Everything that is Old is New Again

It’s one of those mornings when the thoughts in my head are as hard to nab and put down in writing as bobbing for apples in a tub of water at a Halloween party. As the game goes, you try to pick an apple up with your teeth but the apples keep slipping away and you get your face wet trying, to the delight of everyone watching. No one is watching me try to come up with a cohesive topic to write about but if someone were here, they’d snicker and poke fun of how many stall tactics I’ve been taking to the whole write-a-blog-entry-or-die-trying thing I’ve set forth to do today.

I learned during one of my stalling side trips that in recent years the game of apple bobbing has come under fire for being “unsanitary and it could lead to blindness.” Sounds ridiculous to me, given the fact bobbing for apples has been around since the Romans invaded Britain in AD years. If it were true, billions of kids and young adults would have been asking for white canes and Seeing Eye dogs for Christmas. I suppose it could happen but I prefer to believe it’s a rumor started by the makers of an iPhone app that takes apple bobbing to a place I don’t care to go. Everything that is old is new again.

After getting sidetracked googling apple bobbing, I tried to remember if I’ve ever played the game with an old friend I had lunch with this week. Nope, the Halloween party for adults I’m thinking of was with a different group, a group for singles sponsored by the YMCA, a group I joined in my twenties when I was in hot pursuit of husband material. But the old friend I had lunch with was part of a package deal I got when Don came into my life---three guys who met in high school and who stayed close their entire lives. Since Don died, Gary and I have been getting together spring and fall, meeting half way between where we both live. And we talk on the phone whenever the political world heats up and we want to bitch to another member of the choir. This year was special for him because we met at a bar/restaurant the three amigos hung around in their school days. It burned down last year and was recently reopened. Brand new, but with enough nods to its history to make the hometown people happy to see it back. Everything that is old is new again. Ever notice how many times we can say that as we age? 

Letty Cottin Pogrebi, founding editor of Ms. Magazine and co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus once wrote, “We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.” I don’t know about the staying young part but forming new friendships does add value to one’s life. And in that pursuit I met with my Gathering Girls pals on Monday at the Guy Land Cafeteria. This past summer we’ve been meeting at different places and while that was nice, so many places now days have such poor acoustics that carrying on a conversation is a challenge. I just ran into an article that said the new decorating trend in restaurants of high ceilings and hard surfaces has resulted in the number one complaint of diners being “noisy” and a couple of new apps have been created to measure the decibel levels in restaurants so it can be posted in reviews. People talk at 60 decibels and anything over 70 in public places causes you to raise your voice. If they keep developing more and more apps for this and that, will phones have to grow in size again? How many apps can those little buggers hold before they'll squeal like greased piglets in a county fair game? 

After lunch I was pulling one of my hearing aids out and pulling it in my change purse, something I often have to when I go to the movies. One of my Gathering Girls pals and I went to see A Star is Born with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. Everything that is old is new again. I remember going to an earlier remake of this movie---this is the fourth one---with Barbara Streisand and Chris Christopherson in the leading roles but as I sat in the theater this time I couldn’t recall how the story line was going to end, so I was as shocked as any newbie to the theater. As I sat listening to Lady Gaga sing the finale---God, can that girl sing---it struck me that the song she was singing will become a classic. Spoiler Alert: It’s a perfect anthem for anyone who has lost someone they loved. ©

“Wish I could, I could've said goodbye

I would've said what I wanted to

Maybe even cried for you

If I knew it would be the last time

I would've broke my heart in two

Tryin' to save a part of you…”

All of the film’s music was written by Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper and Lukas Nelson (Willie Nelson’s son). Such a powerful trio of talent! If you’re as interested in Nelson’s contributions to the film as I was, you can find an article about it here.

