Jeanne's rules

I certainly have a lot of them. As does my girlfriend, CM. Perhaps it is a luxury of us aging singles who live alone?

People who don't look 80:
- EB at exercise class wearing short jean jacket. She got it at the Bridge, a faith-based donation center in town.
- FA - a dynamo with a fascinating history and a busy present.

The most beautiful walk in the world (book), by John Baxter. Stuff about Paris is always welcome to me. He gives literary tours of Paris and lives in the same building where Shakespeare and company started out. So, he has tourists always clustering. Got it through Overdrive as an ebook. Miscellanea of the present and past. Talks about what makes a tour interesting or not and the importance of walking to discover a place.

The high cost of maintaining your 5 senses

Have just come from the dentist after having learned the hard cruel repercussions from having bitten down on an unpopped popcorn kernel last week - The "best" option involves 4 steps, two doctors, 10 months and $4500. (They tell you the other options but make them sound really unappealing). It made me think about the high cost of our senses. I will rank them in order of cost (just guessing here)
1. Taste - if it involves the TEETH it gets really expensive...cavities, root canals and now IMPLANTS
2. Sight - glasses and cataract surgery and laser surgery can get pricy
3. Hearing - an expensive, tiny, problematic object is a bitch to sic on the elderly person
4. Smell - those that lose their sense of smell just get by without it
5. Touch - pretty much the last thing to go

Am headphone-less and all the other people in this library are really getting on my nerves. All of my cheap headphones I acquired on airplanes have now bitten the dust. I have to listen to:
- talking
- phones ringing
- people quietly cursing to themselves
- the clicking as a woman photographs pages on the Internet
- one guy who is constantly turning the dial on the mouse to go down the page
- sighs and groans from people not doing well in their online games

Having a hot flash. It will pass. The weather is great outside and I am sort of warmly dressed.

Feeling invisible

Sometimes feeling invisible is bad and sometimes I WANT to be invisible. A woman of a certain age gets to feeling invisible. Flirting works better with infants than with men these days. Also feel like a follower not a leader, an attender not an organizer.

Things that make me feel old:

- the restaurant where my 60th birthday party was held has been torn down
- my mother and two friends that were present at that party are dead
- I still think tattoos are LOW CLASS
- I am still LEASING a telephone
- I have never spent money on a television

There is a lot of new music I want to hear/get - Stevie Nicks, Jackson Brown, Prince, Leonard Cohen. Right now am enjoying a new album on Hoopla
- 24 karat gold - songs from the vault (album) by Stevie Nicks. Especially loving the songs Twisted and Lady!

"The Villages"

Imagine over 107,000 people over 55 living within 5 square miles. It is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the country! I don't think I would like it. Too crowded with wealthy retired people. It was founded by a billionaire and is known as "Disneyland for adults". It is in Florida, not sure exactly where.

A job has become available in my area of expertise. However, it is a "starter" job, downsized to 20 hours in order to save money on benefits. While it would be nice to have some extra money, the thought of having to commit myself to a schedule is not appealing and I would rather escape from some of the people who hang out at his place rather than help them. I am not proud of that sentiment, but there it is. I was there yesterday and some people came in and sat at the adjoining table. I couldn't wait to leave. Two people, one handicapped, curse words every other word, and a rank odor of cat piss. I am very sensitive to the smell of urine and unwashed bodies and stale smoke. (Hmmm...maybe I WOULD like the Villages?!)

Nice to wake up today with only the prospect of my usual research haunt and choir practice. Sometimes I wear myself out running around to all of my various activities. Like tomorrow, when I have arthritis exercise class at 8 AM, followed by art class from 9:30 - 12:30. Then I have to run down to Ocean City to return a library book. I tried to renew it, but someone had put it on hold. French women don't get facelifts talks about aging gracefully without too much intervention.

I was on my way to Morocco once

but I got waylaid in Barcelona (LAID being the operative word). I met a man in the park and ended up living with him for sixth months. Never did get to Morocco.

Another great story about people meeting online. I am listening to it. Not sure if I want to meet someone. I have gotten so unadventurous in my old age.

Today was going to be my EXCURSION day. I even have a FOLDER called excursions. I looked at the first 10 papers but could not decide. Have run out of energy, ideas and money. So am doing the same old, same old. Breakfast date, laptop hoboing, art opening tonight. There is something comforting about my routines.

French Quarter for your thoughts

Clever name of my weekly nail polish from O.P.I.  I usually explain the puns to my Vietnamese nail technician but this one made me tired just thinking about it.  "Why did you pick THAT nail polish"?, inquired a male friend of mine.  Because I saw a picture in the April edition of Ladies home journal of many earthy tones that were "in" this Spring.

Was reading a blog by a young person who had someone die...a twin? a sister?  who died.  She was all broken up about it and lamenting about the trivial things that people complain about on social media.  That's me.  Like talking about my NAIL POLISH.

