do. 

Except for plants at the nursery...

NO LONGER HOME ALONE

Am I the only one tired of hearing about in these "unprecedented, unpredictable, un-whatever times"  that we are "alone together"?  If those companies spending a fortune on the sappy, repetitive ads would direct that money toward their employees - I wouldn't get so irked.  But that is a rant for another day.

Apparently, I am no longer sheltering on place alone.  The signs were subtle at first,  then nothing for a bit, then they were unmistakable.  Mice.

This nice little house I live in has very little kitchen cabinet space, but there is a sort of semi-finished closet off the kitchen. Previous tenants housed their dogs and pet supplies in that space. I set up shelves and organized my overflow bowls, pans, storage containers and some pantry items I couldn't fit into the kitchen.

The first alert was the tiny mouse I surprised while it was exploring the trash under the sink.  I went out and bought the standard glue traps (I know, none of this is particularly humane but those snap and squish things seem worse.) I placed two of them under the sink at the spot that looked most likely to be the point of entry.  Nothing. For weeks no sign.  Maybe the trash explorer returned to the hide out and reported it was a no go.

Then I started finding droppings in various places and the glue traps still perfectly in place.  In the closet there was a nibbled potato and I had to wash a basket of dish towels, but no other signs.  I stopped storing my occasional potato in the "pantry" and put the towels in another location.  Wiped down the shelves with Clorox, put a couple more glue traps on the shelves and started doing daily inspections.

Turns out these mice have very high end taste.  The only thing they focused on were my very expensive low carb crackers which I order by the case from San Francisco.  I tossed the first package they had ravaged and placed all the cracker type items into very heavy duty plastic bags my husband used to store yard and pool chemicals in the garage.

All seemed well. Traps clear and no new nibbles.  Or so I thought.  I went to get a package of my special crackers and I found they had chewed through the plastic and into one of my new cracker packages.  I related my battle to my sister who advised me to get electric traps that zap the mice.  She swore by the effective and more humane little killing devices.

Stay in your own damned house!

Amazon apparently didn't think them essential enough to deliver right away and I didn't want to wait 3 weeks so I left the safety of my home, went to Home Depot and paid more but had my new battle plan.  As directed, I put peanut butter in the traps even though I knew the hearts desire of the mice - so nothing happened.  I left trails of crackers up to the entry of the traps - they ate the crumbs but did not enter.  I moved them around, I cleaned out the peanut butter and put cracker crumbs inside.  No go.  I got the smart rodents.

Meantime I completely rearranged my storage and got all soft packages out of the closet pantry.  Was that a smart move?  Will they just hightail it into the kitchen cabinets now?  Is this really how I am spending my days?

Well, I don't know what changed the dynamic, but all of a sudden, 2 tiny mice on glue traps to dispose of.  Still no action in the $40.00 fancy reusable traps - but progress.  Then another on a glue trap.  Then the big time - a much larger critter entered the zap trap - I could see the tail hanging out.  I am not particularly squeamish and I will step up and deal with this myself with gloves and newspapers to remove and wrap - and try not to look at any of it.  Yuck.

Two days now and no new action.  I may be alone again.

Probably not - still alone together.

ALL THIS AND ISOLATION, TOO

Three weeks after I moved to another city in another state to escape the high prices of the SF Bay Area and to be near my son and his wife in Nevada - the stay at home orders came out.  I had managed to get really well settled into my little house and was looking forward to being out and about  - getting to know the area and to start finding ways to meet people.

 I had signed up for a couple of classes and was researching bike and social groups.   I had visited several gyms and chose one to join.  I got all signed up with a local doctor.  I completed the process to get a new drivers license and register my car.  I was all revved up to get out there and start a routine and meet people and fill my no longer work and husband filled time. 

It all came to a screeching halt.  For good reason - I am not arguing that at all.  I don't have health issues, but I am of the age group that is at risk.  The last thing I would want is to do something reckless and cause others to get sick or require care for myself.

It just seems to me when I think back over the last 6 months that this is personal.  Which is crazy, I know that.  It just seems like the universe is really piling it on considering all the drama and problems and issues and frustrations I have had to work through beginning with my husbands diagnosis and continuing to this day.  The number of hours invested in dealing with the fall out from his death, including identity theft, tax and financial issues, settlements from the moving company and disbursement of funds from accounts and even just trying to get mail delivered to the correct address. It seems endless and I have such empathy for anyone having to go through all of it. 

