Finding My Phone

I seem to misplace things a lot these days.  My glasses.  My bluetooth earbuds.  My keys, my phone, my tablet.  I like to think that its because I have a lot on my mind and not because I’m 75.  At least once a day you’ll see me roaming around the house using the Find My Device app on my phone to find my tablet or vice-versa.  Or using the Tile App on my phone to ring the Tile on my key ring.  Finding my glasses and wallet requires a good old-fashioned, where-have-I-been hunt.

Bad Coffee Day

I find as I get older (which keeps happening no matter how much I complain) that hurrying becomes more counterproductive, a fact that the forty-year old who lives inside my head refuses to accept.   On Wednesday, I volunteer in a Twelve Step office, taking calls from people in need of help and serving as the all-around computer guy.   My normal shift is from 11 am to 2 pm but today we are having the windshield replaced on my wife’s car because a tiny chip caused by a flying stone on the freeway has begun to grow into a crack.  She would like me home to deal with the mobile windshield replacement people, scheduled to arrive between 2 and 5 pm.   Thus, my plan was to shift my hours to allow me to be home at 2.  Have I mentioned that as I get older it becomes increasingly hard to change my routine?   By the time I got out of bed, read some news on my tablet, did my morning chi gong and showered, I realized that I didn’t have time for breakfast.   Easy, the forty-year old in my head said.  We’ll brew some coffee while you get dressed, then pick up a muffin or something at Ralph’s Market when you stop to buy something for lunch.   I scurried (as much as this old body can scurry) downstairs and set up the coffee maker, then scurried up the stairs  (more slowly) to finish dressing.  As I carried my office paraphernalia to the car, I stopped to fill my travel cup with the coffee I’d brewed.   What I got was pale brown hot water.  In my haste, I’d forgotten to put the ground coffee in the basket.  Shit, says I.

Head. Feet. Together.

With visitors coming this week, this Saturday was a chore day.   I had a long list of things to do around the house and of errands I needed to run in order to be able to do those things around the house.  Chances are about 98% that on a chore day, a trip to our local Home Depot will be required.  Today, I needed flowers … assorted viola and some sweet alyssum … to brighten up my flower pots in the yard.  I also picked up some kitchen cabinet polish.  The plan was to finish at Home Depot, take some boxes to our storage bin, then stop at Target to pick up some cat food before heading home to start on my chores.  Everything was on schedule until I loaded the plants into the trunk in the Home Depot lot and closed the lid.  Have you ever had one of those moments where your hand is in the process of closing the door and a voice in your head shouts KEYS!!! … but it’s too late to stop?  You hopefully look in your pocket but you know where they are.  In the trunk with the plants.  And the car doors are locked.  Shit.

Monday Smiles 10/12/2015

One Monday a month, my wife, Muri, and I spend several hours delivering Meals on Wheels to people even older than we are.  It’s an easy enough sort of service done mostly by people ten or twenty years younger than the clients to whom they deliver.  We arrive at the MOW office at around 10:30 to pick up a cooler holding the days meals.   We also pick up a book that tells us what meals each client gets and gives turn by turn directions to their houses.   Our clients are spread over a wide area and periodically change, so we never quite get to memorize our route.  I drive and Muri reads the directions, interspersed with an occasional, No, no, turn right when I don’t listen.  And we talk … sometimes a lot … enjoying time together with no interruptions. Occasionally l miss a turn, and if I think I know the area, I find a different route.

Feeling (24 Years) Older

Last night, as I often do leading into the weekend, I was fulfilling my role as the Social Director of the Eyes Household, looking for an activity for Saturday (aka Date) Night.   I wasn’t having much success for a variety of reasons.  We’ve seen nearly every film we want to see.  We’ve seen so much theater, that we’ve either seen most local offerings or they are too community theater for our tastes.  Yes,  there is some theater snob in both of us.  I’ve never heard of the bands at local music venues.   Friday had been a long day and I really wanted to find something nice so I was excited when I discovered a Tchaikovsky Spectacular … with Fireworks … at the Hollywood Bowl with tickets available.  I immediately bought two online and went to  bed happy.  This morning, not so much.  I recalled the long walk and the stair climb to the nosebleed seats I’d purchased at the Hollywood Bowl.  And I remembered the sore hip that has had me limping around for over a week, some days a little and some days a lot.   I think I did something dumb last night, I said to my wife, Muri, as I was telling her about the tickets.  I will probably see if there is a way to return them when I get home from my morning trip to the park (where the short walk to the restroom made it clear that the Hollywood Bowl is a NO WAY) but there’s a good chance I can’t.  Shit.

