THE Line

 Everyone has a line. It's the invisible one that no one should cross. But it's hard for some people to determine it. My line is privacy, and I am fiercely protective about it. If someone crosses it foolishly and I say that because most people tell me, as soon as they look at me, they know it. I am not about to inflict punishment when someone crosses it. Everyone deserves a bit of a chance, but I will likely and hopefully, disappear forever from their sight. And they from mine. There are many people who don't have a solid line, but one that you may step over accidentally, and soon realize you have, and then you may step back and everyone is okay again. Not my line, but maybe yours. Others have a line that wavers or comes and goes or isn't there at all. The latter are what we might call "door mats". They are often bullied and turned into service beings who do whatever the stronger person wants of them. This is difficult for me to comprehend. Recently, someone stepped over my line, and that hasn't happened in a very long time. When I say no, that is exactly what I mean, and no amount of cajoling is going to change it. Well, unless pure logic or deep emotion or a great alibi from the stepper, changes things. In this case, the stepper was pre-warned with one no, but persisted and finally demanded. Not a good idea. Again, I have to say, no violence or harsh words ensued because I try to have better manners than to resort to that kind of nonsense. The individual who trod badly, possibly had an ego equal to mine in some ways, and simply forgot that not everyone sports large ones that are as delicate as ours. Probably as you, I reside behind somewhat of a mask that could be called good manners or perhaps bad ones, but there it is. Most people aren't going to turn themselves inside out at the drop of an order such as the one I received and thus become a wimp. The offender not only continued the demand, but added a thinly veiled insult to the mix. Well, that's stepping waaay over the line. A series of emails flew back and forth but none of them carried weight. The deed was done. The upshot of this tale is that the line stepper is banished from my list of people I want to see again in my presence, not that it won't happen accidentally. If and when this might occur, there will be no sour looks or cold silences, but there will be politeness and tersity, if such a word exists, and the little red line tells me it doesn't, but I like it, therefore it will remain. One can retaliate most efficiently with tersity and tact supported by very short appearances that will be terminated quickly. The lovely phrase "excuse me" may be employed effectively if called for. There is no need to say why one wants to be excused, and certainly that would be ridiculous since the stepper doesn't credit one, history tells. The over-stepper may go public with their side of the issue, but the best advice is to ignore, ignore, ignore. In fact, there is a convenient other phrase that goes, "just step over it". But never let that be THE Line. 

Chic Canery

 No, it's not a misspelling.  A cane is generally not considered, in this day, chic. There was a time when a walking stick was not a necessity, but a fashion statement and both ladies and gentlemen, sported them. These times, indicate a rather unhealthy climate of attempting to remain youthful forever. But when you reach the venerable state, that ambition is out of the question. The one I see in the mirror is well past any human ability to gussy it up to anything near "youth". When people say you-don't-look-a-day-over-sixty and you take it as an extreme compliment, it's proven. The best one can do at this stage, the one I presently own, is to dab on a bit of make-up, shower regularly and submit to the ravages of aging with grace, but not too much. The "ravages" include such experiences as arthritis, especially if, in your younger days, you used whatever joint it's in, far too enthusiastically. My joint happens to be my right knee. Kneeling is not possible, walking and bending are seriously to be considered, and running is but a dream. A secret cane is helpful, but not in public, we think.  There comes a time, when you can no longer hide the cane that you use around the house only. One must see the dentist or go to a restaurant or a store when the item is not found on line with delivery. Something has to be done! Your friends delight in showing you their knee surgery scars, be they linear or little pimply things they say are laparoscopic and it-didn't-hurt-for-long. "You really must get your knee 'done' dear," they say, "I did".  To emphasize their point, they give themselves a little hop, not far off the floor, but close. When you press them, they do admit to wearing a brace on their knee if they are going for a nice, long walk. They also don't reveal the pain pills they are sure to take before going on the nice long walk. Taking the advice of other surgeried, elders in my midst, I called my favorite doctor who is available for the most part, on the telephone. He offered me a buffet of choices for "bad knees". I opted for the ointment as a first choice, being that going to a hospital where viruses are rampant, was not a safe destination. And seeing a specialist in the osteo field is perhaps a year or two away at best and frankly, I am not sure if I can afford the time. The informative pharmacist called me about the ointment I could slather on,  and I learned that using it would give me perhaps a half hour relief from pain. Factoring it all out, timewise, I surmised that the ointment solution, would get me halfway into the mall but not back out to my car with any degree of comfort. Scrub that fix. My bamboo dragon carved cane, that is older than I am, and needs a  new tip, begins to take on appeal. A new tip costs pennies and a tiny blue pill will give me twelve free of pain hours, according to its label.  I deem to wait until I can get a shot in the knee of some kind of goo as a second step choice solution. And really, the cane is rather attractive. I shall wear it with pride, and keep in mind from now on, that with retro fashions abounding, its use might even come back in style.

