White Haired Woman

From the time I was little* I have cried easily at being told off, reading a sad story, being heart-broken, being happy, and a whole lot of other times including some tv commercials!

Not all tears in my eye/s are from joy, as you can see from the list above. I cried (undoubtedly) when I sat on the glass face of a “shadow box” and broke the glass. (Luckily I have no memory of this as I was only very young, although I still have the very poorly stitched scar, performed by an old doctor who probably thought no one would ever see it, not knowing how society would become much less staid and would usher in such things as short shorts and bikinis.)

I think I must have cried when I was made redundant. It wasn’t that I loved the job. My boss had decided I should be a sales rep rather than the invoice typist/secretary. I should have quit rather than be lured into accepting at the promise of a car if I did well. I should have known that I am not, was not then and never would be a sales person. (I was certainly okay, later in life, at selling toys and jigsaws but I didn’t do that face to face with potential customers – I had a website and digital photos.) Selling huge shop signs to architects and builders was something I really wasn’t interested in and, in my twenties, I was very shy with strangers.

I cried when my daughter, ‘Veronica’, graduated from Oxford as I watched from my perch in the Sheldonian and when my grand daughter, Chloe, graduated from university some years later.

I have cried many times in the cinema during and after films when, thankfully, no one could see how I can allow such unreal things to affect me, if only for a minute or two.

I cry while reading a book and sometimes when I’ve finished. The same can happen while watching some programmes on tv. A couple of weeks ago I was watching Call the Midwife on catch-up tv and cried when a baby was born!

Babies – the concept – easily make me cry. I cry because they’re born, because they are so sweet (when asleep) and so cute and so cuddly and I can make myself cry knowing that I will never hold my tiny newborn baby again, being a bit beyond child-bearing age. Also I don’t think anyone that I know is going to have a baby in the next few years which I can hold, either, which makes me want to cry a little.

Seeing small children putting on a Christmas show has the same effect. Sweet dogs and cats, and baby animals also can bring a tear to the eye, so to speak.

I am not at all religious but when I hear or sing hymns, there will appear a tear or two in my eyes. ( I don’t sing hymns as a rule but when I go to a funeral and there is a hymn, I sing along – and cry.)

I cried when I had a really bad case of sciatica! It was like having toothache, but in weird areas of my leg and foot and it was always worst at night and interrupting my sleep! It happened, I seem to remember, after I had had pneumonia and had stopped taking amitriptyline for a squished nerve in my back.

What I hadn’t realised about that nerve, it must have been the sciatic nerve or one associated with it. No over-the-counter pain killer had any effect. I must have gone to the doctor eventually and was given a prescription for codeine. That helped but only ‘just’ – the pain was there but not so bad. I think it was around then that I realised I needed to start taking the amitriptyline again. Almost from the first dose, the sciatica went away. Occasionally, as I lie in bed, I feel a little twinge, reminding me that the sciatic nerve is still very much there!

I cried when Eric Zerbrugge broke up with me in junior high school. I’m not certain we had even talked to each other and am not at all certain how we were ‘going steady’, but he broke up and I showed the world (of the Zanesville junior high school) how badly I had been treated! I, and a group of girls, followed him and a group of boys, down the street, I was weeping and wailing, very theatrically (though it could hardly have been cinematic! My face doesn’t ‘do’ crying, prettily!)

You may wonder why I am putting myself (and you) through some of these memories. Yesterday’s prompt was about the reason for one’s blog. Mine is for my daughter (who is not really called Veronica but who doesn’t want her mother’s foibles to show her up so she chose a pseudonym for me to use.) Some time ago she asked me to write down all the stories I have told her about my life so she can pass them on to Chloe (grand daughter’s real name). So, here in my blog, are those stories. I didn’t have enough time yesterday so thought I would combine today’s with it.

*ie: young. I’ve always been short though not always little in size!😩

A “shadow box“, I believe, is like a deep picture frame displaying (in the above case) dolls. It had been taken down from its place on the wall, to be cleaned when I thought it looked like a jolly nice place to sit!

