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.

Waking up Early and Not-so-Chronic Pain

 

I got up at 5:30 which is three hours before my normal time to 'rise and shine' as my mom used to order me to do each morning when I was kid. "Rise and shine!" she'd yell in the hall between my brother's and my bedrooms, "It's daylight in the swamp!" The sky was starting to show some pinks and lavenders through the bare trees across the green space in from of my apartment, something I hadn't seen in a very long time. Back when I was plowing snow I used to see the sun rise often, to the point that I had better words to describe the pastel mistiness that washes the sky like a watercolor painting in the crisp dawn air. How can anyone not love watching the day come to life?

I looked for the deer they say are often around that time of the day. I looked for the raccoon that leaves tracks in the snow on my deck. I looked for the white tailed skunk I've seen several times but have learned not to talk about it because other people living here freaked out on my report and want to see it and the racoon exterminated. A heavily wooded area was destroyed to build this independent living facility and in my mind we humans need to adjust to live in peace with the displaced wildlife that survived the disruption. White tailed skunks are rare in this part of the country. I researched her on our DNR site and found someone had photographed another white tailed skunk sixty miles away at our state capital. They were as excited as I was to see something they'd never seen before. Not only are the tails white and bushy but the stripes down the backs are wider than on our normal skunks. The first time I saw my skunk all that pure white fur was backlit by parking lot lights and she was stunning.

It was a dream that woke me up. In the dream I was telling myself, "it's just a dream, you need to wake up!" WAKE UP!" I was in that state of Sleep Paralysis which happens sometimes when you are conscious during waking up or falling asleep but you can't move any part of your body. It doesn't happen to me often but when it does it rattles me enough that I can't go back to sleep. 

The only details in the dream that I remember are that my husband took the dog out for a walk and they didn't come back. I waited and waited and worried until I got out of bed in the dream and found he'd left me a hug jar of honey on the kitchen table. Dreaming of honey, according to the dream dictionary, can mean a lot of positive things including that the dreamer has a strong support system which I'm going with in this case because that evening I had had long talks with both of my nieces who were concerned about the outcome of my appointment with my orthopedic doctor. One of my nieces and I had even talked about it being time to start eating a daily teaspoon of locally sourced honey to build up an immunity for our summer and fall allergies.

I don't think I mentioned it before but all winter I've been experiencing a lot of pain in my right arm from my wrist to my elbow. And since it's in same arm that I broke my elbow in 1999, I had myself all worried and worked up thinking it was finally time to do something about the botched surgery, as my current bone doctor calls it. I saw him about this same thing (when the level of pain was much less) last summer and back in 2018 when I wrote: "One of the screws that once held the top of the ulna bone to the bottom was floating around free-willy in my flesh. Another screw that looked to be around 1 ½ or 2 inches long had backed half way out and was no longer anchoring the ulna bone to the radius bone like it was supposed to do, and a stress fracture was showing a few inches below the screw." Xrays taken this week showed both screws are free-willy now, but the doctor can feel their heads through my skin and he doesn't think they are causing my pain. Back in 2018 when this was first discovered he didn't want to do anything to try to correct "the mess" because, he said, would be “a major ordeal involving a very long surgery, weeks in a cast and  months of physical therapy.” I was advised back then to never again lift anything above my waist or ever pick up anything over five pounds with that arm. When I forget, it lets me know.

This week the doctor gave me a shot in my wrist as part of a diagnostic procedure to track down why I can't do things like put my right hearing aid or earring in without pain and dozens of other movements that jabs me with pain through out the day and night. And soon I start a 13 day round of 20 mg prednisone as part of his diagnostic process. The most I've ever had of prednisone are rounds of 4mg so I'm a little concerned about side effects but I trust my doctor. If the wrist shot works (which it did like magic but for only 24 to 36 hours) it means the majority of the pain is coming from arthritis in that area but if the pain in my forearm goes away with the prednisone then the source is coming from crushed and arthritic vertebrae in my neck. It's possible that both are in play. Once he figures that out he'll be able to form a treatment plan that could involve a nerve block on my neck and/or gel shots in my wrist---and "other options" we didn't get into. I'm relieved that elbow surgery is off the table. The bones are fussed together though not lined up right, but they are in no danger of rendering my elbow non functioning which I invented and feared in my worse case scenario. If I live long enough the screws could start cutting through my skin and they'll be easier to remove then. Shrapnel tends work its way outward if no nerves or organs get in the way. On a side note: did you hear that Russia is now dropping shrapnel by drones on Ukrainians to maim, not kill them, in an attempt to overwhelm their healthcare system and give them painful fragments they'll have to live with because they aren't all easy to remove?

Back on topic: All and all things are looking up. I've got a busy March in front of me including some promising looking art classes taught by a college professor and my sense of feeling old and defeated has lessened just knowing a have a path towards feeling better. I'm still struggling to get in enough exercise to make a real difference but nicer weather is on the way so that will help get me outside walking again. By then my fellow residents will quit walking around with ashes on their faces and filling up the calendar with 'churchy' stuff. If that sounds irreverent or disrespectful, I'm sorry. I'm not a fan of the Easter season and listening to how beautiful the Stations of the Crosses ceremonies are, which are repeated here four weeks in a row. I just can't relate to the somberness of the occasion and the bitten-by-the-spirt looks in the eyes of those who take part creeps me out. Not to mention my mom died on Easter which led to a trauma filled couple of years making peace with her very preventable death. 

Nope. I'll buy yellow Peeps but that's the extent of my Easter celebration and this year even that didn't turn out well when one of my table mates at lunch told me my four pack of tradition yellow marshmallow rabbits was pure sugar and not good for fatty-two-by-fours like me. Not her words but implied. More on that conversation in my next post. ©

 Until Next Wednesday...

 

I spent a lot of time trying to track down the author of this poem with not luck and I hate that he or she isn't being created properly. If anyone recognizes it, please leave a comment!