This has been quite the week. One more story to add: I had a nightmare last night that was so vivid and real, down to every detail, that I’m still having trouble shaking it off and it’s 9:30 am. I never went back to sleep except to doze for a few minutes. What was it about? Don asked me for a divorce. It came out of nowhere, no warning. He just said he wanted to move on. There were more details which, thankfully, are now hazy. When I woke up from the nightmare, I had no idea what was real and what wasn’t. I finally got up to go in the bathroom and then returned to bed, still shaken. I would never wake Don up as a rule, but he got up as well, so I told him about it when he came back to bed.
I am incapable of conveying to you how shaken I was, and am, from that dream. Eventually, it will fade. I know my husband is not about to ask me for a divorce – truly. But, sometimes, I am shaken to my core by how much I love and need him. It scares me at times. I’m sure some of this has to do with getting older, feeling more vulnerable, and this strange and unsettling – to put it mildly – time we’re living in.
We had a good talk this morning during our second cup of coffee. I have to take a break from the news. I have to stop raging about those things I can’t control – except at the ballot box. I have to revert back to what I was doing a few months back; no news, no Twitter, only music, books, gardening, cuddles with my husband, Frasier, old movies, miniatures, more books, and the occasional sugar-free chocolate.
We also had to deal with a hurricane and the loss of a beloved tree this week, so yours truly is well and truly over it. By the way, the arborist called yesterday and talked about what he would like to do. He charges a daily rate and, in addition to cleaning up the fallen tree, there are a couple of dead ash trees he’d like to take down and he’d also like to prune the big maple by the porch (it needs it) and the catalpa. I was dreading the price quote but it was actually less than we had anticipated. Still a lot of money, but we’re grateful it isn’t more. So that’s good news. They’ll probably come sometime next week. Pruning those trees should have been done a while ago, so now we’re being forced to do it and that’s a good thing. Also, I’ve been eyeing those ash trees and have been worried about them. All ash trees around here have fallen prey to the emerald ash borer and over the course of the almost-15 years we have lived here, they’ve all succumbed.
I finished Melmoth yesterday – it’s simply stunning and powerful and, through its storytelling, a clarion call to arms concerning our morality and the need to take action, as well as redemption. Sarah Perry is brilliant. I’ve only just started Hamnet. Don ordered the new book by Isabel Wilkerson; Caste. And he ordered it through our favorite local bookstore, Oblong Books. That should be arriving today. He devoured her first book (and winner of the Pulitzer Prize,) The Warmth of Other Suns; The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, so when I saw that Caste had just been published this past Tuesday, I told him about it.
The Michael Connelly that I ordered from The Mysterious Bookshop arrived in yesterday’s mail. I going to tackle Hamnet first because it’s been here longer.
It’s going to rain today. I won’t have to water the gardens, just the porch plants. More good news!
Stay safe.
Happy Friday.
That was so weird to read about the awful dream you had, as I had one of the worst dreams I’ve ever had last night! It was so awful and I woke up absolutely panicked. I can’t even repeat it, it was so awful, but it involved a horrible accident. All this to say, I know exactly how you felt when you woke up! I’m glad to hear you’ll be staying away from the news. I’m trying to do the same. There have always been bad things going on in the world, but we’ve never had the CONSTANT coverage of it until recent times. There’s no way it can be good for us to see so much turmoil. Anyway, hoping you have a lovely, peaceful, day!
I’m so sorry to hear you had a bad dream, Jenny! They do leave you shaken, don’t they?
Rest up, avoid the news, and stay safe!
Day 147 of isolation for me. I live alone in an apartment. However, my family delivers food, etc. I still walk my five miles plus a day-not at once-with three bone diseases…my Fitbit keeps track. it is painful but helps…Florida family ok now…I do tutor on Facetime…two grandsons-little ones-in Florida…a girl in Maryland-friend of family…looks at the college girls’ essays…and the tenth grader here=home schooled…we used to work all day on Thursday before virus…now will do couple hours on Facetime or in their yard with masks. I haven’t been with family in homes since March…I don’t go in places…exc. one small store occasionally. Good news is 20.00 in gas since early March. Makes me happy. I read fewer blogs now…I respond seldom if ever…I do not watch news and politics…I have so much teaching to do, reading, hobbies, bleaching this apartment…that I don’t get bored or lonely. I do pray for a vaccine, so that the young can go on with their lives…they are missing so so much. Who would have thought? I imagine, at this time, that the little things are causing much stress because we can’t fix the big things. You are an inspiration with your blog, and so many relate…I just decided a long time ago-I can’t listen to the propaganda…I also have to avoid a few friends on phone and texting…as I can’t imagine how anyone believes that this virus is not real…that the politics in this nation are FINE…sorry for the venting…but you keep writing…you and Don are living in your cottage together…you have each other. prayers to both of you…you are so sweet and kind. brenda b
You are wise, Brenda. Avoid all of that. Make a happy world within the walls of your apartment – and you’re doing that.
