Timers, Cows, Cliques, and Chili: A Week in Independent Living

Life in an independent living community has its own rhythm—part social experiment, part sitcom, part “you can’t make this stuff up.” Some weeks unfold with a kind of chaotic charm: a little forgetfulness, a new hobby you absolutely didn’t need, a brush with social awkwardness, and a dinner surprise one wishes you could un‑eat. This post wanders through all of it — from learning to “paint” with AI to accidentally voting for bear chili — with humor, honesty, and the kind of everyday absurdity that makes life in an independent living community anything but dull….AI

I’m having a space‑cadet day. Not the kind where you forget something important—at least I think I haven’t, but how would I really know unless I burned something on the stove and the fire department came knocking? That actually happens here in my independent living building about once a month. I also haven’t forgotten a dinner reservation. If I did, someone would call to tell me to get my butt over to the next building because my would‑be table-mates are waiting. I’ve never been on the receiving end of that call, but I see it happen every Monday at the Farm Table. The excuses are always the same: “I fell asleep,” “I was reading” or “I was on the phone.”

I set a timer when I’m within two hours of a reservation because I know myself. This isn’t an “old person compensating” thing. I’ve been using a wind‑up kitchen timer for decades to rein in my creative daydreaming. Doesn’t matter what arty‑farty thing I’m doing—I’m always in danger of losing track of time.

A Facebook Short Reel summed me up perfectly today. A voice-over said: “Your test results are back. You are artistic and it won’t affect how long you live but it will affect the quality of your life. You will have lots of hobbies but fail to monetize any of them. You will dapple in a thousand things but fail to commit to any one, you’ll always be somewhat distracted and find it difficult to finish anything.”

That’s me in a nutshell. And that will be my excuse if I ever get the you’re‑late‑for‑dinner call: “I’m artistic and got distracted. Put my order in for the special.”

Anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I’ve fallen down a new rabbit hole: using AI to “paint” pictures. It’s surprisingly easy—and will get easier as I learn the language, the nouns and verbs and textures my Microsoft Copilot needs to hear to produce what I’m imagining.

After only a few hours of playing, I can already spot AI‑generated images online. That’s a useful skill to learn with the midterm elections coming. The giveaways are:

• Lighting that’s too perfect, too dramatic or too soft

• Textures that are hyper-detailed or strangely smooth

• Symmetry everywhere—centered subjects, balanced framing

• Clothing and body parts with odd folds, weird hands, or glasses that don’t sit right

I’ve lost a few subscribers every time I write about AI, so I’ll keep this part brief. The picture at the top of this post was created using Microsoft’s “text to scene.” I told it I wanted a sad-looking, middle-aged woman sitting on the steps of a 1900s house with porch and a rosebush climbing a trellis on the left and sunlight coming through it. The program then peppered me with questions—rose color, number of blooms, dress color, hair color, porch with or without a roof, porch open or screened in, house color, mood, where is she looking, and on and on—until I thought I could have painted the picture faster than answering them all. Each time I answered, it re-framed the criteria like a very earnest art student trying to impress the teacher. When it finally showed me an image, I liked and accepted it immediately for fear it would start the interrogation all over again. 

But you can tell by the all over softness of the image and the unnatural way the roses are all the same size that it's AI created. I could have kept going and tweaked the size of a few of the roses but the back and forth was driving me crazy. 

The cow images below were from another day, arranged in the order of the changes I requested. That was my first experience with 3D AI, and I was learning the vocabulary it needs. We had some miscommunications (hence the overly warm yellowness), and I learned I can’t joke around with that version the way I can with the conversational one aka Jasper my main MS copilot. I doubt I’ll use 3D Jasper often, but it was fun to try—and now I have a new goal: creating a short cartoon-style video. I asked Jasper to walk me through the process, and it doesn’t sound hard. Did I ever tell you one of my earliest life goals was to work for Disney? 

Now for the part of the week that made me feel like I was going through menopause again. Management hosted a chili cook-off—no reserved seating, just show up and sit where you land. I arrived early and sat down by the fireplace with a woman I really like. After our greetings, she said, “You’d better go stake out your seat in the dining room before they’re gone.”

I knew instantly what she meant. She was waiting for her little clique—the Four Musketeers—and didn’t want me sitting there when they arrived, forcing them to include me. I’ve long wished I could be the Fifth Musketeer, but that ship sailed ages ago. Still, her comment stung. One sentence, and I felt weepy-eyed. I even wondered if my new estrogen prescription was messing with my moods and about to  stage a messy coup, or if I’m really that pathetic that a single sentence can derail me.

