Snowed in with your spouse? Overloaded on togetherness?
Winter tends to do that to retired couples, especially when the weather precludes getting outdoors for a brisk walk or a trip to the health club.
Since that is my present state, I am compiling a bucket list. Normally this list is assigned to the things you want to do before you kick the bucket. Today, however, I’m working on a bucket list of books I want to read again.
Those that don’t make the list get kicked off the bookshelf and join their brethren in a box destined for our favorite used-book store.
Normally, on days such as this, I’d be in my sewing room. However, that room is now occupied by a man and a cat.
He’s sewing.
She’s watching.
No room for me.
I know, and I’m sure you do to, retired folks who complain that all their spouses do in the winter is sit in recliners and watch re-runs of old movies or hunker down at the computer for a game of “Inkball” or “Spider Solitaire.”
That was, for a time, life at our house once winter set in.
Three days a week, we are up at 6 a.m. off to the club for exercise and swimming, home by 9 a.m. to start the rest of our day. When the snow got too deep, even the club was put on hold.
“So,” I said one day. “You need to find something to do in the house that will keep you busy and your mind engaged. That’s why I quilt.”
“I could quilt,” he said.
Not the response I expected.
“I suppose you could. Want to try?”
Challenge made and accepted.
I handed him a bag of fabric strips and showed him how to make a scrappy “string” block by sewing straight strips together on a square fabric base.
He’s repaired my sewing machines on occasion, but never actually used one. Slowly and methodically he learned to sew a straight seam and run the machine. He learned to trim blocks. He is ready to cut his own fabric when the scrap bag is empty.
The cat sits on the window ledge directly behind the sewing machine. She walks over his carefully placed strips at will sending them to the floor in a heap.
“Come and get your cat,” he yells.
Like children, the cat belongs to the person who is not in the room when bad behavior occurs.
Most mornings he’s in the sewing room by 10 a.m. He comes out for lunch and then returns to sew for another few hours.
He finished 30 blocks in the first two weeks, enough for a quilt top. He handed it off to his assistant (that would be me, not the cat) so I could make a backing and get it quilted.
He’s busy stitching a new set of blocks right now.
I can’t whine about this because it’s infinitely more creative than most computer games and excellent exercise for the brain — something essential to good health among folks our age.
His finished quilts will be shipped to military hospitals for wounded military vets through a national organization, Quilts of Valor.
Pretty cool, huh?
That’s why I’m trying to figure out how to arrange the sewing room to accommodate two quilters. Meanwhile, there’s deep-cleaning for the book shelves and a book bucket list to complete.
Or maybe I’ll just take this dog-eared paperback of “Beach Music” by Pat Conroy and give it another read. Wait, here’s Michener’s “Mexico” and McMurty’s “Lonesome Dove.” So many choices … and lots of time.
The bucket list can wait. After all, I’m retired.
Linda Bryant Smith writes about life as a senior citizen and the issues that concern, annoy and often irritate the heck out of her now that she lives in a world where nothing is ever truly fixed but her income. You can e-mail her at ljbryantsmith@yahoo.com.
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