Nailing It

 I wasn't the sister with the long fingers and perfect nails. She had the long legs, arms and slimness. I got the other side of the family, the one with the chunky body no matter what, and the short fingers with nails that defied growing to any length. The upside was, that though she had the romantic long, slender digits, I played classical piano. Not that visiting relatives wanted to listen to my efforts. After a polite suffering, they preferred Sister's key chording singalongs, while I, the Beethoven fan, sulked in the background. But that's sibling rivalry for  you. Back to nails. These days of "keeping up appearances" ( one of my favourite Brit Box comedies) with false anything you can afford, I finally hied off to the local nail spa. The cost is up there in the clouds, but hey, a lifetime of stubby hands, I was at last going to play Bridge without trying to hide my fingers at the same time. I wanted those nail babies out there in plain sight while I sipped from stemware or held a hefty thirteen cards on Bridge night. I wanted to flaunt those nails in all of their glory even though it cost me each time, more than a nice dinner out. When I emerged from the salon the first session, after one full hour of things that hurt slightly, smelled ghastly but had very friendly people from exotic countries who didn't understand a word I said, but smiled constantly. I had Hollywood fingernails. I could barely drive home safely, for staring at these beautiful glossy fingertips. At my next Bridge game, I bid fearlessly and passed jokingly, hands aflutter, and lost courageously, and all due to my new nails. They were so strong that I could do all kinds of kitchen counter maneuvers previously unheard of. What defied me was picking up a dime from the floor. Well, who uses dimes any more anyway? Since Covid, I decided that the nail salon, though I missed my dear "lady", was out of bounds for awhile. My gorgeously red long nails were growing out, and beginning to look freakish. Masking up, I did go to the salon when things settled down a bit. I had to, because my fingers began looking alien. The up side of not going to have my nails done, was that I saved the pile of money I had to spend on their renewal every three weeks.  But when Covid returned with a vengeance, I let the fake nails grow out and bought press-on nails. Wow, I thought, this is the way to go! For a fraction of the price of professional nails, I had these fancy ones. I followed all the directions and stuck them on and they looked terrific. The first day, three of them dropped off and others soon followed as time and regluing occurred. Some of the the missing bits of acrylic are worthy of a poster because I lost them and don't know where they are. A salad, the chili, down the drain, in the washer? Yesterday, I found a thumb nail at three in the morning in my bed. I am back to my short, short nails but I paint them a stunning sparkling pearly shade. I don't glow, I shine. If nothing else, now with them, I can see in the dark.  

