The Widow Hood

    Several things are happening:

   • Sunday while Song and I were dismantling Michael’s cubicle at work, creatures of the type not covered by my homeowner’s policy held WWF auditions atop some fragile drywall between the attic and the landing where the washing machine sits. I came home to find washer, landing and stairwell full of blown-in insulation and rat poo. 

   I have a call in to a well recommended contractor, but in the meantime am not turning on the heating because there also is a creature hole on the corner of the roof outside. It’s unusually cold for October — we’re having one of those Arkansas Octobers, which might as well be Arkansas Decembers or Arkansas Mays or Arkansas Februaries ... any month might happen at any time here. It’s cold enough that creatures will be looking for warm cubbies to move into, and I don’t want to make the attic any more enticing than it already obviously is. Let it remain a cold place until a contractor closes up the hole and repairs the ceiling.

   The cats have been huddled, miserable, in their plush beds. That is, they are using for the first time ever the plush bends Michael bought them.

   This evening I brought my studio space heater upstairs to take the edge off the 58-degree den, and everything eased just enough that love and peace reigned for an hour. Ollie and I curled up to eat soba noodles and watch Grey’s Anatomy in standard definition.

   But then the space heater tripped a breaker. 

   Back we are in the icebox.

   • Standard definition is the new rule on the TV here. Now that Michael isn’t watching our TV, my dear daughter-in-law has figured out how to make AT&T sell me fewer and less fabulous TV channels so I can pay less not to watch TV. 

   Michael and I talked about doing that while he was alive (oh! what a painful turn of phrase, “while he was alive”!), because we were wasting money paying for top-level options we neither wanted nor used. But change is a hassle. He preferred to let things ride, even though it made sense to be more conservative with our disposable income since he was made part-time last year.
   But I should talk. I have been paying $5.38 a day for coffee I could be making at work. That has to change.

   The basic option Caro and I selected includes some HD channels, but only shopping outlets. How mean is that, AT&T? The local channels (which I might watch) are all in standard definition. But standard def looks pretty good when you don’t compare it to HD. I will probably miss the heck out of AMC and HBO, but now I have an incentive to use Michael’s Netflix subscription and stream Amazon Prime.

   • The coroner signed the death certificate in time for the memorial, so the cremains were ready for us. But the sexton at Mount Holly and his assistants were all unavailable last week while the family was gathered. So I have Michael’s cremains tucked into a niche here at home. 

   I thought it would make me insane with grief having them in the house, but compared with the mess on the landing, they are easy to live with. 
   And this delay gives me time to make a ceramic box for them. I am going to make a noble porcelain box, carved all over with cats and fired in soda. 

   Then we will put it into the ground and never look at it again.

   But I will know it is down there, being pretty in the dark.