she loves to dance so every night we put on the easy listening channel on cable tv and I lead or she leads. she follows almost perfectly. I’m perfecting my lead very nicely with her as my partner. she will be 91 next week, and she still asks where and when we can go out dancing. she doesn’t always know where she is or how to get to her bathroom, but she knows how to dance. we laugh really hard when we trip over each other’s feet (which doesn’t happen to often, but when it does, we start giggling and can’t stop). today I laughed a lot with three of my former work colleagues (women) who came down to spend the day with me. we howled over the silly things we did and silly things we do. made so much noise we thought we’d get thrown out of the cafe where we had lunch. shared endless anecdotes about the kids we know and love and mates and how we spend our days. complained about getting older. unlike many of the elderbloggers I read, I still color my hair, wear make-up, and am addicted to fashion. I have to make sure that my hair covers my ears so that my pretty-much invisible hearing aids don’t show. they looked at the things I am knitting and reminded me that I could sell them for a good price. someday I might, when I have the energy to deal with record keeping. I am overwhelmed with ideas for what to blog about. she will be 91 next weekend and my brother began inviting some of our cousins to come up for lunch and now there will be more than a dozen and guess who gets to do all the preparation. my cat is too fat. I weigh too much. I am going to ignore valentine’s day. my four and one-half year old grandson uses words like “apprehensive” and uses them correctly in context. next month I will be 67, WTF!
after a survey of 1,000 American women found that most valued their favorite clothes more than sex, and would gladly abstain for 15 months in exchange for an entire new wardrobe.
A world that’s 7 to 12 degrees hotter will require a lot of adaptation, said Robert Samuelson in The Washington Post, but right now, we have no real alternative. “The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution.” About 80 percent of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels. With India, China, and other parts of the Third World rapidly developing, worldwide output of carbon dioxide will likely grow from 26 billion metric tons to 40 billion metric tons by 2030. ….. Politicians who blather about Kyoto, or “cap and trade” schemes for carbon dioxide emissions, are simply “grandstanding”—pretending to be addressing climate change, when they aren’t. “That’s one truth too inconvenient for almost anyone to admit.”
The U.S. simply can’t admit how badly it has behaved, because the consequences would be disastrous: criminal charges, trials, “and a complete breakdown in morale among intelligence officers.” No, the return of justice will come only “after Bush has left office.” The next president will make redress. He—or she—will have to apologize to el-Masri, “or else the guilt will truly belong to America, and not just to the Bush administration.”
Asked why he is in such a hurry to run, Obama tells Kroft, “You know the truth is I’m not. We have a narrow window to solve some of the problems that we face. Ten years from now, we may not be in a position to recover the sense of respect around the world that we’ve lost over the last six years. Certainly, when you look at our energy policy and environment and the prospects of climate change, we’ve gotta make some decisions right now. And so I feel a sense of urgency for the country.”
saw this huge woodpecker as I was heading down the driveway today — big plumed red head, looked like the Woody Woodpecker cartoon. I’ve counted five different kinds of woodpeckers around our property. also the usual junkos, chickadees, jays, cardinals, mourning doves, titmice (or is it titmouses?), wrens…… we have our own aviary. endlessly hungy winged things. I feed them. I feed everyone.