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 |  The latest Life Journey of Nada, widowed, now married! Blog #4 |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I'm no longer a single widow. I found true love again. Call me Lucky! |
| (My apologies for putting this in before the story of Cesar, but this is finished!) A few years ago I was fortunate enough to meet a woman in our local antique shop. She is a master seamstress. As it were I happen to have a couple of designer dresses I wanted hemmed up a little. I wouldn’t take them to just any seamstress to do because they were the once in a lifetime (mine anyway) designer dresses my husband insisted on buying me for my birthday a few years ago. She eagerly accepted my two dresses. When I took them over to her apartment there was so much of interest to look at. It seems her mother previously worked in Italy for a famous designer becoming quite a seamstress with an eye and hand for very fine fabrics. She collected beautiful dresses and handbags saving them for decades. Her seamstress daughter, Susan, became the benefactor of many gorgeous, one-of-a-kind couture items which she took the best care of and when the stars were aligned perfectly she wore one. On the day I came to pick up my two, now hemmed perfectly dresses (Valentinos the Italian designer who made them) she gushed amply over the fine craftsmanship of their maker. I was delighted with her work. The two dresses remained true to the original garment in every way. I found a jewel of a seamstress. As I tried on the second one she stood there with a puzzled look on her face and I wondered if I had unintentionally signaled something was wrong. Finally she smiled and said, “I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into another room only to return in a flash with a hanger displaying a very simple, beautifully print Jersey dress. Her eyes sparkled as she looked over the dress she first held closely then out and over to me. I don’t mind saying I was confused now. “Do you like this dress?” She then asked me with a half-smile. (Like who wouldn’t?) I looked it over. “Yeah I do. It’s simple and elegant.” “I knew you would. Would you like to try it on? Please. It’s a Pucci from the sixties.” “The Italian designer? Oh, can I?” “Sure. You’re the only person I know who would fit into it. I’ve totally reinforced all of the seams too. It belonged to Frank Sinatra’s wife, Barbara.” Eagerly I stripped off my own delicious dress knowing that soon I would be transformed (even if only in my mind) into the Hollywood days most only have dreamed about. Who knew Barbara Sinatra and I wore the same size? I slipped the thin Jersey over my head and it glided into place. It fit like it was made for me. I had a flash of a moment of remembrance. How strange a few years ago Frank and Barbara lived on the corner near my in-laws? Now he is gone. Then it dawned on me we had a cigarette lighter Mr. Sinatra use to give out as a Thank You at home. I was most surprised when Susan said, "Please accept this dress as a gift from me. I know you will appreciate it. It's important for it to have a good home." She wrapped the dress up with a loving hand, only giving it to me after the layers of tissue paper covered it completely. I still have all three dresses, a Valentino red cocktail dress, a black one, and of course the colorful in many ways Pucci. Now I am a couple of pounds heavier, a decade older, much less inclined to wear any of them, but oh the memories. The Sinatra lighter is about to be given to my brother-in-law. Now a relic from the Sinatra days to my father-in-law days to my husband days and finally back to a family member who can remember when Old Blue Eyes had some class. |
Well yesterday we had a big storm, loads of rain and ya know what? The new roof worked PERFECTLY!  This was the first time in ohhh...10 years or longer I was not frantically looking for "rain catching" buckets, wringing out soaked towels to throw into the dryer. It was so nice I even went out to dinner! Now when I am thankful for a roof over my head I actually have a roof....what a novel concept. The only thing about having the outside of my house look good is it only points up how the inside could use a lift. That's sort of how I feel about my body...errrr....make that my face. If only my insides felt as fresh...but hey, everything still works so I think I will just enjoy it. Sometimes we have to just grin and bare it. (I have never figured out which bare/bear to use). If I see people running away screaming I'll know. Something new is happening here...always when I would leave the house my dogs, Niles and Frasier would stay home and guard (hah) the ranch. Well, the boyfriend liked them coming along and now....they run to my car before I do. Gawd, now I have no more solo