Life Enrichment for Widows and Panda Bears

 

It’s no secret that I’ve been infected with cabin fever since before Christmas. Not to worry. It’s not contagious, at least not through a computer monitor. If you were sitting beside me I‘d make no such promise. But that’s irrelevant at this point in time because today my fever broke! I got to talk to people whose voices didn’t come through landlines, cables and satellites and I no longer feel like I’m the last real person left on earth. Earlier this week the Life Enrichment lecture at the senior hall got canceled because the wind chills here were twenty-something below zero. Then yesterday I got an email announcing it had been re-scheduled and the gods of snowfalls took a day off, so I got to go play in the neighborhood today. Life enrichment, here I come!

The Life Enrichment lectures are always interesting, captivating and---well---life enriching with their eclectic variety of topics. One time it might be a presentation by someone who had sailed around the world in a two-man sailboat and the next time the talk and slide show might be presented by someone who had walked across America, or who weaves, dyes and collects handmade fiber-art. This month’s lecture was presented by a guy who writes travel and history books about out-of-the-way places, festivals and small towns in Michigan. Today his talk was focused on oddities and rarities around the state and he sure made us laugh enough times to make us all go home feeling uplifted and happy. Cookies from Trader Joe's did a lot to cure my cabin fever as well. I could throw a sleeping bag under one of their display tables and happily live there for the rest of my life. I’m glad I have to travel a couple of hours to get to a Trader Joe's. If not, I’d be fat enough to sit in an off-the-midway circus tent collecting quarters from kids who've come to gawk.

One of the mysteries Mr. Rademacher talked about was an object that was found in a copper mine up north in 1801 and eventually ended up in a tiny town museum marked ‘unknown tool’. Two hundred years after it was found, a professor from Chicago came through the museum and asked if he could borrow the curious object. His wish was granted and he sent the tool to a Vikings ship museum in Norway and, yup, he was right. It was authenticated as a circa 890 AD Vikings ship building tool only used in one small, isolated place on earth. Did Gokstad Vikings ships ever sail the Great Lakes and maybe one got ship wretched near the mining area? Who put the tool down in the mine? How did a six-seven inch long, square shaped stone with one end wrapped in metal that was pegged in place survive for so many centuries without someone throwing it away? Every object tells a story and every life enrichment lecturer has an interesting object in their arsenal to act as seed for thought.

Life Enrichment. When you google the topic you’ll find a lot of stuff aimed at senior citizens like me. Some call it social-therapy. You know, get the old people out of their houses where they have opportunities for socializing and learning, for exchanging "person-centered philosophy" (is there any other kind?) and to find benchmarks to use to measure our involvement in life up against. Yadda, yadda, yadda. When I was younger we called them leisure time classes but, now, be a senior citizen taking a tai chi or quilting class or going to a lecture and you’re enriching yourself. Why can’t some people just be life-long learners without having to put a new shade of lipstick on the same pig every couple of decades?

Later this afternoon, as I do often, I went to the Atlanta Zoo panda cam site and one of the mammal keepers had written: “It's always a fun experience seeing how different animals enjoy new enrichment like snow.”  (As most of us know, Atlanta got one of their rare snowfalls this week.) The young twins were not allowed outside like the older pandas but the keepers brought them a pan of snow to play with inside their den and they took to the white stuff with enthusiasm. She said, “They were eating the snow and shoving each other’s faces in it.” When you think about it, that’s not much different than what we seniors were doing today with our enrichment. We ate it up like you’d expect people suffering with cabin fever to do and after the lecture was over we oohed and aahed over the rare and odd things we’d just heard as we milled around shoving cookies in our faces. ©

 

Is It Just Me?

I haven’t even gotten my new smart phone in the mail yet and already I’m having fun with it. I’m planning the apps I want to download. I’d bet the farm you don’t know I can get pothole alerts for my county or that I can get my daily panda twins fix from the Atlanta Zoo. They have apps for that. Isn't that cool! Of course, I’m getting the normal downloads as well---CNN, Flashlight, Calendar, Maps, the local weather station and the grocery store apps, Kindle, Facebook, Barcode Reader and Instagram. My great niece is expecting a  baby in the spring and she will only post pictures on Instagram where, she says, others out in cyberspace can’t grab your photos, so I will have her to thank (or curse) if I get hooked on that app. Can you believe that over my lifetime we went from waiting 10-11 days for a letter or photograph to come from across the country to being able to get a message or photo in seconds? It makes you wonder what impact all this is having on young people just coming into the world. Will it give new meaning to the words, “he’s got a short fuse?” How is anyone going to learn patience in our modern age of easy communication and over-night or drone shipping?