caps off

 i have a little finger that plays tricks on me and one of them is the shift key that it often mistakes for the caps lock key - then i am in trouble - for this, and this only blog, i fully intend to use no capitals - i will go with punctuation bits, however, because, really, one cannot do without them - for some odd reason, whomever planned how the english language should be presented, seems to have complicated it unreasonably - i see little about capital letters in most cases, that make them necessary for understanding - someone told me that capitalizing certain words meant that you respected the named individual, time, place or structure and while that makes sense, especially with the word, God - you don't mess around with that word because there are so many names for God in every single religion, even those who say they don't believe in it when not believing is believing - and who wants to mess around with God - not i or is it me - so far this is going very well and my little finger is sulking down there in the left hand corner of my world - back to the subject, language, well, the english language - i am desperately trying to avoid the red underlining and blue grammatical suggestions that colour my page at this time - writing these days is practiced by many fools who can't spell, know very little about usage or writing novels, and usually always publish their own books - let's face it, they have to because they are so bad no one would deign to spend a loon on them -  the word books, i use lightly because there are far too many on line "authors" who dream of being that horror writer we all know that doesn't live like a hollywood star but could  which i respect - i came across a so-called book today on-line, with a cover title very small, but the author's name blazing over fifty percent of it with a bastardized spelling of two of the most famous authors in the fiction field - now who does he think he's kidding - right! - himself, period - no sale - but back to language and why it should change or ought to - the matter of the reader's responsibility for example - we have to learn how to contextualize more - if we gave up capital letters that don't make sense, perhaps readers would pick up their responsibility as it should be - only lazy readers need to be directed to understand what they are eyeing by plopping in capitals - who doesn't get it that new york isn't pudding? or the big apple isn't new york? - in fact, if we stopped making a capital i for ourselves it would not only save our little fingers, but also keep us awake and to me, a small i is cuter than a capital one anyway - another pleasant off-shoot of losing capitals is that we might have to stretch our minds a bit more if, rarely, it was necessary to fathom our brains beyond capital letters or for authors to explain when a capital or not, might cause minor confusion as to meaning - most of us "get it" as they say - i am an avid crossword puzzle fan and am overjoyed when i get it all right - i want to shout it to the moon and never think that i am doing it all in capitals - oopsy. 

Making Up Time

 We LOLs, little old ladies for those who are unfamiliar with the term, are NDY or not dead yet. Sometimes we feel that way, but if we were, we wouldn't care anyway, but here we are alive. I neglected to say the "and well" part, because some of us are not at all completely well. We all have our little niggling physical matter that is not for public knowledge. Sometimes it's big and sometimes, small, but it's there and we know it. It can be called "my bad" something, usually a hip or a knee or fingers or toes etcetera, but we live with it. We've learned that taking pills or surgery don't always turn out well, so most of us suffer silently or have a glass of wine. The queen I understand likes a gin and tonic. When we complain to our off-springs, they tell us to get out more, exercise, join the senior's center or "I have my own problems to deal with". I happen to have the world's best son and our conversations are usually concerning world matters that neither of us can solve, but we give it a go anyway, and meet over dinner once a week and during the meal, there isn't a lot of talk due to chicken cacciatore or chili pot or steak and onions. Our kids, and we still call them "the kids", have a life of their own and hopefully a babysitter, not us. After the age of eighty, when you are a LOL, you give up on a boyfriend or any remote hopes of marrying someone because you know that means you would be back into doing laundry, making meals and listening to someone snore all night. The world at large, thinks you are a burden, a joke and invisible so here you are up in the morning looking at someone in the mirror who is you, that stranger with the white hair and droopy body. You. Telling yourself it's okay because everyone grows old, doesn't work too well. Out comes the soap and water and shower time is the day's big event. After the tedious wiping down of the shower glass, you emerge and open the make-up drawer but only after turning on the transistor radio, yes that thing that few know exist still, but that you found in a second hand shop. The daily news begins and it's not nice. There is the weekend announcer woman and her smarm but it's welcome only because the alternative weekday radio "host" has nothing but bad news and furthermore he is hoping to be awarded some kind of diploma as the keenest news investigator of the year. No fun for listeners there. The fifteen minute stretch routine happens to oofs and oohs. Next the body lotion. On goes the make-up and hopefully no LOL forgets this step. The eyebrows need picking up, a dash of colour on the cheeks works and don't forget the lip liner because otherwise you wouldn't have a mouth at all. Then it's hair time. Mine is long and the only thing about it is when  you tie it back, eschewing a bun, making the stray bits look deliberate. Scent is no longer permitted says the little elephant, so on goes a pat of that wonderful English rose dusting powder that smells heavenly for five minutes. All dressed and made up going nowhere, your day begins. Coffee, computer, crossword, jigsaw and journal and you're off. Well, not too far off.  

