If you’re an elderblogger, then you probably know Millie Garfield, of My Mom’s Blog.
Thoroughly Modern Millie is celebrating her 84th birthday by going to the theater to see Jersey Boys.
We’ve been joining to celebrate Millie’s birthday online for the past four years. She became a celebrity among us when her son posted a series of very funny videos in which she starred. You can find them here.
Go there an have a laugh, compliments of Millie, and go to her blog and wish her a happy birthday,
One of my brother’s college-days girlfriends is staying in my old living space here for a few days. They were out at the Woodstock “Roots of Woodstock” concert last night and are out somewhere this afternoon doing whatever she felt like doing during this her brief vacation.
When I went upstairs to get something out of the refrigerator that’s still there, I caught a scent of what must be her perfume. I liked it. It freshened up the whole area.
I haven’t worn perfume since I started wearing hairspray and the scents conflicted.
I remember finding the cologne I used to wear in my teens and twenties (maybe even 30s?) as making me feel light and airy — a feeling I wouldn’t mind having again.
You might remember that scent: Windsong. “I can’t seem to forget you. Your Windsong stays on my mind,” the commercial sang.
I don’t know about him, but it certainly stayed on my mind, and I’m having the desire to smell it again.
Maybe that’s because it smells a little sulphury around here due to the well water, which needs to be run through the softener — which can’t be done until my brother cleans out the residue and puts in more softening and deodorizing agent.
It just smelled so darn nice up there where my brother’s friend has hung up her clothes for a few days.
I have somewhat solved the cat litter box odor in my two-room personal quarters back home by strategically placing bags of zeolyte around the premises. But that doesn’t make the air smell “nice.”
I don’t like the strong scents of air fresheners, so I’ve just ordered a bottle of Windsong cologne to spray on my sheets and in my closet.
I wonder if it will smell the same to me as it did a half-century ago.
Not Bethel, where the original Woodstock festival was held, but rather the town of Woodstock, where the planning for the original festival took place and where, for decades, the town served as a magnet for the most talented artists and musicians..
That’s where my brother is tonight, to hear and rendezvous with his old pals from the original Blues Magoos, who are performing tonight at the Bearsville Theater.
Forty years ago, when the original Woodstock was happening, I was the mother of a 6 year old and 7 months pregnant with the son who has become theonetruebix. The Woodstock Festival was a far cry from my interests at the time.
Family lore has it that my cousins (then teenagers) all piled into a car to drive up to Woodstock Festival from where they lived in lower New York State. They never made it, having got stuck in the long line of cars heading for Bethel who never made it either.
I never missed missing Woodstock. I don’t miss missing the Roots of Woodstock concert tonight.
Tonight I am missing my home in Massachusetts and I will miss going to the beach with everyone there tomorrow.
I need your help. Or rather my mother does. She is 94 and living in a personal demented hell where she is constantly besieged by overwhelming fears and anxieties. She lives with my brother, and their local family doctor is not very knowledgeable about dementia issues like my mother’s. None of the meds that he has prescribed have helped at all.
An acquaintance who trains nursing home staff told me that nursing homes bring in a pharmacologist to do an assessment and suggest a pharmacological treatment plan for dementia patients. Often it is a combination of drugs, and the process is carefully monitored and the drugs adjusted as needed.
Where can I find a pharmacologist who will come into a home and do a similar assessment??
After this weekend I will begin calling local nursing homes to see if they can recommend a pharmacologist that they use. I also have emailed national pharmacological organizations and associations to see if there might be a list somewhere of pharmacologists who specialize in doing those kinds of assessments.
No one should have to spend her last days in the kind of agony that my mother is in. I don’t know where else to go for help. Please leave a comment if you have any advice.
It was 1953. I was thirteen and feeling my burgeoning hormones. I would tell my folks that I was going to confession and, instead, meet my friends at a soda shop with a juke box, located a few blocks away, where the owner let us get together in a back room. We closed the door and played “spin the bottle.” That was where I got my first kiss from a boy — to the music of Les Paul and Mary Ford.
