Walking Again...

Walking again! Well sort of. I have new regard for anyone who has ever broken a bone.  It is hard to believe that I have been recovering from this since August 12!!  Thank you, wheel chair, walker, scooter, cane! Thank you to the rolling desk chair that got me from my car to my home before the wheelchair arrived.  And thank you to my good right foot that provided support and balance while the left foot did nothing...for months!  Friends and family were there every minute and my neighbors were amazing.  I am a changed person for all of the kindness that was lavished on me. I know I will walk differently as a more caring and helpful person...kind of a born again helper and reacherouter.  Just gotta pay it forward..one step at a time.

Sad and Frightened for all of us.

Last night I met a woman who has chronic leukemia. She is on medicine that keeps her alive. For $8000 per month! When her Cobra runs out she believes she basically faces a  death sentence because she can't afford the meds and she can't get insurance.  This election is important, people.  I challenge Mr.Romney/Ryan to tell me what will happen to this lovely lady?  And please don't tell me she should get a loan from her parents - they've already lost everything material.  They don't want to lose their daughter.  She is thirty years old.

Memory Box

A long time ago I watched a teacher use this "trick" to help a student remember her spelling words.  I share it today for all of us who occasionally struggle to  keep numbers or names in our aging and sometimes unreliable brains,  It works - at least in the short term.  I am not aware that it is a copyrighted or patented method - but I do know that someone invented it.

Here goes:
1. Become aware of where your eyes go when you are trying to remember something (letters, names, numbers etc.)  You will see that your eyes almost always go to the same place...maybe upper right, lower left..everyone is different.

2. Once you have that awareness, visually/mentally  create an empty rectangle in that space.  That is your memory box.

3. When you come upon something you want to remember (maybe a phone number, or a new name) consciously put that something in your memory box.  (I visualize the numbers as I "put" them in my memory box.) Once you "have it" there, "look" at it in your mind.

4. When you want to retrieve that number, "look"  at your memory box (move your eyes in the normal memory direction)- and...(hopefully) you will easily retrieve your information.

5. Of course the memory box is probably short term - so don't try to overload it with too many things.

6.Sorry, but  it only works if you can first remember that you have created a memory box!

Lucky!!

Google gotta love you...but darn it's become a challenge to blog or comment.  Maybe I have it figured out, but maybe not.  I have missed being able to comment on blogs I have read everyday for years.

Trying again as I am sidelined by a double ankle fracture and a huge pink cast.  Surgery aside, it has forced me to slow down, way down, and stirred a great compassion for my smart active mother who never complained about how hard it must have been to live the last two years of her life in a wheel chair, and my vivacious and funny aunt Annie who used crutches from age fourteen on due to a rare crippling disease.

I have been touched by the calls and cards, the folks who show up with food and offers to get me out of the house.  I am stunned and daunted by the challenge presented by my front steps and the sweet curving path to the street.

  Every day I am stonger and every day I realize how blessed I am.  Every day I give thanks that when I fell down the interior stairs in my house, I had my phone with me.  And everyday I am grateful for baby rivers and boyfriend who jumped in the car when they got my call, kept me talking as they drove, and called 911 when they realized I had passed out. I am a very lucky girl with a big fat left foot.

Hmm...

I have realized that I do not have a bucket list.

Second-Hand Happy

It really makes me happy when Baby Rivers is happy.  She now has a special guy in her life who makes her smile. A lot. AND I really like him!  He is smart and funny and so  kind to her, and to me!  He has good manners, a good job and he can fix things. He likes to help this old lady.  His mama raised him right. Yay.

Dental Spa?

I have been going to the same dentist for about fifteen years.  My daughter recommended him because he was cute and charming and his office was interesting.  My daughter was 22 at the time and impressed by cute dentists.

 Dr. Dentist now owns a high tech practice that takes up the top two floors of a downtown building...and he is still the only dentist.  He and all of his assistants wear carefully placed tiny microphones and earphones to keep things running smoothly. While a the technician was prepping me, Dr.Dentist was talking quietly to someone in another part of the office and at the same time making sure that I was comfortable and ready for the procedure.

 I wanted to be upset that maybe these people were distracted from the most important patient (me)  but actually they were giving me very good care. I wanted to complain that the white white walls, fabulous art and views of the city were a bit over the top, but really...it was more like the serenity room at  five star spa.

 I wanted to be annoyed when I had to wait twenty five minutes for the anesthesia to take hold, but when they brought me to a comfy lounge chair in the roof garden, gave me fresh a white blanket and offered me all of the current glossy magazines and a choice of music, I just gave up on complaints.

