My Apocalyptic Michigan Summer: Smoke, Parasites, and Other Delights

 

This summer, Michigan feels less like a state and more like a testing ground for whatever fresh disaster the universe wants to beta‑test. Jean was hunting for a topic to write about this week then Michigan, never one to miss an opportunity for dramatic flair, said, “Hold my beer,” and delivered smoke, parasites, bedbugs, and even a grocery store suspending carry-out service like it was a preview for the end of time. And because she lives right in the middle of it, she gets a front‑row seat to the chaos, complete with hazy skies, health alerts, and the occasional reminder that our global connections are far more tangled — and far more fragile — than we like to admit…. AI

Michigan is one of twenty states affected by the unhealthy air quality caused by smoke drifting down from the historic number of wildfires in Northern Ontario. The sky has been a dull haze — the kind you mistake for fog until you step outside and get a lungful of it. It was so thick today that the one grocery store in town that still has “bag boys” that take your purchases out to your car wasn’t offering the service. OSHA doesn’t forbid outdoor work during wildfire smoke, but they do say employers should offer NIOSH‑approved masks for voluntary use, give workers frequent indoor breaks, and reschedule strenuous tasks.

Welcome to Trump’s there’s‑no‑global‑warming world. As of this writing, he has blocked federal U.S. waterbombers from assisting across the border, even though Canada sent their firefighting air teams to California last fall. He’s also threatening Canada with a tariff on “cross‑border pollution,” claiming they’re “willfully negligent” about "keeping their forest floors raked." Canada has 912 million acres of forest — 40% of their land mass — and only 41.1 million people. Even if “raking the forest floor” were the answer, where exactly would they find the workforce? And where will we get the lumber to build houses if we keep slapping tariffs on a country that used to be one of our closest allies?

Rant off — in case you didn’t know it was on.

I didn’t see many people wearing masks while I was out, but I did talk to one man who said he wished he’d grabbed one before leaving home. I have a stash of masks in my car left over from the pandemic, but it never occurred to me to put one on until after that conversation. Even then, I didn’t do it. Why? Because those masks have been hanging behind my driver’s seat for several years. Who knows what microscopic yuck they’ve been harboring. When I got home, I tossed them straight into the washing machine. No telling how long it will take for the smoke to clear out. I just might need them. 

Since I’m already in a doom‑and‑gloom mood: Michigan is also dealing with a health alert involving the microscopic cyclosporia parasite, which has caused over 5,000 confirmed cases of severe, “explosive diarrhea” and more than 100 hospitalizations in Michigan alone. (Last year, RFK Jr. ended the CDC's required surveillance of the parasite, which in the past kept these kinds of widespread outbreaks from happening.) If untreated, the diarrhea can last from two weeks to a month. Contact tracing is difficult because symptoms don’t show up right away — they appear five days to two weeks after exposure. Salad greens are the suspected culprit. Thankfully, I’ve been on a high‑protein diet and haven’t had a salad in almost two months. (Side note: I was at the doctor’s today and the official word is I’m down 20.8 pounds since May 15th.)

And as if smoke and parasites aren’t enough, Michigan was recently named as having three of the worst hot spots in the nation for bedbug infestations. I need to stop reading public‑service notifications. Today I learned I live in the tenth worst city in the nation for bedbugs. I am not sitting on any fabric‑covered chairs in public places until further notice! And needless to say, I’m not sleeping in any stranger’s beds either — not that I’ve been asked in the last fifty years. But if Brad Pitt came along, I’d jump in his bed even if it meant he’d have to call security. Between the smoke, the parasites, and the bedbugs, I swear, at this point I’m one emergency alert away from answering the door wearing a hazmat suit and oven mitts.

Back on topic: Years ago my mother‑in‑law’s house had bedbugs, and how they got in was shocking. She had a live‑in caregiver who, unbeknownst to the family, had a hobby of writing to prisoners. On her days off, she went to state prisons to meet some of the men she’d been corresponding with where she was gifted with the critters.

Bedbugs are known to spread from one care facility to another via workers who hold multiple jobs in multiple facilities. If our Assisted Living or Memory Care buildings ever get bedbugs, they’d quickly spread to my Independent Living building because many spouses live in IL while their partners are in one of the other buildings. It’s one of the selling points of continuum‑care campuses — a short walk gets you a daily visit (conjugal or otherwise) without driving halfway across town.  

Oh, yes, Michigan doesn’t need a state motto — it needs a warning label. 

The ecosystems around the world are becoming more and more interconnected, and disasters in one region ripple outward — whether it’s a war that disrupts shipping lines, a pandemic that refuses to stay on one continent, or produce that isn’t handled properly and ends up being distributed far and wide. We’ve come a long way in the last hundred years; towns no longer dump factory waste and raw sewage into rivers. But I still wonder how people back then couldn’t see that that was a bad idea. Just as I wonder how someone can sit in the Oval Office and be so short‑sighted and vindictive against our neighbors to the north. Call it Karma or cause and effect, everything that goes around, comes around. ©

See you all next Wednesday. In the meantime, let's all keep Canada in our hearts and thoughts. It's not only the forests they are losing to the fires, but also lives, homes and wildlife. 

The Distant Star Theory of Blogging

The legendary 1930’s essay ‘In Awe of Words’ often circles back to the quiet reasons we write — the rhythms that steady us, the connections that surprise us, and the memories that tug us forward. In this reflection, Jean revisits an old pandemic-era post, a favorite Steinbeck quote, and the complicated dance between observing life and participating in it. What emerges is a meditation on friendship, aging, and the strange, sustaining companionship of blogging… AI

Every so often an old post shows up in my “Most Read in the Last Seven Days” column, and I'll know people have been poking around in my archives, maybe even shared one of my links. If the title doesn’t ring that proverbial bell, I’ll click on it myself. That’s what happened with a piece I wrote during the pandemic six years ago. When I opened This Too Shall Pass… I found one of my all-time favorite quotes by John Steinbeck — a quote worth repeating in this forum of bloggers who enjoy the art of writing for whatever reason: personal pleasure, documenting our lives, or monetizing our blogs in hopes of fame or fortune.

If I had done the latter and been paid a penny a click over the past ten years, I would have made $46,254.97. Roughly $4,625.50 a year. Hoop dee doo. I’m glad I never did that. Money makes you a slave to the consumer of your content.

Nope. Steinbeck nailed my reasons for blogging In Awe of Words when he wrote:

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — ‘Yes, that’s the way it is… You’re not as alone as you thought.’”

That quote still hits me like a tuning fork.

In a reply to one of the comments on that old post, I wrote that blogging gives a rhythm to my weeks. That’s still true. But it’s also becoming more important, now, for me to connect with people out in cyberspace because I feel more and more disconnected from the people I live with here in my Continuum Care Community.

That’s partly because roughly a quarterly of the original residents that all moved in when I did (when the place was brand-new) have died or had to move to other buildings for more care. And every time that happens its a reminder that life is fragile. But it's also partly my own fault. I chose the double life I’m living as a kind of undercover reporter writing about my fellow residents. I observe. I make judgments, fair or otherwise. I hold nothing back when I write. But in person I hold back most of what’s going on in my head. On one hand, you can’t make deeper connections without taking risks and sharing our thoughts. On the other hand, civilized society doesn’t stay civil if we vocalize every observation and thought out loud in close-knit places like this. I have causal friends here, but no one close.

