R.I.P., Ms. Vickie

I would be remiss to let this month go by without writing about Ms. Vickie, a woman I greatly admired.  I first met her in March 2000 when I went to interview her for my first CASA case at her cramped, dark apartment, off MLK in Atlanta.

Until their mother dropped off her two great-nephews, ages 3 and 5, Ms. Vickie lived alone.  She had no children of her own and never married.  After a few days of trying to contact their mother, Ms. Vickie realized that she wasn't coming back to pick up her sons.  So Ms. Vickie filed a case in Juvenile Court to get legal authority to take care of these boys.  She really stepped up to the plate when she decided to keep the boys with her.  It would have been easier to let them loose in the foster care system, but she didn't want to do that.

So this single lady on disability raised these boys for the last 12 years.  It wasn't ever easy for her - money was always a big issue as the parents of these boys weren't inclined to pay child support.  I'm not sure how she was able to manage but I know it was a struggle and a source of constant stress for her.   She always drove an old, rattletrap of a car that never seemed to be working right. She even learned how to do many repairs herself with secondhand parts and would often explain to me how she completed the repairs, which was always way too complicated for me.

With her own high school diploma framed and prominently displayed on her living room wall, Ms. Vickie stressed education with the boys and was more than a "hands on parent".  She watched them like a hawk, and they could get away with very little.  She encouraged them to be in sports and ROTC with her hope being that the older boy would join the Marines when he graduated this spring and the younger boy, a great student, would go to college.  She was far from perfect.  She was a hoarder and her house looked like the ones you see on that hoarding show on tv, actually pretty scary. But she made up for this with good parenting values, and I realized there were some things I just needed to overlook.

Over the years, we became unlikely friends as we bonded over the boys' best interests. She would call me every couple of weeks to report on the boys, both good and bad. Sometimes we would commiserate over how hard headed teenagers can be. Sometimes we'd rejoice together over an award or accomplishment.  These calls continued, even after I left Atlanta.  I still wanted to know how the boys were doing, and she still wanted to tell me.

A few weeks ago, she left me a voicemail on January 9th.  I didn't get a chance to call her back that day, and when I called back the next day, the older boy answered her cell phone.  He told me she had a heart attack and died just that afternoon, January 10th. Such a sad day - she was too young (a few years younger than me) to go this way and to miss seeing the fruits of her labors by watching the boys turn into the fine adults I hope they will be.

I somehow hoped that I had heard wrong on the phone and that she would be calling me back soon, but it didn't happen.  Instead, her brother, who lived across the street in their small Georgia town, called me to let me know he would be taking care of the boys. I've never met him but hope that he can fill the big, empty shoes that Ms. Vickie left behind.  Rest in Peace, Ms. Vickie.  You will be missed.

Here's to a Year of Expecting MORE

2011 was a year of transition for me, and that's always tough.  So I basically gave myself a pass on many things, acknowledging that just coping with new places, people, culture, climate, etc., was probably enough without expecting much more.  My life definitely changed a lot in 2011 - much more hermit-like.  I hate to admit it, but there are many days (due to a lack of places to go and people to see, combined with cold temperatures) when I never actually leave our building.  

But now here we are in 2012, a whole new year ready and waiting.  I'm personally a fan of new year's resolutions because it's always good to take stock of where you are in life and where you want to be.  I enjoyed re-reading my 2011 resolutions that I wrote on this blog a year ago and seeing how I've done.

So I apologize if I bore you with my resolutions for this new year, and please feel free to stop reading right here.  I write them because it makes me a bit more accountable, and I also believe that if you envision it, it's more likely to come true.

Without further fanfare, here are my 2012 resolutions:

The first two are perennial resolutions, and the rest are particular to this year.

1.  Lose weight.  I made some successful inroads on this perennial resolution in 2011 but not enough to cross it off the list.  I'm probably about halfway there.  I continue to work with trainer Courtney a/k/a Killer who has perfected the double-stinkeye dirty look when she suspects I have not been diligent in my exercise and food intake.  I wonder if they offer classes in dirty looks in trainer school.

2.   Have more fun.  You can never have too much.

3.   Expect MORE of myself in all aspects of my life.  The transition year is over, and I can be quite lazy.  Time to take myself to task and get more accomplished.

4.   Finish (and I mean really finish) the book that I have been working on for many years with my friend Ruth.  After a hiatus of at least a year, we have started working on this again with a total rewrite.  I want to complete this project and move on to something new.

5.   Buy a place to retire in California.  Last year, one of my resolutions was to sell our house in Atlanta, and that was accomplished.  So this year, we hope to buy a place that we can look forward to when we eventually leave Denver.  We've done a bit of looking already, and it's complicated.  More to come on this at a future time.

