grow older better

Category: human interest

  • Scams, Medicare, And Obamacare

    scammerObamacare or the Affordable Care Act [ACA] is NOT the same as Medicare.

     

    If you have Medicare, there is need to do anything on October 1st.

    ACA or Obamacare is for people who are not 65 or older who need insurance.

    You might get called by those unethical scammers who will try to sell you something or get your information by telling you they can do something insurance-wise  for you.

    DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM

    They want to steal your credit card information or identity

    PS – please alert any seniors you know

    Thank you.

  • Washboards, Washing Machines, And Memories

    I have had a lot of conversations of late with a good friend, my age, who is visiting, and we have been reminiscing about how things were…

    washboard

    It’s fun to try and remember how life was before all the conveniences we take for granted were in existence, or in my existence. Things like washing machines, TVs, checking accounts, credit cards, and a whole lot of other modern conveniences…. 

    I have decided to write about these to refresh my memory and to make some sort of record for 

    my son and anyone else who is interested in living history.

     I often regret that I did not push my own mom a bit harder to talk more about her childhood and youth – she was generally reluctant to talk about it so I did not push hard.  Now I wish I had asked a lot more questions.

     @@@@@@@@@@


    Memories about washing clothes

     

    There aren’t many household chores I enjoy – but washing clothes, oddly, is one I love. 

    I don’t do them by hand; I do have a washing machine so the part I love is hanging them outside on a line to dry in sun.

    Doing this often has me thinking back on how we washed and dried clothes before all the modern appliances came into being.

    I remember a double sink in the basement of the house I grew up in. It was deep to hold the washing board and I think it was made of concrete.

    My mom used Fels Naptha and scrubbed the clothes in one half of that sink and rinsed them in the other half. They were then wrung out by hand, and hung outside on a line to dry, or hung on a clothesline in the basement when the weather was bad.

    I don’t recall when we got a real washing machine, but I do remember it had a wringer on it!  One fed the clothing thru that wringer to squeeze out excess water.

    That was modern technology!

    Over the years, I moved on to machines that wash, rinse, and spin dry….

    Yes, I do own a dryer, but my preference will always be the sun! 

     

    And PS – I now make my own laundry soap and guess what? The main ingredient is Fels Naptha!

    What are some of your memoir of how things  were? 

    Stay tuned for more “blasts” from my past  :roll

  • Birthday Thoughts [for our adult kids]

    newborn

    35 years ago, at 3:55AM in Boston Massachusetts, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy!

    Then, about 20+ years ago, when he was a teenager, we went to see City Slickers.

    There is a scene where Billy Crystal is awoken at 5:16AM by his mother who reminisces about his birth.

    She does this every year – and Billy Crystal mouths her exact words as she says them.

    “Oh no” said my son, “I can see it now!”

    Well – I never did start the reminiscing calls – because for one thing – 3:55AM and I have become strangers in these 35 years. But it keeps him wondering if I will!

    But I can schedule this to appear at 3:55AM EDT 🙄

    And for most of his birthdays, he calls me and says…”yes, mom, you HAVE aged [whatever age he is] years…because I tend to say how can you be [x age] when I have not aged that many years….

    happy birthday

    Do you have a birthday custom that has gone on as your kids grew into adulthood?

     

    Please comment below and thank you.

  • When I Was Young, I Wanted To Be A ……

    reading_a_book

    Me?  I always wanted to write.

    When I was a kid, I used to write books for children.

    They were usually about horses and/or dogs.

     

    Anyway – I grew to be an adult who did write [and talk] about children because I was in the field of early childhood and developmental psychology – but I kept thinking about books for children.

    Then somewhere in the early 70s I started writing some books, but in those pre-computer days it was typewriters, carbon paper, and sending manuscripts and queries to children’s magazine and book editors.

    Never had much interest shown, but I still kept writing things for children, and things for adults. The adults ones, text books and Kindle books, were published and that was good.

    BUT….I still wanted to write books for kids

    Then a few weeks ago I thought okay – I saved all of these old type written papers and I looked and found them.

    All sorts of writings. For children, adults, text book ideas, etc.  With all my many moves, it was remarkable that the old files were not lost over the decades.

    So now I am going to use the advent of technology to put these ideas into books for Kindle.

    Even in the pre-technology days, somewhere in my head I always wished there was some way that would make it easy for me to put my words and my pictures together and you that day has arrived.

    I am so happy that the world of technology has finally caught up with all the things that I’ve always wanted to do!

    So – I am going to write some children’s books

    When you are young, what did you want to do? Did you? Will you?

    Comments?

    Thank you.

  • Is It Age? Or Is It Me?

    I seemed to have had a harder time adapting to the time change this Spring and gave it some thought.

    Adapting To Light, Dark, And Other Phenomenon

    time changes

     

    I know, as I have aged, I am learning to accept that my body reacts differently to various phenomenon. 

    For example if I do a lot of heavy work like lifting, hauling heavy stuff around, gardening etc. I need extra time to feel like I’m back to normal.

    And, as I wrote, I do tend to hibernate in the winter and I think this has to do with light/dark [as opposed to my being a bear.]

     

    In the Portland winter, it is dark until nearly 8 AM. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place where it is so dark so late in the morning that I am waking up when it’s still very dark out. 

    This phenomenon can be adapted to.  We go from summer to fall – gradually losing a minute or two of morning daylight and we adapt. After a while, I am waking up in total darkness and that’s ok.

    But then we suddenly shift the clock and this year I had a more difficult time adapting to the time change and I wonder if it’s age-related.

    It took me almost 2 weeks to get back into the swing of getting up in the dark.

    For me, the time changes are not a matter of gaining or losing an hour of sleep because I personally sleep the same amount of time. 

    I figured it is the sudden shift of the light/dark cycle that gets me… 

    We humans like to adapt to changes but it seems it is easier to adapt over some period of time than it is to adapt so suddenly.

     

     You? Comments? Thoughts?

    Thank you