Category Archives: aging

torn by craft

Posted on by
3

I’m a writer. I’m a writer. That’s what I am. I’m also a cutter and sewer and looper. I want to do it all. I’ve always wanted to do it all.

So I’m writing. Mapgie Tales for one (a new one in the works). Entered an essay contest about death for another.

Pinned on my wall are pieces of what eventually will be a wall hanging for an online craft exhibit.

Maybe it’s because I started in therapy again, and that always gets my juices going.

Or maybe it’s because I’m cutting down on my anti-depressant.

Or maybe I’m getting manic in my old age.

Or maybe I’m avoiding thinking too much about the awful state my mother is in.

Or maybe all of the above.

So much to create. So little time.

a sad shoe story

Posted on by
17

Magpie Tales features a weekly visual writing prompt, and this is my response to Magpie #16. Click here for more.

shoes

I sit on the floor and massage her bony feet, carefully avoiding the hammertoe and bunion that distort her right foot, although both bear assorted signs of 94 years of wear. How she once loved her stash of Ferragamo pumps — slim pointy toes, even slimmer curved heels. In high school, as the size of my feet caught up to hers, I would jam my feet into those Cinderella slippers, wondering if the price of pinch and pain was worth it. Decades have gone by since she chose to suffer for style and status, and those Ferragamos have long since gone to Goodwill. She has no choice now but to shuffle in soft slippers, her frivolous fling with vanity long forgotten. I sit cross-legged and barefoot on the floor and massage her hurting feet, delighting in my straight and polished toes and thankful that I had the good sense to choose otherwise.

I bow to Betty

Posted on by
2

betty

The image above was created by Vicki Howell of “I Love To Create” as part of her tribute to Betty White, who co-hosts Saturday Night Live tonight.

At 88, Betty White has achieved a resurgence in popularity and a whole new persona, and the reasons for her current icon status are aptly explained here.

That’s why I was surprised when, linking around from my son’s tweets several weeks ago, I wound up at an article (which I can no longer locate) by a young-ish female criticizing White for the very charms that attract the rest of us. I guess, for that young writer, older women should be sweet, non-intrusive, and very well-mannered. I guess she never read Jenny Joseph’s famous poem “Warning,” which begins When I am old I shall wear purple…

Betty White is a perfect role model for those of us elders who still value sass and surprises.

I bow to Betty.

the project of the pink hat

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t like to wear hats. It’s more than not wanting to get “hat head.” It’s more the fact that I must have the roundest face in the world and hats make my head look like a pumpkin.

So, I’m not exactly sure why I had the urge to crochet a hat out of strips of fabric. I think it’s because, like “the mountain,” the idea was there and so I had to master it.

The color didn’t matter, so when I found the end of a bolt of sheer pink cotton for $1.50 a yard, I figured why not.

I didn’t have a pattern, but I know how to crochet a circle, and I’ve made hats out of regular yarn before. Used to sell them, back when ideas seemed to automatically turn into energy.

So, I spent one day ripping fabric into 1.5 inch strips and another crocheting a hat that turned out to be too big. I threw it in washer and dryer on “hot,” thinking it would shrink, being cotton and all.

Nope. It stretched

So I undid all of that crocheting and and started over — smaller hook, fewer stitches.

And now I have this pink hat crocheted out of fabric strips, which doesn’t necessarily make my face look less like a pumpkin, but I guess I can wear it when we go to Maine for a late-June vacation. It’s always windy near the ocean, and maybe the big sunglasses will make me look like an aging celebrity. Betty White?

I napped all afternoon today, waking up intermittently during thunderstorms to ponder why I launch myself into pointless projects like the pink hat, why it matters to me that my face is round and sagging, why I am obsessed with my hair, why I don’t write much any more, why am I here?

But here I am, anyway, pink hat, big sunglasses, wattle, and all.

Here I am.

Betty rules the age; Dixie dies too soon.

Posted on by
3

At 88 years of age, Betty White still rocks and rules, and she demonstrated on Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show the other night. I hope I can be a sharp as she is in another 18 years.

At exactly my age, Dixie Carter succumbed to cancer earlier this week. I never missed a performance of her Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women.

