I Am Getting Old - Part Twenty-five

I am getting old because…well I forget why???? These days this is normal for me. Right in the middle of completing a task, I forget things. Like why am I doing this and what is next. I think part of it has to do with the fact, I feel unorganized. I am currently sleeping on my son's couch but the good thing is I have a place to sleep and a roof over my head and food. I have my important papers, etc., in a crate under the computer and am constantly worrying that I have lost something or something is missing. I just got through getting them organized, again, and I have not lost anything. Thank you very much. There is this canvas thing that hangs on the closet rod where I have my underwear and folding clothes. All in all it is not that bad. I am grateful for these things and thank God each night. I am looking for my own place and will have one before the new year. My son says to take my time and we will begin to accumulate household items, etc., so I will have some things to get started. If I knew enough people, I would have a housewarming party and get lots of gifts. lol I only know a few at this time, so the party will have to wait.


It is time for another cup of coffee and time for me to reorganize, again. lol

Happy Halloween!

Today and Other Stuff

It is Sunday, October 28, 2007, 3:05PM and the temperature in Phoenix is 95, Wind: E at 8 mph, Humidity: 10%. The sun is shining and overall a gorgeous day here. I have not done much today other than load and unload the dishwasher and snack. It is one of those lazy days, a day of rest. Not that I do that much on the other days. I did sweep the leaves off the walkway in front of the condo. Believe it or not it is fall and yes, the leaves fall from the trees even in Phoenix. I am wearing shorts today and that is really nice.

There are Gecko's that run along the walls of the flower garden in the front, around the back door frame. Since the parking space is at the back door of the condo, you have to be careful when opening and closing the door. Unfortunately, this morning my son found one of the Gecko's deceased on the top of the back door. Seems like no matter how careful you try to be, it does not always work. My son felt really bad that we had somehow killed the Gecko. In case, you would like to read more about Gecko's: Gecko - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I just learned a lesson that I preached to my students about SAVE, SAVE, SAVE every few minutes when using composing documents, creating spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The breaker kicked off and of course I had not saved this post for a while and lost 2 paragraphs of it. Perhaps the paragraphs I lost were not supposed to be included here. lol I was writing about Microsoft charging such a high price for MS Office and how I had found OpenOffice 2.3. I cannot remember exactly what I had written but the point was OpenOffice is FREE and works very well with Vista and has 99.9% of the features of MS Office. If anyone needs a suite of products comparable to MS Office, I would recommend OpenOffice (from Sun Microsystems). Here is a link to the website: OpenOffice.org: Home. Until later, Sainara, Ciao, Au revoir, Adiós, Auf Wiedersehen. In case you want to say goodbye in another language, I found this site: "Goodbye" in many languages.

My Little Friend

“Poi Dog”, my son's Chihuahua. He is thirteen and a real doll. I have been trying for days to get a photo of him standing and he will have none of it. I will keep trying. If you are wondering about his name, he is named for a band called Poi Dog Pondering.

Ruth's Bottle of Hugs

You can visit Ruth at Me, My Life, My Garden . Hugs to everyone who may visit here today.

Feelings

This is not being written for people to “stroke me” or tell me that I can write or that I will be okay. It is merely my observations and thoughts today. As you read this, you will see that I am filled with self doubt and fear today. It is one of those days for me. I know who to thank for this and that is not meant kindly. For so long I was told how useless and worthless I was and I have not overcome those feelings. They manage to creep back when I least expect them. With time, I am sure they will change and I will know that I am useful and worthy.

I fancy myself a writer and a poet in my mind. Then I read my favorite blogs and I am intimidated by the post on them. I question why did I ever think I could write? Those posts seem so polished and professional and then I read mine. I seem to ramble on about nothing even though I have all these profound thoughts in my mind. At least I think they are profound.

In fact, I visited at least ten blogs this morning and only left a couple of comments. One about my obsession with coffee and one for someone taking a break from blogging for a while. The intimidation extends to comments I may want to leave because I was touched by the words of the blogger. I do not want to seem patronizing to the bloggers but so many times their post seem to express my feelings that it is scary to see that others feel as I do. What I want to ask is how, do you get past these feelings when you do not have the energy to do so? I want to cry, scream, yell, hide under the covers, withdraw from life. In other words, I feel like a child that has a tantrum. Would it do any good? No!!! Does expressing these feelings on paper do any good? Maybe, maybe not. I only know that I have to get this out of my system or I will cease to exist.

Quote

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Mark Twain

I Am Getting Old – Part Twenty-four

I am getting old because…I need peace, quite, understanding, tolerance and acceptance in my life. I wish and pray for peace for the world and all the people in the world. I pray for each of us as human beings to accept mankind and be tolerant of all people. We are all God’s children, no matter our skin color, the language we speak. I read the news each day and wonder how people can be so cruel to others and what they think gives them the right to hurt others. How on earth can one human being kill another? Do they have a conscience? Are they just evil? Are they insane? Will we ever know the answers to these questions?

