Busy getting ready to move (before winter) to senior housing.  Remarkable how happy I will be to get rid of things I've treasured -- signatures, for instance, of Jane Austen and Samuel Pepys.  Don't understand it, but it's handy.

My son Dov is still here, and he suggests posting that farewell note I wrote at 2 am a couple of weeks ago. The local paper, the Democrat & Chronicle, used it as the final column, and it brought me a dozen or so gratifying emails (one, if I remember right, compared me to God? I can't be remembering that right).
Of course first I have to find that farewell note, and I have no idea how to.  Stay tuned.
Aha!  Dov says he just sent it to me as an email (I can still handle email) ...

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/marketplace/real-estate/2019/06/14/edith-lank-hangs-up-her-real-estate-column-after-nearly-44-year/1457007001/

I would point out, now that you realize I'm as far behind the times, computer-wise, as anyone my age, that somewhere around 1984 or so I was a computer pioneer.  Those first computers cost a fortune -- in 1984 dollars at that -- and they kept improving them so fast that I kept replacing them -- but somewhere along the line it all got ahead of me.

Well, anyhow, Dov says you'll find the final column at that address.
I thought that the syndicate didn't run it --  But yesterday I received a postcard from Washington!

Have a nice day.

Take a listen...

Dov  found this on a web site -- I didn't know any of these survived --  I had evidently tailored this talk to a group of Realtors -- it's not very long and I'd like to think you'd heard it so do take a listen.  I used to get paid for these!

http://askedith.com/audio/Edith-Lank-Funny-Letters.mp3

I''m Back!!

Yielding to popular demand from at least two correspondents, and with my son -- the one who's going back to Vancouver--  looking  over my shoulder and egging me on, we'll start posting again.  Dov emphasizes that "It wasn't your fault" things got complicated.  As usual, to serve me better, They improved this site and I couldn't get to it.  Besides which, of course, not a hell of a lot is happening here.  But I believe I have at least  half a dozen followers, so hello!  

Hi -- I''m still alive.  Just haven't felt like posting for months now.

It's okay -- feel fine.
I was picking the blueberries out of a fresh fruit salad this morning and flashed on a scene from around 1937 -- I'm with a group of Girl Scout campers climbing Mt. Monadanock in New Hampshire, and in front of us is a scraggy bunch of shrubs -- they're wild blueberries -- and we're FREE TO PICK THEM -- they're FREE.  Free food! I am so  astounded by the concept that I retained the memory -- I can still see that scene.

Worst Movies Ever

                   Yes, I'm still among the living!
Seems that to serve me better, They complicated signing on to this site. Google is involved somehow.  Finally got up the energy to solve the problem because I just have to tell you about the worst movie I've ever seen.  So far.
Until recently I would have said that was Reefer Madness -- one poster says THE BURNING WEED WITH IT'S ROOTS IN HELL -- yes, that's the way they spelled "its".   Reefer Madness is black-and-white and it shows up on cable now and then, or there's always youtube.
Thoroughly enjoyable.

At this age and unable to walk, I spend an ungodly amount of time in bed watching tv, and now to my amazement I've found an even worse movie there -- in color!-- perfectly fine title -- The Unexpected Bar Mitzva.   I guess you can take a look for  yourself on youtube?   Rotten Tomatoes lists it but without a single word of comment that I can find.

                                           Enjoy!

Dreadful Sorry Clementine #2

Dov tells me all I posted about that was the headline.  Dreadful sorry, clementine.  Left you hanging.
So a couple of days later I saw an orange disk on the green carpet behind the bedside table.  Did not recognize it.  Pulled it up with the grabber, recognized it.  You will remember it had already been peeled.  It was a bit desiccated (I think maybe that means dehydrated, hope so) and it was also somewhat dusty.


There are advantages  to being old and living alone -- nobody, for instance, to tut tut -- so I ate it.

More Mystery

Adding to the festivities of my 92nd birthday this week, there arrived a delightful picture book, printed on thick stiff boards --


                        

It came (I think) via Amazon , and after a brief effort to find the sender's name -- to no avail -- I sat down and read it.   Not all that time-consuming.  But by the time I'd finished, Companion had finished filling the bird feeders, taken out the trash, said goodbye and left.
                                so WHO SENT THIS?

