Wordle

 So what am I doing up writing this entry at 3:30 a.m.?

My night started like it usually does -- went to sleep at 11 and woke up at  1.  Posted my 1SE videos and then went to do Wordle.  I got the second letter in the right place and one other letter that would be somewhere else and most of the letters unusable.  I absolutely could not find the answer and couldn't get back to sleep without finding the answer.  Whenever I put the phone down and decided to go to sleep, all I could think of were words to use.  I came in to use the desktop because it was easier to make guesses and when I finally got the word right (which was a very simple word) on the fourth try, I was wide awake, so decided that while I'm here at m desk I might as well write my journal entry.  Wordle is going to kill me!

We went to the bank this morning.  This is the third time I've been downtown in the last two weeks.  It's almost like being normal again.  We were going to have Ned's signature put on my Golden One account (we had his signature on our B of A account last week).  I was hoping to make a videotape of blossoms, but it's about a week before blossoms will be everywhere in Davis (another excuse to go outside).

After lunch, Marta cut my hair while I watched The Muppet Show.  Ned said I should look better for my birthday lunch on Saturday.

She does a great job and I'm happy with the results.

Best part of the day was finding out that my good friend, who has lived in Arizona for  the past several years, whose husband died recently and who moved back to California will be able to join us for lunch. I haven't seen her in about 3 years and am looking forward to her being with us.  There should be about a dozen people taking up a table at Fenton's.  It will be a nice celebration.

Ned has also arranged for us to have dinner with our Mexican daughter at her restaurant on Monday, which will be great.  I haven't seen her in 3 years or so too.

Now it's approaching 4 and I think I'll try to get back to sleep.

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Memories of an old lady

Yesterday was Valentine's day.  the Today Show had a whole morning of men proposing to women.  While it was beautiful, and emotional, the interesting about it was that all of the couples had lived together for several years before the proposal.  Some had children together.  I was thinking back to the days when you hid the fact that you were living with someone without marriage. It was strange when my mother left my father to live with the man she would eventually marry.  You just didn't do that in those days.  I saw a report that the youngest women marry these days is 25.  I was 22.

But lots of things are different now.  Some good, some not so good.  I still remember vividly the first mixed race couple I saw.  It was outside my high school and I was just shocked to see them being so affectionate with each other.  Now, good grief, it almost seems strange to see two people of the same race together.  Commercials that show families almost always have one African American married to one Caucasian and sometimes one of their children is Asian.

I remember the first time I saw a woman doing the news on  TV.  News reporters were exclusively men, Now it's not unusual to find both reporters on the TV news as women.

It's interesting to watch shows, like Jeopardy, where the contestant introduces himself and says that he lives with his husband.  Nobody flinches.  I remember when men were arrested just for being in a gay bar, without any interaction with anybody else happening.  And now gay couples are often having children.

A woman in Texas was recently handcuffed and jailed because she let her 8 year old son walk the half mile home from school alone.  In Florida, a mother was arrested for letting her child go to the park, less than half a mile from their house, alone.  She faced up to five years in prison.

My goodness, if these are crimes I should be in jail.  For  that matter, so should my parents, who let me walk the mile to grammar school and to the local playground by myself.  When Jeri was in 1st grade, we put her on a city bus to take her to her school.  Our kids here in Davis always walked or rode their bikes to school.  Now it seems that it's not only encouraged, but required that parents not allow their children to travel anywhere alone.

In most cases, we have improved but in other we have not.  I'm old enough to remember what it was like 70 years ago.  I wonder what my grandchildren will remember when they turn 80.

* * * * *

It was Valentine's day, so we had heart shaped pizza for dinner.

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Where do the hours go?

 It seems like the day just flew by today.  Ironically, last night I had trouble sleeping and I'd check my cell phone to see how long I'd slept and it would be 15 minutes after I checked it before.  In contrast, whenever I checked the time, thinking it was about 30 minutes after I checked the time, it was an hour and a half.

Nothing spectacular got done, but I just had several little projects I was working on. 

In the middle of the day, my new printer was delivered!

I was napping when Ned got it unpacked and then got it  set up, so I'm back to printing again, which I'm very happy about!  I was able to get the letter I always answer the same day it arrives written and printed.   The nice thing about having the same printer Ned does is he is able to explain things for me...like how to scan using this printer!

In the afternoon, Walt went to the store and came home with roses for Valentine's day.

Ned is planning heart-shaped pizza for dinner tonight, so we just had a big salad for dinner and then called it a night.  Looking back over the day, it seemed that nothing got finished and that I have a bunch of things to do today.

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8195

Arts and Crafts

I have been on an "arts" program the past few days.  I am not in the least artistic, but I have several projects that I'm working on. 

I'm working on a new magpie journal, where I just put "junk" on every age, for 30 pages.  My books are never as clever as the ones that I get from others (with a few exceptions), but I have such fun making them.

I had fun making this VanGogh page for the last journal I did and decided to make another one this time.  I have a small booklet of VanGogh stickers and so this is easy to do and looks fun when it's finished.