Lillian, A Start Up

 Lillian began life before her name as most of us do. She isn't human wholly, but in part, she could be. Some of my bacteria could be part of her. That's what starter is all about, not yeast as such. Lillian is sour dough starter and if you think starter is a mild little urbie term, it's not. The urban fadists: the kale, cauliflower, designer coffee, gym, bike crowd? Yes, that group. Even though I am ancient by age designation, I try to keep up. I went on line to research the making of sour dough bread because the idea intrigued me and like you, I am stuck at home these days. I make all of my own breads and being arthritically challenged, I use a bread maker as my mixing slave. All of the bits about  the making of sour dough bread which is my choice at a restaurant, sounded relatively simple given patience and time, which we retirees have lots of. I dived in. Dived is not an inept term as it turns out. Diving into the dough is a fact. First, you get your starter going. Dump a little flour into something clean and add water and go away and bacteria says, aha, a place to grow. And it does. Some people name their starters and when I saw mine bubbling and growing before my very eyes, I knew it was alive. Alive! What gives it life, could be you or any other bacteria lying around that gets into the flour and water and takes on a life of its own. As it bubbles away quietly in the corner for days, you feed it. That's right, you feed it. Take a bit out and toss it, then add more flour and water and off it goes again with the bubbling and growing. Lillian named herself. I am not sure if it was because I had a pale, whining little friend once when I was four, but it did look a bit like that Lillian. She had white blonde hair and whiter skin. The instructions I penned from the on-line cook, seemed rather useless because Lillian knew what she was doing. Our relationship lasted for a number of days as recommended by the sour bread folk, but today was the end. I needed the counter space and Lillian was now the size of her large glass bowl. She was glossy and when you touched her, she clung like a big white slug. Sort of like the real Lillian who was a hugger, too. Ugh. I wanted to give my Lillian a chance at life, and my bread maker had a "artisan bread" cycle. In I poured her. She pours like hot toffee before it's pulled.  Now we are ticking, I thought, when the bread maker boldly whapped Lillian about, or tried to, Lillian decided to take revenge. She grew up the sides and over. The machine tried desperately to get her under control, but she balked. Besides, there was smoke pouring out of the bread mixer due to bits of Lillian burning on the element. I swear she looked smug lying there all sticky, as I removed her and poured her into a baking dish. Now Lillian is sulking, but triumphant sitting in my oven with, I am sure her arms crossed, defying even the baking process. I didn't  bother with the cute little razor slashes they do, but I know why they do it. So does Lillian. 

