Winter in New Jersey was not too bad as far as weather was concerned. I actually would have wished for more snow instead of just cold, gray days. The worse part was the fact that it got dark about 4:30 in the afternoon being on the very eastern edge of the time zone. Actually I like winter time since I love winter clothes. One cannot have too many sweaters but this winter seemed to just not be much fun.
In the past I had always been very good about looking on the bright side of everything when upsetting or disappointing things rolled my way. Over the next couple of months I kept counting all my blessings of which I really had a lot. Barney called the morning after our visit at the airport to make sure he had not upset me and to make sure we were still okay. Both of us knew we were in impossible situations but it would eventually work out.
I should be the happiest person in the world with a beautiful home, two fun little boys, a great job, lots of dear friends and enough to do everyday that there was not time to think. It was easy to laugh about Dennis hating every minute of being in New Jersey and living in an old house. I used to laugh and say that he knelt down every morning facing Southwest and prayed to some God to send him back to Dallas. It was only after a fun skiing trip that I realized that maybe it wasn't just depression but that I might be physically sick.
Riverton had a local doctor just two blocks from our house. Since I never seemed to get sick I had not been to a doctor since we left Kansas City. That time I actually went to Dallas to my old one so I had to have felt bad to seek a new doctor. The new doctor gave me no time to back out as he said to come the same afternoon I called. When I described that I felt bad when I seemed to eat anything, that there was this burning sensation across my back most of the time and I did not have my usual energy he sent me to have an upper GI x-ray at the hospital. That was fun.
When I went back to see him two days later he explained to me that he had thought I might have an ulcer. That was a surprise as I thought only people who worried or ate really poorly had ulcers. But I did not have an ulcer but had what he called gastritis. Gastritis is an inflammation of the lining of the stomach with many possible causes. He asked a lot of questions about diet, lifestyle and just what I was upset about. Needless to say I did not go into great detail about what was I upset about. He ended up prescribing Tagamet for me for one month at which time I was to come back to see him. In the meantime he said perhaps I should straighten up my life because there was no physical reason I should feel bad. Well, that was blunt.
It would have been easy to just ignore what he said but I did not think that would be productive. So I spent sometime trying to figure it out. Needless to say it wasn't my job at the Library which was more like playtime than work. Library usage was up about 200% so the Board was happy. The situation with Dennis was no different than it had been for many years and I really had developed a real sense of humor in dealing with it. The only things I could come up with were the house was always a mess since I never had time to really clean it but just sort of kept things picked up. It was winter. Then there was the little folder filled with medical school applications.
Winter would soon turn to spring so that problem would solve itself. I could hire someone to come once a week and clean the house. The applications were another thing. Had I just given up on trying again for medical school because just didn't want to go or was I just afraid? I really needed to do better on the entrance test in Physics which I had never taken plus it had been several years since I even thought about the word calculus.
I found a lady who must have been close to a hundred years old to come one morning a week and clean the house. I picked her up at 8:30 one morning a week, went to work, came home and fixed her lunch at 12:00 and took her home for $20.00 a week. Not bad but I found myself really cleaning the night before she came so that the house looked halfway decent. She was awesome at cleaning windows and bathrooms, not so good at vacuuming as I don't think she saw very well but together we made a great team. Problem solved. House sparkled.
The stack of applications was not that easy to solve. I checked around and there was a community college a short distance away that offered calculus based physics. I could take the class in the fall and retake the medical school entrance test in the spring. In the meantime instead of reading all the new books at the library I could brush up on the Biology and the chemistry as I still had all my books and notes from college. Problem solved. My month of Tagamet was up and no more problems. Maybe the doctor was smarter then I first thought.
Wes and Wally had been begging for a guitar. Naturally my acoustic would not do so we bought them an electric guitar and an amplifier. We also enrolled both of them in lessons. Super Star Future Rocker Wes expected to sound like Kiss the day the guitar came home. Wally just wanted to learn but the two of them fought over whose turn it was to use the guitar. Wes did not practice and really would not let Wally so lessons were cancelled. There were times when Wes was not home that I would hear guitar sounds from upstairs as Wally would try to teach himself.
Spring finally came and there is nothing more beautiful than Riverton in the spring. Wes went out for soccer and my very non-athletic Wally went out for baseball. Wally had to sell candy bars for the team. He went out the first Saturday to all the neighbors and sold about half of them. I was pretty proud of him as I really did not think he could do it. A few weeks went by and the baseball coach announced that the boys needed to turn in their money. Wally still had about half of the candy bars left so I forced him to go out and sell the rest. He was pretty reluctant but finally went. He came home and had sold all the candy so I asked him who he sold it to. His answer was that he went beck to all the houses that had purchased it before and they all bought some more.
Several of the neighbors told me later that he looked sad and told them he would get in trouble if he didn't sell them all and they felt sorry for him. Guess it helped to be so cute and sad
Wes was pretty good at soccer since he had been playing since he was five years old. His team was almost hand picked boys that seemed to win every game. Wally had tried soccer once. He was the little boy in the big shorts with little shinny legs that always seemed to be more interested in the dirt clods on the wrong end of the field than where the ball was. My thought that baseball would be his sport was certainly wrong.
My thinking was a little too positive. There were the same dirt clods in the outfield as there were on the soccer field. When it was his turn to bat he always stuck out, would burst into tears at home plate and the entire team would rush out to console him. Dennis started working late on Wally's game nights as he found Wally's tears embarrassing. Fine.
Wes and I came up with a bribe to get Wally not to cry. If he didn't cry at a game he would get to go to Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor for a Reeces' Pieces Sundae. That thing had seven scoops of ice cream, hot fudge sauce, pecans, Reeces' and Whipped Cream. It took several tries but he finally stopped crying although he always struck out and the three of us enjoyed one sundae.
Enter the episode of the Flasher. There was this 20-something fellow, well over six feet tall that had been rumored to have dropped his pants in front of the local high school cheerleaders. One day in the parking lot of the grocery store I noticed the five foot tall police chef putting him in the police car at which time he kicked the back window of the car out. A few weeks later I got a call from the Library that the same person had dropped his pants in front of some high school girls in the Library. They laughed and he left. The tiny police chef came by the next day to warn me about him and asked if maybe he should make his patrol rounds or park the police car in front of the Library in the evenings. I was not too concerned nor was I confident that this little police chef would stand a chance against the Flasher.
All was quiet for a week or so and then day the Flasher walks into the Library in the middle of the day. Of course I was alone and rather curious as to how this was all going to play out. He wandered around looking at books for awhile and finally walked up to the desk and starts up a conversation about Riverton and Palmyra. I can be nice and polite so I talked to him and he behaved in a perfectly normal manner. He was actually quite literate and although I was waiting for the big reveal he was a perfect gentleman. He came by several times in the next few weeks just to talk and then he disappeared. The police chef dropped by one day to tell me he had gotten arrested in Palmyra for exposing himself and was now locked up in a mental institution. I found that rather sad but maybe he could get the help he needed.
What I was learning was that you can and usually do make yourself sick by not doing what you want to do or losing your sense of humor. Relish the happy parts and laugh at the bad. There really is a silver lining in every cloud but you are the only one that can find it.
Dennis' Mother and his aunt decided they would come to visit us in June. Their timing was pretty good as we had just visited a little town on the shore named Sea Isle City. Everyone else spent time at the shore during the summer so why can't we. We rented a brand new house on the beach for the first week in June. The first week of June was fairly reasonable in price and it seemed to jump up to over a thousand dollars a week by August. It had plenty of room for everyone which solved the problem of what to do with our visitors.
What a week that was!
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