Even at 82, I have a few goals. They aren’t long term like becoming a millionaire or becoming a famous model. No, they’re quite short or medium term, my goals.

My biggest medium term goal is to lose 3 stone. A stone is 14 pounds so my medium goal is to lose 42 (or more) pounds. If I had made this goal a year or so ago it would have been to lose 2 and a half stone, but I have enjoyed ice cream, chicken pies, cinnamon buns and have, sadly therefore, gained half a stone or more.

As of today, I have lost around 4 pounds but I’ve only been trying for a week. My meals have consisted of smaller amounts of food that I enjoy and, so far, I haven’t really felt hungry. I know I’m not going to lose this much every week – the first week’s loss is always the biggest. I’ll let you know how I’m getting on in a few weeks or so.

So, what are a few of my short term goals? I think the first is to finish the book I am reading. I read the one before it which was very readable and led to the one I started the other day. So far, I haven’t really got into it and I’m wondering if I ever will. (I’ll let you know.)

Another short term goal is to walk further than I do at present. Most days, Lola and I walk a certain route which takes around 15 minutes – that’s because I get tired easily. I’m hoping the tiredness is because of my weight and that I will find it less daunting to walk for, say, another 5 minutes – leading up to another ten or twenty minutes, later on – when I’ve lost some blubber.

Of course, I’d love to get back to some painting and, hopefully, that is a short term goal! At the moment we are undergoing some major decorating which has meant that my little corner of the studio is taken up with furniture from other places. I could paint in the conservatory but I worry about getting paint on the table, the chairs, the floor. Perhaps I should have a goal of being tidy when I paint!

Next week I’m going to a U3A quiz with some other members. My goal, there, is to remember all the weird facts I have stored in my brain over the years, in the hopes that some of them pop up in the questions. It would be good to contribute to our team winning! (I’ll let you know!)

The following week should be a really good week as ‘Veronica’ is coming to spend some time with her poor old ma and isn’t bringing her hubby as he is feverishly writing a book. The goal is to have some quality mum and daughter time!

Our plans are mainly to look at stuff – stuff that’s been stored for years, like Veronica’s and Chloe’s old toys. Also, books and games and china and bits and pieces that will belong to her when I am no longer here. Many of those things will have belonged to my mother and grandmother. Of course, she may not want all of that stuff and I can plan to get rid of it myself. (Another short term goal!)

I guess I do have one longer term goal – living until I’m 90 or even 100! If you’re still around, I’ll let you know! 👵🏻😆

(I realise I haven’t said ‘how’ I’m planning these goals. I guess making the goals is the ‘how’!)

1. ‘Veronica’, my daughter, who has made me so proud and happy over the last 60 years.
2. Chloe who is my very lovely granddaughter, who also makes me very proud and happy!
3. Lola, of course. It is her job to make me happy, I imagine.
4. Puppies and kittens
5. Human babies – always such a joy to see new life.
6. Things that grow in my garden.
7. Things that grow in public areas – including trees. We don’t have enough trees in Thanet.
8. Cake
9. Really cold dry white wine
10. Beautiful music
11. Painting
12. Julian – he should be higher up the list but I don’t want to change all the numbers!
13. Seeing old friends
14. My iPad
15. Blue skies
16. Trees silhouetted against blue skies, just when it’s getting dark.
17. Seeing bats flying (rarer nowadays, sadly)
18. Good food that I haven’t had to cook and won’t have to clear away
19. Memories of places I’ve been happy (Paris, Le Touquet, Avignon, Waterford, Zanesville, Cincinnati, Palm Springs, Reno, La Quinta, London, West Malling, East Malling, Bath, Wateringbury, Center Parcs etc etc
20. All the little wooden objects that I have collected over the years.
21. Christmases when all my family is here, eating and playing board games
22. Seeing clearly (after having had cataracts)
23. Not having my hands go numb (after having had carpal tunnel problems)
24. Being able to walk painlessly (yep, after 2 knee replacements)
25. Actually managing to live to 82 (so far)
26. Beautiful paintings,
27. Beautiful objects
28. Elephants, tigers, polar bears, lions, meerkats, slow lorises, monkeys, apes, and on and on and on…..
29. Days that are not too hot (writing this in summer 🥵)
30. Days that aren’t too cold (remembering what winter can bring🥶)

I’m not really certain that bringing back a dinosaur would be a great use of either science or money.

