Random Thoughts

This is 59. Birthday photo 2025 - National Arboretum in the rain It is a strange age. It’s older than my sister Annette ever got to experience. It is on the verge of “old”.   Or wait, is it old?   Is it just that what “old” is keeps getting pushed back further and further, so actually we hit it a long time ago? I don’t feel “old”. But, as always for a decade or so, I feel “resolute”.   I feel “accepting”.   I feel realistic . I know my time on earth is limited, and I know I have used up over half of it. Some of it I wasted – watching movies but not really paying attention, sleeping, dusting (though to be honest I have not wasted much time on that one, one look at our house will tell you that). Some of it I relished - skiing down mountains, splashing in waterfalls and ocean waves, looking out at cornfields, clouds, and forests from high in the sky. Some of it I suffered – watching loved ones die, witnessing friendships fading away,...

So, this is 53. Birthday SUP - first time out on the paddleboards this year I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions – but if I DID believe in making promises to yourself that you wanted to keep for a whole year – I would do them on my BIRTHDAY instead of New Year’s.   A birthday is something personal.   It is YOUR day.   It is a clean slate.   A new beginning.   Starting fresh. It's nearly impossible to use a camera timer and get two people in one SUPing photo...  That didn't stop up from trying! But instead of resolutions about what I will do going forward, I think it would be wise to take a look backward and see what 52 (and the years before that) may have taught me. I have been open and honest – 2018 SUCKED.   It was a very hard year for my entire family.   It started with David breaking his collar bone, which turned out to be the very least of our worries and poor David in his arm sling was tossed to the bottom of the ...

I was in my bathing suit yesterday, doing my annual Spring/Summer cleaning of our wrap-around porch.  Being in my bathing suit while in DC brings ONE THING to mind – SLIP ‘N’ SLIDE!!!  I got a Slip ‘n’ Slide a few years ago for my birthday, and even though I have only used it a couple of times I really like it.  Both times we set it up, some neighbor kids came over to slide with us. Well, yesterday when I thought of the Slip ‘n’ Slide, I wondered, “Will the little neighbor girl think she is too old this year to play on it?”.  And that got me starting to think about the concept of AGE APPROPRIATENESS.  I realized that I never went though the stage of feeling “too old” for anything.  Here I am just a few weeks shy of age 48 and I can’t think of a darn thing that I am “too old” to play with or do.  Not only that, I don’t need to have a kid by my side to grant me access to anything, either!          Bouncy house? ...