Sitting with the father of a friend today who needs watching.  Since I am a doer and a thinker, I always want to ENGAGE the elderly.  They are very hard to engage!  Asking if he wants to watch TV, read, listen to music, go for a ride in the wheelchair to look at the flowers and trees.  Even as I am saying it, I am thinking how LAME I sound, if these are the only possible activities available.  Of course, he exhibits NO interest in any of these.  Perhaps one should just do stuff and not ask?  Or just let the aging "vege out" as my friend used to say.  I do not approve of aides who talk on the phone instead of paying attention to their clients, but here I sit on the laptop while two aides bathe my ward
I don't want to bother him but I don't want to ignore him either.

The shark bited him and he died

Six year olds have such an adorable way of speaking.  I just can't bring myself to correct their grammar.  Had breakfast with two adorable twins who are very affectionate.  Trying to notice the differences between them each time I get to see them.  Someone kissed me and said "I love you" but which one?  Today I learned that one of them just kisses the "BB" (a cross between a pillow and a stuffed animal).  The other one kisses "everybody".  Then he clarified...."Not everybody.  Just my family and my teacher."  So, I had ONE arm around O. (who was watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on his iPad) and one arm around D. (who was playing a sword fight game on HIS iPad).  Talk about cacophony!  Oh, they were both coughing and sniffling too so I hope I don't catch anything.  One of them wanted to kiss me ON THE LIPS.  I couldn't avoid such an offer!  Also watched part of The hobbit and some other hideous action movie from long ago.  Charmingly, when they first arrived in Fairton, they wanted to watch The Swiss family Robinson, the same movie we watched the LAST time they visited Fairton. 

All the libraries are closed today (Good Friday).  Luckily I got into the Sweet life bakery (on Landis Avenue in Vineland, NJ) which is ONLY open Fridays and Saturdays now.  Unfortunately, they are cutting back more and more.  First, they stopped making breads and now they have stopped making soups and sandwiches and now they have cut way back on their hours.  Seems like a nice crowd is in and out today, anyway.

Went to a nutrition lecture and did some dances with the WII.  That was really fun.  The nutrition program was full of old people (I mean "actively aging" people).  Wonder if we get on the nerves of the people who work there.  I know we get on MY nerves.  A lot of characters who insist on putting in their "two cents".

I've been living in the past all weekend

Is this what it is like to get older?  The past suddenly seems more interesting than the present.  Saturday night I went to  a concert at the Landis Theater in Vineland, NJ.  Lauren Fox sang songs of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.  She seemed like Joni Mitchell of long ago.  When she sang Leonard's songs, she put on a fedora.  It was interesing getting the back story behind various songs.  She sang the one Joni wrote while hanging out with Leonard at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City.  Then she sang the one that HE wrote there, but it was about Janis Joplin.  He was quite the womanizer.  (Actually, weren't we all?)  It was taking me back to my youth.  She finished up with a song by each of them.  The word "FREE" came up an awful lot.  We all wanted to be free forever, not realizing that we could be imprisoned by our own selves.

Also thinking about the past a lot as someone is researching a communal house I lived in perhaps from 1975 - 1980.  So, there is a flurry of emails back and forth as we all recall things.  I have been procrastinating on my answers for a questionnaire that he sent out.  I had better hurry before all the stories THAT I REMEMBER have already been mentioned by others.  It was a good time at Atlantic Street House in Bridgeton, and I still love all the people, those that are not DEAD.

Sunday I went to a classical music concert which was fabulous.  Had to drive all the way down to Stockton State College in Pomona but at least a friend went with me.  I HAD to hear Rachmaninoff piano concerto #2 as it holds great sentimental value for me.  I was in LUST with a Frenchman who chose that record at my mother's house (she was away), put it on the stereo and proceded to tell me that it was "the most erotic piece of music ever written".  Need I say more about our subsequent activities?  I enjoyed hearing it again and reminiscing about former loves and one night stands. (I need to make a list!)

Finished a book, Beautiful ruins : a novel, by Jess Walter.  It has been mentioned in quite a few places and lists.  It jumps around a bit between time periods and locales.  Interestingly enough, I was on the Italian coastline in 1967 and there was a rumor that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton were dining in an outdoor cafe in Protofino.  So this guy writes a fictional (?) tale of a hotel owner who encounters an actress who apparently had a daliance with Richard Burton and is being hidden away in this obscure town and inn on the coast.  Later in life, an old man and a young writer meet at an agent's office in Los Angeles and, along with his assistant, they reveal more details about this story.  I thought is was pretty interesting and suspenseful and could almost have been true.  I borrowed it from the Vineland Public Library (FIC Walter Jess). 

The ruins

Am listening to an audiobook by Scott Smith called The ruins.  Everything is ominous.  A bunch of friends are in Cancun and they go on an adventure to find the missing brother of a guy they ran into.  The story is fraught with confusion and dread.  The Americans are traveling with a Greek who speaks no English, and a German, the brother of the missing guy.  They run into unfriendly Mayans who speak no English.  There are flies and snakes and unhelpful people and secret paths and it is all making me very nervous;

Speaking of The ruins, I feel like a bit of a ruin myself.  Think I am going to have to make an EFFORT to lose weight.  I can't think of another way to stop the inexorable march of time.  I am feeling decrepit.  I look around at some of my women friends who are over 70 or over 80 and they look great.  I feel like crap and feel like I look the same way.  I have tried exercising and I don't feel any better.