drives where I don't need to think about them. It's cute now, but I wonder how I'll relay to them they can't go when it gets hot? In my town it is full of dog vigilantes who do nothing but roam the parking lots looking for poor, hapless animals locked in the car without adequate water or enough windows down. Their sole purpose is admirable...but having the police get called out because someone thinks your dogs are in danger when you just went in someplace to use the bathroom is a tad much. Worse yet I have seen them break into the car to "free" the dog. Anyway, I don't want to endanger my boys by leaving them in a hot car this summer, so I guess I'll be having a sit down talk. "Boys, I hate to break it to you, but you can't go with me today". I see their little heads swivel to one side full if questions. "Aaaarrrrr?" "Yeah, you get to stay home!" Immediately they slink down like I have just said they'll get no more treats. Now there is a novel idea. "Okay boys, I'll leave the air conditioning on for ya....AND you can have two treats when I get home.". They look at each other. "Yes really." "Oh okay...and I will come pick you both up when I get back and we will all go to the mailbox together. Happy now?" Tune in next time for a story about....Cesar! |
| This is my new, mostly achievable goal. Ya gotta start somewhere, and if Party can do it... So this year...well for starters I did go on my holiday cruise...the usual, through the Panama Canal where I was supposed to meet up in Costa Rica with Kare...but I got sick.  Then he was going to be in LA on his way back and where was I? On a 50' sailboat on my way to...LA...so I missed him then too. And did I mention I was sick then too?I had left a deposit with a roofer and contractor to do some work on my house while I was gone. Uh...apparently we got like 12 inches of rain so they couldn't do the new roof etc. They are still here and it is late Feb. Yesterday they said they have one more half-day. Fortunately since we are expecting 3-6 inches of rain now. Gawd. Oh, and the work got tripled, had to get a loan to pay for it. My first ever bank loan on my own. I won't even go into how traumatic it was. Suffice it to say I hope it never has to happen again. I am still in the midst of hubby's unfinished business...I believe it's known as Probate. Ugh. In ten days he will have been dead for 18 months...and still no final nuttin. My life is still on hold, but hey life goes on. I have a boyfriend...but there are days I don't want one. Sometimes I don't know what I want except less STRESS. I miss everyone here, so will be making more of an effort...which I think is a statementIcould just copy and paste into every feeble attempt at blogging.  |
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Everyone handles the holidays differently as is very evident by all of the postings about it. My late husband taught me some valuable lessons about holidays. Holidays have become something about expectations...not being focused on what it is making it a holiday in the first place. When you expect to receive gifts isn’t the idea of the gift of giving lost? I believe it is. When you are expected to appease someone else’s expectation by giving them whatever it is they want isn’t it putting unwanted pressures on you as the giver? Of course it is. Isn’t it completely unrealistic to ask someone else to make you happy when really the only person who is responsible for your happiness is you? My husband’s family didn’t rush out to buy birthday gifts or Channuka or any other gifts every year. The element of the surprise would be lost. So they gave each other gifts when there was no special holiday, but rather when they saw something the person would like, or actually needed. Imagine receiving presents for just being you, no excuses, no planned event, just because you are loved and someone was thinking of you. Yes I will admit it took me awhile to get the hang of it, and in some ways I was not able to give up my own Christmas expectations, but I learned how to focus them more on what I wanted to do not buy, rather than what was expected of me. Lance didn’t care if I had a Christmas tree or three of them, he actually thought they were beautiful and he adored how festive they made the house look and smell. He loved me for assembling an elaborate Christmas Village above our mantle, one which grew to be five streets and numerous houses and accessories. He never complained when I hung stockings on the fireplace for the both of us, our dogs and my son. It merely added a festive dimension to our already wonderful home. The freshly baked cookies filled the air with sweet aromas he helped me to make and eat. I always had our house decorated by Thanksgiving because I made the big dinner for the families and it was part of my own tradition. But