bedazzled

videoblocks.com

The truth must dazzle gradually

or every man be blind.

                                            Emily Dickinson

Thanks for your visit,

Riverwatch

A Bad Day At The Ranch

Just been out to lunch with old friends.
We find we all are being over-run with family who "want to help us",
but ....you will find this strange (ho ho ho)..... somehow we are the helpers!"

Not that there is anything wrong with being a helper.

Just like there is nothing wrong with having a cup of coffee and then taking a nap.tastingtable.com



Emma Jean has been just great, still volunteering in spite of a major stroke (one year recovery but she recovered and you cannot tell she has had a stroke).  Oh, yes, she broke her femur (another one year recovery but  it overlapped some with the stroke recovery so it was like a blip-on-the-blip.)  Yeh, she now uses a cane, but don't a lot of people?  They don't ask you down at the DMV if you use a cane!
Maybe you are using a cane to whack stupid people over the head with!

Sorry.  I am just remembering my grandfather who couldn't walk but wasn't dressed until he had his cane in hand.
njadvocates.com

And Emma Jean almost bled to death from the Advil she took to manage the pain of the splintered femur, but she did recover!  I mean, and I can tell you this as a nurse, hemorrhage is life threatening, but if you don't hemorrhage to death you recover fairly quickly with a few transfusions and a bit of a rest.  Emma Jean recovered nicely after the crisis.

Her daughter (who needs a place to stay during her lengthy new home construction) has decided Emma Jean, age 80, is too infirm and "needs somebody to stay with her".
Since said daughter  has never been fastidious as her mother is, she has decided Emma Jean is too fussy about everything especially the kitchen.
Since she is "helping" her mom, she is excused from ever saying thanks.
Her mom is so lucky.
Emma has gained 30 pounds since we all went to lunch a couple of months ago!

Sue Ann and I are aghast as we listen to Emma Jean.

Sue Ann can relate because even though the cubs haven't moved in on her, she cannot take a cruise without them.
Not just a cub.
Several cubs.  Sue Ann pays for it all.  After all, they are "helping her" so she won't be alone in case she strokes out or something on her cruise!  God forbid she find an on-board lover to rob her of her money!

I was a little ashamed to share my pathetic little undramatic cub story, but I had to admit I am in the aging arena also.  Mundane of course, but right there with the crowd.  It is about family dinners.  It seems the family worries about me being alone.  Grandma needs company.  Open door policy, so here comes the dinner crowd.  Ok.  I'll rustle something up.  They all have fun, cousins relating with cousins and my grown-up cubs talking tech with each other and telling jokes I don't get......and then they all leave.
As I am cleaning up alone, I can't help but wonder why I skipped lunch with Sandy after church to have quality time with family.

Oh, that's right.  It was about not being alone.
pinterest.com

Sandy calls me up on the telephone and complains that her afternoon is spent on her tiny deck alcove watching the lizards play on the hillside rocks for hours.  Actually, it is just one lizard.
One lonely lizard. Zipping about.  Basking in the sun.  Resting on a flat rock.
Sandy is depressed.
She needs to get over it!!

Cheerio,
Riverwatch

PS  All three of us, the lunch-bunch, are without husbands in our old age.  As we sat there trolling the good old days, we realized the prime purpose of a husband....(be he the first one, ie father to the cubs, or a later one)...is to run those cubs off!!!
We women are very wedded to our cubs, whom we love dearly.


souloftruth.com

Sorry we are that we ever criticized that which protected us.

Thank you for your visit.

Longevity. What's the point? Interviews # 3 and # 4

This is a follow-up post to the 2/25/16

preceding post on What's the Point?

Longevity.  What's the point?
Interviews # Three and Four

Is it worth the bother and pain?  

Interview #3     She is so sweet.  The only thing we ever argue about is the status of her wealth.  She denies her wealth.  Tries to tell me she  has never been rich and just because she and her husband used to fly around in a Lear Jet doen't mean they themselves had money.


bbc.com

Well, she dresses like a million bucks at age 83!
The Lear Jet is long since gone, as is her husband, but the aura of wealth still clings to this happy elderly lady.

