Life & Spirit | mulberryshoots

July 7, 2014

‘never too late’ . . .

Yesterday, I read a charming essay in Vogue magazine, written by a daughter whose parents, after thirty years of an arranged Indian marriage, had finally fallen in love with each other. Humorously told, it depicted her own search to be “in love” with someone after observing her parents’ newly found happiness, and how it felt different from the man she was dating at the time. She calls her older brother, Arun, who lives in Seattle who says he also “can’t believe it.”

It turns out that her father, a successful surgeon with an outgoing personality had finally succeeded in overcoming or breaking through their mother’s natural reserve and they fall in love with each other after their children are grown and have left them alone together in their middle-age. What a wonderful concept for those of us who may have deep reservoirs of love for our spouses and who also have deep pockets of misery left by unkind parents and/or an abysmal batting average with ex-husbands or boyfriends.

Last night, I was watching Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda in the movie “It Could Happen To You,” playing the Cop and the Waitress (Charlie and Yvonne) who are thrust together by Fate. Near the end of the film, Yvonne says that “nobody’s ever loved me before,” as a reason for why she’s awkward about falling love with Charlie. Coming on the heels of reading the “never too late” article about a couple together for over 30 years falling in love with each other, I felt a satisfying little surge of hope for all those people out there who still have a chance to be happy, even if they don’t know how to open up to their spouses.

These vignettes also remind me of a couple that I’d been acquainted with for over thirty years: she was an antique dealer living in Bolton, MA. who had a quirky, very individual sense of primitive antiques that made many of us flock to her little shop on the ground floor of her little stone house. We all knew she was very unhappy in her marriage with Bill because she talked and complained about it all the time. How unhappy she was, that is.

I ran into her AND Bill in an antique shop in New Hampshire about five years ago when I was passing through with another antiquing friend. Astonishingly, she said out aloud to anyone within earshot in the antique barn full of household detritus that she couldn’t be happier now in her seventies. . . because she and Bill had fallen in love with each other for the first time even though they each now had health issues and no money to speak of.

So, there you go.

It is possible for us to fall in love for the first, or even the second time with our spouses after years of annealing relationships which haven’t quite made it to nirvana. In fact, I believe that once the thunderbolt has occurred to us that maybe “nobody has ever loved me before,” and in spite of whatever kinds of moats and defenses that we put up around ourselves, we can decide whether to let the drawbridge down. And reflect upon whether to finally let someone inside the fortress of our inner selves.

I don’t want to sound over melodramatic about this but it does strike my fancy that it indeed may “never be too late” to listen to lines from movies or to realize how hard we might be making life for ourselves when what we most want can indeed be found in our very own backyard.

Now, there’s a romantic story if I ever heard one!

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July 5, 2014

un-hooked! . . .

parsley, (basil), rosemary and thyme by the back door. . .

Do you ever notice when something happens and one of your automatic responses zooms in? I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been able to take a step away from that automatic response and take a different tack. Whoa, when did this start happening? I think when things piled up on me this Spring, I just felt overwhelmed for awhile, something I don’t normally let myself indulge in. And I lived for a couple of weeks with a feeling that I just didn’t have any reserves left. I just didn’t care about things that mattered to me before.

I think this defense mechanism has succeeded in washing away a lot of “shoulds” and “have-tos” in my system when actually they don’t really matter. They never did matter much anyhow, but now, I actually experienced not caring about them anymore in a way that didn’t help and sometimes hurt me.

For example, I summoned up courage enough to tell someone point blank why things were not going to work out for a visit that we had thought about having in the Fall. I didn’t spend a lot of energy leaning over backwards or second-guessing myself either after waiting for a response, then being told of an unreasonable travel itinerary that would have put everyone out, including herself. I felt battered by one too many demands about “this is the way its done here” when everything was about them and nothing was about us together. Given that, I believed that we could hardly decide where to go out to lunch after that, never mind who was paying and what we wanted to do. So, I called it off. It was a little awkward, but worth it to nip it in the bud.

