Book Corner

jeanLuceyPratt

A Notable Woman – the Romantic Journals of Jean Lucey Pratt

It somehow seems harsh to say that I didn’t really like this woman, after spending 600 pages with her, from her teenagerdom to her final ambulance ride at age 76…  But I didn’t like her, particularly in her 20s and 30s.  She was man-crazy and felt that women were incomplete without marriage.  I had been expecting the sexual escapades of a strong single woman.  Jean has affairs mainly with married men who treat her abominably.  She’s dying to get married; her professed love of her independence and fantasized regrets at losing it seem lip-service, compared to the relentless drumbeat of longing, pining, cursing, wishing, hoping, for HIM to call.  And so, she wants to get married; what of it?  Does she DO anything to try to make that happen?  Sleeping with a succession of married men doesn’t seem to be a very efficient route to that version of happiness.
She becomes more tolerable as she enters her 40s.  (Maybe I am just more sympathetic to my own age group.)  She opens a book shop, and finally I see a glimpse of that strong independent woman I had hoped to read about.
It was funny how she kept daring to dream that someday, someone would read her diaries – her exact wish has come true.  But you’d think that if she really did have hopes for publication someday, she would have written herself up in a more flattering light, and done a better writing job in general – she actually WAS a professional, published author.
Why did I stick with it – well, she wasn’t hateful, just pathetic.  I was also interested not just in reading a single woman’s life story, but about life in the 20th century United Kingdom, including the war years.  Ultimately, I did nearly shed a tear at Jean’s death – I had spent a LOT of time with her by the end; and it was strange, abrupt, unfair-seeming, to have her carried off after her final entry, and declared dead some weeks later.  “But that can’t be all,” one somehow feels… “She can’t be just… gone?”  Like in real life.  😦

On Having Two Dead Parents

I came across a written passage yesterday, which was a thought I see written from time to time: that once you have two dead parents, the feeling of mortality weighs down on you in a new way, because you are “next in line.”  I never feel that way.  I feel a lot of things about having two dead parents, but a heavier sense of my own mortality isn’t one of them.  It feels kind of like the illogic of thinking two coin tosses of “heads” in a row increases your chances of “tails” on the next throw.  We can any of us die at any time.  Just because both my parents somewhat recently landed “heads” doesn’t make my ”tails” any more imminent.

What I feel most about having two dead parents is freedom, and not just the freedom to spend Thanxgiving any way I please from now on.  Two relationships that defined me whether I liked it or not, and I didn’t, no longer define me.  Now I’m just me.  And my siblings, the relationships that bound us together, child to parent and parent to another child, no longer exist.  Now we’re just three adults.  All of that drama, it’s over.  And more than that, there are no more excuses, either.  Blame your parents for 50 years if you like, but there’s got to come a time when the ridiculousness of that can no longer escape even you.  I had my chance to be molded and shaped and deformed and stunted and held back and warped and all that.  It’s been done, it’s over.  Now I’m just me, just a pushing-50-year-old woman, “I yam what I yam”.  Not that life is over and I won’t “grow” or develop any further; I hope to.  But it is now in my hands entirely, to a new extent.

And speaking of pushing 50, there is an anonymity to this age about which I’ve also read strange things from time to time: that a woman of a certain middle age and beyond becomes in a sense “invisible.”  Men on the street no longer see her as a sexual possibility, and so they don’t “see” her at all; likewise younger women, who no longer see her as sexual competition.  This too feels very freeing to me.  I’ve always WANTED anonymity.  As a very young adult, I felt happiest sitting on a NYC subway car, surrounded by every variety of humanity you could imagine.  Back in high school, back in Staten Island, I felt I stuck out all the time, a hideous thing full of acne.  On the subway, nobody gave a shit about the girl with the acne; she was one of the less interesting and gruesome things around.  I loved it.  I never wanted to be noticed.  I always wore things to tone down my bright red hair, not draw attention to it.

For others, relationships are ‘primary’; for me, they’re not even secondary.  All I’ve ever wanted to do is my own shit.  Now I can drift through life unnoticed and unimpeded more than ever before, and just do my own shit.  Finally.

Some People Think I Want to Retire and Do Fiber Arts Full Time, But Between You & Me…

Working on a multi-colored yarn.  I’m not happy with how it feels, coarse & sticky.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Somehow I thought some of the coarse, sticky fleece I was using would magically feel OK in the yarn.

Fiber arts are just a way to kill time between meals and work.  The only things I’m passionate about really are food and work.  But one definitely cannot eat all the time, and I hear tell that working all the time is not desirable either – at minimum, I would risk running out of work.  So this.

 

Deck

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Partially covered, partially open deck, leading into the new mudroom-to-be, as viewed from my office window.  “Bill” the Donald “Wyman” Lilac is at the upper right corner, hopefully adjusting to his transplanting.  Site of many future mohair washings to come.

Finger Woes

I sat down to work as usual this morning, and after about a half hour, noticed that the tip of my right ring finger was half-numb and tingly.  It bothered me enough that I looked up numb finger on the internet, and I was assured that it was most likely carpal tunnel.

As lunchtime approached, I had thoughts about digging out my carpal tunnel wrist brace, but couldn’t help but notice that finger looked blue between the joints.  I don’t think my finger should be blue.  Carpal tunnel is about nerves; this looked to be about blood flow.

I had lunch and went out and fed goats, and the cold made my finger even number.  When I came in, whereas the rest of my fingers and me were rather red from the cold, this finger was white.

I went down and walked on my treadmill for a half hour.  This eliminated all symptoms.  But they gradually came back over the course of the afternoon.

I have been wearing a ring on this finger for over 20 years.  I obviously took it off at the first sign of trouble this morning; but it wasn’t at all tight.

I also have had this feeling in this fingertip before, now and then, briefly; but it was generally when out feeding goats in the cold; and coming inside was enough to make it go away.

In the past I’ve chalked it up to most likely damaging a blood vessel in my finger from carrying pails of water.  The pails that don’t have ergonomic handles, that are just a wire handle, can really dig into your fingers when the pails are full of water.  But I haven’t lifted a pail of water all week.

Still, I suppose I COULD have damaged something somehow without realizing it; and it’ll heal within a day or two.

I wish that it were easier to get medical opinions.  What if your health insurance provided you with a phone number and a pin number; and you could call the number, provide your pin, and you would be validated and your co-pay charged.  Then you could tell a doctor or nurse your long sad story, and they could give you their opinion.  And the whole thing would be about 20 minutes long.  Wouldn’t that be great?

Screen Porch-to-Be

018.jpgThat will be the new screen porch.

It rained for seven days in a row.  Today it’s cold but the sun is shining!

I have been broody.  Silly to brood on a negative narrative.  I get to make up any narrative I want.  I don’t owe anyone anything anymore – those days are over.

 

Nothing Much

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This was a couple of days ago.  The weather’s gotten even drabber since.

Today the team and I logged our 1,004th bug.  Having exceeded the thousand threshold, I am no longer able to pull the JIRA data to create my daily report to management.  I win a prize!

I think I might actually not work tonight.