Fancy-Pants Dining, Haircuts and Mr. President

Practically in my back yard is a large culinary college that is listed in the top five in the USA. Every year our senior hall has a popular event where they’ll bus 100 of us (25 at a time on four consecutive days) down to their 5-star style restaurant. This week was my third year going and I’ll keep going as long as I can still spoon food into the biggest orifice in my head. The ambience and food are to die-for and out of the norm for my dining experiences. We sat at tables of six and the conversation focused on the food, the dessert cart and the chefs that came out to answer questions about unidentifiable flavor profiles in the dishes and how they were prepared. I had the “Caribbean Adobo Braised Pork” with sofrito and pineapple sauce and for dessert I practically had an orgasm devouring the tiramisu cake in an eatable chocolate dish served with a scoop of coffee ice cream on the side. Each time we go, we tour a different part of the college and the bakery was on slate this week. After lunch we went on a mystery side trip that turned out to be a tour of the fire department and its regional-wide training center. They had a “house” with moveable walls that can be filled up with smoke so the firefighters can’t see where they’re going. I swear they must have picked the cutest guy in the department to do the talk and tour. Dimples and tiramisu in the same day? It doesn’t get much better than that. 

I got a new hair style this week---breezier and easier for a spring that includes more showers now that I’m going to the gym three to four times a week. It seems like the longer you go to the same stylist the more they get into auto-pilot-cutting your hair and then you end up with a helmet head. At least that happens to me. So I searched for a photo to bring with me and when I showed it to the stylist she said, “That’s not going to work.” I didn’t expect resistance. “Why not?” I asked. “Because It’s longer than the cut you have.” Say what? I couldn’t believe it but I wasn’t about to argue with a lady holding a pair of sharp scissors. “I’m not married to that photo,” I said. “What do you suggest?” Instead of answering she asked me what I was trying to achieve and I told her I wanted to get rid of the bulk on top and be able to towel dry my hair after a shower and be good to go. Boy short. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” she replied. “As thick as your hair is if you go that short it will all stick straight up and there’s not enough jell in the world to make it lay down.” “So what should I do,” I begged, “walk around with a helmet in my arms so it looks like I have a good reason for having helmet hair?” She talked and I lost interesting in listening. Finally I ended her monologue with, “Why don’t you just surprise me.” She did. She gave me a cut that to my untrained eye looks like the one in the photo I brought in! “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” Well, I didn’t get the answer I wanted but my new cut is definitely ready for the sultry summer days.

A week or so ago a blogger friend, Bella Run, recommended signing up for The Word of the Day at Dictionary.com which I did and until yesterday I hadn’t received a word that I’d seen before or thought that I’d use in the future. Then an email came with this word: mumpsimus. “1) adherence to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, memorization, practice, belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy, or 2) a person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.” Who does that remind you of? Hint: He lives in a big white house. Oops, zip my mouth and slap me silly. My blog is in a controversy free zone. At least I’ve been trying to keep that way lately, but this past week has been a good week for those of us in The Resistance so I’m sticking my neck up like a periscope on a submarine. Feel free to take a potshot at me if you think the world is being unfair to Mr. Mumpsimus, if you don’t think Voltaire, the French philosopher of ye olden days, knew what he was talking about when he warned, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Speaking of The Resistance, I had lunch with my oldest niece over the weekend, an early birthday treat on her part. I love that woman! We talked about the Russian entanglements in the White House, the failed Trumpcare bill, the second Muslim ban that's been blocked by several district courts and I got caught up on all things family related. We each had to drive a half hour to meet in the middle and as I drove home after lunch I couldn’t help feeling wistful that we can’t do it more often. I miss having people around who’ve known me longer than a minute and a half---who knew me when my brain and my tongue worked at the same speed and who can fill in when my memory fails me. Magic mirror on the wall, why can’t I age like smooth-as-silk Jamaica Rum instead of Hire’s Root Beer that’s gone flat? ©

The haircut

My dessert

A hard choice that came in second

Serendipitous Inspiration

Saturday morning I couldn’t decide if I needed a shower or not before taking myself out to lunch on a dark, raining day. Dermatologists don’t recommend daily showers for old people if you’re not doing stuff to get sweaty and dirty. Our thinning skin apparently is chronically too dry which exposes us to all kinds of nasty skin ailments, the least of which is wrinkles. I don’t care about wrinkles but I’d like to avoid cracking skin and eczema, thank you very much, so I listen to my doctor. I hadn’t been doing much but sitting at the computer so I stuffed my iPod buds in my ears and made a decision to get sweaty with music and exercise so I’d have a good reason to hit the shower. 

It felt good to listen to my old 'power walking' playlist. In my world that meant it was time to strut around inside my house, arms swinging and knees pumping high. I stop at certain places where I have something to hold on to to do a few leg lifts, squats or old-people dance moves---anything to get my heart rate up and my muscles working. My 'power walking' playlist includes: Stayin’ Alive, The 5^th of Beethoven, The William Tell Overture, Night Fever, Gangham Style, Hooked on Tchaikovsky and All These Things That I’ve Done. As you might guess I don’t have any ‘50s music on my iPod and I dread the day when I’m in a nursing home and the activity director thinks she’s doing a good thing by flooding the place with Elvis, Pat Boone and Bobby Darin. That’s what they do---match the music to the era in which the majority of their residents came of age. Actually, I should have ended that sentence with, “I dread the day when I’m in a nursing home.” Well, I’m not there yet and I’d better not forget it!

