Write a book

Emails from September, 2011, the events in Washington that were of major concern (see last 2 posts for backstory)

From my friend, The Flowery One:

Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 9:40 AM
Subject: Busy, busy day

I hope I have time to write more than a sentence or two. Son M. is on his way to pick me up. He called last night to set up the time and how we'd do it. The Silent One can go home today any time before 10 o'clock at night, so the kids are arranging it for me. 

Thank goodness because I wanted to be there when they sprung The Silent One. 
 All that's important for now is that The Silent One is coming home today. Hooray!
 
And later this good news came:

 

Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 9:02 PM
Subject: The Silent One is home!

The Silent One is home and resting. Whew, what a time of it for all. He has all weekend now to just sit and rest. Then Monday he has his doctor/psychologist's appointment. Then he has to stop at the clinic and see if they'll give him a prescription for more meds which he's been out of for FOUR MONTHS and didn't tell me. No wonder his blood sugar shot up so high...300. He's feeling better emotionally but still very, very fragile, and of course his body has taken a beating too. You're right about not expecting things to go back to the way they were. We don't WANT it to go back. That's what got him in the trouble and the depression he's in. Things will be on the upswing from now on.
 
We're going to stop working 24/7 and only work the hours they pay us.  We'll take that time to look for new jobs and a new place to live. We've been invited to live with the family if we need it.

In fact, son M. has broken up with his partner for good. We even helped him pack a little today until The Silent One got too tired. It helped get The Silent One's mind off things to do that. Anyway, son M. is moving out tonight and staying in his sister-in-law's spare bedroom. He'll be getting a new place in the next few weeks.

I'm just SO glad to have my honey (haha, almost typed "homey") back again, alive and on his way to being happier and healthier!!!! I can breathe again. Thanks for all your good energies, support, words of wisdom, and love!!!
 
And my other friend, dear Brain, got into the conversation also, of course:
Sept 25

Dear  ones,
 I've just read all your messages. Oh my! What a difficult time you've been going through, Flowery One.  I'm grateful your family was nearby and rose up to meet your needs.


My first thought when I learned The Silent One had been told his regular job was ending or changing was that the agency is having severe financial problems and had to cut back on their expenses and the first place they would look at is in the workforce. That's been happening all over the U.S. and globally. The entire country and states are facing unrest and governments are being overturned, rioting everywhere, wars are starting. 

I'm so sorry that you both were deeply troubled by it. You are such clever, efficient, and creative workers that corporate must have wanted to make sure that you'd be willing to stay on with lower pay. 

Dear Flowery One, I'd been thinking (before this) of you and The Silent One writing a book, selling it. Your imagination would help you write a novel. Now I'm thinking you could write something about surviving so many different things that you've been going through. Like depression, or job loss, or living with an extended or blended family, or sharing a home. 



Then the Flowery One answered her:
 
Thanks for your e-mail, dear Brain. Yes, things have been rough but all that matters now is that The Silent One is home safe and sound and will most likely not do anything like that again now that he knows what I went through. He also knows it was so unnecessary, that (and you're right about this) it was in large part because of the company trying to save money! 

 As to writing a novel, you've hit on another thing that might turn out like that in a way. We've been talking about starting back up our old business, where we write and sell books for activity directors. That's still very possible. We just need to get settled somewhere so we can have a place to work and a place to store the books we sell. 


When picking nick-names for my friends, it was hard not to call The Brain, Motorcycle Mama.  But I refrained, because I really respect her intellect.  However, there is that other  persona in there too.

Flowery One had troubling events

The Flowery One has been an Activity Director, while her husband, The Quiet One was a manager, of a senior apartment complex in Washington state.  She and her husband had been authors of a book about activities when they were working many years ago in the field.  They moved from North Carolina to Washington to be near their adult children and their families several years ago.

Of course there's a lot more background that you can see on my post "High School Friends" but this might bring you up to date enough to understand the email I received from the Flowery One a few weeks after I turned 69 years old.

The Flowery One

First sign of difficulty was this email.  I've deleted some of the details, but you can imagine how my friend and her husband felt...

Saturday, September 17, 2011 10:07 AM

      The Quiet One was given a terribly big blow yesterday. He's been demoted from manager to assistant manager with me! Seems that after corporate didn't give him very much training on the re-certifications on tenants he has to do for each one every year, and then them putting in a new computer system that didn't work half the time, they're blaming The Quiet One for not getting the recertifications in on time. They said he's doing an "outstanding job" on everything else, like keeping the place full and handling maintenance and other matters well, and that I am too with activities.

As it is now, we don't know what's going to happen. So far they haven't fired us.  We just don't know if The Quiet One will get a cut or no pay at all other than the apartment. 

