A Day In The Life

People, Places, Nature, LIFE!

08/17/2014
DailyMusings

10 comments

And The Seasons, They Go Round and Round

I came down to my kitchen this morning to find the sun was not yet up, the room still dark. Oh boy I thought, summer is officially ending. The windows were all closed to keep the morning chill out too. I have heard people say they miss the seasons when they have moved to a place that is sunny and warm all year round. I don’t think I would feel that way. Maybe I would miss wearing all those wonderful boots I have, and the great cashmere sweaters, but I think I would happily trade them for being able to walk on sand anytime I wanted to in my flip flops.

Summer leaving means school is coming. Back to a more structured day. Back to worksheets and sight words and addition and subtraction. The new challenge of going from a class of 12 students to a class of 22. Having promised myself to make changes this year in how I try to deal with different situations that arise in the classroom. I am still learning.Taking my lead from the head teacher and her ability to remain positive and unruffled.

I have made some headway on the list of summer projects I had. Cleaning out the basement, divesting myself of the unnecessary collections that clutter, that no longer serve a purpose. Organizing things so they have a “place” and knowing where they are. I am on the last few stitches of a needlepoint project I started four years ago. I have finally reciprocated with friends who have invited us over, inviting them for a meal.

It is a great feeling to check things off the list, but there is a part of me filled with apprehension knowing the routine I have become accustomed to over the last 8 weeks is coming to a close. It’ll be time to change my closets over any day now. Brings to mind lyrics from two of my favorite songs.

The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Changes by Phil Ochs

Green leaves of summer turn red in the fall
To brown and to yellow, they fade
And then they have to die
Trapped within the circle time parade of changes

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08/11/2014
DailyMusings

11 comments

New Wrinkles

The Daily Prompt: New Wrinkles. You wake up one day and realize you’re ten years older than you were the previous night. Beyond the initial shock, how does this development change your life plans?

I awoke to find I am old enough for Medicare! No more $10,000 yearly bills for Health Insurance. No more deductibles and 10% co insurance. Maybe a vacation with that “found” money!

medicare-card-held

08/11/2014
DailyMusings

14 comments

Sunday Stills Challenge: Flashback

Sunday Stills, the next challenge: Flashback: Ed says: The challenge is to go as far back in your archives and pick out some of the oldest pics you have taken since beginning taking pics. They don’t have to be perfect pics just ones you have taken and add a description of the type of camera used.

selfie

A selfie of me and my BFF taken with a Polaroid Camera in 1982 on the beach in Southampton, NY

We thought it was hysterical to turn the camera around and take a photo of ourselves.

Who knew 30 years later there would be a name for this type of photo.

Join the Challenge!

08/07/2014
DailyMusings

13 comments

Summer Camp Blues

I never went to summer camp. My friends “on the block” all went to day camp every summer. The bus picked them up, and off they went for the day, coming home late afternoon with stories of how they swam, played games, went on trips. When I asked my mother if I could go to day camp the answer was no. Maybe it was the money, combined with her nervousness that “something could happen.” I have a vague recollection of her saying that. I was signed up for the program in the local park run by the Recreation Department. I went to arts and crafts, drama, and I don’t remember what else. It was a few blocks from the house and certainly not as exciting as going away for the day and participating in new adventures.

My husband went to sleep away camp from the time he was seven years old. He loved it. When he became too old to be a camper he became a waiter. He remembers it as a wonderful time in his life. Something he looked forward to each year. Going away from home, feeling independent, learning to be independent. The camaraderie among the guys in the bunk, the thrill of “color war breaking out.” I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about when he first mentioned “Color War.” Two teams, two colors, contests and competitions, plays and skits, and then a winner is declared. The campers never knew when Color War would “break out”- it was done as a surprise, a prop plane flying overhead to announce it or some other clever way to make it a exciting.

My step daughter started going to sleep away camp when she was 9- she was used to spending weekends and weeks apart from one parent so she had no reservations about going away. When she became a counselor we would go to visit on a weekday, not visiting day when everyone was there. We would bring loads of food and have lunch with her friends. I would walk the grounds of the camp and become wistful at the thought of never having had the experience. The freedom of being away, the outdoors, the activities, the closeness that develops from spending 8 weeks together with friends.

