For six years my mother suffered from Alzheimer’s and needed full-time care. She received this care in a loving adult family home, and I could enjoy her during the time we had together. I am the lucky daughter, the one who could enjoy her mother fully without frustration, anger or exhaustion. But what about those who do the caregiving? Who takes care of them?
If you’re like most people, now that January is coming to an end, so is your commitment to your New Year’s resolution. I’m referring to the one to lose weight.
In Alfred Hitchcock’s tale, a few seagulls dropped by a neighborhood in Bodega Bay, Calif., for no apparent reason and then lured sparrows and crows to join them in attacking the residents. My story is less suspenseful.
Do blondes really have more fun?
In my youth I thought the ukulele, as well as the songs played on it, were among the purest examples of what my peers and I called “lame.” (Funny how the word has resurfaced in recent years and seems to mean the same thing.) Only the accordion came in higher on our list of instruments to avoid.
How much can we learn about the culture of a country when we spend one night here, two nights there, passing through many towns and cities in the space of two weeks? That’s the question I’ve asked myself since we returned home from a Rick Steves’ tour of Spain and northern Morocco.
We’re home from two and a half weeks on a Rick Steves’ “Europe Through The Back Door” tour. During that time, we covered a lot of territory in Spain and northern Morocco, places I’m still a little fuzzy on.
My cup, or rather, my Tupperware container, runneth over with tomatoes, bite-sized beauties that sing with summer sweetness. Even the big slicers, so heavy they bring the branches to their knees, are at least recognizable as tomato-flavored, although they can’t compete with their dainty counterparts for sugar. Best of all, I can pick all sizes daily from the overflowing plastic pots in my backyard.
You can see the shapes of Paul Klee and Piet Mondrian and the colors of Franz Marc in the Bellevue Arts Museum’s African American Quilt Show, “Bold Expressions.” The quilts on the museum walls are predominately from the American South and many are from the 1940s, though there is at least one example created between 1910 and 1920 and one completed in the ’70s.
Why learn more about history, especially local history? I’ve been hounding Jane Morton, education coordinator for the Eastside Heritage Center, for an answer to this question for the last few weeks. And now I think I have one.
Clutter is a killer. Do an online search for “house clutter stress” and you’ll find more information than you ever want to know about the negative effects of living in clutter, starting with the anxiety that comes from wasting time looking for things.
I’m still laughing at friends’ reactions to a piece I wrote reciting all the things I planned to accomplish this summer. I tallied the time required to complete the items on the list and realized that one summer will not be long enough to get through the stacks of books piled around the house, much less those on reserve at the library. I’ll need to write about 150 pages more to finish the first draft of my novel. And those are just the first two categories of things to do.
A few weeks ago my husband and I attended a seminar to learn how to pack a suitcase. We did this because we’ve committed to a Rick Steves’ tour and the literature we receive from the Steves’ organization never fails to remind us that we must carry our own luggage.
“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” Good advice from the song I sang as a Girl Scout, which came to mind recently when I met other retired Bellevue School District administrators for a tour of the newly remodeled Bellevue High School (BHS).
Snowfalls, like the one we had recently, provide the rare experience of a quiet world.
December is the best month to practice lowering expectations, because this is the time we all hope to get our way, whether it is receiving a particular gift, having all the relatives get along without a squabble, or merely surviving the shopping/baking/traveling experience without feeling drained and stressed.
“NaNoWriMo” is taking over my life. I’m trying to write a 50,000-word (or longer) novel between Nov. 1 and Nov. 30.
I can walk four miles without losing a beat. Five miles and I need a stretcher. But I hope this will change as a result of a class I’m taking at the Bellevue and Newcastle YUMCAs. It’s called Feldenkrais, named after an Israeli physicist turned movement improvement pioneer.
My former job took over my life, which is why I’m intrigued by people who lead double lives, not as secret agents but as regular day workers who turn into artists after hours.
My friend Maria Valdesuso, long-time Clyde Hill resident, does not consider Peter Pan a children’s tale. On Aug. 29 she marked the 50th anniversary of her arrival in Miami, one child among the 14,000 airlifted from Cuba between 1960 and 1962, many to become orphans here, when right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista lost his job to revolutionary left-wing dictator Fidel Castro.