Mystery for You

So yesterday I sat at my breakfast table  (in the scooter, lately it's too painful to bother transferring to a kitchen chair) and peeled  a tangerine to end the meal.  (Actually it was something sold as a Darling Clementine, a bit smaller and less juicy than a tangerine.) 
And then thought wouldn't it be cozy to eat it while reading in the bathtub (one nice thing about being old and living alone is that there's no one to be upset by unorthodox living habits) so I scooted the peels over to leave them in the kitchen sink -- cannot grind them up because of what I did back in the 1950s which I won't take your time to discuss as it's really off the subject (when  our first disposal -- garbarator -- was installed, the electrician started to put the off-on switch in front of the sink, and I -- nervous and a bit afraid of this new device -- said  "no, no, not where the children could play with it" so it's up on the wall where now I can't reach it) and scooted off down the hall to the bathtub. But then remembered the Handyman was coming and because it's below freezing out there today I'd written a sign that said "Door's unlocked, just come in" (these days it takes quite a while to  get to the door -- and this is a ranch house and the bathroom door is at the end of the entrance hall, and I leave the door open when I take a bath because otherwise the room could get super-heated.)  Never mind what the handyman was coming for -- it's off-topic (change furnace filters, drain hot water heater, fix dishwasher)  so I decided instead to go back to bed and eat the clementine there while I read the morning paper (still 


seven days a week and still defiantly in four sections even when sometimes now a section 
is just a single sheet of folded newsprint) so I continued down the hall  to the  bedroom, dismounted, plugged in the scooter to re-charge while I was reading and getting dressed -- tossed the newspaper up near the pillows and pulled myself into bed and now we come  to the mystery, which perhaps you can help me solve.
Where  was the darling clementine?
I tottered back and unplugged the scooter, got in and searched.  It was not in the kitchen.  Not in the bathroom.  Not in the bedroom.  Not in the scooter.
Not in the bed.  At least, I've looked as thoroughly as I could -- I  have visions of it quietly rotting away between the sheets somewhere before Companion  comes next week to change  the bed.

Where is the darling clementine?

Mystery

I'm  told some grad students in History are having problems because they can't read cursive documents.  Well, and then there's just plain old-lady handwriting -- what do you suppose is going to happen on Sunday? Am I supposed to be somewhere?  Will someone be expecting me?
I do have some Smith in-laws, over in Albany, but that rings no bells.
If I made some appointment for the totally impossible hour of 8 am, I'm sure I'd  remember. This must be 8  pm.

I live in suspense.



p s Just noticed --I must have jotted IRS on the 15th -- so this  will  count as a cheerful reminder for those of us who withhold.  Let's make America great again.

Maybe from now on I should print everything in CAPITAL LETTERS

Truth in advertising

That "sachet" is a squirrel repellent.

Or maybe it isn't.

Illiterate creatures

I found these anti-squirrel bags on the Internet.  They contain something that repells squirrels, keeping them away from the birdseed in the feeders.  

Or maybe not.

Obituary

Well, the obituary pages paid off again today.  We have a gentleman (no age given) who 
"joined his wife Evangeline amongst the stars from whose dust they were made.  Now reunited they explore the fields of Elysium. Together as they had almost always been they gaze down upon their children...grandchildren...and new baby Katherine with contentment, peace and love.  From the heavens they reach One final time To bless us all, ...

I think I'll just let you read the rest of that for yourselves, if that's okay.  Services, you won't be too surprised to note, at the 
Universalist Church...

