“Not in Assisted Living (Yet): Dispatches from the Edge of Independence!

Welcome to my World---Woman, widow, senior citizen seeking to live out my days with a sense of whimsy as I search for inner peace and friendships. Jeez, that sounds like a profile on a dating app and I have zero interest in them, having lost my soul mate of 42 years. Life was good until it wasn't when my husband had a massive stroke and I spent the next 12 1/2 years as his caregiver. This blog has documented the pain and heartache of loss, my dark humor, my sweetest memories and, yes, even my pity parties and finally, moving past it all. And now I’m ready for a new start, in a new location---a continuum care campus in West Michigan, U.S.A. Some people say I have a quirky sense of humor that shows up from time to time in this blog. Others say I make some keen observations about life and growing older. Stick around, read a while. I'm sure we'll have things in common. Your comments are welcome and encouraged. Jean
Showing posts with label canaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canaries. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

My Super-Doper Ordinary Day

My life is both speeding up too fast while still moving too slowly. How can both of those things be true, you ask? You can ask from here to Kingdom Come but I’m not sure I know how to explain what is going on in my head. The pandemic has put all our lives on hold, restricting where we go, who we can see, what we can do. Yet we still keep getting older by the day. We still have to pay our bills and we still have to get up in the morning to start our days. That latter thing---get up in the morning---is something I didn’t want to do today. But Mother Nature painted a wicked grin on her face and kept calling me. I tried to ignore her and snuggle back into my dream but that only worked for so long. I flipped her the bird and did her bidding, my eyes barely open.

By the way, I’ve been using the phrase “Kingdom Come” my entire life and just bothered to google its meaning for the first time and now I’m confused. Something about the Lord’s Prayer, salvation, DC comic books and the Justice League? Since I don’t read comic books and never did even as a kid, one can only assume I'm using ‘Kingdom Come’ as an idiom for eternity, the next world, the hereafter, the end of time---take your pick. But my curiosity was peaked about the comic book. The blurb for the comic Kingdom Come at Amazon reads, “Set at the dawn of the 21st century in a world spinning out of control, Kingdom Come is a riveting, alternate reality story pitting the old guard--Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and others--against a new, uncompromising generation of heroes in a war that will determine the future of the planet.” 84% of those who reviewed the comic book gave it five stars and only 1% gave it one star. 84% is pretty high. The Bible only has a 79% on the high end and 3% on the low. I only read books with at least 75% of the reviewers dishing out a 5 star rating. I may read a lot of smut but a girl’s gotta have some standards when reading kissy-face books.

Back on topic if I can remember what that was…oh, ya, my super-duper ordinary day. The second thing I did this morning after a trip to the bathroom is what I do second every morning. I hopped on the scales which often sets my mood for the entire day as I compare my morning weight to what it was just before I went to bed. Yes, I’m one of those females who is obsessed with how those two numbers can vary from three to seven pounds. I like water. I drink a lot of it and it comes back out during the night plus supposedly the moon phases also effects overnight weight loses. Thank goodness I still get up for those "comes back out" events. Somewhere along the pandemic I’ve gotten into a pattern of waking up at 7:30 and I hate getting up that early or at least that’s what I tell myself as my sleepy brain tries to catch up with my body as I’m shuffling towards the kitchen to start my four cup coffee pot. (They call it a four cup pot but it's really only two cups unless you're using a little girl's tea party set with tin cups.) Everything is better once I’ve had my Starbucks Breakfast Blend with Italian Sweet Crème.

Today I had a mission to accomplish. I was scheduled to get my second Covid-19 vaccine---not a very ordinary thing to do but I was having trouble naming this post, so just go with it, okay? After getting the vaccine I visited a Petco where the internet said I could buy live canaries and finches. Last summer I bought myself an Audubon Bird Call and I often sat on my deck in the late afternoon, teaching myself how to use it. When I decided to explore the idea of replace Levi my dearly departed schnauzer with a canary I looked for my bird call and I took it as a sign that I hadn’t downsized it out of my life. Petco was disappointing, though. They only had a couple dozen parakeets and one canary and she was the center in a parakeet sandwich the whole time I was there, never woke up from her nap so we could make eye contact. A couple of summers ago I went to a place that had a walk-in bird aviary with hundreds of finches, canaries and budgies inside. You could buy sticks that were covered in bird seeds and you’d hold the stick out so the feathered creatures could line up on your arm to politely take their turn grabbing a seed then taking off so the next guy in line could grab a snack. I got it into my head that Petco would be like that---have an aviary I could walk into and have a bird pick me instead of the other way around. Ya, I know. It's Petco and I should have known better.

I am still open to the idea of getting a canary. I’ve done my homework and will now let it simmer on the back burner over the summer. My city does have another place to buy birds---that's all they sell---plus everything that goes with them. It's been around since I was a kid. Heck, I went past the place twice a day for ten years when I was working on the south end. When I'm in a serious buying mode, I'll bite the bullet to drive the dreaded S-Curve through town to get there. In the meantime, I don't want to tempt myself too much until I'm 110% sure I'm ready to close the door on getting another dog. I miss Levi and reminders are still popping up when I least expect them. I put on a spring jacket today, for example, and found baggies in the pocket I used when we went on walks---things like that are like pulling a Band-aide off a wound that is still trying to heal. ©