I wrote my Christmas letter yesterday and now I need to reconstruct my mailing list in the new computer. When my old computer crashed a couple of months ago I upgraded from the Office Home Edition 2000 to Office Business Edition 2013 so I’m not looking forward to figuring out how to build my first mailing list, then merge it with labels. In a worst case scenario I can always hand write the addresses and make the Emily Posts of the world happy at the same time. Are there people left in the world who still care about proper etiquette? I’m told a lot of schools no longer teach cursive writing. Without their handheld devices and computers the kids of the future will be just as illiterate as the masses were in the 1700s. Even my nephew-in-laws say he can’t read cursive and he’s pushing forty. Someday the ability to read (and write) cursive handwriting will become a specialty skill only seen in professors at the highest institutes of learning as cursive writing goes the way of buggy whips and candle trimmers. Man that makes me feel old when I think about how much time we spent in grade school learning how to write between the two solid lines with the broken line in between.

Today I went to a program at the senior hall billed as Holiday Spirit and Fellowship and when I pulled up I found myself parked in between to a bright yellow Volkswagen and a clear green Escape. They made me wish I was driving a red car. You know how everyone seems to have a friend who can take the most benign statements and turn them into a sexual innuendo? Well, that’s me with colors. I see a green and yellow car parked alongside one another and I see two-thirds of a traffic signal. Ah, yes, I have several unmarketable quirks like that. One of which is spending entirely too much time wondering if all old people feel too young to be hanging out with people in our own peer group. Or it is just me? Why do we all have to look so gray and dated, so fragile? Who took the bounce out of our steps, the sparkle out of our eyes and left us singing Christmas Carols as the highlight of our week?

Everyone was ever so careful picking out their sugar laden, no caffeine treats during intermission. So demure and civilized---“Here, dear, take a napkin.” Except me, I was trying to figure out if our outside packages truly matches our personalities. Where was that woman who mooned people on a bus trip and the other glam gal who dresses like she belongs in old Hollywood? Where was that woman who waltzes into the room leading her husband on an invisible leash? I wanted see a red, green and yellow traffic signal, I wanted to see a crazy character hidden underneath a 20 year old Christmas sweater.  And when I took the time to look, they were all there...hiding in plain sight, waiting for just the right time to turn their red lights to green and let the good times roll. Sometimes we get so self-absorbed worrying about fitting in that we don’t see the seeable.

Is it just me? Heck, no!  Now, what was the question? ©

Panda Bears, the Widow and her Aphasia Book

Since the birth of the twin panda babies at the Atlanta Zoo in July I’ve been a daily fan of the panda cam. I’ve watched them grow from 4 ounces, 4.5 inches long to eleven and half pound butter balls. Until this past week they’ve divided their time between an incubator and their mother as the zoo keepers swap them out every few hours and sublimate their diet with a bottled milk. The mother panda has never had them both at one time until this week. She's been such an affectionate mother with her cubs. She carries them around in her mouth like cats do their kittens and you’d swear she’s smiling when they nurse. She cuddles with them even when they aren’t nursing, she bathes them and  the babies often look like they're sucking their paws/thumbs. It’s been such a sweet and angelic story to follow from the hairless and ugly little creatures they were at birth to the beautiful, fur-balls they are now. Now that they are spending more time together they attempt to play even though their walking is wobbly and they’re not in control of where they’re trying to go. The twins are too cut for words.

I had just gotten into making teddy bears before my husband’s stroke. I still have a stash of exotic fake furs and bear joints in the basement because I never gave up the dream of making artisan bears with personalities. And I have a collection of teeny, handmade and signed bears that measure under three inches tall. I love the micro-mini bears the best. The smallest I’ve ever achieved is five inches tall and he looks like a bulky ox next to my treasured, tiny favorites. The panda twins have gotten me thinking about making bears again. I wish I could find a good panda pattern. It’s been so long since I’ve tried alternating patterns that I’m not sure I can do it anymore. The only panda bear pattern I’ve found they want $17.50 for a downloaded pattern and the reviews say there are no instructions or how-to photos to go with it. I can’t believe that! I used to be able to exchange them free with other bear makers or buy them for next to nothing. So far, I’m not willing to pay $17.50 for a piece of paper to come out of my printer. But I may weaken and buy myself a Christmas present.

