I Am An Aging Woman - Appreciating My Body

How did we do life before we had smartphones?  I could write numerous posts about how this little instrument has changed the way I navigate through life…some good and some not so good.  But for today, I am just going to focus on one aspect of it…the sending and receiving of short videos to and from my grandchildren.  

Since I have not yet learned how to bilocate, there are times when I am not able to be present for one of their activities, like yesterday’s “away” football game for Gabe’s team.  Jay and I attend all of his home games and Murphy’s Law…the one we miss is the one where he catches a pass and runs 40 yards before being tackled!  But, not to fear, on the bus on his way back to the school, Gabe sent me a text with a little video attached showing me in real time the execution of this wonderful moment!

As for Gino and Jessie…they are 2 ½ and 1 years old.  Everyday brings a new accomplishment and I get to see it on a video text…first steps, dirty chocolate hands and cheeks, a new monster mask, singing a new song, playing at the playground.  

Sometimes, like this morning, I received a “Good Morning, Mima” video from the 2 of them both chattering to me.  So I decided to reciprocate and I took a selfie video of me talking to them, thanking them for the morning message and asking about their day.  Charlotte said they loved it so I played it back to me to see what they saw.

Here comes the “not so good” part of this little instrument.  Have you ever looked at yourself on an up-close-and-personal selfie video!  Do I really look like that!  It is not complimentary.  So aged, so weathered, so worn. That is not how I look in my mind.  It was sobering.

Later in the morning I dragged my aged, weathered and worn body to the clubhouse for the weekly yoga class.  As I sat on my mat and stretched over my outstretched leg, I looked at it.  

The skin is dry despite the lotion I lather on.  There are little age spots I keep saying are freckles. I found myself massaging my leg and I became overwhelmed with a feeling of great tenderness.  I realized that this leg is 75 years old.  It is still serving me well.  I am able to take short hikes with my friend, Cindy.  I am able to stoop to weed my garden.  I am able to push the double stroller with two toddlers.  I looked at my arms and hands, both reflecting the passage of time, and think of how I am able to knit, cook meals, change diapers, even hoist up my “big boy” Gino, caress Jay’s cheek. 

I felt a tremendous sense of gratitude for this body of mine, this aged, weathered and worn body of mine.  It is not giving up yet.  The privilege of growing older is the best thing that has happened to me.  Rather than delete my selfies, I will rejoice in the fact that I am still here, that today is one more opportunity to begin again…to tell those in my life that I love them...to drink another glass of wine...  to listen to a happy song...to laugh with my husband...to try to have a positive impact.  But I think I will still refrain from selfies!  I am not blind!  But, I am grateful!

(Note: This is the first time I have embedded videos in a post, so I apologize in advance if they don't work!)

I Am A Traveler - Preparing For Our Untour

Today I walked with Cindy along the trails at the PV Interpretive Center and asked myself "Why would I travel when I live in paradise? "

It is true, but the world is so big and there is so much to experience.  This time we are taking an Untour where we will spend one week in Southern France in an apartment in the village of Pernes-Les-Fontaines, near Avignon.

We will explore the area in our rental car, sip wine, eat pastries and veggies and watch locals. Àt the end of the week we will take a train to Barcelona, Spain. There we have another Untour apartment in the Eixemple area of the city for our second week.

In keeping with our desire to travel light we have bought a tablet for the trip to provide our Internet access rather than our bulkier netbook.   In fact. .. I am attempting to write this blog post on the tablet. If I can master it I hope to blog some posts about our adventures.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? "Arf-Arf"

I Am a Celebrant - Happy Birthday to My Blog

One year ago today I got the brilliant idea to start a blog.  At first I was just intrigued with learning the technology.  I had read an article about how easy it was to set up a personal blog using Blogger.

One click led to another and before I knew it I had established "Life, As I Live It."  I conceived of it as a "private activity."  I saw it as a way to create some writing discipline in my life.  I used to journal regularly but had slacked off as time passed, telling myself I would write when the muse whispered into my ear...but my muse was silent.  Yet at night when I crawled between my sheets, I was usually filled with a sense of well-being in the knowledge that I had a good day.  I would lie there recalling the events that had contributed to this and think, I need to capture this, to remember what gave this sense of meaning to my life.  I decided that I would use my blog for this, as my private record of roles I played and events that occurred.

