Watch out! Bad Karma could get you.

This font is Georgia, the computer doesn't lie, or does it?

It is beginning to feel as if all the good Karma that I collected doing God Knows What, may have dissipated. Been used up. Gone South. Taking a Break. Deep-sixed. Taken leave. Is resting. Whatever. It may need replenishing. A stay on the Vineyard, I hope, will cure that. "Things" have taken a turn for the worse. Not, as Roger, Skip's best man used to say, "A turn for the Nurse."

Prepare yourselves. We have been travellin' since early Tuesday a.m. A lot has happened during those three days. This blog could or may go on for some time. There is too much to recall in the short time alloted, but I hope to stay with the important points, not sure that I will. What with the Karma thing going bad and all.

When we returned last evening, Thursday, the 18th, 2010, at 9:15 p.m after 711 miles on the road. I unlocked the door to the condo and there on the counter near the sink was what I had hoped not to see. A rectangular piece of white paper with a couple of Yale-bluish lines outlining the bolder blue print which read: TODAY we provided a follow-up pest prevention service. If you have any questions, please contact your Management Office. It was signed Jvu, dated 3/18/10 the Logo read:

MASSEY services, inc. "It's another sign of good housekeeping!

Unfortunately, I had walked on the kitchen floor in order to get to the counter to read what the "Technician" had left. Now the bottom of my shoes were contaminated. I smelled an odd odor, could that be the sweet smell of PESTICIDE? !!!

Was this a coincidence? Did the exterminator just happen into the kitchen while we were away and spray Who Knows What? all over the place?? Who had I told about the ONE cockroach I had found and escorted out of the condo? Ah, yes, I told Kay, but I did not tell Kay how I feel about pesticide. That was a big mistake. Not giving her the whole picture. My real mistake was mentioning the "Cockroach Incident" to anyone. What happens in Condo #115, stays in Condo #115. Or my interlude with the bug was really our business, the bug and me.

What a way to learn a lesson. The Hard Way.

A phone call to Kay confirmed my suspicion. Kay told me she happened to see the "Bug Guy" going from condo to condo a couple of days ago. She stopped him to tell him a Cockroach had been found in #115. His response was typical. Something like this. "I can't do anything about it lady, You'll have to call the Office. I get my orders from there." Thinking she was doing a good deed, Kay called Monica in the Office and told her I had found a Cockroach in the kitchen of #115.

Monica is very efficient. She responds rapidly to most requests and with a smile. She is very friendly and helpful. I guess she got right on the horn and called Massey to come back. Must have made a special trip on Thursday so the Technician could spray God Knows What, God Knows Where.

The odds that I will have an encounter with another Cockroach in the next few days or weeks are low, I suspect. Kay thought she was being helpful. She probably has only shortened my life by a few days or weeks or months. It's hard to quantify that sort of thing. Statistics on this issue could be hard to come by. Besides, our landlord, Dr. Goldfarb, employs landscapers who spray pesticide or herbicide (I know it isn't friendly to weeds or the environment) on the "lawn" outside The Toxic Apartment in Montclair that Skip has been tracking in for years. It would be hard to say whether my life has been shortened and by how much by this incident or the many incidents in Montclair. And then we can all recall the years from 1989 to 1999 to 2004 when I owned 122 Western Ave. in Cambridge and the fellow downstairs smoked 4 packs a days. All my cats died and Shebarita, my loyal and loving dog might have had a few more good years if she hadn't been subjected to all that second hand smoke that wafted up between the old floorboards and yellowed ceiling of the downstairs apartment.

Jim used to arise promptly at 7:00 a.m. Smoke 7 cigarettes before he left for work at the New England Conservatory at 7:30 a.m. I didn't witness this event. He confided his habits to me on one of the occasions I talked with him about how his doctor's request for him to stop smoking was going. He would come home around 5 -6 ish and finish off the rest of the 4 packs of butts he consumed each day. Luckily I had to be at the BHF at 7a.m. Mon - Thurs. It was Friday, Sat and Sun, my days off, when I would smell the awful aroma of cigarette smoke from early morning on. I tried everything. I bought him and myself air purifiers. I hope it helped some. Winter was the worst. Closed windows. Once the windows opened in Spring, Summer and Fall with the fans going upstairs and down the odor was less.