 

$100 Days, Psychic Apps and Free Ice Cream

Every four weeks I get a haircut and every eight weeks I get a pedicure and the dog goes to the groomers. Monday was our mutual day of beauty. I got up at the crack of dawn so I could get a shower and show up on time for my haircut. Then I raced the five blocks back home, picked Levi up and took him to the nature trail for a short walk before dropping him off at the groomers for his bath, haircut, doggie pedicure and whatever they do to his butt---I don’t even want to know. I’m just glad I don’t have to do “it”---whatever “it” is. After dropping him off at noon I grabbed a quick lunch at a drive-through Wendy’s that has a lake behind it. I like sitting back there as I eat, listening to the seagulls but I often wonder if they feel deprived because they consume more French fries than fish. Do they ever get out to Lake Michigan? Is this lake next to a parking lot a ghetto in the Kingdom of Birds?

The pedicure place is close by and while I was waiting for my nails to dry I read an article about sleep research. After sitting in their back massaging chair for over an hour, I could have fallen asleep but I had to pick Levi back up before they sold him off to a cat food cannery or a medical research lab owned by Dr. Evil. They have five groomers, one bather and two desk people working at the doggie beauty parlor and it’s always busy and bubbling over with canine energy. For some reason Levi and another schnauzer seem to get booked on the same day. The other dog is so cute and lady-like and I think Levi has a crush on her. I know I do. I call days like this my hundred dollar days but they actually cost closer to $120 to get us both “prettied up” and that doesn’t even include tips and lunch. First world problems, Jean, remember how lucky you are to have them instead of second and third world problems.

Today was the annual ice cream social at the senior hall. A local creamery donates the ice cream and all the sundae fixings to honor us oldies-but-goodies for reasons all their own. It’s the best made ice cream in area and usually it’s so hot in July the ice cream melts before you can get to the bottom of your dish. Not this time. It was 60 degrees! Can you believe that? The cool weather we’re having coupled with the back-to-school advertising blasted out everywhere is making me sad. I’m not ready for summer to end. I’m not ready for a lot of things. They will come anyway. But if I’ve learned anything in my 70 plus years it’s that life is constantly changing. The ebbs and tides, the yin and yang, the positives and negatives all do their dances to keep the world turning which means no one can stay sad for long at the senior center where they book bands that tell corny jokes like this: An old guy using a walker made his way up to the window at Tasty Freeze and ordered a sundae. The clerk gave him a kind smile and asked: “Crushed nuts?” and he replied, “No, arthritis.” You can always count on old people humor at the senior hall.

All of us at one time or another wonder about life, what it’s all about and why do some suffer and others don’t. I compare my first world problems with those from around the world and wonder, why me?  Why am I lucky enough to have hundred dollar days and free ice cream? Why am I lucky enough not to have the sound gunfire over head? I’ve been thinking too much about this topic lately and even when I try not to it comes knocking on my door. Turn on the eerie music while I explain that one. I have a Buddhist Mediation app on my cell phone that I like to use in the car if I have time to kill. It gives you a phrase you’re supposed to repeat each time a Burmese gong or Chinese hand bell rings and before the ice cream social I turned it on. The phrase they gave me was, “There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.”

Usually my Buddhist Mediation app puts me in a mellow state, almost on the verge of sleep. Not this time. After spending four minutes repeating, “There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it” I was analyzing and wondering if we truly wouldn’t recognize the intrinsic value of good if not for the evil in the world. Do we all know the perimeters of those words, or are some of us still in the dark ages and truly don’t know that doing good is better than doing evil? I decided the latter is true. Since time began, we’ve gotten a lot better though. We no long burn girls at the stake because a neighbor’s cows went dry. We no longer shanghai boys to work on pirate’s ships. We have a world court to try crimes against humanity. And we have eerie mediation apps that seem to be psychic and make me focus on Truths as old as enlighten thought and written language. And one of those Truths is the fact that all any one of us can do is our best to leave our tiny slice of the world a better place than when we found it. ©   

They've Got an App for Everything But....