Early on, when management was looking for someone to write a weekly column for the CCC’s blog, my name came up because I started the creative writing club. But I refused. It sounded too hard to write about all the events going on while keeping my personal observations and quirky humor in check. I learned that lesson back in the ’80s when I wrote my first family history book and characterized the hometown of my nieces and nephew in a way my oldest niece didn’t think was fair. She was editing the book, and I ended up softening my description. That experience taught me that writing for community consumption is different from writing about a community. The family history book wasn’t about me, nor would an official CCC blog be — nor should they be. “Just give me the facts, ma’am,” as Sergeant Joe Friday supposedly said on Dragnet.

Except he didn’t. When I googled it, AI told me Joe Friday never actually said that line. What he said was, “All we want are the facts, ma’am.” A radio parody cemented the version we all remember.

And this — right here — is the point in my post where I’m supposed to come up with something profound or universal. Something that ties all these threads together. Something that makes readers nod and think, Yes, that’s the way it is for me, too.

But damn if that doesn’t get harder to do the older I get.

I look back on the friendships I’ve treasured over the years and I see a pattern: complete trust, a shared sense of humor, mutual respect for each other’s opinions, and the ability to really see each other — foibles and all. That kind of connection doesn’t come along every day. And it doesn’t always stay the same.

Friendship has been on my mind for a couple of months now, ever since my best friend since kindergarten was moved to an assisted living facility. She calls me sometimes ten to twenty times a day. I’ve changed her ringtone to something unique so I don’t have to run to find my phone every time it rings. And I’ve made it a rule to answer her only once a day. When I do, I put on my Clown Hat and entertain her with stories about life in my CCC or about our shared experiences growing up. She talks about the same theme every day — how she wants someone to take her home. I leave her laughing. She leaves me exhausted.

In days past, we walked back and forth to school every day of grade school and high school. We did everything together. We taught each other what friendship truly is. I thank the powers of the universe for putting us together all those years ago. And now we’ve come full circle with a slew of daily phone calls about nonsense and nothing not unlike what we used to do as boy-crazy teenagers.

Maybe that’s the universal thread I’ve been trying to find: connection doesn’t disappear as we age — it just changes shape. It becomes more intentional, more fragile, more precious. Sometimes it happens in the dining room or on a park bench here on campus. Sometimes it happens in a phone call about nothing. And sometimes it happens in the quiet space between a writer and a reader, we're like a distant star sends out a signal and hoping someone will feel the vibration and think, Yes. That’s the way it is for me, too. ©

My First Big GLP‑1 Test: Surviving the Dessert Club Without a Banana Split

Jean wonders if willpower shows up in the small, unglamorous moments — the ones no one applauds, the ones that happen at a farm table or a dessert club or in the quiet recalibration of daily habits. In this post, she writes about a surprisingly triumphant Thursday: a slice of lemonade cake, a room full of banana splits, and the complicated business of changing her relationship with food while navigating the opinions, assumptions, and whispered commentary that swirl around weight loss. It’s a story about discipline, dignity, and the delicate art of keeping one’s own counsel... AI

I did it. I got through a meeting of our First Thursdays Desserts Only Club without ordering a HUGE banana split like everyone else. And I didn’t have to out myself as a new recruit in another group: those of us getting the GLP‑1 Zepbound shots for weight loss. There I was, surrounded by eight people all enjoying my favorite food group in the whole wide world, and I didn’t have food envy and I didn’t feel deprived. The only thing I felt was miffed that I got charged fifty cents more for my small slice of lemonade cake with strawberries on top — while the banana splits came with three gigantic scoops of ice cream, chocolate syrup, nuts, whipped cream, three cherries, plus a whole banana. I’d worried this challenge would test me beyond my ability to resist going off my diet.

I was also worried others would ask why I wasn’t indulging, especially since I was one of the two founding members of the group nearly a year ago. A couple of people even offered me some of their ice cream since I said I didn’t like the cake — that was my excuse for only eating half of it. That’s what Zepbound GLP‑1 does. It’s a natural hormone our stomachs produce that tells you when you’re full, and if you know what’s good for you, you stop eating when it makes that call. I haven’t been able to finish a meal since I started the shots two weeks ago. And the “food noise” in my head is entirely gone. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that ‘you’re full’ message before in my life. As a child who had to sit at the table until my plate was clean I’m guessing that trained me not to hear it.

Still, you have to count calories every day while on GLP-1, but the strangely foreign part is you count them to make sure you’re eating enough calories and protein. Every time your weight changes, you have to re‑calibrate your DTEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), then deduct 500 from that number — that’s the number of calories you try to eat each day to lose two pounds a week. If you fall short, you’re burning muscle instead of fat.

I’ve lost 15 pounds in 27 days, but part of that was before I began the shots, just by doing the DTEE‑minus‑500 trick and doubling my protein. I’ve since been trying to triple my protein, but that’s really hard when I don’t cook my own meals and institutional food is high in carbs and sauces. I’ve also been walking every day and going to the gym every other day. For the naysayers who poo‑poo those of us on GLP‑1, thinking we’re taking the easy route, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s a tool, but it doesn’t make you lose weight without putting in the work of changing old habits.

The first sign that I’ve lost fifteen pounds is that it made my shoes — of all things — feel too big and my face look slimmer. The second sign was being able to get into a size‑smaller pair of blue jeans. So far one person has noticed, and when she asked if I was losing weight, I faked surprise and said, “What? Did you find some?” Everyone in the elevator laughed, and I added that I’ve been walking more. I don’t intend to lie (except by omission), but I’m not going to share what I’m doing if I can help it.

Why? Because I was sitting at our farm table when our tech guy went past — he’s lost 140 pounds on GLP‑1 — and I heard some unkind comments about how could “he let himself get so fat” and how he’s “cheating to lose weight.” Lots of positive comments were made, too, but you know how it is: you can hear twenty good things, but it’s the one or two bad things you obsess about. I think that’s human nature, or it could just be Jean Nature.

There are three of us in my Independent Living building who are obese, and I’m number three if anyone were to rank us from heaviest to lowest. I’m frequently at the farm table with the guy at the top, and the way others talk about him when he’s not there is awful. And while I’m probably 75 pounds lighter than him and 50 lighter than the woman in the number‑two spot, I imagine I’m the topic of a few snide, body‑shaming remarks as well.

It’s easy to see that he struggles with “food noise” in his head. He never leaves leftover bread or butter on the table. He’ll ask us all to pass them down so he can take them back to his apartment because he “doesn’t want to see it get thrown out.” I struggle with seeing food wasted too. A lot of us in my generation are in the Clean Plate Club because of those poor kids in China who didn’t get enough to eat.

Number Two in our little obesity club has a husband who is an enabler. He’s normal weight and she has mobility issues because of her weight, but when we have buffets he’ll fill up a plate of all the desserts because, he says, “he doesn’t know which one his wife wants,” and you guessed it — she eats them all. He does the same thing with the main courses. He’s a retired minister who lovingly looks at his wife through strong rose‑colored glasses. You can’t help but like the guy, but he’s killing her with kindness.