The Lost Prince

My kids are all out of town and "Mother, it won't fit in the suitcase" -- so bit by bit I'm giving away stuff I'll never use again and furniture that gets in the way of the electric scooter. Books I'll never read again go in a separate bookcase.  When I wrote the sign                                                                       "FREE -- PLEASE TAKE", my son with the economics degree suggested I'd get better results with:  
                                                                                                   "Take a book -- $1
                                                                                                      2 books  --$.75
                                                                                                       3 books --$.50
                                                                                                       4 books -- $.25
                                                                                                       5 books -- FREE"
At any rate, even with my few visitors that bookcase has a nice turnover.  Someone even took, recently, the big two-volume textbook from the freshman Survey of English Literature, a work that that started with Beowulf and -- back in 1944 -- never even mentioned Jane Austen.
Every now and then, though, I find a book I'd like to re-read, and those go in a different bookcase.  Looking it over recently, I discovered that the titles I can't quite part with aren't all that impressive.  Not much there in the way of challenging classics.
But there was a copy of what I would have said was my favorite book (had anyone asked me) back when I was 11 or 12 -- The Lost Prince, by Frances Hodson Burnett.  I'd borrowed some of her other books from the library -- The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, but The Lost Prince I'd taken out over and over.  During the Depression I never dreamt of buying a book, but I set out, one day, to make my own copy.  I must have given up after just a page or two, because all I remember is a notebook page filled with not very impressive penmanship.
 
So when did I buy this battered and much-mended copy?  In college, when I finally discovered second-hand bookstores?  This copy does contain the bookplate I'd made as an assignment in journalism school's printing course -- as close to attempting Art as I ever got. The linoleum block is supposed to be a view down Lake Keuka from my folks' porch.
 But then I found, at the bottom of page 133, an imprint that said "Portland Psychology Assn". I must have already been teaching at a college in Maine when I found a second-hand bookshop with this copy.  And why do you suppose that Assn owned it?
Well, I had some trouble, yesterday, keeping it in order on my bathtub reading rack.  The pages kept falling out, and I can no longer read a book straight through.  It took two days, but I'm here to tell you, The Lost Prince, with its 1916 copyright and 12-year-old protagonist, is still delightful. I'm keeping it.
                                                       Highly recommended.

Hair

Thought I was through with blogging, but this hair thing has been obsessing me so -- yes, I know it's irrational  but maybe talking about it to you will help me let go of the irritation.  

How come I only noticed a few weeks ago? How long has this been going on?  Did the Pope recently issue an edict saying you can't anchor a cable tv network unless your hair is below your shoulders...you can't make a commercial for this year's automobile unless your hair is long and almost -- but not quite entirely -- straight?

  Women are ironing their hair again?...we might as well be back in the '80s.  
And what's the word I'm trying to remember (I once heard that the nouns are the first to go, and that's true) -- aha!  extensions!  That's the word!  I've been dealing with hair for more than nine decades now, and I happen to know it takes at least a couple of years to grow hair down to your shoulders, so we're talking hair extensions, right?  or did everyone on TV suddenly decide to wear wigs?  I can't tell just looking at them -- what do you think?
Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention. Maybe it's been happening over a period of a few years and I just never noticed? 

And why does this whole thing irritate me so?

I see by today's paper that Si Newhouse Jr. has died.

Sometime around 1945 I found myself sitting next to this freshman at the typewriter lab in the journalism school at Syracuse.  Evidently trying to impress the kid with how the school would make him a professional, I bragged that I'd spent the past summer at the Penn Yan Chronicle-Express -- to which this freshman responded that he'd spent it as a reporter on his father's Staten Island Advance.

Which, come to think of it, was the paper for which a generation later my son Avi Lank covered some good stories at one point...

