Family

 Well, that’s an incredibly small and incredibly large subject, isn’t it?

 When I started putting this blog together, it was going to be a simple description of how I had been finishing the pad of Jumbo Word Finds that I ended up with after my Grandpa Krause died in February 2018. Ultimately it will be, but I had to explore a bunch of tributaries before I got back on the river this particular tribute to my maternal grandmother would become.

I’m a quasi-genealogy contact for my family of origin. That said, tonight I sifted through obituaries, funeral programs, printed material from ancestry.com, and database information that my second cousin on my paternal grandfather’s side had created. Yes, Bruce Schaepe, I will call you out because whenever we have been together, unfortunately it’s always at family funerals, we have created a pod of just the two of us talking about family history and genealogy. Bruce’s mother married a brother of my Grandpa Porath. So, his mother was my great-great aunt. Establishing family relationships at times makes my head spin. Tonight, I tried to organize some family documents into folders. So far, I have a folder titled “Krause” (my maternal grandfather), “Wilber/Ziemer” (my maternal grandmother), “Porath” (my paternal grandfather), and “Kuether” (my paternal grandmother). Yeah, I know, my head is spinning right along with yours.

Now, getting back to the original purpose of this blog: I hope everyone reading this can say, “My grandma was the best grandma EVER!” I can certainly say that without doubt. In my maternal family we have this tradition I have posted about before called “Gravehopping.”  Quick hits info: either the weekend before or Memorial Day Weekend we go to the graves of our maternal grandparents’ family, which now consists of three separate cemeteries, and remove the fake flowers we placed last year and replace them with “fresh” fake flowers.

When my Grandma Krause (my mom’s mom) was able to go with us, when we got to the grave of her grandma, she always said, “She was the best grandma ever.” Every year I would tell her, “No, you’re the best grandma ever.” She would look up at me and say, “Oh, I can only hope so, Dolly.”  She ALWAYS called her five granddaughters “Dolly” when ending a phone call or a letter.

Back on the river and off of the tributaries: As I alluded to earlier, I have my Grandma Krause’s Jumbo Word Find Pad. I don’t know the date of my grandma’s last attempted word find, but the title is “80 Reunion Time.” The clues include “guest”, “memories”, and “mementos”.  Of the 28 words, she found 15. Today I completed 10 of the remaining words.

I left one incomplete on purpose. The word is “Farewell.” It’s in here somewhere, but I haven’t looked for it. Despite the number of years that have passed since Grandma Krause passed and where she lived at the time she passed, I like to think about one year when we were in Shawano, on the small front porch of the house on Smalley Street and Grandma said, “They must not have the stock car races at the Fair anymore.” My cousins and I shared a knowing look with each other and one of us said, “Grandma, they’re racing the cars right now. Can’t you hear them?” She answered, “Oh, no, but I’m glad that you can hear them.”

The BEST things about Gravehopping was that on Sunday of Gravehopping weekend, Grandma Krause would fry eggs over-hard for me in the bacon grease in her cast iron skillet. To this day, all of these years later, I have not eaten anything that comes close to how absolutely perfect these simple fried eggs tasted.

I have no idea who got Grandma Krause’s iron skillet, but I have my Grandma Porath’s iron skillet and I have yet to attempt the “eggs fried over hard in bacon grease.”  I hope that I have the courage to fry eggs over hard soon. In a way, it will complete the “farewell” Reunion Time.

How Will I Know?

When we lost Peanut on May 26, 2010, it was exactly one month later, June 26, 2010, that we brought Apollo home. If you knew me during the Peanut years, you know how completely devoted I was to him. Living in a household without a dog got lonely and when we chose Apollo and he chose us, it felt right. When I close my eyes, I can still feel his little puppy body curled up in my lap on the drive home. He was warm and I could hear him breathe. We picked him up in Wausaukee and had a significant drive home from his foster family’s house. I held him steady with my left hand, playing with his ears, looking out the window, contemplating his name.

His name. As someone who silently giggles when I come across “unfortunate” human names, this was a defining choice. His foster family named him Red, which was a no-go from the start. So, I’m doing some free association thinking and the movie Troy with Brad Pitt as Achilles floats into my thoughts, and how he fell in love with Persephone, the protector of the oracle of Apollo, the Greek god of light, their Sun God. The Romans worshipped Apollo as a god of healing. Light, the sun, healing…exactly what was needed in the vacuum of our lives that Peanut left. Not a replacement, but a healer. That’s a lot of expectation for an eight-week, nine-pound puppy, but fucking-a did he deliver!!