What Was I Going to Write?

Like most people my age, I find myself among older people a lot. It’s not so much a conscious choice as common interests. The movies we choose often attract an older audience and live theater would not survive without its senior audience. The park, particularly during the week is the habitat of the retired and semi-retired. And except for talking with my daughter and my son, I mostly communicate with people within shouting distance of my age. Even the men in my Men’s groups are aging with me (although, damn it, I seem to be staying ahead of most of them). There are those who tell me they like to be around younger people to keep them young. For me, that is one of the reasons God put my grandchildren on this earth … I don’t need to be young, I need to be childlike. I like being around seniors. They … at least the ones I choose to talk to … tend to be more honest, more comfortable in their own skin, more compassionate, and yes, a lot less noisy than all those younger adults out there. But the other side of the coin … there is always another side of the coin in this life … is that I get to see the effects of aging all around me. The forty-year old in my head can’t kid himself.

Two Stories

Unlike most people in California, Muri and I have only had two houses.  When we moved to California from New England, we discovered we could actually afford to buy a house here.  How long ago was that???  1971.   It took a while, but we finally found a new tract of homes we liked in the North Orange County town of Yorba Linda.   There were five model homes to choose from and we liked a 2400 square foot two-story model best … but our bank account preferred a one-story 1,600 square foot one.   Practicality prevailed.   For months we drove to Yorba Linda every weekend to watch the progress as our little one-story house was built.   It was a great neighborhood, mostly young families like ourselves.   It was our home for 31 years.  But gradually, the neighborhood began to go downhill and, with both of our kids grown and my new consulting business doing well, in 2001 we moved across the Riverside Freeway to a two-story house in Anaheim Hills.   It was our dream house.  Still is.

Uh … I Forgot

It is six pm here in Southern California.  In spite of the Post-A-Day 2014 badge in the sidebar of my home page, there has been no post today on Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog.   No, the problem is not writer’s block … or poster’s block either.  I haven’t been working all day on a really interesting post requiring lots of research and I haven’t been engineering the crap out of the new project my company’s working on.   Yes, I started the day with a doctor’s appointment (the wrist I hurt in a fall seems to be healing), picked up and installed some new equipment needed because Time-Warner is switching to all digital cable, and solved a problem with my wife’s cell phone.  But I didn’t skip posting because I was busy.  Nope, I just plain forgot.

Stubborn or Obsessed

In my heart of hearts, I knew that putting that WordPress Postaday 2014 badge in the corner of my page was a mistake.  At the time, my life was in an ebb and I had time to spare.  But by the sometimes fine age of 69, I knew … the ebbs never last.  Life is always in session, sometimes leisurely sometimes not.  For at least three weeks now, my days have been over-filled with new business, taxes, travel planning and a variety of activities.  I’m rebuilding a computer for a friend of my son’s.  I’m the literature guy for my Thursday Night Men’s Meeting.  I am one busy old guy.  Quality problems, my friend Truck would tell me and he’d be right.  Nonetheless, it’s hard to keep up with that damn badge.  Of course, it’s not the badge … it can easily be deleted with a trip to my WordPress Dashboard.  It’s me.  I’m either Stubborn or Obsessed when it comes to Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog, so I’m trying to keep up.  When I overdo like this, something always falls by the wayside.  For a month, it’s been the form of journaling that Julia Cameron calls Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way.  It has been an important part my life for over twenty years, a way to center myself at the start of each day.   Yesterday, during my weekly meeting with my sponsor, he told me that in his opinion, I should get back to doing it.  Shit.  But he’s right.  I’ll try.  So you may see a few posts like yesterday’s for a while, photo essays.  In case you missed it, the subject was Blue and it included several photos, a Van Gogh painting and several songs on the theme.  I may do colors on Wednesdays for a while.  Then maybe we’ll start flavors.  But for now, the badge stays.

Notes – Mental and Otherwise

Believe or not, kiddies, when this post publishes, it will be my 1,350th post.  I say when because in spite of the fact that I am sitting down with only the vaguest notion of a topic in mind, I’ll find 400-600 words that I can string together into some semblance of a post.  I find that as I get older, I’m less talkative but more writative.  I wonder why.  Perhaps it’s because it’s easier to imagine someone out there in the blogosphere actually enjoying what I write than watching someone sneak glances at their watch when I say the very same thing in person.  Six hundred words makes a long soliloquy.  Nope.  Having enough words is never a problem.   Ideas for topic?  Well, that’s another story.