But I'm also working on my 1SE (1 Second Every day) project, of one snippet of 1-2 second video (or a photo) every day for 2023.  I also started a second video of one thing I watch on TV every day and a third on what we have for dinner each night (t he last one is just for me, not for publication...I don't think)

I've been looking at YouTube videos of 1SE projects and some of them are very professional and/or have fun themes for their daily snippets (one was of feet walking through various streets, with concrete, leaves, grass, etc.) but it's nice to see that so many people are making the same kind of videos that I am.

You upload one snippet each day (for me it's 3, since I have 3 projects I'm working on) and they open up the new day at midnight. Lately I've been going to sleep around 10, which means I wake up between midnight and 12:30 so I post my videos at that time, and then do the daily Wordle.  Then I try to go back to sleep!

I've been creating new photo albums for myself on Facebook.  I was looking for a specific picture of Bubba which was taken in the first weeks we got him, so I ended up starting a "Bubba photos" album and spent a good deal of the morning going through my cell phone to download pretty much every good picture of Bubba to the new album.  It helps having them all in one place when I go to write to one of the Compassion kids and want to add a photo.

With all these artistic projects floating around in my mind I've been letting letter writing slide for a few days.  Partly because I don't have a printer yet, but if Amazon is to be believed, it will be delivered and then I'll be back in business again.  I have several letters that have arrived which have been put in my "to be answered" stack and I'm starting to feel guilty about that.  Some of the letters are from people who rarely write and so I don't feel I know them well, but a few are from my "regulars" and those are the ones I will get to when the printer is set up.

(Ned has been printing letters for me, but I'll be happy to have my own printer again.)

I've been so busy on all of these extra things that I almost forgot to do Sunday Stealing! And I completely forgot to do Saturday 9!

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Sunday Stealing

I almost forgot to do Sunday Stealing this week! 

7 Layer Meme

 

LAYER 1: Tell us your...

* Eye color - Hazel: 

* Hair color: - Brown and Grey

* Height: - 2 inches shorter than I was 10 years ago!

* Righty or lefty:  Lefty

LAYER 2: What's...

* Your heritage:  Irish and Scottish, with apparently some German

* The shoes you wore today:  Slippers

* Your weakness:  Right now it's walking (i.e., balance)

* Your fears: being helpless

* Your perfect pizza: sausage and mushroom

* Goals you’d like to achieve:  Getting through life without Alzheimer's!

* Your first waking thoughts:  how many hours did I sleep?

* Your best physical feature:  It used to be my hair, but I don't think I have a good physical feature any more

* Your most missed memory: Conversations with my mother before Alzheimers took her.

LAYER 3: Do you...

* Smoke: No

* Cuss: Yes

* Sing: No.  My voice left me several years ago.

* Do you think you’ve been in love:  Yes

* Did you go to college: For a year

* Liked high school:  Loved it

* Believe in yourself:  Not really

* Think you’re attractive:  Definitely not

* Think you’re a health freak:  Nope

* Like thunderstorms:  Love them

* Play an instrument:  Kazoo?

LAYER 4: In the past month have you…

* Drunk alcohol:  No

* Smoked:  No

* Done a drug:  Only the ones the doctor has prescribed

* Made out: No

* Gone on a date: No

* Gone to the mall: No

* Eaten an entire box of Oreos: No

* Eaten sushi: Yes!

* Been on stage: No

* Been dumped:  No

* Gone skating: No

* Gone skinny dipping: No

LAYER 5: Have you ever…

* Played a game that required removal of clothing:  No

* Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: Yes

* Been caught “doing something”: Probably not

* Been called a tease: No

* Gotten beaten up: No

LAYER 6:

* Age you did get/hope to be married:  I was 22

* How do you want to die:  In my sleep

* What did you want to be when you grew up:  Many things, but when I was young, a nurse. When I got older, a secretary and a writer

* What country would you most like to visit:  Any African country where I can see wild animals.

LAYER 7: Now tell...

* Name a person you could trust with your life:  Ned (Like me, Walt is getting  too old to depend on for my life)

* Name a favorite CD that you own:  Emergency Third Rail Power Trip

* Number of piercings: One in each ear

* Number of tattoos:  None

* Number of times my name has appeared in the newspaper:  Many, many times.   I wrote several columns for the newspaper, was their theater critic and before I worked for the paper, I was publicity person for many organizations, so was in the paper for many activities. (It's easy to get in the newspaper when you live in a small town)

* Name a past experience that you regret:  Burying our children 

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8193

Ha Ha Ha

 Wile looking at Amazon for something I saw this book, "Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: and all the Brilliant Minds who Made the Mary Tyler Moore Show a classic" by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

I checked out the snippet that Amazon shows you and it sounded like a fun book, so I went onto Roku to see if somebody was showing the old MTM show, and sure enough, Hulu is.  So I got the book and started reading it, watching bits and pieces of the show as the book mentions it.

