waiting

Ed is waiting for all the ice to melt so that he can begin chopping down a tree.
The cheepers are always waiting for one of us to emerge and bestow foods and favors upon them.
My morning, filled with sunshine and warming temperatures, is spent on long, long hours of waiting as well. Nothing as exciting as felling trees or receiving treats. I wait for the number B13 to show up on a screen where numbers flicker occasionally, perversely out of order and not in any recognizable pattern.

I am one of those unfortunates whose (online) application for Medicare was flagged as requiring additional documentation. Who knows why. Possibly because I was born outside the US. On the SSI website I am told to bring a birth certificate and passport or other ID to the local SSI office. Just as I set my poor sister on procuring my birth certificate in Warsaw, I receive a letter from SSI telling me that actually they need just a passport or a driver's license. I'm perplexed. What does a driver's license prove?

Well, I'm not taking chances. After breakfast...





...I pack a folder with papers and head out to SSI. I don't understand so many of the nuances, rules and assurances of Medicare anyway, so I better come prepared. Being a former state employee makes the whole process of applying for this indispensable health care for seniors at once easier (if you just want to follow blindly and do what the state insurance fund tells you to do) or harder (if you actually want to try to comprehend how you fit into the Medicare quagmire of services, programs and particulars). I just want to not make mistakes, so I bring all the papers, duly collected, and wait.

The process of waiting is instructive. I mean, I wonder if Donald Trump has had to wait, or if SSI people came to him and if he had to pay a lot to get them up to Mar-a-Lago?

The people who wait at the regional offices are people with problems. You don't go to your SSI branch (they warn you: parking is limited!)  if you have access to online forms and if you aren't flagged as being a problem. Those who wait look like they've been doing a lot of waiting in life. It's really a sad place, but also one where everyone is patient. The room is quiet. A screen flashes news items that SSI has decided are pertinent to your well being. Did you know that the CDC would like to have a state of the art facility to study rare diseases? There is no WiFi. Most people don't have a smart phone in hand.

Two hours later, B13 flashes. I sit before my agent who tells me I needn't have come because I'm not applying for SSI benefits. She is wrong, of course, making her a third and unique version of what it is that I have to do to process my application. In the end she takes down info from my passport and tells me they simply needed proof I was a US citizen, which is funny since a driver's license (one of the document options, according to the letter) would not have given them that information.



From there, I go to the Apple store with my dead computer.

You'll have to wait -- I'm told. At least an hour. Go get a couple of coffee!
Is there a coffee shop nearby?
There will be soon...
Thank you.

I go to Macy's. (Our Apple store shares mall space with Macy's.) Snowdrop needs a spring sweater. Maybe I'll find it there?

After walking up and down the aisles, I conclude that this store should basically close. Clothing is scattered on the ground, and what's on the racks is out of order, with no eye to presentation. There is no one to help you and there's nothing in the children's section you'd want to buy anyway. Trust me on this.

Good bye, Macy's in Madison. You were once a very nice store.

I return to Apple and they tell me they'll have to send in my computer to their mega fix-it center. They don't even look at my machine. They just take it from me and ask if I'd backed up my data. I respond that I did not worry about a computer that is barely a couple of months old crashing and so no, I haven't done that yet.
Tsk tsk... We'll try, but it may not be possible to save anything.

I used to love you, Apple.

I ask: how many computers fail in the first few months?
Oh, not many. Only 10% fail in the first two years. (Ed later tells me that if Tormach's -- the company he oversees --  machine failure rate was that high they'd be out of business in a year.)


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.






It's nearly 50F (10C) outside! Would you like to go to the park playground?
Would she ever!

Swinging once more!






Stories told on the play structure.






And back at the farmette, Ed has felled the tree!
The cheepers are perplexed.






Snowman melts.






Ed hauls branches to the wood pile.
Can I help?







In the farmhouse now. Ed tempts her with a ballet Youtube clip...






That's not Swan Lake! -- she complains. The girl has become smitten with dancing swans.
Can I please wear my ballet dress?














Evening. Crazy busy recedes. I pick up my old, slow, but oh so trusty computer and write.

Sunday

It's so good to wake up to sunshine (even if it does wake our farmhouse guest earlier than one would hope)! We're just below freezing and this has created a curious confluence of puddles and ice: the surface is frozen, but the underbelly is water. The cheepers learn from sad experience that even their weight will make the ice snap. So they hold back.






It's at once lovely and horrible and definitely slippery and/or wet out there!






Snowdrop is up! And she picks up where she left off last night. She is committed to her storyline!






Me, I just shamelessly pander to her wee preferences. Cornflakes this morning? Sure! Want to keep your pajama bottoms on? Of course! Into ballet? Check this out: a magnetic paper doll called Nina Ballerina!






Ed playing with magnetic paper dolls is a first.






Our big breakfast is at the big table. She dresses up for it.






After, we create an "art museum."






Back to play with characters. It's sunny in the front room. She squints hard, then finally asks for her sunglasses.






Eventually: can we please go outside??
It's one degree above freezing and the winds are howling...
Sure! Let's go to the front yard -- there's less ice there. We can pretend there's a campfire!