Finished another library book, Started early and took my dog.  I love that title.  The book is by Kate Atkinson.  I found it enjoyable but very confusing.  Many characters moving around.  A  murder, a snatched child, a social worker, a detective, many car trips.  From the flap I learned that the author has written several other books featuring the same former private detective Jackson Brodie.  I liked this quote, "Now, like so much else in Jackson's world, videos were obsolete".  I liked the Britishness of this book.  "He came to the end of every day feeling as if he had failed somehow.....He lived his life in a state of guilt, every day waiting to be found out.  He wasn't even sure what it was he had done".  "Speaking truth to power.  That was what the Quakers said, he'd had to arrest a few in the eighthies, peaceniks, yacking on about "direct action" and Cruise missles.  For people who worshipped in silence they seemed to talk a lot."

It's a jungle out there

Just finished a class on DRIVING for senior citizens. It was enough to make one paranoid. Even if I don't DO any of those things, there are a lot of people out there who are not yielding when they are supposed to and who are making crazy left hand turns. Those are the two biggest causes of accidents with the aged. We learned about how it becomes more difficult to SURVIVE an accident after age 75. I'm not there yet, but it was somewhat depressing to contemplate. Also learned a bunch of curious facts, such as you can be booked for a D.U.I. if you take your medication wrong. I know I drive other people crazy by driving too slow (the speed limit) but they drive me bonkers by turning out in front of me when they are going 10 miles an hour and I am going 50. So which is greater...the people who HONK at me, or the people at whom I would like to honk? I try not to honk, as much as I may want to. Teacher advised us not to encourage ROAD RAGE but to avoid it at all costs.

I tried to COOK the other day. It was pretty much a failure. I tried to make tuna casserole with a recipe with no measurements, just a list of ingredients. I may try it again with some adjustments. Or, maybe I will just rip up the recipe and forget about it. I had just suddenly gotten an urge for an old fashioned casserole with potato chips on top. I don't have the patience for cooking. Although, as the driving instructor pointed out, we have all EARNED the right to be patient.

My local paper is going to regionalize. I HATE that. It started out being the Bridgeton Evening news. I still call it that even though they changed the name to The news of Cumberland County. Now, any day it is going to become The South Jersey times. Libraries and newspapers and social service organizations do not IMPROVE when they regionalize. They just get more out of touch with the local needs. But of course freeholders and politicians LOVE regionalization. My paper drove me nuts the other day. A guy got murdered. Instead of James Penn III, they wrote James Penn!!! on the caption. Lame!

Why didn't I think of that? A guy, Jonathan Evison, wrote a book called The revised fundamentals of caregiving. It is fiction, but I had a LOT of material on THAT subject, having spent many years accompanying my mother through all the stages of one of those "life care facilities", The Quadrangle, in Haverford, PA.

Another frustrating Sprint interaction ruined my morning. It is the PIN number and the security question. Somehow I ended up with a totally nonsensical combination of security question and answer. I can't seem to get rid of it. I will just have to resign myself to the situation where the security question is "What is the name of your first pet?" and the answer has NOTHING TO DO with the question. I would never choose that question because there could be several forms of the name. They assigned me the question and the original answer they assigned me was "delicate". Huh? I just have such an overwhelming need for life to make sense, it causes me high anxiety.

Feeling kind of manic. Too many ideas rushing around in my head.

I think I will make a good "crone". Well, I can't figure out the female version of curmudgeon. I hate to keep harping on this "senior citizen" issue but I am feeling more every day like I will make a good one.
- I hate change
- I don't like it when libraries, newspapers, etc. change their names. There is nothing like a library named after a town. You know exactly where it is. Please, do not name a library after me when I die. I would much rather have a bench or a rocking chair in Cape May. (If it costs $150 to buy a BRICK at Wilberham Park in Cape May, how the hell much does it cost to buy a BENCH!)
- I can't stand this concept "they" are trying to sell us of REGIONALIZATION. Local library system was told to do that and twenty years of sharing and organization just went down the tubes. Now, our local newspaper is changing their name and losing any local focus they ever had. I really don't WANT to read about the arrest of drug lords in Camden. Of course, the LOCAL stuff I read makes me want to move away. Three paragraphs of these blowhards and I get depressed and have to stop reading.

Library reviews: Millville Public Library (from a computer user standpoint)
Pros: Lots of room to spread out in case you have a lot of CRAP like I do, you can plug in your headphones without an extender cord,they will usually give you more computer time if it is not busy
Cons: No food or beverages, no cell phone, only one hour of computer time

Saw some friends when I was out with Breakfast club. I was asked what I have been doing. "Just trying to get used to retirement", I said. A friend quiped, "What's to get used to. It took me about an HOUR."