some thoughts on aging...

You know you’re old when…

   For us (DH and myself), it was the first time we visited the Senior Center in our area – the same Senior Center we used to drop my mother off at several times a week 20 years ago. Someone had told us that it had been recently been remodeled and renovated and that it had a really large well stocked exercise room.  Since I have had trouble convincing DH that we need to exercise more, I thought this might offer a possible solution. It was close. It was convenient. And best of all - it wasn’t expensive.

   We have found that many fitness centers are expensive and most people don’t continue after the first few months. We do walk at the mall twice a week. We walk the upstairs and the downstairs each once… and keep track of the other ‘walkers’ who are doing the same. We have names for them (not their real names – but made-up ones like the ‘Pat look alike’, ‘the serious walker’, ‘the couple with the friendly wife’, etc.).  We do wonder what they call us...?  But generally, we see them all on the days we walk… and occasionally have begun to either smile or wave at each other.

   There is no shopping done during these expeditions – well, almost none. Occasionally I will run into a store for a specific item (like candles at the bath and body shop - I love Campfire coffee or Hot Cocoa and cream), but since DH is waiting, there is no real time for shopping around. And on occasion, I find it necessary to grab a Mocha Frappuccino at the Mall Starbucks. DH would prefer a Cinnabon – and once in a while we do indulge. 

Anyway, this is how reaching 74 has found us… and I thought it might be interesting and fun to share just how life is at this stage of the game. You may find that a lot of this sounds very familiar.

So for the next few postings, I'm going to mention other things that perhaps are 'age-related' and occasionally funny, sometimes sad, but none-the-less worth mentioning (IMO anyway).

If you can remember times like these, I'd love to hear about them.

As always, thanks for visiting.  And hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs,

- Rian

summer 2018 semester has started...

Aint' that the truth...

Saw this on Pinterest the other day and thought, "Yes!" 

Guess we all have those days. Well,  classes started this week. I'm back in my aerobic/yoga class twice a week. Am I sore already? You bet. This morning I woke up thinking... 'oh no, I can't move. How can I go do more exercise?' But I did and it was fine. Sometimes I have to tell yourself to 'just do it!' 

Pottery class won't start for another week.  And I am anxious to get back to it. But since I missed the whole spring semester, I was able to spend more time on my writing. I now have a little over 20,000 words into my latest work. Will I ever finish it? Don't know. But lately it seems to be flowing well... and I certainly enjoy the process.

This past week my  5 year old grand daughter had her dance recital. She takes dance, gymnastics, and swimming. I love watching the little ones at these recitals. They are so cute in their costumes... and whether they actually perform or not, they are adorable. After the performance, we all went out for frozen yogurt.

grand daughter is second from the right

She also came over to our house the other night while her parents attended an orientation for her kindergarten class this Fall. While here she decided that I didn't have enough pins, flowers, and hair clips and said she would bring some over next time so she could do my hair properly. 5 year olds are really fun. 

Actually 19 year olds are fun too. My grandson who is visiting with us right now told me that our house was like living in a zoo. This might not seem like a compliment, but I believe he meant it as such as he seems to enjoy the cats inside and the abundance of critter activity outside. And since our youngest son is the curator of the Herpetology Dept at the Dallas Zoo, we take any zoo reference as a good thing.

And lastly DH and I made our semi annual visit to Ham's Peach Orchard in Terrell, Texas this past week. We loaded up on fresh peaches, peach ice-cream, peach cobbler, peach cider, etc. Here are a few pics!

peaches

blueberries, strawberries, etc.

fresh veggies

...and DH enjoying his home-made peach ice-cream in the rockers out back!

Hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Weekend!  The Flags are flying and the weather is beautiful... (a bit warm as we may hit the high 90's or possible triple digits this week).

Kittens! A funny story! And being Happy...

Guess what! DH found Shiney's kittens this morning. She had moved them originally from the garage to the side of the house... and now they're over by the fence (in the flowerpots). She is black and all her kittens are black (as far as we can tell... some blacker than others).  And I have a friend  who has about 30 acres in Anna, Texas. They have horses, burros, dogs, and cats. Her outside (barn) cat had kittens a few weeks before Shiney.  She sent me these pics.

           These were sent from her iPhone to mine....

This mama had 2 solid orange tabbies, 2 orange and white, 2 calico, and 1 grey tabby...















Both she and Shiney appear to be very good mamas.  My friend will keep all her barn kitties, there's no question there. As for us, we usually take the kittens to the Adoption Center here, but we're procrastinating this time. This is Shiney's first litter and she's been such a good mama that we may let her keep this first batch. If we can work with them and get them friendly (which we have done on other occasions... especially since it's summer and we can sit out back with them), then we can take them in for their vacs and neutering. We'll see. May have to play this hand by ear (that sounds kind of weird, but you know what I mean).

By the way, I will tell you a funny story about my 18 month old grand daughter.She and her dad were over here this afternoon. She has now discovered the stairs and it is the greatest source of entertainment for her... climbing up and down them (with either her dad or me holding her hands), and then eventually looking down through the banisters to the entry below.  Today we gave her a small ball that she could throw down, it would bounce and one of us would catch it and throw it back to her. It was an amusing game... for the first 15 minutes or so... then it became a quest for a way to get her back downstairs without causing an uproar.

Well, I decided to try something.... I asked her if she would like to go back down and get some ice-cream (she loves ice-cream!!).  I didn't know if she would understand or even want to leave her little game, but surprisingly enough, she immediately grabbed my hand and headed down, led me to the kitchen, then to the freezer... and everyone laughed when I handed her the tub of Blue-Bell's Home-Made Vanilla and she sat right down on the floor with the carton on her lap.  All she needed was a spoon and she was ready!

Her dad snapped this with his iPhone fast before she started taking the top off...

On another note:  Just listened to a program on PBS called "Happy"...  It was a study on what made people happy... in different lands as well as in general. However, it really didn't tell us anything that most of us don't already know. If your basic needs are satisfied and you have people around that know and love you, most are generally happy. Those that don't have these things... those who are very poor or alone in the world... as well as those who have too much or want too much... where the drive for money over-rides everything else are not. It does have to do with dopamine... but apparently the conditions we find (or put) ourselves in affect this chemical. Exercise and laughter apparently increase the dopamine whereas stress and not enough sleep diminish it.  Now... realize that I'm paraphrasing the whole program... but this is what I took from it.

What was interesting that I didn't know:  they showed a circle chart where it showed the amount of... how do I phrase this.... maybe the *tendency to be happy we are born with* (50%) as well as the environment we live in (10%), and the leftover amount that we may have control over (40%). It was this 40% that we could play around with... by doing things we enjoyed, being around people we cared about, sharing... etc. And another interesting fact they mentioned was one's tendency to for want of a better phrase - *to pop back* after adversity.  It was not always simple, but it did involve "choice".