The Holidays Can Be Painful

We had much to be thankful for at Thanksgiving – living, for example – painful though it has been the past four months – is still living.

People often tell us how lucky we are. I agree. Then, my brain flips to what have could have been the worst outcome, not that we both could have been killed – but that only ONE of us had died. The very thought of it quickly sets me to crying. How could I go on without him? The devastation would be mind-boggling and I try not to go there, though sometimes I still do and am grateful for my physical pain. The mental pain of losing him would be greater than anything a few broken bones will ever bring me.

Jim is 8 weeks out from his shoulder surgery, his stitches are gone, and his sling is off. He’s still unable to sleep on his right side and isn’t supposed to be reaching that arm up over his head and does take the occasional Ibuprofen for pain. On the bright side, he’s able to play guitar again! Today he heads to his first Physical Therapy appointment.

I’m 2 weeks out from my clavicle surgery, the stitches were removed four days ago, but I’m still in the sling 95% of the time. I can’t sleep on either side yet and am still propped up with pillows when I do so. Good thing I’m okay with sleeping on my back. I was given a couple simple exercises but, for the most part, the elbow stays tucked to my side in an effort to not move things around too much. Pain pills are taken 2-3 times a day. It sucks. It always hurts even with medication. It’s frustrating and sometimes downright infuriating not being able to do for myself.

With a great deal of help from Jim, the tree is up and the house is decorated (at least inside – no outdoor lights this year). We got our first major snow storm Sunday-Monday. A foot of the horrible white stuff fell. Thankfully, the same young man who mows the lawn also does snow removal – not that I’m going anywhere without help.

As I’m still unable to drive, my son took me Christmas shopping yesterday. Didn’t get it all done, but certainly a majority of that is complete. Gift bags and boxes will replace much in the way of the actual wrapping of gifts.

Doing what I can on the writing front. Try to edit a few chapters every day. Progress is slow, but it’s still progress. I’m thankful for that, too.

Yup, the pain tells me I’m alive. I’m no fan, but it’s a constant reminder that we escaped a far greater tragedy and are meant to keep on going – in sickness and in health, for better and for worse.

The Holidays can be very painful. Mortality rates go up during this time of year. I hope you all are able to find the positives in a sea of negatives and that you can find something to be grateful for each and every day, no matter how small. It’s amazing how monumental just cracking an egg into a bowl can be!

Take care of each other and do what you need to do to take care of yourself – especially when that means asking for help. We all need help now and then. Don’t be ashamed or afraid to ask for it.

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater

As I do every year just before Halloween I bought some pumpkins. My heart wasn’t into it as much this time around, but who am I to break a lifelong tradition? I considered carving them into Jack-o’-lanterns, but that never happened. The smallest of the three succumbed early to rot. The other two sat on the porch quietly awaiting their fates. Would they, too, be food for the birds and critters?

Last week Jim asked about them, suggesting I actually process them and make a pie. It was a novel idea and not one I have not considered in the past. It did seem a waste to just let them sit around only to eventually be tossed out back into the compost pile.

On Saturday, I made the commitment and set to work cutting, gutting, cooking, puréeing, and freezing the smaller of the two still edible squashes. I figured the big one wouldn’t be as good for human consumption and frankly I don’t use a lot of pumpkin in anything to begin with. This was more a fun project than anything else. I ended up with 12 cups of home-processed pumpkin. Not a bad haul and easy enough to make.

As my mind is wont to do, it wandered off while all this was going on. It kept repeating that old nursery rhyme in my head, “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater” to the point of turning into something more than a little disturbing.

Consider the whole rhyme for a moment:

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had another and didn’t love her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.

Seriously think about this.

This guy Peter, apparently a HUGE fan of pumpkins, can’t seem to keep his wife interested. His solution is to put her inside a pumpkin shell and keep her there. First off, that’s one big pumpkin. Second, how did she go about her domestic duties once put into this shell… or did she? He’s a known eater of pumpkins. He stuffs his difficult wife into a pumpkin. Does he then eat the pumpkin and possibly his wife in the process?

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As I cooked my own pumpkins, I pondered this more times than is probably healthy. Maybe Peter was actually a cannibal! Maybe putting her into a pumpkin shell is the nice way of saying he butchered her, ala Mr. Todd and his lovely assistant Mrs. Lovett.

Which brings us to the next verse. The wife Peter stuffed into (and possibly ate) a pumpkin shell was apparently not his one and only. His second wife he was unable to love until he could read and spell (write). I get the feeling Peter was not a particularly bright man. Perhaps he envied this other wife’s education. I’m going to speculate she was pretty well off considering this poem is believed to have been first published around 1825, a time when well-read women weren’t quite so common as they are today.

After eating his first wife, Peter found another woman he admired. Unfortunately, she lived in a world above his. Maybe he was but a mere pumpkin farmer and felt he didn’t have a chance with this new woman until he could improve on his own education. So, Peter somewhere along the line learned to read and spell. Only then was he able to approach this new love with the confidence he needed. It never says if she loved him back, mind you. I would like to think she did, otherwise I’m guessing she, too, would have ended up on the dinner table.

All this because I decided to be frugal and not waste my pumpkins this year.

As Edgar A. Poe once wrote, “I am a writer, therefor I am not sane.” Yeah, I really think there may be some truth to all that. Do sane people think about Peter the Pumpkin Eater as a poorly educated pumpkin farming cannibal?

And yet people continue to ask where horror writers get their twisted and dark ideas from!

Oh, and by the way, enjoy your pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving!

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