Ghostbusters, Ben, and Me

 Yes, I know. The correct grammatical construction of the title is "Ghostbusters, Ben, and I," but I'm following E. B. White's sage advice that sometimes it's better to go with your ear and not the rule. Thank you, Andy.

The original Ghostbusters movie came out in 1984. My oldest son Ben was born in late 1985. Thanks to a bootleg video copy made by my brother Mike sometime in 1987 (I think), Ben and I watched Ghostbusters not just once or twice, but easily two dozen times or more.

Probably more. We knew every character, we knew all the scenes, we knew it all.

How could you not love this this scene?  

So when Ghostbusters II came out in 1989, Ben and I were at the movie theatre in Sacramento on the opening day, our excitement of seeing it the very day it opened outweighing the hour drive to get there.

Ben was not disappointed. Neither was I:

Time moves on. Little boys grow up, interests change, and the once beloved movie or book or game ends up tucked away in fond memories.

Then in late 2021, Ghostbusters: Afterlife came out, reuniting much of the original cast. When I heard about it, my first reaction was, "But Harold Ramis died. They can't do Ghostbusters without Egon."

I didn't go see the movie. (Confession: I have seen no movies at a theatre in these Covid times but neither did I rent it to watch online.) I doubt Ben saw it in any format. I do remember sending him a quick email noting the new movie. After that, I put it out of my mind until I caught an interview with Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson, the remaining Ghostbusters, in which they talked about making the movie without Harold Ramis, but also with Harold Ramis, being careful not to give out any spoilers.

Then I saw an interview with director Jason Reitman (whose father directed the original two movies) in which he explained how they went about bringing Harold Ramis or, rather, his character, Egon Spengler, back using a combination of a body double and CGI. (Brilliantly, I might add.)

What is YouTube for if not to see bits of movies? Including the ending of Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

Without recapping a movie I have not watched, let me just say that the movie's final battle brings back Gozer (from the original movie) against the remaining Ghostbusters. When all seems lost, Egon's granddaughter Phoebe, who has been discovering and learning the lore and knowledge that her late grandfather had stored about the earlier battles, steps into the battle with Egon's proton pack on her back. She loses ground against Gozer until a translucent adult hand appears to help steady her aim. It is the ghost of her grandfather, who returns her amazed look with a gentle smile and helps her battle on until his former companions can rejoin the fight. 

The part I have watched repeatedly is the final scene, after Gozer has been defeated, between Egon's ghost and his estranged daughter, Callie. Callie's version of family was that her father had abandoned his family and her heedlessly. Egon looks at her longingly. Will she forgive him for seemingly running out on her so many years ago? Will she understand that he left his family behind in order to protect them?

Spoiler alert: yes, she will and she does. She goes into his arms. and they embrace. His hope fulfilled, Egon's dissolves into the night sky. 

Ben and I are not estranged. We live far apart, true, but we stay connected. So I don't have that element. But if wishes come true, when I transition from life to death, I would love one last opportunity to meet up with Ben, my Ghostbuster pal of yore, and have that one last loving embrace.

And then Ben, not unlike Peter Venkman in the end of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, can go have some hot cocoa. With or without marshmallows. 

Love Up

It was supposed to read "love you," but Amy's fingers went astray and it came into Messenger as "love up." She immediately followed with a "you," but the "love up" stuck with me. I typed back that "Love up" was a message for living life. 

Seriously. 

I've been gifted with several instances of dear ones loving up this week and what gifts those were. Here are three.

The first was the Amazon Prime envelope on the front porch, addressed to me. I try to avoid using Amazon as a rule and certainly knew I had not ordered anything, so I was not sure what it was. Upon opening it, I found a pristine paperback, Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, along with this note: "Mom, I read this book a few years ago. I know fantasy (and genre fiction) isn't usually your thing, however I will say this is a fun read despite the length." 

My son Ben loved up and sent me a book.

Later in the week was a note from Jennifer, a close friend here in town, telling me how much she admired and looked up to me for my community work and what I bring to her life. Totally unexpected, totally heartfelt. After the tears dried, I thought of how many times I think of a friend, near or far, and don't go the extra step of telling that person what they mean to me. Jennifer, in loving up and sending me that note, has inspired me to love up going forward. 

The third occurrence was a package in yesterday's mail (in a repurposed Amazon Prime mailing envelope incidentally) that I did not see until this morning. (Mail was very late yesterday, it was dark and cold when it finally did arrive, and neither of us felt like going out last night, even though the mailbox is right there by the front door.) It was from Tani, a longtime friend, confidant, and mutual correspondent, and contained two books. One was a copy of the novel Meet Me at the Museum by Ann Youngson, which Tani passed along to me because the story is told in letters and she said how appropriate to give it to me because so much of our friendship is an epistolary relationship. That made me smile. The other book was Among Friends, a collection of poems by David Langworthy. I puzzled at the name for a minute then burst out, "Langworthy was Tani's family name. That has to be her father." 

And it was. Tani's family had published a collection of his poems, private for most of his life, for his memorial service in 2004, and Tani wanted me to have it.  I was in tears that she loved up and sent me that and the other book as a reflection of our friendship over the decades. 

