Ok...what?

Edit: The experiment described below lasted about 6 days. I guess the interest generated made me feel a little like a kid on a Big Wheel in Times Square traffic.
I am ready to confess that this week, under the tutelage of two of my adult daughters, I made an OkCupid profile. They assure me that it’s not a big deal. That lots of people use the site for meeting people in general, and not necessarily just for dating. I point out that I’m only thinking about how it would be nice to go out to dinner and have a conversation, or break up the alone time. That I’m not at a point where I am, in any serious way, ready to charge into the dating scene. Whatever the dating scene is.
Alzheimer spouses discuss the question fairly often: Is it acceptable to consider a relationship with another potential partner when your disabled spouse is still living, but unable to interact with you in a meaningful way, and is largely unaware? Opinions vary. Intentions vary. Mostly we agree to try not to be judgmental about it. I’m not even sure how I feel. About me, I mean. Toward any other Alzheimer spouse contemplating the question, I accept that they will do what’s right for them. And we all recognize that humans thrive on relationships with other humans, and don’t do well in isolation.
But do I want to “date?” I would like to ignore that word. Not look at it. I expect that if it comes to a point where I’m actually on the verge, pertinent emotions will be hard to disentangle from my continuous sadness about losing Jeff.
But making the profile felt like a brave step. A doing of “something.” Across the board, I need to do a lot of somethings in order to reconstruct a sense of contentment with the world, and being slightly open to the possibility that a man could be involved in some of the somethings is a factor I’m trying to process. If my brain let me choose, I’d choose to be happy single, but I’m having trouble convincing it.
So, back to OkCupid. Luckily, the wise and intrepid girls steered me away from using a handle that bears any resemblance to my real name. Then they graded my text entries (without a red pen) into the various categories such as “the 6 things I can’t do without,” and “you should contact me if.”
More fun for them, I’m sure, was editorializing on the messages that have rolled in since. Over the last 36 hours, maybe 20-some. So much fun for them, in fact, that I will probably not continue to let them read over my shoulder.
In which case, I will have to gauge for myself which notes warrant a response and which don’t. If it’s from “Awesome4U”...well, probably not. But I will confess that I’ve found one or two to be quite appealing. I am still not brave. I am still quite petrified by the prospect of actually meeting anyone. So, maybe I won’t. This is yet to be determined.
The girls tell me to relax. It’s low-key, I can deactivate my profile at a moment’s notice, I don’t have to respond to anything. And anyway, if I ever were to meet someone, I’d vastly prefer for it to be accidental. But this is at least one more way of shaking a leg at the world.

Holiday Devolution

Every time I’m getting ready to host one of the periodic holiday meals at my house, I am slightly seized with a little niggling hang-up which I think I’ve finally thought through. It has to do with my location on the devolving formality continuum.

If we trace my small lifetime of family meals back to earlier days, we’d start in Tazewell, Virginia, where “the grannies” (as we often referred collectively to my paternal grandmother and great-grandmother) had a concept and execution of even ordinary Sunday dinner which involved family convening in a lovely dedicated dining room, and food prep relegated to the kitchen which was through a swinging door, past the “breakfast room,” and down the hall. Although we kids (and adults) freely scampered back and forth, there was a clear line of demarcation between the dining setting, and the “rest of life” settings.

While my grandparents engaged some domestic help, they weren’t quite Downton Abbey, with a houseful of servants, a kitchen on a completely different level of the massive house, and all pertinent protocol adhered to. But I think that my grandmother’s notions of meal presentation could be placed on a timeline of style, with the King’s banquet table anchoring one end, and the peasant’s kitchen-centered humble holiday bounty at the other.

My mom has a dining room which adjoins the kitchen by one open doorway. She often sets up beverages in what she likes to call the parlor (I grew up calling it the living room, and I’m having trouble adjusting to the word “parlor.”) She will put a nicely arrayed tray of veggies and dip in the family room, and the kitchen is a busy place indeed. People hang out there--it’s everybody’s quarters and there is no one but family doing the work--but there is still a line, albeit fuzzier, between prep and dining.

So, I realize that I have some relics in my head about how things at holidays are “supposed” to be done. I intellectually rejected them as requirements years ago. In fact, when Jeff and I designed our house add-on, we very purposefully made the kitchen/dining area a space to live in. There is no separation. There is no “dining room.” That’s what I knew best represented my personality and I designed out any provision for making the meal magically appear out of thin air, as happens in the Hogwarts dining hall.

Still, there’s this weird little vestigial thought that pops up when I’m thinking out what I need to do about Christmas dinner, and it says “People are going to be all over the place, and there will be blobs of mashed potatoes everywhere, a sink full of pots, and probably several people’s computers. How will you make it look like Christmas dinner?” "Frankly," I reply to it, "there is no point in worrying, since the dishes and flatware are a hodgepodge anyway."

So I realize I really need to embrace my position on the formality continuum, as being a cozy spot next to the paintings of some Dutch realists of yore--where everything happens in one room, the dogs and cats are underfoot, and there is no line of demarcation. It’s the kitchen feast. I was apparently not only NOT to the manor born, I was possibly born to the tree. Or in a tree. Or maybe under one.