Proud Moment

     In the 1940s during The War, I had a summer job as county correspondent for the Rochester daily newspapers.  Typed each story (double-spaced, one side only) twice with different lead paragraphs, kept carbon copies (remember carbons?) and took my offerings to the 3 o'clock Greyhound bus for the 50-mile trip to the city.
     I was instructed to clip my stories if they appeared in the fat State editions of those dailies, paste them up (minus headlines, alas) in a long roll, and every week measure that roll with a long string. As a stringer (it would be years before I ever heard the word "free-lancer") I was paid --could it have been ten cents? --per column inch.
     It occurs to me only now -- why the string?  Why not just take the tape measure to that roll of clippings in the first place?  Did I mail in that string or something?-- can't remember.
     So just now, more than 70 years later, I googled "stringer" to see if I'd remembered right, and yes, there was the word.   But when Wikipedia started to discuss the etymology of "stringer" it appeared nobody knows where the term came from. The possibility that stringers were considered second-string journalists was offered.  There was no mention of  measuring one's clippings with string.
     So I typed in my contribution.  First time I ever did that, ridiculously easy, and there it stands on Wikipedia!
     I've forgotten so many things -- but I remember exactly where I was standing the day in August 1944 when I phoned (long-distance !! in the middle of the day !! before the rates changed !!) to tell the State Editor that I'd be leaving to return to college.
     Just one telephone in our house, on a party line (our ring was one long one short) -- and as I stood there in the kitchen that unknown Editor said -- I've forgotten a lot now but I remember his seven words exactly -- 
    "It's been a pleasure receiving your copy."

No Longer Heard

Cleaning out a desk drawer, I find three pieces of scrap paper -- 
and I can't take a picture to show you because my camera is no longer working. 
I don't feel capable of learning to use a new one. 
My cell phone is a dumbphone -- if there's a way to take pictures with it and transmit them to you I don't know how and I no longer feel capable etc.
Maybe I can find a vintage Canon SD1100 IS on ebay -- stay tuned. Meanwhile, here with no illustration to dress up the post is what it says on those pieces of scrap paper.  What do you suppose I was intending to write?

rumble seat
Sue Barton, Student Nurse
Dionne quintuplets
hand signals
house dresses
Dutch bob
matching panties
double dutch
popsicle stick "free"
Red Fairy Book
Shirley Temple paper dolls
tire blowout
dry cereal
floor wax
matching panties
penny candy
bathing cap
tourist cabin
mastoid
root beer barrels
candy cigarettes
diptheria

Profitable Hobbies

Yesterday I found a box of old letters Norm had saved from the few years before we were married.  He job-hunting; I putting myself through college (one could do it in those days) and freelancing articles to magazines.  I wrote “I just finished re-typing that article about you.  It’s not bad and I think it’ll sell – it’s about 2,000 words.” 

Well, I evidently did find a market for it, and the magazine may have paid something like a penny a word.  Twenty dollars would have been a lot of money in those days. 
That was a long time ago and I forgot the whole thing.

     Fast forward SEVENTY YEARS.

I get a phone call from a woman who lives one suburb over. She’s been reading the November 1947 issue of a magazine called Profitable Hobbies, and she finds an article about a Norman Lank who tape-records festivities like weddings and bar mitzvas.  There’s a picture of the young man, with his impressive huge recording machine. And the byline on the story reads Edith Handleman.  

“So,” she says, “Norman Lank had a real estate company here, and Edith Lank writes that column in the Rochester paper so I wondered…”

Which left me wondering how on earth she happened, 70 years on, to be reading the November 1947 issue of a magazine called Profitable Hobbies. 

The Past is a Different Country

     Well, I got down the cardboard box with the letters Norm had saved, from 1946 -- my senior year at college.  I was writing during class, which was held in a Quonset Hut.   Over the summer, the war just over, and the GI Bill promising to pay tuition and living expenses, Syracuse had promised to admit every returning veteran who applied.  Over the summer, enrollment had gone from 10,000 to 20,000 --
     hence the Quonset Huts.  I wrote that the side near the coal stove was warm, and I was wearing a mitten on the other hand.  
     There were men in class!  Not even boys -- men back from the South Pacific, from Europe, from the Battle of the Bulge -- and here's what I wrote --
     "The smoke in here is pretty thick -- seven cigarettes, one cigar and two pipes all going at once."
     The past certainly is a different country.

Can You Believe

Ran across this booklet in a bottom drawer -- I'd forgotten all about it.

In 1946 -- I seem to remember I was home for some school vacation -- I was contacted LONG-DISTANCE by the DEAN OF WOMEN -- would I, she asked, be interested in copy-editing and updating the (women's)

RULES AND REGULATIONS OF SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY?