I scour the photos posted online of my nieces who are away at sleep away camp, living vicariously through their smiles while they are doing archery, painting, having races in home made boats laughing uproariously. Happy for them that they are enjoying the experience, and knowing they are making memories that will last a lifetime.

08/06/2014
DailyMusings

8 comments

The Ties That Bind

I received an email from an old friend yesterday. She moved away over a year ago, far away, back to her home country of Trinidad. I will most likely never see her again which makes me sad. We became friendly when she became a caregiver aide for a close friend of mine. The friendship was borne out of seeing each other everyday, dealing with the challenges that arise when someone you care for is ill, and then moving past that into a sharing of what is going on in your lives outside that world. Receiving her email took me back to a time in my life that in some ways I never thought would end.

My days two years ago revolved completely around my friend who was sick. My first stop in the morning was to his house to walk and feed his dog. Then for a quick chat to see how his night had gone.  I would then go to work and on my way home pick up food for him, walk the dog and find out how the day had gone. Some days were quiet like this, others not. I would arrive to find him sick from taking too many pain killers, or that he had fallen and hurt himself. Sometimes my phone rang in the evening asking if I could take him to the emergency room. It was calm and chaos. All the while he was dying of lung cancer. The dilemma I faced when he ran out of cigarettes and asked me to buy him a carton. Aiding and abetting- buying a carton of cigarettes for someone with lung cancer. A moral quandary. Being able to walk around the block with him and the dog, and then watch his decline into not being able to get out of bed, not wanting to get out of bed. The brain metastasis that made him unable to reason, but then he would ask me, “What I just said made no sense, right?” All the while steeling myself for the inevitable day that this would all be over. That my life would no longer be filled with cigarettes and morphine and trips to the ER.

My friend’s email brought it all back for me. Made me think back to those days. She and I have a bond and understanding having lived through it together. We used to say that no one would be believe what was going on behind the front door of that house. We were glad to have one another. We needed each other. Then life moves on and the rhythms change and distance comes between you. Save for a brief hello in an email, which brings it all back.

08/04/2014
DailyMusings

14 comments

Unlikely Pairing

The Daily Prompt: Bacon and chocolate, caramel and cheddar… Is there an unorthodox food pairing you really enjoy? Share with us the weirdest combo you’re willing to admit that you like — and how you discovered it.

I love mayonnaise. I have since I was kid and my father introduced me to it on fried egg sandwiches. He was a master at making them. White bread slathered with mayo, a perfect fried egg that he would lay upon the bread, then cover with another piece, and cut it into 4 triangles. Bliss. Meatloaf sandwiches with mayo. Bologna sandwiches with mayo. Mayo straight from the jar. To this day I will not buy “Lite” Mayonnaise. What’s the point? It tastes like glue.

Another one of my favorite foods is Peanut Butter. Years ago a friend and fellow lover of peanut butter told me about a new taste combination she had discovered. Peanut butter and Mayonnaise. My eyes lit up, I could feel my arteries clogging just at the thought of it. And so began an unusual pairing of two things most people would not think to pair together. Peanut butter and Mayonnaise. On a rice cake, a slice of bread, or just a tablespoon with both heaped on. Bliss.

08/03/2014
DailyMusings

4 comments

Money From The Grave

An article appeared in yesterday’s NY Times about accounts holding “unclaimed property.”  Abandoned accounts, dormant accounts, accounts of the deceased who never bothered to claim their money while alive and never told anyone the account existed. These types of accounts came to my attention in 2004 when an article was published in a local paper. There was a link to a state website that allowed you to type in the name of a person to see if that name connected to any unclaimed accounts. I started by typing in the names of relatives, living and deceased, but came up with nothing. Then I started typing in the names of friends and their parents. Nothing. Then I typed in the name of my BFF’s father. Bingo! It said there was an unclaimed account that matched that name. I printed out the forms that needed to be filled in and gave them to my friend. Her father had died suddenly in 1982 at the age of 64, while playing tennis with friends. He was divorced and left no will and as my friend is an only child it fell to her to hire a lawyer to handle “the estate.” We both laughed at the thought of filling out this paperwork to find out there was $4.68 in some old account from 22  years ago.