Dr. Dentist  likes art, beautiful architecture, impeccable design, gardening and comfort.  He also really likes saving teeth, advanced dentistry and technology.  He has invested time and money in learning and implementing  the latest in dentistry, hired great people to work with him and created an environment in which he thrives. I walked in today with a broken tooth and I walked out with a crown fully fit and  fashioned and seated - in one visit.  No need to return unless there is an issue, and there should be none.

It is a far cry from the one chair dentist who yelled at me as a child and filled my teeth with giant gobs of mercury.  Dr. Dentist is still pretty cute.

Marigolds and Popcorn

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - What's Really Important?


A group of British retirees decide to "outsource" their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India. Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self. Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past.

I found this movie totally delightful though I admit I can’t get a handle on what I might have thought of it at a younger age. The theater was full of graying, grayed (and balding) women, and we all loved it!  Who couldn’t love this amazing cast, this whimsical but plausible idea and the constant visual feast offered by the Marigold Movie?  We embraced and identified with  every nuance, insecurity, corny line, and wrinkle.

Sign me up to hang out with such interesting characters in my old age. Please don’t point out the rails along the walls or the monkey dishes of canned fruit cocktail. Don’t show me the “excursion” van for Drs. appointments, or the multipurpose room for popsickle crafts. Show me Judi and Maggie and some fabulous clothes. Show me hopes and dreams I'd never admit I still have. Show me new places to go and new things to learn. Show me the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.  Just maybe not in India.

Mazel Tov!

After ten years of teaching adult Old Testament classes at the Methodist Church, my middle-aged brother in law began to think more and more about Judaism. At the same time, my eighty-nine year old mother was becoming good friends with a Rabbi at her retirement home. She introduced the two. What followed was quite stunning. Hours and hours of conversation over ancient texts, issues of great and small consequence, ethics, morals, rules and questions! Rabbi encouraged BIL to learn more. Sadly retirement Rabbi died. BIL continued his study and joined a Reformed Temple. He said that he had always felt that he was Jewish by heritage. He decided to convert. Last week my brother in law stepped to the Bema and read from the Torah. At 61 he was the Bar Mitzvah boy!! It was an amazingly beautiful service - and his friends and family from all over the world showed up to celebrate with him. He provided an inspiring and thoughtful D'var Torah (sermon) - that had people saying..."We thought you would become president of the congregation...but maybe you might become a Rabbi!" The party that followed was a mix of wonderful people, joyous music, fabulous food and tremendous joy. The Methodist friends beamed with pride: "We trained him!" The marathoners(he has run a marathon on every continent) said the same! Everyone there gathered to celebrate and honor a man who chose his own path. I have never seen him so happy. Mazel Tov!

Mage Made me Think of This

I learned to swim in a cold Adirondack lake at 8:30 every morning of my childhood summers. When you live in a village on a lake you make sure your kids know how to swim. My parents signed us up every summer for the early morning community lessons that produced everything from splashers to life guards to olympians and professional syncronized swimmers. An old photograph shows me and my sibs in soaked suits, guts pulled in from the brutal lakewater cold shivering under a shared towel. After the lessons we went home, warmed up, ate a meal and returned for the warmer afternoon to play on the beach and swim. It was a big deal when you were certified to go beyond the ropes to the dock. Sadly there was at least one drowning every summer. Lessons or not. A few years ago I jumped off a boat into a cold Idaho lake - and my life quickly passed before my eyes..I am definitely too old to be that cold. Now I love the gently heated old lady pool. May 8, 2012 4:44 PM

So sad

So sad tonight as I hear from a young friend who is very ill and has no health insurance and no funds. The free clinic is Wednesday nights (only)for three hours and they will not deal with any condition that requires further tests or lab work. It is not possible to make an appointment there. He has been to the emergency room where he was admitted once overnight and then sent home the next morning because there is no insurance to treat his swollen gall bladder or compromised liver function. Just so sad. Somehow I didn't think this was possible in our country.

Big cars and Canned Corn

Tonight I had an hour to wait in a different part of town so I decided to treat myself to dinner. I saw a diner with lots of cars in the parking lot, and thought that might be a good choice. I did not note that the cars in the lot were mostly very big and more than slightly old.

The clientele, like their cars, were more than slightly old. I fit the demographic,except for the more than slightly old big car.

I am pretty sure that the menu hasn't changed in 40 years: iceberg salad, pork chops, chicken or ham, canned corn and rice pudding or ice cream. Just like mama used to make.

Sitting alone in the restaurant among the silver haired ladies and bald men, and the walkers, canes and portable oxygen, I felt pretty fortunate to be independent and mobile - and pretty smug about my small car and my life as a non-smoker.

I would have loved to have had a dining companion, and truthfully,some of the old bald guys looked pretty good, but I think that next time I will choose the restaurant with smaller cars in the lot, and dark greens on the menu.