I try to tell her I am poor but she is having none of that fiddle faddle!
So I tell her it is all relative.  I merely am comparing myself to her.
I ask her if she knows the difference between an elderly lady, such as herself, and an old woman.
She doesn't know.  I give her a hint:  "I am an old woman."
Her response is a statement not an answer to my question!  She states I am much younger than she!

"The difference between an elderly lady and an old woman", I say, "is money!"

Not responding to my wisdom, she brings up her age again!
Once we make it to our 80's I guess we need to brag!
So I ask the question:  would you like to live to be 130?  
"Not really," she said.  "I want to be functional and I don't want to live longer than I am functional,  but if I have to, I will, just as long as the young people keep smiling at me!"
                                                   
Longevity.  It is worth it if young people keep smiling at us.
                   Old people's smiles are helpful, too,
                   but if we live long enough, all the old people we know are dead!
                   Need those young people to smile!
                                                       *



Interview #4     She is a nurse.  Aging, to be sure, but not so old she doesn't know which end is up.
I don't have to interview her because she is gonna tell me whether I ask or not.

usnews.com

"I tell people who whine about why they are still living, that they are living because they either have something yet to learn, or they have something yet to teach."



Ok,
Riverwatch

Thanks for dropping by.

Super Lifeguard

Things You Learn While Lifeguarding

americanpool.com

At 17 she is an experienced and stellar lifeguard.  She loves her job and prefers going in early for the 5am to 9am shift.  I asked Kennedy why ever would she want to get up so early to go to work.

Kennedy was clear.  "I go that early because that is when the old people and the dead beat athletes go and old people are nice.

Except the glutton who says she is  diabetic and has eaten up ALL our sugar pills we keep for swimmers who are getting low blood sugar.
 blubberbuster.com

She even demands a piece of your orange if you happen to be eating one.  "I need a piece of that orange", she says.  "I am diabetic!"

"Do you give her a piece of your orange?"

"Oh, yes.  I'd really like to give her a piece of my mind and tell her she is a glutton, but I don't want to be moved to the shift where families clog the pool.  I like the old people and dead beat athletes."

"What is a dead beat athlete?"

"A used-to-be athlete whose time is past and who is in the pool 

re-living the glory days.  Wearing a tight little speed-o with the muffin top hanging over the edge."

"What's a speed-o?"

"You don't know what a speed-o is??!  Well it is obscene.  Tiny.  One old guy wears one that is see through white!  Why would you expose the rest of the world to that body?!  And, oh, Grandma.  You should see them strip down!  So confident.  Very proud.  Gross."
mandyvstheworld.com

"Are any of the dead beat athletes women?"

"No.  The old women do water aerobics, or so they say.  Actually they hang in their floaties "getting exercise", but really it is just social hour.  Not that I blame them.  I tried to do their exercises in the deep end without a floatie, and I had to tread water constantly and I was so exhausted I decided to never try that again!  So they hang there talking, wearing atrocious bathing suits from out of the 90's.  Their suits are as loose and flabby as they are!  
                                                                               theblueroom.bupa.com.ua


I don't understand why they don't buy cute new bathing suits."
reddit.com

"But you like them?"

"Oh yes, old people are nice.  But sometimes the triatheletes come in and they are MEAN.   They are mean to each other and mean to lifeguards.

crispysharp.blogspot.com

I had to break up a fight once when two of them were fighting over a lane.  I like old people better."

And all the time we think we are invisible to the young,

Riverwatch

PS   When I asked her how she at her young age could break up a fight between triathalon men in their prime, she said "I have a whistle!!  And I blew it so hard everybody in the pool jumped!  Then I climbed down and walked over to the athletes and bent down and talked to them like they were children.  'Here', I said, 'I bet this lane would work for you, and if you took this other lane, I bet that would work out.'  And so they took the lanes I pointed out and the fight was over."