Not that we fatty‑fatty‑2x4s can rightly blame our weight on someone else, but the world and people around us do influence our choices. If I were going to make a true confession along those lines, I’d say I’ve always been a ‘closet eater.’ Whenever someone would say, “Should you be eating that?” or “Is that on your diet?” I would put it down — then later I’d find a way to eat in secret, out of resentment for the control that person tried to have over me. And in between the admonishment and the secret eating the food noise in my head was so loud I’m surprised others couldn’t hear it.

And there, dear readers, is the main reason I don’t want to reveal that I’m trying to lose weight. I don’t want anyone looking at my plates and saying, “Should you be eating that?” or “why aren’t you eating?”

Change is hard enough without an audience, and this stretch of my journey feels like something I need to protect. So for now, I’m keeping my little GLP‑1 secret tucked away like contraband in a spy movie. I’ll keep showing up at dessert club with an alternate choice besides the 695 calorie banana splits, pretending I’m just “not in the mood”,” while everyone else demolishes their architectural ice cream masterpieces. If the weight keeps dropping, people can assume it’s from all my virtuous walking or possibly divine intervention. And if anyone else asks if I’m losing weight — and they will — I’ll just shrug and say, “Yes I am and don’t tell me where you found it. I don’t want it back.” ©

This is my New Mantra

                               

The CCC Chronicles: From Foot Doctors to Reflecting Pools

 

In this week’s dispatch from Jean’s Continuum Care Community, the everyday rhythms of aging collide with the absurdities of modern life — from firefighters hauling residents upstairs to a foot that stages a midnight rebellion to a national monument wrapped in drama like a bad home‑improvement project. Jean brings her trademark blend of humor, candor, and side‑eye to the small dramas of communal living and the larger drama unfolding in Washington. As always, she finds the thread that ties them together....AI

“Who got picked up by the ambulance last night?” That’s a frequent topic of conversation at lunch or dinner tables here on my Continuum Care Campus. But today it was a different twist. The question was, “Why was the fire department here so long?”

The answer: the elevator in one of our buildings quit working, stranding several of our more fragile residents on the first floor when the repair crew couldn’t get a needed part until this morning. So the firefighters (stationed three minutes away) had to carry people up to their apartments. It was either that or they’d have to cuddle up on the couch in front of the lobby’s fireplace which wouldn’t be such a bad choice if it was winter, and not so close to the forth of July.

There are other times when our mealtime conversations turn into a litany of aches and pains, sounding like the very jokes younger people make about our age group. As Maxine of calendar fame says, "At my age, a 'balanced life' means 50% aches and 50% pains."

But for the most part, we leave our aches and pains at our apartment doors. Still, here’s a piece of advice if you’re thinking of moving to a CCC: don’t downsize your greeting card stash. I’ve written more “get well” and “thinking of you” cards (and “birthday,” and “sympathy cards”) since moving here than at any other time in my life. Not a week goes by that I’m not digging through my card drawer.

I’m no exception when it comes to having my own list of medical woes. I have a foot doctor, a hand doctor, and an orthopedist for the rest of the bones in my body. I’ve got an ENT, a dermatologist, an eye doctor, a gastroenterologist, a sleep doctor, an urogynecologist, a primary doctor, a nurse practitioner — and a dentist. Who could ask for anything more? Not me. I’m one of the lucky ones, though. A few  of my fellow residents have cancer and heart doctors on their lists.

Despite having all those people on my medical team, last week I decided Dr. Google was a better choice. I typed in my symptoms, and their AI “doctor” told me that shooting pain around an open sore meant I should go to Urgent Care immediately because it could be an infection. Not wanting to do that, I called my foot doctor’s office. They tried to schedule me a month out — until I repeated the magic words “shooting pain” and “open sore.” Suddenly I had an appointment the next day. Thank you, Dr. Google, for the buzzwords.

This all started just after my six‑month check‑up with my sleep doctor, where I gave him a glowing report. I shouldn’t have done that — it jinxed me. That very night the shooting pains started, waking me up and refusing to let me sleep again. My foot looked like the photo below. Actually, worse — that picture was taken after a week of swallowing antibiotics and daily slathering the area with silver sulfadiazine cream. 

The foot doctor claims there are no broken bones, but I don’t believe her or her X‑rays because it hurts too much. The weirdest part is I have no idea what caused it. I don’t remember hitting my foot, dropping anything on it, or doing anything dramatic like letting a stranger suck my toes. All I’m told is that the X-ray shows no infection or broken bones, but "skin bruises easily on the elderly” and the foot is “the slowest place to heal.”

Yup, I know that, doc. I had a similar gash on the side of the same foot recently, and it took four months to heal without medical intervention.

Lest I give the impression that all we talk about here is ourselves and our woes — not true. Recently at our Tuesday Night Conversation dinner table we discussed the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the cost of repairing it, and the claim that “vandals” cut a 350‑foot slit down the center despite 24/7 security cameras. I’ve got a bridge to sell you if you believe that. (But not the brand new bridge between Canada and Detroit that Trump refuses to allow to be opened, but that's another scandal for another day.) 

We can all read the news and draw our own conclusions about the pool, but around our dinner table the story sounds a lot less like “vandals” and a lot more like, “someone had their head up his ass.” You don’t need a PhD to connect a few dots: With cameras everywhere they would have stopped anyone in the center of the pool long enough to cut a 350 foot slit; a no‑bid contract that included no oversight by manufacturers of the liner polyuria coatings; and the presidential motorcade running over the uncured coating so Trump could get a closer look. The presidential limo alone weighs about 20,000 pounds, which is roughly the size of a small whale — and we’re supposed to believe a mystery vandal with a box cutter is the culprit. Please.

It doesn't take a deep dive in cyberspace to learn the experts all agree the failed project is due to one or more of the following: 1) improper preparation of the surface, 2) not applying the polyuria according to manufacturer’s specifications, 3) speeding up the timeline for applying a second coating, 4) the solvent added to kill the algae, and last but not least, 5) vehicles running over the uncured surface. 

Everything shows its age eventually — our bodies, our buildings, even the places meant to inspire awe. Here at the CCC, we meet those changes with humor and a little stubbornness, because what else can you do. The reflecting pool could be funny too, if it weren’t such an expensive lesson in what happens when oversight and comment sense takes a holiday. We can’t stop time from aging us or our monuments, but we can at least insist that the people in charge stop accelerating the process. © 

Nabbed off Dawn's Bohemian Valhalla Blog

              

The Day Sinatra Made Me Cry in Public

In this week’s installment from Jean’s corner of CCC life, what starts as a simple outdoor concert — the kind you attend mostly because it’s on the calendar and the weather’s decent — turns into an unexpected brush with memory. A Sinatra impersonator, a rollator walker packed like a day‑hike, and a crowd of fifty neighbors set the stage, but the real story is how a single song can reach backward and tap a place you thought had finally gone quiet...AI

I saw Frank Sinatra today. Oops — I left a word out of that sentence. I meant to say I saw a Frank Sinatra impersonator. Good thing I cleared that up, lest you think I’ve hustled on over to the Land of Delusion, given the fact that he died in 1998. I was never a fan of his music, nor were my parents, so I didn’t cut my teeth on his many hit records the way a lot of my ninety-something neighbors did. But my Continuum Care Community booked him for the second time, and since the reviews were glowing after his first performance, I thought, What the heck, it’s something to do.