It's scary, but that's what we're up against and have to wait until Monday, or later, to find out how it will all work out. We might be on the streets by next week for all we know. The Quiet One is taking it pretty bad. I'm a Pollyanna and think there's always a way and worrying doesn't help anything. I'm mad as heck for The Quiet One's sake though. 

Monday, Sept. 19, 2:27 AM

Hi again. I'm up late after trying to stay asleep with The Quiet One tossing and turning. He finally got up. Now he's back asleep on the couch. He's taking this job thing hard, worrying so much about it before we even know how it's going to play out. In his mind he has us living in our car. It's depressing. I sure hope we hear something about it tomorrow so he can stop worrying and I can get some sleep!


And on

Monday, September 19, 2011 11:05 AM

Hi sisters,

We don't know what today will bring, but it's a good start to the day to find a message from S. in my e-mail. I wrote back but didn't say anything about our recent troubles since I don't know most of the details of what's going to happen.
 Whatever happens, we'll get through it somehow.


S. is The Flowery One's adult son who's working in Afghanistan presently.

Then an email with the title
"Worse Troubles"

Monday, September 19, 2011 5:45 PM

I'm really worried about The Quiet One.  He got an e-mail from corporate this morning telling him that he's not even going to be assistant manager but just key holder. 

  While we were in a tenant's apartment who we've become friends with, telling her about our recent troubles, The Quiet One just got up and left, didn't say where he was going. I followed him 10 minutes later and found that his car is gone. It's been almost 3 hours now. His cell phone is turned off and I can't even leave a message because he never set up his voice mail when he got his new phone last time. I'm worried sick!

I looked for him in town when I had to walk to the pharmacy to get a prescription refilled. I thought maybe he'd gone to the post office or bank for the company...well, guess that's a laugh and I was just trying to feel better about him up and taking off like that. So here I sit, worried as anything. I hope he doesn't do anything foolish.

Just had to talk with you about it. I'll let you know what happens.


This was the beginning of a major episode in my friend's life.  It happened just a week after the death of The Enlightened One, my close friend for whom I'd been one of the caregivers.  Her story is posted separately, here.

More of these emails will be continued in my next posting.

My highschool friends

I am an introvert, and that means I had lots of friends, but wasn't one of those 'in-the-yearbook' kind of girls.

The Flowery One, (it doesn't help to enlarge the low res picture)

When I took a vacation in the early 2000s, I came to North Carolina (from Florida) to visit my old friend The Flowery One and her husband The Silent One.

The Flowery One and I had gone to school together back in St. Louis from 7th grade through 12th.  During those years we studied, learned about boys, played sports on teams together, dated boys, questioned everything grown-up, made out with boys, pushed boundaries sometimes, and giggled a lot.  I was even in The Flowery One's first wedding soon after high school. But in 2000, after almost 40 years apart, we again made contact because another student wanted to do a gathering of our graduating class via the internet.

Three graces come together (what? we don't look like that?)

Our other friend, The Brain, had responded to this other student that she wanted to get in touch with us, so we all made contact again.  I may have the details of this wrong, but basically we started writing emails regularly in 2000.

The Brain and I had also spent a year together in college as well as all through high school.  I had written back and forth, ("snail mail" it came to be called) with The Brain several times in my life, and always enjoyed hearing about her and her husband, The Tall One, and sharing whatever was going on in our lives, including kids.

The Brain and The Flowery One enjoying pictures and ??? as teens

My teenage friends, wearing the styles of the time, scarves, bangs and curls of hair coming toward the cheeks

The Brain, riding her scooter in 2012, having lived with MS for many years

The Flowery One several years ago, in NC

The Flowery One after treatment for cancer

The apartment complex for seniors in WA state, where The Flowery One and The Quiet One moved in 2011

The Flowery One and The Silent One, Halloween 2012

Our email let us see how many similar choices we'd made through the years, and we continued to share these common bonds. We all loved cats and had left the religion which was the sponsor of our high school.  We sent support whenever one of us went through a tough time, and we sure did continue to share our love of the silly, and cats, and humor, and Halloween, and laughs, and story telling, and creativity in lots of ways.

I've tried to keep a record of the emails we exchanged, in hopes of writing some kind of memoir of our lives.  But working with thousands of emails is very tedious, to say the very least.  You can't just turn them into computer savable documents unless you copy them out of the internet server, which I've done with many.  Most of them remain in the land of the web.

So if I guess at something, I can go looking for what one of us said back at that time.  But for purposes of these blogs, I may often just write from memory.  If something important happens though, I'll go cut and paste from the emails again!  (Unless I get enough comments saying that it's not a good idea, that is.)

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday this week.  Sorry it hasn't got a thing to do with Alan's picture idea.  But this is what I've been wanting to share for some time.