Selling the portable typewriter that David took to Italy, England, and France. The one that he used to write his first novel that was never published. It is in pristine condition and really quite lovely. But should I put it on a shelf? Odd to find out that is it a pretty valuable machine -- as standard typewriters go, that is. My neighbor offered to buy it and I told her that I had not done any research but that if she could come up with a price, I’d sell it to her. She looked it up a bit and found that is may be worth a few hundred dollars which is way more than she was looking to spend. And way more than I thought it was worth. In one sense I hate to let it go. It is a lovely little machine. Like I said. Lovely. Still, it has been sitting in the basement since we moved to Bloomington for law school. Maybe I can find out what a dealer would give me for it and bargain with my neighbor from there. Maybe just sell it to a dealer.
Poor Julia had a rough day. When she got on the bus this morning she was so excited about the lamb we saw yesterday that she told a little boy about them. The boy told her that he hated lambs and that he wanted to hurt and kill them. This did not sit well with Julia and she pushed him, and then when she got to school told her teacher about what happened. Both kids got talked to and later in the day they apologized to one another.
What was so disappointing was that Julia was so excited to talk about the lambs with her teachers and other kids. What are the chances that she would run into the only lamb-hating kid in the world?
Julia also lost two chances due to scratching today. Not only did she lose the chances but she became upset about losing the chances and hit her aide on the arm. At least, she told me it was on the arm. She had to leave the classroom and go to the room where she can calm down. I had to ask her about this after I got an email from her teacher, but Julia told me pretty much exactly what her teacher wrote once I asked.
Both of these behaviors is such an improvement over a few years ago that it seems somehow small minded to complain, but to succeed Julia needs to control her anger. Slow but steady, she will get there. She told me tonight that she wanted to have real friends. I told her that we were working on it. I hope that I am right.
I spent the day getting ready to have taxes done -- mine and the estate’s. When I started work in the morning, I had this awful fear come over me, but as I got down to making my lists of expenses and deductions, I fell into a groove and worked well throughout the morning. Later in the afternoon, I realized that I had been channeling the feelings of the fall of 2010. I had been cleaning out the medication bottles and charts that David kept by his computer when I found our tax file. David had done our taxes for years using Turbo Tax. I discovered that he had never finished Cheshire’s taxes, and that our tax form had a mistake. It was fear. It was shock. It was realizing that David really could not handle this task that he had done so many times before. It was realizing that he was sick on a whole other plane. Sure his body was not in the best shape after the transplant, but this was the working of his mind. It was coming to grips with what I had not known, had not looked at or understood. It was finding out what David had kept hidden.
So, that old fear started the day but by day’s end I thought that next year, I’d do the taxes myself. I needed help last year for sure, and I haven’t invested the time to figure it out this year, but unless there are many more financial changes in the next year, and I don’t expect there to be, I can handle it after this. And by that time, my mother’s estate should be long closed (please, God!) and I’ll only be preparing and filing for myself.
As I was driving to pick Julia up from therapy, I was remembering how weak I felt last year at this time. If there was anytime to be rescued, last year would have been the time. I would have been so grateful to lean, lean harder that I was already leaning on friends. If someone volunteered for the position of protector and knight in armor, last year would have been the time. But without a savior, I shouldered on, not always efficiently or successfully, but I did it. Today, I felt the first feelings of strength, of courage, of the beginnings of the new. One of my new year’s resolutions was to disengage from people and situations that fed my weakness. Today, I feel that I’ve taken steps to accomplish that goal.
No comments:
Post a Comment