From the moment we got back home, his huge personality filled every shadow of darkness. It took two rounds of obedience classes to get him to honestly, the sub-par level in which he would listen and “obey.” We did get him kennel trained which was huge because Peanut wasn’t, and it eventually became problematic – like the time in Milwaukee when he got my new $1,700 eyeglasses off of my night stand and I woke to the sound of him chewing and destroying them a mere two hours after I fell asleep.

 It’s been 6 months and 10 days since we lost Apollo. I am finally able to look at pictures of him without crumbling into tears, although if I look at anymore than three, my thoughts wander to how much he was loved, how much he loved all of us, and how much I still miss him. Then the tears roll, like they are now.

Two weeks ago, I opened my Petfinder app and plugged in the info about what type of dog I was looking for (size, sex, age, etc.). Then I added our info (kids, other pets, type of yard, etc.). This is the website where we found Apollo. There are small-to-medium sized male puppies available for adoption. Some of them are part-terrier with wired hair like Apollo had. Some of them have the same black and tan markings that Peanut had.

While looking at pictures and reading puppy bios, it crosses my mind that I may be looking for a “replacement” for Apollo, and that if a pup has a different personality from his, which of course he will, I will be disappointed.

I just untangled my own answer right there.

Key West Rhapsody

Key West Rhapsody

Yes, I stood in the ocean and wept with joy.
I floated in the gulf and brushed seaweed from my hair.
Hearing a waterfall under water sounds like thunder.
I miss roosters crowing in the morning…and all day.
She decided to start living the life she imagined.
Closer to Cuba than the nearest Walmart, I found Sun Drop at $1.79 a bottle at Fausto’s Food Palace, cheaper here than it is where it’s made, Shawano WI.
I caught my own Mahi Mahi and ate it seared with olive oil and Key limes.
I never imagined there were so many shades of blue.
Just before the rain poured, I picked up 4 college kids from Pensacola in my 4-seat golf cart and drove us to Mallory Square.
The humidity is high and stagnant.
The air smells of orchids and cigars, is subtly spicey and subtly sweet.
The water feels thin and light.
There are two places where my soul feels at home; one is Manhattan, the other is Key West.
There will be a time when I go there, to Paradise, and I won’t come back. 

Those are some of the major “be mindful in this moment” memories from our trip to Key West. Before Mark and I spent eight days there in late May/early June, I had spent a total of roughly eight hours there twenty-nine years ago. But I knew then, “even if I have to live in a box on the beach”, I knew this is where I’d retire. Considering my ability to work remotely from anywhere in the U.S. in my current job, and, having lived in the equivalent of a tiny home while we were there, the possibility of moving there sooner than retirement is a high possibility.

It was very freeing to have a small footprint of space available to live in. Anyone who has ever helped me move or has been to any of the places I’ve lived in since I lived in Boston as an undergrad, may find this shocking. I have a ton of shit. I have been hauling books I read in high school (and never re-read), yearbooks from junior high, photos of my parents in my childhood and “junior cookbooks” with me since the day I moved into my first off-campus apartment in Boston. I still have a bookcase that was in the bedroom I shared with my sister in 1984.

I’ve been reading about people my age and younger living in Key West for roughly six months each year, depending on the climate they are coming from, and living the other part of the year where it’s likely much farther north, but they also call “home.” Apparently, there are boarding houses in Key West that offer this option. I haven’t looked for something comparable in Wisconsin yet, but I’m not hopeful.

Just by looking at photos of me from Key West is proof enough for me that this is a place where I belong. Not because of the touristy stuff we did, like deep sea fishing and then having the fish made to order at a harbor restaurant. I belong here because my soul feels full. I look forward to each day here. All I need is a small golf cart to run errands and for grocery shopping. I need to spend every day in water, a pool, a gulf, an ocean.

                                  

                                                          This is where my soul feels at home.            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

                                    

                                                                                   

 

 

                                                                                            

                                                                                                                

And Another Year Has Come to Pass…

On New Year’s Eve 2022 I randomly chose three statements from my day-by-day calendar that I had saved because they meant something to me on the original dates when I read them.