I was so impressed to be speaking with that august individual -- in the daytime! before the rates changed! --  so flattered to be asked, that it never occurred to me to ask if there was any payment involved -- so there wasn't.

Of course I did the job, and in time for reprinting before the freshmen arrived that September.  Syracuse's Chancellor had promised to take any veteran who applied, and over the summer the student body went from 10,000 (mostly women) to 20,000.  Those new students were fresh from at Iwo Jima , the Battle of the Bulge,  the liberation of Auschwitz -- and they made short work of the long-standing tradition that new students wore Freshman Beanies for three months.

I have no memory of the work I did on that booklet, though I still have the letter the Dean sent expressing her gratitude.  But I came across the old one the other day. 
 It was dated 1941.  Evidently mine would be the first revision -- first reprint -- since The War.  Paper had been so scarce -- like most everything else.  I have no memory of what guidelines I used, what changes I made, but anyhow, I wanted to show you the sentence that greeted me on the first page I just opened it to --

There is no dancing or card playing in the dormitory living rooms on Sunday.

The rest of that page makes pretty interesting reading too.  Those telephones, for instance, were coin (nickel) wall phones down in the entrance halls -- none of us had individual phones, which were unavailable anyhow like so much else during The War. And while the rules mention leaving the house after 11 o'clock, I remember that freshman girls had 8 pm deadlines, and could sign out for no more than three 9 o'clocks during a semester.  As is now obvious from the rest of that booklet, the main concern of that Dean of Women's Office was to see that as few of us as possible, in the days before The Pill, ever showed up pregnant.

Finance Problem

For income in my old age I'd built a nice cozy group of municipal bonds -- they pay low interest rates, but they're pretty reliable and the dividends are free from income tax.  And I don't have to think about them, which is great these days when I seem to be a lot less capable of thinking.

Starting last January, though, some of those bonds are being called in, for some reason I don't even want to try to understand
-- and I'm left with cash to re-invest. 

When I ask for investment advice, the kids are no help at all. 

Well, full disclosure, actually I did get an opinion from my son in Vancouver, who says

"There's a good mutual fund that specializes in marijuana, but I'm afraid you can't buy it in The States."

*note: "to serve you better" my server has upgraded me and I can no longer figure out how to get pictures on this post.  I used Google to find some lovely ones -- the Canadian flag with its maple leaf replaced with a sprig of marijuana, for example -- but I can't post it.  If anyone out there feels helpful, it'd be much appreciated.

Ain't he cute ?!!

So I just came out here to send the kids the usual "I survived the night" email, glanced out at the feeders and what to my wondering eyes did appear but this guy having a fine breakfast on $3.99 a pound peanuts from Wegmans.  Nice way to start the day.  Nothing I can do but watch from in here -- Companion not due till Friday afternoon.   

Duck Update

     Okay, it's 4 pm on Tuesday, and here's a report for those who have been asking if the Misguided Mallards are still wasting their valuable nesting time in that shrinking puddle at the rear of this suburban back yard. 

     I hadn't seen either one for several days, and then just a few minutes ago there was the male alone, standing tall and absolutely still, watching the house.  Just standing stock-still.
     I couldn't figure out why -- and then, waddling back from the spilled birdseed under my window, came his mate.  They're both still with us! and he'd been watching her.

     By the time I got the camera out again, she'd made it almost all the way back -- and she's such a camouflaged dullness that you'll have trouble finding her.  Try for that little grey spot above the center there.  He, evidently reassured that she was obeying his summons, had already returned to the puddle--if there still is a puddle.  Hard to tell from here, and I can no longer walk to find out.
      If this actually results in ducklings, it'll be a first, in the more than 60 years I've been watching this backyard.

Breaking News from the Obits

     This morning's obits lists a man who "passed away on Friday...at the age of 60, surrounded by his family and friends."  Not right of course -- my kids are all older than that and they're still kids.
     But anyhow, what I started to tell you is that he is survived by "his wife Mary Ellen...his daughter Melissa...his son Brian..., daughters Naomi...and Michele..."   There's a story back of that, one suspects, but again I digress. 
      Nine grandchildren are listed, all with interesting names ----MacKenzie, Bethanie, Morgan, Cooper,... but anyhow, what I wanted to tell you is that 
     in addition to a long list of close friends, he is survived by
    

 
four dogs, a cat, and a rabbit.