We're roasting broccoli!






Always taking the load onto her shoulders...





I help her pull the wagon up the hill. Singing makes it easier.
We're going home, we're going home, we're going home home home, we're going home...

Thirty rounds into this, she suggests we make up another song.


Back at the farmhouse, I give her lunch choices. There's no question: she wants corn and pb&j. I'm not sure she's had pb&j (they don't allow it at school), but she surely has heard of it. I have supplies!

Can I help?
Sure: can you clean the corn?






Lunch. We're giving the new table a real workout!





More play. Nap. Then she goes home.

The house feels very quiet without Snowdrop.

Well, we have to head out anyway. Even though it's nearly evening, we have errands: my brand new computer died (for no good reason!) and so a trip to the Apple store is in order. Never go to an Apple store on Sunday. You'll just be told to come back another day. I do. I will.

So long as Ed and I are this close to Owen Woods, maybe we can take a walk there?

Well, we do it, but it is a brutal trail: what's not ice is mud and what's not ice or mud is a puddle. And yet -- it is lovely to be there at this late afternoon hour...





... at the cusp of spring.

endings beginnings

No one stands still. We're all spinning this way and that, sometimes with a goal in mind, sometimes unsure what's around the bend. But you know and I know that I have had one firm goal this winter: to purchase a table that would expand and be large enough for our herd at mealtime. All those grandkids! And daughters with friends! And perhaps someday grandkids with their friends!

Very early in the game, I found a table that I thought would be quite fine. I called the store, learned the price ($2000 when you added two leaves) and sighed.

The search continued. And I found another table ($1200)! Hope rebounded. Maybe if I saved, and we sold our current table, and I talked Ed into sharing the cost? A big shake of the head from Ed.

So we traveled. To Jefferson. To Sun Prairie. To Cottage Grove. All in pursuit of a decent used table that would cut the price in half, or more. We checked the ads daily and selected ones that would look okay in our large farmhouse kitchen. And one was worse than the next.

But last week, Ed came with me to the furniture store (Rubin's) and while there, we found a table we both rather liked. It isn't authentic anything, but it strives to look like it's Mid Century Modern. It's made mainly of rubber wood, which sounds gooey and awful, but is actually a great hardwood found in southeast Asia and it grows fast, therefore appeasing anyone who has trepidations about cutting down forests to put a table in their house. You know whom I have in mind. The top is covered by a thin sliver of walnut. And the price? Just a tad over half of my last beloved.

You think this is the end of the table story? After all, I suggested there would be an ending today.

In fact, we were inching toward purchasing something else altogether -- a Craigslist table that is authentically Mid Century Modern. Made out of solid birch, by a Massachusetts company that any furniture nut would recognize (Haywood Wakefield). The owner wanted $1200 for it. It's a collectible! Ed waited the right amount of time and bargained her down to $550.

This morning, immediately after breakfast...






I took a deep breath and climbed into the truck next to Ed. This in itself indicates how much I am set on getting a table -- the truck smells like ten mouse families inhabited it all winter long. To say that it is not clean is perhaps the greatest understatement of the year. But of course, why should it be otherwise? No one uses it except on the rare occasion that we need to pick up a load of something or other or Nina gets it into her head that she needs a table for the farmhouse.

There are no shocks on that wreck and so we roar and bump our way to downtown Madison -- thankfully not a terribly long ride.

And there stands the table!






Ed says -- it's kind of bland.
I say -- true, but hey, it's Mid Century Modern! Though it does look more scuffed up than in the picture.

We do our usual -- ask the owners to please leave us alone while we talk it out.

I lean on it. It wobbles. And squeaks. It has a center leg for stability. The leg doesn't touch the floor.
I could try to fix that... Ed mumbles.
I touch it lightly. Wobble wobble wobble.
I want to love it.
I don't like it.

We explain why it's a no. The owners -- nice people, downsizing from Madison's posh west side house to a smaller posh west side house -- admit that it's not a favorite of theirs either.
Hard to keep in good condition... Probably needs refinishing...

As we leave, I say to Ed -- we have an hour or so before Snowdrop comes over. Want to go to Rubin's?






And that's how it happens that we drive home with a very heavy box full of table pieces.

Duly assembled by the both of us. So solid! And, you can take the leaf out, or put another one in. Expandable, shrinkable -- as the needs dictate.






Oh, Ed does mutter -- I thought you wanted a lighter table...
I reassure him that it will lighten over time. I think. And it really is just fine even in its current shade.

The table project receives a check mark. Done!






As for the rest of the day -- oh, that belongs to Snowdrop. She is spending a short weekend with us and she runs in with every intention of continuing her story just where she left it yesterday:

... and Susie fell soooo hard and bumped her head, so we had to take her to the hospital, where she rested and waited for the doctor. And I asked the doctor: why do you have a chair that jingles when you sit on it and the doctor said...






and so on,






and so on.






With a happy ending.






And the table quickly becomes a place to gather, talk, play, and eat macarons if that's where your heart lies.