Take care, my friend, and stay safe.
I think you dream was more about Don’s lyme disease than anything else. When our loved ones get sick a part of our mind goes to what it would be like to lose them. Your brain is just doing a clean sweep of the bits left over. Your trees and property will also be much healthier when all the work is done. You will love it. You two stay safe and take care!
Or COVID, which we have now worried about twice – right at the beginning of the lockdown, I was very sick and we went through a period when we were worried about the virus. And then, before we became pretty sure Don was suffering from Lyme, we worried about COVID.
Yes, our trees will be much healthier, Tana.
Stay safe!
Good morning Claudia. We have been going hiking in our mountain area that is a 45 min drive. So wonderful to clear out heads in the beauty of nature. We have ticks and Lyme disease here, but I’ve never thought about it until we started hiking. Wow! It is an incredibly horrible disease. Thanks to you, we will be diligent watching for ticks from now on.
Poor trees. We have been watching ours handle some freaky winds here and holding our breath. I feel for you and them.
Verna
Yes, you always have to check each other for ticks after hiking, Verna.
Thank you.
Stay safe.
I just related this story to the other blog friend I comment to. She took a spill so mentally and physically she was hurting. Many of us are hurting by being bombarded by this terrible virus. Read an article on why self care is not laziness. You seem to know your physical limits and now you are working on your mental health. I have to keep a bubble around to protect me mentally and physically but didn’t get validation that it was self care, I always thought I was taking the easy way out. I wish peace to all, we all deserve it. It does take a load of off our shoulders releasing and sharing our thoughts.
Yes, it is self-care and we all need to do that for ourselves, Cindy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts here, Cindy.
Stay safe.
I can only imagine how shaken you were. I suspect between all the Covid stuff, the loss of the tree, the other stresses of life in general and most likely the scare of Don’s lyme disease, the whole sense of loss is heavy these days. I know it will fade but still, frightening.
I suspect passing on the news for a bit will be a very good thing. Here at the lake I don’t constantly have news in the background (news as a BG helps divert me from my tinnitus, even though I don’t always listen; I am aware). Rick can’t have vocal distractions while he works and I’m outside more often, painting, and the sounds are diverted by lake sounds. But I noticed my covid dreams stopped and even though I still have loads of dreams up here, most of which I can’t remember, none are particularly disturbing. So, I think you are smart to limit yourself.
The books sound good. I love summer reading time…. It’s nice to read on a porch or outside.
Yes, I’m passing for a while. I’m exhausted today but we took a brisk walk through our woods this afternoon. Now, I’m crashing!
Thanks, Jeanie.
Stay safe.
Well, Claudia, you are not alone. I’m sure there are web articles out there talking about how we’re all so revved up in our brains over Covid and really serious other stuff like the election and wondering what’s going to keep happening in our lives, when we’re already facing getting older, not wanting to lose any valuable time, etc. and of course we also just have our general problems of life be it with family, responsibilities with our homes and health, etc. Just so much added load right now on top of everything else.
I think a lot of us are just feeling overwhelmed with the enormity of problems that we keep hearing about every single frick’in day on TV or what we read on the web … like so much that’s still ominous about Covid in these next months … and then if you complicate it with social media, which ‘they’ say will give you the most dim and grim view of the world EVER, how can anybody feel uplifted; it’s just this WEIGHT of the world on our shoulders, and we’ve lost freedom in our normal/everyday lives, so it’s hard not to be tense. Clenched up.
I mean think of all that’s on your-Claudia mind that can come out in twisted dreams, as you were detailing the very-real fear and consequence of the hurricane and your property damage, Don’s Lyme, someone you’ve known with Covid, just the stress of being out there in the world right now with all the disinfecting and hoping you don’t encounter any Covid exposure, but also bills & finances & thinking about winter to come; the loss of your freelance work; it’s a sh*tpile of STUFF and it IS a big deal; and, yes, I have certain news-show anchors I can’t listen to anymore because of the intensity of their news talk and it seems to be all I do lately at night is watch ‘the news’ which is not a good bedtime story, so I hear you, I hear you but, dear-darling-girl, you need to cut yourself some slack and don’t be so hard on yourself right now; you just need to re-gain some balance. And I know you’ve tried hard to do that with reading, puzzles, gardening; you’ve done a lot of right things.
I had more than a few dreams early in Covid where I was running away from people who I felt were trying to touch me and give me Covid. More recently, equally unsettling, is more than one dream about an ex-boyfriend from like 35 years ago I almost married, and he is NOT someone I want in my mind or dreams; I have no idea where that’s popping out from because I haven’t even seen him in person for probably a year or more; and, believe me, he’s not somebody I go out looking for; so, I don’t know what else to tell you except that my husband says he refuses to give dreams credence and he tries to FORGET them as soon as he wakes up!