We all know about dinosaurs, don’t we? Except, of course we don’t, really. I remember reading about a time, in the not too distant past, when scientists realised that a particular part of a particular dinosaur was not a horn but a thumb – or it could have been vice versa. Since no one was around to see what went on in the time of dinosaurs, how could we know the outcome of bringing just one of them back?

I would far rather spend my time and money working to stop the decline in populations of elephants or blackbirds or butterflies. And, what about bees? We need bees to pollinate our food crops, and also need them in our gardens so we can watch them busily flying from flower to flower – our stopping what we’re doing to watch the bees (and the dragonflies and the butterflies and the ladybirds) is a useful pastime for Homo sapiens in that we can relax, forget about our worries and be a part of nature for a little while.

And then, there are the oceans with their populations of fish, reptiles, amphibians and mammals. We (homo sapiens again) have spent many long periods of time treating the sea and its creatures as a food store and a dustbin, to the point where some fish aren’t allowed to be caught by fishermen – and if you catch one by mistake and in catching it, it dies, you have to throw it back! I’d certainly rather spend my resources on making the sea as clean and habitable as it must once have been!

And again – another example of our caring and loving use of the world around us – have you noticed how few insects your car is catching in your headlights at night as you race down a country lane?

Some day – wayyyyyyy in the future, there might be a being who sets a writing prompt for a group of other beings which sounds rather familiar, but not quite: if you could bring back one mammal (or reptile, amphibian, bird, insect) which would it be?

If I won two free plane tickets tomorrow, I would give them to someone who doesn’t refuse to fly. If I had won them when I was 14, I might have used them as I hadn’t yet been traumatised by the plane journey from New Jersey to wherever it was that we landed in England. But, truly, I haven’t a clue where I would have wanted to fly to in 1957.

I know that flying is safer than driving or being driven – that doesn’t comfort me about flying! No, it puts me off travelling by car! In the 40 years that Julian and I have been together, I have been driven to quite a few places.

I’ve seen much of the west of England and the east of England, some of Yorkshire, Cheshire and Northumberland, bits of the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire and Wales – all by car. I believe I have written about a few of these journeys.

I have always been of a nervous disposition, possibly because I was ‘taught’ to be nervous by my mother who, herself, was of a far more nervous disposition than I! Knowing that normal people do things like go on holiday in cars, I have gone along with Julian, often helping to plan these journeys but always feeling nervous when we were en route.

I, myself, was a driver for about fifty years. When I was driving, normally I wasn’t nervous – I was in charge of how fast the car was going, the route I was travelling, and the destination. I seldom drove further than ten or twenty miles, particularly when I reached my seventies and when I was going longer distances, I was usually going to an auction which was something I loved.

I gave up driving in the November before lockdown. I was paying for insurance, repairs, and road tax to drive fewer than 800 miles a year. It just didn’t make sense for me to carry on driving my poor old 20 year old Focus any longer.

I don’t miss driving at all. Julian, on the other hand, still loves driving and goes all over the place for a week or two, to paint, while I stay home and am not nervous.

At my age, I’ve had all the adventures I need.

I’ve been across the US on the Super Chief train (in 1956); I’ve been across the Atlantic Ocean in a plane propelled by propellers; I’ve been across the English Channel on a ferry, on a jetfoil, on a hovercraft and under the English Channel in a train that carries us with our car and, too, a train that carries us without our car.

I’ve gone from Calais or Dover, by car to Le Touquet, to Amiens, to Paris, to Alsace, to Switzerland, to the Dordogne, to St Tropez. By train I’ve gone from Calais (or Dover) to Paris, to Amsterdam, to Avignon, and to Nice (in 1959.)