Does this need for peace and understanding come with age? If so, then I wish there wish some way to instill this in us while we are still young. Perhaps the world would be a better place to live. As years pass it seems that we as a society are turning away from God and assuming an anything goes attitude. I will continue to live with understanding, tolerance and acceptance of others and hope that others around me may come to see this as a good thing and do the same.

I wrote this a couple of days ago when I was in one of those moods. That's another thing I found out. That as I get older, I get "moody". Hey, after 64 years, I am entitled.

Landscapes - Squaw Peak In Phoenix

See Other Places at These Links

1. Gene Bach

2. katherine.

3. Claire Rachael Pitt

4. david mcmahon

5. Vic Grace

6. Ron Simpson

7. SargeCharlie
8. Amazing Gracie

9. Jessie

10. Acire

11. Nikita

12. Scott F

13. SargeCharlie

14. julia
15. Patsy

16. Aditi Srivastava

17. Aman

18. Misty Dawn

19. Latharia

These photos were taken in and around the condo where my son lives. Squaw Peak Mountain is within walking distance. I just moved back here a month ago and would have taken more photos but I am without transportation at this time. Phoenix is surrounded by mountains and we have desert and palm trees. Seems like a contradiction but is simply breathtaking.

I Am Getting Old – Part Twenty-three

I am getting old because…I am happier with less than I use to be. I have discovered or finally learned that material things are not the answer to all our needs. My needs are simple these days. I want a nice place to live that has somewhere for me to sit outside and watch the world go by and join in when I want to, a place to plant flowers and tend to them, a place to call my own and live in peace, sleep late or stay up all night, just do what I want to.

I Am Getting Old – Part Twenty-two

I am getting old because…the mirror tells me so each time I ask, mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all. Seriously, each day my hair gets a little grayer and there seems to be a new wrinkle that was not there yesterday. I can do something about the gray hair but not sure what to do about the new wrinkle. I know that I will never get a face-lift since I watched a special on Discovery Channel that showed how a face-lift is done. My face hurt just watching the special and decided then that I would consider the wrinkles a sign of wisdom and leave them alone.

I approached the issue of changing my hair color today by checking out hair salons close by. Some do not do color and the ones that do are WAY to expensive. I have entertained the idea of “do it yourself” color but then I remembered the times I tried this before and the results. So I think I will just save for a month or two and let someone who knows what they are doing color my hair. Then if it turns out badly, I have someone to blame and have recourse to get it fixed. I have been watching “the trends” for fall and it seems that the must have color is some shade of brown. The problem I have with that is when your hair grows, the gray will show through quickly. I may buck the trends and go with a blonde shade. Who knows and how trivial is this?

I have not gained any more wisdom, i.e., no new wrinkles today. Just think if I gain wisdom, I may look like a prune when I am eighty, assuming I make it to that age. This makes me think that maybe I am wise enough at 64; therefore, I will not get any more wrinkles. How dumb to worry about wrinkles. Due to good genes from my grandmother and mother, I have been blessed with skin that really does not wrinkle that much and for that I am grateful.

Well, it is time to move on for today and look for other reasons why I am getting old.

I am Getting Old - Part Twenty-one

I am getting old because…as I unloaded the washer, putting clothes in the dryer, my mind drifted back to my childhood and thoughts of hanging our clothes outside in the fresh air and sunshine. I remembered our Maytag wringer washer and big aluminum tub for the rinse water being filled on washday, which was usually Monday. I remember putting “stretchers” in the legs of the blue jeans that had been starched. I remember “cooking” the starch for the clothes and my beloved “can-can” slips worn with pride under full skirts to make them “stand out”. I remembered getting the ironing board and iron ready. No steam iron back then so we “sprinkled” the clothes with water and rolled them in a towel to keep them damp so they would be easier to iron. We ironed everything: sheets, pillowcases, handkerchiefs, clothes. Washday was an all day affair at our home and thank goodness it only came once a week.

It is funny how the simplest of tasks can trigger such good memories.

I Am Getting Old – Part Twenty

I am getting old because ….I am taking naps in the middle of the afternoon and I have not done that since I was a young child, so it must be getting older that is causing this. My sleep habits have always been horrible. I would go to bed late at night and wake up very early in the morning. In the past few years, I go to bed early and still wake up early. I fall asleep very quickly and thought that was a good thing but I saw a program on sleep disorders and learned that the quicker you fall asleep, the more sleep deprived you are. Imagine that. I would wake up three or four times each night so maybe I was sleep deprived

My cat Morris caused part of my waking up. For some reason starting at 3AM, he meows, very pitiful I might add, until someone gets up to feed him. Nothing would make him stop. Not even a spray bottle of water (he loves to play in the water running from the faucet). I solved this problem by moving his litter box, food, and water to the den and at night, I shut the den door. This is a better solution than a “crate” to keep him in at night (recommended by the vet). You might ask why not just close the bedroom door. Well, Morris has this thing about doors that are closed. He will “paw” at them and then jump against them until the door is opened to stop the noise.