I am glad I was not working and able to be with my husband every one of his last days.  I have the time and the capacity to deal with all of the challenges I am facing. I can afford my little house in my new city and my car payment and groceries and the things I need.  I am near my son and my daughters who live across the country check in pretty much every day.  This will pass - at some point I'll do all the things I was looking forward to.

 Right now I am a bit too steeped in being alone and all the platitudes are getting annoying.  But in writing this I also feel annoyed by my own complaints.  So I am just going to knock it off and make a list of things to do for the rest of this week - and then the next one and just stay busy and active and stop whining.

GRIEF - ONE SIZE NEVER FITS ALL

Much has been studied and reported about grief.  We have all heard about the stages of grief and the requirement that one has to go through them to go forward emotionally.  The most frequent  statement is that we must express our grief or it can't be put to rest.

It is four months ago today that my husband died.  He was hospitalized for 22 days.  He went through a complete round of chemo during that time.  He struggled physically and emotionally.  He would say to the Palliative Care team that he looked at the disease as a "blessing - a new beginning".  He never talked that way.  The entire family engaged in eye rolling over that one.  But generally he was himself to the day he died.  Difficult, demanding, hard working, sentimental, loving.

I loved my husband of 35 years.  Our relationship was interdependent in many ways.  I am a nurturer by nature. As a lonely only child he sopped up all that I did for him with gratitude. He was my protector, provider and companion.  We have 3 amazing children.  We - all five of us - are independent people.  We agreed to let him go when it was clear he was not going to recover, we were at his bedside when he breathed his last breath.  We told stories and laughed and none of us thought he would go as quickly as he did because it was his way to put up a fight and drag things out.

I did not cry then - and have shed very few tears since.  We went home and started getting things organized the next day.  I did not take to my bed.  I did not feel that there was no reason to go on, or that my life was over. I recognized that my life had completely changed - but that I am still my whole self.

After the initial shock had worn off and many tasks had been taken care of and things around his death had slowed a bit - I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me.  I didn't feel I was denying any of my emotions but I wasn't distraught.  I felt pretty secure in the decisions I was making.  When I felt overwhelmed by things I took a step back.  I engaged in self care - went for walks, made sure I ate well. But still I wondered if I was "normal."

I went online and looked at information about grief.  I don't think I am repressing things - Brene Brown would say I was not being authentic, that I was denying my negative emotions and that suppression would bring more suffering.  I don't think so.  I am not denying who I truly am.  I am not fearful of being unlovable.

I had and still sometimes have a lot of anger toward my husband for the financial situation he left me in - but I also recognized immediately that he suffered knowing what was coming for me and I have, as best I can, forgiven him for it.  So I explored if that combination of being sad and mad was something others had experienced - and there is a bit out there about similar situations - but mostly it goes back to the "stages of grief" kind of anger.  So I was satisfied with the general sentiment that not everyone grieves the same way, on the same timeline - one size doesn't fit all understanding of grief.

Then I ran across some newer studies about resilience.   I am nothing if not resilient.  The Mrs. Brightside moniker is all about that. For me it isn't about glossing over or denying the negative - it is about finding your way through by focusing on what is possible, the positive, the light.

George Bonanno's studies and book The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells About Life After Loss  is about "studies which followed bereaved people over long periods of time we always found tremendous variability in how people react to loss. We found a pattern we call "resilience" in between one third and two thirds of bereaved people. It looks like the term suggests. People who show a resilient outcome struggle initially with the pain of loss, as almost everyone does, but they manage to deal with the sadness and distress with equanimity. Their pain is acute, usually lasting most pointedly for a few days to a few weeks but then begins to subside. It is not that they don't grieve, or that they didn't care; far from it. Rather, they are able to put the pain aside when they need to and they continue to meet the demands of their life. They even laugh and experience moments of joy. They accept the loss, readjust their sense of what is, and move on."

I don't report this as in "I am of superior mental health" than people who are traumatized and grieve for years and years.  I am well aware that sudden, violent loss or the loss of a child is much different and creates more of a PTSD response.  I am just comforted by the approach that lets me know I am not a cold, unfeeling or suppressed person for experiencing my grief in my way.