You’ll be okay, Claudia. This weekend will be better.
I’ve had a few COVID dreams where people got too close to me and they didn’t have masks on and one where I didn’t have a mask on.
Thanks, Vicki.
Stay safe.
Yes, I had those dreams, too, where I was caught in a not-good situation and I didn’t have my mask.
My husband doesn’t like to keep talking about Covid and especially a lot of the politics right now, so I have to figure when to back off although sometimes I make him talk out things with me when I’m really steamed about something on the ‘news’. But, tonight, end of evening, went in the other room to pull off his shoes and just sat there, so I said ‘what’s up?’ and he said, “This is getting hard.” So I said, “Want to define that?” And he said, “This. How we’re living. Cooped up like this. For like, what is it now for us, like 150 days or something? I didn’t sign up for this.”
And of course as mature, rational(!!) adults, any of us know that 150 days is just 150 days & counting, because we have a long way to go yet. So I think it’s the constant assessment and reassessment of what we’re doing, if we could do something differently, is there a new project we can tackle, etc. Just have to persevere. Not always so easy. Staying home at first felt really safe; like, okay, we can handle this. But a lot of us have been doing it for what seems an awfully long time. So I try to remember the people out there in the trenches, having to go out to jobs and other responsibilities, wishing they could have my life at home, when they have to go away from home and encounter risk.
Life before, life during, life after Covid. I think a lot about all the stuff I’m going to do after Covid, and it can’t get here soon enough!
I am relieved your tree clean up is less than you thought. Home maintenance can be expensive.
I can barely tolerate any news. I read the paper every day than try not too hear any more and avoid Facebook. It is just too upsetting. More reading is on my agenda.
Sorry about the bad dream. Dreams are weird.
They sure are.
Thanks, Kay.
Stay safe.
I don’t know anything about your ash trees, of course – how big, how close to the house, etc…but if they are not endangering anything, had you considering leaving them for woodpecker and other bird habitat? My husband is an avid birder and on our place we don’t cut snags (dead trees) unless they will land on and destroy something we need. A webinar I attended earlier in the year said that woodpeckers need at least two dead trees per acre to provide adequate space for nesting and food foraging. And of course once the dead tree falls, it is home to many other species. Here is an article that discusses this issue: https://www.fs.fed.us/nrs/pubs/jrnl/2019/nrs_2019_knight_001.pdf Just a thought…..
We have other dead trees that we have left up. Several within our woods and some on the edge of the property. These would hit other trees if they fell and/or our shed, so they have to come down. We also have at least one that is already down in the back forty and we leave it there for animals and bugs, etc.
Thanks, Anne!
Stay safe.
Well, I know you aren’t watching the news, but I had to share this one w/ you. Desantis just said people should be allowed to visit their loved ones in Nursing Homes because….. wait for it…..”hugging is good”. I can’t say “unbelievable” any longer, because it is all I would be saying ~ all day ~ day in and day out.
You are wise to listen to your body and psyche telling you it is time for a rest. It is like we wake up in the morning just knowing we have to accept that the “what’s next” is soon to arrive and then it doesn’t stop all day long.
I can say he’s insane. Just like his mentor, the Orange Man. Stunning idiocy.
Also, I think checking the news in these times can be addictive – same for Twitter. So I am going to do my best to avoid that today. Wish me luck!
Stay safe, Chris.
It was interesting to hear of your dream. I have had that dream a few times. It is the worst! I have also had the dream where I haven’t met my husband and I am lonely. I am not sure exactly what it stems from. My husband and I have a good marriage but often I feel like I don’t deserve him. I know this is my issue not his because he has never treated me like I don’t deserve him. Dreams are just weird and sometimes I think we need to just let them be. Perhaps they are there so we can feel fortunate for what we have! That’s the way I’m going to choose to think of it. My kids are starting to go back to college now. I sent one off to his senior year as a trumpet performance major- not a going to be a fun senior year for the times we live in. My daughter moves to U. Of Del. later this month at the Lewes campus for graduate work in marine geology. My husband and I will be empty nesters again.
Yes, normally, I have no problems letting them be. This one was different, it kept ‘sticking.’ Now, later in the day, I’m fine about it.
Prayers for the safety of your kids as they go back to school, Jane.
And as always, stay safe.
Hello. This time we live in certainly affects us waking or sleeping. My dreams have always been vivid/crazy and are more so now.
Here’s a little story about trees and the cost of maintaining them:
The husband was an accountant and he had little savings accounts set up for vacations and gifts (birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, etc.) He contributed a percentage of our income to the accounts monthly. Our first house had multiple large, old, pecan trees. Of course, he set up a tree account! A small % every month went into the account, as well as any odd money we received over the course of the year. That $ came in handy when we had to care for the trees. His teenage nieces thought that was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Now they are middle aged and just recently one of them said to me (after paying for tree clean-up after a storm), “I should have listened to Uncle Steve about that tree account.”
