January 6th is important for a couple of reasons

 

Today is my husband’s birthday. We are having a family celebration tomorrow so that his mom and the mine part of “yours, mine & ours” kids can be here.

Two years ago, right at this time, we were frozen to our seats in horror as we watched the Capitol being stormed by violent right wing tRump supporters. We were witnessing a coup attempt and never ever dreamed something like that could happen here. Today, the Repugs are still trying to elect a Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy has tried 12 times now and has been an epic failure. I’m half afraid that one or more of the QAnon reps will start pulling out their guns and start shooting.

But I set that aside. It’s Ted’s birthday and he is the love of my life now. We both lost our first spouses the same year. Rich died of cardiac arrest which was a result of having Marfan Syndrome. Ted’s wife Audrey died after a procedure went wrong in a hospital she went to because fluid accumulated in her lungs. She had pulmonary hypertension.

We didn’t know each other then. As the sad, lonely months passed I knew I had the support of my best friends, but I missed a male voice. I would call Rich’s work number just so I could hear his voice. When that went away, I thought it might be nice to be pen pals with a widower from out of state.

There was a method to my madness when I signed up with Match.com for a trial membership. I wanted to connect with a widower, no one else, because I felt we would share the same issues of grieving and have a better understanding of what we felt and why. It had to be someone from out of state because I didn’t want to date.  I was sure that Rich was my one and only, even though he’d often said he wanted me to move on if ever he should die.

I had a few widowed pen pals, but it felt superficial. I wanted someone who would open up and talk to me and it wasn’t happening. I continued to receive a few profiles and one stopped me cold. The man reminded me so much of Rich—hair style, glasses, Van Dyke beard. I sent the profile to trash without reading it. I was completely unnerved.

At the end of my trial period 2 months later, I decided not to continue. It just wasn’t working out. I got one more profile. It was him again! I went to delete it but then I swear I heard Rich whisper, “Give him a chance.” My hand froze. Instead of deleting the profile, I read it.

Ted lived in New Jersey. That was cool. I lived in New York. He liked to read (me too) and mentioned he liked cats. I’m a cat person. He was a family man. Other little details appealed to me. He could be a friend, I thought. I decided to go with that whispered voice and sent Ted an email.

Ted responded right back, and we struck up an email conversation. What really attracted me was how well spoken he was and the fact he’d include funny little gifs in the text. The gifs made me laugh. I would respond to him at night after work; he’d write back in the wee hours before he had to leave for work.

Our emails progressed to phone calls. My, how we talked! We would spend hours chatting on the phone about all sorts of topics. I learned he was a union sheet metal worker. He had a large family. He was the eldest of five sons and a daughter. I learned his biological father abandoned his mother and the five boys when Ted was young. Later his mom remarried, and that wonderful man adopted all the boys. Sister Pam was born when Ted was about 12 or 13. I learned all about his life. I shared as much of mine as I dared, still hesitant to speak freely of my childhood.

I’d decided to take my three kids (then 14, 12 and 9) to Disney World in Florida to do something really fun for a change. I’m afraid of flying so I decided to drive down in our new van. It occurred to me that we would be going through New Jersey on the way down so I suggested to Ted we would meet at a place to eat just off the New Jersey Turnpike.

Ted was all for it, suggesting a McDonald’s near Great Adventure Amusement Park. So, on the way down, we pulled off the Turnpike and stopped for lunch and to meet Ted at McDonald’s. We met in the parking lot, and I sensed Ted was nervous, so I took his hand. After that, we enjoyed our lunch and just talked and talked. Finally, I realized we’d better get back on the road. On the way back to our cars, Ted and I stopped and kissed.

The rest is history.

In June, we’ll celebrate our 21^st wedding anniversary. We are so blessed.  It’s a rare gift to find true love just once. It’s a miraculous blessing to find it twice. Happy Birthday to my dear Teddy Bear.

Out with the Old, In with the New

 

It’s been a long year that flew by in the blink of an eye. There was a lot of wicked stuff over the years that caused me to rename my offline journal What The Actual Fuck (WTAF) 2022. Instead of rehashing all the awful stuff that’s happened over the year, I’d like to pick out an article that focuses on some actual good news from 2022. This article is from Nice News, and I have been getting it daily to preserve my sanity. The article is called WhatWent Right This Year.

We, as humans, seem to focus more on the negative things that happen. I find that definitely to be a fact for me.  I need to be reminded that along with the bad, there is always good. I happened to read a really informative article about why we do that and, having read it through, it’s one of the reasons I’m looking back at the nicer stories from 2022.

I have no idea what the New Year will bring. When I was a senior in high school, graduating 50 years ago this June, we used to say to each other: “We’ll be free in ’73!” We were so excited about that. Our whole futures lay ahead. I am hoping we’ll be free in ’23 too: free of 45, tRumpists and tRumpers, traitors, liars in Congress, Putin, Clarence Thomas, and other causes of agita. But, if we’re not, I’ll look for some brightness every day.

Oh. It’s not only New Year’s Eve, it’s also Caturday! How about some happy feline family news? It’s “if it fits, I sits” day at our house.

 

Happy Days Are Here Again

If I felt recovered enough, I would be joining in on this video below.