over time we began our own tradition of going away for Christmas and New Years. We began taking a cruise somewhere warm and sunny, spending our days with new friends who would become old friends. Our gift to each other was in spending the time together, concentrating on us and appreciating the fact we could get away. In reality it was a perfect time to go, everyone else was so wound up trying to make a perfect holiday, rushing to buy something for all the people on their lists, fighting the traffic jams, the lines in the stores, the frenetic buying...well, we just had enough of all of it. Besides no real work was happening for those who were not in retail. Last year we had planned our trip right after the one we finished but I ended up going on it alone. In retrospect it was perhaps the best final gift I ever got from him. Though I was not at all sure how it could have been at the time. His dying gave me strength to go on living as I had never done before. Was it weird? Yes, and I would not be honest if I didn’t say sometimes it still is. But were it not for the confidence he taught me, the fearless way he lived and died I doubt I would have become what I am today. I never knew who I was without him. Thirty years with someone can blend you and bend you. But as I approach this year I see how beautiful life is, and the problems we all have...well they are just temporary, we don’t take them with us. He may have left me some problems, but the good things he taught me will live far longer than any of the problems. I spent the other night rereading the posts I wrote when he was in the hospital, and when he died. I honestly don’t remember writing them, nor the details I wrote. I’m so grateful to have those to go back to now. I could not have read them before now. It’s only now am I fully able to be appreciative of the generous support you all showed me then and continue to. I know many of them are no longer here for their own reasons, but the “gifts” of your support and kind words have gotten me to this place in life. Thank you for helping me to find new reasons to live and love. I will be going away again this year. I know it will be different yet again, but I am positive the experience will be a gift that cannot be found under any tree. True gifts are experiences which enrich our soul. |
| Happy Thursday night. You know I am beginning to wonder why I do things I do. For instance, I spend hours drawing individual cards with wonderful notes inside, one for each night HE is going to be away (5)...plus one for a freebie "anytime" note. I seal them with hearts drawn over the seal (awwwww...I make myself sick sometimes) and mark each one for the night, in order, by number. I spent a few hours doing it. Am I nuts to think I would enjoy having a note to open each night he was away saying how much he loved and missed me? I don't think so. I would think it was sweet and thoughtful. Or so goes my expectation of how HE should react. Gawd, when will I learn it has to be enough just to DO it and not get an "atta girl" for it? You would think after 62 years of living and loving I would quit doing those kinds of things. Well crap, I feel like a teenager. I do. I physically swoon when HE is nearby. Isn't this why we are alive? I mean besides do whatever it is we do like have kids to perpetuate the planet and all. Don't we exist to love? He came home tonight. Sick. Okay, I understand that. But while he was away I did the things he casually mentioned he would like...plus other nesting type things. I wanted a reaction, a positive reaction. He didn't want me to get sick so he went to the guest room. Okay, now I sound positively ridiculous. What I want to say is when I asked him how he liked the cards, since he hadn't responded...he said, "I didn't read them. I forgot I had them." He took one carryon bag to Asia for 5 days and he didn't notice the stack of cards? Excuse me. Well, that was my day. I need to not expect something. Kinda like when I signed on here tonight. You guys are great. Thanks for the smiles. I feel a whole lot better. |
| Well, it looks like two whole entries for Oct.! I should be bowing my head in shame, but hey....two is better than one! You know me by now, gotta find a good way to look at things. I wish the rest of the world would. Look, I have some huge negatives facing me, but what good will complaining do me? Oh sure, I'll get to unload...but there are people reading who have worse problems. Well, I like to think they read this. Anyway, I felt I needed to say hello to y'all and just say I miss so many of you: Scarlett, Party, CC, Tor, Dan, well...the point is we used to have a really good time and lift each other up...we were sort of a playground for adult children. I see some of you on FB...but I don't hang there...heck I don't hang anywhere lately. With the way life is now it becomes harder to just do something fun...but we need to have the space to be allowed some, or...well what is the point? We work and then it's over...not right. If I learned anything from my husbamd's death It is, "To not put off til tomorrow what you can do today.". So here ia am. Please say hi, smile and I will return the favor. |