6.   The year of the puppy!  We have been dog-less for a couple of years now.  While there are definite advantages to not owning a dog, we very much miss the canine company.  So hopefully we will add to our family in 2012.

7.   Spend at least 3 hours per week organizing closets, drawers, cabinets.  I've learned that, for me at least,  general goals (like #2 and #3 above) don't work as well as very specific goals.   So rather than just say organize my stuff, I want to be much more specific.  Although our apartment looks neat, what lies beyond the cabinet and closet doors and file drawers is not so pretty.  When we moved in, I didn't really have the time to go through individual items but now I do.  I really want to get rid of all that is extraneous, as I know there is another move in our future that will benefit greatly from the time that I put in this year.

8.   Do something new, whether it is volunteer someplace new or take a course in something.  Last year, I volunteered at a day shelter for women and will continue to do this.  I've volunteered to help the same shelter with their gala/auction, something I feel comfortable that I have the experience to do.  I also took  cooking classes with a friend, which I'd never done before.  I learned, among other things, that I didn't even know how to crack an egg properly (I always did it on the edge of the bowl, which is wrong).

May your 2012 be healthy, happy, grateful and productive as we all strive for doing and enjoying MORE.

The Tale of Puffyman

This last blog post of 2011 is The Tale of Puffyman, a morality story with an unsatisfying ending. 

As has been previously mentioned in this blog, downtown Denver has a very visible, significant homeless population.  Recently, I heard on the radio that there are 11,000 homeless in Denver.  Of course, this is a group that must be very difficult to count as they don't have a reliable place to stay so I question how accurate that number is. Honestly, it seems like there are much more.  On any given day (sunshine or snow, broiling heat or frigid below zero temps), there is a person with a cardboard sign on every corner.

Because the Denver homeless problem is so obvious, for about the last six months, I've been volunteering at a full-service day shelter for homeless women called The Gathering Place.  I'm tutoring in the GED program and have gotten to know some women in the program who I greatly admire for trying to improve their situations.  But, I digress, as this is the tale of Puffyman.

About a block away from our apartment, there is a little pocket park wedged next to a busy street and Cherry Creek.  Every single day for the entire first year that we lived here, a man would sit in this tiny park all day long.  Depending on the weather, he would wear various layers of coats.  Of course, on the cold winter days, he would wear every coat he had, making him appear that he was quite big.  When he was in full winter regalia, he resembled the stay-puff marshmallow man, so we started to refer to him as Puffyman or, sometimes, Puffy for short.  

I would see Puffy sitting in his little park as I walked or drove by.  Usually, he looked like he was sleeping, but sometimes I'd see him reading a paperback book or eating.  He never had a sign or seemed the least bit interested in soliciting donations.  I often wondered how he took care of his basic needs as he never seemed to leave the park during the day.  How did he ever clean himself up?  Where did his food come from? When and how did he use the bathroom?  At night, he would disappear but we would sometimes see him on a bench in front of our bank, a few blocks away from his daytime gig.

Puffy was always alone.  In all of my Puffy sightings, I never saw anyone with him.  I would think about what a sad, lonely existence he had but never actually thought about approaching him or trying to offer some help.  To be perfectly honest, he looked kind of weird and I'm not sure how he would have smelled up close.  So I kept my distance.

Then, one day this month, after watching Puffy for an entire year, he disappeared from his little park.  I worried about him.  Was he still alive?  Was he in a hospital somewhere?  I felt guilty that after all of those days of seeing Puffy, I never showed him any humanity.  Weeks went by Puffy-less and I felt even worse that I had never tried to help him, never even approached him.  I vowed to be a better person in the future.

But one day earlier this week, as I drove by Puffy's park, there he was in a new camouflage outer coat, sitting where he always sat.  Did I jump out of the car, run to Puffy, give him a hug and tell him I missed him, and ask how I could help him?  No, I did not.  I did what I had done so many times before, just went on by, noting his presence but nothing more.  He still seemed pretty weird and a bit outside my comfort zone so, feeling much more guilty than before, I still didn't act the way I should.

So here's to a new year of 2012 where I hope we will all be filled with compassion for our fellow humans.  Maybe this will be the year that I get to know Puffy, but then again maybe not.

A White Christmas

Snow Drifts on the Terrace - 12/22/11

View from Apartment -  12/22/11

May your days be merry and bright . . .

Thankful (but a little late)

Sunset in Denver, 11/30/11

I meant to blog about being thankful during the appropriate week of Thanksgiving, but I was on vacation in California and that wound up meaning that I was on vacation from blogging as well.  So before it gets way too late to do this, I do want to express my gratitude and thankfulness for my very good life.  Of course, there isn't anyone who can't find "issues" to complain about, but brushing those negatives aside, I feel extremely lucky to feel good, have great family and friends, and an all-around easy life.  