Dixie Carter and Julia Sugarbaker. Gone but not forgotten.

losing it

Posted on by
1

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, at my age.

I lost my big bunch of keys somewhere in the past few days, and the ring has my car key w/chip on it. Today, as I was out running errands, twice I left my extra car key on a store counter. Sometimes, when I’m driving, I forget where I’m going and wind up blocks out of the way before I come back to the moment.

Granted, I’ve been pretty distracted, worrying about my son’s “dental carnage,” as he calls it. With no health insurance (and living across the country from me), he was given little good advice from the doctors he saw regarding his swollen (although pain-free) jaw. After a CAT scan and a week and a half on antibiotics that didn’t help, he finally was sent to an oral surgeon for the extraction of several infected teeth.

Which brings me to appreciating friends that I HAVEN’T lost, including a former SO who now lives in Portland and wound up bringing my son to stay with him after the surgery and transporting him home and to and from the follow-up appointment.

I guess it’s a matter of losing some and winning some.

I can always get another set of keys made.

almost as immorally nuts as GOPers

Posted on by
Reply

I gave up raging over the mess that the GOP so-called “leaders” have been making of my country. It seems like too many of the people on this planet are hell-bent on helping with the demise of sense and sanity.

All of the following are excerpts from this week’s Harper’s Weekly Review, where you can find documentation and a citation for each of these discomfitting reports.

A Walmart in New Jersey asked all black people to leave.

An Ohio man told police that since January he’s been sucker-punching little children at his local Walmart for thrills.

A Kentucky man was charged with wanton endangerment after he got drunk and put his five-week-old son to bed in an oven.

Wachovia Bank was fined $50 million, and required to remit a further $110 million, for laundering funds for Mexican cocaine cartels.

A Swedish report found that the United Arab Emirates is now the fourth-largest importer of weapons in the world.

Dutch officials repudiated a claim by U.S. general and former NATO commander John Sheehan that the gayness of the Dutch army had rendered it unable to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to Ireland to apologize for the sexual abuse of children by Church leaders.

A lawyer in Oregon was planning to release the Boy Scouts’ “perversion files,” a secret archive of 1,000 documents identifying Scout molesters.

A cable network in North Carolina played two hours of porn on the Kids On Demand channel.

Then there’s the “a little nuts but not immoral” category:

Members of the Winnemem Wintu Indian tribe traveled from California to New Zealand to beg forgiveness of the salmon.

Mexican police were praying to spirits and sacrificing chickens to protect themselves from drug lords.

The Vatican was investigating the daily appearances in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, of the Virgin Mary, who is crowned with stars and floats upon a cloud.

Indian politicians wanted to ban both black magic and Lindsay Lohan.

Finally, neither nuts nor immoral, and maybe a good idea — especially since I haven’t been able to wear my removable bridge because my gums are swollen:

A Bavarian baby-food company said it was planning to market its product to adults who dislike chewing.

Makes you just want to break out in song, doesn’t it?

Stop the World I Want to Get Off

and

Stop the World I Want to Get Off

and

Stop the World I Want to Get Off

Buddha waits for Spring

Posted on by
Reply

buddha

Until the snows came, Buddha rested on a tree stump in the corner of our yard. Now he waits in the corner of the porch, along with bike helmets and what will be the starting of seeds.

I wish I could wait like Buddha, without anticipation or expectation. Waiting in stillness as lives begin and end, as the first butterfly finds its way to our doorstep, as somewhere on a mountain, an old woman cries for stillness.

The 70s at 70

Posted on by
1

My 70th birthday is today. My Face Book profile photo today is one from the 70s as a reminder of the fleetingness of time and body image.

I am here trying to take care of my 94 year old mother , but I am feeling like the sciatica inflicted 70 year old that I am.

And I’m pissed because my laptop wont connect to the net even tho the wifi sig is coming in strong. So I’m doing this late at nite on my iphone because it’s my only time my hands are free of my mother’s ferocious grasp.

Let me tell you, those 70s were a hell of a lot more fun than this one.

But it’s my birthday so I’ll bitch if I want to. Hell, my first birthday card is my jury duty notice.