Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Been humming David Bowie songs today, bet my young grandgirls don't know who he is.

Just read Ronni Bennett's blog about shoes and old feet.  The postman arrived with a SHOE catalog, drool.  How is that for serendipity?  In it is a Mary Jane shoe with a rubber sole in silver.  Kind of a dressy (if that's possible) tennis shoe.  So much has changed for me, gone from admiring spikey heels with one tiny strap to wanting silver tennies.  Although Ronni has a pair of pink jeweled mules I will probably try to duplicate.

Much has besides shoes has changed. 

1) My music, I still love David Bowie, and Marvin Gaye and many others, oh like, Creedence Clearwater, but now I also like Nightwish, a Finnish metal band with an operatic songstress and orchestra arrangements, and a lead guitarist who looks like my idea of an ancient berserker.  And Shakira.

2) I used to walk, hike, and kayak.  Now I've turned into a gym rat showing up usually five days a week to hike on the treadmill and let the nautilus equipment pummel me.

4) Food, drink. I ate anything and everything.  I drank a mocha a day at my favorite coffee place, now its one cup of coffee usually at home; two cups means antacid pills.  I loved rum and cokes, fruity drinks, now most hard liquor gives me a headache right away, the "no waiting" hangover.  Probably a combination of allergies and medications.  Fortunately a little glass of wine actually lowers your blood sugar so I save that for those dinners when everything is too good to pass up.  Mostly I drink water.

3) I spill things.  No wait, I always spilled things.

4) I used participate in political marches, now I write letters and send email.

5) It takes half an hour for me to take my pills, drink two glasses of water, and do stretches in the morning just so I can get dressed and eat breakfast.  It used to take me half and hour to shower, eat, and dress and go to work.

6) I am much more patient with my little grandkids than I was with my sons when they were little.  For that I am sorry, I really thought what I was trying to teach them was really, really important.

7) I no longer have to rush to be on time to things because I kept washing dishes and hanging up clothes before I leave.  They'll still be there when I get back.  I vacuum and clean after the kids leave not before.

8) I used to listen to the news and the weather in the car on the way to work. Now, I go out on the deck every morning whatever the weather and give myself the weather report, and be thankful that I have my own (neglected) backyard and I can see trees and birds.

9) Then there is driving.  I love to drive, short scenic drives, driving to visit my relatives, and so on.  The price of gas is rising as you know and my solution is to drive less.  I'm not buying a more fuel efficient car because mine is paid for and safe, and may last out my driving career.  Is is really efficient and green to toss out a perfectly good car for an expensive hybrids at this point in my life?  I think not. Where do the leftovers go?  I noticed when the deal for trading your car in to get rid of junkers, the cars they got were better than most of the cars that the poor people here drive.  And before I leave my soap box -  it's not just money that made me decide to drive less.  I am shocked that we are bombing yet a third middle east country, and I want us out of the wars over there.  It's all about the control of oil over there.  That alone makes me feel a need to commit to driving less that stands on its own.  My sons are too old for the military but why would I want my neighbor's son or daughter to die in a war like that?  I don't.

What Happened?

This morning I finally got online and did the "your account" thing with my cell phone provider.  I needed to because my voice mail was password protected and I haven't been able to use that in the eight months since I got the phone.   Then I decided to buy myself a ring tone as a reward for finally taking care of it.  It told me I couldn't because my 8-month old phone isn't set up to do that.  Whaaat?  Apparently I bought a very passe phone.  Well it was cheaper.  I wouldn't mind a fancier phone but I don't want to pay the extra monthly charges and every time I try to look at stuff on my son's Android I end up dialing someone by mistake, touchy touch screen.  Fat fingered me.

In another life I was a programmer and PC techie, loaded down with cell phone, pager, work access at home, and I set it all up myself.  I could bring whole production systems to their knees from miles away. Now my daughter Heather had to set up my TV for me, and then discovered my PC speakers were monaural rather than stereo as they were plugged into the wrong place.  I'd like to stream netflix movies to my TV so I could see them better but the whole process intimidates me.  Soon I think I'll have to get a new PC, mine has occasional fits of the "blue screen of death" at times, I think its because MS has sucked up all the spare space with its endless updates.  I'm not looking forward to all the shopping and comparing anymore.

There must be some answer besides going to live in the hills in a yurt and growing potatoes.  Hmmm, with an outhouse there'd be no toilet to wash either.

Ruminations

It can truly get windy here and it amazes me all the ways people have found to harness that wind.  We parked in the lot of the local theater to watch this fellow and a companion flying before the winds.  I found it thrilling watching these young men enjoying themselves and putting on a show for us so I could get pictures.  This is exactly the kind of thing I would have loved to have done as a kid.  I used to use my roller skates to do long jumps over things, now it would asking for a life in a body cast to do that but maybe rolling around a parking lot...I wanted to tell him to get a helmet.

My mother used to watch musicals and the dancers and say "I could have done that."  She very well might have, she had danced in Vaudeville shows in Portland when she was a very little girl and kept her flexibility and long legged grace up to the end of her life.  As she grew older she quit bemoaning her lost alternatives and truly seemed to enjoy watching others perform, in particular my younger sister who has always moved well and seems to have the performing gene as does her daughter.  When I realized that I'd quit envying others doing what I used be able to do, I understood better her joy in musicals, watching Olympic ice skaters, and gymnasts.  Now I love watching the speed skaters, Apolo Anton Ono is amazing, not to mention he is a fellow Seattle homie, and a handsome young man.  And the snowboarders, especially the women. 

Things way different since I was a girl.  I loved basketball.  No basketball teams in my high school.  My first opportunity to play on a basketball team didn't came when I was in my 30's and a young mother.  My alma mater now has a great collegiate women's basketball team. My grandkids, all girls but one, have much more opportunity to develop their physical side as well as their minds.  A very good change.