I am in love with my smart phone! Shopping for free apps and reading their reviews is my new, part time hobby. They have some neat stuff and it’s no wonder so many young people have their faces buried in their phones. If I was in the dating scene the first thing I’d want to do when checking a guy out would be to look at his apps so I could get a window into his personality and quirks. For example, my first apps included the emergency ICE app and the Tornado app from the Red Cross. I’ve always been a person who believes that being prepared for the worst is somehow insurance against the worst happening. Crazy, I know, but it does ward off panic attacks in high stress situations. My grocery store app is another list kind of thing but with the ability to clip virtual coupons and locate which aisle of the store you’re going to find that obscure thing you only buy in leap years.

When people jokingly say, “I’ll bet they have an app for that” it’s really not much of a joke because they probably DO have an app for whatever you can throw in the Google Play Store search engine. Today I was testing that theory and I typed in ‘how to be happy.’ Sure enough they have an array of ‘how to be happy’ apps to download. I didn’t do a ‘happy’ download, but I couldn’t resist the Buddha Meditation Trainer with its Zen bells and Burmese gongs. Level one of ten starts out with a three minute meditation on the phrase, “Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth.” That was downright spooky given the fact that I’m getting over a bad cold that had me feeling yucky and depressed, and given the fact that the whole month of December I’ve been singing a song about my discontented life. And that brings me back to this age-old question: Does the universe find ways to tell us what we need to hear when we need to hear it? Or are those messages out there all the time, like white noise running in the background, and finally we let it penetrate our conscious thoughts when we’re ready to accept its Universal Truth? The meditation reminded me that a bad cold is not cancer---I’ll get over it---and contentment is a worthy, obtainable goal that we all struggle with from time to time.

At the Play Store next I did a search for ‘old people apps’ and I was shocked to find one titled Quickie Locator. You know, “for those times when you’re sitting in an airport with nothing to do” and you want to know if there is anyone near-by with a similar desire for a quickie to break up your boredom. Apparently, you can hook-up using GPS in any given area. You don’t even have to lock eyes across a crowded bar anymore, you can use an app for that and cut to the chase. Who knew! But I think someone tagged that app wrong because I’m guessing most old people would rather find friends and lovers the old fashioned way. But I did find a great magnifier app listed under old people apps and it had me going all over the house magnify stuff. I can even do it in a dark closet which I figure will be pretty helpful in a poorly lit restaurant.

For as cheap as my new phone was---$99.00 on a Black Friday special---I still can’t figure out how they can do so much yet a pair of no frills digital hearing aids that only has to do one thing costs in the thousands. But guess what. At the apps store you can get an enhanced hearing app. They say it’s for bird watchers or students listening to lectures and for people who forgot to wear their hearing aids. Ya, sure. You just plug your headset into your phone and you can listen to conversations coming from across the room. I can see the advantages of that app for people who are hard-of-hearing but, ohmygod, it kind of makes you wonder about some of these plugged-in young people sitting around in coffee shops! Are they really just playing games or could they be high tech voyeurs? It would be kind of fun to test for eavesdroppers wouldn’t it, by saying stuff that would shock a young person into a reaction. “Hey, Mary, see that young guy sitting by the window. I’d like to be his sugar momma” then count the heads that turn to look.

But I did manage to find an area of interest where there seems to be no app for that. I put ‘widow’ into the Google Play Store search engine and all that did was make the system assume I misspelled ‘windows.’ Then I tried ‘widowhood’ and it up came a bunch of apps featuring sexy Scarlett Johansson---actress, singer and model---tagged for this app catergory because she once played the Marvel comic book character, the Black Widow. I don’t know what I expected to find---maybe a pep talk when you need to hear one. Maybe an app like the Tornado app with headings like: ‘what to do before, during and after [a bad day]’, ‘recovery’ and ‘planning ahead.’ As a widow fast approaching the second sadiversary, I know all too well those back-sliding, sad days happen. So where is the app for that? ©