And, long ago, I flew on a plane from California to Reno, Nevada and, not nearly so long ago, I flew on a plane from Stansted to Pisa then was driven on a bus to Florence. After that flight, which was perfectly unadventurous, I still would have taken a train back towards England if they hadn’t been on strike! (Flying is just too adventurous for me. Just ask Julian if you don’t believe me!)

In my living room I’ve been all over the world via books, photographs, film and tv. On those journeys I’ve seen the pyramids with John Romer: Rome and Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and many, many more places, too. (Thanks to my sister-in-law, Julie, for her lovely photographic journeys where I’ve seen lots of places, also gorgeous animals)!

Personally, my goal is to live at least as long as my mother, (nearly 91) or my great grandmother (93, I think) or even to 100(!), but if the “G.R.” should decide it’s time for me to go, it won’t be a tragedy.

I have had an interesting and fun life, where I have met so many annoying (at times) children who have grown into friends, and have met so many interesting and sometimes unusual people as well as having the greatest daughter and grand daughter any one would wish for and also acquiring my extended family and all my in-laws and their families and of course, Julian and a wide circle of friends who have come, departed and returned over the years – those have been, in their own quiet way, the best adventures I could ever wish for. (That last paragraph was difficult to write and make sense and if it doesn’t make sense, please read it again!)😄

(PS I feel I should mention the pets and other animals I have known, especially the one who is sitting next to me trying to remind me it’s time for a bite of supper, but that list is so long that I’d be sitting here typing for another hour or so.)

I was not a very adventurous girl – had no wish to climb trees, disliked p.e., would never have become a parkour fan – never had a broken bone and had never been in hospital (except for giving birth) until I was 64.

We had lived in Broadstairs for about a year when I got a bit of a pain in my tummy. It wasn’t a terrible pain and I thought it would go away on its own but, after a few days of waking up and finding the pain was still there, I decided I should probably go to the doctor. That was the beginning of the surgeries I was to have in the ensuing 18 or 19 years.

It was appendicitis. The doctor sent me to the hospital. There I had various tests and it was decided that I should have my appendix removed straight away. (One of the tests was to see if the pain was being caused by gall stones. Interestingly, I was told that there were “lots and lots and LOTS” of stones in my gall bladder but they weren’t the cause of my pain. I’m still waiting for that!)

I got over the appendicectomy and went back to my normal life when, suddenly, I lost some of the hearing in my right ear. After tests the audiologist decided I should have a grommet put in my ear. I had that done in a day surgery and the only outcome of that surgery was that I couldn’t go swimming for a year or so – which was really annoying! The tiny grommet fell out eventually but my hearing didn’t improve.

Then came a year in which I had two surgeries – my right knee was replaced in June and my left was replaced in December. The first operation went really well and the new knee worked beautifully.

The second operation went well, too, but my wound didn’t heal quite so quickly. That was probably my fault. I am allergic to plasters and there was a big one covering the wound. It itched under the edges but I didn’t touch the plaster. My leg also itched lower down on my shin – and that, I scratched. Somehow, my leg became infected and I had two lots of antibiotics to clear up the infection. My new left knee worked just as well as the other. I’m happy to say that both knees are still working well after 15 years!

Since then I have had various other surgeries: 2 carpal tunnel ops, one on the right hand and the other – ten years or so later – on the left. I’ve recently had the cataracts removed from both eyes. That wasn’t exactly surgery, though they do make an excision to remove the cloudy lens and replace it with a clear lens.

That is the end of the surgeries I have undergone in the past 18 years. I won’t be sorry if I never have another!

I’ve always been good at ‘wasting’ time. Nowadays, as a retired old lady with no real work to do beyond preparing a meal or two a day and watering a few hanging baskets in the summer, I find I have lots of time to waste!

The newspapers and magazines on my iPad allow me to waste time finding out what is going on in the wider world. I spend from an hour to an hour and a half reading what terrible things are happening in the world, particularly what the man in charge of America is doing and saying. I refuse to call him ‘president’ and am loath even to say his name.