Epic Mickey U.

What if you’d had all the fun you were allotted in life? Had the major relationships you’d come to have, nurtured those you were assigned to nurture, accomplished whatever was your function, but then just had time left? You didn’t need to work, there were no doors or windows opening provocatively before you...you just had a couple or so decades, potentially, of blank slate left, but no directive?

Uh oh...I just reminded myself of Epic Mickey 2! A game which ends perfunctorily, leaving you with no further goals, no further mandated quests. The world of Wasteland remains open, and you’re free to wrap up any little fetch chores you may have left undone in the course of the main campaign...but you’re not really sure why you’d want to. The campaign is done, there is just nothing driving you.

That is among the very weirdest things I’ve ever heard of--that Epic Mickey 2 has suddenly, and most strikingly, presented itself as an allegory for life as I currently know it. I swear I didn’t do that on purpose, but there it is, and such a good fit.

I guess it’s pretty damn lame not to be able to design your own levels. I figure that’s what most people would do. I’m stuck. I can’t think of a good level idea.

I thought, actually, that back when I was still completing the “Caregiver” level (worth about a million experience points, and 3 strength upgrades,) that I’d laid the groundwork for another chapter, but it sorta fizzled. That is a flat can o’soda.

Well, I did put in a couple wish requests (see last entry.) But they are not important, they are wishes. More to the point is finding something useful to engage in which includes interacting with humans. At which point those wishes would become recognizably wants not needs.

There is a “task” on the Epic Mickey 2 pause screen--the spot that usually tells you, briefly, whatever it is your next goal is. At the end of Epic Mickey 2, after you’ve had your epic cut-screen finale, and you’ve run around for a bit saying “huh?...am I done?” it says this: EPILOGUE: Work together to use the turnstile and open the way forward. “Together,” in this context, refers to the fact that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, whether controlled by a second player or by AI, is your constant companion throughout the game. But where is “forward?” So far, no one seems to know, and we assume that Epic Mickey 2 is a truncated game, meant to prime you to shell out for Epic Mickey 3. In my real life, there is no epilogue stamped at the bottom of anything I normally turn to for advice, so I’m left to wing it without even that teaser hint that something might be on the horizon.

A couple friends said that if I’m experiencing winter solstice seasonal affective disorder, I should sit in the dark and stare at the lights of the Christmas tree, with a warm cup of something nice. (in my case, it’s a decaf with a shot each of french vanilla soy and whiskey.) So I did that, and it feels good.

pass the mojo, I'll put some in my tea.

Yes, this tiny guitar is hanging by my front door. I will try to fashion an explanation as to why. A book I recently finished is The Wishing Year by Noelle Oxenhandler, in which she explores--in theory and actuality--the effect of wishing, or purposeful intention, on a life. You’ll have to read the book yourself for the details of the author’s various interesting projects and outcomes. Meanwhile I have been at least inspired enough to think about what life factors I feel deficient in, and how I might make a wishful statement about them.

I am inclined to utterly toggle back and forth, like funky wiring, about whether I accept that intention can add up to effect, or whether the world is random, but it’s been demonstrated in the past that the very practical-minded Executive Function aspect of my brain does not always win tugs-of-war, and there’s little to be lost by at least being clear with oneself about what one would like.

So here’s what the guitar means: It’s a sort of talisman whose intent is to attract music to my house. I want to jam with people. A couple weeks ago I attempted to put a bit in the community e-newsletter, asking if anyone else might be up for an acoustic jam, but either it got lost in the tubes, or someone thought the request was stupid compared to “house for rent” or “babysitter available,” so that effort has not paid off. But my little guitar might just carry its own mojo, and send out a sort of homing signal for people who like to make music. That’s why it’s there.

I have another wish. For company. I watched “Hope Springs,” the Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones movie, last night, by myself. And thank goodness it was by myself, because it was not an easy movie for me to watch. I’m just going to be honest: As much as that old Exec. Function is still pushing the idea that singlehood is something I can and must learn to enjoy, my dog-brain isn’t buying it. I recognize the problems. There are statistics and all that. There is the fact that I’m not unmarried, and I am Jeff’s #1 care-minder, visitor, and supporter. But seriously, I don’t believe anyone thinks there’s a split-hair of danger that I would ever abandon that life duty, and they are correct. Since my secret crush died, and I’m pretty sure the piano tuner is married, I find myself looking around going “no, no, no, probably not, maybe,” as I mosey along, doing whatever it is that I do. Right, alright, I know. I’m dumb. But I don’t like looking at another (maybe) 3 decades, and thinking that was it. It’s all over. I’ve had the good parts. And they were good parts. No complaints there.

So, maybe I’ll outgrow it and realize I love being solo. Could happen. And maybe there will be enough good parts completely unrelated to having a person in my life who makes me laugh until I cry that it’ll be a great 3 or so decades anyway. And maybe I won’t have 3 decades. Who the heck knows? But I made both wishes. Depends on which way I’m toggled at a given second whether it’s worth a bean, let alone a hill of beans.