The first time I walked into the cafe for lunch after my time away I got a standing ovation. I don’t know if I was truly missed or if they were just anxious to hear some tales from the… Read More
NOTE I went home a few days before this post went live. It was in my scheduler so I'm letting it publish to buy me time to settle back in.I must be getting better judging by the fact th… Read More
A huge black face just inches in front of mine woke me from a nap here Respite Care. It was the face of a massive dog who belongs to one of the workers. The management allows staff to… Read More
After moving Into Respite Care here at the continuing care complex my brother still lives next door. But I'm staying on the other side of him now than I did before the move. I had my 1st tel… Read More
I left the Pain City Hospital after being there for 6 days in a whirlwind after waiting all day to find out if they were gonna release me. The anesthesiologist said 'I think you deserv… Read More
It's 6:00 AM and the nurses are getting ready for a shift change. I must say the nurses here at the hospital are so compasionate, young and professional and they don't seem to mind doi… Read More
I’m having a hard time getting back into a post-holiday routine. I did manage to go to a lecture on the continuum care campus where I live. Our TV channel that advertises what is… Read More
Google came out with its list of the most searched words for 2022 and Wordle came in first. As usual I’m running behind the eight ball because it took that list for me to finally jump… Read More
Since October I’ve been having dinner once a week with a group of women at what we’ve been calling the Liberal Ladies Table. We started with four of us and last week we were up t… Read More
This time of the year I’m programmed to think about New Year’s Resolutions. Yes, I’m one of those dinosaurs who has been making them (and breaking them) since my early teen… Read More
In that foggy state between the time I crawled out of bed in the morning and I lay there with my brain still half asleep, I wrote an entire blog post in my head. It was cleaver and thought p… Read More
Do you ever get obsessed over things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life? My latest obsession has been to figure out what the tiny orange light is for on my laptop&rsq&hell…Read More
One of my frequent dinner partners here at the continuum care campus is an 80 year old I nicknamed Ms. Social Worker who you may or may not remember had a series of falls a few months ago th… Read More
Saturdays are a crap shoot when it comes to trolling for conversation at the cafe’ here at the continuum care complex where I live. We old people seem to be creatures of habit honed to… Read More
My brother is settling into Memory Care quite well although an aid there just told me he thinks he’s in a hospital. I’m not surprised because on one of my visits he asked me if h… Read More
We’re getting our first major snow storm of the season and it’s coming down hard with 6 to 12 inches of snow predicted to accumulate over the next three days. For snowplowers lik… Read More
Our third meeting of the writing group here on the Continuum Care Campus was amazing. We had five people show up and that included Chatty Cathy who claims she just took dictations from God t… Read More
My eyes were nearly crusted shut, I had to pee but the tail end of a dream kept me in bed as I tried to stay in the dream for as long as I could. Usually when a dream wakes me up it’s… Read More
I had my legal i’s and t’s dotted and crossed ten years ago. Right after my husband died I went to a lawyer to get a will and the powers of attorney for health care and finances… Read More
One thing you need when you move into a continuum care complex is a box of sympathy cards. I’ve written four since moving in a year ago, for residents I know well who lost their spouse… Read More
I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t fall back to sleep so at 5:30 I got up, had some cocoa and here I sit in front of the computer screen. I was not surprised. I went into my bedroom last n… Read More
This post was written a few days before my second surgery for carpal tunnel and trigger thumb that took place on October 17th. I was thinking this one would be the easier of the two surgerie… Read More
“Sometimes life is a gentle ride in a canoe and other times it’s like riding on an overloaded ferry boat while holding our breath until we safely reach the other side o… Read More
It’s hard to believe this continuum care complex has been open a year and our party was a true celebration with lots of fanfare, finger food, speeches, music and dancing. I truly… Read More
One of the guys who lives here went on a fishing trip to Alaska and came home with a fish that was almost as tall as he is. I’m surprised that fish didn’t pull him right out of t… Read More
Sunday mornings are always quiet around here. Few things are on our otherwise busy schedule and the church goers flee the place like rats on a sinking ship. Even the dining room has so few r… Read More
Writing by orders or dictate has never been my thing. I can’t for example dash off a poem to stand up and read at our first anniversary of the continuum care place where I live. Ya, I… Read More
What is wrong with people? What is wrong with me? Don’t answer that just yet because I’m going on a rant and I’ll give you my opinion on the matter first, then it's your tu… Read More
There are three residents out of the fifty-five who live on this continuum care complex that I generally avoid. Two of them joined the creative writing group I started. Our first meeting was… Read More
I like where I’m living but sometimes it feels like I’m living in a high stakes game of Russian Roulette. At any given time over the summer we’ve had one or two peopl… Read More
I visited my future today.The park attached to the memory care building here at the continuum care complex was having a costume parade for dogs, and we residents from independent living were… Read More
Can you believe it’s September already? I can’t and I’ve got two old people, atomic clocks in the house that shout the date out. The clocks don’t literally shout but… Read More
