Programing Gadgets and Walk-Abouts

I’m sitting here waiting for the irrigation guy to come fix my springer head that got broken by a friend of my new neighbor. I can’t use the system until it’s fixed because water gushes up like a decorative fountain in a park. I don't mess with the control box enough to know how to isolate and close down just one of the ten zones so I turn the whole system off. It’s been raining off and on so the lawn didn’t suffer with my stubbornness to get tech savvy with Toro. People in my generation are going to have a hard time keeping up with things like this as we age. It used to be so much simpler for my parent’s generation when all they had to do is drag garden hoses around and then remember to turn the water off before their lawns look like marshlands.

On the same topic of keeping up with programmable things, this week I managed to change the batteries on my electric tooth brush and reprogram the darn thing in less five minutes and it even gives me orders in English. One time it took me a half hour and a Google search to do it. And I also figured out one of the big mysteries of life...at least my life. I’ve figured out why one of cable TV’s seemed to have mind of its own. When the cable boxes were installed last July I was told that the 57 button remotes are not interchangeable which turned out to be a lie. I just figured out that when I’m in the bedroom, the remote marked ‘bedroom’ controls not only the bedroom TV but also the one in the kitchen. If it's aimed just right, yes, the signal goes through an open door and across two rooms. I’m not forgetting to turn off the darn thing when I leave the kitchen! I’m not going bonkers. It’s not possessed by a spirit. Now if I could figure out how to get my CD player not to come on, then turn off five minutes later every day at 10 PM I’d been a happy camper. Actually, I do know why it does that and what I’d have to do to reprogram it but the icons I need to see on a screen to fix the issue are so tiny and low to the floor I physically can’t do it. People with grand-kids don’t know how good they’ve got it. Kids are fearless about programing gadgets and I'd rent a kid to do it if I could.  

New Topic: I’m not a woman who enjoys shopping, never have been unless I was in an antique mall. Even that has lost its charm since Don died and I went into downsizing mode. But this week I needed stuff. Printer ink for one and a Culver’s North American cod filet sandwich for another and I knew I’d die soon if I didn’t get them. (Those darn late night Culver’s TV commercials work!) If Amazon.com could drone drop a hot sandwich at my house, I could happily order most of my ‘wants’ online. But that’s a few years in the future so off I went to shopping roe---a five lane street full of malls and nationally branded restaurants and stores.

Wednesday I went on a Red Hat Society walk-about but I wish I had stayed home for a sit-about. We went out to the boondocks to a farmer’s barn-turned-sandwich-shop and produce stand. Lunch there was slow and so-so, the conversation was so-so and I didn’t need any asparagus or Michigan made jam which is all they had besides tomatoes from Canada. After leaving that place we went to another place that was an apple orchard/ice cream shop/gift shop/wine shop and bakery combo---oh, and a cross-country skiing location in the winter. The gift shop had quality made things but after fifteen minutes I’d had enough of looking at scarfs, jewelry, purses, pop-up greeting cards and other stuff no one knows they want until they see it. Between the shopping, wine tasting, eating ice cream cones and donuts it took FOREVER to get all twelve us on the same page to go back to the car pool lot so we could head on home. We were like red and purple ants going every which way. Oh, well, you can’t win them all. What I’ve got lined up for the end of the week will more than make up for the uninspiring walk-about. My Move and Lunch Club on Friday is going to see a film billed as, “A widow and former songstress discovers that life can begin anew at any age.” And I got invited to a Father’s Day cottage party where my nieces and nephew and their families, my brother, and assorted others will be. So, out to the boondocks I’ll go again but this time I know I’ll come back high on stimulating conversation and yummy food. ©

Bad Bones and Colorful Bodies

 

I officially have bones that are porous enough to quality for yearly DEXA scans of my neck down past my hips to track my osteoporosis. It’s not a brag-able achievement or necessarily age-related in my case. I came by the condition quite simply because I haven’t had a working thyroid since I was a teenager and the medication I’ve had to take ever since leeches the calcium out of your bones. Yikes! If eating calcium-rich food had been an answer, my bones would be spinach colored petrified ice cream with flecks of salmon suspended in them like flies in amber and as hard as dinosaur bones displayed in museums. No such luck. All the standard treatments I’ve been on over the past 15 years haven’t stopped the loss of bone density. Until this year. Behold, this week my orthopedic doctor delivered the first good news I’ve ever gotten since I began my downward spiral towards dying in a nursing home after a hip fracture with no one near-by but a meanie from housekeeping who steals the desserts off my dinner trays and can’t speak English. Not only did the daily shots I’ve been taking this past year stop the loss of bone density, now there’s documented bone-building improvement! Not a lot but it’s there. The doctor said they consider just stopping the loss of density a successful treatment so I’m in Bonus Land. I feel like superwoman! Having a black-and-blue marked belly from all the injections has paid off. Thank you, Forteo!