She filled out the paperwork stating her relationship to the person with the unclaimed funds and mailed it in, and a few months later received more paper work requesting further proof and asking for things to be notarized. Apparently it was her father’s account not someone else with the same name, so things were getting interesting. Even if there was only $4.68, it was exciting nevertheless.

Then an envelope arrived with instructions about where to go to claim the check and what ID to bring, and telling her the unclaimed account held a CD (Certificate of Deposit) in the amount of $15,000. She called me screaming so loud into the phone I couldn’t even make out what she was saying. But it doesn’t end there. When she went to claim her check, the actual amount was over $20,000 as they had not calculated the interest that had accrued. Apparently the lawyer that had probated the estate had missed this account 22 years ago, and so there sat the CD for all these years. Money from the grave we called it. Who woulda thought.

Alice as a child & Her Father

Alice as a child & Her Father

07/31/2014
DailyMusings

23 comments

Sentimental Fool or Hoarder?

One of my goals for the summer is to clean out the accumulation of junk that has been collecting in my basement for 20 years. My attic also needs a going through, piles of unorganized photos, old papers, and old books. I removed the hard drives from 3 old computers and 2 lap tops to take them to the recycling depot, and found a printer so old and so heavy that I can’t lift it, and have yet to figure out if I should take a hammer to it or call in the troops to move it.

I gathered books from my childhood and some from my mother’s childhood, bearing inscriptions from aunts dated in the 1930’s and 1960’s. I passed them on to my sister in the event my niece would someday want them. One of the things I found that I was not ready to part with was an autograph book that belonged to my great grandmother. It is all written in German. We had thought it was a diary, the cover so beautiful with silver hinges and her initials engraved on the front. My mother in law’s “mother tongue” was German, so when she came into my life I asked her to translate what was written within those pages. It was then we discovered it was not a diary at all, the pages contained good wishes for the future signed by classmates at the end of the school year. All dated 1895.

I am sentimental and tend to hold onto things that serve no purpose other than to remind me of a person, a time from the past, a memory. I have watched the show “Hoarders” and heard the therapist that comes into the home of the hoarder explain that an object is just an object, the memory does not go away once the object is thrown out. Granted, I understand I am not a true hoarder, my home is not filled with clutter and objects I have an unhealthy emotional attachment to. But it still makes me wonder what drives me to keep the slide viewer key chains from the 1950’s that belonged to my mother in law who is now dead 16 years. Or the ashtray I made in summer arts and crafts camp in 1967.

I only come across these things on the infrequent occasion I am once again focused on cleaning things out. I look at these items and put them safely back into the box that holds them. I just cannot bring myself to throw them away. I believe I will leave it to whoever is left after me, for them to find and wonder, “Why was she holding on to these? What significance did they hold?” and leave it to them to throw them into the trash, as I know I just can not.

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Key Chain View Finder 1959

Key Chain View Finder 1959

the view finder

the view finder

Looking into the viewfinder

Looking into the viewfinder

07/30/2014
DailyMusings

8 comments

Predictions and Reality

The Daily Prompt:    Back on January 21st, we asked you to predict what day #211 would be like. Well, July 30th is that day — how have your predictions held up so far?

Here is my post written in response to the prompt back in January:

future

I do not like to make predictions, or plan that far ahead. Maybe I am a bit superstitious, or maybe I have just witnessed things go awry too many times when people have made plans, but I tend to plan ahead only by weeks. I know myself- I am nervous and tend to over think things, and yes I realize this can be a “narrow” way to live, that I may be missing out on things, but it is not worth getting myself over wrought- I would just rather avoid it. I have become more like this as I have gotten older- youth allowed me to remain oblivious or maybe more able to roll with what came up. Now I prefer staying in my comfort zone, not having to deal with unexpected occurrences. Some of the best trips I have taken I made plans for 2 days ahead of time. Come July I hope my husband & I will be healthy, I hope my sister who is now undergoing chemotherapy will be feeling well and her hair will be growing back, I hope that “life will be good.” Maybe my niece from out of town will have come to visit, maybe my husband and I will have taken an overnight away somewhere. Lots of maybes. No predictions. Whatever will be will be.

