Category: Family

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Accessed the other half’s computer today….

That’s always difficult.

It’s stupid, but I feel like I’m somehow violating privacy. He’s dead there’s no reason for him to need or expect privacy but I still feel like somehow I’m intruding.

Aside from the way he stored information on his computer, (to me it seems literally random,) there are other stumbling blocks to get past. The biggest one is that he’d subscribed to pretty much every mailing list on the planet and waiting for his machine to speed up means waiting for the download of all that junk mail to complete.

It had been almost a year since I’d turned his machine on.

I was looking for a student he’d been teaching to play the harp. As I’ve been going through yet more piles of crap, I found a cache of harp music. Sure I could give the music to one of the local harpists. Most of it would probably sit in their libraries, then be forgotten.

Or, I could gift his library to a person he loved teaching. Their lesson time together was always joyful and he was happy for days afterward. The student was marvelous, a quick learner, and impetuous enough to keep him entertained because keeping the lesson on track was a bit like herding cats. That particular student he really had to work hard to stay ahead of.

So it seemed fitting that his library be given to help feed this student’s voracious learning curve. I hope the child’s mother doesn’t think I’m some spammer.

I”d no sooner sent the email & shut his computer down again than an earthquake rolled through. I do hope it wasn’t commentary from on high.

There’s a lot of odd emotional back & forth when I’m sorting through his stuff, his computer is the most difficult for some reason. I feel it going through other things but the computer is the most draining for me.

I decided, after the emotional drain and an earthquake that lunch was necessary. I ate then got a shower & flipped on the boob tube. My intention was to catch up on the news and see if I could get the magnitude and location of the quake.

President Biden was blathering on about SCOTUS and wanting to make changes to the justices terms, He also wants to change the immunity that presidents have. I think he really should think long and hard about that one lest he be “Hoisted with his own petard”.

Joe Biden 1 640x480 1 640x480 1.It doesn’t matter, I can’t stand hearing Biden, Trump, or Harris anymore. I’m equally sick of the left / right members of congress. At this point they’re all liars, the only question remaining is, “To what degree are these bastards lying?”

So the TV was turned off almost as soon as it came on. I did learn that the quake was a 4.9 or so initial magnitude. I’m sure that number will drop because they always do.

I think it will be a while before I turn the other half’s computer on again. I’m not saying there’s a link between president poopy pants blathering on about something, earthquakes, and my use of the other half’s machine.

But well… It couldn’t hurt to treat it like a cursed object.

I think it’s time for a nap!

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Yesterday was pretty good.

I’ve been bordering on being blue for the past few days. 

I don’t really know what’s causing the problem but I’ve been thinking a lot about Jerry, our life together, acknowledging that I was happy and feeling sad about missing him and the goofy life we made.

I was tossing a bunch of little things that were junk when Jerry put them into the junk drawer and they were still junk when I pulled them out of the junk drawer. That man couldn’t throw anything away!

Spring_flowers_2015_longwood_cr_Longwood Gardens L Albee.(I smiled as I typed that.)

Then a wave of sadness washed over me. The dog had been walked, but I felt like I needed to step outside. The sun was warm, the breeze pleasant, and as I looked over the back yard I noticed weeds had sprung up with a vengeance.

I went down stairs with the intent to just do poo patrol. Once I’d completed that chore, I thought, “Might as well do the weed whacking too.”

That felt good. I took all the weeds down to nubs, Then I did the patch of grass & weeds between my fence and the next door neighbor. During one of the winter storms, some limbs had broken off of one of his trees and were laying in the way. I moved them, then cut the weeds which had been growing under the limbs. The battery on the weed whacker died just as I finished the last pass against the fence.

“Great Timing,” I thought as I put the weed whacker away. Slipping the battery into the charger I noticed it was the bigger battery that came with my chainsaw.

This led to checking the oil in the chainsaw, and since I was holding the saw, I grabbed a charged battery pack, shrugged and headed out of the garage. Happily I went out to the side of the house where the limbs lay and started cutting them into small manageable pieces. 

From the winter damage I’ve seen on the tree that lost these limbs, I’m not sure it will survive. That’s sad because it’s a beautiful tree. Similarly, the butterfly bush in front of my house is looking pretty shabby too. I’m hoping it will recover but I’m not holding my breath.

The singing of my chainsaw blade made me happy. I’d noticed some of my neighbor’s Mountain Lilacs were overgrowing the power pole we share. So before he gets an abatement ticket or worse, Edison “Helps’ by butchering the plants, I started pruning.

Well, I had the chainsaw in my hand…  

I cleaned up all the trimmings, came inside covered in sawdust and debris from weed whacking, and asked Jerry if there was anything else I should do before I cleaned up.

Yeah…

My heart stopped for a second. In that breathless moment I figured out part of the blues I’d been feeling.

You see, I always did the outside work.

I can run the snow thrower and always could. In winters, Jerry wanted to help and contribute. But Jerry had shitty balance, doubly so on ice, so we agreed that he ran the snow thrower. I was pleased with this arrangement because while he was holding onto the machine, the odds of a fall were greatly reduced.

When It came to yard work, trimming, digging, planting, painting, and that kind of stuff. I did the work, Jerry supervised. He made sure that I was staying hydrated, and wasn’t out in the sun for too long.

Jerry told me enjoyed watching me working in the yard. He said I looked hot, and he liked my confident strut and my confidence while using the tools.

At the time, I’d never thought that I could be hot looking doing chores. For me, it was just chores. Other guys, looked hot doing construction, or farming, or whatever. I never thought about myself that way, but I was happy knowing I was good enough for him.