What a wonderful week full of light and blessings. And now, thanks to a mistyped note, I have a phrase to describe what happened and to guide me going forward. 

Love up. What a radical thought. 

A Different Penny Story

Last week after posting about pennies, I thought this penny story needed to be shared. 

My friend Cindy feels that when someone close to you dies, they remind you they are still out there, still watching you, by dropping a white feather in your path. It has happened to her many times in her life, especially when she has been thinking or talking about someone who has gone on and while you may roll your eyes and chalk it up to coincidence, it gives Cindy a measure of comfort and sweet memory.

I've had a white feather incident once or twice in recent years, but not so much that I look for white feathers. I have no problem embracing the idea that the line between us the living and them the dead is a fine one indeed, the sheerest of curtains, the briefest of breaths. I just am perhaps not as aware or tuned into that other world. 

It amuses me writing that last line, given my close tenancy with Death, who has yet to evict me. Maybe I need to be pay more attention. And maybe I am paying more attention than I think. Hence my penny story.

Earlier this week I came across two shoeboxes of photos from Aunt Ginger's stash. I had gone through many of her photos back in 2017, when I moved her from her apartment to assisted living. These were boxes I had not gotten to and then misplaced. I am now going through those boxes slowly, again thinking of which photos to pass on to my cousins or my brothers, which to throw away because they have no connection to any of us in the family.

In doing so, I came across this photo, with 1958 penciled in Ginger's hand on the back of it:

I know that room, I know that life. The little girl, looking fearful almost, is me. Judging my size and what I am wearing, I suspect this is autumn of 1958 and I would have been two and a half years old. The woman I am leaning against, who has reached back to hold me close, is my grandmother Skatzes. She would have been 65 years old in 1958, the age I am now. I do not remember her hair still having color to it, nor her ever wearing anything less than a full bib apron (she always wore an apron), but after over six decades, I am sure there are other very young impressions that have been replaced by my impression when I was older.

We are in the living room of the house on Flax Street, the house my grandfather, probably with the help of his father, built, the house my mother was born in, the house I lived in until I was 14. The teapot on the gas stove (the house had no central heat) was Grandma's way of keeping some moisture in the air. Every stove in the house had a teapot on it for that very purpose. The bric-a-brac corner shelf on the wall would have been my grandfather's work; for all the evil he brought to the family, he was a skillful woodworker whose pieces decorated our homes.

That was on Tuesday. On Thursday, taking a long, long walk, I crossed the river (one of the visible and invisible dividing lines in this community) and walked around the East side, looping over the street that would carry me down the hill and around the corner to the intersection of Flax and Carlisle. My grandparents' house sits at that T-intersection on the northeast corner. I walked by the house, glancing up at the windows. I then looked down as I made ready to cross Flax. And there, in the middle of the intersection where Carlisle tees into Flax, was this:

Of course I picked it up and carried it home.

Pennies from heaven? A hug from my grandmother? Just a stray coin? 

Or maybe all of the above. 

Looking After the Pennies

I am now through two entire weeks of being retired from paid employment. I always add the "paid employment," even to my PCP yesterday, because I continue to give my time and passion to the Legal Clinic. (But that is different, and not merely because it is unpaid work.)

And now that I am two weeks into this new experience, and now that the dust (well, some of it) has cleared, I am ready to look more closely at my finances for 2022. 

I am not drawing yet social security for two reasons. The first is that I am not yet at my birth year's full retirement age (FRA) of 66 years and four months, which I will hit later this year. The second is that, given my overarching health situation and some other dynamics in this household (age and earnings over lifetime), when I die Warren can elect to take my benefit, which exceeds his. If I delay taking mine and he waits to switch to mine, he will get the boost of my age 70 social security payment. The gray area is between my FRA and that mystical age 70 boundary. If my need for income increases, I will likely apply to start receiving my payments. That is a bridge down the road that honestly I may never get to, not because I am flush with dollars, but because I am realistic about my longevity. 

So, what am I doing for income in the meantime?

Because my last decade of work was as a county employee, I paid into our Ohio public employees retirement system (PERS) and not into social security. As a result, I have a small monthly pension that just started this month. How small? About one-third of my monthly take home while still a paid employee. That amount will increase slightly when an even smaller amount, the result of my (very) limited time as a school employee way back when while managing the middle school Destination Imagination program, transfers over to PERS, but trust me, we're not talking huge sums here.

But here's the sweet spot. The income hit is, at least for now, negligible. Having spent some time recently scrabbling through my expenses and spending for the past two years, I know I can make it. 

Can make it? I think I can still save on the reduced income. 

Part of the reason has nothing to do with my personal habits. I was privileged beyond privileged to have clients long ago, a husband and wife, whose deaths (one long ago, one last year) resulted in some unexpected money coming to me: one as a gift, the other earned winding down a trust. The former went into a separate account; the latter was large enough to pay for a major insurance premium for all of 2022. 

So that was a gift, no matter how you look at it.

