Widowhood 101

I know y’all have been wondering where Hotclue and I have been for the past six months. I’m finally ready now to talk, because we’ve missed you too, and I, more than anyone, have missed Hotclue. For a long time now, she hasn’t been around, and in truth, neither have I.

To start with, my husband, Stan, had been in end stage COPD for quite a while. He also had been diagnosed with advanced dementia last fall, not that I didn’t know he had it, but to be faced with it in an actual written diagnosis sort of puts a different light on it. You can’t deny it any longer, not even to yourself.

There’s something that anyone who has lived with a person with dementia knows. You don’t notice it so much because you grow into it with them, day by day. Who notices someone’s hair getting longer day by day? Nobody, really. Just all of a sudden, you notice it’s too long and it’s time to do something about it. And so it was with Stan. I’d go on day by day, then something would happen to jar me, something new, and that little voice inside would say, he’s getting worse. A lot worse.

Still, he wasn’t that hard to manage, since he’d done a complete lifestyle turnaround and become a very compliant and agreeable little boy. “Whatever you want” or “whatever you say” became his standard answer to everything. That’s not much help when you have a question you can’t answer yourself, but still, that was our day-to-day life.

In addition, he had a weak heart, and for about six months had had a terrible reaction to, I think, his last flu shot. I say the flu shot because he was very allergic to MSG, and the flu shots last year, according to my sources rooting around on the Internet, had MSG in it, probably to preserve it. He gradually became pretty much covered with an unbelievable rash that looked more like lizard skin than human skin. I can’t tell you how much medicine and cream I bought over those months, until his doctor finally said the only thing left to try would be high-tech staph antibiotic pills and cream. We got that and finally something worked. He was having itch-free nights and days for the first time in months.

Just as background, he was allergic to a lot of things. For such a big, strong-looking man, he actually was one of the most fragile people I ever met.

All those things take their toll, but still, you do what you have to do and day-to-day life goes on. However, I had become completely unable to write anything. People kept telling me I was stressed, but I didn’t see that since I was in the middle of it. I stopped writing emails on my groups, and eventually found myself deleting all of them. I was in that state where “none of this matters so why bother”. You get like that. You can’t help it, and you can’t see it. All you see is that suddenly the full life you did have is somewhere else, you know it is, you see life going on without you, but you can’t quite grab it back.

That’s called depression. My doctor put me on an antidepressant, lightest dose, when I burst out in tears for no reason at her office and then told her what was going on at home. When I started taking it, that’s when I stopped writing my blog. There was just nothing there, nothing in my life that I thought would interest anyone, and certainly not enough fun or humor inside me that gives Hotclue her steam and wackiness. I couldn’t find her anywhere.

On June 3, Stan was having one of his bad days where he could barely function, but he had an appointment with his retina specialist. (Did I mention he also had wet macular degeneration and had to have periodic shots in his eyeball to prevent him going blind?)

It was pouring down rain, coming at us in huge sluices as we hobbled toward the car. We couldn’t hurry because I had to say, “Right foot now”, then “left foot now”. We were soaked going into the doctors office, soaked getting back in the car, soaked getting from the car and back inside the house.

Once inside, I sat him down at our dining room table and said, “Stay right here, I’m going to go change my shirt and bring you a dry one.” Two minutes later I came back into the dining room and not only was his chair on the other side of the room, Stan was hurtling toward the wall. Before I could reach him, he had splintered his hip into three pieces and the last twenty-five days of his life had begun.

There’s something not generally known, although I was told this both by his doctor and the Hospice people (God bless them!). When a person with advanced dementia breaks his hip, they never live past a year. Most die much sooner. That’s because they cannot re-learn how to walk. In his case, he wouldn’t have remembered anything taught him in any kind of therapy longer than five minutes, if that long, and you have to be able to walk to recover from a broken hip.

So, two hospitals and one short three-day stay in a rehab center later, we brought him home to die, probably one of the most excruciating times any family ever has to face. His kidneys had ceased to function, his body was shutting down, and there was no hope he could recover because the death process had already begun.