Sometimes the events referred to others, like family members, and I would send them the link so they could know how they figured into my life.  They loved it and encouraged me to continue and to please share it with them.  Little by little I expanded this distribution including a few friends, only those close ones who also ask to see our vacation photos!  Again, they commented favorably.

"Like seeks like" and I found myself visiting other blogs to see what various people were writing about, occasionally leaving a comment, and I began to follow some like-minded people.  Sometimes these bloggers returned the favor by stopping by to visit my blog or leaving a comment.  And before I knew it, my blog had taken on a life of its own.

My statistics for the year:
     Posts: 91
     Page views:  6422
     Comments:  372
     Followers:  29

Lessons learned:
1. It is possible to expand your world from the chair at your desk.  I have been connected to others from Northern California, Australia, Boston, Italy, Sicily, the Appalachia's, Great Britain.

2. It is possible to develop virtual friendships with people who may never shake my hand but who have touched my heart.  I am connected to them with awareness when they bury a mother, wait for a child having heart surgery, lose an adult son, await the birth of an infant.

3. It is possible to teach an old dog new tricks.  It has been enlivening to learn how to set up and contribute to a blog, to link that blog with other social network sites, to enhance photos to upload to share, to link to book sites such as Librarything.com.

4. It takes discipline to maintain the sense of a private activity and remember that the purpose of this blog is to capture my life for me.  Anything beyond that is gravy.  The ego can easily suck me into writing for my "audience" and I have to work to stay authentic to myself.

5. It is possible to get "blogger block!"  It is similar to writer's block and when it occurs I am convinced I have nothing to say.  The remedy is to start typing.

6. Every time I try something, my sense of "who I am" expands, so I should always welcome that new doorway.

7. And lastly, I was right, I do have a rich, full life that I share with others whom I treasure...I am very grateful for that and for the people who contribute to make it so!

So, Happy Birthday to you, my blog...and thank you to all of you who have encouraged me and taken the time to visit and comment.

I Am A Lurker - Tweet, Tweet

I admit it...I am a bit embarrassed...chagrined.  I have tisked my tongue at the craziness of this younger generation who is going to evolve to have huge thumbs as a result of all electronic communication tools they use.  I have bemoaned the passage of that nice social activity called "conversation," the sitting together for a while listening to the sound of the other's voice, watching the expressions dance across the face.  Little by little I am succumbing.  Two months ago I began to text with my phone...usually as a way to get an immediate answer to a question from one of my children.  Now I have a twitter account. 

In spite of the pronouncements I have made in the past about the nonsense of composing a 140 character message to "broadcast" to all your followers...about "who cares if you just got up, had a cup of coffee, are going to bed," I have discovered there are some unsuspected benefits to having a Twitter account.

As is my pattern, I opened the account out of curiosity...to see what it was all about and how it worked.  I began by selecting a few entities to "follow"...my 3 sons, The Economist magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the columnist Mark Bittman, the local PBS station, some knitting sources.  Since I do not have a smart phone I do NOT have my tweets come to my phone.  This means I have to go to the Twitter site on my computer to look at my account and my activity.  Not knowing what to expect, I was amazed at how much great information I received in such a timely manner.  From the WSJ a tweet about a breaking story from China that would interest our China Omnilore Class.  The tweet included a link to the article, so in one click of the mouse I was reading it.  A PBS tweet alerted me to a special documentary that would be shown that night and I was able to program the DVR to record it in time.  A Mark Bittman tweet gave me a link to an article about Food Politics that is perfect for my research for an upcoming presentation.  Numerous Economist magazine tweets kept me up to date on the activity of the stock market on crazy last Monday!

I am not like Jay who can patiently and methodically page through his 4 newspapers, locating interesting articles and clipping them out to read at his leisure.  In my haphazard perusal, I often miss things that would interest me.  Now these same articles are popping up in my Twitter account and I am delighted at how informed I am feeling.  So, I am using this as a tool to bring information that interests me, to my eyes in a timely manner, like NOW. 

I hope no one tries to follow me.  They will be disappointed because I myself, rarely tweet.  So I guess that makes me a lurker!

