Chillin' out

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Been cool here in Tucson the last couple days; got down to the lower 30s last night.

There was a threat of snow yesterday, but the snow line melted into rain at about 2500 feet; we're at about 2300 feet here in the Old Pueblo. The mountains surrounding Tucson were well dusted with the white stuff, however.

I enjoyed listening to the rain on the RV's roof yesterday, and then threw on an extra layer for sleep last night--supplemented by hot chocolate at bedtime.

Can't really complain.

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Can can

Perhaps it is that winter leads to introspection, because I continue to stumble into opportunities to contemplate my foibles.

I have a thing about empty containers; it’s difficult, often nearly impossible, for me to throw them away. Bottles, cans, boxes, crates, jugs, even paper sacks—all must be held for evaluation prior to any decision about disposal. This can be especially difficult in a travel trailer, where space is at a premium.

Right now, the four-inch wide strip between my stove and sink (a significant work surface in my miniscule RV kitchen) is crowded with an empty coffee can, a round quart plastic orange juice bottle and a large square hand soap container. These are perfectly good receptacles, capable of years of continued service in any number of significant applications. Plus, I’ve already purchased them, incidental to other goods, so they have the additional significant advantage of being free. At the moment, I can’t imagine to what uses I’d likely put them, but you just never know.

I come from a line of proud container re-users, so the source of the disorder is most likely genetic. We saved the sturdy little baby food jars for my grandfather, my Mom’s Dad, who filled them with a large and varied collection of used hardware—screws, bolts, nuts, washers nails, all saved from other projects—that he kept on special shelves and racks he’d built between the wall studs in his garage. He was always sending me out there to fetch one particular jar or another, which I could never seem to find. Then he’d have to come out to pluck it from the exact spot he’d told me to look. He never made a big deal out of it, but still, not good memories.

With my mother it was cigar boxes. Don’t ask me where she got them; nobody in the family smoked, let alone cigars. But she had stacks of them on her closet shelf, ready for scout projects, school pencil boxes, or as a home for bug and beetle collections.

My Dad specialized in coffee cans. Again their source is a mystery, since my folks drank instant coffee, which came in too-fragile-to-reuse (as I knew too well) jars. I suspect he may have brought the coffee cans home from the fire stations where he was assigned. I liked those cans the best because the aroma of coffee tended to linger long after they were put to use holding lawn mower parts and bicycle chains.

I knew I was in trouble when they came out with the plastic coffee cans a few years ago. A dedicated drinker of “real” coffee, I soon had a formidable collection of all sizes—and in matching color and brand logos! Those cans are perfect. They're easily cleaned, have potential applications in both the kitchen and the shop, are able able to hold dry goods and fluids, and don't leave a rusty stain behind when set down in the unnoticed wet spot.

By the time I moved from my last house, I had accumulated over 30 of those beautiful, wonderful plastic cans—all empty, of course; but still, a distinguished matched set unlikely to be found elsewhere outside of a major metropolitan area. However, I was moving into smaller quarters provided as part of my employment, and the cans had to go. I couldn’t bear throwing them away, so I set them out with the other yard sale items, ten cents for the big ones, a nickel for the small. And there they sat. Not a single taker! What was wrong with folks?

It was then I took that long, cold look in the mirror and saw the maniacal face of a coffee-can horder staring back.

Since then, I’ve allowed myself to hold empty containers for a week. If, within that time, I have not thought of a probable use that I, in my present circumstances, am likely to encounter, then, reluctantly, I dispose of them, to recycling as appropriate.

And right now, as I look at the can, bottle and jug occupying about 40% of my kitchen work space, I know it’s time. This will not be a happy day.

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Do not copy

Over the past few days I had been corresponding with my friend, the Otter, about recently popularized words in print. Particularly, I took note of “fraught” and “one-off” as words I had come across in the internet news and commentary pages to a degree that was becoming annoying.

And that gave me pause: why should I be annoyed?

It came to me, suddenly, in an uncomfortable bolt of realization—I am an anti-faddist!

Fads aggravate me. I mean, except for a brief period between 1966 and 1971 when I was into everything—Nehru jacket, paisley shirts, bell bottoms, pea coat, madras jacket—I pretty much go the other way on everything I can think of.