I have to say, my daughters, including his daughter, were wonderful, as was Hospice. All four daughters came to stay and help, and they did. Hospice provided everything we needed to keep him comfortable, and somehow, we got through that week. Stan died in his sleep late the following Saturday afternoon, June 28th, 2008.

I can’t blame Hotclue for not being here. I had completely buried her, but little by little, I can see she’s still with me and I’m letting her out to play from time to time, testing both of our wings.

So now, I’m learning how to be a widow. Widow 101, I call this class. No homework needed, pay as you go.

How do you begin? How do you suddenly realize, when someone asks you to go somewhere, that you can go, without worrying about the other person at home who needs you? How do you start learning how to cook for one? I haven’t gotten there yet, and considering how long it took me to learn to cook for just two after my kids were grown and gone, I may still be eating TV dinners a year from now. So far I’m not sick of them yet, and in fact, I’m eating a lot better because I’m not the one who was allergic to (you name it). I’m eating fish and chicken and green vegetables and fruit, and as a side effect, I’m losing weight, a bonus, if there is such a thing.

Yes, I’m pulling out of it. Once in a while I email someone I haven’t emailed in a long time. I’m catching up with a lot of favorite group emails. DorothyL, I haven’t read them in months. Now I am, and any day now I’ll start responding again. I have a new hairdo and I’ll put up a photo soon so y’all can vote on it. Shoulder length, ends curl under naturally, no hairspray needed, 1940′s pageboy cut with a 2008 twist. Still blonde, of course; I’m not giving THAT up no matter how many bottles of Clairol #27G it takes. Am I lonely? I can’t honestly say I am. I got over loneliness a long time ago, when I realized Stan didn’t recognize my youngest daughter, whom he had helped raise from the time she was about 8.

So, I’m back, and soon Hotclue will burst through in all of her weird, goofy glory, and all will be right with my world again. I hope you’ll join me here. There’s a lot of life to be lived for all of us, and my feeling is, we should try to enjoy every second we have on this earth, because you only get one time around.

…Although, if you do get more than one life, next time around I’m coming back as a Broadway Star like Liza Minelli. That’ll be a start. I always wanted to sing off-key and dance with half a tux and a top hat.

Love y’all, and I have missed you very much. I hope you’ve forgiven my absence.
Beth Anderson
(And Hotclue says “Hey!”)

HOTCLUE’S B-A-A-CK FROM ST. MORITZ!

Hey, y’all, IT’S ME, Hotclue! YEAH! Did you miss me? I have to apologize for leaving all the blogwork to Beth for a while, although I see she semi-replaced me with her pesky cat Sarge, who is probably at this moment sneaking one more bite from Beth’s Mother’s Day flowers. (Oh, before I forget, Happy Mother’s Day, y’all!)

I keep thinking Sarge is going to start upchucking on the dining room table, where the flowers are sitting, any minute now but so far no go. The little devil has toughened her stomach to an unbelievable degree over the past couple of years by garbaging down copious amounts of sofa stuffing, curtain threads, paint flakes from the dining room wall, Beemer’s food, and God knows what all else.

I wish she had eaten my skis, but more about that in a minute.

Sorry about my absence, but I had to get away. Beth has this terrible habit of every morning reading the NY Times and the Washington Post. I wish she’d quit that. She reads all that stuff, including letters to the editors and all the comments readers can post on WA PO (hello again to afraidofme, the literary lunatic), and the more she reads, the less I feel like writing anything even halfway fun or uplifting. In fact, the world news lately is so bad that while she sits there reading, I just want to go soak my head in a bucket of kerosene or something. I’m gonna have to find a way to make her stop that. I’m not fond of the smell of kerosene and it might dry out my hair.

I have to make one social comment though, before I tell you about my ski trip to St. Moritz, which was, I gotta tell you, a disaster of international proportions.