I suppose what I’d been secretly dreading was this “first” spring.

Last year, I was just going through the motions still “numb” from his passing.

This year, I’m getting back to something like “normal” and those normal things remind me what’s missing.

One “missing” ritual is this. In the first days of Spring, We’d have discussions about planting spring flowers, or changes in the yard, and trimming of various shrubs and trees. Sometimes there wasn’t much discussion, Jerry would come home with flats of flowers and ask me to plant them. I’d do it because I enjoyed the work and because the flowers made him smile.

It’s that time of year and probably why there was a bit of a sting yesterday. This is a part of the healing process. It’s just going to take time.

The good news is that being outside and doing the usual, normal work felt really good. There’s more to do, but I wanted to see what my arms and shoulders felt like before using the pole saw on some Cottonwood trees that are spindly and overhanging my fence line.

The other good news is that I’m not blue today, it seems a little yard work was all it took to make the blues disappear.

Maybe I’ll go look at some flowers up at the hardware store.

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Jesse got to ride in the nice car yesterday…

I get to spend some time cleaning the nice car today.

Jesse had a Vet appointment yesterday. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that it had been a while since I last drove the station wagon and we’d had a cold snap.

OOOppps. The combination, and I suspect the age of the battery in that vehicle combined to “Surprise!” Make the car not start.

Goody!

I thought about using the nice car to jumpstart the wagon but If I’m going to have to pull the nice car out of the garage grab jumper cables start the wagon, then put the nice car back in the garage, get the dog loaded in the wagon, and do all that in less than 5 minutes so I can make the appointment. 

Too much stress!!!!

Ah well, Jesse was going to be riding in the nice car sooner or later. I flip down the rear seats, toss a blanket on top of the  platform and load him up. 

He was mostly good. As usual, he wouldn’t settle down and kept pacing like he couldn’t get comfortable. Coming back from the Vet, I tried having the rear seats in their normal position. In a way that might have been better because Jesse tried to curl up and lay down. Something kept him from staying curled up or getting comfortable for more than a minute or two.

It might have been the stop & go traffic or just that he was too spun up from the excitement of going somewhere.

I suspect, that if we were on a long freeway trip he’d find a way to curl up. Lately as long as he can see me he seems to be content.

We had an incident last Friday with another dog that was totally out of control whose owner had zero control over. As is always typical in these situations, the idiot owner was letting their dog run free off leash. Great!!!! 

Their dog really came after Jesse and I both. To his credit, Jesse kept himself between the aggressive dog and me. Jesse’s attitude toward me changed on Friday. I’d had enough of this aggressive dog biting and snapping at both Jesse and I and got aggressive back. I made a sound Jesse has only heard once or twice, on those occasions it was directed at him because he was out of control. This time he looked up at me and realized I wasn’t angry with him, I was fixated on the other dog and when I moved toward the other dog Jesse moved with me.

It only took him a moment to connect the dots he and I were going to fight this dog together. The dog’s owner finally got their fat ass to where Jesse & I were making a stand and her dog ran off up the street, the minute she reached for its collar.

She offered a lame weak “sorry” to which I bellowed “Sorry my ass! Your dog attacked us, it went out of its way to follow us and was waiting for any opportunity to bite one of both of us.” I was very mad about it. We were less than 300 yards from our house. Jesse picked up on my being pissed off. He checked to see if I was angry with him and when he figured out I was yelling at the lady, (another human,) it seemed to give him pause.

At this point her dog ran in front of a delivery truck narrowly missing being hit and causing the delivery truck to lock up the brakes on a downhill run. 

Jesse & I continued our walk. I needed to clear my head, and perhaps so did Jesse. On the walk, I noticed Jesse was sticking much closer to me than usual. Every subsequent walk since, Jesse hasn’t been pulling on the leash or trying to drag me up or down the mountain. He’s been paying more attention to where I am versus where he is and we’ve been waiting on each other. He’ll wait for me to navigate rough terrain and he’s not dragging me into the underbrush but I’ll wait on the trail for him to investigate intriguing smells in the underbrush. 

Somehow the whole incident on Friday changed the dynamic between us.

That change in dynamic also carried over to the Vet visit.

He was more obedient and relaxed. Oh he didn’t like being there and really hates waiting for anything but he was more mellow. He got on the scale with no production then sat when I asked him to, 69 pounds! He laid down next to me in the waiting room and was mostly obedient even when he heard the kitten in a cat carrier and really wanted to know what that thing was. He was good with the Vet, & the Assistants. I was super impressed. The only thing that was annoying was him doing this high pitched whine that he does when he’s anxious or not getting his way. 

People in the waiting room were laughing when I was talking to him. “Jesse stop that whining. Look you can talk about it all you want but the whining is really annoying.” For some reason he chose that moment to “Talk” and it was like he was back talking me. We became the entertainment in the waiting room.

He’s got a clean bill of health. I’ve got the documentation that he’s had his boosters, so now I can take him to the groomer.

When we got home he was tired, I also noticed his head seemed a little warmer than usual. I think the booster they gave him may have made him feel a little punky. He napped the rest of the afternoon and wasn’t interested in his usual sunset ritual. He tends to want to be outside on the deck to watch the sun set and I guess he’s keeping an eye on the critters.

Last night he was curled up on the couch next to me with his head on my thigh. He wasn’t interested in rope, or ball, or anything other than my scratching his ears every once & and while.

Even this morning, he’s not fully himself but I can see him improving since we’ve gotten out of bed.

I know, too much information about the dog.

You know what? The Dog is way more interesting than the Washington D.C. follies!

Have a great day!