For many years I tried to explain the dangers of some chemicals to Skip, but I have been almost 100% unsuccessful. Although, I backed up my opinions with written material, I was unable to persuade him to change his habits or even admit to the vague possibility I might be onto something.

He refuses to take off his shoes when he enters the house after walking, not on the cement walk, but on the grass that has the little yellow flag stuck in the ground saying, Pesticide application. He is not concerned about what is in our tap water, or the processed food he craves. He is not concerned about the additives in his food, the antibiotics in the milk he prefers, the chemicals on his shoes that transfer to the rugs I lie on to do my exercises. He has happily turned a deaf ear to my entreaties. He has turned a blind eye to the list of chemicals on the food containers. He is in blissful denial about the dangers that surround him and have surrounded him for so many years.

Needless to say, this notification that the condo had been provided with "a follow-up pest prevention service" was of no concern to him. In fact, although he did not say so, he may have been glad to know there would be no reoccurrance of the "Cockroach Incident." Skip tolerates, barely, my insistence to not kill things. I have not had to stand between me and a bug recently, but if I am not careful and Skip gets to the offending insect, meaning it is in the house, first, you can imagine what he does to it. He does not gently escort it outside. But Live and Let Live. That is his choice. Maybe his Bad Karma is spilling over onto me? Is that what has happened recently?

March 15th, the Ides of March, marked one month here in Florida. I think a month may be a little too much time for the two of us to spend in Condo #115, together. I've noticed the downward trend of doing things I would like to do. I find an incredible need to have some time to myself. I NEED A BREAK FROM THIS 24/7 MARRIED LIFE! It is enough to kill a horse, as someone used to say.

No one can survive a 24/7 relationship. Believe me. It does not work. It is stifling. It is, at the very best, very difficult. It takes incredible patience to remain civil when one's life is not one's own. Very, very bad way to live. I vowed I would not live under anyone's thumb ever again, but in a situation such as this, isolated from friends and family, it is not easy to persevere. However, persevere I must.

At the moment I have moved with the computer over to the room next to Monica's Office. I have wifi here, but no surge protector. No printer. No access to AOL, for some odd reason. In the condo I have AOL, but I can not, on dial-up as I have said ad nauseum, I can not open attachments, download anything, open photos, send photos, etc., print out airline itineries.

Skip is flying to Boston to spend Easter with his daughter and perhaps other members of his family. That is nice for him. I'm happy he can spend time with them. I am happy to have a few days to call my own, I hope. However, in my less than Good Karma protected state, it reminds me that I have No Family. Not true. I do have Friends which are something like family, unfortunately none of them will be here.

As I age there are moments when I would like to have children somewhere. I'd like to have grown children happily employed in careers of their choice, doing what makes them happy. They wouldn't need to live near by, unless they chose to. I, hopefully, wouldn't interfere with their lives. But, selfishly, I would like to have someone to leave all my stuff to. That's when offspring really come in handy. Don't know what to do with all that stuff? Leave it to the kids. They don't want it? They'll throw it away? Good. No worries.

If I were to have regrets and I know having regrets is a stupendous waste of time, but if I were, for a minute, to have a regret, I would regret the time I didn't spend in the last 12 years with my family, while I had one.

My original plan, as I may have iterated on this blog, was to work in Cambridge until I reached 65. Sell the house in Cambridge, or if I were lucky, keep the house, but move to the Vineyard, take a part-time job that, hopefully, allowed me to have health care and SPEND TIME WITH MY BROTHER AND HIS FAMILY.

Alas, every once in a while, at times when others spend time with their families, I realize, with the death of my brother last Labor Day and then his wife after Christmas, that I am very much without any family. My sister, at 84, can be fun to talk over old times with, unless she brings up certain family stories such as, "You were unwanted." That isn't all that cheery. I've had to protect myself from her as I tried to be compassionate about the suffering she must endure in her quest to justify her life and situation.