I’ve also noticed that another thing that has or is going bye-bye is the feeling that I have to fix everything. Or prevent things from happening that might need to be fixed later on. Lots of energy is freed up when you don’t have to save the world of minutiae that pops in front of you every single day. Whew, what a lot of trivia disappeared with that category of daily concerns!

What this has done is to have cleared the clouds out of my eyes and made me feel like putting on a nice overshirt and a flower necklace from Anthropologie to go out to a Portuguese restaurant for dinner that we haven’t tried yet. Or to look for a straw hat and buy some sunscreen so that we can actually sit out on the rocks and watch the ocean after Hurricane Arthur approached the New England coastline over the 4th of July. Or, read some English cottage novels and make some Lapsang Souchang tea in the afternoons with a little lump of light brown sugar and milk.

There’s no reason for me to think (or justify) that I am only living on the periphery of my life when I can live within those margins much more fully. It’s a matter of seeing the important things more clearly and letting the rest of it recede where it matters little if at all.

I know that we are fortunate in our lives to have family, love and enough resources to do what we enjoy doing and to manage injuries and the rest of it as they come along. And yet, it’s another thing to un-hook oneself from some of the hangups we have in our heads that manage to catch us up, like brambles on a bush that catch one’s clothing as we walk on our way to the beach.

Beautiful sun and light breezes are what the day and a half of rain and thunder have left us for the weekend ahead of us. We’re on our way up to spend the weekend by the sea in a little rented studio which is just right for us. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

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June 23, 2014

sleight of hand . . .

puget sound . . . (http://watoxics.org/publications/puget-sound-down-the-drain-1/image)

This winter and spring have been filled with recuperation, recovery and other taxes on the mind and spirit here, not only for me but for my husband, G. as well. We’ve done well during some of it and not so well for some of it. But that’s the way it goes. We’re only human and when pain fatigue sets in, you’d like to think of something better to do with your time.

Speaking of that, I’ve reflected on what to do when things appear bleak and there’s nothing obvious to look forward to in the immediate future. For example, when we had our granddaughter, A.’s high school graduation to look forward to a couple of weeks ago, there was a flurry of anticipation and preparation that was both exciting and engrossing: finding a place to stay in that seaside town (found a perfect one with minimal stay requirements and soft quiet environs that we plan to go back to often); planning what to wear (experimented thinking about more color and prints but left the tags on and returned most of the items unworn afterwards) but it was fun to “try on” those new looks; planning and giving special gifts to A., buying and preparing special cheeses and charcuterie to contribute to the family gathering spread, and so on and so on. Afterwards, there’s usually a let-down. It took us quite awhile to unpack everything, get help carrying things upstairs and then putting things away, little by little. Then, the let-down hit. So, activity is good.

In the last week, I’ve been feeling like there’s not much to look forward to except straightening out a vexing airline ticket credit that I had leftover from last year and a number of equally vexing car insurance matters to straighten out. Add to that, neither of us is wholly healed as yet, experiencing small ups and a few downs along the way. Thankfully, the weather has been pretty dry and temperate most of the time, showers and enough rain so that the gardens and trees look more lush than ever. The roses are out now and the morning glory seedlings are well on their way to getting started on their climb up the strings so that when they bloom, their blue flowers will be able to sun themselves on the 2nd floor deck.

So here’s the thing: I’ve discovered that the way to have something to really look forward to is (te-dah!) to consciously plan something yourself. I think intervals of every 2-3 months is probably good enough to get through a year. The key to this emotional sleight of hand is to be intentional about it: that is, not just rely on reacting to an invitation or thinking something will come up that may not appear. So, making invitations for a dinner party, or inviting out of town folks to visit, or going somewhere you’ve never been, even if it’s just for a weekend are things that we can make plans to do and it can cost whatever it is we think we can afford. Or not much at all. In fact, I don’t think that I can afford NOT to do it. So here’s my current idea.

It turns out that my daughter M. was able to straighten out my ticket credit by explaining my ankle injury to the travel people so that I can travel domestically rather than internationally and to extend the expiration to September when it’s not so hot everywhere. Given that I HAVE to use the ticket up by that time, we began brainstorming about places to go that we always wanted to visit, even for a brief time. She and the Helpers found a quaint place with an 180 degree view of Puget Sound from the deck of the cottage which sleeps 6, five minutes from the Seattle airport. Even though there are scant windows of time that my daughters can travel, given schooling obligations and teaching school schedules, we’re trying to find a time that they can make it out together along with M.’s partner and her daughter, J.