PARIS HILTON, GET OVER YOURSELF. Here’s the answer to your current drunk driving problems, you irresponsible, narcissistic idiot. Have your equally idiotic rich mother buy you your own country, where you can drive drunk, run over people at will, bitch about cops hitting on you, hey, whatever you want. THEN, and ONLY then, you get to make up your own laws and break them whenever you feel like it.

Meantime, you’re living in the USA, doing God knows what, and We Have Laws. One of them is, if you drive while you’re drunk you get tossed in the slammer no matter what your name is. SURPRISE! YES! That’s really, truly the way it works! Our laws don’t care how cute you are or which designer duds you’re wearing today. You do the crime, you do the time. So shut up and enjoy your time with your cellmate.

Personally, I hope she weighs at least four hundred pounds, has a Black Belt in Karate, sings Country Western as well as Rap 24/7, and has a huge halitosis and underarm odor problem. 45 days of that MIGHT wake you up.

Okay, enough of Paris. On to more important personalities’ pecadillos. Mine.

First off, I had fibbed a little and told Count Babbalallapaloozo I knew how to ski. Well, I’d read about it and seen people skiing, and after all, how hard could it be? You start off at the top of a hill, which guarantees you’re going to wind up at the bottom, due to mathematics or physics something like that. You’re standing ON two long boards which are curved at the front so you can’t stub your toe, or it looks that way in the movies. And you have a couple of sticks to hold in your hands and prop you up so you can’t fall sideways. So like I said, how hard can it be?

Well, first, due to my little indescretionary fib (move over, Paris), the Count said we could skip the bunny hill and try Mogul Skiing. I agreed because I have a real thing about bunnies. I love them, and the idea of skiing over one really turns me off. So I was happy. Mogul it would be.

I was all set with my new ski outfit, which I’d bought in Chicago before I left. Leopardskin pants, hot pink jacket with white fur around the hood. Sorta kinda matched one of my nightie sets, how cute is that! We checked in, got dressed, and headed for the ski slopes and the instructor the Count had hired, just in case.

Now here’s the first thing they tell you: To make a turn over a bump, start with a good traverse stance and begin skiing.

Really?

I look down at the sticks I’m holding. They don’t look like traverse rods to me. But I figure that’s what they’re telling me anyhow, so figuring I don’t need more instruction, I grab a good hold onto my traverse rods and off I go. I hear screaming in the background but hey, I’m still standing, sort of. Still moving downhill anyway. I’m doing fine, right? I ignore the Count’s shreiks. I figure he’s just jealous because I caught on so fast.

I see a bump ahead. Many bumps. Many, many, many bumps.

Everywhere.

Oh, God.

No, I’m not having an orgasm. I just don’t know where to go next.

There is no place to go next. Except straight toward many, many, many bumps.

I hit the first bump. I go straight into it. The damn curves on these skis don’t work. I go over it, sort of, but not how I think I’m supposed to. I go head first. My traverse rods go somewhere else. I don’t know where my skis are.

Two minutes later I hear the instructor, now standing over me, giving me the next part of the instructions. To wit: “Hots, when you get near the bump, you’re supposed to bend your hips and apply pressure on your outside ski. At the time when you’re passing over the top of the bump, you plant your ski pole on the bump’s edge in order to give support as you extend your legs, direct your skis in the new path and turning over the bump. At this point, you are already on the other side of the bump. You finish the turn by shifting your weight and applying pressure on your downhill ski.”

All that, while I’m lying, face still IN the snow, wondering what the hell happened. He repeats his instructions. I hear the Count laughing and saying something about having to go back to the lodge and change his pants. I pull my head out of the snow, try to get up and while I’m doing all that, not so successfully, I’m muttering under my breath. “Bend my hips which way? Which ski is my outside ski?”

More laughter. Oh, yeah, guys. I’m almost upside down in this godforsaken place and you’re laughing. Good job.

“And why are you telling me NOW that I was supposed to go OVER the bump? How the hell was I supposed to do THAT?” You can tell when I’m upset, I start speaking in capital letters.

The Count is still doubled over, giggling. “Mi amore, is anything broken? Tee hee.”