July 30th update: My sister thankfully came through her chemo feeling well overall, and yes, her hair has started to grow back, long enough now to venture out of the house occasionally minus her wig. My husband and I did take a day trip to a lovely shore town for the day, and may go back for an overnight as we liked it so much. My niece who is out of town has had a crazy busy summer and will not be making the trip up to visit.

Have other things occurred that I would never have thought to predict? Yes they have. Life can be full of unexpected surprises both good and bad, which is why I stay away from predictions. The brutal winter of endless snow is now a distant memory and I am enjoying the warmth of summer and the beauty of the flowers blooming and the birds visiting my yard. Living in the moment, enjoying the moment. Taking each day as it comes.

07/27/2014
DailyMusings

10 comments

Age Is Just A Number

The Daily Prompt says: “Age is just a number,” says the well-worn adage. But is it a number you care about, or one you tend (or try) to ignore?

I have written about this before. I have learned to ignore the number. I look in the mirror each morning and seem to see more wrinkles, more age spots sprouting on my hands, the same ones I remember seeing on my grandmother’s hands when I was a child. Sure the spots and wrinkles may give away my age, their emergence signifies I may be “of a certain age”- but does it matter? No. Staying young at heart is what counts to me. Keeping my “spirit” young.. and to just keep on keeping on.

07/25/2014
DailyMusings

16 comments

BFFs Before There Were BFFs

The Daily Prompt: Do you — or did you ever — have a Best Friend? Do you believe in the idea of one person whose friendship matters the most? Tell us a story about your BFF (or lack thereof).

Alice and I met in Fifth Grade- the year was 1968. We had a few “play dates” after school, and I remember doing a project for our English class, acting out a scene from Alice in Wonderland. But then she started hanging around with one of the girls known to be a bully who would get all the girls to gang up on one girl, and as I tried to keep a distance from the bully, we didn’t have much to do with each other the rest of Fifth grade.

Then the summer before 8th grade we started hanging out with the same group of friends. That summer we wrote to each other while she was away in camp, and it was through those letters that our friendship was sealed. She came home and we became best friends. We shared everything- our secrets, our clothes, our fears, our hopes. All the teenage angst. We were inseparable. Then High School graduation came and she was off to college, I was staying home and starting work.

We were afraid of what the separation might do to our friendship- we promised to stay in touch, I promised I would make the four hour drive to visit her in college. Our lives were diverging in two very different directions. But I did make the trip- many times. In those days phone calls out of the area were “long distance” and cost money- but we managed to call anyway. The four years came and went, and we were still BFF’s. And so it went, our lives continuing to take different paths, but our friendship never diverting from the path it was on. It just grew stronger and deeper.

I believe what has allowed our relationship to continue the way it has for over 40 years, is our desire to discuss, to be introspective, sort things out, dig deep for the answers as to why we are reacting, responding, dealing with life the way we are. From that summer before 8th grade, we have consistently continued to talk about anything and everything- always wanting to get to the bottom of whatever subject at hand- dissect it, come to understand it, come to terms with it. We offer one another constructive feedback- knowing there will be no judgment from the other side. Honesty, a thoughtful response about it, but no judgment. And the laughter…the ability to laugh loud, laugh often, laugh at ourselves, our own private jokes that date back to high school that can still send us into spasms of uncontrollable, make you cry, make your coffee come out through your nose, laughter.

Having a shared history we never have to start at the beginning- have to explain- we both “get it” immediately because we have been there through it all. We have been there to see it all, feel it all, get through it all. The common life experience together that has helped each of us grow, the security of knowing that one person will be there no matter what. Love of talking, love of discussing, love of shopping, and most important, just love.

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