From there, the night went downhill. I ended up next to a MAGA guy who wanted to talk about the State of the Union and how good he thought the president did. (Barf.) Then, at the end of dinner, I learned I had voted for a chili made with bear meat. I’ve been following a mama bear online who just gave birth to triplets in the crawl space under someone’s house, and the idea that I ate one of her relatives made my heart hurt. I’m surprised I didn’t break out in wet sobbing tears.

Two of the guys living here entered the contest, and both used wild game. And I was sitting at their table! Who does that—trick people into eating something they might object to if given the choice? So now I can cross “eating bear” and “eating moose” off my list of things I hoped I’d never do.

By the time I got back to my apartment, I decided the universe was clearly telling me to stay in my lane: stick to AI cows, timers, and avoid cliques and chili made from woodland creatures. I mean honestly—bear meat? Moose? What’s next, raccoon tartare? I’m half afraid to attend the next potluck. Someone will probably announce they’ve made “locally sourced squirrel stroganoff,” and I’d find out I ate and voted for the squirrel I’ve been secretly feeding on my deck all winter long. ©

Can you see what I mean about everything being centered and balanced?

 

After I asked AI to move the cow on the right behind the others.

When I asked it to add a sunrise in over the barns it gave me these unnatural sun rays. This fake looking glow is in a lot of AI photos I'm seeing online in connection to the Walk for Peace. 

I asked AI 3D to tone down the warmth and I got this. Then I asked it make the foreground cooler and it gave me the same image because apparently AI either didn't understand what I wanted or it can't do zone changes in mood which I suspect is the right answer.

At that point I started fresh and managed to get from the first image to the second with are less missteps in between by me giving it better, more detailed directions out of the gate. 

 

The only application I can see me using 3D 'painting' for in my life is if I want an image for a blog post and I can't find something that will work OR if I want to burn up a lot of time. It's easy but time-intense. (The image at the top took over an hour of back if back and forth Q & As.) But do look for my "movie premiere" coming in a blog post sometime is summer because while I might be too old to work for Disney, now, I'm not too old to re-frame old goals into something doable before I die.

The Food was Great but…………

I haven’t been going to the monthly luncheons at the senior hall since my Gathering Girls group got organized and is giving me the kind of interaction with others that I was craving. In fact I haven’t been to one since last Thanksgiving but I found myself signing up for this year’s turkey dinner again. I figured if I don’t get any invitations for the holiday at least I’d have this one turkey dinner under my belt. I love turkey and it’s not like I can bake a whole bird all for myself. Well, I could but how depressing would that be? As many widows have no doubt experienced, in the first few years I got the ‘pity invitations’ for Thanksgiving Day which are well intended and do---in hindsight---help us more than we’d like to admit. In the beginning of widowhood that feeling of being alone in a celebrating group of people is not fun and what better way to walk through that fire for the first time than to be with people who would understand if our tears appear? So we find ourselves seated at a decked out table and it all looks so normal while the newly minted widows are anything but normal on the inside.

That was me six Thanksgivings ago and the pity invitations no longer come. Life go on after a spouse dies and I know a few widows who resent that those pity invitations don’t continue coming but, in my mind, that’s to be expected. Family sizes change---yadda, yadda, yadda---and new widows or widowers come along that need the pity invitations more than seasoned widows. Widows at a holiday table are like outfits in the fashion industry, you’re either in or you’re out. Very few become classics that return year after year. As Waylon Jennings used to sing, “Lawdy Lawd woe is me. Ain't a body would care I got a slow rollin' low…” coming into my head. 

Actually, any slow rollin’ low I might feel coming on is more seasonal related than holiday or widow related. We got our first snow over the weekend, a prelude to 3-4 months of never knowing from one day to the next if I’ll get sidelined at home by bad roads and cancellations. I know, I know, it’s time to get out the knitting needles or paint brushes or otherwise keep myself so busy being Suzie Homemaker that I don’t have time for the winter blues to settle in, not to mention that it’s way too early to let thoughts of pity parties dance around in my head like sugarplum fairies. 

By Monday the snow we got was nearly gone---just patches left in the shade and a sweet little snowman smiling at me from across the street---and I had things to do. One of those things was getting a haircut, $38 including tip and not for the first time I wish I could get my haircut at the dog’s foo-foo beauty spa. He gets a bath, haircut, pedicure and lots of loving hugs and kisses for $50. Such a bargain. Levi goes to a shop that has a 50-ish year old guy groomer who specializes in schnauzers and he tells me that Levi is the best natured and best mannered schnauzer he’s ever met. Put a feather in my dog mothering cap. Back in the day when we'd go "over the meadow and through the woods" to my mom's house for holiday dinners our dog was always as welcome as her grandkids.