So I loaded up my rollator walker with a sweater, a bottle of water, my phone, a notebook and pen, and my apartment keys, then headed for the park nestled between the Memory Care and Assisted Living buildings. (Permanently in my walker are: binoculars, ear muffs, gloves, a bird call, sun glasses, and two books.) I don’t need a walker, but I use one outside because I’m proactive about preventing sidewalk falls. I’ve seen enough people with bloody faces and broken hips get picked up by ambulances to know the smart money is on those of us who aren’t too proud to admit we’re old and tend to shuffle along instead of picking up our feet properly.

But I’m not a shuffler. Yet. I know that for a fact because — being proactive again — I took the Fall Prevention Study offered here last year. My only walking issue is that every five or six steps, the heel of my right foot hits the side of my left foot. I’ve known this since childhood because the side of my left shoe was always scuffed up. What I didn’t know was why. Turns out I walk with asymmetry: my right leg strides 21 inches and my left 24. I also walk with my feet only four inches apart when they should be six. Knowledge is power, or so they say.

A lot of my fellow residents were afraid to do the study for fear our “overlords” would use the information to move them down the road to Assisted Living. Paranoia is alive and well in senior communities like mine. If you failed the study — which I did not — you earned some physical therapy appointments, not an eviction notice.

The Sinatra singer was in his 60s, I’m guessing, and even with the classic hat and suit he didn’t look much like the real McCoy. But he sounded like him, and he had some of Frank’s characteristic moves down pat. With audience members from all three buildings plus the townhouses, we were fifty strong. The weather was perfect. The sky was bluer than it’s been all week and the sun was shining.

And wouldn’t you know — even though I’m not fond of that kind of music — I ended up with tears in my eyes during the last song he sang: My Way. I was sitting in the back row, and in my view was a Memory Care patient in a wheelchair with his wife sitting behind him. During that song she leaned forward and put her arms around his neck while the performer sang, “Regrets I've had a few...I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption.”

I felt like I was looking at a snapshot of my past life when I was Don’s caregiver. Those twelve and a half years were a test by fire, and I’m proud of how I handled them. But by the end of the song the wife was wiping tears from her eyes, and so was I. She’s still living the stress and devotion I went through. It’s strange how you can think old wounds are healed, but a damn song comes along and reminds you that some wounds never fully close. They may scab over, but bump that scab and the hurt comes back.

Places like this always book entertainers who play the era of music residents grew up with, built families to, danced to, so we hear a lot of '40s and '50s stuff. When an entertainer takes requests, I usually ask for a Bruno Mars song and they will say, "Don't know that one, but I'll learn it before my next gig here." Even after nearly five years of going to these musical events, I’ve yet to make it through one without tears (or hearing Uptown Funk). Sometimes they’re happy tears, but usually they're a jolting flashback of longing for what can no longer be. 

Another highlight of my week: I went to a Father’s Day banquet. At first, women weren’t allowed to sign up unless they were dining with a father or father figure, but eight of us raised a fuss. After all, for Mother’s Day they served the women afternoon tea and cookies, but the guys were getting a ribeye steak dinner with baked potatoes and asparagus. The injustice was noted. The ribeye was wonderful, and it was the last big meal I had before starting my GLP‑1 shots the next morning.

Then a few days later we had another musical event put on by a local favorite, The Beer City Blues Band. This time it was right outside my building on the piazza — impossible to avoid, not that I wanted to. They play more contemporary music, so fewer memories get stirred up for me. Not to mention I love their sound.

We have an active charity foundation that funds all our musical programs, including one‑on‑one music therapy sessions down in Memory Care, our summer concert series, and monthly birthday party entertainers. You might call it lucky, but I knew before I bought into this non‑profit CCC that our sister campus was heavily supported by this group. It’s kind of a shame, though, that the senior places where more Medicaid recipients end up don’t have the same kind of charity foundation. Maybe they do and I just don’t know about them?

Our charity sponsors golf tournaments, fancy‑ass balls, fashion shows and parties, and I suspect the reason they raise so much money is because the donors hope to live here someday. The guy who lived and died across the hall from me gave so much money they named our street — and a golf tournament — after him.

Music has always had a way of slipping past my defenses, but living here has made that truth unavoidable. Every concert is a gamble — you never know whether you’ll walk away smiling, crying, or both. But I keep showing up. Maybe that’s the point. These small moments, these shared songs and shared tears, remind me that living life doesn’t stop in a place like this. It just keeps unfolding, one performance, one memory, one unexpected pang at a time. ©

See you next Wednesday.

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Preparing for Zepbound Like It’s a Baby Shower

 

In this post, Jean chronicles a week filled with medical busy work, sleep apnea victories, and the long, bureaucratic march toward starting GLP‑1 treatment. With her trademark humor and sharp observations, she turns frustration into storytelling — and even finds room for a cameo from “Dr. Cutie Pie,” her ever-charming sleep specialist. ...AL

 

It was one of those weeks where every waking moment felt devoted to either busy work or maintaining my body like it’s a vintage car that requires constant tinkering. Friday afternoon was a prime example: I spent 17 minutes and 12 seconds on hold just to report that yes, I did keep my follow-up appointment with my sleep doctor. This was in response to the medical supply company's strongly worded letter warning me that if I failed to show up — or failed to call to confirm I had shown up — insurance would not cover this very expensive odyssey I’ve been on since last December.

I was actually excited to keep that appointment, and not just because Dr. Cutie Pie looks like he wandered off the set of a medical drama where he plays the heart-throb who keeps millions of women and gay men tuning in each week. He’s also genuinely nice and extremely thorough. I wanted to tell him that except for the fact that my face looks like a relief road map every morning, I’m doing really well.

And wouldn’t you know — he has a “cure” for the puffy-face-with-ruts look. Witch hazel wipes. Not the fancy expensive, cosmetic-counter potions I’ve been trying. Witch hazel. I could have kissed him, but I didn’t want to smudge his imaginary TV makeup.

The good news is that treating my sleep apnea and hypoxemia has already changed my life. My morning bed no longer looks like I’ve been wrestling alligators all night. And I don’t dread going to bed, especially after learning at the sleep lab that I was quitting breathing 64 times an hour. Now, with my BiPap machine and my pseudo-astronaut headgear, I only stop breathing 1.5 to 2 times an hour — and when that happens, the Bi-in-the-Pap yanks the breath right out of my lungs and puts another one in like a tiny, bossy life coach yelling, “Breathe, damn it, BREATHE!”.

I’ve been 100% compliant with the machine, which is extremely important if you don’t want Medicare to stop paying for supplies then send you a bill for $1,000 if you don’t return the machine ASAP. And how would they know if you’re using it...or if you’ve strapped it to your dog? Oh, they know. The machine has its own Wi-Fi and sends a daily report to Medicare: how many hours you were hooked up, how often you took off the mask to pee, raid the refrigerator, or — in the case of my youngest niece — go sleepwalking down a flight of stairs. (She’s just beginning her own sleep apnea diagnosis journey.)

