…I’m getting some exercise. I’ve been getting no exercise at all since the pandemic appeared in March. I was munching my way through the first few months and realized if I kept that up that I would be 30, 40 or 50 pounds heavier by the time this is over. I decided I had to change my eating habits and got out my Atkin’s carb counter and my hypnosis tape on weight loss. I did very well at eating the right things and did lose some weight but it took me days to lose a pound. I realized that I had to get exercise, not only to help with the weight loss problem, but I was getting stiffer and stiffer everyday. When I first came to the Villages I saw they had a deep water aerobic class which I joined and of all the water aerobic classes I have joined over the past 16 years, the deep water has always been my favorite. The pools had been closed up until a month or so ago, however when they opened them it was about the time I said I have to do something. So I now enjoy going almost everyday to one of the deep water pools when there is open swim or combo swim. There is usually very few people, for example today there were only six other people. The sports pools are the largest of all the pools in The Villages so very easy to distance one’s self. There are classes available, however I’m not comfortable being in the pool with 30+ other people. As I look at the picture above I think I presently look like the lady on the top right and I hope as I continue visiting the pool everyday I will eventually look like the lady on the left. We can always dream can’t we?

…come back to haunt you. Several weeks ago, out of sheer boredom I decided to take a ride. I headed south, winding down through the new area that the Villages is developing. I continued out of the Villages and moseyed south along the back roads of Florida. I finally intersected with Rt.# 30l and decided to head back home taking the route north. I had never been on this part of 30l so it was interesting, and sad, going through old towns with buildings and businesses that had been abandoned once Rt.# 95 became the way to travel to south Florida. All of a sudden the route came to a stop and you had to make a complete right hand turn to continue, so I did. Shortly after making the turn I was fascinated with a very old abandoned house that had a picket fence running the complete length of the property. It really stirred something in me, but seeing as I had never been on this part of Rt.#301 there was no reason for it to be a bit familiar. It really troubled me that I couldn’t get the picture of the house and fence out of my mind. About four hours later it hit me…I was there before. That was the house and the picket fence that I walked in front of many years ago and I had been scared to death. The year was 1958 and as newly weds my husband and I decided to visit my grandmother in West Palm Beach. Our car was on its’ last legs but at 20 years old did you worry about things like that? I believe Rt.#95 was barely in existence at that time and the way to go was Rt.#30l. We had been driving for many hours and when we stopped to make the turn to continue south, the car sputtered and died. There were a few houses and not much more. As we walked down the street to find someone to help us we walked in front of the house with the picket fence. On the other side of the fence was a good sized dog that was barking, snarling and baring his teeth. On the front porch sat a woman just rocking away in her chair, just watching us. As we walked we saw that the fence ended and the dog would be able to come out. We looked towards the lady for help and when it was apparent that she would not give us any, my husband raised his voice at her and demanded she get her dog. She finally did. We found a mechanic that fixed cars in his yard and he came and looked at the car. He said we needed a part and it might take two or three days to get it. In the meantime a mentally challenged man came upon us and we retreated to our car. We locked ourselves in as he banged on the windows and pressed his face up against the windshield of the car to watch us. He probably meant no harm, but at that point we were very aware that we were two outsiders from the north and not welcomed at all. What were we to do, we were doomed to sleep in the car until the part came. The thought was frightening. However this story has a happy ending though. After we sat there for an hour or two, my husband decided to see if the car would start. It did and off we flew, waving good-bye to all those unwelcoming people. The rest of our trip was as much fun as we anticipated it would be.

…binj/noun: a short period of uncontrolled indulgence to an activity, especially eating and drinking. That definition was taken from the 2009 Second Edition of the Oxford American Dictionary and Thesaurus and I think a third edition should come out updating the definition. I would say to change the word short to long and add watching to eating and drinking. I remember the first time I heard someone say I was binging all week-end I wondered if they were eating or drinking, and admired their truthfulness about something that could be quite a problem. It was only later I understood the new definition and until just recently experienced the binging activity. I might also now change another word in its’ definition, and that would be addiction instead of indulgence. I’ve watched many things the last few months and have looked forward to the next episode however nothing overtook my life like A Place to Call Home did. I compare it to Downtown Abbey, it’s about a very wealthy family in Australia in the 1950’s, (there is no heavy accent) that has many family secrets and twists and turns in their daily lives. It arouses curiosity but not intellectual curiosity. You don’t come away with any kind of opinion, but during your binging time you tend to abandon any thoughts of the virus and the political upheaval we are experiencing. In fact I don’t even come away.