“Extend my legs WHERE, dammit? Direct my skis in WHAT new path?” I’m highly pissed now.

“Well, you see, my dear…” This is the instructor speaking now. The Count seems to be out of breath or something. His face is purple and tears are running down his cheeks.

“I heard what you said! Finish the turn by shifting WHICH way?” I scream. “Can you at least tell me THAT, since you left so much out?”

Naturally, I’ve completely forgotten I left before he could finish. Not that it would have helped much.

“And WHICH ski is my damn DOWNHILL ski? I thought they were BOTH downhill skis! How could I GO any other way than DOWN?”

At least I got that part right.

Sigh.

It didn’t take long to get back to the lodge. As if I weren’t humiliated enough, I had only gone eight feet. I crawled back up while they did some cute little X-mark things with their skis and poles, showing off like the clods they were, but to give them credit, they did it beside me, not ahead of me, as I crawled. The Count always maintains such impeccable manners.

We spent the rest of the trip watching the skiiers from the comfort and safety of the bar, which sits directly behind a huge floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, which sits directly in front of a wall-sized picture window. At least I know for sure what a picture window is.

When I opened my suitcase back here at home this morning I found a book on skiing, with many pictures. Many, many, many pictures.

I’m not sure whether the Count slipped it in there, or the ski lodge management team, all of whom manned the doors to the ski slopes to make sure I didn’t get out the rest of the time we were there.

Hey, it’s good to be back. Come back again soon, you hear me? We all love YOU, you KNOW we do!

Hotclue Herself, with a little help occasionally from Beth Anderson and Sarge the Terrible.

A Couple of Things

Most all authors in the mystery field have, by this time, learned that one of our own fairly young authors, Elaine Viets, suffered a stroke almost on the eve of publication of her new book, Murder with Reservations: A Dead-End Job Mystery. You’ve probably heard of her. Her website is here: http://www.elaineviets.com and I urge you to visit it.

Elaine is at home in south Florida, recuperating, and one of her main concerns right now is that she won’t be able to tour, as she usually does, to meet and greet fans new and old. Elaine has had at least a dozen books in her two mystery series and is wildly popular with her fans. Because she’s ours, in a sense, we’d like to help her.

Since authors tend to respond when one of us develops major troubles, a lot of us are either going to add her books when we tour, or at signings, or what I’m doing here today, asking you to support her by buying Murder With Reservations either at your local bookstore or it can always be ordered through online bookstores.

I’d like to add my request to this, and invite all my fans who like fun, fascinating mysteries with characters you’d love to have in your own lives (except for the killers, of course) to consider buying her book. I’d appreciate that and it would really help her as she recuperates.

To aid and abet you, here’s a short blurb on Murder With Reservations:

The young couple looked like inept burglars sneaking through the lobby of Sybil’s Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale. They were both dressed in black, which made them stand out against the white marble. At their wedding two days ago, they’d been slim, golden and graceful, trailing ribbons and rose petals through the hotel.
Now they moved with the awkward stiffness of amateur actors trying to look natural. The bride’s black crop top exposed a midsection sliding from sexy to sloppy fat. The groom’s black T-shirt and Bermudas failed the test for cool. They were boxy rather than baggy. He looked like a Grand Rapids priest on vacation.
The honeymooners avoided the brown plastic grocery bag swinging between them, carefully ignoring it as it bumped and scraped their legs. That screamed, “Look at me.” They stashed the bag behind a potted palm while they waited for the elevator.
“Red alert,” Sondra at the front desk said into her walkie-talkie. She was calling Denise, the head housekeeper. “The honeymoon couple just passed with a suspicious grocery bag. They’re getting out on the third floor.”

Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn’t it! It will be, I promise you. I do hope you’ll help Elaine out with her sorta kinda virtual tour and buy a copy.

Thank you, all of you!

