So, two weeks into the New Year. I’ve been doing pretty well, mostly quiet. I decided to cut way down on my drinking – no automatic glass of wine every night now, and I’m finishing my evenings with herbal tea instead of bourbon. Actually, I’m pretty much having just one cocktail for particular meals on the weekends, and stopping. I’m also ‘low-carbing’, not total Atkins, but steering clear of wheat and skipping carbs for most meals. I’m still eating oatmeal every other day, and have other carbs here and there. But I’m avoiding all the crackers and chips I have left over from the holidays, and all the candy and holiday goodies has been gotten rid of. It’s working, too – I dropped a nice chunk of weight almost instantly, and hope to see it continue to drop…
Although I need to get back to real and regular exercise, and I keep being reminded that it’s only 3 months since the heart thing showed up and I’m still, despite the pacemaker, huffing and puffing with even moderate exercise. It doesn’t get in my way or stall me out, I just breathe harder, but I’d hoped that would go away and it hasn’t. Stairs are particularly tough now, and maybe I just need to not worry about them and embrace the opportunities to climb stairs rather than avoid them.
The pacemaker site continues to twinge oddly at times and I often wonder if my occasional cough is really a respiratory thing or a heart thing. But my heart stuff is being monitored from data sent to the cloud, and I’m assuming that if anything is really wonky, my cardiologist will notice and get in touch.
But I’ve promised myself I can start skating again once I get down to a certain weight, and I’m not that far above it now.
New Year’s Weekend I gave myself free reign to do a lot of nothing, and that was really nice. Last weekend, I started on the ‘roll over the paperwork to the new year’ project and a general office organization and cleanup that will probably last through the winter. I’d be doing more of that this weekend, but the Christmas stuff was looking more odd the longer it stayed in place (it feels like The Langoliers, where you’re in a time that’s already happened). So Friday, in addition to getting laundry done, I bought the Xmas boxes up as well as some other stuff I needed to fetch from the storage closet, and I can de-Xmas leisurely over the next week.
This weekend, though, was a nice confluence of my connection with not only Charles, but his family. Friday was the anniversary of the day C and I met, 29 years ago (also a Friday the 13th, which is why I now consider that a lucky day) – and today is the anniversary of our first date, two days after we met. It also turned out that that my older niece Samantha was coming in from Minnesota with the kids to visit my brother- and sister-in-law, and also to come over to Beacon (up the Hudson from here) to visit her sister/my other niece, Allison, and her partner. I’d been meaning to come up to Beacon myself to visit Allie and John, particularly because I had two boxes of C’s mother’s china to give them, so we decided to all go on Saturday.
After picking up the car Saturday morning, and going through the logistics of loading it up when the car is double-parked outside your building – one suitcase, two boxes of china, and a gigantic air-fryer/toaster oven I’d bought myself and which turned out to be way too big for the kitchen space, I drove to a UPS store in Astoria to send the oven back to Amazon. Then off to Beacon, arriving in time for a fun ‘heavy snack’ sort of lunch. I’d expected the two nieces and the two kids, but my sister-in-law, Dottie, was also there which was great – hadn’t seen her since a couple of summers ago. Sat around chatting, and I got to open two years of Xmas presents from Allison – all knitting books, which were awesome.
Once John came home from work, we all headed to Happy Valley, which is a retro arcade with a bar! The kids had hot chocolate, we had adult drinks, and John led the kids through a bunch of games. I myself got to play Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, but that was about it. (I told the family about how, in college, Bunthorne Boy and I knew where every Ms. Pac-Man machine in Williamsburg was, and we’d drive around looking for an open one.)
We bought sweatshirts for the kids, and a t-shirt for me, then walked Main Street (the wrong way at first, which was annoying because I was underdressed for the windy weather) to various toy shops. (I picked up a funny oven mitt.) Then back to their apt. for coffee.