After my indulging myself with the news, I see what’s going on with visitors to my blog. Last week, for some crazy reason, quite a number of new subscribers appeared on my subscriber list. I am pleased that 23 new readers want to see my words but am confused as to why they all chose that one day last week to join such an exclusive group as those of you who automatically receive each post. I must say, they all have very strange names followed by lots of numbers and all seem to have the same avatar showing that they are reading on gmail. Several others in my list have the same avatar but they didn’t all join on the same day!

Occasionally when I go to my blog site, I see a ‘prompt’ that gives me an idea of what to write – as did today’s prompt, as happened today.

After this waste of time which can take anything from 2 minutes to over an hour, I move on to Wordle. I’ve been doing the game called Wordle for some years and am reasonably good at it. After I have finished that one to my satisfaction (or, occasionally dissatisfaction), I try the NYT mini crossword and Connections. I’m not great at either of those until I’ve had my coffee and maybe, also, have had my lunch. For those games, I need to be able to think clearly and sometimes, only an hour or two after I’ve got up, my brain isn’t working as well as it does later in the day.

With those finished I go on to the Solitaire game which I must have downloaded in the 20teens. Nowadays they do a one-off Daily game which I have a go at. Luckily, it allows me to start over if I haven’t been successful. I’m amazed at how many times I can play the same game but can do it slightly differently each time and, after 2 or 3 or 6 times, can ultimately succeed! This is how I have wasted the most time – I won’t tell you how many DAYS I have wasted with solitaire! (They add all the seconds, minutes and hours up and I can find out but I don’t do it too often. It’s a bit scary how much time I have spent over the last 10 or so years at this particular game!)

Until around 2016 I used to go to the swimming pool in Ramsgate 4 times a week where I spent time in an aqua aerobics class. Then, in their wisdom, the swimming pool and gym were demolished and I started to go to the ‘new’ Ramsgate pool in the middle of town. Strangely, I – and others I know from that group – preferred the old pool! I can’t figure out why. Anyway, on and off, I went to the class there but, when I gave up driving, I stopped.

Now, my exercise is walking Lola. The older I get the worse my breathing is, though, so our walks are fairly short. Instead, I carry on looking at stuff on my iPad or I pick up a puzzle book and work on a Codeword.

If you haven’t seen these I’ll give you a brief description. You have, in front of you, what looks like a crossword puzzle but each white space has a small number in a top corner. The numbers equate to a letter of the alphabet so go from 1 to 26. You are (usually) given a letter or two or three to help you on your way, so you go through the puzzle adding those letters in the boxes. For example, they show that all the boxes numbered 23 will have a D in them, all the boxes numbered 2 will have an A and that all the boxes with 13 will have an S.

I’ve always felt that the next thing you should do is find out where the Es should be. This is because E is the letter most used in the English language. Sometimes it’s possible to work it out by just looking to see which box number is the most prevalent, though this doesn’t always work and sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth finding it because it’s not obvious. Strange how some numbers stick out and you can see them easily. For example a 1. Even if there are lots of letters already filled in, it seems quite easy to see the 1s. But a number like 23 isn’t (necessarily).

In the early days of my working on these puzzles, I could take an hour to finish one. Once in a while I come across one where I have trouble getting into it but once I’ve cracked the code, so to speak, I can finish it – but it looks untidy! Usually, though, I can get through one in 20 minutes or so.

My other time-wasting time during most days is reading a book. I have loads of books that I haven’t read yet, on shelves in my bedroom and in the conservatory. I also have a Kindle app on my iPad so can buy books to read that way. In fact, most of the books I read are ebooks which I mostly buy when they are offered at 99p on Apple and Amazon. I am sent an email every day by a site called BookBub which tells me which are the books on offer each day.

If I see a book by a favourite author, I go to Amazon (or Apple) to find out what the book is about and whether I’ve read it already. If it’s a book by someone I’ve never heard of, I read the ‘sample’ which is usually the first chapter of a book. If it pulls me in, I might buy it. In this way, I sometimes find a new favourite author!

Well, I’ve wasted a bunch of time today and have just been reminded that we’re going out for lunch! I hope you enjoyed finding out about how I waste time and if I remember anything else, it might give me the start to another post. Off I go to enjoy a delicious Sardinian lunch!