Old So What

  When you live in a house with lots of people and pets, and you walk into a room that’s a total mess, you might ask the question: “What happened here?”   I was strolling through a cable channel video with no particular place to go. The subject was ghost or near-ghost towns, based on stories without happy endings. The town I zeroed in on was literally being swallowed up by its own vegetation. Sometimes a porch or a roof would stick out in protest. (You could look at a clump and think: Is there a “there” there under all that ugly, non-specific greenery?) Sometimes someone had seemed to sneak back into town to plant a few flowers or mow a lawn (showing that relatives of the original residents, or more than likely, other residents were still around), but you could see that this was a very sad place in a very sad situation, in the aftermath of some unhappy happenings.   Some place you don’t want to think about. Some place you don’t want to be.   A place you don’t e...

Let's face it, at some point we will all be faced with a doctor's appointment that will change our lives. This can be scary and completely overwhelming, but this tip can and will make things easier. Choose a close friend or family member to go to the doctor's office with you and be in the room when you hear the news. This "second set of ears" matters! While you are focused on the questions, "will I be okay," and "what do I do now," the other person can focus on what the doctor or nurse is saying. They can even take notes! While explaining the next steps in the course of action, most medical professionals will use examples of how others patients adapted to their new way of life, and those examples are important too and will not appear in the visit summary. "What did they say could help?" "What foods should I avoid specifically?" The other person can help you fill in the blanks of any parts you missed. Together you will have a...

  About 36,000,000 older adults fall every year. Well, this didn’t just happen. And I think that the brain tries to eliminate the memory of pain, but to be honest, it actually wasn’t as painful as I would have expected. Now having said that… After I fell down the cellar steps, not because something in my body snapped or through lack of calcium, but simply because I reached for a banister that wasn’t as long as I thought, and I had at the time lost my sense of balance due to dehydration. I laid there thinking that I hope I could get up again quickly so I could forget the whole unfortunate event.   But no such luck because any movement on my part led to an unexpected sharp pain. I looked up and saw this spider looking back from near the stairs, surveying the scene and looking as if it was considering the possibilities. Before it got too far into its plans, I decided to get up. I couldn’t.   So, sitting up was the next option. No one was coming back to my house for...

  It set new records. It resulted in new laws and codes that included the retrofitting of sprinklers on all building floors from now on citywide.   It left us with a lot of statistics.   The most tragic one was that three firemen lost their lives in what can only be described as the perfect storm of office fires. Everything went wrong at once.   It was a building with a prime location and easy accessibility.   It had a modern feeling of power and durability, which turned out to be false. Our offices were spectacular.   Visitors were often overheard expressing superlatives under their breath.   There were different kinds of costly, well-oiled woods used throughout, in the paneling and the flooring as well, so you had to take care when walking not to slip and slide into something, such as the walls. It was beautiful but not ostentatious. These offices didn’t have to try to impress you, they just did.   The company had a history of accomplishme...