The last few days I started watching around 8pm and have to force myself to stop at 2am and go to bed. I stay awake the whole time saying I will watch one more episode. That conversation with myself starts around 11pm. The other night I stopped watching even though many things were happening. When I got up yesterday, what did I do immediately? Turned it on to find out who survived and the Prime App is frozen, can’t open it. I spent from 11am until 3pm with Comcast and with Amazon Prime. Nothing either of their techs. did opened the app up. I now have to wait 3 to 5 days for a new tv box to arrive and hope that that fixes the problem. As any addict will do they will figure out a way to get the food they like or the drink they want, so I ran to the computer with my addiction, and sure enough I got it. I do feel like I am back in the 50’s myself watching a little 10″ screen, but at least this will do until I can get it back on my tv. If you are looking for something easy to watch, this home is a beautiful country estate with elegant people, rolling countryside and many many secrets. I highly recommend it.

It is on Amazon Prime, and when you search it, it will come up under Acorn. There is a seven day free trial, and then $5.99 a month. It is well worth it as Acorn has a lot of English mysteries on it. In this day and age binging is really fun, and probably triple fun if I add eating and drinking.

..here we go again. The day I figure out all the technology I am surrounded by, will probably be the day I die. I thought I had developed the first skill needed when dealing with the computer and that was patience. I have been very proud of myself and as with my patience skill have been able to do things I never thought I could. However, as with many times, when you become overly proud of yourself life has a way of humbling you and I believe the computer does too. I think I had mentioned in a prior blog that my printer didn’t work and all that I had done to correct the problem with no success. I never did get it to the office that was going to help me and yesterday while I was looking up something up came a message from the printer, did I want to run a test page. I almost ignored it, as I had done dozen of tests pages in my quest to fix it. However I stupidly clicked yes and it printed the page. I was dumbfounded. I printed other pages and it never missed a beat. I was delighted, but had no idea how that came about. My delight didn’t last too long as all the settings on my computer are different. I couldn’t find my scanned items..went through hoops and found them, (don’t know if I could find them again) however they are all there and all the names of the items are gone, just jpg image, which means I would have to open each one to know what it was. What has even raised my frustration level higher and really is wrecking havoc on my patience is, on this blog I had taught myself how to type a sentence, highlight it and if you clicked on it it you would go to information I wanted to share. Today I did it and it won’t steer you to the sight as it had, but pulls the site up right next to the sentence I wanted to highlight. Worked quite awhile to get it to do what it used to do and had no luck. I want to share with you a song and music video. I especially enjoyed the video. It is called I believe good things are coming and I think we all have to think that yes good things will be coming and of course we hope soon.

Good things coming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkGBLLjAXEA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2IDG0kQ0xyEkFn3WEXZl2Rvo8kFqLEbBkEOQxl5qcYoOAaEB8FAbgOSbs

…pounds. I don’t know about everyone else, but this pandemic has not been kind to my waistline. I read where there are now 15 Pandemic pounds you can expect to gain, and I long ago read that when you moved to the Villages you can expect to also gain 15 pounds…that is 30 pounds. And even before that I read that you gained 15 pounds your first year at college. Now we are up to 45 pounds and that doesn’t even count the pounds that the extra ice cream and cookies and snacks and crackers and pizza contribute. And than add to that many years ago I stopped smoking and gained weight. In my 50’s my womanly hormonal changes put a few pounds on me. Wow, when I think about it I didn’t have a chance. In cleaning out drawers and the like I came across a little book, which when I opened it and started reading it, I was journaling about my new diet. The date was July 1998. It had all the pros and cons of dieting. After I read a few pages I was inspired and impressed with my own words. However I continued reading and realized I would love to weigh what I did in 1998. There were only a few more pages about how well I would do with this new mind set and the next page is all about Christmas day, the dinner I am going to cook for everyone and a few sentences about what a wonderful day it was. A few blank pages and then May 2014. I confessed that I had not lost weight but instead gained the amount of weight I had wanted to lose. But this time I am serious. Next page – July 2015 I write I am now heavier and am running out of years to accomplish my goal. Not much dialogue now..just I’m going to drink water and exercise. On the next page I have week one and each day I mark my weight down. I did very good, it was going in the right direction. Week two was not so good, each day it was going up and by Friday I stopped completely and put the book away, only to be found 5 years later. June 2020..I guess you could consider it good news I am about the same weight I was 5 years ago, but I have written I have run out of time and all my energy is going to go into achieving the goal I set in 1998. I had a friend at that time that lamented that we are going to be in our 80’s and still trying to lose weight. Well, how true was that statement? There is one silver lining to this saga, vodka has no calories and no carbohydrates.

