Slice of Life 2025: 29 of 31- Dinners and bedtimes

 

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Even though I have tried not to focus on my knee and its rehabbing (TKR on 2/26) this month, the topic tends to sneak in, and I have to preface this post with the admission that 8:00 pm is late for me this month. And for whatever reason, nerve pain seems to wake up at about the time the rest of me wants to sleep, so there hasn't been a lot of flexibility with my early bedtime. 

Clare's slice from yesterday details our Friday night dinner plan. Go me. A restaurant! Sort of a recovery milestone, right? If you read her post, and you don't have to, you'd know that her schedule mandated a 7:00 pm reservation, which she did communicate to me, and I did repress. That extra hour was a stretch, but the lure of normalcy was real. I took an afternoon nap, and I kept my pants on. (Literally).

We had some early warnings as we prepped for our 7 p m reservation. Winnie, known in this community for her occasional rolling moments, had in fact had a smelly afternoon binge, and she needed a bath. With fifteen minutes allocated for our fifteen-minute drive to the restaurant, we needed to make a five-minute stop at the pet store for shampoo or we'd be bunking up with a smelly dog. (Not happening). Yes, that math made us a tad late for our already too-late reservation. 

The restaurant, new to us, was a little too bright and a little too loud, but more concerning was the fact that our table was much too high. A bar height table is a challenge for a person who can't comfortably hand one's leg for extended periods of time or bend past 100 degrees to rest on the chair rung. I had to admit hurt-knee status and ask for an accommodation. A stool under the table solved that problem. I thought about ordering a beer-- the place was owned by a local brewery-- but I was slow on the decision-making process. When Garth's beer arrived, it was a little warm. Since it was nearing my bedtime, I kept my intake to occasional sips of his not-quite-cold-enough beer and my water. That was fine. 

Maybe our real rookie move was ordering a couple apps before our dinner, but we were hungry. Or maybe the waitress didn't get our order in when she should have. Or maybe they had to catch the chicken for Garth's sandwich...

Whatever the answer was to the maybe, it took a long time to get our dinner. Long enough that I asked if it would be soon. (As a former waitress, I don't like to do that.) Long enough that I thought about asking for a to-go box. (I was splitting my meal with my mom so that wouldn't have worked.) Long enough that we all ate fast and had zero interest in dessert. (Good for the calorie counters.)

At least Garth dealt with Winnie when we got home. I was close to sleep when that clean little dog snuggled in next to me. 

Slice of Life 2025: 28 of 31- My dad's life in cars

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Ten years ago when I spoke at my father's funeral, the focus of the eulogy was on passion, purpose, and play. Those were the perfect unifying threads for his life. But having dinner with friends tonight, we heard stories about one of their mother's ill-advised car shopping escapades. I had some entertaining thoughts to myself as we drove home, thinking about how car stories could have been the unifying thread for my father. 

The first car I remember him driving was a Plymouth Duster. A gold one. A gold one with a crocodile roof, or so he told us. According to my father's lore, the roof had come from a successful wrestling match between my father's doppelganger, Okie from Muskogee and a Mississippi crocodile. Okie used to visit when we were kids, showing up at the front door with my father's bathrobe on, a guitar, strange hats, and sunglasses. He played guitar badly and handed out jelly beans and jujus, my dad's favorite candy. Strangely, Okie NEVER showed up when my dad was home. We believed it all, and I can still feel that roof under my fingertips. I know I've written about Okie in past years of slicing. He was a lot of fun. 

At some point, the Duster was upgraded to a Saab which was totaled when my dad fell asleep driving home from an all-day fishing trip. Saabs are solid, so he was fine, but RIP cute blue Saab. Somehow the dealer convinced my not-so-agile dad to buy a black 16 valve VW Scirocco with special racing seats and lots of bells and whistles. I think I was in college during the short Scirocco era, which means that my younger brothers were new drivers. I shudder a little at the slices they could right about driving that car. It gave a fast lesson in going fast. 

I don't think it was more than a month old when he parked it on the wrong side of the street and some drunk driver hit it head on. The damage might have been less if it hadn't been head on. (Lesson: Never park on the wrong side of the street.) Since it wasn't totaled, the new black car got towed to service station to await the insurance inspector, but entrepreneurial car strippers got there first and stripped clean-- anything they could take, they took. That totaled the VW. RIP hot fast car. A more sensible Saab returned to my father's garage bay. 

In the twilight of Dad's driving years, he got his self-proclaimed dream car, a BMW that was too big for any of us to feel comfortable in. His driving skills, never great, diminished, and that boat-like Beemer had a number of bumper blemishes before it morphed into a smaller more manageable, but somewhat eccentric turquoise Volvo which eventually got sold right out from under him-- if you asked him. "One day my car was in the garage," he'd say to anyone who'd listen, "and the next thing I knew it was sold right under my nose." (Note: It's tough to revoke an older person's driving privileges.)