Chug A Chug A

 Chug A Chug A is what I hear, not just on Monday Washday but on any day at any time. Living in a condo means being with and knowing all about the other people. You live with their noise. I have probably the best sorts of folks above me and I almost never hear them now that the little pony grand kids have grown beyond the trot across the floor hours at a time phase.  I complained only once early on, and regretted it from then on. What I learned to do to tolerate the little hoofs on high, was to play jazz which is not only comforting but drowns out the clippety clop upstairs. I live in a very old, wonderful building that has hardwood flooring with hot water heating pipes in them. Cement buildings were not yet invented. For some reason, the pipes don't play along with the thump thump. Too bad, because that might be a great riff.  My current noise situation has nothing to do with little grandchildren but only in perhaps an abstract way. Their laundry. It is the washing machine that the upper woman uses, that is my present topic. I am sure that it is the same one that my mother had in the fifties. Mom couldn't stand the noise either, therefore, she had my father take it down to the basement and there she instructed me how to use it. My mother made sure that I knew how to do housework among other essential tasks so that she could depart to tea with her friends. She told us that every girl needed to know about these matters because one day she would move out with her Hope Chest full of pretty china and linens, and get married. At five years old we made beds and set tables. Properly. Being a teen in those days, meant that you did what your mother told you to do eschewing running around at game schedules, lessons, school and play dates. No one had TV and phones were only one to a house. Money was scarce. Twenty-five cents allowance got you a Saturday movie and a sack of popcorn. No other parental money was forthcoming. You had to work at a paper route or babysit if you needed more. School supplies were free then. You got maybe a new pair of shoes and clothes once year and labels didn't count. You felt very lucky to have all these luxuries. For fun, you joined the  library and played street baseball and tennis if you could afford a racket. That was average, not poor. Few were rich where I lived.  Back to the washing machine. Our washing machine was like most others with a wringer attached to the top. These were things that instilled horror in young minds. We heard tales of women getting their hair ripped off when it was caught in the wringer. Move aside S. King. After the clothes were beaten to death by the metal chugging churner and the soapy water was drained via an old hose that led out to the garden, you filled the machine up with cold water to rinse everything. When it drained, you plucked out the sopping wet items and fed them into the wringer that ran constantly. The items went in one side and were squashed to a flat mass of wrinkles on the way out. After all, we had irons in those days because perma press wasn't alive. When I hear the chug a chug a upstairs now, I want to run up and see if it isn't my mother's old one. If it were, I'd give it a hug, but only if  my hair was in a pony tail and the wringer wasn't on. 

Goals Be Not

 Being human has its downside. We creatures of earth became what we are, good or bad, in the setting up of goals for ourselves. Everything around us tells us it is true. We are inflicted with making things better for ourselves including "and others". We want to fix it all so that we can be better-off whatever that means. January is traditionally, the time for setting goals to improve in some way what was, to what we idealize. It can work both ways. Some say, this year I am NOT setting goals. I heard a woman who is a foodathon  (her term) who decided that this is the time for her to STOP making food the number one important issue in her life. She decided that she is no longer going to deny herself what she had made iconic by not eating it. Dieting is not her idol. She is going to eat meals with everything in them that is not only healthy but of her choice, ones she truly enjoys. There will no longer be rules. She's going to have a breakfast in the morning and at lunch time she is going to have not just a dab of green leaves,  but a wholesome full one and at dinner she is planning to prepare a regular meal. She intends to give up worshipping diets because none, none of them work. If they did, they'd disappear forever. Food is no longer her nunnery. Food is something she will glorify and partake of. What she will do is stop giving meals restrictive attention. She will eat what she likes. She will have the potatoes, pasta, bread and any other carbohydrate that is a natural part of a natural meal along with the rest. She has banished from her life the word diet, and she does not appreciate having to listen to other people addicted to dieting, going on and on about what they do not eat and why. If it happens, she will rise and leave. She is not a diet addict. Not any more. I loved this story because I, too, am tired of hearing this topic when there are so many more important issues that are  worthy of conversation. This woman threw away her scale. She doesn't worry about how many steps she takes or kilometers she runs or walks. She walks because she pays attention to where she is, not how far she has gone. She buys clothes from the racks that fit. She no longer shames herself  about size. She has freed herself from the stress of  diet denial. I love this story because it makes innate sense. What we worry about NOT doing is what we are obsessed with wanting to do. We want the "bad boy" because it's more exciting. There's no more need for binging when you've already had what you used to binge on. You've taken away the bars you set up for yourself, and you've freed yourself from those unrealistic goals you set for yourself. There's no need to Tweet or Tube or any other cute term because your new self doesn't need "their" approval little heart or check-mark. You're done with that, too. You matter. Your freedom from goals approach, has eliminated what was really your failing. You already know what's best and most healthy for unique you. So live the life you love. The happy you of you is your goal and it doesn't include steps or sizes or calories or pounds or, or, or.