I’m doing the same this New Year’s Eve. I’ve randomly chosen three dates from my “You are a Badass” daily calendar that I had put aside on the date I originally read them. I am also posting 2 other quotes that really hit me in the feels this year. It has been a pretty rough year. In September I started by journey to ketamine therapy for treatment resistant depression. I finally had my first treatment session with the ketamine on 12/02/23 and it didn’t go well. I was much more depressed and had strong passive SI (suicidal ideation for those of you not in the mental health biz) after that session, but my care team helped normalize that for me and my second session was truly a breakthrough for me. I met with my personal individual therapist, my ketamine clinician, and my ketamine therapy Guide during the week after my second session and felt 75% less depressed and anxious. I checked in with myself and with all of those listed above to assure myself that I wasn’t experiencing hypomania or mania, which I wasn’t. I was probably feeling what those with a healthy, balanced emotional life and home/work life feel. Regardless, it was the first relief I’ve had from crushing depression and electrically charged anxiety in well over a year.

Today, 12/31/23 I completed my 5^th of an initial schedule of 6 sessions. “Session” being defined as taking the medication and the preparation and integration that happens on session days.

So, back to the task at hand: here are the dates and messages from 3 randomly selected desk calendar pages from 2023!

Saturday/Sunday January 14/15: Your brain is your bitch.

My shrink, who I’ve been seeing since 2004 and with whom I regularly talk about how “the mind” is not necessarily in my corner (or anyone else’s for that matter), when it comes to processing experiences and the accompanying emotions post-experience. The longer we live, the more inaccurate and irrational thoughts and emotional responses we gain/develop over time. It’s classic CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). It takes a lot of work and repetitive practice of learning how to “respond versus react” to whatever experience we encounter during any regular, ho-hum day, much less the “biggies” which is a definition we create for ourselves. A “biggie” for me may be a phone call from my mother when she’s sobbing and whatever she’s saying is something I can’t translate so I let her ramble on for a few minutes before I tell her I can’t understand what she’s saying and end up hanging up the phone.

Thursday June 22: The thrills from the little wins will keep you rolling toward victory.

Despite how much I “know” that big changes result from small, day-to-day changes in habits, the way I think, and how I manage my expectations, it still fucking sucks that the changes I want to see in my life don’t happen when I want them to. I’m a classic addict: I want what I want when I want it. I don’t want to do the day-to-day shit, I want the miracle of change to happen simply because I say so and because I want it. This was a good reminder for me to get back to my “recovery roots”: one day at a time (sometimes it’s 5 minutes or 1 minute at a time). Nevertheless, it’s a good reminder for me to slow down, accept it is what it is, and keep taking those small, regular steps that eventually will be life changing.

Tuesday July 25: You are responsible for what you say and do. You are not responsible for whether or not people freak out about it.

Oh, dear Lord if I could truly embrace this concept life would be so much less work! There are versions of this I’ve heard in my life such as “It’s none of my business what other people think of me” which in my rational mind I know is true but fuck this is really hard for me to embrace. Until I found “my people” in junior high which happened well into 8^th grade, I was shoved into my locker once, had the books I was carrying slammed out of my hands by a girl who would eventually become a nurse who took care of my dad when he had his prostate surgery. I had my rebellious periods during junior high and high school, which included dying a part of my hair orange and then blonde, then dying the whole thing platinum blonde the night before high school graduation. Seriously this is how I “fought the establishment” in the upper-middle class that was Appleton, WI in 1989. As I accumulated more life experiences throughout college and into early adulthood, even I giggle that this was my big stand against “the man” and the personal oppression I felt when I was 17 years old.

The other two quotes I’m just going to post, and you can interpret them as you like. As always, I will close with a quote from the New Year’s Even anthem, Old Lang Syne.

                                          

We two have paddled in the stream
from morning sun till dine
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                         

 

Finding Mini Surprises Part 2

As the end of another trip around the sun nears, I’ve been looking through some mish-moshed paperwork, receipts, and all sorts of crap that has been accumulating on miscellaneous bookshelves, on top of temporarily empty boxes labeled “XMAS DECORATIONS”, and basically any flat surface in “the Patio Room” which is where I work from home.

The space is likely intended to be a third bedroom, but because we already have a twin bed in the “guest bedroom”, and there’s a full-size patio door in the room, this Patio Room has become my default office-I hate calling it that because I want to use the space for more than just where I work from, forty hours a week. I plan on setting up my piano keyboard in that room, once I have sorted through and organized the mish-mosh that takes up 90 percent of its space.

So, before I get into the visceral guts of what I want this post to be about, I will share another mini surprise I found when opening a 4” x 6” 60 sheet journal that was buried under unopened 401{k} quarterly statements and invoices from Apollo’s new vet.

There is no title, just the date of 02/23/23. 

