Birthday Cards

 

I had a birthday this month and was a little sad about not getting cards from some people to whom I always send a card.

Perhaps the sending of physical cards is just going out of style.  I am always pleased to receive a card, happy that someone has thought enough of me to remember the date and go to the bother to mail a card.

I also take pleasure in sending cards.  I like preparing this bit of paper that's going to go through the postal system and that they're going to receive at their home.  It just a little way of letting them know that I care about them and think of them enough to buy and prepare a card and not just do a few clicks on the computer to send a greeting.

Now I'm wondering if I will continue to send cards to everyone or if I will stop sending to the people who don't send cards to me.  How many years should I send and not receive a card before I decide to stop?

Shoes in the House

 

There seems to be this thing going on in the social media world.

Lots of people chiming in about being asked to remove their shoes when they visit someone's home.

I imagine this is mainly a "thing" in the US and Canada.  I believe there are lots of places in the world where it is assumed that you will remove your shoes when you enter someone's house.

Personally I think it is a really good idea.  We walk in buildings, on and off transit and on sidewalks - the very sidewalks where dogs pee and poo!  Why would we want to wear that footwear inside our clean homes?  I have friends who request no shoes and I am happy to comply.  I don't ask it of people who visit me because I just don't want the hassle if someone objects.  I don't have anyone over to visit all that often anyway.

However, there are people on the web who seem absolutely furious about the very idea and say they won't take their shoes off because it's somehow infringing on their freedom.  I just don't understand that attitude.  It's someone else's home.  It's their choice.  If you don't like it then don't enter.  

It's a matter of courtesy, of respecting others' rights, of behaving like an adult.

If someone came to my home and refused to do something I asked them to do or not do I would tell them to leave.  And never invite them again.

Baby Boomers' Parents

 

I've been thinking lately about the people who raised the Baby Boomer generation.

I was born in the first wave of the late 1940's.

My parents were born just before 1920 and lived through The Depression and The Second World War.

There would be Boomer babies born to people who themselves were born before 1910  and would have clear memories of The First World War, the Influenza Pandemic, The Depression and The Second World War.

Experiencing these huge events has to have made a deep impression on them and their view of the world.  These people had lived through perilous times and would have a clear sense of how fragile life is, and how easily things can be taken away from us, and both how cruel and how wonderful human beings can be.

There must have been studies done on how this affected their child rearing attitudes.  I need to try and find some.

Movie: Oklahoma! (1955)

 

I watched this film this week.  I don't know when I last saw it but it was decades ago.  I was engrossed, captivated, delighted to find that it is still wonderful to watch.  I couldn't help but notice the care and precision that went into every aspect.  The old Hollywood approach where everything had to be the best.  I don't think recent musicals come anywhere near this standard.

It was also interesting how subtly sexuality was handled.  Nothing blatant yet clearly there.  At the risk of sounding like an old prude I have to say it's hard not to think of the overt sexual scenes in current productions as being somehow more adolescent.

Paper Towels

 

I've noticed many times that people tend to grab one, two, three or more paper towels in a bunch when they need to use them.  Similarly with antiseptic wipes - two, not one.   I don't do this - I take one and use it and then take more only if one was not enough.

I think this may come from my childhood.  My parents grew up during The Depression.  My father on a farm where they were poor and survived because they could produce most, if not all, of their own food.  My mother's family was a little better off and her father had a job, but to keep things going my grandmother moved the kids to the basement and rented out the bedrooms to boarders, and in the summer she turned the back yard into a garden and sold any excess around the neighbourhood.

So I grew up in an environment of not wasting and not using more than you need.  

In the 1950's it was still a time when you changed into old clothes when you got home from work or school.  You also wore those old clothes until they were worn out.

My friends tend to be environmentally conscious people so it the inconsistency surprises me when they use more of something than they need.

A Fall

 

I had a fall today, at a friend's house, on the stairs.  I was alone in the house at the time and accidentally brushed against a framed picture on the wall near the top of the stairs and knocked it off - I made a grab for it and I guess my damaged leg didn't support me and I fell, banging my jaw on the top of a, thankfully padded, dining chair and then landing on my side on the floor.  Nothing particularly hurt but I made my self just lie there for a bit and breathe before trying to get up.  I feel ok but I wonder what's going to hurt when I wake up tomorrow!

Looking back it is interesting that as I fell I had such a sense of myself as a human body.  I think most of the time I experience myself as a brain in a head.

Of course right now I feel very aware of myself as being an old/older person and have a strong feeling of being vulnerable.  This is also amplifying my feeling that it may be time for me to move to the senior's independent living place I have been considering, someplace where help would be on site if I needed it.

An Incident of Panic

Late last evening my internet went down.  I pushed the restart button on my modem but that did not fix it so I decided to wait and see if service was restored.

I thought I would use my phone to connect to the web but that wouldn't work, which led me to think it was a major problem with the provider (possibly like the cyberattack on the library last fall).  I realize now that I should have turned off wifi on my phone since that was working and it would continue to try and connect that way as long as it found my wifi signal.   I tried calling both ways from my house to/from my cell phone and that wasn't working.  So I concluded - major problem.

That's when I started going in to distress mode - something that I have found happens so easily as I get older - I just don't have the confidence that I can deal with things the way I did when I was younger.   Now I can understand and sympathize with my parents who seemed to get dithery as they aged - I'm doing the same thing.

Most of my tv access was down - except for the few channels I can pick up with my box antenna, which reminded me to be glad of the DVDs I still own.   I thought of ebooks and looked at my readers and became aware of the number of books I own but hadn't actually downloaded - again a reminder to be grateful for the physical books I still own.

This afternoon I am going to a birthday function out in the west end of the city. I had decided to splurge and take an Uber rather than transit but got panicky when I thought that my cell wasn't working so how was I going to connect with Uber?  I could take transit but I wasn't sure exactly where the house was and didn't know what subway stop to use or bus to take and I didn't have internet access to maps, and I no longer own a paper map of the city.

I decided there was no point going on fussing and went to bed.  But things were on my mind and I woke up this morning with stomach pain ( not unusual when I'm stressed) and took antacids and then an acid blocker - that helped somewhat but I'm still feeling off.

I got up, checked the modem which still showed a red light. I checked my phone and had that moment when I thought to turn off the wifi and was able to connect to the net.  And see that there were no reports of a major outage.  I went to my provider's site and found their auto fix function - that led me through rebooting my modem and then unplugging it (something which really should have occurred to me last night!). Finally my internet was back!  

A lot of fuss and stress but it really shows me just how much I depend on the internet to live my life day to day.  I've written before about my thoughts of moving to an independent living seniors building and this is the sort of happening that makes me feel that that is a good idea.  I live alone, I've never been really good at coping with things, and perhaps it is time to make that move before I get to be even more of a ditherer who can't cope on his own.