Back to that phone call: after my 17-minute hold time, I finally talked to someone, then left my apartment — and my phone — to go to lunch. When I got back, there was a voicemail from the same person asking me to call back Monday because they “need more information.” Busy work. Waiting around for a medical supply company to data-mine my brain may not technically fit the definition of busy work, but it sure feels like a stupid waste of time. They've called me four days in a row, now. Why can’t people do their job right the first time?

Speaking of which, here’s another example. Over a month ago, my Nurse Practitioner started the process to get me on the GLP‑1 drug Zepbound for weight loss. First she sent the prescription to my short-term pharmacy instead of my mail-order pharmacy. Then she forgot to include dosing instructions. Then I had to go through Prior Authorization, which is basically the insurance company looking for a reason to deny the drug. This back-and-forth took place through texts and MyChart messages and still isn’t over. But OptumRX assured me that one phone call from the NP is the last hurdle, and they’ve sent her two faxes. I sent her one message. We waited. Then they canceled the prescription when they didn't hear back from her. More calls and text messages and finally everyone is on the same page and the prescription is being filled as I write.

Since I’ve had a month to prepare, I’ve been nesting for this medication like a woman setting up a nursery. I bought the hardcover “bible” on GLP‑1 to learn how to get the best results and manage side effects. It’s not a miracle drug, not a quick or easy fix — I’ll still have to track my food — but the strange part is that everyone on the support sites say they track their food to make sure they’re getting enough calories, protein, and water. Every other diet I’ve ever been on required tracking to make sure I didn’t overeat. The drug stops the ‘food noise’ that goes on inside your head. If you experience it, you’ll understand what that term means. GLP-1 a natural hormone that our bodies product that tells us when you’re full and apparently on GLP-1 we listen.

I also bought a tracking journal specifically for GLP‑1 users. If you’re smart and you want good data to show your doctor so you can keep on the drug you should record everything: injection sites, calories, protein, water, side effects, and what goes out of your body — by mouth or… you know where. Like pregnant women who vomit at the smell of certain foods, some people on GLP‑1s do the same. So my pantry is stocked with ginger gummies and ginger tea. I’ve got high-protein snacks and shakes because apparently protein is key and they don’t mean red meat.

Just doubling my protein and staying under a 500 calorie deficit a day from what my body weight requires in preparation for this big adventure helped me lose ten pounds in fourteen days. Hopefully, when I finally get to do my first injection, I won’t be projectile vomiting. But if I stick with the program, I’ll get to see Dr. Cutie Pie sooner than my one-year follow-up because all my sleep apnea settings will need to be recalibrated. He’s confident I’m a rule follower and will do well on Zepbound. Did I mention he’s also a psychiatrist as well has a sleep specialist? He’s says there’s a lot of overlap regarding why we have sleep issues.

Surviving in today’s medical community requires equal parts patience, paperwork, and circus‑level flexibility. But if it gets me better sleep, a healthier body, and another appointment with Dr. Cutie Pie, then I’ll deal with feeling like I’m living in a full‑blown medical montage. All I’m missing is a soundtrack and a slow‑motion shot of me bravely opening the Zepbound box — when it finally gets here. Fingers crossed. ©

See you next Wednesday.

On Chin Hairs, Sam Hill, and the Stories We Collect

Jean has a talent for taking the small, ridiculous indignities of aging and turning them into stories that make people laugh, nod, and mutter “oh thank God it’s not just me.” In this piece, she tackles one of the great universal mysteries of womanhood after a certain age: the stealth chin hair. Along the way she wanders into euphemisms, Michigan history, hormonal betrayal, and the sacred friendship pact involving tweezers. It’s part rant, part folklore, part confession — and Jean at her silliest best. ...AI

How in the Sam Hill do whiskers on women over a certain age manage to grow three inches long before — with great embarrassment — you finally see them in the mirror? I look at my face with a magnifying mirror every morning. I wash my face every night. I see my face in between when I refresh my lipstick or wash my hands. Still, it’s always when I’m driving to an appointment or running errands that I’ll glance in the rear‑view mirror and see a foot‑long, gray chin hair waving at me like it’s hitchhiking. I swear these things grow overnight like they’re auditioning for the stage production of Jack the Beanstalk.

Someday I’m going to rear‑end someone, and when the police officer asks if I was texting, I’ll probably say, “No sir, but do you happen to have a pair of tweezers? I can’t get a mugshot taken with this mile‑long hair on my face.”

Turns out I’m not alone in this battle. One of my fellow residents here on my continuum‑care campus confessed recently that she has an agreement with her daughter: every visit includes a mandatory chin‑check. She hates to see old women with long, curly strands of hair bouncing up and down as they talk. Don’t we all? Especially when it’s on our own faces and we’re trapped in a car with a chin hair that’s trying to get us killed in an accident.

I’ve resorted to keeping a pair of tweezers in the car because there’s something about the light coming in from all angles that makes those stray hairs pop like neon signs. Not that it makes them any easier to grab. They like to play peek‑a‑boo in my chicken‑like wattles, darting in and out like they’re training for a covert ops mission. Yes, I know I could go to one of those fancy waxing places, but for one or two stray hairs, is it really worth what they charge?

And speaking of things that sneak up on you, here’s a tangent I promise is connected: did you know the “Sam Hill” in the “How in the Sam Hill…?” euphemism was an actual person? If you didn’t grow up hearing it the way I did, you may not know it’s basically a polite stand‑in for “what the hell.” It’s one of those versatile expressions that can convey confusion, exasperation, or disbelief. “How in the Sam Hill am I supposed to know that!” or “How in the Sam Hill did you do that!”

According to Google, Sam W. Hill was a 19th‑century surveyor and mine developer in Copper Harbor, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He was well known for his “colorful vocabulary,” which is a polite way of saying he swore like a lumberjack with a stubbed toe and a pint of whiskey in his hand. His friends and neighbors would retell his stories but substitute “Sam Hill” for the cuss words. From there, the phrase spread beyond the Keweenaw Peninsula and somehow survived all the way into the 21st century.

It amazes me how euphemisms born before radio, before TV, before social media still manage to hang on. Maybe the slower pace helped them stick? Maybe clever phrases had time to settle into the language instead of being replaced every three seconds by whatever TikTok is doing today. Or maybe Sam Hill was simply the 1800s version of going viral — just slower and with more flannel.

According to AI, the fine, wispy facial hair on the chin and jawline of older women is caused by “shifting hormone levels — specifically, a drop in estrogen alongside a relative increase in androgens during menopause.” I am well past menopause, but I was recently prescribed estrogen as part of my sleep apnea treatment, which begs the question: Why in the Sam Hill am I still growing chin hairs? Perhaps instead of applying the estrogen cream down there, I should try slathering it on my chin.

And why in the Sam Hill is it socially acceptable to poke fun at the biological realities of menopause? I don’t know who first said it, but I’ve never forgotten the joke about The Friendship Test: it’s about which of your friends will pledge to come to the hospital if you’re ever in a coma and pluck your chin hairs. I tried to Google the origin, but there were dozens of references in blogs and TikTok videos. So instead of going down that rabbit hole, I decided to vent about this First World Problem by writing about it too.