So when families get together at holidays I find myself, often, just as happy not to have any family. I don't miss the horrible feelings I endured growing up of not belonging to any family. My brother and sister being whole brother and sister. Me being a half-sister. My father meant the world to me as a young girl. To loose him at age 10, really, he was not very much in my life after age 8 or so due to his illness, was a terrible blow. I'm recovered from all that, of course. It took years and years to come to terms with the loss I felt when he died and the unhappiness I experienced of being an "unwanted" child, as my sister describes my entry in the world. My mother, long-suffering, raising two children alone during the Depression and then having to deal with a very rebellious kid like me after my father died, did the best she could to get along. Her choices weren't all that good, marrying two alcoholics who died from the disease and a third who drank on the sly I found out recently, but she got by. She was very active at the Methodist Church. She worked until she became too ill to work at age 74. She liked to "keep busy." She did the best she could do. I have no bad feelings toward her. I still feel as if I raised myself. She wasn't very much help to me, but she did teach me to try to be kind to others. She sent me to Sunday school. I learned the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. I haven't killed anybody yet. That's a good thing.

She didn't bother to allow me to do what I wanted. She wanted me to not embarrass her. She wanted me to BEHAVE. She wanted me to be able to support myself financially and I did that for her. I worked Summers, saved my money, spent very little, put myself through nursing school and never asked her for money. Love was what I was hoping for, support, reassurance, recognition maybe. I gave up that quest when I learned to lower expectations and have better results in life. I made my way. I resented her greatly. I was angry for years because she never told me she loved me, never listened to me, never allowed me to be myself. But I got over all that. By the time I was in my thirties I was able to invite her to visit me in Cambridge. When she became ill I was able to take care of her. I had lost all resentment by then. My anger was gone. I knew she did the best she could. I couldn't ask any more of her than that. I did my best to advocate for her with the medical profession, such as it was, on Martha's Vineyard. I cooked her her last meal, walked with her while she rationalized. "I've raised three good children," she said as we took a short walk in front of the Katama Roadhouse in between her surgeries for ovarian cancer. "Yes," I assured her. I was secretly reading Kubler-Ross, the stages of dying, trying desperately to be a good daughter for her, attend to her emotional and physical needs. When she died I wanted to be sure that I could live with myself. I wanted to be sure I had done everything I could to make the end of her life as good as it could be. Nothing is perfect. I did the best I could at the time.

When my mother mentioned she had raised three good children, as I said "Yes," out loud, I can remember thinking, "except Faye, of course." My sister. She can be very kind. She is liked, maybe loved by many. I call her in Maine and we gab on. We laugh over events past. Sometimes we even agree on certain things. There are a ton of subjects we don't talk about, with good reason. We don't really see eye to eye on a number of things. Her interpretation of her life and mine is much different than my interpretation of her life and mine. No need to go there.

Faye is my sister, my half-sister, she is 84 years old. She lives with her daughter, Andrea, Andy, who is divorced. Andy has four dogs. Andy and Faye just went and got themselves each a cat. Good company for my sister. Andy works long days. My sister is alone a great deal of the time.

We talk on the phone and that is about as close as I want to get due to the long history we have. A cousin of mine told me this last Fall of her experiences with my sister. They weren't very many nice stories. I have lots of not very nice stories, but I won't recount them here. Not now.

I've run out of steam on this blog today. I'm going to, maybe, take a swim or at least read a book for a while. I may have been able to give my ticket for the Opera, which I did not want to see, to the woman next door. Hooray! Oh, just to set the record straight. I did write a couple of Thank You notes. That feels better. The other notes I was going to write were to thank the people who sent me cards when my brother died and then my sister-in-law. Maybe I won't sit inside and write to each one of them. I'm sure I thanked them when I saw them. I wouldn't expect anyone to thank me if I sent them a card. I mean, write me a note. I wanted to do it. I wanted to tell the people who took the time to write to me how much I appreciated getting their card, their note, but there are a number of them and I may just try to say thank you again in person and let it go at that. More on the threee day trip another time. Aloha, FAN

I do miss the Thanksgivings I spent, years ago, at my brother's. It was so much fun to listen to him tell stories, give his opinion about Oak Bluffs, Island and world events.

At least I have learned another valuable life lesson. There are so many to learn and so little time to learn them in. This lesson. Silence is better than chatter. Keeping one's own council or is it counsel? Anyway. Some things are better kept quiet. The "Cockroach Incident", unusual as it was, which prompted me to tell Kay about it, was better left to the blog.