I have to admit that at this very moment I’m feeling a bit older than usual. I just finished weed-whacking the front yard, the driveway area in front of our trio of planters, around the driveway pad, the back sidewalk edge and a bit more. I’m inside, drinking water and trying to cool off before we fix lunch. Then, I’m HOPING it won’t be too hot for me to finish the back.
For ME to do weed whacking, I have to get in a certain position. Holding that position while working, plus the weight of the weed whacker, plus fighting with the 100 foot extension cord I need to use makes me tired pretty fast. I used to be able to do the whole job in one session. Now I quit after 45 minutes. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll feel younger later…. :0)
This amazing lady, Tao Porchon-Lynch, died in February of 2020, living to be 101. One of her mantras: “Know that the joy of living is right inside you.”
I’m not at all sure I want to live to be 101, but I really admire the way she lived life to the fullest, spreading joy and energy to everyone she saw. What a wonderful role model!
I spent two hours yesterday weeding our rock beds that run along the front and back of the house. I finished, and even my husband was impressed, saying they look, “Great.”
The only problem is that my back is NOT so pleased with my efforts, even though I sat on my garden stool part of the time, used a padded knee pad part of the time, and stood part of the time, trying to vary my position often to avoid problems.
NEXT time I’ll only do the front OR the back, not both in one day.
Maybe I can do TWO sessions of yoga stretching today….
hahahahhahahahah. Actually, I’m not stressed, just late today. I just loved the picture above. :0)
I’m having a very late start to blogging today. I had a haircut appointment and errands to do this morning. By the time I got home, it was time for lunch. THEN, after we ate, I got sleepy and took a nap…
We’re having a weird day today.
We were just checking a detail on our investment account and saw that Schwab had generated a corrected tax form for us. We printed it, and then I emailed our CPA that we were having to mail him a correction for our tax stuff.
My husband wanted to check to see if we had gotten a delivery from Fedex or UPS (sometimes left at our mailbox at the bottom of the driveway) and said he would mail the corrected forms when he went. We talked about how it would be mailed, etc.
Then I started to work on the computer. I heard the driveway alarm and realized my husband had left. The form was still where I left it, so my husband didn’t take it. Wonder what he’ll think when he gets to the post office. Getting old is SO much fun. I’m glad I don’t have to do it alone.
I’m having trouble eating the right things lately. What I HOPE is the last gasp of winter has encouraged comfort food. I’m getting so ‘comforted,’ I’m almost comatose.
I titled this post, ‘Sad,’ because I saw a thing on aging –
and it made me HUNGRY…..
Old, hungry, and ticked off by pet peeves can be a lethal combination….. :0)
The three-times-a-week yoga stretches are helping this sweet old lady loosen up. I’ve lost 3 lbs this week, too, so thumbs up. :0)
Speaking of feeling a bit ‘long-in-the-tooth’ lately, three things:
Thing One – when we were looking for a replacement cover for one of our kitchen fluorescent fixtures lately, a kind guy was trying to look it up for me at the service desk at Home Depot. When he told me he couldn’t find the one we needed, I realized that our fixtures are over 30 years old, installed in 1987 when we built the house – and older than the nice guy has been alive!
Thing Two – shortly after my husband and I married, we decided to try building a digital clock, building one with the use of a Heath Kit. (I’m probably showing my age again, but Heath Kits were popular back then for the fun of learning a bit about electronics, and having things you couldn’t afford otherwise.) I learned about circuit boards, learned to look at various parts to install, learned to solder, etc. My husband kept trying to prepare me that the clock would need a lot of trouble-shooting to get it to work and that things almost never worked the first time. Can you imagine his face when it worked perfectly the very first time we plugged it in? :0) We’ve had this clock with us ever since, most recently living in our entertainment center in the living room. We noticed it was losing time – something it has never done. We reset it several times, and it kept gradually going off the right time. I was a bit sad that we need to shop for another clock now, but realized that it lasted over 50 years!
Thing Three – The latest heart throbs are younger than our son….
“The older I get, the more I see there are these crevices in life where things fall in and you just can’t reach them to pull them back out. So you can sit next to them and weep or you can get up and move forward. You have to stop worrying about who’s not here and start worrying about who is.” — Alex Witchel
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and Trigger – Chicago Tribune
“Trigger” was ridden by Rogers in every one of his motion pictures, finding his own fame in the process. After Trigger died at age 33, his hide was stretched over a plaster likeness and put on display, also reared on two legs, inside the museum. He was mounted, then, not stuffed.
taxidermy-Lonesome George-smithsonianmag.com
I bring this up because, when my husband and I talk of end of life issues, my husband always says he wants me to have HIM ‘stuffed like Trigger and mounted in the living room.’ That would be a form of immortality – I guess – a way to feel as if your life had made a difference to someone.
Some people will be remembered by some special talent – their singing, dancing, writing, creating, building, teaching, entertaining….
Most of us won’t do anything so wonderful that we’ll be remembered by the world for something we have contributed, but that’s okay. If we are remembered from time to time by someone we touched in some way, that’s immortality too.
I think of all the people who have made my life wonderful – my family, my friends, strangers who have taken the time to be extra kind, people I’ve never met, but who have made my heart sing with joy through their talent, who have made me laugh so hard I have trouble catching my breath.
Little means more than living on in someone’s memory and heart.
Thankfully, keeping moving and doing afternoon yoga stretches are mitigating a lot of mine.
I discovered Cat Kabira and her “Gentle Yoga” DVD several years ago now. I can’t say enough about her.
One of my pet peeves now is people on TV referring to the ‘elderly,’ and then clarifying the insult, adding “people over 65.” How insulting is THAT!