all time poem. In the 1970’s my Mother gave me a book of poetry which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. I came upon the Calf-Path poem which I found to be very thought provoking. I can remember reading it to my sons who were quite young and probably rolled their eyes and sat in silent obedience as I told them to listen. Move ahead 20 years and I was a Branch Sales Manager for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage attending quarterly manager meetings, where the CEO would always bring us up to date on the Company’s progress achieving quarterly goals. He always ended the meetings with a very powerful motivational speech and sometimes would incorporate a poem which he used to make a particular point. Whenever he did that I would think he would love my Calf-Path poem. I finally got the nerve up to send him a note with the poem and received a very nice note back thanking me for it. A year or so goes by and we are all heading to the National Convention in San Francisco. Our CEO had an unfortunate fall at the airport where he was carrying a suitcase in each hand, tripped and went down so fast that he sustained a serious amount of injury to his face. He therefore was unable to attend the Convention where he was the key-note speaker. Another gentleman introduced himself and said he would be reading his speech, however I didn’t feel it sounded at all like speeches I was use to hearing our CEO give. In fact I have to say it was an awful speech, which was so surprising to me. A few months later I received my copy of the Company Newsletter and there is the speech in its’ entirety. The speech used the Calf-Path poem as its’ theme. I was so excited I immediately called my Regional Manager to tell him it was my poem. He was shocked and said: “whatever you do don’t tell anyone you gave him that poem. We sat around a table in San Francisco and were damned if we were going to talk about a calf. Do you know how many hours we spent trying to modify his speech”. I was momentarily saddened by his reaction, but down deep he could not dampen my excitement. Here is the poem in its’ entirety. The Calf-Path

The poem was intertwined in the speech with the idea of getting off the Calf-Path requires you to see differently and to think differently, and that great innovation means getting off The Calf-Path. It was the best speech I ever read.

(Click twice on The Calf-Path and once on the URL)

There is an elderly man in a Nursing Home in New York suffering from dementia. He no longer knows who is family is even though they come daily to see him and hope that there will be a glimmer of recognition but there has not been any for a long time. They bring food, his army uniform, pictures, anything, anything that will jog his memory but nothing. Down the hall is another gentleman and his family is going through the same thing. A funny thing started to happen. Every day the first gentlman would walk down the hall and into the second gentleman’s room and rub his back, stroke his head and hold his hand. He would visit for a short period of time and then leave. It started happening on a regular basis and both families enjoyed seeing him do this everyday, although baffled by it as normally the second gentleman tended to get agitated when others touched him. They never acknowledged each other but both seemed content with the procedure. One day the second  gentleman’s family had brought in pictures and were showing them to their father. Their father did not recognize them, but the son of the first gentleman thought there was a familiarity to them, that somehow he had seen them before. When he got home that evening he poured through his father’s albums, and there was the same picture. Through research it turns out that both gentlemen had been in the Korean War, both in the same unit.  The first gentlman was a medic and the second gentleman was a cook. The first was on the front lines and the second, although not on the front lines, would sneak food to those up front, knowing they needed all the energy they could get. The second gentleman was wounded quite seriously and the first gentleman was the medic that took care of him during his worse times. They have since been moved into the same room where they take care of each other, the only form of recognition there is is the tender touch of the medic on the cooks back and hands, and a loving look only a good cook can give, after he has offered up a good meal.

..Fourth of July was always a fun holiday with parades and picnics and with the day always ending with fireworks. Whether you brought along a blanket to sit on, or a chair or in some cases the hood or roof our your car it always seemed exciting. One thing I always wanted to do but never got there was to watch the Macy’s Fireworks over the East River at the tip of Manhattan. It would have been about a half hour ride from where I lived in North Jersey to sit along the Hudson River and watch them. However I never failed to record them and enjoyed them the next day. If you click twice on the Fourth of July spectacular and once on the URL you can enjoy 25 minutes of the best fireworks ever and the most patriotic music played and sung by the West Point Band and Glee Club. I especially enjoyed when they played all the different songs from the different branches of service. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Fourth of July New York Macy’s Spectacular.