Wildlife Adventures

Assuming this program will operate as it should today -- you will remember I showed you the Mallard ducks that migrated in here Easter weekend -- as they do every year -- attracted by that strip of melting snow at the rear of this back yard. 

I think I told you they always move on, looking for a nice swamp to nest in, because that water dries up and disappears every year within a matter of days.

This afternoon, though, I found him still here, and what's more, chasing another male away, after which he flew out to the end of the back yard and landed with a --- omg!--- a splash.

Now here's the view of the yard from my desk, and these days that's all I've got to work with -- can no longer get back there to see what's going on, and even moving to another window is a big undertaking.

 

 So I got out the binoculars, and sure enough, there's a puddle still left back there, about the size of a manhole cover, and I'm afraid they're wasting their 2017 nesting opportunity, because I know -- if they don't -- that it'll be gone within a few days.

Okay -- he's in the middle of this picture, looking at you, and I've blown it up so you can see her more or less -- she's just to the right of that dandelion in front of him, beautifully camouflaged by Nature so that it's hard to see her...because, I'm afraid, she's sitting on eggs.  Or could that be a grey chick already, just to her right?  Wish I could get out there and find out.  

Only consolation is, come to think of it I haven't seen that feral cat around here lately.

Stay tuned!

 

ALTERNATIVE FACTS

DAMN, THIS PROGRAM ISN'T WORKING RIGHT.  I"VE BEEN TRYING TO GET THIS POST OUT FOR TWO DAYS AND I UNDERSTAND THE PICTURES DON'T COME THROUGH, NOR CAN I CHANGE THE SIZE OF THE TYPE.
TIME TO CALL THE COMPUTER HOSPITAL  -- I CAN NO LONGER TAKE IT IN BUT THEY MAKE HOUSE CALLS.
I GIVE UP.  RATHER THAN SPEND ANY MORE TIME ON THIS, I'LL JUST SKIP RIGHT TO THE POINT AND TELL YOU THAT THE TOPIC TO BE PRESENTED NEXT SEPTEMBER BY BILL HUTCHINGS IN BATH, ENGLAND CONCERNS ITSELF WITH

TRUTH AND FICTION: ALTERNATIVE FACTS IN JANE AUSTEN'S NORTHANGER ABBEY

and I finished the post off with a picture of Kellyann Conway, the originator of a phrase that's evidently made its way around the world at lightning speed.   Wikipedia tells me she first pronounced it fewer than four months ago.  Got to figure that invitation had to be printed in England, travel across the ocean, make its way to my house -- and it must have been some time earlier that Bill wrote the description of his talk, assuming even then that Brits reading it would recognize the phrase. 
- - -- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This morning's post brought a mailing from the Jane Austen Society, the original one, in England.  It includes an invitation to a scholarly gathering planned for late summer in Bath.  

   Nice picture of the Royal Crescent, incidentally.  Norm and I once spent a night in the hotel that you'd never guess is discretely located in the center of that Crescent -- no  obtrusive sign allowed. But I digress.

   This year marks the 200th anniversary of Jane's death.   Years ago I stood in the low-ceilinged room where she died -- yes, in Bath.  I don't believe one can visit it now-- sorry, digressing again. 

   So -- Austen scholars are concentrating, right now, on the two of her novels published that same year, 1817 -- Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. 


The list of speakers for this planned assemblage is impressive -- Bill Hutchings, for instance, is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, co-editor of The Cowper and Newton Journal, a National Teaching Fellow (whatever that is), and the author most recently of Living Poetry and Living Fiction. 

Here is the lecture you could hear him deliver, late morning next September 25




















and finally, here is the bit that brought me up short:

 

IT'S PASSED INTO THE LANGUAGE!
INTERNATIONALLY!
YOU CAN EVEN FIND IT IN WIKIPEDIA!