Aging hands us plenty of indignities, but it also hands us stories — and the older I get, the more I’m coming around to realize the stories matter far more than the stray hairs ever will. And if the day ever comes when I’m too old or too out of it to pluck my own chin hairs, I hope someone I love will lean over my hospital bed, sigh dramatically, and say, “Well, Sam Hill help us — she’s sprouted another one.” ©

See you next Wednesday!

A Kiss, a Memory, and the Long Road Between Then and Now

Jean has always believed that memory has a mischievous streak — especially the kind triggered by music. One moment she’s driving to the grocery store, minding her own business, and the next she’s dropped straight into a full moon‑drenched scene from the 1960s involving rum, steel drums, and a kiss that would age into something far more complicated than it felt at the time. What follows is her attempt to braid that long‑ago moment with the world she lives in now, and the distance between the two...AI

Music has a unique way of hooking us up with memories buried deep in years past. When a song manages to bring a vivid memory alive, you can’t help but marvel at our brain’s computer‑like ability to retrieve data our conscious self had long forgotten. That’s what happened to me on the way to the grocery store when Riley Green’s voice came over the country station singing, “...I know I can’t stand or sit, but if I was hammered, could I dance like this?...I ain’t as think as you drunk I am.”

I can count the number of times I’ve been truly drunk on the fingers of one hand. And all those times were in the last century — the 1960s, to be precise. There are different kinds of drunks, and I was a happy drunk, the kind who wanted to be on the move, dancing and singing. One particular time I was on vacation with another twenty‑something girl down in the Bahamas.

If you’ve been to the Bahamas, you might remember, as I do, the buttery‑smooth rum and the steel drums those notes rang like laughter as they tumbled through the warm air while the rum settled me into my happy place. As I remember it, it was the kind of intoxicating combination that loosened my world at the seams, making everything feel a little softer, a little friendlier — the perfect prelude to that warm, tipsy, rum‑drunk joy with a side of “I love you, man,” delivered to bartenders, strangers, and possibly a palm tree.

And to the Black taxi cab driver who delivered us back to our hotel that night. After he opened the taxi door and let us out, I gave him a long, deep kiss, much to his surprised delight and much to the disgust of my friend. Later she said she couldn’t believe I actually touched a Black man, much less kissed him shamelessly. And in a public place, no less! It was sometime after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law and before the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed, better known as the Fair Housing Act. But in my friend’s world, Blacks and whites mixing was still a sin.

Try as I might, I can’t remember her name or what she looked like, but I still remember that taxi driver’s sparkling eyes and wide, toothy smile as he enjoyed my drunken state as much as I was. 

It’s a sad statement about how limited my world has been that when I got home from that vacation, I’d have to fast‑forward to when I moved here, four‑and‑a‑half years ago, before I’d have real contact with Black people again. And those in my daily life, now, are all employees of my continuum care community — the wait staff, the cleaning staff, and our CEO. As a flaming liberal I, of course, loved having Obama as our president but that's not the same as actually talking with someone from another race on a daily basis.

When I see our very capable CEO at our monthly Dialogues, standing in front of my fellow residents, his skin as dark as the night, I can’t help noticing the irony: a Black man confidently leading a room full of old white people in a country where that simple image would once have been dangerous, even impossible. I sometimes wonder if he feels that history humming under the floorboards the way I do.

The universe has a way of pairing my life experiences so neatly that it often feels like a deliberate plan to call attention to something I might miss otherwise. When I got home from the grocery store with that feel‑good memory still lingering in my mind, I went to a lecture here in our all‑purpose room. It featured an Abraham Lincoln impersonator who put on a fabulous one‑man show about the Civil War.

There’s roughly a hundred years between when the Civil War was fought that ended slavery and my trip to the Bahamas, and over another half‑century between that trip and now. Still, I’ve always been proud of the fact that my generation has done so much to move race relationships forward — although I’m not sure Black people would see the progress in the same light as most whites do (not to mention the backtracking our current administration is attempting). In terms of history, it wasn’t all that long ago when a Black man would have gotten strung up to the nearest tree for kissing a white woman, even if he wasn’t the one who initiated it. Few days go by when I don’t see someone hug our CEO. I wonder what my long‑ago travel companion would think of that. Has she changed over the decades, or does she still hold onto the belief that races shouldn’t mix? Is prejudice so deeply ingrained in some of us that we can’t change?

I didn’t know where this post was going when I started, but somehow it feels like I’m at the end except for saying that sometimes a silly, rum‑drunk memory from sixty years ago can remind you how far we’ve come, how far we haven’t, and how strangely a single impulsive kiss can echo across a lifetime. And looking back now, I can finally see what I couldn’t then: the kiss was never the scandal. The scandal was the world that insisted it should be. ©

See you next Wednesday!

Memorial Day, MAGA Men, and the Art of Living Together

 

In her ongoing chronicle of life inside a Continuum Care Community, Jean returns to Memorial Day with equal parts honesty, humor, and hard‑won perspective. What begins as a reluctant decision to attend a campus ceremony becomes a meditation on patriotism, personality clashes, and the strange intimacy of communal living. Along the way she encounters the usual cast of characters — the generous, the sentimental, the maddening, and the unforgettable — and finds herself, almost despite herself, grateful for the complicated little world she now calls home…. AI

Last year I skipped our Memorial Day event here at the Continuum Care Campus (which they hold four days before the holiday but that's the way they do things to give employees time off with their families). I had two reasons for skipping it, and I’ll quote myself from the post I wrote back then: "I couldn't bring myself to go because a guy from my building planned to read the entire Constitution, and I'd have a terrible time hearing it from the lips of a rabid Trump and MAGA supporter. And two, because I felt like a fraud last year singing along with all the patriotic songs when I wasn’t all that proud of our country. Asking God to bless our ‘Great Nation’ felt like pretending we were still the same beacon of freedom and hope we used to be.”

I’m not alone in avoiding this man. At our Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner event (more on that later), I learned that at least half a dozen residents have asked the dining staff never to seat them with or near him. He’s surly, swears at the servers, and tells anyone who asks about our Independent Living community, “Don’t come here. It’s awful.” His bad attitude started when management informed him that we are a gun‑free campus and his massive collection had to go home with his sons or they'd take legal action to evict him. He still warns people that we’ll be sorry if a mass shooter storms the building because he “could pick them off from his balcony.” A surly old man with a gun. What could go wrong?

This year I still didn’t want to sing God Bless America. Blessing America when our leader behaves like a spoiled child feels a bit like saying, “You’re doing great — here’s your reward.” But I decided I shouldn’t let one person keep me from honoring the other veterans who would be participating. We have roughly a dozen Vietnam vets here, all of them former commissioned officers. You can draw your own conclusions about why that is, but I suspect it has something to do with the upper‑middle‑class backgrounds that CCCs tend to draw from. During Vietnam, these men had families who kept them in college long enough to get deferments, then commissions. A couple have even admitted they enlisted after college so they could choose their military branch and job rather than wait to be drafted into the infantry.

