On Time, Money, and Age

When I was a kid, I had all the time in the world  to do all of the stuff I wasn't old enough to do yet.

Then I grew up and got a job so I could afford to do all of the stuff I no longer had the time to do.

Now I am retired. I've got all the time in the world to do all of the stuff I can't do anymore even if I had the money. Plus, I am old enough to know better.

Don't Mention It

 

 

Really -- there is no need to mention it . . . 

• An online dating site for the Single Silver Senior crowd: You must be 18 to join. No, your braces don't count as 'Silver'. 

 

• New scholarship from the Smithsonian points to a paradox of historic scope: Our writing system was devised by people who couldn't read.  Honestly, that one comes to us from Smithsonianmag.com. Could be the same people who uncovered evidence that Edison invented the light bulb by candle light.
  
  
• Did anybody ever wonder if Superman ever used a phone booth to make a call? And when did he make the time to go around to pick up all of his clothes? How did he conceal the cape under his Clark Kent duds? And the inquiry that inquiring minds inquire the most: did he ever take off the Superman spandex and cape to wash them?
  
  
• Warning label on my bottle of sleeping pills: Caution, may cause drowsiness.
  
  
• How is it that car manufacturers can sell cars made next year? Are they going by a different calendar, or do they have a time machine that sends back  next years' cars that don't sell because they are already selling the next years' model? Will they ever catch up ... or slow down to let the cars catch up?  Maybe they could do an ad campaign of dealerships selling cars that don't exist yet.
  
  

Marking this Day

 

Marking this day ... as ...  What? 

 

 I don't even know what to call this day. Is it a 'death anniversary'? That sounds morbid. "The date of my husband's passing"? Too long. "The day my widowhood began" sounds a bit dramatic, even for me.

Whatever you call it, the anniversary of the day Derek died marks a whole new chapter, or maybe even a whole new book of my life. 

I lost both of my parents much too early in my life. Mom died of lung cancer in 2007, and Dad of pancreatic cancer in 2015. Their deaths made me sad. I miss them very much. But other than not being able to go 'home' for a visit, or  pick up the phone and hear their voices, their passing didn't really change my life all that much.

          Thank God I have never lost a child. Many of my friends have, and I can't begin to imagine the pain of such a loss.

I have heard it said that the death of a parent is a loss of the past, the death of a child a loss of the future. But the loss of a spouse is in the here and now. This one event changed my life more than any other. When Derek died, I lost a partner, a provider, and a care giver and a lover. I lost the person who fixed my computer glitches, who got mad at me when I spent too much, who sometimes drove too fast for my liking,  worked way too many hours for my liking, and was always right way too often. 

    Sometimes I think I hear his truck coming home, eventually, just really, really, really late for supper. I catch myself thinking that I need to tell him something. I always felt like I was "off duty" when he got home. 

Whatever you call this day, it is going to come around once a year, every year, whether I like it or not.  

I have been trying to  think of a way to end this blog with some insightful, clever, maybe even devotional or inspirational thought. I got nothing. Maybe next year. Stay tuned.

Draft Dodgers

Draft Dodger: I am my own worst enemy.

Draft Dodging is my new term for my seeming inability to finish and publish any piece of writing, from these blog posts to my novels and other writing that I am working on. I take frequent strolls through my morgue files, in search of any lifesigns that I may have missed on the first ten or twenty times I re-examined these particular specimens. 

Some drafts just need a really good last line and some polishing. Every once in a while I get a burst of inspiration and I finish those. Most of the time I have no idea where I was going with that one. Problem is that these bursts seldom occur anywhere near my laptop, especially since my laptop isn't as portable now as it was when it had a battery. I have forgotten why Jed took the battery out, since I bought a new laptop, but then the new one was totalled as an unfortunate bystander during one of my falls. I have no idea how, but it went flying off my desk as I went flying in the opposite direction. Just as well, I hated that thing. Did one of my surviving brain cells plot revenge without my knowledge or consent? I wouldn't put it past me.

Where was I going 50 or 75 words ago? Oh yes, my draft graveyards. I was going to add to my excuse list my lack of any ability to save ideas the old fashioned way, by chiseling my ideas into a flat rock. No, I am just kidding, I am not that old. Back in my school years, we had already progressed to making marks on paper with a number 2 pencil. 

