Saturday

I really do not have a good title for today. Don went up into the mountains to work on trails with his trail buddies while I stayed home to clean the house, shop for groceries, and prepare a meal for the family of our friend who leaped from The Bridge of the Gods last Sunday. I really wanted to be at my daughter’s house, holding Z, but second best would have been a trip into the mountains with Don (sans his trail buddies). After all, it was going to be in the low 50’s (Farenheit) here – and SUNNY.

I thought briefly about gardening, but a quick walk through the yard convinced me that I needed to pretend I do not have flower beds for awhile… Murphy has holes in every single one of them, and most of those holes are suspiciously close to where I planted those rather expensive ariceum bulbs and I don’t want to think about trying to garden with Murphy in the Spring. I’m trying very hard to like Murphy.

I returned to the house and did those disgusting but necessary cleaning jobs (bird cage, toilet), but I left the fine film of dust on everything and I did not bother to mop. After all, Murphy will be running through the house with muddy paws soon enough. I looked at my sad sofa and sighed, then pretended I had not looked at it: why did my husband allow the dog on the sofa in the first place? I thought we had agreed on that: no dog on sofa. I feel like I am at my mother-in-law’s house, a home which is otherwise immaculate, but where the dogs (there are usually two of them: currently a German Shepherd and a Jack Russell Terrier rule the roost) are allowed on the furniture. They also are allowed to beg from the table.

Since most of my life is pretending it isn’t my life, I decided I should go get some groceries. Just a few, we don’t need much. $130 late (I “saved” $40 or it would have been $170), I limped home. Darn gas prices driving up grocery prices! Oh well, I also stopped at BiMart (pity those of you who do not live in Oregon and do not have a BiMart!!) where I picked up 3 pairs of slacks for $5/each. I love a score like that, even if I have to rehem them (here’s a trick: but the iron-on hem tape). BiMArt had seeds out and bulbs and I sadly wondered if any of the bulbs I planted last fall will manage to survive Murphy?? A couple weeks ago, we purchased a nice portable greenhouse from BiMart for $89 – it is still in the box, but I know where it will go in the yard. I hope to plant any surviving ariceums in pots and keep them in there in the future.

Home again. When I was asked to provide a meal for the family it was with a condition: we had to eat with the family and “act normal.” I suppose picking one’s nose in public is out of the question, then. Got a call that the family was still not ready to sit down and visit and would I mind just dropping off the food? I had decided on Shepherd’s Pie and a gallon of Tillamook Mountain Huckleberry ice cream. A few years ago, when my friend’s mom died, we picked huckleberries and gave her a gallon of our harvest – she was thrilled to pieces (being a good Montana girl) and we promised to take her out sometime. Unfortunately, we haven’t been picking since – last year, I had knee surgery and wasn’t interested in picking huckleberries. Besides, I still had some left over from the year before. But now I am out, and Tillamook ice cream is the closest I can come to repeating that gesture. Since Don was out in the mountains, I decided to make dinner and deliver it early, sans him.

I thought it would be a disaster. If anything can go wrong in the kitchen, it will – when I am trying to make something special. The worst moment came when I was pouring the hamburger gravy over the mashed potatoes and my arm gave out. Ack! Gravy poured down the front of the stove! Fortunately, my left arm intervened and grabbed to cast iron pan from my right hand and saved the day. Good left hand! But now I am left wondering if I have some carpal tunnel issues to deal with…??? (Just so you know, Shepherd’s Pie is really simple: mashed potato base, hamburger gravy on top – you can use sausage, but I think my friend doesn’t eat pork, and biscuit topping. Just plain cholesterol-strong comfort food.)

Delivering the food was more emotional than I can describe. I can remember the two girls’ names, but the son in the middle eludes me. Of course, he was the one who came out to help me carry in the food, and he was very talkative – I think he needed to talk. He’s 25, if I remember correctly, and loves the outdoors. The widow wandered in to give me a hug – she was clearly on drugs, walking very dreamlike and very spacey. She was coherent and thinking clearly, but walking in that fog of loss. They were high school sweethearts, married longer than Don & I, parents of three beautiful children and grandparents a year before us. (The grandbaby crawled out to meet me).

Her son walked me back to the car and I did ask him his name. I was honest: I could remember the sister on either side of him, but his name just escaped me. He was so sweet. So talkative. So vulnerable. I cried half the way home. And I decided I was not ready to sit down and break bread with my friend, either. The wound is too fresh.

At home, it was all about Murphy. What a pill! If you turn, he’s tearing up the sofa (he has yet to actually tear it, but he digs the cushions and buries his chews – and his leash – inside it. He barked at the ceiling fan. He jumped on me. He ran outside and tore up the yard, then returned and left big, muddy prints on the sofa and carpet and my hardwoods (am I glad I didn’t mop???) He’s been binging off walls. barking at the German Shepherd next door (they’re playing – at least there’s that: they like each other!), and generally disrupting my evening.

Tomorrow, I plan to go to church (more on that later), then to see my daughter. My husband groaned when I told him what my plans were. Church is 20-some-odd miles one way and Arwen is 20-some-odd mile the other direction. But I did a map on the computer, and the entire trip is 62 miles. That’s from her to church to Tigard and back home. It’s nothing. Why is it, when we move to the urban area, 62 miles is suddenly an insurmountable distance – but when we lived in eastern Oregon or Nevada, 62 miles was a one-way trip to a destination we’d make any old day. And we’d drive it back the same day, ice, snow, or whatever.

I deserve to take some Grandma time. Life is short.