1. How I could sit down on a perfectly wonderful stone fireplace in my bedroom and get stung by a wasp! Sheesh, you think it is safe in your house...but apparently not. Those things hurt like hell...and if I had not been so ladylike (except for the short with no undies  I was wearing) that wasp would have....OMG I don't even want to think about what a few inches higher could have done! As it was 4-5 days of pain, intense itching and sitting lightly was bad enough on the back of my upper thigh. Look before sitting is my NEW motto.2. I volunteered to draw 26 canvas bags for a charity who will be giving them to children with cancer. The funny thing is when I said I would do it there was more than a month until the Gala...now, it is 8 days away and I only have 18 done. Sigh, how does time slip by so quickly? I should have them done in a couple more days though, but yikes, talk about hand cramps. 3. I went to my mailbox yesterday and there was only one piece of mail; an envelope addressed to Lance (aka HubbySpeaks) from the StoryMaster and StoryMistress. I opened it, and it was a cute little calendar to "celebrate" his account birthday. Uh...I shouldn't be surprised I suppose, but since they were aware my husband died over a year ago it kinda reopened the wound. (Not very wide, thankfully.)4. A week ago it was 109º here, today it is muggy, thunder and lightening been hanging around for three days now. Such weirdness. 5. Lastly, why is my desk such a mess? Oh...I'm working on it, or trying to.  That about wraps up my exciting life lately. Except I am having great s-e-x. Gotcha! |
| Thirty eight more hours until he has been gone a year. A year. This is the first year in 32 years I have not spent with him. One day at a time, one night at a time, and sometimes one second at a time. Breathe. How do you express how different the world is when you suddenly find you are alone in it? For me it has been through my art. It is the ultimate expression of where I am in my life. I’ve been told I am a a documentarian of my life. I can’t deny it. I don’t know where the compulsion to write has come from, but I am not just a writer, nor artist, but I find I have some artistic talents in everything I touch, though music eludes me for the most part. Maybe I only touch those things which I have an attraction for because I have some talent for doing them? I just don’t know, but thank you God or whatever has placed this in my care. I do think it has only been placed in my care, it is given to me to spread some happiness. I’m sure of it. Yesterday I had to leave my house because the electricity was going to be shut off for an hour. No big deal, I had things to do, responsibilities that I would have to do sometime soon, yesterday was perfect. I serviced the four retail establishments I sell cards in. Much to my surprise and delight I had some fairly large orders. When I stop to think that last year on this date I was sitting in my house taking with my brother in law about the grave condition of my husband. The most important thing in the world was him. It was crucial that we be united, both in body and in mind. One of us would speak with the nurse before we went to sleep. Then we would inform the other. We felt it important to share information, not to take the nurses away from their patients to answer the same questions more than once. We cared about them doing the best they could to make him more comfortable, to help him to get well. Yesterday I spoke with a friend who was heavily involved in guiding me through sanity through this. I know it did different things for each of us and she has her own memories of this upcoming day. The other half of my female/friend support system is now watching her husband go through a horrendous type of cancer. She actually thanks me, credits me for spurring she and her husband into getting their affairs in order. But she is hurting now. Two other friends have the pets in their lives, women without human family around, now experiencing having to face life without them, more cancer victims. Everywhere we turn is human heartache. Because we have seemingly learned nothing about each other which would have us not going into mental or physical battles with each other. We still kill our enemies instead of seeking to find common ground. War is the convenient and profitable answer. It makes me sick. People being mean to each other...on tv, in person and anonymously. It takes