A few years back, I rented a cottage facing the Atlantic in Rockport for three winters running. By the third year, we were only able to make it up on weekends although we loved it everytime we were up there. For three years, Thanksgivings and Christmases were spent there en famille with everyone bunking down wherever there was room. It was a lot of fun. But it was also costly for the amount of time we were actually able to use it. Now, I’ve rationalized (that’s the only word for it) spending money on trips that will create memories for us which we might not have otherwise. Honestly, why not do that now while we still can? The injuries that we’ve had recently have brought home with a thud that these times won’t last forever.

HOW we think about things, our perspective, determines the attitude we can choose to take about something. Things can shift in an instant. I hope that with a mindset to create wonderful shared experiences for ourselves, every quarter or so, there will be many more family memories than there might be otherwise. After all, you can’t start planning for Christmas in September, can you?

Our granddaughter, J. will be turning four in September, almost the same timeframe as this trip that we are trying to pull together. What a nice way it would be to do new things together: go on a ferry ride, watch the sun set over Puget Sound, eat as much Dungeness crab as you can, go to Pike’s Place for farmers market, seafood, restaurants and people watching. And trying out COFFEE in Seattle. Now, there’s something to look forward to! Can’t wait!

If we don’t look for joy in our lives, who will?

puget sound ferries . . . (http://watoxics.org/publications/puget-sound-down-the-drain-1/image)

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June 20, 2014

onward and upward! . . .

I don’t think I really noticed how things had dissembled while both I and my husband have been so laid up for the past months and weeks. We put forth a lot of positive energy to travel up to Rockport for our granddaughter, A.’s high school graduation. It took about a week to finally unpack everything and to return some things with tags still on them that I decided not to wear. In fact, it was enlightening to me that during the “before” timeframe, thought I might want to wear more color and more prints. During that weekend, I felt more comfortable wearing my trusty LL Bean comfort trail khaki cropped pants and a dark blue linen v-neck tee-shirt. My new Birkenstock black leather sandals dressed up my outfit enough.

Since then, G. has been in almost constant pain with a dislocated bone in his hip area. Even though there were ultrasound treatments and a little adjustment to his vertebrae, he still has the dislocation and concomitant muscle and nerve pain radiating down his hip to his knee. We tried acupuncture yesterday and while it alleviated a little pain, it didn’t do the job. Today, he also had some ortho-massage for an hour and fifteen minutes which he felt might have improved things. At lunch, the color in his face was so much better–probably from the benefits of the massage to his circulatory system. Even so, any improvement was better than the stagnant situation he faced for the past couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we managed to try out and purchase an extra-firm mattress which is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. Today, I took on all sorts of straightening out tasks and coordinated having some handicap equipment carried downstairs by G.’s guys who were here to help with a piano move; getting the strings for the morning glories retied to bricks so that the watered seedlings would be trained where to travel as their growth bursts forth during the warm weather. I also rearranged the kitchen cupboard so that things we use more often are now more accessible and tucked extra glasses and cups in the tall cupboard.

rearranged cupboard today . . .

On a roll, I sorted out the bookstand that holds current magazines (Bon Appetit) and books “Bringing Nature Home,” a gorgeous flower/decorating book and one of my favorite books to derive housecleaning inspiration from, “Japanese Country Living.”

Cleaned out the small basket of mish-mash papers, stamps and miscellany next to my telephone/answering machine; AND, I spent more than two hours on the phone this morning with Apple Support, escalating all the way up to a senior advisor who helped me delete all sorts of start-up programs to rid my laptop of those annoying spinning balls that slow things down.

She also advised me to keep my laptop on a flat wooden table (not a leather ottoman) in order to keep it from overheating as it has been doing. I’ve had two major (send laptop to Memphis, TN) repairs made to the machine during the winter and spring, and wanted to ensure that if there was a further problem with the fan and overheating, that I would make it under the warranty window. We’ll wait and see but the laptop is much quicker afterwards than before so my fingers are crossed.