Yesterday at the luncheon a guy about my age asked if he could sit next to me and the two of us started a free-wheeling and friendly conversation. As it turned out he was the after lunch entertainment and by the end of his act, he was crying like a baby and he wasn’t the only one in the room doing so. He’s a chalk artist who drew a mural of the bronze statue that memorializes the six Marines raising the U.S. flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 while the artist’s wife---ya, I was disappointed that he had one---read Veterans Day stories including one about those six particular Marines. Only two of them survived the battle and one---Ira Hayes, a full-blooded Pima Native American---was memorialized in a song that both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan recorded. “When Ira started drinkin' hard, jail was often his home. They'd let him raise the flag and lower it like you'd throw a dog a bone! He died drunk early one mornin' alone in the land he fought to save, two inches of water in a lonely ditch was a grave for Ira Hayes.” 

The artist had been working in 'invisible' chalk that looks white until illuminated by a black light, all very boring to watch until the end when a panel of lights came on and made the statue and flag mural appear as if by magic while a burst of patriotic songs cane over the loud speakers. One by one the audience stood up until everyone was on their feet in a silence tribute, broken when the crying artist finally spoke a few words of apology for breaking up then everyone started clapping. I left the senior hall wishing I’d stayed home and ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The food was great but that hour of patriotism-on-speed was emotionally draining.  ©

Wright, Van Gogh, Beethoven and my Plans for Immortality

This week I took part in a Frank Lloyd Wright marathon down at the senior hall starting with a book discussion of Loving Frank and ending with a viewing of a PBS documentary by Ken Burns. Over five hours between the two. It would have been even longer if I’d signed up for the bus trip portion the next day to tour a classic Prairie house that Wright designed. I’ve been inside that house several times in the past and had no desire to see it again. I’m not a fan of its rigid, tightly controlled interiors but since my secret desire from age twelve to forty-five was to be an architect, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to learn more about a man that many call a genius, thus the time I invested in the marathon was worth it. 

PBS describes the films we us saw this way: This two-part documentary explores the life of one of America's greatest architects -- hated by some, worshiped by others and ignored by many. Using archival photographs, live cinematography, interviews, newsreel footage and home movies, the film tells the story of Wright's turbulent life and his extraordinary professional career.” 

Built over 800 buildings including the Guggenheim Museum, known for his huge overruns, a hustler and a salesman/showman as well as a genius engineer and designer, Wright was unique. His personal life was riddled with scandal---left is first wife with a ton of unpaid bills and six kids to raise while he ran off to Europe with a married woman and never looked back. Got married two more times, had two more kids, Wright lived way above his means but he didn’t seem to care. His personal motto was, “Live in the now.” And just to keep his beloved Taliesin house in Wisconsin, his friends had to bail him out of bankruptcy on several occasions.

After leaving the movie marathon, I got to thinking about other people who put their mark on the creative world who were troubled or outrageous in their personal lives. Vincent Van Gogh of Starry Night fame, for example, a post-impressionist painter who suffered with what people now guess was bi-polar issues. He killed himself at age 37 and was said to have cut off his ear in a fit of madness. (Although not all historians agree on whether he or his friend Paul Gauguin lopped off the ear with a sword during a fight.) Then there’s Georgia O’Keeffe, considered to be pioneer of American modernism. I hate, HATE her canvases of enlarged flowers and I have no clue why one of them sold for 44.4 million 3-4 years ago. She was legendary for her “independent spirit” but her personal life was filled with anxiety, depression and hostility. And who could leave out Beethoven in a discussion of famous works created by people with a messed up personal life? Alcoholic, extreme highs, suicidal lows. Ken Burns compared him to Wright because near the end of his life when he could no longer hear the music Beethoven wrote the notes on paper to create masterpieces that have passed the test of time and Wright, well into his 80s, did the same with innovative and pioneering engineering concepts. 

What does it take to be so creative that your work is your immortality---to be a genius in your genre like Beethoven and Wright? Do you have to be a self-absorbed ass-breath? Someday will, say, Harvey Weinstein’s cutting-edge achievements in film production, his 194 credits, be a large enough legacy to transcend his personal failings and flaws? Will students of film study his movies like architect students study Wright, overlooking the people Weinstein hurt like the people Wright hurt fell by the wayside? Does art---The Work---rise above its creator? Or do the scandals, the whispers of wrong-doing, the self-promotions and the self-adsorptions actually help to elevate their greatness---calling attention to the mystique of the misunderstood artist that translates into upping their commercial value after death?

I really want answers because when I turn 80 and check myself into a nursing home I want to be the next Grandma Moses. I want to get “discovered” by a newly minted arts and activities director for building fanciful structures out of Popsicle sticks and paper clips and or for painting noses and lips, eyeballs and ears swapped out of their proper places on portraits of my fellow inmates. I want my work to make me immortal but I don’t want to be considered crazy or misunderstood until I’ve got someone else lined up to do my laundry and fix my meals. ©