Mary Ford passed away in 1977, and by then I was listening to the Moody Blues and Judy Collins. Mary Ford and Les Paul were divorced long before then. I don’t remember hearing anything about her passing, but
Les Paul died today.
Moody Blues and Judy Collins. Here no longer young, but, like Les Paul did until age 94, they can still move an audience.
Wake up! You’re being manipulated by those who can afford to pay for their own most expensive health care.
From here, where’s there are more links to truthful information.
Top Five Health Care Reform Lies—and How to Fight Back
Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!!!
The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.”1 What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.2
If you’d like to read the actual section of the legislation that spawned these outrageous claims (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) for yourself, here it is. It’s pretty boring stuff, which is why the accusations that it creates “death panels” is so absurd. But don’t take our word for it, read it yourself.
Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!!!
The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.3 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.4 If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them.5 But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.
Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!!!
The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.
Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage.6 And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.
Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!!!
The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits.7 Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care In fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.8
Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!!!
The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals, families, small businesses, and the American economy. Right now, we spend more than $2 trillion dollars a year on health care.9 The average family premium is projected to rise to over $22,000 in the next decade10—and each year, nearly a million people face bankruptcy because of medical expenses.11 Reform, with an affordable, high-quality public option that can spur competition, is necessary to bring down skyrocketing costs. Also, President Obama’s reform plans would be fully paid for over 10 years and not add a penny to the deficit.
I’m looking at the photos that b!X took and posted on Flickr of the emotionally charged gathering in Portland OR regarding the health care issue. We are, indeed, a country manipulated into being divided. What a shame.
I finally have begun dipping a couple of toes into the waters of life — at least the waters that are not to deep, since I can’t swim.
I have sent poems in to two contests being held by regional poetry reviews. They are old poems, but they might be good enough.
I have enrolled in a four-week poetry workshop based on the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. It’s a start.
I took my first water aerobics class today — just the thing for elder women, and there are a bunch of us. My plan is to go twice a week.
It’s a start — at loosening up my social skills, my once writing talent, and my tight back muscles.
It’s just too easy to just hang around here and be entertained by my 7 year old grandson. Here’s what I mean.
I need to create the life I want to have at 70 (which is only 7 months away). It’s a start. And it’s about time.
Early in my marriage, I tried to grow some house plants and they all died. My once-husband used to say that I could kill plastic plants.
I grew up in a city-space house devoid of greenery. What did I know.
Later, when my own nuclear family moved into a house on a rural hillside, I started a garden. About the same time, I joined a writers workshop. Things started to grow, inside and out.
Today, the jade plant I’ve been nurturing for years is on its last leggy legs. Even the ivy in the hanging planter is drying up. My garden outdoors is wilting. This blog hasn’t been faring much better.
And so I’m on a quest for a Fall writer’s workshop. I need to get that green thumb moving, need some seeds, fertilizer. Need to stir that dirt, above and below.
It’s a wonder I haven’t broken any bones.
This last trip was yesterday during my (driving) trip to visit my friends in Albany.
Not too long ago, the friend in whose house I was staying had her front entrance redone — semicircular brick steps bordered by more bricks and beautiful plantings. She had joked about perhaps needing to put up a railing for her “elder” friends, and I assured her that I was still able to navigate.
That is, unless I’m talking on my cell phone and looking down through my progressive lenses while navigating.
So, after tripping and rolling into her geranium bed (never dropped my cell phone) and scraping my forearm, I got up, climbed into my car, and continued on to visit another friend in Troy. (fodder for yet a whole other post)
I’m home now, can’t take a deep breath without getting a sharp pain somewhere between my breast and shoulder. I will call the doctor tomorrow.
I fall down, I get up.
I really have to start doing one thing at a time.