I don’t know if it’s awfully tedious for you to read about these mundane activities and if so, my apologies. However, I’ve begun to feel, just today, that maybe we aren’t just going to keep descending into a vortex of helplessness and even, that maybe, things might get a little better, day by day. G.’s nephew came by this afternoon (he’s a senior in college) and we talked about some projects that he could help with this summer. Fetching a bunch of liquor store empty cartons, bringing them upstairs here so that I can fill them with books to be donated to our public library would be a good start. Then, we’ll figure out how to clean out the pantry and the closets where I have things that are too good to give away and also a pain in the neck to sell on eBay. I might try it though because if I am incentivized to at least take a thorough inventory, it might be the most common sense way to truly clean things out.

So, the morning glories are planted, staked and watered (it’s taken us this long just to get someone to turn on the water valve to the outside faucets!) the bathroom detritus has been cleared out and the sink/shelves sparkle; the laundry is done, brought up by C. and folded by me; the books/magazines have been de-cluttered from our living space; the big kitchen table made of curly maple is also cleared off with a vintage Katazome indigo runner on it (a tortoise and a phoenix gracing the pattern.) I brought the big cherry tray with pottery etc. into the bedroom as a way station until we feel like having it out again.

Supper is already made: I browned some onions and ground beef to make homemade sloppy joes for dinner, served on wheat toast and accompanied by some deviled eggs. We still have some yummy strawberry-rhubarb compote that we’ve been eating for dessert with some Haagen Daz ice cream. I don’t know why my spirits are so lifted after a day of what might be interpreted as drudgery house-keeping tasks, but it’s because it LOOKS wonderful in here now, or at least much better than it has in a long time. So onward and upward, as they say. Nothing stays the same, even when things seem abysmal . . . and that’s a good thing, as Martha Stewart might add.

everything’s coming up roses! (or at least a few might be . . .)

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June 18, 2014

terra firma . . .

This morning, I noticed an advertisement for a Sealy’s firm mattress at our local store. We had slept on a firm mattress at a seaside studio that we visited for our granddaughter’s graduation a couple of weeks ago. Home again, we started thinking of looking for a firmer mattress.

As you know, I’ve had an injured ankle and my husband, G. has had a bad back from moving pianos. Me, with my arm crutch and G., with his cane, made a pathetic pair, hobbling along: you can imagine what we looked like tonight, trying out mattresses. The “firm” Sealy mattress on sale felt like a flat slab without much support. Then, we tried out a $3000 Stearns and Foster mattress. Whoa Nellie! I had never seen nor felt a mattress like that before: firm and plushy the way you imagine beds in very expensive hotels must be like (not that I’ve ever seen one!)

We asked if there were any other firm mattresses. He pointed to one that was extra firm and we lay down on it. Honestly, it felt and even looked a little like the Stearns and Foster but it was a lot less expensive. Then, we asked if we could buy just the mattress since we didn’t really need a box spring. The price a little pared down, we decided it was worth it.

I called the store when we got home to put a payment on the mattress. All went well until he said that if I bought $50 more, I would qualify for free delivery, otherwise it would cost $100 to deliver the mattress! Of course we needed delivery–are you kidding?–with our infirmities and inability to even carry groceries up the stairs, there was no way we could have managed a queen-sized mattress! Then, he asked me if I belonged to AARP (whose mailings I usually toss in the trash without opening them.) “How about Triple-AAA?” I asked in jest. “What’s your membership number?” he asked, saying, “I’m the manager.” I dug out my AAA card and read the number over the phone.

“Yep, that’ll do it–you can have free delivery,” he said and then asked for my AAA number again to input into a free gift program page on his website. “Yep, and you can also have a free $180 mattress cover as a gift.” By the time I had paid for it, an invoice arrived instantly by email. Then the phone rang. it was K., the manager of the mattress store, making sure that everything had gone through and that our free delivery was already scheduled for this Saturday morning.