Have a Nice Day

 After skipping several monthly tests, yesterday I finally remembered to make a routine check of  the panic button I wear around my neck. 



Remembering how loud the other alarm -- the door/window thingie -- is,





I scooted not too close to that little speaker box in the living-room, pressed my button, and was rewarded with an immediate “EMERGENCY EMERGENCY” from the little box.


 

Then I scooted up next to it, waiting for a human voice to come on and ask what was the matter.  And just at the instant when that happened, I had – for the first time in more than a year –

 a sudden spasm of the larynx.

Unable to breathe, unable to speak.

In the past there’s been instant panic thinking I’d die, but this time it was instant panic thinking I couldn't answer. I pictured firemen breaking down my front door.  Thought if I did die at least they would find me.

Meanwhile for some reason the Voice went away, total silence.  I struggled for air and then the Voice came back and asked again.  By that time I was able to whisper “I’m okay”.  Couldn’t believe the Voice would hear it, but It said something along the lines of “Have a nice day” and vanished.  By which time I was breathing again.

Not all that much drama in life lately, but you’ve got to admit there’s excitement every now and then.

 

This clunky AOL server doesn’t always bring up emails I sent in the past few days, but I think I told the kids, in Monday’s good-morning-I’m-still-here note, that I was expecting the podiatrist for a house call that afternoon.  Cleaning lady on Tuesday.  Hairdresser house call on Wednesday.  Think I slated that email Aging in Place but of course not too sure about anything these days.

At any rate, yesterday I was expecting the podiatrist after her office hours.  First time at my house – she had assured me it would still be covered.  Her name was down on my calendar – an old-fashioned cardboard calendar – right here in the basket of the scooter.

 

Decided, as the afternoon wore on, that she’d probably want to clip those toenails in the kitchen, so I figured out a way to prop myself safely at the sink and tackled several days’ mess. 

Just at I finished, the doorbell rang.  Flurry to get back in the scooter, reminding myself that falls happen during hasty transfers – scooted to the front door thinking that can’t be the cleaning lady, I don’t think she’s coming today, opened the door and there was a woman who seemed familiar but definitely not the cleaning lady.  I must have looked as bewildered as I felt.  She said “What’s the matter, didn’t they phone to tell you I was coming?”  I’d seen her before but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the cleaning lady….pause. 

End of story.  You know who it was, and so did I, after perhaps two minutes, maybe not even that long.  Probably  due to that white stuff on the surface of my brain, in the MRI the neurologist showed me when I had the TIA.

Tomorrow I'll also have a visitor from the senior residence I applied to.   Seems they require a "15-minute-cognitive test."  I'll bet the first question will be "What year is it?" (I'll report to you) and I definitely know 1984 came and went.  Even if I'm only operating with maybe 70%, that's still passing, right? 

Now I'm not so sure.

Aging in Place.  

Duck Duck Easter

                                                  Well, that's a relief! 
I worried last week when the Passover Mallards failed to show up.  But I guess they just got confused by those liturgical calendars -- some years Easter and Passover fall at the same time; this year they didn't. 
At any rate, here's what's outside my desk window right now.  This year they're evidently Easter Mallards.
  As always, they'll plod hopefully around the soggy back yard for a few days, grazing under the birdfeeders on bits knocked down by the songbirds. 
 Then they'll face facts, accept that this place is drying up, and depart to find some nice gooey marsh for nesting.

Last Time Around

They're Baaack!!!

Wegman's supermarket is suddenly full of Easter candy, with Peeps in all sorts of configurations -- surely there were not this many variations in earlier years?  For my birthday I received a pack of three large orange ones "DIPPED in decadent orange fudge" and trust me -- there's a reason we never heard of decadent orange fudge before.  Possibly the worst candy ever devised.  The remaining packet is up on the counter where visiting teenagers will absently browse on anything in sight.
And thank heaven, I also received some decent old-fashioned run-of-the-mill Peeps -- they were even the yellow ones.  I stabbed their cellophane and practiced restraint till they seasoned properly, and I can't show you a picture because they're all gone.
But the exciting news at Wegmans is that the Cadbury creme eggs are finally back -- been waiting months for them.  Sugar sugar sugar in its most delightful configuration. 
So Dannie, here's this year's very first effort.  I know -- the red is a bit torn down there next to the chick, but I couldn't help that -- the creme had oozed a bit and it was stuck to the chocolate there.
 I promise I'll practice diligently -- will try to do better right through to Easter.