Exercise is supposed to be good for your mental health, too, a perk that I could use right now. I haven’t been doing much since last spring which is one of the reasons why I dug out my iPod and put it on the charger a few days before resurrecting my old power walking routine. According to HelpGuide.com exercise “promotes all kinds of changes in the brain, including neural growth, reduced inflammation, and new activity patterns that promote feelings of calm and well-being. It also releases endorphins, powerful chemicals in your brain that energize your spirits and make you feel good. Finally, exercise can also serve as a distraction, allowing you to find some quiet time to break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that feed depression.” I’ve always hated exercise but I’m willing to get out that big ugly gun to ward off the winter blues that I’ve somehow managed to acquire in August.

As I do my power walking around my house the dog thinks I’m the Pied Piper and there’s a good reason for that. I leave a trail of dog treats as I move through the house so Levi will stay behind me instead of getting in front of me the way he does when we do “doggie dancing.” (And why I don’t play more music in the house is a mystery I need to solve. It does lift my spirits.) The only song Levi gets to hear is, Stand by Me. I used to play it on my computer every night as a way of entertaining my husband and exercising the dog with obedience commands disguised as dance moves---leg weaves, circles, standing up on two legs, walking backward and forward. We’re not good at it like you'd see in dog dancing competitions---I shouldn't even call what we do dancing---but my goal was never perfection but rather to have fun and giving the dog five minutes of undivided attention. Since last winter we’d only been doing it three-four times a month and I need to give that activity back to him more often, if only because he’s got a more boring life than I do. 

Do you believe that inspirational messages come into our lives when we need them in a serendipitous manner or do you believe they’re always out there like white noise, ignored until our minds and hearts are ready to accept the lessons they teach? After I wrote the first draft of this post I was on Facebook where one of my friends had just posted a video of a Chinese guy in his eighties. I scrapped the original ending so I could write about Deshun Wang, a man who took up doing an intense workout late in life. He also walks the fashion catwalk with kids a quarter of his age---his gray hair flowing down to his shoulders and looking full of life. His easy smile and kick-ass attitude earned him the nickname of the ‘hottest grandpa’ and he became an instant internet sensation.

He says in the video, “At 80 I still have something left in me. I still have dreams to achieve. Believe me, potential can be explored. When you think it’s too late, be careful you don’t let that be your excuse for giving up.” Now, that’s an inspirational message I truly needed to hear! I've spent my entire life working towards goals and dreams but since my husband died I’ve let my age limit my dreams. I don’t have enough time left to do such and such, I’ve told myself. What’s the point of trying? Watching one video, of course, can’t change the trajectory of anyone's life but Mr. Wang gives me mega much to think about. How about you? Do you let your age edit the potentials you could explore? ©

Slow Week on Widowhood Lane

Here it is Wednesday already and I don’t have my mid-week blog ready to go. It’s one of those weeks where I have little on my day planner except work projects and a party on Saturday, so there's nothing much to write about unless you want to hear about the two boxes of stuff I skimmed from the house and garage and took to the Salvation Army or the nine antiques I’m dropping off at an auction house on Friday. First, though, I had to take a trip to the dealership and admit I couldn’t figure out the directions on how to get the back seats in my Trax to fold down. I felt foolish and old when the salesman did it in two seconds. Nice young man that he is, he said a lot of people come in with the same issue. It seems the owner’s manual left out a step in the directions.

I love my new car, though. I may have bought it on a whim but it feels like me and, knock on wood, I will probably own it until I can no longer drive. Crazy, isn’t it, to know that day will come and there is nothing we can do about it but try to handle giving up our driver licenses with grace. I had the salesman, today, help me with another issue while I was there. I was having trouble pairing my phone book from my cell to the Trax. After a half hour of the salesman trying to do it, he finally paired his own phone book to my car which helped us decide his smart phone has a higher IQ than mine. Time to upgrade. He deleted his data from my phone book and I told him, “Too bad. I might have enjoyed stalking your friends.” He laughed and apologized for not being able to resolve both my problems. “But you did,” I replied. “Now I know it’s a tech/device issue and not an old-lady-can’t-do-anything issue which makes me very happy.” 

It was a good day all the way around in Old-Lady Ville. While I was away from the house the guys who put the first coat of stain on my deck sixteen days ago---and who got paid in full even though they still had 30 foot of details on the spindles to finish plus apply the second coat---came back to finish the job. I was starting to get depressed about the deck, thinking I’d made an old person, too trusting mistake. When I was younger I never would have paid in full for half a job. I was more business savvy than that. I’d even started writing bad reviews in my head to post online and I’m glad I don’t have a reason to use them. Still, I hope the anxious feelings I had these past sixteen days over writing that check serves as a lesson that I’m no longer on top of my game and I need to be more careful. What next? Will I start writing checks to all the heart-tugging charities that fill up my mailbox with requests?  Old people, you can’t trust them with their own money! But let’s not tell my nieces. Keep them in the dark as long as we can. 

Since this blog is short, I’ll take you on a photo essay of my yard. The nature strip on the back of my lot looks especially pretty right now and most of the photos below are of that. (The French Lilac at the top is in my front yard.) Between that man-made nature strip in the back and the natural cattail bog on the side. my yard brings in a lot of wildlife for a city lot. ©

 

view off my deck of the nature strip

this and the next four photos are close ups of the nature strip

the tall stalks are day lilies, this whole area will be various shades of orange soon

behind the lilies & other flowers queen's Ann's lace will bloom later in the summer

The cattails that separates me from my new neighbor. I love that frog factory.

across from the cattails, along side of the garage with the dog's fenced in area in the distance

I have three of these along my deck in different colors

more stuff along my deck

Another view off my deck. The white fence marks where some of my husband's ashes are buried. I planted a dogwood behind the fence, his favorite tree.

my front patio and view down the street