Here is a perfect example of Helpers interceding on our behalf. I had also complimented K. early in the conversation about how good he was with all the customers, patient and taking his time. He appreciated my saying that. Honestly, I think this salesman/manager felt sorry for us with our cane and crutch, looking for a firm mattress without a box spring, needing a free delivery. . .

So despite all the truly awful things happening in the world these days and the frustration of so many things that have happened to us lately, something positive occurred tonight that truly helped us. All it took was a Triple AAA membership card in a mattress store–and a compassionate store manager who was willing to work his magic!

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June 13, 2014

“happyness” . . .

I’ve been thinking about happiness lately.

Someone I’ve known for a long time whose personality was usually kind of prickly is newly very happy. She’s given up jobs that were stressful and is now able to devote all her time to doing only what she loves doing. She’s fortunate because she’s in good health, doesn’t have to worry about money and she’s made choices that have allowed her to have what she’s wanted for a long time after some false starts.

Someone else I know has recently just had a birthday and is grateful and so happy with her life: her partner, daughter, family and friends. The joy in their family is palpable while doing simple things like baking a cake together and having an indoor picnic of sandwiches to celebrate a birthday.

So, what makes people happy? Being able to do what you want to do most of the time? Not worrying about money? Being with people who are sufficient in and among themselves in relationships that are joy-giving?

Speaking of joy-giving, my husband, G. and I are not doing such a great job of it here. My recovery from a bad ankle injury in February is on a plateau while I learn how to use my foot to drive and walk again with a crutch, going to rehab once a week. Our mobility or lack of it is compounded by G.’s back injury a few weeks ago which has failed to relieve itself after twice-weekly chiropractor appointments. Yesterday was the first time that he was able to have an actual adjustment to his back. There’s a little improvement which is heartening but there’s still a long way to go, it seems.

Honestly, we’re pretty cranky. With each other and with a world that I thought we’d be able to avoid for awhile at least: not being able to carry things up and down three flights of stairs (like groceries and doing laundry.) Having to phone and ask people for help to do things that we would normally be able to do ourselves.

One of the things I’d like to do this summer is to cull out things and give them away (things stacked in closets and books to the library): a BIG clean-out instead of the timid forays that I’ve managed to carry out so far. But it requires getting some empty boxes from the liquor store to pack books in; having a strong person carry them back downstairs and load them into the car on a Wednesday when I can drive them to the library on a donation day or to Goodwill on other days.

I guess the other thing is my acute awareness of how much verbal complaining can taint my perception of the quality of how we spend our day. In an ideal world, there would be so much compassion for someone’s suffering that it wouldn’t bother me as much as it does. But it’s an imperfect world. Looking around me, I can’t think of a real reason why I shouldn’t be feeling more happy than I do right now. After all, I have a good book to read, there’s fresh food in the fridge for dinner and maybe I will start sorting things out in advance of getting some help to cart things away.

This weekend, I’m looking forward to driving up to the ocean town we visited for my granddaughter’s high school graduation last week and having lunch with an old acquaintance. I’ve already looked at the menu and might order a lobster mac and cheese and share a beet salad. For dinner, we might try out a local Portuguese restaurant called the Azorean that specializes in dishes made with calamari and octopus!

The other thing I have in my mind is to ask myself what it is that might make me feel happy again. Somehow, there must be a way to insulate myself from things that annoy me so much and to neutralize my irritation with our situation. I think that part of what’s bothering me is the undeniable fear that our joint helplessness is a sign of age and that things will get progressively worse rather than better. Writing this post has been helpful in excavating that anxiety from the darker recesses of my mind and bringing it forth to the light of my consciousness.

After all, I could also decide that perhaps it’s not all that bad if we consider this phase as being temporarily handicapped, rather than a permanent condition. As usual, everything depends upon what attitude we take about things. I’ll have to do some work on mine, that’s for sure!

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June 7, 2014

‘ a room with a view’ . . .

There’s nothing like getting away to a tranquil seaside place for a few days. Last night, we attended our granddaughter’s high school graduation in the high school gym, filled with enthusiastic families and friends. G. and I managed to get back and forth from the car, he in a wheelchair and me using a crutch to balance my recovering ankle. Once they announced the scholarships and diplomas, the graduates, in one motion, moved their tassels from one side to another with big grins on their faces. Sweet!