==============================

Just to catch you up, Hotclue is still vacationing. Last I heard she was in St. Moritz, either skiing or not. I know on those skiing trips she seems particularly fond of the sushi bars, or just plain bars, actually, so I don’t know if you’ll find her truly skiing or not but I’m sure she’ll tell us about it when she returns sometime next week.

Meantime, my daughter did get married on April 7th. To show you just how thick blood is, her wedding invitations said, in part, 4/7 at 4:07 in the afternoon. Only a kid of mine would do that, but at exactly 4:07 that afternoon, with all of us standing out on their balcony in thirty degree weather (yes, she actually did the deed outside), overlooking a beautiful lake, the bride walked down the aisle, which was actually one of their stone walkways, and there she legally and publicy and, I might add, ecstatically, gave her heart and soul to the most adorable man I’ve met in a long time, and he gave his to her.

It was a beautiful, emotion-packed wedding, not a dry eye in the house – er – balcony, after which we had a gorgeous reception (inside, thank God) full of gourmet food – are you ready for this – Made By The Groom! that even Emeril couldn’t outdo, champagne punch, and much, much wine. Then we ran them out of the house so the family could take over every bedroom in the place.

At that point I’m sure they were glad to get away from us. I sure would have been. In all honesty I did tried to talk them into taking me along, but for some reason they declined.

That’s it for the moment, folks. This coming weekend I’m going to post an interview with a young author I’ve known a long time, Scarlett Dean, who does her best to live up to the name.

Scarlett started out writing horror, but just broke out of those ranks and into mystery with her new book, which you DON’T EVEN want to miss.

See you again in a few days. Love y’all, you know I do, and so does my alter ego, Hotclue, who had better get back home soon. I miss her and I know y’all do too.

Beth

Wake Up, Little Susie!

Wake up, little Susie, wake up!

Guess what, Sus. We want out of Iraq. Like soon. Our guys and women are doing a terrific job, they always have, always will, but looks like you and your cabinet have been letting them down bigtime all over the place. Don’t get me started. Oops, too late. I already am. You’re lucky I’m not raggin’ about New Orleans right about now.

Wake up, little Susie, wake up!

No, actually, not like soon, like now. Look around you. Do we care about You staying straight on Your personal Heavenly-inspired course when Our kids are dying because you don’t have sense enough back down when You’ve made a mistake?

We’ve both been sound asleep, wake up, little Susie, and weep

We’re all waking up and weeping.

The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock, and we’re in trouble deep

Yeah, it is too late, isn’t it, Sus, to get out of this. And for this, we’re all grounded.

Wake up little Susie, wake up little Susie…

Well…whatta we gonna tell your mama

She won’t hear you, she’s as out of touch as you are.

Whatta we gonna tell your pa

How about, Pa, you were right and I was wrong so how the hell do I get out of this mess I let my idiot cabinet talk me into? Hunh, Pa, hunh hunh?

Whatta we gonna tell our friends when they say “Ooh-La-La”?

Oh, hey, I got it, let’s just rename our French Fries to Freedom Fries. Make a Big Statement. Yay us. Oh, wait. We just renamed ‘em back to French Fries again, right? Well, couldn’t have been a very important statement, could it. Shucks.

Wake up little Susie, wake up little Susie!

Well, I told your mama that you’d be home by ten…

No, you told our country we had to Shock & Awe…

Well, Susie baby looks like we goofed again.

Yeah, they didn’t exactly shower us with flowers did they, after they got over their shock & awe. Hell no, they were too busy looting their own museums and destroying their own stuff, weren’t they, and NOW look what they’re doing, they’re killing EACH OTHER! Doesn’t ANY of this tell you something? Hello? Sus?

Wake up little Susie, wake up little Susie,

And to top all of this off, Iraqi’s own new leaders are upset with US now. We’re in debt, we’ve lost how many of our troops, everybody in the world’s mad at us, and THEY’RE upset?

We gotta go home.

Need I say more.
========================================

Yanno (t/m Miss Snark) , some people ask me why, every once in a while, I blog on national or international events instead of sticking to nice, safe writing topics. Well, there are thousands upon thousands of author blogs on writing. Just, every once in a while I get fed up and want to speak up. So since this is still–although no guarantees–the USA, I thought I would. Speak up, that is.