I Am A Student - Learning to Text

Warning:  I am going to sound "old" in this post.

Remember the days when the family gathered around the table and people engaged in eye contact and conversation?  Today's meals with adult children are likely to be interrupted with a buzzing occurring on the electronic device that is set on the table next to the water glass. The son, picks it up, averts eyes to device while continue to say "uh-huh" to me and then says, "Excuse, me I have to take care of this."  My sons do not work 8 to 5, they work 24/7 tied to their employment by their smart phones and conduct business often with a text or a tweet.

I was waiting for some information from my son, Marc, and finally called him and asked for it.
His reply to me, "I already text it to you...didn't you get it?" 
My reply to him, "You can text me until the cows come home, I will not get it because I do not text."  
His reply to me, "Mom, you really should text."

So I went kicking and screaming into texting and discovered that, in truth, it is the most expedient way to get information to and from my adult children. It is their information highway! So when we were able to upgrade our phones, I opted for a phone with a QWERTY keyboard to assist my thumbs in their new task.

I am still not willing to invest in a data package for a smart phone but for $5 extra a month I can send or receive about 250 text messages. While texts do not provide the pleasure of hearing my loved ones voices, it does get the job done!  I have tried to learn the coding to make the texts brief and though my teacher's soul cringes, I will use lower case and I will type a "u" for you.  So when necessary I send brief texts using some Senior codes, like..."Had surgery today for my left cataract and got a Crystalens, not CBM (Covered By Medicare)"  and if I get lost in the middle of a thought, I just type in the code FWIW (Forgot Where I Was). :-)

Jay has watched me texting periodically and has said, "I suppose I should learn how to do that."  Jay opted to keep his flip phone which he has only used to find me in a store.  In the past, if it rang he would hand it to me and say,  "Here...answer this."  But he too has decided he needs to get current so it was wonderful this weekend to watch him venture into this new world.  It is all thanks to our grandson, Gabriel.  Gabriel is 10 and he is using his mother's old phone to learn how to text. Friday night, the day after Gabriel and his parents left for a vacation in San Francisco, Jay's cell phone beeped.  There was a little enveloped displayed on the screen.  After figuring out how to open it, he saw displayed a message that said..."Good night, Grandpa Jay!"  

He immediately found reply, placed his thumbs on his keys and typed a text back.  So together, the two ends of the generation spectrum are learning to text.

I Am a Computer Techie - Repairing My Palm Pilot

I have a new best friend.  His name is Shawn and he lives somewhere in cyberspace.  Today I spent 50 minutes engaged in profound conversation with him and at the end of it all, I had the greatest sense of accomplishment.  Life is good!
In reality, Shawn is a chat technical support person employed by Palm, the maker of my T/X Palm Pilot.  A few days ago as I was activating the sync process to update the data from my handheld PDA (personal data assistant) to the backup file on my computer,  the application crashed and wiped out much of the information on my computer.  The Palm Pilot is my lifeline to my world.  It holds my entire life...my calendar, my addresses and phone numbers, my memos of important information.  I have been told that PDAs are obsolete, like beta and VHS cassette tapes and rotary dial phones, having been replaced with newer, smarter technology. But mine is still essential to me and I needed help!  By going to the Palm website, searching for their product support section, and activating the Chat support, I connected with Shawn.
Bottom line, my PDA is fixed, all done via a chat screen with Shawn giving me step by step instructions, accessing my desktop with my permission, using a red marker to indicate what I was to click and push and open, sending me a small repair application to debug my device and finally restoring all my old information.  It felt like magic and as I followed his prompts I was in a state of awe that all of this was even possible.

However, along with the sense of elation that comes with success, I am also left with a sense of anxiety as I realize how dependent I have become on electronic devices.  These tools are marvelous and I love them...the Palm, the cell phone, the computer, email, the Netbook, the Kindle.  They enrich and, in some ways, simplify my life.  Yet, I have become dependent on their availability and function.  My recipes...on my computer.  My letters...on my computer.  My maps...on my computer.  My checkbook...on my computer.  This has familiar ring to it..."all my eggs in one basket!"   While I am pondering this predicament,  I think it would be wise to print out hardcopy of all my information and then back everything up to my external harddrive.  Was life simpler and calmer with stone and chisel?