We left and stopped by the little 7-11 and bought a bag of ice and a large bottle of Schweppes ginger ale. Safely back in the place we’re staying in, we quenched our thirst and caught up on our email. The bed had a very firm mattress which was a huge boon for our aching backs. I put some pillows and elevated my foot while I slept.

This morning, we made coffee and cinnamon toast, G.’s standby for breakfast and I went out for the newspaper. Our host stopped by and we had a nice chat. We look forward to the rest of this celebratory weekend and a bonus has been discovering this wonderful place to stay. We’ll be back for sure!

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June 4, 2014

confidence? . . .

Actually, I think that confidence and attitude is just about everything to how we go about our day. I went to my first rehab physical therapy appointment tonight. Up to now, I’ve been hobbling around, still using a wheelchair every so often, going up and down stairs gingerly using a crutch. My ankle feels like a solid block of concrete, not blood, bones and flesh. The PT examined my foot and leg, asked me to do some standing exercises and told me that I would see improvement in 4 weeks and real improvement in 12 weeks. . . in a year’s time, she said, I’ll never know I had the injury.

Up to now, I’ve worried in the back of my mind that my ankle would never loosen up all the way and that I might walk with a limp. Not so, it turns out. My mood brightened considerably after the visit. She even said I could try how it feels to drive a car and test myself in a large empty parking lot. So now, a little more confidence has entered my consciousness. When we returned, I came up the stairs using a crutch, carrying a couple of LL Bean packages upstairs too.

Tomorrow, I plan to carry a bunch of G.’s shirts down to the basement laundry room to bleach. It almost feels like someone has waved a magic wand and has tacitly give me permission to get well. TRULY get well. Yeah, sure–the surgeon said I could use 100% weight on my foot as of last week. But I wasn’t confident then. I kept remembering what he had told me during the first visit after surgery that he hoped the repair would work; and that he had avoided making two incisions, letting some of the broken bone heal by itself without more plates being inserted. The PT said that the healing also has to do with whether the screws holding the plates go through my bones or not. We’ll take another look at my X-rays to see what’s going on in there.

Meanwhile, I now have more confidence to use my foot more. And when it’s tired, I’ll continue to rest the foot higher than my heart on the couch at night. Time heals all, they say. And I’m thankful to be this far along.

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June 1, 2014

good advice . . .

So, I guess you know that our granddaughter, A., is going to Johns Hopkins University in the Fall. We’re excited about driving up to be at her high school graduation this coming weekend and we’re planning to manage getting there with some helpers along the way. In the meantime, we’re hoping that G.’s back will improve along with my mood by that time.

We have two apartments that are rented on the second floor of our Queen Anne Victorian home and the smaller back apartment has been occupied by a UMassMedical student for the past few years. “C.” has been a model tenant: studious, responsible and patiently good humored when something needs to be fixed. We invited him to have dinner with us last night and it was good to catch up on his plans for this upcoming last year of medical school. He’s done well with his studies, getting A’s on his exams and applying himself to being accepted to his specialty for clinicals in advance of applying for residencies at hospitals located in Boston and New York City.

Today, he helped us hang out clean sheets out on the line since both G. and I are rather limited these days on being able to do simple chores like that. When he brought the dry sheets back upstairs before lunch, I asked him what advice might be helpful to a college freshman going away to college and what had worked well for him. He mentioned that he’d been through 4 years of college, 2 years of graduate school and now, 3 years of medical school and his response was:

“Everybody’s different. There’s no advice that works for everyone. Find out what works best for you and stick to it.”

He said that many of his classmates study at the library before exams and that what he found works for him is to study intensively by himself for three days before an exam. That’s what works for him and not to worry that he should do what OTHER students did (in the library) just because that’s what works for THEM. Of course, finding what works best for us, individually, can also be a trial and error process we have to discover for ourselves on our own.

This may sound like bland advice. But, in my generation, certain “rules” for studying were doled out: “don’t let yourself get behind,” “ask if you don’t understand something,” etc. among others. Nowhere did someone say, “be yourself and find out what works best for you…then stick to it!”