I always say that if you wake up and you feel good, that's a good day.  Something to appreciate and you only truly appreciate this when you don't have it.  Kind of like how I feel about "bad hair days."  Once you lose your hair in chemotherapy, there are no more bad hair days, which may account for why mine sometimes looks so . . . well, bad . . . and I don't seem to care.

Thanksgiving 2011

Since I've not posted anything in many weeks, there is much to say.  However, I will try to spread that out over several posts in the near future so I don't overwhelm with excessive prose.  My thought is that everyone can get some smiles from the photos of the dogs who surrounded us at our wonderful Thanksgiving dinner in L.A., cooked to perfection by Anna and Max who appeared in this blog when they were married in Scotland in September.  As you can probably tell from the beautiful table pictured above, Anna and Max were totally channeling Martha Stewart and hosted a lovely and delicious dinner. 

Bunny and Mitzi Martin

Their great dane (who weighs 155 pounds) Mitzi Martin was well behaved and entertained her canine friends quite nicely.  She had a bone the size of a brontosaurus but she very sweetly ceded it to the smallest canine present, Bunny, who most likely weighs less than 10 pounds.  As you can see in the photo below, it is not true that the big dog always gets the bone.

While we're on the topic of dogs, I can't end this post without including some photos of my very cute granddog, The Baroness.  Enjoy and be thankful.  I am.

The Smiling Baroness

The Baroness and her buddy Bunny (white socks courtesy of Isac)

One Year at Mile High

Friday will mark one year since we sashayed into Denver with the intention of making it our new home.  It's been an interesting and not always easy year, but also an eventful one.  Moving is definitely not for sissies.  Even moving a few blocks can be an exhausting experience, primarily because it's so physically tiring.  Then add to that the mental and emotional components that come with moving 1,400 miles - all the way from grits to granola - and that's been my year.

I've learned a lot - primarily about myself, but also about other people, places and things - in this year.  I still miss the folks I've left behind but really nothing else.  I've been very fortunate to see so many people during this year in all sorts of places and particularly fortunate that a number of them have actually been in Denver in the last 12 months.  

Having made some big moves in the past, I understand that it takes time to feel comfortable in a new location and with new people.  With that in mind, I feel fortunate to have a great husband who so wants me to be happy and a wonderful place to live.   I've met some nice new people and reacquainted with old friends.  My time is free to do with as I please, and I'm starting to accept that it's ok to sit down, put my feet up, and enjoy reading a good book, even if it is the middle of the day.

Almost everything about my Denver life is different than my Atlanta life, but that doesn't make it bad, just different.  The mountains are so very pretty to look at, but they will never beckon me like the beach.  That's just part of who I am - Jersey Shore, through and through.   

So I embark on this second year of our Western adventure with interest to see what the future holds.  I hope to keep posting here both my occasional thoughts that seem worthy of sharing as well as my travel adventures.  This blog has been fun to write and has served its purpose of keeping me in touch with people whom I miss.   I enjoy hearing from you and hope that will continue during my second mile high year.  

By the way, I still miss my grits.

Snow + Obama = Interesting Wednesday

Our terrace - 10/26/11

On Monday, Denver set a new high temperature record of 80°.  On Wednesday, it snowed and snowed - the first of the season.  Colorado weather is definitely interesting.

My ticket

Also, on Wednesday, President Obama spoke at UCDenver, where Barry works.  Since he was literally speaking across the street from our loft, I would have felt badly if I missed the opportunity to see our President.  Last night, he stayed at The Four Seasons Hotel, about 3 blocks from our place, so several blocks of the surrounding area were totally closed to traffic.  It was eery to walk over to the campus in the snow with no traffic to be seen.

Line to see Obama

Remnants of line to see Obama

With ticket in hand, I waited for over an hour as the white stuff continued to fall to go through security to get into the speech. It was worth it.  There's a certain excitement about being in a room with thousands of regular people and one very powerful person. Segments from his speech in Denver can be seen here.   Everyone was hoisting their cell phones to record a glimpse of the Pres, so I apologize for my disappointing photo below.

The guy in the white shirt under the flag is Obama

What a difference a swing state makes.  When I lived in Georgia, we never saw any candidates come through in 2008.  Both parties ceded the election to the R column. But, since Colorado is a swing state, I expect to see lots of action. This is already the second time in a month that Obama spoke in Denver.  Most people who have lived here a while have seen him numerous times.  I definitely had candidate envy, so I will have to make up for all of the lost opportunities of seeing politicians do their thing while we live in Denver.

So, an interesting Wednesday, and I'm ready for the snow to stop now please.