I'm still recovering from my SI joint fusion so I'll just watch and sing along.  I am feeling elated because there were enough voters in this country fed up with tRumpism/fascism that they voted out election deniers at all levels.  With Senator Cortez Masto's win in Nevada, we retain the Senate. There are still like 21 House races still up in the air.  Even if we lose the House (and I pray we don't) I think we've given the Rethugs a clear message that we don't want their fascism and conspiracy theories, their cruel so-called Agreement with America to kill Social Security and fundamental rights. We are saying that we ARE a democracy, bound by the Constitution.

The Rethugs have been backpedalling against tRump, who is rumored to be making an announcement he's running for President again.  Good, let him do it.  It'll kill the nasty new party off for sure.  If only the Repubs would to-a-man denounce the tRumpism and bring themselves back into what it used to be: the Grand Old Party.

There is still a run off election to occur on December 5 between Sen Raphael Warnock and that poor deranged brain damaged Hershel Walker. I am volunteering to phone bank for Sen Warnock because he is the better man by far and I respect him very much.  He is an ordained minister and still gives sermons at Martin Luther King's church, Ebeneezer Baptist.  How he could be in such a tight race is dismaying. And it turns out almost all of Walker's supporters are white. I know what that means: they are in or out of the closet white supremacist/racists. They'll vote for Walker because they know Walker is a tRump puppet.  

I believe this is what happened with the governor's race in Florida as well as Georgia An evil white man is preferable to a qualified black candidate.  What happened in Texas was a travesty in that white voters overwhelming went with a racist, incompetent incumbent rather than a forward thinking liberal.  Disgusting.

Baby steps.  We'll get there, especially with young voters, Gen Z and Millenials. We need new blood in this game and I'm very happy to see several Gen Z winnning races, including one in the House. Go, Gen Z!

So yes, I'm quietly celebrating but in my heart, I'm dancing.  Happy days are here again, at last!

Vounteering & Random Acts of Kindness Feels So Good

A few days ago, I happened on a piece in my Axios newsletter.  It has stuck with me and, because I am totally sick of US news lately, I thought I would focus my attention on it.  The idea was the benefits of paying it forward and acts of kindness.  We’ve all heard of little acts that actually make a big difference.  A prime example is a driver in the toll lane pays not only for him/herself but also for the driver behind.  It can have a ripple effect, with the other drivers in line inspired to do the same thing.

Or take the person in the Walmart line that is short of cash when the cashier is done ringing up purchases.  A person in line behind might be inspired to make up the difference.  It’s such a small thing but saved the first customer from embarrassment.  That customer might later do something nice for an elderly neighbor.

Kindness can spread just as well as a virus.

I have been in some tough situations in my lifetime.  One particular period of time was when my first husband, Rich, was recovering from heart surgery.  He was on medical leave and was receiving a very small portion of his salary.  I was working as a sign language interpreter for a school district but it was only part-time.  Rich needed a lot of help in those days and could only care for our baby a few hours at a time.  We were struggling to pay our rent, for food, and for expensive medications for Rich not covered by insurance.  We couldn’t bring ourselves to reach out for help.

Somehow, my cousin Mary figured it out.  She would come over to visit or to babysit Billy if I happened to pick up a freelancing gig.  Maybe it was what was in our fridge or what we wore.  One time when she dropped by to visit, she had a warm, full length winter coat for me.  I didn’t have any nice coats to wear when I went to work and this was an act of kindness that meant so much to me. 

When Rich was doing better and we were more financially secure, I felt a need to pay it forward, as it were.  We were going to church at that point and I learned that there were a lot of vets living under a bridge that was on our way to the church.  The church was providing cots to sleep on during the winter months and Rich became on of the volunteer drivers to pick the guys up and bring them to the church.  I joined a team of volunteers that rotated at Elizabeth House, where we served meals to those in need.  Many nights, we served families.

Here we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world and yet we have vets and families homeless and hungry.  It’s appalling.  When I give, I donate to food pantries and No Kid Hungry or the Harry Chapin Foundation.  Ted and I can afford our food so it’s a small act of kindness to try and see that others get a meal.

Before the pandemic, I was a volunteer reader at an elementary school.  I read one-on-one with students K-2 and these were children who struggled with reading but not so much they qualified for special services.  I loved reading to the kids, most of whom had never had anyone read to them before.  I loved talking to them, learning about them and their interests.  Many of them grew more self-confident with the individual attention.  It wasn’t a small act of kindness because reading helps children to succeed later in life.  It was mostly an act of kindness to me because I love reading so and wanted the kids to feel the same way.

The point of all this is that volunteering or performing small acts of kindness ends up being a win-win situation.  The people we do a kindness for receive something that they need and it’s a feeling of relief or joy for them.  Feeling relief or joy starts the feel-good endorphins flowing and they’re likely to be kind to someone else.  As for the person who volunteers or helps out some way, the feel-good endorphins flow as well.  There is a feeling of doing something positive in a world of so many negatives.

When I volunteer, I feel I’m doing something useful and beneficial.  Working people are often too busy to volunteer a lot of their time but it only takes a few minutes to perform an act of kindness.  I wish we would all do this.  It could be healing for us all.