I’m sorry for the damage to your tree. It hurts, I know.
Wow. He was very smart to do that, Cindy. It’s a bit harder for us as we have no set income and we are not so hot with numbers, but what a great idea!
Thanks, Cindy.
Stay safe!
I totally understand your being upset after that nightmare…who wouldn’t? You’ve had quite the week…quite the week! One thing right after another.
We had our own scare this week. Someone on my youngest son’s job site showed up to work feeling ill and feverish. He was sent home, but not before being in contact with my son and several others. It’s an outdoor job site, but, my son still felt he had to be tested. Thankfully, he tested negative. But, the stupidity, to show up to work when you are sick, in this age of Coronavirus, is simply inexcusable!
Staying way from the news is difficult. So…I decided….I can take a little in the morning, and a little of the National news before dinner. That’s it. The more I watch…the crazier it gets! Between numb nuts in the White House, and every other crazy out there…it’s just too depressing.
Stay safe…stay calm…enjoy your little slice of paradise with Don! ;)
Oh no! Why would someone do that? And then, everyone on the site has to deal with stress and worry. I’m so sorry.
Thanks, Donna. Stay safe!
That’s a horrid dream! I had a similarly bad dream last week, only it was about my ex- husband leaving his third wife and asking if he could come back. Yikes! It wasn’t funny at the time, but it is moderately amusing now.
I’m glad that your trees are going to be looked after. As I am at work by myself today, my daughter took care of a maintenance call (washing machine) and I have worried all day about whether the repairman would take adequate precautions. I’m sure I’m not the only one becoming very stressed about what used to be normal, everyday things.
I can’t listen to the news, either. And I am a news-a-holic. Instead I am watching British mysteries, especially Midsomer Murders. Just imagine, a story with at least 3 murders per episode being more relaxing than our daily news?!?!?!
hej, jan …
i, too, love “midsomer murders”. also agatha christie, “miss marple” and the not-too-complicated (or at all gory) “father brown mysteries”.
hope you and your loved ones are safe and well!
kathy in iowa
oh, claudia … what a nightmare! sorry you had that happen. i hope you are feeling better now!
i think all the feelings we have about covid-19, pino, etc. must (for our own sakes) come out and, if we don’t let them out, they will make themselves known one way or another. i am choosing to get them out by praying and walking. also trying to focus on good things at night (sometimes listing them, if it’s been a very lousy day) and listening to those recordings of ocean waves and thunderstorms when i go to bed. i only watch the news before going to work.
and i wish my happy dreams would stick like the bad ones do.
sorry about the tree damage, but glad the estimate isn’t as high as you thought it would be.
hope you and don continue to feel better and take it easy every day.
i love where you put shanna’s painting … such a sweet face to greet you (and a lovely mix of colors in all your arrangements)p. does the groundhog have a name yet?
i am going to check out descriptions of those books you mentioned (not that my “to be read” list needs to get any bigger) … your enthusiasm is compelling. hopefully my order from the mysterious bookshop will arrive in a day or two! for now, i need to wash dishes and gather a list for grocery shopping tomorrow.
hope you sleep better and have a very happy dream tonight.
kathy in iowa
What a horrible dream! It surely encapsulates the depth of your fear and unsettlement. So glad Don felt better and was there to comfort you. In a way, my therapist tells me, bad dreams help us move along our fears. It sure feels lousy, tho. As we’ve said before, every day brings at least one outrageous and upsetting development that is totally out of our hands. I’ve been watching some of the million ghost/paranormal stories to avoid my news addiction. Rather be scared of spirits than reality right now. Of course, I believe spirits are a reality, so maybe it’s not so helpful? Women’s basketball is back on every single night now…there goes my lovely evening conversations with my deaf husband. I’m happy that he finds the games, teams, and women so exciting and inspiring, but it completely shuts down our connection. Sports are on the list of things I could live without even after the pandemic. But we are fortunate–no trees down, do blocked driveway, our road is clear, and we never lost power after the hurricane. Big ruts in the driveway that will have to be addressed and a couple of trees that are teetering so must come down. I can relate to the expense, but I’m glad it was less than you feared. Living on a tight budget doesn’t leave much room for the unexpected. Thanks for listening. BTW, I read the Warmth of Other Suns and found it absorbing and stunning. If I taught history and/or social studies/or black studies, it would be great to do a whole (virtual) semester on that time. The roots of many kinds of racism can be found by tracing that migration. Keep reading–maybe take up your needles again to make scarves for the homeless which we will be having more of. May your soul be comforted as you comfort us.