Make do's for memory and body

Had a lovely, long phone chat with my sister Susan.  We are planning a couple of getaways. I asked her if she remembered her visit two years ago on the 4th of July, she did. We went to the fair in the park here. After eating goodies and checking out the arts and crafts, we sat on the lawn to listen to some pretty decent music being played. When we got up to leave I couldn't. Couldn't get off the lawn by myself. When I she and I couldn't get me up a kind woman who happened to be a nurse helped us and showed us how to do it without hurting ourselves. That was the day I had to admit  my body just wasn't working as before. I still catch myself out by getting down on my knees to wash the bathroom floor forgetting I can't get up from there and I have to crawl over to the grab bar in the shower for lift-up. How do I forget that? Funny enough I don't forget in public, the embarrassment of the 4th seems to have stuck with me. I've solved that though by buying a sturdy little three legged folding camp stool with a carrying strap. About a pound and a half weight and 20" off the ground. Standing up is easy peasy.

The aid to my memory is my "smarter than me" phone. I depend on my calendar.  I discovered I no longer remember the names of all the capitals of our states I while playing a "states and their capitals" game with my grandkids. I came in last! Although that's not actually what I said much to the delight of those kids.  But when did those bits of trivia leave? Most of time I'm good with it now that I learned to be okay being wrong. My Dad always thought he was losing it but he never did as far as we could see. Mom had all her marbles right up to the end. But there's that little nagging voice that says "but what if..." 

And so, I love this poem, especially the last stanza. I do rise at night to look things up. 

Forgetfulness by Billy Collins

The name of the author is the first to go

followed obediently by the title, the plot,

the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel

which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor

decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,

to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye

and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,

and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,

the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,

it is not poised on the tip of your tongue

or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river

whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall

well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those

who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night

to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.

No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted   

out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

Saturday - not much going on here :-)

Cloudy Saturday and Family Thoughts

Grand-girl Natty is 17 today. She's spending her birthday competing and helping out at a big regional track meet here. She also fishes with her Dad.

She's enrolled in a program the school district has with the local community college for her junior and next year's senior year.  That allows her to collect her high school diploma and her AA degree at the same time in 2019.  She'll be starting Washington State University as a junior.  Her older sister did the same thing and is now finishing her junior year at Western Washington University.  It's good program for students and needless to say saves $$ on college tuition. I'm proud of them and can't help think how different it was for me at 17 and socially inept I was when I started college. It was good for my grades though. I feel lucky that I've lasted long enough to get to see what they're up to. The oldest, Alandra is missing from this photo as she is married and living in Bellingham while she finishes college.  With a a bit of luck I hope to see where the 6-year olds, Ella and Jacob, will be headed. She's the little redhead in the front and Jacob is the little blond guy. They'll be 21 in 15 years. Hmm.  That's 91 for me; good goal but I'm not taking any bets, one day at a time.

They are a family with nine kids, three homegrown and six adopted which explains why three of them will be graduating high school next year with a junior right behind them.  And my Oregon grandson Nikos will be graduating in 2018 also.  All the older kids work. Paper routes (also the younger ones), nannying, Dairy Queen, at the Portland zoo, and supervising summer strawberry pickers for a large farm here. Natty is a soccer referee and can be tough as nails with obstreperous parents. I was impressed, "though she be little, she is fierce," thanks Wm Shakespeare. All those girls are tiny and supercharged just like their Mom Heather.

Alandra and my son David walking down the grassy aisle at her wedding 2017.

My discovered quote of the week. Bullshit asymmetry principle. 
Publicly formulated the first time in January 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer, the bullshit asymmetry principle (also known as Brandolini's Law states that: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."  I'm taking it to heart.