an amazing amount of fortitude to not let all of that affect you and your relationship with the world. But back to yesterday and what made me think about how we can affect each other. After I serviced my accounts I drove to the coast where I knew it would be cooler than the 104º back at home. It was lunchtime so I decided to eat at In-and-Out, a burger chain who does things right. It was 12:30, the height of lunch hour rushes, and the joint was hopping. I ordered, sat on a bench a waited for my number to be called. I saw a young man who is a Dallas Cowboy order. I know this because they are in town to practice...like they do each summer. I saw loads of people order and finally my number was called. I picked up my tray and surveyed the bustling room. No empty tables. “Excuse me, may I share a table with you?” I asked the woman who had just began eating her fries at a table for two. “Oh sure.” She said looking up at me smiling. I smiled as I sat down. Just after I got situated and began to eat she looked at me asking, “You on lunch hour from work too?” I had to think a moment. “Yes. Sort of. My electricity is off and I had to escape the heat of Ojai.” “Ahhh. What do you do?” She dipped a fry into catsup. “I run my husband’s companies...he died a year ago, and I have a business of my own, greeting cards.” “Oh I’m sorry.” Her brown eyes reflected her sincerity. “Thank you.” We carried on chatting about families, jobs, and the deaths of her brother, mother and offerings about how people get greedy when others died. The smell of money brings out the worst in people we agreed. She gave an example. I could have, but chose not to. It seemed more important to listen to her. Her name is Andrice. A beautiful name, and a very generous soul. We mused over how tough life is now, how she is readying herself for retirement from her job, and I told her the fear of not having enough to pay my bills was what pushed me into my art, thankfully. I know I became animated as I told her of my art business, small yet I have big plans for it. She smiled and when I had finished said, “You know, I feel better just listening to you. I feel hopeful.” “Thank you, I do too.” We carried on talking about how there is no good news reported, only bad, and it was no wonder people got mean. As we finished lunch I had promised to give her my card, but I had them in the car. As serendipity would have it we were parked next to each other. I gave her my card, some Ojai Post Cards, and a couple of TheBuffyW greeting cards. We then parted, both of us feeling better for having met each other. What a difference we can make to each other, if only we spread the good in our lives, not just the bad. PS: Just a note of thanks to all of you who participated in the beautiful book made for me after Lance died. I look at it and think of you all. I don't know how tomorrow will be, but I do know it is the first day of the rest of my life.  |
| The best laid plans....the last time I was here was the end of May. I thought for sure I'd be writing more, but it turns out I am writing less than ever and drawing more daily. My husband's estate takes up a great deal of time...what with the attorneys, CPA's, and actually working at the office etc.. I am the President of the company now. Ugh. Maybe I should just give you, in a nutshell, what I have been up to... for those who even check my blog... 1. My son is in State Prison, sentenced to five years. He'll do half or less. He has been for 110 days or so. We are corresponding...I mean he is a captive audience for me now. He turned 43 while there.2. I started a business of my own with my art...and it is actually making some money. (Okay not close to what I have spent yet, but hey, nothing happens overnight except being older the next day.) 3. I am still having the @!*$%@*** water problems. (This despite Lance having installed a 5,000 gal. spare water tank so I never would have to haul water from the pool to flush ever again.) Yeah right. I'm doing it again. 4. Cesar is still employed by me. (I know, I know.) Call me a masochist, but I do like the consistency of knowing what to expect from him. (Nothing.) 5. I met an amazing man and he gave me an engagement ring two weeks ago. Both he and the ring are gorgeous. It will be a long engagement. (You'll have to wait for the stories. Hah-Hah!) And that brings me up to the mandatory List of Five, so I will stop here. I hope to do another list soon. I miss you all and am popping in to read, so keep up the wonderful blogs...it is time for me to renew my membership and I WILL! You can't get rid of me that easily! Til next time...I'll see you in the comments or on the blog pages! |
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. Cute pictures! I'm so glad you have found a new and different, but still beautiful, life.