This post should probably go back to the morgue. I'm calling it: time of death, 6:45 pm. I brought it up from the morgue at around 11:00 this morning, so it is only getting posted because I decided to be more honest about how crappy my writing usually is.

Is there such a thing as a second world country?

You know, I have written and read a lot about First World Problems, and the gaping chasm that is the third world, but I don't know that I have read anything about the Second World. Is there such a thing? I could google it... everything is on the internet now, and there is no excuse for lazy journalism -- but I'm not a journalist, and this is not a research project for a class, it's just a blog and it's supposed to be stream of consciousness writing. Why is that? Why am I defending myself to myself? Whose voice is up there, arguing with me? And why have I gone so far down a rabbit trail that I can't even remember what I was going to say about the Second World?

Looking for a voice of reason, I don't think I will find one anywhere in my brain tonight. I should just go to bed now.

I remember now, why I was thinking about the gap between the First and Third worlds, so I won't go to bed just right away. I con't speak for everyone because I am just thinking random thoughts, but I am thinking that most people think that they are the Second World, like the geopolitical equivalent of the quintessential middle child. "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! If you are young enough to not get that tidbit of pop culture, then you are young enough to just google it. I am going to bed now.

He is Risen Indeed!

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

With these words, the Christian Church was begun.

It was very early, around sunrise on the first day of the week. For Jewish folk, it would have been their back to work day, like a Monday morning for us gentiles. On this particular morning, a motley little group of men were gathered in a borrowed room, with the door locked because they were scared of the authorities. 

I think I understand a tiny bit of what the disciples of Jesus must have been feeling that morning. I have had the horrifying pleasure of being in the room when a loved one dies three times: my mother in 2007, my dad in 2015, and then my husband in 2019. Sitting afterwards in the gloom of the "Quiet Room" in the hospital -- an exhausted, dejected gathering of family and friends. 

Back in the locked room: what could they say to cheer each other? They had been The Twelve!  They were only the eleven now, one of their members had betrayed Christ and then took his own life. Another had just denied even knowing the Master three times, he cried bitter tears. All of them had deserted Jesus in His hour of need. What were they to do now? They had thought that when the Messiah came, He would free His people from the oppression of Rome and set up a kingdom in Jerusalem. They had even fought about who would sit at His right and left sides. Were they wrong about their Master? Had they been duped by a false Messiah?

Meanwhile, a group of women carried a heavy load of spices to anoint the body of Christ. It was a hot country, before the days of embalming, so the custom of the day was to apply a pungent blend of spices and perfumes to cover the smell.

What happened next changed the course of human history. He was Risen! Jesus Christ came back from the dead, just like He had said He would, but they hadn't understood. 

And that's how Christianity began. Women were the first witnesses, unheard of at that time. Those cowardly men who ran away and hid for fear of arrest were transformed into Apostles who turned the world upside down. The one who had denied even knowing Jesus brought about 3000 people into the fold with his first sermon. Of the Eleven, ten were martyred for their faith, and the remaining one was exiled to a lonely island where he wrote the book about his amazing revelation. 

Two thousand years later, a deadly pandemic might close the doors of the church buildings, but it doesn't stop the church from meeting. God said that where ever two or more gather in His name He will be there. Even in cyber space. 

They may have been right after all....

Anybody remember writing Differential Aptitude Tests (DAT) in high school? 

I remember writing a DAT test when I was in the ninth grade. Basically, it's a tool for career planning. I had already decided that I wanted to be a teacher. Or a librarian. And a rock star. In grade nine I reasoned that I could teach during the school year, and spend the summer holidays touring with my band.

The results from my DAT test (I know that the T stands for test, so it is a bit redundant to call it a differential aptitude test test but that's what they called it. I don't make the rules.), anyways, they suggested that I could be a doctor or something in the medical field. I said, "ha" to that suggestion because "lol" hadn't been invented yet.

I didn't think I could possibly be a doctor or anything else in the medical field.  So I got my B ed, but I only taught for seven years, and then I had to quit that because of my health.

I got to thinking a while back, and made the connection, of my health problems and the career counselling way back in the ninth grade: I did have a career in the medical field! I am a full time, professional patient. It doesn't pay much, but the hours are pretty good. I can work from home or anywhere in the world, really.  So the DAT testing works after all. Huh.