Spitzmuller me

I have often joked here that I cry easily and that I can cry at supermarket openings.  Now I don't mean boo-hoo sobbing, but tears welling up in my eyes, threatening to spill over, enough so that I turn away so nobody can see that I am having an emotional moment, as I surreptitiously wipe away the tears before they can betray me.

My grandmother always told me, when I cried like that, that I was a "Spitzmuller."  I've tried to find a definition on the internet, but can only find people whose last name was Spitzmuller.  Her mother had come to this country from Germany, so I'm sure that she learned the term from her mother, who brought it from the "old country."

This morning as I was moved to tears by a Today Show story of twins both diagnosed with breast cancer, I decided to make a record of all the things today that move me to tears.  The first time I got tears in my eyes was because of a sign someone on the Today Show plaza was holding (unfortunately I don't remember what it was now--if I had thought about this entry at the time, I would have written it down).

The story of the twins was followed by a report on Jacquie Kennedy's famous pink suit, blood stained following the assassination of the president.  Tears filled my eyes.  It wasn't even 8:30 yet and I had already cried three times.

I actually made it all the way through Jenna Bush Hager's interview of a blogger, who writes cartoons and talks about her depression, without tearing up, until the end, when Hager gave her a big hug.  Then the tears came.

Two teenage girls were freaking out at the notion of seeing actor Josh Hutchinson (don't know who he is, but apparently the star of the upcoming Hunger Games movie).  He came out onto the set of Kelly and Michael to great applause and these two girls in tears.  Me too.  Tears welling--and I don't know him or them, but was moved by the emotion of the moment.

[Aside:  It will become apparent throughout this record that I would cry significantly less if I ever turned off the television.  But it's on all day long as white noise in the background, as well as a kind of clock, because I know what time each show comes on.  This has been my habit ever since I got my own apartment back in the 1960s, before Walt and I were married]

I received an email from a Compassion blogger who took on a young woman in Uganda to sponsor a couple of years ago.  Several of us went in together to pay for her sponsorship.  This girl left the program when she became pregnant and today Michelle, the blogger who was writing to her, learned that she had her baby, whom she named after "the heroes in her life," Michelle and her husband (Michelle Jason Grace).  Tears.

A few tears came at the end of a Kelly and Michael interview with race car driver Jimmy Johnson.  It was just as he read the card going to commercial, but it was a warm, funny moment, and I got choked up for a minute.

NPR was playing a recording of Gregory Peck reading the Gettysburg Address, on the 150th anniversary of that speech.  It was so moving that I was moved to tears.

The next incident was a "normal" tearing up.  A telephone fight with my mother over clothes that I washed for her that she swears are not hers and she complains that her closet is emptying out and she doesn't know what has happened to her clothes.  She ended up screaming at me and hanging up on me.  I just don't know what to do about her.  They are her clothes and she doesn't believe that it is her memory problem that she doesn't recognize them.  I am so frustrated with all this!!!!  No wonder it brought tears.

The last time I teared up was at the end of NCIS, when Gibbs hired a new girl to replace Ziva.  A tender moments.  Tender moments always get me.

I might have had more Spitzmuller moments but I was so upset after the incident with my mother that I was fuming.  I sent off several messages to different people for different reasons, one of them to a medical professional I know to ask for suggestions of a therapist I might see that could help me deal with my mother.  She gave me a couple of names, but also suggested I check the Senior Center to see what they might offer.  Turns out they have a support group for people dealing with people with dementia and Alzheimers, which meets once a month...and the next meeting just happens to be tomorrow, so I'm off to a support group tomorrow and if that doesn't seem promising, I'll check out the recommended therapists.

Also, I came up with a plan of action.  I am going to take her shopping for new clothes.  I'll even take her back to the thrift shop where she used to work, if she wants.  We will then bring those clothes home and LABEL them all together.   And then I will let her know that I am not going to do her laundry any more. She is going to do her laundry there at Atria, only we will do it together (since she is afraid of getting lost going to the laundry room, just a few steps from her apartment).  She will take the clothes from her hamper and put them in the washing machine and transfer them from the washer to the dryer and then bring them back to her apartment.  It will be much less convenient for me, but if it will avoid another incident like today, then that will be good.

I don't know if she will remember our fight, or if she will remember and not be speaking to me tomorrow.  We are scheduled to have lunch at 11:30 and the support group meeting is at 10:00.  I don't know what I'm going to find at Atria tomorrow.  But I have to do something to make this right.

Of course all this drama robbed me of my chance to record a full Spitzmuller day...when you are angry and frustrated you are less likely to find anything on television or in the newspaper as something that makes you teary.

The newspaper DID make me angry, too, though.  I've been waiting for a review I wrote last week to be printed and the editor got huffy and told me I'd have to wait for all the other writers' pieces to be printed (unclear on the concept of helping to sell tickets, not for the first time).  I expected the review to run today, but she ran one from OCTOBER, which I believe she ran weeks ago.  Beverly is not a happy camper.  But I don't suppose I can find a support group for that.

Maybe I'll just go to the couch and cry myself to sleep.  Sigh.