When hair styles were long, I kept mine short; when they went short, I grew mine long. Beards were popular, I went clean-shaven; when facial hair faded, I let my whiskers grow. Everyone is wearing shorts? Then mine languish in the drawer.

Folks buy big cars, I drive an Isuzu; gas prices go up, I buy an old Suburban. White sox are in, I’m wearing gray. Rooting for one team? I’ll cheer the other. Serving romaine while I stick with iceberg, popularizing sushi and I’m seeking out natural casing wieners.

One of the reasons I resisted starting a blog for so long was because “everyone” was doing it. Now I have four.

So what is it with me, anyway?

Best I can figure is one of two things. It’s either some sort of twisted DNA strand or else, when my mother scolded me so many times in my childhood, “If everybody goes and jumps off the bridge, are you going to do that, too?,” I took it way, way too seriously. I suspect the latter.

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Sadly

As I was writing this on Monday afternoon at about 4 PM MST, I received word that MJ, of whom I wrote last week, had passed away about an hour before.

The world seems a stranger place.

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Sadly

Today, my friend MJ is on her death bed up in Del Norte. She may not survive the week.

MJ is one of the Stalwarts, a small group of friends I can count on for . . . whatever. They lift me when I fall, dry my eyes when I cry, laugh at my jokes only when they’re funny, and tell me when I’m being a horse’s patoot (as if that ever happens).

I met MJ and her husband, the Shepherd, when they were hand-digging post holes for railroad ties. The ties were to become corner and anchor posts for a fence around their 40 acres, about a mile from my old place, just northwest of Del Norte, Colorado. After several days of passing them at work, as I ran errands to town for my own construction supplies, I pulled over near them and shouted out the window, “You guys need to get a life!” That was the beginning, about 15 years ago.

MJ and the Shepherd turned out to be the most mismatched, intriguing, and personable folks I’ve ever had the fortune to know. The Shepherd is a Native American, a Puebloan descendent of the Ancient Ones, once known as the Anasazi. He’s the type of quiet, methodical guy who would dig a post hole half way to the earth’s core just to do a good job, or in case he decided to herd elephants. But he also plays guitar and harmonica (at the same time), sings in a sweet, Mexican-influenced tenor and can tell stories, both real and embellished, in a charmingly casual, entertaining manner.

MJ is a Licensed Practical Nurse, but she’s also been a seamstress and clothing designer, leather worker, cattle hand, mother, photographer, cook and a few other occupations I’m sure I’m forgetting. She loves stories about UFOs and is an active pursuer of little green men and photographer of ghosts. A scrupulous practitioner of so-called western medicine, she is also an herbalist, ear candler and iridologist. She is as likely to compliment you on your aura as on your new boots.

Where she is garrulous, he is reserved. He is hand-tool traditional, she is internet modern. He likes fat, she likes lean (so help me). He, of course, is rail thin, she not so much. They both cook, they both do dishes, they both keep house. They ride horseback, they hike, they vacation with their travel trailer, sometimes back to his home village in the northern New Mexico mountains. Sometimes to her home stomping grounds, laid-back northern California.

They met later in their lives, the Shepherd pushing sixty, MJ in her late forties. All I can say is, I would’a never put money on it. But they were both extraordinarily good for one another. The Shepherd rescued her from misery brought on by marital calamity, and she saved him from a life best described as dissipated.

For the past two years, though, MJ has been fighting an ovarian-introduced cancer that has now thrown its deadly cells throughout her body. She fought it, hard, with every form of medicine—western, traditional and exotic—at her disposal. For a while it looked like she might be gaining the upper hand, but last autumn the balance of power shifted.

Her care is complex, something that, as a nurse, she could accomplish and still stay active at home. But as her condition deteriorated, the procedures, and finally her total care, passed to a now-elderly Shepherd who would have gladly seen it through to the end.

MJ, however, displaying the love and wisdom that has marked their regard and forbearance for each other, assessed the increased risk for both of them, and elected to admit herself to a nursing facility. There she lies now, surrounded by family and friends, basking in that warmth as she awaits the death she has told them she welcomes.

And there I am not. It is a consequence of this lifestyle, with far-flung loved ones and a skin-of-the-teeth way of life.

Does it need saying? Well, then: MJ, I love you, I will miss you. Wish I was there.

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