So that, dear reader, is a generation gap that’s worth mentioning, don’t you think?

“Vive la difference!”

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May 30, 2014

more “new normal” . . .

Hey, guess what? I’m not the only invalid around here anymore!

My husband, G., who moves, tunes and takes care of pianos, is suffering from a pinched nerve/vertebrae in his back and suddenly, the tables have turned and I am now the one going downstairs using only a cane to fetch the morning newspapers off the front stoop. He was lucky to see our chiropractor yesterday and is there for a follow-up adjustment and ultrasound treatment this morning.

What this means for us is that because he has difficulty going up and down stairs, carrying my wheelchair down and up is now out of the question. I’ve put on my thinking cap to figure out how to do grocery shopping without being able to use a wheelchair at the store, never mind trying to figure out how groceries would be carried up to the third floor where we live in our splendid treetop home!

Then, I remembered a suggestion that one of my daughters, C., had made very early on when I was waiting to have surgery on my broken ankle: to use Stop and Shop’s Peapod online ordering and delivery service to buy groceries. For a long time, I resisted the idea, feeling like this is something the “rich and famous” might do or that the helpless infirm/elderly might have to do in New York City (ordering from De Luca’s!) and that there would be a hefty premium to buying food this way. Plus, I like to pick out things myself but the current exigency we’re faced with rapidly blew that prejudice out of the water too.

“This is great,” said the little red hen to myself, as I browsed the online grocery store–so many choices, reasonable quantities and I was able to find just what I wanted. This was at 2 in the morning last night when I couldn’t sleep, feeling depressed about the two of us getting older and not being able to do simple routine things, mentally looking into the abyss of how to manage things “later.”

My mood brightened this morning when I discovered that this kind of process for shopping is actually much more efficient than walking around a store. I can reflect on the meals I want to make and add on ingredients I sometimes forget about (like fresh rosemary for lamb loin chops;) and, after tightening the list of what we’ll eat for lunches, dinners and breakfast for six days until we travel up to Rockport to visit and celebrate our granddaughter’s high school graduation next week, I cut out extras and purchased ONLY what we’ll use for the duration. I’m surprised and pleased to discover that online ordering allows one to more comfortably select what we decide to buy.

With my Stop and Shop card, the program also automatically deducts savings that I would normally get in person. And a rolling shopping cart adjusts on the screen as you remove or add items which helps you to see how much you’re spending as you go along. At the store, you don’t see that final number until it’s been rung up–usually 20% more than you thought you might be spending, right? Being in control of how much you are spending before racking up the total is a way to keep on a budget in real-time. I loved it!

To top it all off, I went online for promo coupons and found a code that took $20 dollars off my first Peapod order! The delivery charge was only $6.95 (for an order >$100) and I selected a delivery window of 12:00 noon to 2:00 pm tomorrow (Saturday.) I’m also allowed to add anything I forgot to the shopping list until 3 p.m. this afternoon. Very convenient. Also avoids buying mistakes that occur every so often when written lists are somehow “lost in translation.” Best of all, the groceries will be delivered to me all the way up here on the 3rd floor when they arrive!

VOILA!! All food-buying logistical challenges seem to be resolved. Now, THAT’s a “new normal” that I could really get used to!

POSTSCRIPT: The proof is in the pudding as they say: so here’s a report on how the Peapod delivery turned out. I received an email alert that the delivery was going to happen soon. I went downstairs with one crutch and saw the big Stop and Shop Peapod truck drive by and then slowly came back, parking along the street. A tall young man walked up the driveway carrying about four full plastic bags of groceries. His name was “Tom” and he wanted to bring the groceries up to the 3rd floor. He made a second trip, carrying up another set of bags up to the kitchen. When we unpacked everything, I was impressed by the size of the vegetables (squash, zucchini, beets) and particularly the freshness of the kosher chicken legs and lamb loin chops whose sell by dates were not until mid-June! I gave Tom my thanks and tipped him for bringing the groceries to our kitchen. So, my review of this first order to Stop and Shop Peapod is FIVE STARS!!

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Category: Life & Spirit