Tonight, listening to the stories of an older mother negotiating used car deals as we finished dinner, I thought about my carless but car-craving father negotiating a car to be delivered to his driveway. (The car arrived, my mother and I intervened, and the disappointed salesperson brought the car back to the lot.) Even when dementia was in full force, he loved cars and worked to broker a deal. 

Dad definitely had some great car stories. Thinking about his cars and his retirement plans of restoring a Model T, an earlier post of the month, Dad and his cars really did encompass the passion, purpose, and play that defined so much of his life. 

Slice of Life 2025: 27 of 31- Ladder time

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

When Julia and I went to see her physical therapist-- for her knee, not mine-- the topic of ladder work came up. Julia had already mentioned it to me. "You'll need to do some ladder work," she'd said when I talked about my worries about not being able to move well on the tennis court any time soon. 

I'm still high-fiving myself for walking up the driveway and going foot over foot on the stairs, so the idea of ladder work? Not anytime soon. 

To give you an idea, I've grabbed a picture of a PT ladder from the internet and included it below. The idea is that you do various agility moves within the ladder rungs. It's harder than you'd think with a limb that is learning to move again. 

In any case, while I was at PT yesterday, I was paying attention to Jen and what she was doing. I'm nosy that way at PT, but when you're' just sitting there with ten minutes of heat or another ten minutes of ice, you have the choice of phone scrolling, watching the weather channel, or checking out the other orthopedic woes. I know other people pay attention to me, as well. Adele, an older woman who's been in a couple times when I've been there, has had to bear witness to my PT's (borderline inhumane) bending of my knee. I've tried to keep my moans in check, but I can neither confirm nor deny that I've made some noise no and then. Adele told me on Monday that she thinks of me when she wants to complain about her PT. (I'm not sure how to feel about that!)

Getting back to the ladder focus, but still as an aside, I was a Jen fan because she brought her 2 to 3-ish daughter in a stroller and that little girl spent the whole time in the stroller watching the goings-on and looking at her book. Not an iPad in sight. It was so refreshing! 

I finished my exercises on the staircase and headed to the squat wall as Jen's PT laid a ladder down on the floor for Jen. 

I couldn't help it. "A ladder," slipped out of my mouth. 

"You'll get there," the PT said, understanding my point. 

I did my squats, and I did the bike, and I worked through my lunges. And Jen skipped, hopped, and bounced through the ladder. 

"I want to do ladders," I said to Kate, my therapist, as she rigged me up the ice boot. 

"Yeah?" she said. "Let's do those on Friday." 

Did she not realize I was being aspirational? I didn't really mean Friday. 

However, Kate was serious. On Friday, she's laying down that ladder. For me. 

Slice of Life 2025: 26 of 31- Living life more than once

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Alan Wright used to slice in this community, and I loved the name of his blog which was Living Life Twice. He still writes a lot, although he doesn't participate in this challenge. I love the idea that writing and sharing allows me to revisit moments that have mattered and share them, talk about them, giggle over them, cry over them... 

March in the Meehan community is interesting because every interaction has the potential and possibility of ending up in a slice. There's a little joy and a little worry mixed with that. Our four daughters have been rotating through the house this month, and three of them are slicing. You may have already met them in the community. I've had many moments where I've wondered if a snippet of the conversation would be captured in writing. March Madness and Meehan Memoirs...

The other night, Julia was in bed with me, and we were watching basketball as she was doing some work and I was reading some posts. "Oh look," she said, showing me an email that had just arrived in her box. 

I smiled at the response she'd gotten, a little smug about the role I'd played. 

The next thing I knew, the bed started shaking a little as Julia couldn't control her laughter as she write a post. You can read it here. Yes, she wrote that slice while she was sitting right next to me. I've now lived that moment once, twice, and more, Writing and slicing and being in this community has given me that. 

Today's conversation with Larkin was across many miles, but it was all about the rightness of oldest daughers, and we both had some aha moments. I wasn't surprised that it was the focus of her slice today, and it was fun to read her written rendition of the conversation.  I have a feeling we'll continue to talk about it, but I wonder if we would have thought about the patterns and the truths without the power of written reflection. The moment would have been much more fleeting. 

And Clare was home and I thought reading and baking bread while I tutored, but I found out from reading her slice that she'd gotten a little afternoon siesta! She and I have been spending a lot of time together, and I've loved reading about her interpretations of some of the same experiences we've shared, and, when she's been away, I've gotten peeks into what she's up to. There's something intimate about these peeks. 

Yes, I teach students that they can write to entertain, inform, and persuade, but writing also deepens relationships and sustains memories. I've been struck this year at the interactions and connections between slicers, as well as the family members who have been willingly brought or coerced into the fold-- conversations about or within slices or even guest appearances have brought me joy. How lucky we all are for this community. We all get to live the moments we share on repeat and have an archive of written memories and comments as well that we can visit whenever we need it. 