PNGkit
“Old age is always 15 years older than I am.” ~ (attribution disputed)
I don’t think of myself as a hostile person, but I do NOT consider myself ‘elderly,’ and will probably NEVER accept it. People also say that “you’re as old as you feel.” Though some days I feel at LEAST 108, most of the time I feel pretty good. :0)
So I will continue to do my yoga for old broads stretches, try to lose the lard, keep trying to learn new things, and enjoy my life – while trying NOT to bite someone in the leg who calls me ‘elderly.’
We went to bed at around our normal time – about midnight. We were both up again, downstairs reading at about 1am.
That is the worst time for me to NOT eat. I could eat a house at that hour. I found this cartoon yesterday and thought if our fridge were like this, it would help a lot. It would remind me that I’m not REALLY hungry at that hour, just needing comfort, and maybe some water, as well as my book…
I woke up crackling and popping this morning. Even my husband heard it!
I will do a longer yoga practice this afternoon to see if I can improve things. That and W-D40….
My husband found an image of Wonder Wart-Hog, one of his favorite comic book characters from his childhood, and wants us to do another mailbox decoration. “Wonder Wart-Hog (the “Hog of Steel”) is an underground comic book character, a porcine parody of Superman, created by Gilbert Shelton and first published in 1962.” (Wikipedia)
He worked on the computer much of the afternoon, coming up with a program he hopes will work as it should to translate the image to the computer out in the shop and allow us to use a computer-guided torch to cut the image out of sheet metal. Then he’ll make an attachment that allows us to bolt the decoration to our mailbox, welding it to the sheet metal. We’ll use an overhead projector to mark the key areas of the bare sheet metal front and back. Finally, I’ll paint both sides of the piece plus the attachment. I’ll post a picture when it’s finished. :0)
Right now we have Godzilla on the mailbox. We’ll be exchanging it for Fritz the Cat in another week.
We’re having nice weather here in Arkansas today. I’m planning to spend some time in the yard again today, pulling out spent plants, trimming, pruning, etc. I’m concentrating on not overdoing it, since the people on TV keep insisting on calling me ‘the elderly’ when they’re talking about Covid and vaccinations. GRRRR!
I would like to remind them –
David Mamet-BrainyQuote
So we will run an errand or two and then I’ll spend several sessions in the yard today – resting in-between – and see how much good I can do out there. :0)
Most of the time I don’t think about “age.” Happily, I feel good enough to do most of the things I want to do, and I’m trying to move and exercise daily so that I continue that.
My world is expanding. I love to learn new things. YouTube is a wonderful resource for that. I’m also discovering other sites like this, and I feel a whole new world is waiting. We heard about Rumble and Substack, and our son told us about Bitchute and Odysee. I’ve bookmarked them, but haven’t made time yet to explore and decide what I think.
Art techniques demonstrated on YouTube make my mouth water. I saw one a couple of days ago called, “Dutch Pour,” a delicious injection technique a lady used to create a fabulous design with acrylic paint.
Emjay’sandthem’s blog
I feel old when –
the latest heartthrob turns out to be young enough to be my son – or worse (I refuse to feel guilty, though. I ain’t dead yet! :0)
the people on the news are again talking about the “elderly,” – and they mean ME! :0(
I get up from my recliner to take care of business after drinking my 4 bottles of water during the day and it takes me several steps to loosen up enough to walk without limping.
My wonderful massage therapist remarks that I sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies – snapping, crackling, and popping as she works her magic.
FIRST – My husband said I should write this blog post!
SECOND – I was right TWICE yesterday and he acknowledged it!
We took one of our vehicles for diagnosis and service first thing yesterday morning. I told my husband I would follow him, since when senses of direction were passed out, I was AWOL. I can get lost in a paper bag. He said I KNEW where the place was – at the curve of two streets in Ft. Smith. I told him that the company had been sold and they had relocated to the autopark, wherever that was. He got angry, so I let it go and told him I would follow him.
We got to the place he said. There was a big sign that has been there at least a year that says, “We moved!” and gave the address at the autopark. We wound around and around, finally making it to the autopark. We made it in time for our appointment, and he said. “You were right.” as we drove home together.
We changed our TV provider recently. That meant a lot of changes, and as we age, we seem to learn the new procedures with less and less grace. The biggest remaining problem for us with the new system was that our whole DVD collection, taped on a system called, “Synology” was gone. Since my husband got rid of the DVDs as we taped them on this, it was really upsetting.
My husband has been working with Microsoft – who did an update recently that disappeared our access to the program, and the tech support from Synology, trying to solve the problem.
Since I am amazed that my computer works at ALL, my function at these times is to keep my mouth firmly shut rather than voice what are probably inane suggestions.
This once, though, I told him that I THOUGHT I remembered that we accessed the movies through our Playstation. He blew this suggestion off right away, irritated that I interrupted his train of thought. This was two or three weeks ago.
Finally, we were able to access the collection through the Media Player on Roku. This was a really good thing, but he is still not satisfied, since it’s not coming through our main system, but an add-on. I finally suggested that we get on the Playstation and see what it showed. My husband did that, a pained expression on his face. There – right in front of us – was “DS218” – our movie collection! We immediately accessed a move and watched it.
When the movie was over, my husband looked at me and said, “You were right.”
Last night, he said, “You need to write a blog post about this.” I told him I was marking my calendar – that first – he said I was right twice, and second, that he wanted me to tell others about it. We agreed that since we are now considered, “Elderly” by many (though not close enough that we can punch them in the face for saying that) that we need to work together when we have problems – listen to each other more and consider that the other might have a point.
Words to live by. MAYBE I’ll be right again sometime… :0)
I know that when I hear music I first heard when I was a teenager, it takes me back. The years fall off. I feel GREAT. My heart fills, I jump up, and my body moves. Listening and reacting to music can be therapy. Making music is an art.
creativeartworksblog 