The other reason I can make it on the greatly reduced income has to do with my own spending habits (and indeed, the habits of this household). As I have often noted, usually poking fun at myself, I don't shop. I don't go to stores, I don't buy online. The Covid shutdowns only underscored and intensified that habit. My personal purchases since March 2020? Ummmmm...less than $75.00? I don't even buy books anymore (but did save $3500+ by checking out all my reading at the library; our checkout receipts totals the amount you save by using the library). I did buy a new pair of walking shoes ("tennis shoes," folks) because I walk so much I had worn through my last pair. I think they came out to $36.00 or so, on a markdown of a markdown.

On the "eating out" front, realize Warren and I did not eat out a lot even before Covid. Covid only intensified that habit. For safety reasons, I cannot eat in a restaurant, period. We've done takeout, we think, maybe five times since March 2020, not counting when we have traveled to Mayo or when we traveled this summer to see my family. (For the record, we only did takeout, if even that, those times as well.) With Omicron variant cases surging off the charts and my oncologists and PCP saying, "you need to be extra careful again, still, always," I'm not going to change in that regard either. 

Heck, I don't even own a car anymore. Once I knew that I was retiring in 2021 and would not be returning to the schools in person before I retired, I no longer needed a car. My dad needed something more reliable; I gifted it to him midyear last year. No more gasoline, no oil changes, and our car insurance dropped. 

So with all those non-expenses, I was able to save a large portion of my biweekly paycheck. Enough that all of my health insurance premiums (Medicare Part B, Medicare Supplemental Plan G, drug Plan D, my dentist's in-house plan, and a vision plan through PERS) are set aside for all of 2022. 

Taking all that into account, my pension check will pay the monthly household bills that I am responsible for (we do not have shared bank accounts in this home) and my share of the groceries (the same), and I will still have money left in my checking account.

For someone who went through a full bankruptcy in 2005 because of the fallout from my cancer diagnosis, and then who lived paycheck to paycheck (and sometimes not even that) for a long, long, long time after, that means a lot. I look back at old posts and see where I was trying, dime to dime, to get even, let alone get ahead. It wasn't that long ago.

The biggest unknown heading into 2022 is the cost of groceries. I kept track of our grocery spending through 2021. Food: $2131.73. Household items such as detergent, toilet paper, trash bags: $201.05. Combined total: $2332.78. Monthly average: $194.40. That was higher than I had hoped for the year (and yes, food costs have risen) but lower than I had feared. Our goal for 2022? Come in under $200.00/month again. 

Found money, 2021

And one last thing. Along with the Non-Consumer Advocate and others, we drop any money found in the parking lots, sidewalks, and such into a container for the year, then see what we have December 31. 2021's haul? A whopping $1.39. (Clearly people aren't carrying as much money as they used to; I know I don't.)

Maybe this is a longwinded way of saying I'm okay and, indeed, this household is okay on the financial front. That is a huge privilege. And a huge relief. 

I am still working on my 2022 financial goals, which is different from budgeting. What do I need to accomplish financially this year? What do I want to accomplish? And how do I pay for it? 

Time will tell. And in the meantime, I will continue to keep an eye on those pennies. 

And All at Once, It Was Over

No, this post is not about gardening. Yet. 

I am not talking about the end of the year 2021, although that too ended in a second when the clock hit 12:00 a.m. on January 1.

I am talking instead about my (finally, finally) last day of "paid government employment," as my erstwhile boss, colleague, friend, and neighbor Dave announced to our local Bar at the December meeting. After some 43 years of employment in the legal field, I ended my career (careers) on December 24.

I had noted that my job end was coming in my post last July.  What I did not realize back then was how much it would take for me to get from there to that last day. Much of that was the work itself: finishing projects (a very few), getting projects into good shape to be handed off (all the rest). Some of that was physical. My progressive, incurable cancer is always a factor and it did not take a break for me to wrap up my job.

And it's not like my daily life came to a halt while I wound down the job. Our home life continued, my treatment continued, the Legal Clinic continued, the garden continued. We even slid in a long-hoped-for trip to Washington and Oregon, driving every inch of the way, in mid-August when my Mayo oncologist listened to the precautions we would take, asked when Ramona would resume school (two days after we planned on leaving), then closed his eyes and said, "Go right now. That door is about to shut."

To bring it back to the present, my first whole week of not working just concluded. It was freeing, relieving, and bittersweet. 

It has been a mashup. Or a smashup. Or anything else that goes with "up." In random fits of energy, I am clearing away the detritus and chaff of the last few years from my office. What a mess. And I am walking. A lot. A whole lot. Walking to think, walking to sort things out in my head, walking to just walk.

I don't make resolutions for the New Year, but I have been thinking about goals.  Financial goals (especially now that my income has shrunk considerably). Gardening goals (last year's gardening experience was a mixed bag, to say the least). 

And writing goals. As I shared with my friend Tani, for the first time in a long, long, time, I am feeling the need to write, too long submerged, starting to stir within me. Hence my photo above from a long ago seed spouting. My desire to write is finally breaking through and lifting its head.

May 2022 hold kindness for us all. It's good to be back.