One of the ladies living here in on the continuum care campus had a birthday and her kids bought her four tickets to the local circle theater so she could taken three friends with her. I was… Read More
My poem about the contentious meeting between the residents and the new food service here at the continuum care campus has earned me my very own nickname. Isn’t that ironic considering… Read More
Book Club: We read The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan and all twelve of us were all on the same page in our opinions of this well-written and well-researched non-fiction… Read More
Seven of us from the continuum care complex left our campus in two cars to go on an adventure. Destination: A cottage on Lake Michigan down between South Haven and Benton Harbor about hour a… Read More
Six of us left the continuum care campus to go to a movie theater in a near-by mall. I hate getting into a car with another octogenarian at the wheel but my car isn’t big enough to tak… Read More
I went down to visit the swans today after lunch but they were on the other side of the lake, which is a mile walk to get there and back. So I sat on a bench 15 feet from the water&rsq&hell…Read More
The Fourth of July weekend seemed to last forever here at the continuum care complex. Except for one security guard none of the staff worked Sunday and Monday in the independent living secti… Read More
I’ve got to stop listening to old music from the ‘50s through the ‘80s. Once a month they have a birthday party here at the continuum care complex to celebrate everyone who… Read More
I blow off a lot of steam in my blog. I’m really not as surly as one might think as you read through my inner most thoughts. I write about them because---well, because I’ve been… Read More
The outside of my windows are so dirty I can barely see out of them when the morning sun is shining. The CEO of our continuum care complex claims the earliest they could get a company contra… Read More
If you are reading this it means I survived being a model in my first ever fashion show. When I got the email looking for people here at the continuum care complex to wear purple and walk a… Read More
According to the Mental Health America website people over 65 comprise 13% of the population but account for 20% of the deaths by suicide. I was shocked to learn that two million of tho… Read More
I made it through what I’ve been calling Rat Race Week. A week when I had ten commitments stacked up: Book club, mahjong, a lecture about NATO and a follow-up appointment for my c… Read More
It’s Saturday morning and I should be half finished with writing a post for next week but inspiration isn’t coming. I have a file of possible topics to write about when my muse l… Read More
I’ve been wanting a travel coffee cup since summer finally settled in and I saw people here on campus walking around with their insulated drink containers which coincided with th… Read More
I’m glad May is in the rear view mirror because it kept me too busy as all the May’s in I’m life have done since 2000 or as I enjoy saying “…since the last cen… Read More
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.” I love that quote because that’s often the way I feel when I reveal my willy-nilly thoughts in my b… Read More
It’s eight AM and I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for an hour and these are the first words I’ve typed. Sure, I’ve been reading around my normal morning cir… Read More
Spoiler Alert: If you’re a Pro-Life activist please stop reading here. I haven’t wanted to do this but here I am writing a post about abortion. I’m a product of t… Read More
Maintenance here at the CCC can be a two edged sword with one side sharper than the other. On the sharper side, the system for writing up service requests works well for those of us who are… Read More
Two weeks ago I had four blog posts in my scheduler which meant I could take a breather to wait for something interesting to happen in the wonderful world of---wait, let me rephrase that. I… Read More
I’m a person who does better with routines but we’ve had this conversation before so I’ll move on to the topic of the quirks and rituals that seem to define who I am. For e… Read More
The Association of the Blind put on a presentation at my continuum care complex. I’m not in danger of going blind anytime soon but knowledge is power and my threshold for boredom… Read More
April 5th I had an appointment card in my hand, written by a receptionist at my internist’s office that said my appointment was for 1:00 on Tuesday April 5th. It was 12:30 a… Read More
I shall call myself Lady Shoutsup for this post…to set myself apart from the notorious Lady Whistledown of Bridgerton and author of the Whistledown Society Papers, a scandal sheet of… Read More
Three times over the past few days I’ve developed an alarming brain fart, I’m calling it. I was sitting with fellow residences and I kept getting their names reversed. For exampl… Read More
Another one of my doctors bit the dust. You get to a certain age when your list of doctors and specialists seems to grow by the minute and even though I picked mine out by age, hoping they&r&hell…Read More
Let’s talk sci-fi. I’m not a huge fan of the genre but every once in a while it catches my interest. The last time was the movie E.T. so I was long over due for a little alien in… Read More
I’m in book club hell right now. We’re supposed to be reading Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbothham but with all that's going on in that part of the world right now th… Read More
International Woman’s Day brought two events to our continuum care complex. One was a catered luncheon from a Michigan chain called The Traverse City Pie Company. The other was a lectu… Read More
It’s been said more than a few times that living in a Continuum Care Complex compares to being on a cruise ship and not just about this place where I’m at. I toured another facil… Read More
I’m a creature of habit and predictable patterns. I was going to say like no other, but that wouldn’t be true. Birds fly south every fall and come back in the spring. Bees and an… Read More
I was waiting for the elevator when the door opened and a man stepping off. “Darn it,” I said, “I forgot my mask!” “Do you have Covid?” he asked. &l&hell…Read More