A few weeks ago my daughter sent me a video of her reading to her sweet baby boy and my four month old grandson, Joshua. The book was Sandra Boynton’s board book Moo, Baa, La La La, in which she tells of the sounds that animals make. As Erin read and made all of the requisite animal sounds for Joshua, he giggled and giggled…except with the meow of the cat. Apparently at this tender young age, he is not impressed…
I know…there is nothing routine about a bucket list trip that takes you to another continent almost 4000 miles from home. That said, this trip made me think a lot about my daily routines at home-the things I do and don’t do-as well as the pieces of those routines that I did and didn’t maintain while away. The oddest part of the trip, since Weber did not go with me, was having seven nights in a hotel room by myself….
Bucket List Trip #2 is now complete. As is the case when any goal is set and then achieved, the emotions surrounding it are many. It is much like what I experienced when I was playing recitals. For a long period of time, all of your thoughts and energy are focused on that one thing and then, in what seems like no time at all, it is over. In that “overness” is a swirl of thoughts, emotions, and images. As…
On my 56th birthday, I wrote this post, the first in what I intended to be a weekly post about making my way from 56 to 60. That did not go exactly as planned. I acknowledged my failure with those weekly posts a few days back and am now starting again where I am, with Sailing Toward Sixty #9- Here We Go Again! This post’s title is not what you think. This series of posts got its name from the realization that…
As a musician by profession, it will come as no surprise that I love going to live concerts. I also love live theater. What I don’t like is how expensive tickets to these things can be. “Good” seats for both can cost hundreds of dollars. It is not that I don’t think experiencing these things as a member of the audience is worth the money. I know first hand how much time, energy, sweat, and money is needed to produce…
I am now a month into summer vacation 2019. As is the case with everything these days, I have no idea where the time has gone. Thus far my break can be summed up as…random acts of…. Today I find myself examining these last four weeks more intentionally, trying to identify in concrete terms exactly what I have done, what I haven’t done, and what I want to be doing with my days. This exploration will hopefully lead me to…
So what’s up with old, older, old-ish, people over fifty and their fascination, or maybe it’s an outright obsession, with the weather? When my dad retired from the Navy, my parents moved back to their home state of Delaware where, at the time, my grandmother still lived. Almost every evening from 1985 until 2012 when my grandmother passed away, my dad, the the dutiful son, would call his mother to check on her. Inevitably, the conversation always began with, “How’s the weather over…
So, let’s talk about knitting. Why is knitting something that is associated with grandmas, which are associated with being old? Neither of those things is a given. All knitters are not grandmothers and all grandmothers are not old. I’ve known women who have become grandmothers by age forty. Forty is not old by anyone’s standards. Nonetheless, the stereotype of an “old lady” is a grandmotherly-type woman spending her day in a rocking chair knitting the hours away. You know…this doesn’t…
This morning at 12:37 am my 56th year of life ended and my 57th began. With this day comes feelings of gratitude, joy, amazement, and a need for some quiet reflection. Age has never really been a big deal to me. I have no problem honestly telling someone my age (except the young cashier at the movies who kindly gave me the senior discount, presumably because of my white hair, when I was 49) if they ask. I always tell…
Several years ago, I used to do a “Five Fabulous Finds” blog post at the end of every month. I shared a list of five things that I encountered during the month that I found to be fun, useful, interesting, or perhaps just odd. Every now and then, some of the things may have even been fabulous, but I used the word fabulous more for its alliterative quality rather than its descriptive one. I am going to revive these posts beginning today,…