There you were,
looking at the skyline on a
humid August evening,
methodically swirling the Pinot Grigio
in your wine glass.
Not knowing better,
one would assume you were
mesmerized by the passing skyscrapers along the Milwaukee shoreline.
But I knew you were looking through the passing urban landscape.
Your mind turning about,
you and her
me and him
you and me.

 

 

Finding Mini-Surprises

Scrolling through my laptop's Documents looking for the Storycatcher's folder to post the "sage advice" Word document I read from last night I happened upon a folder titled "Poetry".  Prior to opening it, I thought I knew what was stored inside. I have some standards that I re-worked for so long, I can practically recite them from memory.

I was surprised to find pieces that, after reading them, I'm surprised by. I haven't posted them here before. I scrolled through all of my posts to make sure. So, I'm going to post a few of them now. Each of them bring me back to the environment, event, or experience that prompted me to write in the first place.

Where Hope Fears to Tread (02-11-17)

For twenty-four weeks I did your time too.
My cell: a desk, a chair,
a steel door, window banks of bullet-proof glass.

You retreat
behind your steel door, cover your window
with toilet paper, feces, blood.
I was constantly displayed for you,
to shout to,
to shout at;
demanding I fix your crisis or
be the target of your disgust for the system, “the man”, your lawyer, your victim.
Demanding my self, my values, my soul.

“Fucking bitch!”
“Kristine, why don’t you come talk to me?! Why the fuck you ignoring me?!”
“Come suck my dick!”

Ten hours later, I leave my cell, exhausted and empty.
Despite time and distance,
we both know tomorrow; these roles begin anew.

County Drive (12-10-14)
A heavy hawk lazily
circles, riding currents of a swift autumn breeze.
What were once proud and regal sunflowers
bow their weary heads;
time in the late summer spotlight expired.

Low laying fog, the smoke of smoldering brush
settled over farmers’ fields,
some already turned for the coming snow.
Harvest complete, their usefulness fulfilled
for another season.

Maybe You're Not As Good As You Think You Are

 

In a world that often encourages us to be our own biggest cheerleaders, with meditation, positive self-talk, and an entire field called “positive psychology”, it was a sobering thought for me to consider that I might not be as exceptional as I believed. I learned this lesson from my revered high school orchestra conductor in my senior year of high school, aged a tender18.

When Mr. Wolfman retired after 36 or 38 years with the Appleton Area School District, I wrote a letter to the editor of The Post Crescent to somehow commemorate what was a long, steady career of inspiring students, challenging students, having high expectations of students, and demanding it from us. All the while playing some of the most difficult, well-known, and eclectic classical music.

Every spring the orchestra played a Commencement Concert at the Lawrence University Chapel. This was an opportunity for seniors to audition to solo backed-up by the entire West/East High Schools’ symphony. As a senior cellist, I yearned to solo. And I didn’t want to play any cello concerto, I wanted to master the Dvorak cello concerto; a big, intense concerto that puts all others to shame.

I was confident that my passion for great music, especially the Dvorak, and the surprising progress I had made as a cellist since my first year in the high school orchestra, were going to be enough for me to claim that coveted solo.

My audition was appalling. I had started butchering the concerto in January. The concert was in mid-May. I took weekly private lessons with a music ed. major at Lawrence and after our first month in, I could barely play the first three bars. He asked, “Are you sure this is what you want to play?” I was adamant. In my mind, I had mastered everything I tried and if I recognized that a skill, a project, or anything else in life was something I couldn’t master, I threw it in the “Disinterested” bucket. That maladaptive thinking is what kept me trudging on, week after week, Dvorak, I imagine now, screaming from his grave, “STOP HER!” to the universe.

When the list of soloist’s names was taped to the inside of the orchestra room door my name wasn’t there. I felt an aching hurt in my soul. I cried in front of the entire symphony then ran from the room, not returning for rehearsal that day. I didn’t know I was on the cusp of learning a great life lesson.

Later, my conductor said to me, “I think you got so emotional because you’re not as good of a cellist as you think you are, and that's ok.” Well, that’s a hard smack of reality right to the forehead. It stung like hell…but it was true.

The lesson I learned that day is that life is not fair, and sometimes we’re all not as good as we think we are…and that’s ok. No matter how much of the spirit of the music I felt, how much I believed in myself, how much passion I exuded, I had to reconcile with my “Disinterested” bucket. I had to take every piece of failure out of that sloppy, long-ignored pail and own it…and it’s ok. I needed to learn from those failures instead of burying them. I needed to learn that true success can only come from attempting, failing, reshaping my efforts, and attempting again.