Slice of Life 2025: 25 of 31- Pay attention and do something

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

Like some of my friends, I vacillate between paying attention to what is going on in the world and keeping my head in my own personal sandbox. Over the last few weeks, it's been fairly easy to focus on whatever I've wanted-- healing, basketball, SOLSC, daughters' visiting... I've admittedly gotten my news from the Daily Skimm and some education information from the EdWeek overviews. I should be doing better. Doing more. 

Yesterday, one of our EL tutors texted me, and she's not one to bother me while I'm on leave. We have several families from Yemen, and one of the families has several children. The parents are currently in Yemen with two of the children while elementary children are home with older siblings. Yemen is now on Trump's red list, so travel it the US will be limited if not altogether banned. 

Our tutors know and support this family. They know A.'s struggles to wake up and eat before sunrise during Ramadan. They know he's doing his own laundry. They know he's worried about his parents coming home before Eid. They give him rides to soccer practice, and they know possible travel routes that could get his parents home. Could they fly to Egypt? How long would they have to stay in Djibouti? 

Today, this morning, policies and bans and boycotts are impacting a family that lives a mile from me. A family whose children I've met and hugged. When will they get to hug each other again? 

Today I'll do better with topics I've been ignoring and repressing. 

Slice of Life 2025: 24 of 31- Apologies to the bluebirds

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but I feel like I've been coming across a lot of birds during the 2025 SOLSC. There have been birds making messes all over cars, birds as gifts, birdsongs, displaced birds, skittering sanderlings... a veritable text set. All of these posts have made me want to do more for our feathered friends. 

It's a little tricky where I live. We live in the Connecticut town with the highest rate of bear sightings in the state-- an auspicious claim to fame. Given the town name of Simsbury, it gets dubbed Simsbeary by the local punners. We are not allowed to hand bird feeders in town, and if we do, they don't last long. Local bears sniff out fresh bird food right away. 

After reading about bluebirds and spotting a few of them flitting in the back of our yard, I remembered the bluebird houses that have been in the back of the garage since last year. 

"I have a couple of requests," I announced this morning in the company of Garth and Julia who is visiting for a couple of days. "The first one is can we get the bluebird houses back up in the back yard?"

The two of them both looked at me askance. 

"You're joking, right?" Garth said. 

"Absolutely not," Julia said. 

"That's not happening," Garth said. 

From upstairs, even Cecily, another visiting daughter, piped in. "We are not welcoming bluebirds!" she yelled from the stairs. "Don't you remember the mess of my car?"

"And what about the early morning obsessive banging on the windows?" Julia added. 

"Alright, alright," I said. 

They were right. The resident or maybe the non-resident bluebirds had some messy and loud habits that I repressed as I thought about the loveliness of welcoming birds. I guess I'll continue nurturing birds vicariously through many of the posts I read. Apologies to the neighborhood bluebirds. 

At least the rug is changed in Julia's bedroom. That was my other request. 

Slice of Life 2025: 23 of 31- A ride on the Peloton

Throughout the month of March, I am participating in the annual Slice of Life Story Challenge, an event hosted by the team at Two Writing Teachers. Every day in March, I will share a story and comment on the stories of other participants. Please join us in writing, sharing, reading, and commenting!

I bought my Peloton in November of 2020. It was one of those pandemic purchases, and I still love it. I had no idea how competitive I would get about it. Yes, I like the leaderboard. And, yes, I am constantly trying to set new personal bests. I never know anyone I'm riding with personally, but I give high fives and appreciate receiving them. #IFYKYK

Over the last few weeks, I've been recovering from a total knee replacement. Today is Day 24. Even though they get you up in the hospital and walking right away, walking is in quotation marks. Every day is a little better, but there have been a lot of moments when I've been like, wait, how do I do that?  Raising my leg in the first place...stepping onto an escalator... going down stairs foot over foot-- they all seem like new tasks. 

At physical therapy, I've been riding the bike. Two weeks ago, I made it three times around, and it was a big deal. This past week, I can get on and get right around, so I've been asking Kate, my therapist, if I can ride my Peloton on the non-appointment days. On Friday, she gave me the go-ahead. 

"But you have to be super careful of the pedals," she said. "They're weighted, and you might not be able to do them."

I promised I'd be careful. I'd even get someone in my family to help. 

This morning all said family members left me alone at home. There were friends to meet, drawings to deliver, appointments to make, and I waited. Finally my husband came home with bags of groceries. 

"Can you help me with the Peloton?" I asked. 

"Can I put away the groceries first?" he asked. 

"No," I said. 

He got the message. 

The two of us went downstairs and he held my foot as I pedaled the first time around. 

"Just spot it," I said. "I think it's fine."

It was fine. I found a five-minute ride, and I accepted the fact that everyone was blowing by me. I was under orders to ride with zero tension and I couldn't go fast-- I had to take Instructor Christine's instructions to ride at my own pace VERY seriously-- but I finished the ride. Woohoo-- watch out leaderboard! Not my personal record, but one of my personally best. 

Maybe I'll do a ten-minute ride tomorrow!