I was staying overnight at the schmancy Dutchess Inn and Spa, so I had to go check in. Definitely more fancy than I needed, but nice to check it out. I stayed in the “Dragon Room”, in their newly converted 2nd building, a factory, next door. It was lovely, actually. After some chill-out time, I walked all the way to the other end of Main Street to Brother’s Trattoria, meeting the rest of the family for dinner. Really nice meal – I had a spicy chicken francaise special, and enjoyed giving myself permission to have the pasta and a glass of wine, although I avoided the bread.
Afterward, we all smushed in the car to go back to the apartment for dessert. But everyone (including Allison, but not John) was heading back to the Catskills, so they left around 8-ish and John drove me back to the Inn.
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I was sad that they wouldn’t be around on Sunday, but Beacon is a lovely town, so I figured I’d get up, have a leisurely breakfast and walk the length of Main Street again and see if anything would be open before I had to leave. I had a great ‘crunchy brunch wrap’ at Homespun Foods, really tasty. Then did the walk, but didn’t really see anything other than an antique store or two at the other end – so decided to head back to the inn, check out, then drive back down once the stores were open. I did go in the antique store I’d bought my rescue baritone in a couple of years ago, but didn’t see much. (I’m not a big shopper, tend to zoom through stores pretty quickly.)
I had a car and no plans, so decided to go to an enormous outlet mall on the way home. It was great, but cold and windy and I wasn’t in a shopping mood, so only lasted about a half hour. And got back to the city mid-afternoon and got a parking spot right across from my building!
Since today was that first-date anniversary, and the cemetery is in the same general neighborhood as the Avis lot, I’d planned to get up and use the car before I got it back by 9:45 (the end of my two days). I had to tank up the car first, of course, and also go to Home Depot to pick up lightbulbs, so when I did go to the cemetery, I apologized for making C an ‘errand’ on the list.
Had a nice catchup, but here’s the thing. (OK, actually two things.) First, C’s resting place is on the third floor of a really nice mausoleum, but I haven’t come up with a nicer word to describe his ‘space’ than ‘crypt’ or ‘tomb’. Those words are accurate, but of course give quite a lot of subtext of dank drippy walls in a basement – and it’s not like that at all. Anyway, his crypt is in a small hallway off the main part of the floor. And if I show up there and there’s another mourner communing with their loved one, I’ll hang back and wait until they’re done, then go in and do my thing.
Well, sure enough, I’m there today and monologuing out loud to Mr. C when another guy (who I’ve seen before) just charges right in and starts communing with his wife’s (?) crypt, right across the space, so like 8 feet from me. And I’m like, “OK, I’m just going to keep going.” Didn’t seem to bother him, but that’s definitely a situation where now I felt self-conscious and weird. It always feels vaguely weird going to the cemetery in the first place… but … well, no big deal, really, I got to wish him a happy anniversary and all that.
I was reflecting that anniversaries used to be about ‘wow, look how far we’ve come’, but now it’s more like, ‘aw, look how long ago that was, and that was the start of the story… but the story’s over now’. And that’s just another ingredient in the general “C is gone and I’m sad” soup.
I’ll take myself out to dinner tonight and raise a glass. I’d hoped to go to one of our ‘special restaurants’, but they’re mostly in Manhattan and I won’t be in the city for a few days – so just going to a local reliable standby.
What else? Have been enjoying my ‘stories’ – I finished the last season of “The Crown”, which was amazing, and so sad. I finished the last season of “Shetland”, with Ashley Jensen in for the departed Detective Jimmy. I love Ashley Jensen, and they’ve really set her new character up nicely. One more episode of “Reacher” left – the last episode had a little too much torture and killing for my taste. (Really, Eric? What’s the exact amount of torture and killing that’s your spice level?) I’ve started “Succession” – I can tell already it’s going to be amazing, but also cringey – all of these people are horrible in different ways, and some screamingly incompetent. Might be tough to watch. I need another detective drama, I think, or maybe a medical show.
And I need to start thinking about this year some more. I’m going back to England in August, and Dad and I might do some sort of weeklong trip this spring, but in September I have a big-zero birthday which will also be the anniversary of me moving to NYC - a big anniversary. So I need to start thinking about what that celebration is going to look like.
Enjoy your ‘hygge’ as the temperature drops!
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