Being a widow and no longer being a caregiver to a severely disabled husband sure freed up a lot of time in my life. This point has really been brought home to me as I work on the book I’m writing for the National Novel Writers Month. As I read over the seven years’ worth of journal entries I made as a caregiver/spouse I can’t believe the range of emotions I recorded. So many things I wrote about I’d forgotten about doing. Studying those journals has made me laugh and cry and both be ashamed and proud of myself for how I handled life during those difficult years. I believe in this book because I believe that I can help others by sharing the raw emotions of what a couple goes through as they search for acceptance and a new normal after such a life-altering medical crisis. I will get the rough draft done on the book by the end of the contest, I just hope I don’t lose my mojo for getting the draft turned into a “final product.”  And maybe that’s why it’s a good thing that the panda bear pattern I lust after costs so much---if I don't buy it, it can't distract me from my do-good book project.  

But the worry-wart in me keeps wondering if I'll ever be able to do everything I've put off doing while I was busy living a different existence---paint again, make bears again, keep writing and be totally happy again. Now that I have the time but not the husband to share my joy in doing these things, do these goals from past years still ring true? Or maybe that's the way it's suppose to be. Maybe we're supposed to keep on wishing and hoping and dreaming about that next project just over the horizon until the day we die. Even if that next "project" is just trying to figure out how to steal the jello off our future roommate's dinner tray at the nursing home. Without wishes and hopes and dreams would we ever accomplish anything? I don't think I want to slow down long enough to find out. ©

The bear pattern I lust after.

 

One of my micro-mini artisan babies.

My Weekly Report, Five Days Early

I almost learned the hard way the cars are not like kittens. You can’t wean them! At the gas station today I put $37.72 worth of fuel in my little Malibu and she said, “Thank you but don’t ever try to starve me to death again!” In my defense, she should be blaming the farmer’s market. Since I’ve been going there on Saturdays I don’t need to go to the grocery store every Monday and it’s on those trips when I’d buy gas at the station connected to their parking lot. No groceries, no gas. What can I say? I’m old and set in my ways.

I had a great day today starting out with the weather being as perfect as a summer day in Michigan gets---warm but not humid and sunny with a bright blue sky. Mid morning I took the dog for a walk down the nature trail before dropping him off at his fancy-schmancy groomers. Then I made stops at Starbucks, the pet store, the post office, and the city hall to pay my summer taxes before going to my own haircut appointment. After that I stopped at Lowe’s, the gas station, the dollar store, K-Kmart and Starbucks again before picking the dog back up. I call days like this my Hundred Dollar Days because running this chain of errands always costs that much and even more this time because, sadly, cars really aren’t like kittens. Bummer! In between stops I had the radio turned up full volume and the sun roof open and the sweet smell of summer was on the wind. Like I said, it was a great day and if I’m not mistaken, to top it off an old dude at Lowe’s was flirting with me. It’s been so long I’m not sure.

I also did something today that I haven’t done in twenty years. I ran. Imagine that! It wasn’t a conscious choice but we can blame the William Tell Overture---the Lone Ranger theme song---for it happening. I had downloaded it to my iPod and instead of walking with that fast-paced music before I knew it I was trotting along…all 9.57 minutes of it. Old ladies shouldn’t be doing that! I'd be a damn fool if I ever do it again. I’d chance falling and breaking another bone. But I couldn’t help it; I love that Hans Zimmer 'Finale' version. Listening to it makes me feel young again, like it was just yesterday that I spent Saturday afternoons watching double feature western movies and spent afternoons in between playing cowboys and Indians with my summertime friends at the cottage. I need to work on putting together a “safer” playlist for walking on the trails. Maybe a little Michael Buble` who’s music often makes me glide like one of Frank Sinatra’s showgirls. 

“When marimbas start to play
Hold me close, make me sway
Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore
Hold me close, sway me more.”

Have you seen the panda twins born at the Atlanta Zoo last week? They are newborns in the photo above. Considering how cute they get when they are older, it’s shocking how homely they look as babies. They won’t start getting their characteristic black and white fur until they are around 25 days old. I wish human started out ugly and got cuter as we age instead of in reverse. I’m not a vain person but I bugs me that when the dog gets his fancy-schmancy haircut, he looks like an expensive Steiff teddy bear that everyone wants to hug and sleep with but when I get a haircut I look like---well, like I just got a haircut, ho-hum.  

Why you're jealous of the dog!

“I guess so. Maybe," I tell the anonymous voice in my head. “He's do damn cute! Now go away before people start questioning my mental health.”  ©