This year our Life Enrichment Director took the lead instead of Mr. MAGA, and the difference was noticeable. She read a lovely two‑page essay which I later learned was written by Artificial Intelligence. When I complimented her, she said, “I put some ideas into ChatGPT and let it compose something much more eloquent than I could.” She also read three poignant poems and showed a nine‑minute video titled Flanders Field: Remembering Their Sacrifice. The YouTube description says it “serves as an orientation to the Great War, the cemetery, and the American Battle Monuments Commission.” Several of the clips from black‑and‑white newsreels shocked me — and I don’t shock easily. The image of hundreds flag-draped caskets waiting to be loaded onto ships took my breath away.

Near the end of the Memorial Day event, our LED invited anyone to share a story about their own service or that of a loved one. Five or six did. Mr. MAGA did not. And while I still refused to sing God Bless America with the others, I was glad I went.

The next day brought a very different kind of gathering: the 90th birthday party for our resident retired lawyer. He has two sons and a daughter and a gaggle of grandkids and great-grands and 17 of them flew in from all over the country. They have a charming tradition of a nightly 7:00 p.m. Zoom call — sometimes twenty people on the call,  other times just four or five but they’ve never missed a night in the four and a half years their dad has lived here. The party itself was first‑class and catered and everyone who lives or works here was invited. He and I both moved in the first week the CCC opened, and I can’t imagine this place without quirky him and his generosity. While I might donate ten or twenty dollars to various collections, he donates a hundred. Five hundred. A thousand. He calls himself the Mayor of our CCC and insists on sitting at the head of any dining table. He also has tender ears and will flee the room if anyone mentions menopause or female anatomy issues. He's also sentimental and cries easily and he didn't make it through the party without shedding tears. Yes, we have characters here.

Speaking of characters, I promised to circle back to our Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner event. Communities like this naturally form cliques — nothing malicious, just people gravitating toward others with similar interests. You often see the same four to six people eating together. But these cliques aren’t exclusive. Anyone could call any group and ask to join their reservation, and they’d make room. New residents are routinely invited to various tables as we get to know them. We even have unofficial ambassadors who make a point of introducing newcomers and connecting them with people who share a background or hobby.

A couple of high‑octane women decided to shake things up. They created a sign‑up sheet for anyone willing to sit with someone new, then they matched us into mystery dinner groups. We didn’t know who we’d be eating with until we arrived at the dining room. It was something like speed dating — not that I’ve ever done it, but I’ve seen it on TV — in that we all asked and answered the same questions: Where did you live before this? What was your career? Where did you go to college? Kids? Grandkids? Hobbies? Two people at my table found out they both taught in the same school district and knew some of the same people. 

This is the third year we’ve done a 'Guess Who' dinner, and I enjoyed it twice. The year I didn’t, I was seated with Mr. MAGA. This year he didn’t sign up, so the rest of us were free to enjoy the excitement of meeting people we knew by sight and name but had never had a real conversation with. And as the two lady organizers say, "If you don't click with your assigned tablemates, it's just ONE dinner." 

Community living isn’t always peaceful — it’s more like being adopted into a sitcom you never auditioned for. But weekends like this remind me why I keep showing up anyway. Between the veterans, the birthday party and the mystery dinner, I found myself oddly grateful for this cast of characters. Even the ones who make me mutter under my breath. Maybe especially them. After all, every good ensemble needs at least one antagonist to keep the plot moving — and to give me blog fodder. © 

  Flanders Field: Remembering their Sacrifice

 

Borrowing Trouble From the Future (Again)

Jean didn’t plan on writing about dreams, grief, or the strange places the mind wanders at night. But then she woke up crying—something she hadn’t done in months—and the moment insisted on being examined. She’d cried at the doctor’s office the day before, too, which was even more unusual. Jean is not a woman who cries easily, not even when life has handed her the kind of losses that would buckle most people. But something about that dream, and the day that came before it, tugged at her in a way she couldn’t ignore. So she followed the thread, the way she always does, to see where it led…. AI

I woke up crying. And yesterday I cried at the doctor’s office. What’s going on with me? Waking up with tears in my eyes from a dream has happened before, but crying at a doctor’s office? That hasn't happened since 1968 when a doctor lectured twenty-six year old me about the evils of having premarital sex. And trust me, I’ve had plenty of reasons to turn on the waterworks when doctors delivered bad news about my husband. I didn’t even cry after I had to make the decision to pull the plug on his life support, and ten minutes later he died. I saved those tears for when I got home.

The dream-tears that woke me featured my mom hanging clothes on the line at our family cottage, my dad tinkering with something nearby, and my husband driving his yellow Chevy Cutlass convertible. I was walking home from a sleep lab in a far off city and I woke up when Don pulled up alongside me and said, “Why didn’t you call? I would have picked you up.” Since I’ve been using my BiPAP machine, I haven’t remembered many dreams, but this one was an exception. I can’t wait for my follow-up appointment with the sleep doctor to ask if not recalling dreams is normal when getting treated for Central Sleep Apnea.

I used to keep a dream journal and spent time analyzing my dreams each morning. The long walk from a sleep lab wasn’t hard to figure out. I had my first appointment with the sleep doctor last December, and it took until a month ago to finally get a BiPAP machine because his final diagnosis didn't come until after he'd sent me to three additional specialists plus an overnight stay at the sleep lab. Getting all those appointments scheduled took time. I had to see an ears, nose and throat doctor, a gastroenterologist, a urogynecologist, the sleep lab technician and last but not least, I had to go in for an out patient surgery plus go to the durable medical supplies place to get fitted for a mask. 

My mom hanging clothes in my dream was no doubt symbolic of airing my “dirty laundry” at the doctor’s office—the thing that made me cry. I had asked my primary doctor’s Nurse Practitioner if I was a candidate for one of the new weight-loss drugs on the market, and she listened—actually listened—to my history with weight gain. Unlike my primary, who told me several months ago to “just move more.” She said severe sleep apnea is one of the qualifying factors for the weight-loss shots. She ordered a bunch of blood work and will submit the request for Medicare approval. (Fingers crossed.) I’m not sure how long that will take, but that’s what made me cry. Not the full-blown ugly cry of a toddler whose candy was snatched by the family dog, but she could tell I was trying to hold back tears. I would have managed it, too, if she hadn’t turned around as she was leaving to ask, “Do you need a hug?” I thanked her for listening while wiping tears from my cheeks.

When Don drove up alongside me in the dream—now that has a scary interpretation. Was it a death wish? Just hop in the car and go to the Great Unknown? Or a comforting thought that I won’t be alone when I do die? In the back of my mind, the predictions on the insurance actuarial table still weigh heavy: that my time in Independent Living will be up by October, when I’ll be moved to Assisted Living. Being a two-person lift in a place like that would be fertile inspiration for a horror movie plot. And that thought is what my mother used to call “borrowing trouble from the future.” I may not have mastered putting on compression stockings, but I am a master at borrowing trouble and trying to prevent it from happening. She may have called it borrowing trouble but I call it long-range planning. Tomato, tomatoes.