It's dinner time. We will be breaking the table in for its first family meal. Snowdrop chooses the napkins (or what she feels ought to be used as napkins), sets the silverware.






We're ready. Ed comes home with the pizza, I put out the salad and... broccoli flowerets. Because there is at least one person in her home who doesn't adore broccoli, I found out recently that the girl doesn't really know this sublime vegetable. I serve us a small portion just so we can all savor its utter goodness. (I seriously love broccoli.)






Later, much later, she turns off the lights in the kitchen and throws herself into a high speed saunter, laughing and bellowing -- I am a shark, dancing in the dark waters! 

It is delightful the first fifteen minutes, but eventually, she has to be reigned in. There are many ways to do this -- this time she settles by going to my remote desk in the sun room, turning on the work light and scribbling away on index cards. You could say she is burning the candle at both ends tonight.







Good night little peanut. Sleep well, sleep tight. Dream of spring and summer. Of cousins and brothers. They're all just around the corner.

oops!

The great melt away is here. Frozen sheets of ice are slowly receding. It's good news, of course. We want an early spring.

(Breakfast..)





But here's the problem: just because most of the ice has melted, it doesn't mean that all of the ice has melted. And so you're less cautious. I am less cautious. How else do you explain the Great Slip and Slide on the way to my car? Legs flying high, I go straight down with a bang on my tailbone.

It was most unpleasant.

The last time I fell that hard was when skating in Greece more than four years ago. I was so sore then, that upon returning home, I bought a special cushion that helped me sit without pain.

I drag out the cushion once again.


In the afternoon, of course, I pick up Snowdrop. Here she is at school, with a teacher who deserves the hug Snowdrop delivers.





Walking with the little one from the car to the house, I am e-x-t-r-a cautious.
Why are you slow, grandma?
I fell on my butt (rear end? tushie? what do kids call it these days?) and it's sore.
Do you need a bandaid?
No, those only work for bloody hurts.
I will hug you!
Wow, thank you!

Apart from the reading and snacking, I'd say her afternoon is split between two activities: playing alone with her characters...





... and then (commanding a disproportionate share of time) telling a whopper of a tale about her baby who suffered a fall, necessitating a visit to a doctor.






This story lasted well over an hour and was full of drama and pathos!






Luckily, it appears to have a happy ending!






Evening. Ed and I reheat lentils and think ahead to the weekend. Ed managed to haul the truck out of the groundhog ditch so it's ready for a table, if indeed there is to be a table tomorrow.

Perhaps more importantly, there will be sunshine. And Snowdrop. And puddles in the driveway. No ice. Just puddles.

moving forward

We're not stuck in winter. We're not stuck in a landscape of frozen soil and patches of steely ice. We're not stuck in a table purchase impasse. We're moving forward!

But it surely looks otherwise when you look outside at the farmette lands and inside at the kitchen dining area.

(The cheepers slide cautiously toward me...)






Breakfast. No sunshine, but no matter. We're (slowly) climbing out of the winter chill today.






I settle in for a morning of writing, but I see that Ed is pacing. To the sheep shed. Not to the sheep shed. Upstairs, downstairs. Finally, he says bluntly -- you want to go look at your favorite (new) table at Rubin's (a local furniture store)? I'm a little at loose ends.

I know that this does not signify agreement. We have a Craigslist table lined up for a Saturday viewing. But Ed likes to examine all sides of the picture, if only to convince himself even more of the rightfulness of his position.

We drive out to Rubin's. We study a version of the chosen table. He does not reject it. But, it's new and it's certainly more expensive than the alternative on Craigslist.

As we meander across the Rubin's showroom, we pause by another table that strives to look Mid Century Modern (a style that I would not have associated with the farmhouse until we got the new-ish couch and then all hell broke loose and we veered in favor of the classic and simple lines of MCM). And it is cheap. Just a touch more than the older table we're to examine on Saturday.





All this to say that I think by the weekend we will have purchased a table. Which one? Oh, don't ask too many difficult questions! This one or that one!


In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.

It is cold. It is useless, throwaway weather. No one mentions outdoor play.

Once inside, she reads, moves here, there, considering her options.

(She picks up her kaleidoscope. I try yet again to show her how to keep one eye closed. Can't be done. Not yet.)






But did you notice her hair? Pulled back as if she were going to a ballet class? Yes, that class, yesterday's class is still very much on her mind. She is in fact getting ready for an afternoon of most things ballet.

Dancing with her tutu'd Rosie...






Doing a giant ballet puzzle, then dancing on it...






Insisting on switching to a ballet skirt...

But I haven't a shirt for you!
How about this one? She drags out my one spare, used this summer for her backyard pool play...






Dancing with pink ball...






Balancing on pink ball...






Through it all, she is in her story telling mode. I catch snippets of ideas from books, others from her day to day encounters.

I send her home in a tshirt and a dance skirt. I'm sure her parents are thrilled/puzzled/not surprised.

Outside, it's sleeting or raining or both. March weather. You know March? The month that brings with it our most awaited, coveted season. We are getting awfully close to it!