Wednesday was a Red Hat Society walk-about day here in Widowville and this time we went to a small town near-by in apple country, population roughly 4,200. So what does a gaggle of a dozen ladies dressed in red and purple do in a small town on a pleasant summer day? Why we ate, shopped and ate again. Lunch was at an authentic Mexican restaurant and I learned a great strategy for ordering from the woman sitting next to me. She takes the mantra of eat-dessert-first to heart and she had her dessert served while the rest of us were getting our entrees then she had her enchiladas boxed up to take home. The dessert was a large fried tortilla rolled and stuffed with a rich cream cheese concoction, drizzled with caramel sauce and served with a perfectly shaped, baseball-sized mound of vanilla bean ice cream. I was jealous. Not a shy woman, she asked the waitress to have the chef send another dessert out to the table for “the ladies to pass around," adding, "he can do samples.” The waitress replied, “I can ask, but I don’t think he can do that.” Surprise, surprise! Not only did he send one out, he sent two! Talk about heaven in a spoon. I was in love.

Then we did a bit of shopping at an antique store and an old fashioned dime store and in between a trucker in an eighteen wheeler went by on Main Street and shifted gears down to a near-stop to yell something complimentary out the window. We all turned to look and I felt like I was fourteen again as I waved to the young guy who thought we all “rocked.” Afterward at an ice cream parlor the owner came out with a camera and wanted to photo document our visit. I felt just like a model from Advantage Style only without the style. Oh, I had on my vintage red pill box hat, red shirt and shoes but I had left all my bling at home. I don’t know why I do that. People get such a charge out of seeing a herd of red and purple clad senior women gracing their streets and places of business. Making people smile, makes you smile yourself and be reminded that life doesn’t need to be so serious. And that, dear readers, is the not-so-secret secret power of the Red Hat Society dress code. ©

For my contribution to having fun on the 4th of July, here's a great video from John Green over at Mental Floss. I think I'm in love with this guy's mind....

My Widow’s Week in 596 Words

My Red Hat Society chapter had a walk-about this week. We went to a neighborhood near downtown where a cluster of antique shops are located. They cater to young professionals and people looking for shabby chic and their stock was slightly different than what I’m used to seeing when I go antiquing. One store had a laundry basket full of faces from old pocket watches. It made me sad to think about all those past century pocket watches that were obviously melted down for their silver or gold, saving only the guts to sell to crafters. Those hundreds of tiny little roman numerals on ivory colored clock faces with ornate embellishments cried out to me. Needless to say I didn’t buy any of those $6.00 little gems. It would be like buying the bones of a once beautiful child. I have a dozen or so pocket watches slated to go up for auction on e-Bay and I came home wondering if I couldn’t somehow put them in a shadow box to display. But if I put everything in shadow boxes I’m having trouble parting with my walls would probably fall over from the extra weight.

Also in the same neighborhood was an old style deli where we ate lunch. The food was super flavorful and there was never a time while we were there that there wasn’t a line out the door. Dessert---Red Hatters never pass up dessert---was at an equally old style bakery. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve even seen a bakery and the cream puffs and éclairs shouted out: “Hey, I’ll look good on your hips!” The bakery had high shelves lining the walls with more antique cookie jars than I’ve ever seen in one place and I’ve seen a lot of cookie jar collections in my travels. I would never drive to this part of town alone which is probably a good thing because I’d be in that bakery way too often. I really do wish they’d outlaw sugar. If I had to buy sugary products under the cover of darkness I might have a chance of staying on a diet. I don’t like to drive after dark. My eye doctor, today, said I have the beginnings of cataracts and that’s what gives us old duffers the halo around street lights and headlights, making night driving so annoying. My cataracts are not big enough for him to start nagging me to let him remove them---his words, not mine---so I have a few move years of staying home after dark.

‘Old style’ seemed to be this week’s theme. At the senior luncheon I saw one of the best bands I’ve had the pleasure to see in a very long time. The music teachers who made up the band played six instruments between the three of them including a bass, fiddle, acoustical and regular style guitars, banjo, and a washboard. They played what they called “porch music” which was a blend of mountain music, prohibition era songs and stuff you could picture yourself singing if you were living in the book, The Grapes of Wrath, dirt poor and on the way to California to look for work. What made the show doubly good was in between the songs the teachers talked about the history of the genres they sang, their instruments and old time singers and song writers who influenced modern music. And all that for $6.00 including food.

It was a busy week but I’m starting to bore myself writing about it, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead. I want something big and exciting to happen it my life. Something bold and good that will cause me to wear the letters off my keyboard as I tell the world about it. Maybe next week.....maybe then I'll invent a 'years eraser' and I'll be twenty-two again and singing on stage with Taylor Swift. ©