“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 coin collecting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coin collecting. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

The Word Vomit Post

I can’t believe it’s already 11:50 AM and I’ve been sitting at my computer since 7:30! God, these machines are evil time sucking animals. No wonder my butt is growing faster than my IQ. Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s not like I’m sitting here downloading porn. Depending on how you use these time-sucking machines, computers can be very educational. There are online classes---not that I’ve taken any---and virtual museum tours---not that I've taken any---and a host of Ted Talks, Animal Planet and science stuff on the worldwide web. But more telling perhaps is the fact my butt would still fit on an office copy machine if that proves anything on the IQ-to-backside ratio. So there’s that. 

What did I do with my morning, you ask, if not improve my mind like I could have/should have done? For one, I lined up someone to clean out my rain gutters. And not a day too soon. The latest storm that went through had water cresting right over the tops of my evestroughs and it ruined a couple of my newly refreshed bark beds. I also spend time on my medical porta trying to find out when the infusion center can schedule my Reclast bone treatment now that the stay-at-home-order has been lifted. Supposedly it was ordered last April 15th, when I saw the doctor. Since the pandemic shut down started the next day I figured that caused the delay. I figured wrong. What I found out is that the doctor’s office never sent the order in and had they done so I could have gotten the infusion back in April because that infusion is considered “essential for living.” The infusion center is putting an ‘urge’ tag on my file and I should hear back from them with an appointment date soon. 

The above two tasks ate up a lot of time but I also spent time online reading blogs, Facebook and e-mails plus checking on my e-Bay listings and watching panda and elephants cams. The panda and elephants cams are my secret indulgences. Better than fine chocolate for making me feel good. And I ask you, who on earth would pick watching porn over watching roly-poly pandas anointing themselves with sawdust or elephants giving themselves mud baths? That’s as voyeuristic as I want to get. And look who I’m telling that fib to---the blog community who has often read my voyeuristic ramblings on characters I’ve seen while people watching at the Guy Land Cafeteria.

Actually, would my Guy Land Cafeteria habits be called ‘voyeurism’ or ‘eavesdropping’? I just ask Alexa since she’s the only humanoid/virtual assistant who talks to me and she seems to think I’m eavesdropping at the cafeteria because voyeurism would require getting a derivative satisfaction out of obsessively watching a sordid subject. My fellow dinners are not ‘sordid’ and the only satisfaction I get is when what I see inspires a blog fodder topic. I don’t want to use the “P” word here again, fearing the internet crawlers will find this post and spam me with naked pictures of body parts, but Alexa seems to suggest that voyeurism rarely takes place in a public place where everyone is keeping their clothes on. People who watch “P” are voyeurs. But now I have another question: If pandas and elephants are naked and are being filmed without their permission am I an animal voyeur for watching them? Alexa says an obsession to watch is required to be voyeuristic. Check. Must be done in secret. Check. Get pleasure from watching. Check. Yup, add ‘animal voyeur’ to my resume.

Enough of the word vomit approach to writing a post and pick a topic, Jean. Okay, bossy voice talking in my head I pick coins. Foreign coins to be more exact. Back in my teens and twenties I collected foreign coins or I should say I bought them from several companies that were more than happy to advertise their wares via snail mail. They’d send you a batch every month and you’d keep what you liked, write them a check to send back with the coins you didn’t want. For decades I had my foreign coins framed and hanging on a stairway wall, but when I moved here almost two decades ago I took the coins out of the frames and threw all 250 of them in a box to dispose of later.

‘Later’ finally came this past week and I’m officially out of Foreign Coin Research Hell which is another reason why I’ve been living on the internet. The e-Bay listings will have closed and the packages mailed out by the time this post goes live but I don’t expect to make much money off from selling my old coin collection. Half the kids in America were buying stamps and coins from Littleton, Harris or Mystic back then and what we were buying by subscription were not rare by any stretch of the imagination. I divided up my foreign coins into eight lots and since I don’t ship outside of the U.S.A. I’ll probably have to beg e-Bayers to bid and I’ll be happy to do that thus ending another chapter in the mythical book titled Jean’s World of Collecting Curious and Obsolete Things. ©