According to the online Dream Dictionary, “Dreaming of the dead can be both rewarding and terrifying depending on the context of the dream. There seems to be a fine line between actual contact or repressed memories or emotions that have come back to pay you a visit...” Are they coming for me? That was my first question. My second thought was that my dream was expressing my anxiety over running out of quality time. (Most likely the best explanation.) But my third thought—the Little Miss Mary Sunshine version—put a smile on my face: If I had hopped in Don's convertible, I would have been able to tell Mom that I finally learned to enjoy tea as much as she did. I probably wouldn’t tell her I make it the English way, with cream in the cup before pouring in the properly steeped tea. She drank it straight.

Our brains, especially during sleep, are mysterious places. They spin stories vivid enough to feel like time travel, dredge up fragmented memories we thought were long settled, and nudge us toward truths we’ve been avoiding. They can scare us or thrill us to death—a figure of speech. And maybe that’s the real purpose of a dreams like this one: they are a reminder that even in the strangest corners of the mind, something is still trying to move us forward. ©

See you next Wednesday! 

If you have fifteen minutes for something upbeat, inspiring and fun, watch this video of Kermit the Frog at the University of Maryland giving their commencement speech. Several Fox News reporters were bashing it but Facebook was showing this video along with Trump's commencement speech video at West Point where he talked about getting bored with trophy wives and owning big yachts. Kermit's speech ended with the entire audience singing the Rainbow Connection.

Confessions of a Woman Who Bought Her Own Mother’s Day Bouquet

Jean spent an hour staring at her keyboard, waiting for a theme to behave itself and show up. It finally did, wearing petals. Maybe it was the Mother’s Day bouquets stacked on the concierge’s desk, or the tangerine roses she bought herself, or the memory of a Tom Jones look‑alike sending her miniature rosebuds decades ago. Whatever the reason, flowers marched in and took over—as they tend to do in Jean’s life—demanding to be written about….AI

I’ve been drinking coffee in front of my keyboard for an hour, and I hadn’t written a single word until now. No theme was jelling in my head until I decided to write about flowers. Saturday I’d been over to the other building, where the concierge’s desk was completely covered with Mother’s Day floral deliveries. Except for one bouquet—the one our resident retired lawyer sent to all the ladies here at the Continuum Care Community. He does that for every holiday, and when I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, he said it makes him happy. I replied, “It makes us happy too.”

Never being a mother, I’ve never gotten flowers for the holiday unless you count the tangerine roses I bought myself last weekend. If anyone asks about them, I’ll joke that they were from the dogs in past chapters of my life: Levi, Cooper, Jason, Sarah, Cindy, Jody, Scottie, King, and Blackie. With the exception of the two dogs from my childhood, they all had human names—which should tell you something about the surrogate‑baby relationships I had with the dogs in my life.

When I met my husband, I was working as a floral designer and continued for another decade into our relationship, giving me access to all the flowers anyone could want to bring home. So my husband got in the habit of never buying me flowers, especially given the fact that it took me five years after I left the floral industry before I even wanted fresh flowers back in my life. By then the mold was set. No flowers from Don. He was also not known for giving romantic gifts. Long‑time readers might remember the time he gave me an auxiliary gas tank for my pickup truck for Valentine’s Day when I actually longed for a single red rose. More precisely I longed for the symbolism of getting a single red rose. Yes, I was one of those women who thought a soulmate should be able to read my mine.

Other than corsages for proms way back in high school, no guy has ever given me flowers—with one notable exception. Back during the first six months after meeting Don, I was also dating one of his friends. I’ve told this story before, but briefly: the three of us often found ourselves hanging out together on Fridays after bowling. It was where we all met on the same night. His friend looked like he shared the same gene pool as Tom Jones. His first name was even Tom, and he had the same voice quality. He took full advantage of looking like the famous singer in his fashion choices. “It's not unusual to be loved by anyone, It's not unusual to have fun with anyone, but when I see you hanging about with anyone, It's not unusual to see me cry…” Oh my god, I can still see him serenading me with that song. Tom made the bold move of sending me a bouquet of two dozen pink miniature rosebuds to the flower shop where I worked. Don’t think that didn’t make a splash—seeing a delivery van from another shop bring flowers to one of their employees.

Romance novels (and later, movies) have programmed women for a couple of centuries to be wooed with flowers. And I suspect one reason the custom has held up as long as it has is because it’s an easy gift to give a woman for holidays and special occasions. Easier back in my day when a guy would call up a flower shop and get something delivered. They can still do that, of course, or they can just go to a supermarket and pick out a bouquet themselves. I’ve seen guys at Meijer struggling to choose just the right bunch, and I struggle not to jump in and help them.

The kids of many of my fellow residents here must have the nearby flower shops in their contacts lists, because it’s not uncommon to see deliveries on our concierge’s desk waiting for the recipient to come down and pick them up. And no one seems to be in a hurry to do so, giving everyone a chance to check the card to see who it’s addressed to—a sure sign someone is having a special day. My oldest niece has made me the talk of the day on several occasions, and I have to admit it’s a good feeling to have everyone ask who sent the flowers and why. Not to mention the fact that I really do love having fresh flowers in the house. And I make them last, reworking arrangements as some of the flowers wilt and others are still good. For example, the greenery in the bouquet above is what was left over from my mid-April birthday bouquet. Its the third reincarnation. Last week that greenery was the backdrop for three tulips that were given out at a Memorial held here for one of my mahjong players. 

A few people scoff at their kids “wasting money on something that doesn’t last,” but to me a CCC is the ideal place for fresh flowers, for the same reason they’re so appropriate at funerals. Flowers remind us of the cycle of life. “To every thing there is a season…” When you think about it, flowers don’t truly die—they still hold seeds within their dried-up blooms that could spark life again. When I had a house with an open field-like area in the back I'd bury the heads of flower shop flowers and many of them did come up. And, who knows, maybe the Great Unknown does something similar with some unseen essence we leave behind.

At births and weddings, we use flowers to symbolize growth and our hopes and dreams for the future. At birthdays and anniversaries, they remind us to cherish our benchmarks. They are life‑affirming. The connection between the timeless cycle of birth, growth, and transformation and flowers may be symbolic, but it’s pure perfection in the realm of symbolism.

But even though I was formally schooled in the language of flowers at Hixen’s Floral Design School in Cleveland, Ohio, as a young woman who once received a bouquet of miniature pink rosebuds—known to symbolize innocence and the new beginnings of romance—all that went out the window when they were delivered. I was as giddy as any other young woman that my coworkers saw proof positive that I actually had a boyfriend. And that’s only one example of the power of flowers.

Maybe that’s why flowers still have such power, even after all these years and all these seasons. They don’t last long, but they don’t need to. Their job is to remind us that beauty is worth noticing, that love is worth expressing, and that every life—even ours—keeps blooming in ways we don’t always see until someone hands us a bouquet. And if that bouquet happens to come from a niece, a neighbor, or nine dogs with suspiciously human names, well… the heart doesn’t care. It just opens, the way flowers do. © 

 See you next Wednesday. But if you get notices by email from MailChimp I'm not sure how long it will be before they will start in again. The A to Z Challenge messed them up. I'm on the free service and I don't have enough credits built up yet to get back to my normal schedule.