What a fun experience!  I was a fan of the show when it was on and finding out the problems it took to get it on the air and how nobody expected it to go beyond 13 episodes, much less 7 seasons...and how many Emmys it won for how many people was an eye-opener.

This series was to bring Mary Tyler Moore back into the spotlight since her career kind of plummeted after the end of the Dick Van Dyke Show.  

I'd forgotten that Cloris Leachman was part of the Mary Tyler Moore cast and I've been mentally singing the song by that name that Lawsuit performed ever since seeing her.

I was always sorry that Ned never watched The Big Bang Theory because the writing is so clever and the plots so good and it seemed to me that it was the thing that he would definitely enjoy, but he says he has stopped watching shows with a laugh track.  I'm so accustomed to laugh tracks that I never thought about it, but once he said that I find that the laugh track on The Big Bang Theory now bothers me, and the laugh track on The Mary Tyle Moore show seems even more annoying.  But I am enjoying those old shows. Probably won't binge watch, though.  I am binge watching Scandal and loving that.  Another show that was one of my favorites, and they have just started a Scandal podcast, which sounds like it's going to be fun.

I'm really getting into podcasts these days and discover they are great to listen to when I can't get to sleep, though I almost always wake up having slept through half of the podcast I wanted to listen to and into the next podcast.  Ally Wentworth may be my favorite.  Her voice is pleasant and she interviews interesting people  I've never heard of before.  I have found all of her interviews interesting, and am sorry that I fell asleep through so many of them!

I don't fall asleep through Says You.  They are putting a show a week up on their podcast and it's so much fun to hear all of the original panelists, including the ones who have since died, again.  
we listened to Says You on the radio for many years and saw several broadcasts in San Francisco and the Los Angeles area.  After Richard Sher (moderator) died, it just wasn't the same and I stopped listening.  They ended the show after 29 years, with Richard's son s the moderator (I remember the shows when he was born!).  We actually attended the final show, not realizing that it was the final show.  But it's like going back in  time listening to the show every week.

I also love listening to Jon Stewart's new show, which is updated on Thursdays.  He also has a video on Apple+ but that isn't posted as often.  I missed The Daily Show and now listening to The Problem is like going back in time, but with new material (and curse words not bleeped!)

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8192

Plastic Surgery!

 I had to laugh.  In reading through the 2021 entry, it sounds like I was writing the same entry...a paragraph all about my sleeping!  I sincerely hope I'm not going to make that a major topic from here on out!   That picture of Polly in the car sure looks like Bubba, doesn't it??

So.  Off and running....

Ned has been trying to get me  to watch Top Gun: Maverick for a long time and we finally did.  My word!  Not my kind of movie, but definitely one I could not turn off.  Very loud, very vicious, but totally engrossing.  Has Tom Cruise had plastic surgery?  I just could not find him in that face.  Though, my ability to recognize people has also become difficult, so maybe it was just me.

(Now, see if I had a photo program I knew how to use I would have cropped this picture to only his figure, not all that extra stuff on either side of him.)

* * * *

I'm glad I started this blog again yesterday.  If I had not, I would have been very frustrated for wanting to write an entry today.  One of the things I wanted to do for my 80th birthday (next week) was to go and see 80 for Brady.  I have read reviews, most of which were pretty bad, but with the cast of those wonderful women -- Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field -- I couldn't imagine it could be anything but enjoyable, no matter how "stupid" it was.

We got there in time for the film and discovered we were THE ONLY PEOPLE in the theater.

(When the movie was over, we found that three other people were there--two together and one alone.  Not a popular movie, at least not at the early matinee [1 p.m.])

Yes, it was stupid in many places, but also funny and my total feeling was that I loved it.  We know it's based on the story of the four 80-ish year old ladies who are Tom Brady fans but wonder how much of the story is true and how much is a made up story of old ladies who go to the Super Bowl and have madcap adventures (as Ned put it).  

The movie is produced by Tom Brady and when I saw the surviving members of the real 80 for Brady group on The Today Show they said they had never met him I was surprised that the show didn't bring him on to surprise them.

The one thing that bothered me a LOT was Jane Fonda, whose performance was fine, but I wondered how many hours it took to get her looking so young (she's 83) and how many pounds of make-up were used.  She stood out like a sore thumb among the other three, who looked like they could be in their 80s (Sally Field was quick to mention that she's only 75).  It was difficult to believe her in hers scenes because all I could think about was how much make-up she was wearing and how much plastic surgery she has had.

In the previews before  the movie, there is a movie coming up with Lily Tomlin and Fonda and in it Fonda is so overly made up I had to check the credits to see who that young woman was with Tomlin.  But then when I was checking her age on the Internet, I read that she was diagnosed with non-Hopkins lymphoma and had started chemo in September of 2022 so perhaps all that make-up is a part of that (though I suspect the movie was made before her diagnosis).

But anyway, it was the perfect choice as part of my 80th Year Birthday Celebration.

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