I’ll try to do something safer next week. Unless I’m still ticked off, of course.

Love y’all, honest I do. Come back soon, ya hear me?
The Hotclue, wearing her camouflage battle helmet today.

Hotclue Ponders Important Current Questions

I was thinking. I do that sometimes. Today I’m trying to figure out the answers to a lot of today’s mysteries and I’m wondering if anyone HAS any answers. If you do, please say so. I’m feeling awfully lonely here, with all these questions running around in my head and no answers in sight.

For instance:

Can anybody tell me how come these idiots who start all these wars don’t realize that every time you drop a bomb or shoot a missle and it explodes, it thins out our ozone layer even more than it was before? Yo, guys! Ever hear of Global Warming? Hello? Do you really want to watch your kids and grandkids grow up to be mutants because our ozone layer is at war with us now, thanks to all the pollution?

Maybe I’m wrong but the answer, to me, seems so simple: Idiots, Quit Starting Wars!

Wouldn’t you think our Congressional and Executive and Judicial branches would have much more important things to do than wandering around worrying about who wants to marry whom? Since when is it their business to worry about all that? Why don’t they let the National Enquirer, which IS paid to do all that, DO ALL THAT!

Am I the only one who worries that when George Bush said he answers to a Higher Father, he meant either Carl Rove or Dick Chaney?

Just wondering.

Why is it that it’s okay for oil companies to make billions in profit when so many of our dying-out-middle-class senior citizens are going broke trying to pay their wildly ballooning utility bills?

Come on, guys! Try thinking like commoners once in a while. You might learn something.

Did anybody (other than government bean counter sharks) ever stop to figure out that although seniors who subscribe to Medicare Part D get a break on generic drugs (as long as they’re very, very careful not to buy any expensive ones), companies who mismanage these plans receive an average of $360 per year, per person, FROM those same senior citizens, FOR mismanaging these plans. Now if you factor in how many millions of seniors subscribe to those plans, tell me, WHO is getting the real benefit of Medicare Part D, which stops at $2,500 and doesn’t start up again until those same seniors have spent thousands of dollars of their own money, which most don’t have? I could be wrong, correct me if I am, but it looks like the main beneficiaries of Medicare Part D are the pharmaceutical companies, the mail order drug companies, and the insurance companies.

What a surprise.

Is anybody but me astonished that while our men and women are fighting and dying to promote democracy in countries that do not appear to WANT democracy, thankyouverymuch–and this is supposed to be protecting us here at home, per the Prez–well, at the Very Same Time our own borders, shipyards, utility and other sensitive locations are barely protected at all? The Prez doesn’t seem so concerned about that because if he was, they would be protected, wouldn’t they? And while all this is going on, what are our current legislators all worrying about? See above, item 2. That, and getting re-elected, of course

God love ‘em. No wonder they’re all turning gray.

Am I the only one worried that our next election will be decided by electronic voting machines which are terrifyingly insecure and can be hacked by any junior high student?

Oh, wait…so maybe THAT’s where those 62,000,000 votes came from….?

Why do we still have an Electoral College, unless it’s because the same legislators who travel around in packs gathering votes from the general unwashed public ALSO believe that the same general unwashed public is too stupid to know who they’re voting for?

Does that make those traveling legislators somehow culpable in this mass manipulation we call ‘elections’?

Is anybody besides me ready to shoot their television if they see even One More Sound Bite about Mel Gibson’s outburst, Anna Nocole Smith’s pregnancy, or Tom Cruse’s baby?

Note to television producers: Guys, We Don’t CARE. We really don’t. We’re busy worrying about our world, not their world.

I guess that’s it for this time, folks. I apologize for my extreme ignorance, but I really do wonder about these things.

I wonder because dang it all, I care.

Love to y’all, Speak Up if you have questions or answers of your own, and please come back again soon, ya hear me?

Hotclue Herself