Who Knew??

Topic for today: bed frame. Topic I have never given much (any) thought to: bed frame. Who knew?

Baby Rivers is moving and combining households and I inherited her brand new upholstered headboard - which came with a brand new bed frame. I was so excited to get the sleek and sophisticated, modern headboard and to say good by to my foofoo whatwasIthinking lala metal bed with its curls and swirls.

My old headboard and frame went on the truck to goodwill - new bed installed and I am thrilled! Not only do I feel like I have checked into an 18 pillow hotel - I got the best night's sleep I have had in ages. Same mattress, same box spring. The only difference was the frame.

I had no idea how much difference a good bed frame makes! Spread the word!

Goes Around, Comes Around!

When Baby Rivers was barely able to sit up, we noticed that she was a sorter. We saw that somehow she could see categories and manipulate her blocks and toys into logical groups. Maybe all babies do this - but we thought she was unusually bright.

Fast forward over thirty years: Yours truly is trying to help now grown up and beautiful BR move house. Not an easy task!

There is so much stuff. None of it makes sense to me. She noticed that I was sitting on the floor sorting things. I was making up categories and manipulating all sorts of diverse things into piles of "go togethers" that might make sense when she unpacked.

She thought I was unusually bright!

Happy Birthday From Mom- Pretty amazing!

From the year I left for college until the year she died, my mother always called me on my birthday. No matter where I was, no matter where she was. Sometimes I would send her flowers on this day with a card that reminded her that my birthday was also her "Mother's Day" for her because I was her first born. I was thinking about that today (my bd) when I decided to check my phone messages. Sometimes before you can hear your current messages, the mailbox lady says"the following message will be erased" and you have the option of resaving or deleting. Well, you guessed it: the message waiting to be erased was from MY MOM on the day before she died. (Play the na na na na music) - Of course I listened and resaved. Pretty cool that I got a birthday message from my mom. Just like always. Wow!

Put Your Car in Park!!

Today as I was driving home I noticed a woman driving with one hand and scooping something off the car floor with the other. I couldn't help the horrific memory that washed over me.

I was twelve years old and walking to the corner store. Ahead of me was a babysitter pushing a young child in a stroller.
At the corner a woman had stopped her car at the light and she took that moment to reach for something on the floor. Her foot slipped off the break and on to the gas and her car shot forward over the the baby and the stroller.

For hours and hours afterward we heard the agonized screams of that baby's father.
I can't imagine the torment the driver has suffered over this thoughtless tragedy. I know that for me the memory is as vivid as the actual experience.

The rule: if you are going to reach for anything in your car - stop, put the car in park and do what you need to do. NEVER EVER believe that you can just this one time reach over a pick up whatever has slid form the seat.

I know I have written about this before - but it all came back to me today once again.

My Share

The tax man, the tax man, we all love the tax man. I understand taxes. I support taxes. I support the idea that those with more should pay more. I believe in helping those in need. I like good roads and libraries and schools and programs that make life better for everyone. I just don't feel like paying taxes today. Poor planning on my part. My rental, my misunderstanding of how SS is taxed, and a bit more income than I anticipated have resulted in an astounding tax bill this year. Ouch!!

Only 17 Shopping Days...

Birthdays were big in my little town. Everyone knew everyone else and nobody was left out of the parties. Flossie Smith, the unmarried lady at the bank, sent cards to every kid in town, the upstreet woolworths supplied little paper baskets for mints and peanuts, and most parents copied Ann Van Arnam's smart idea of tying a birthday bow on the celebrant's chair. Cake mixes had just come along and moms were excited by this new luxury - my mom became a specialist at white cake with chocolate frosting sprinkled with walnuts. My best friend Mary and I shared the birthday month of March - with birthdays three days apart. Among my dusty warm memories: Mary's mother Ann walking me home after Mary's party and reminding me that I would never again have just one digit in my age...and to enjoy my last three days in one delightful digit.

Love

I love my yoga classes! Just saying.

Hearts and Paste - Sweet Memory

Valentines! Years and years ago, Mrs. Cunningham the most famous second grade teacher in upstate New York dipped her ruler into the big jar of paste and delievered each of us a generous dab of white, creamy almost candy paste on a piece of scrap paper - and the fun began. Foils and doilies and ribbons and lace - sweet thoughts and not a little ingested paste. The result was ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL valentine for mom. Fancy as could be and full of the passionate love of a chubby second grader. My mom, who never got around to send Christmas cards LOVED Valentine's Day - and she loved ME especially on on Valentine's day in second grade. Mom lived to 91 and never missed sending everyone she knew a Valentine. Thinking of her (and Mrs. Cunningham) today.