Sunday Saunterings

It is going to be a busy week here on Kensington Drive, and I couldn't be happier.

Tomorrow, my friend Susan arrives to spend the week. It's her first vacation in years and I haven't seen her in two, since my Dad's funeral. The weather forecast is calling for rain and snow, so I am not sure how much sight-seeing we will be able to do, but it is going to be just so much fun to see her.

And, I am cooking on the big day. I've finalized the menu, ordered the turkey, and today I went grocery shopping to get the rest of the stuff I need. (The most important itemon the list was the cat food, of course. If I didn't get that, Susan and I would have a miserable week...two furbabies would ensure that!) I purposely chose to go to Martin's on Sunday morning figuring it would be quiet. I was wrong. It was crowded. Crowded with clueless husbands chewing on their fingers or staring blankly at a shopping list like it was written in Greek. I have said this before, but I will say it again here: Ladies, if your husbands cannot tell a fork from a spoon, please do not send them to the grocery store on their own. Just like they don't ask for directions when they are lost, they don't ask grocery clerks where an item is located when they can't find it. Instead, they wander aimlessly up and down the aisles - usually in the middle of the aisle. I felt sorry for these poor men, who were so obviously out of their league. I also feel sorry for their wives or mothers or daughters or significant others who will have to go back to the store later this week and try to explain to the store manager why they need to exchang the cream of chicken soup for the turkey gravy.

Bonnie and Lanny are coming over for dinner too, so it should be a wonderful afternoon of good food (I hope) and good company (I know). After some games or maybe a movie, Bonnie, Susan, and I will rest up for our Black Friday excursion. We'll shop, of course, and scoring that perfect gift at a great bargain is one of the payoffs. But for us, the real payoff is breakfast afterward, when we will rehash our purchases, lament the bargain that got away, and all the crazy people out in the wee hours of the morning doing their Christmas shopping. Really, haven't these people heard of Cyber Monday, when you can shop in your PJs?

As if all of this is not enough, Saturday wraps up Susan's visit as well as Picture Book Idea Month. I am thrilled that I already have my 30 ideas -- and them some. I put my groceries away and settled down -- a cat on either side of me -- with my PiBoIdMo journal, my lap desk, and the "Who, What, Where" game that a fellow PiBoIdMo participant raved about and went to town. I shuffled the cards and "dealt" 15 who, what, and where scenarios that tickled my creative funny bone. Some are just the ideas, others are more fleshed out, with a summary of what might happen or a list of things that could. For the rest of the week, I will go back to those ideas and bubble them -- developing the characters, the setting, and the problems my zany group of characters might face. And they are zany --there's a camel doing karate, a music loving alligator, and a dolphin who thinks he's invented the next big game, involving an ice rink, balls, and clubs. I can't wait to see where these guys take this writer! One thing is for sure -- it'll give Black Friday shopping a run for its money!

Of clothes, memories, moving on

Susan will be here in just two weeks, which means I have to get going and get the guest room into a habitable condition. I've been putting it off, cleaning the kitchen, the dining room, the breakfast nook, the family room instead. Doing anything to avoid the biggest task of all: bagging up Bate's clothes and taking them down to EAUS. I should have done this months ago -- in the midst of this slow economic recovery, there are people who could be getting the benefits of his shirts and jeans instead of leaving them scattered on the guest room bed.

You see, I started this task months ago, going through his closet, selecting a handful of shirts and the suit he wore when we married to keep, and then sorting the remaining shirts and ties and jackets into piles. And that is as far as I got. Every time I walked into the guest room, armed with plastic bags, I froze. Giving away Bate's clothes, even to a good cause, seemed like such a final step, that once his clothes weren't there, he wouldn't be there either.

Which, of course, is stupid. Bate will always be in my heart, my memories, with me in the way he influenced my life. I will never be able to pick up a book by Henning Mankell and not think of Bate. I will never be able to eat Chinese food or listen to an Eva Cassidy or Van Morrison CD and not think of Bate. The truth is, I really don't notice the clothes on the bed, it's not the clothes themselves; it's the thought of no longer having them there, comforting in one way and a huge painful, burden in another. They are not just clothes, just something else I have to let go of, like Bate, like the dreams we shared that we will never realize, and all the little day-to-day things that no longer happen.

And that is the hard part -- letting go. I have resolved to bag up the clothes this afternoon and take them down to EAUS. It is time, time to move forward with my life, buoyed up with happy memories of Bate, and not burdened by the sight of clothes that will never be filled out with Bate's warmth and bulk. It is time to let these clothes to move on with their lives, too, to be filled with the warmth and bulk of a man that someone loves just as much as I will alway love Bate.