Morris is an unusual cat. I adopted him in 1995 at the age of 6 months. He has always done strange things. I could not leave an ashtray out at night because he would take the cigarette butts and put them under the rug in the kitchen in a straight line about an inch apart. I had glass candles on the coffee table and he would take the wicks out and hide them. One time I bought dried flowers for an arrangement that included pieces of wheat. The next day when I came home from work, he had taken all those pieces of wheat out of the arrangement and put them at different places around the apartment. I filled a glass vase with marbles and he had to try to take them out of the vase. These are just a few of the “tricks” he would do. I would never considered giving him up. He comes when he is called and gets in my lap on the love seat and purrs and is so loving. I just consider him a very smart cat, not a bother. He is like my little “child".

By the way, since moving Morris to the den at night, I do not wake up during the night but still am napping in the middle of the afternoon, so I am still on a quest to find the reason for that.

I Am Getting Old – Part Nineteen

I am getting old because…I am having a hard time spelling numbers out in words. I may have to change the title of these posts. lol I thought for a while that I did not have anything to write about but once I started writing, I found that I did. Have you noticed lately how many ads there are on television for medications for every ailment you can think of and some you cannot? It makes me wonder how in the world my parents, their parents, etc., survived. It seems that perhaps greed by the pharmaceutical companies may have created a pill for every ache and pain people have and given a name to the aches and pains. To me this is just fodder for hypochondriacs. The ads tell you to ask your doctor. Give me a break, you are lucky if you get to see the doctor for five minutes and if you have anything to ask or say, you better talk really fast. I have resorted to making list of the questions I want answered and still do not find out what I want to know.

If you listen to the side effects that these new drugs have, why would anyone want to take them anyway. I know, you get one of the side effects and there is a pill to take. Some of the “new” ailments are, PAD (Peripheral Arterial Disease), PVD (Peripheral Vascular Disease) RLS (Restless Leg Syndrome) ED (Erectile Dysfunction), “going to much”, to name a few.

While writing this post, I did some searches and read some articles on WebMD. You might be surprised to know (maybe not) that smoking is listed as a major cause of diseases. Alcohol is listed as a cause of some of the diseases, far fewer than smoking. I am not being flippant but my previous physician blamed hangnails on my smoking so it was hard to take him seriously. Since it appears that smoking is really bad for you, WHY HAVEN’T THE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES CONCENTRATED ON A DRUG TO END THE NICOTINE ADDICTION? Are they owned by the tobacco companies and is there a conspiracy to keep people addicted to nicotine?

Seriously, nicotine and alcohol addictions need to be treated as diseases themselves. The pharmaceutical companies should allocate R&D dollars to develop a drug to end the hold that nicotine and alcohol have on people.

A Thousand Marbles

I posted this back in December of 2006. I thought I would share it again.

“A Thousand Marbles”

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whom-ever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say

"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It's too bad you missed your daughter's "dance recital" he continued. "Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."

"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays." "I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear."

"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."

"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time."

"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast." "What brought this on?" she asked with a smile. "Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.

Copyright © 1999, Jeff Davis, KE9V ( previously N9AVG )

(Start of Addition)
A friend sent this to me, so I to you, my friend.

And so, as one smart bear once said..."If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh.

Pass this on to all of your FRIENDS, even if it means sending it to the person that sent it to you.

And if you receive this e-mail many times from many different people, it only means that you have many FRIENDS.

And if you get it but once, do not be discouraged for you will know that you have at least one good friend... And that would be ME.
(End of Addition)

Used with the permission of the author and these are the author’s comments –

The Author writes: I wrote this story a few years ago for the amateur community. In a very short time it became quite popular and was picked up by various email lists, newsgroups and 10,000 other Web sites.

It has since appeared in the Philadelphia Enquirer, Chicago Sun-Times and a dozen other newspapers. I've had friends and co-workers email it to me with "Author Unknown" on the bottom of it.

The "outside" world has sometimes modified it slightly to downplay the amateur radio in the story. You may see other variations but they all come from this one story.

In September 2000 Andrews McMeel Publishing asked me if I could turn the story into a book ... of a "thousand things to do on your day off" so I did. A Thousand Marbles will be on the bookshelves in June, 2001. I hope you pick up a copy. This has been an amazing adventure for me!

Jeffrey Davis, N9AVG