Visa Secret Revealed

Just got my Visa bill, realized I didn't make a payment in January. 
 So I called the phone number, finally got to say "representative", which brought up a  live person -- her name was Tiffany so we know she was young --

 "What can I do for you?"
 "Well, I always pay my bill promptly, but it looks like I forgot in January.  There's a late fee and interest here.  Do I really have to pay them?"
"No ma'am you certainly don't.  I'll take those off right now."

I think (never sure about anything these days) that They are legally (?) required by law to give you one free slip-up a year or something like that. 
I post this information as a public service.
You're welcome.

 

Na Zdorovie!!

 I still read the obits every morning, and I always check the first words

 "died peacefully in her sleep"--

 (how do they know it wasn't terrifying?) 

 Sometimes it's "at home surrounded by his loved ones"

(a consummation devoutly to be wished, btw ..)

 And then yesterday this one... If you can't read it on your cell phone, I expect there's some way you can enlarge it.  

 

 

 anyhow, it starts --" Rochester:  (1947-2017) Released to the next adventure ..."  That birth date is an alert right there -- he was in his teens through much of the 1960s.  It was an exciting time to be a teenager but a pretty hard time to be a parent --trust me, I was there.

  Between them our boys drove Abbie Hoffman, marched on Washington with MLK,  hitch-hiked to the moonshot and heard Arlo Guthrie at the Newport Festival, registered for the draft and debated fleeing to New Zealand or Canada -- and then they turned middle-aged with good marriages and respectable careers. 

 I was curious to read what became of Charles, but judging from this obit, he was a living fossil -- true to his era right to the end.  Anyhow, what I started out to tell you is that someone thought it worth including in his obituary that he

WENT TO WOODSTOCK WITH A PURCHASED TICKET.

YES!  Our Dov went to Woodstock (driving his friends in our station wagon after dawn because his junior license didn't allow driving at night)  And YES! he'd PURCHASED A TICKET, only to find that as Woodstock developed, the fences were thrown down and the gates opened.

Na Zdorovie!

Here's a First!

Could it have been half a century ago that Anna made paint-by-number portraits of The Beatles?
 I guess if you live long enough (and I have) what goes around comes around.
At any rate, here's what the magazine from Cornell Ornithology looked like in the mailbox yesterday --

 

and when the outside cover was removed -- 

 

 

So I'm curious -- is this indeed a first, or has anyone already received a magazine with this kind of embellishment for your coloring pleasure?

Balanced -- and a Bargain!

      As a public service, today's post is all about a perfectly balanced bargain meal --and  one that can be eaten without having to leave the driver's seat.  For your reading pleasure I append a McDonald's check and here's your script:
      First, you drive up and order a "small cheeseburger".  Right there is your dairy and your protein. 
     Then you ask for a "senior coke".  (I know, I know, but I need the caffeine these days and I don't drink coffee.)
Besides, I want to alert those of a respectable age -- did you know you can get a full-size drink for 79 cents?... or even 69 cents? (read on)  You just have to ask.
    Then, because the chopped onions on that cheeseburger don't really provide enough fruit-and-vegetable component -- and because I've eliminated the pickle and the ketchup, which you may remember Reagan (was it?) classified as a school lunch vegetable...
   ...it's prudent to end the meal with a hot apple pie.
   Yes, this nicely balanced meal can be had for just three dollars,
   BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!!

   If you go to store #32511 instead of store # 4789, you save a penny on the cheeseburger, the coke is ten cents less, the pie is a real bargain and the tax becomes only twenty cents.  

  A third MacDonald's had even different pricing, but I can't seem to find the check.  At any rate -- here's your well-balanced meal for
LESS THAN THREE DOLLARS.

       We're Lovin It!