…comes in many different forms. Oh, you first hear about needing glasses in your 50’s, and it starts to get harder to lose weight, the hearing starts to pale, and you develop little aches and pains and as the years go by they get a little more intense, then there is the memory that is there but you have to dig a little deeper to find it. However, my age smacked me in the face this week when I tried to sew a button on. First of all I wear a lot of blouses with a lot of buttons, and I can say I haven’t sewn on a button in years. However I just recently lost a button on one blouse and now another blouse needed one. ( I am so surprised and now grateful that buttons don’t drop off like they use to.) Grateful because sewing on my button became a real ordeal. In my younger years I would have gotten a needle and thread and sewn on the button one, two, three, and be on my way. Age made a difference. First I couldn’t remember where I had my little sewing kit, or did I really still have one. I did find a baggie with all sorts of sewing items, actually two baggies with almost identical items. There was a measuring tape that brought back memories of when I measured my small waist…there was some elastic, there was leather shoelaces, and lots of safety pins and regular pins, all sorts of colored thread, some unraveled and entangled with the shoelaces, some still wound tightly on its’ spool. Then there was this:

What is it? I dug deep in my memory and realized it was a seam ripper. Of course in several decades I haven’t needed it as my body has unfortunately been a built in seam ripper.

I needed white thread which happened to be all tangled up taking on the looks of a cat’s hair ball. Got that squared away and now I need a needle. I found a nifty needle holder that had all sorts and sizes of needles all in their separate dividers. Only problem was the needle holder had opened up and all the needles were in the bottom of the baggie. I gingerly picked out the largest needle with the biggest hole to put the thread through. I find the gadget that helps me thread the needle and still have a hard time doing it. Can’t tell you how many times my thread passed right by that big hole. Finally I am ready to sew and the needle won’t penetrate the blouse material. I fiddled around for awhile before I realized I had threaded a darning needle. Would have worked great if my blouse had been wool. Back to the drawing board. Get all set with my needle and thread and can’t find the button. It was quite small, but besides that when I placed it down on the granite the back of the button was the exact color of the granite. I find it and am all ready to complete my task. There were several more fumbles with the button and that is when I realized my fingers had lost some dexterity. Also I lost some of my button sewing skills as I sewed the button so tight I can hardly button my blouse. If the button had not been so small and been the size of a quarter and I could have threaded my darning needle and used that I might not have been so sadly aware that age does show up in many different ways. I wanted to cry but then thought I could get rid of all my buttons and sew on Velcro, or perhaps zippers. That I’m sure I could do.

…check up. Am taking my computer in for a kind of health check up. I do that every year or so. The IT surgeon will check all its’ vitals and get rid of all the junk that has accumulated. reinstall a security program, and back it up. I’ve been meaning to do it for the last six months since I kept getting the Microsoft scam that would shut it down. I was told unless I permanently got that program taken out it was still in there and would surface from time to time. It does, but I have learned how to trick it, hence putting off my computer office visit. It’s like putting off a doctor’s visit because your ache and pain will go away when you take some ibuprofen. Unfortunately there is no ibuprofen for computers. Anyway you know there had to be another reason that is making me make this trip to the computer doc. It won’t send a print message to my printer. I have tried everything. I have unplugged, I have counted 10, I’ve counted 30, plugged everything back in. I have checked the settings and from what the help icon tells me I have done everything it said to do. There were pages of instructions that said try this. Did it work? I say no, and they say try this. Did it work? no. This went on for days. Is it offline, no it’s on line, is it paused no, it’s not paused. How do I know it won’t send a message, because it works the other way around. It scans to the computer, and it will copy things and it will actually print the printer’s history. I give up and off it will go on Saturday. Not sooner as there are three zooms I want to partake in. One good thing is the computer doesn’t have to fast for blood work or worry about what they will say about its’ weight. It will have to answer however to why it won’t print, and why it has unsavory programs, acting like gang members, surfacing to wreck havoc with its’ owner. If you do not hear from me for awhile I am either out buying a new computer or printer or most likely relearning everything new on my cleaned up computer. It’s the same as you clean your desk up and you can’t find anything, that will be me…searching. Hopefully I will be back writing soon.