I spent weeks researching deck refinishing ideas on the internet and checking out hardware stores for stains and tools. I have to admit I do enjoy this kind of thing. I really like going to hardware stores and browsing through the various sections. I like the challenge of finding the right tool for the job. I used to do this kind of thing with my Dad and I feel a certain connection to him when I’m in a hardware store. I found the perfect screwdriver for resetting the screws on the deck so that they wouldn’t rip up the sandpaper when the deck was sanded. It’s a ratcheting screwdriver with a kind of pistol grip. My housemate was thrilled. It’s a very manly tool. It’s a good womanly tool too. I will definitely use it for other projects My housemate offered to refinish and seal my deck. When I was younger and thinner, and could bend over without cutting off the air to my lungs, I would have considered doing this myself. I actually did do it a couple of times, cleaning the deck with my power washer and using a transparent sealer. Those days are gone and now I would normally hire someone to do it. This time I decided to take advantage of my housemate’s offer. Last summer he sanded, primed and repainted the front of the house where the paint was peeling. He is very meticulous about any work he does. He takes pride in being a manly man and doing manly man things.
It’s lack of control. This is one of my biggest character defects. I want to control everyone and everything. Does it really matter if everything is not perfect? This is a lesson in trust. I must trust that my housemate is an adult and can figure this out for himself. I must trust that I have made the right decisions about techniques and tools and that the deck will turn out fine. This deck refinishing project is a little microcosm of my life where the lesson to be learned is to let go and trust. God help me. * * * The deck has been drying for several days after it was sanded and washed. Is it perfect? Noooooooo, but it is fine. I have been squelching the desire to “touch up” a few places. Tomorrow stain will be applied. Today the reading in my daily meditation book was about trust and control. What a coincidence! It talked about the fact that having control over anything is an illusion. We can and should take action but we have no control over the actual outcome. In the past I have had anxiety attacks over worrying about and trying to control the future. I don’t need to go there today. My deck and I will be OK.
It does surprise me a bit when I consider what I have been willing to put out there. Sometimes I have a nervous pause before I press the publish button. I start second guessing myself. When I do finally push the button it's like stepping off into the deep end of the pool. I'm not a good swimmer and jumping into the deep end of the pool is hard for me to do, but exhilarating at the same time. Sometimes I do go back and edit something I've already published if it doesn't seem right, but most of the time I'm OK with it. For me, the whole purpose of writing a blog is to honestly explore what's going on in my brain. If I get too self-conscious about what I write it's not worth the time to do it. I looked at my statistics for the last three months and I was amazed. I had 1932 page views and 504 unique visitors. Compared to some blogs it’s probably nothing to write home about but it is mind boggling to me. I know that this doesn't mean I have had 504 different people reading my blog. I'm kind of guessing but I think it's more like the same 10 people who actually read it. You know who you are, and thank you for hanging in there. If you do the math that means that each of you have read my blog 50.4 times. Wow! That is dedication. I actually only have about 30 posts, so some of you may have read the same post more than once. Or maybe there really are more than 10 of you. I looked up the definition of pageview but I still don't quite get the 1932 pageview thing. I don't really know what a pageview is or how it is calculated. It doesn't make much sense but if you each have actually read 193.2 pages of my blog I'm flabbergasted and a little worried. In takes a lot of time to read 193.2 pages. I know how much time I spend writing this blog instead of doing other things like cleaning the toilet and vacuuming. I’m worried that there may be some folks who are reading my blog and avoiding doing other things the way I do. I would hate to think I am responsible for some neglected bathrooms out there. ![]() The Weebly site makes a graph of my statistics. A graph is an interesting visual. I like the way it looks like a heartbeat. My graph looks a little like I'm having a heart attack. It has some major ups and downs. There was only one day in the last three months, however, that no one read my blog, not even me. When there is a big jump it appears to be due to a change in how the existence of my blog gets revealed, like when a friend mentions it on her facebook page or when I talked about it at a writers group. I will keep that in mind as I continue to explore the world of blogging. Thanks again for being a reader. ![]() If I forked out some bucks instead of going with a free website I could get access to even more statistics, like which blogs were the most popular and what key words attracted the most people. As it is I don't have a clue why you are reading my blog or what I could do to make it more interesting and appealing but I'm happy that this site is free. Free is good. I had a discussion with my housemate who warned me that perhaps I shouldn't reveal so much about myself and post it out in cyberspace where it could come back to haunt me someday. I'm not too worried. I figure it's basically being viewed by the same 10 people and I haven't put anything in my blog I wouldn't say out loud in a conversation. Come to think of it there ARE a few things in my blog that I might not announce in a casual conversation. Hopefully they will be buried in the sheer number of entries I eventually write and it will take a super sleuth to find them. ![]() Lately I have found myself curiously interested in meeting someone to date. I’m not thinking major romance exactly, just going to the movies or out for dinner. The last time I remember actively pursuing dating was so long ago that I put an ad in the singles section of my local newspaper. There were no internet dating sites because there was no internet. The newspaper process was similar to internet dating. Most of the people in the ads were looking for someone athletic and thin with “no baggage.” I used to feel bad that I was not athletic or thin, and embarrassed that I had baggage, but lately I’ve begun seeing myself in a different way. Everyone has baggage at my age. My main baggage when it comes to dating is that I haven’t had a serious romantic relationship for almost 40 years and I haven't really dated in the last 15 years. That’s a fairly sizable bag. I would surely consider it a humongous red flag if someone I might be interested in dating told me this. It does conjure up the most negative aspects of being a "little old lady with cats," however I don't feel that it makes me a poor dating prospect. Despite the fact that I haven’t been romantically involved with anyone in a long time, I have had an abundance of love in my life. Over the last 40 years I have connected with people who I love and who love me, including my family, friends, and housemates. I have shared births, deaths, marriages and divorce, life threatening illnesses, travels all over the world, celebrations, earthquakes and tornados, and all of the mundane ups and downs of life with the people I love. I have grown and changed because of the people I love and the experiences they have led me through (sometimes kicking and screaming) that have enriched my life. Just because these experiences didn’t involve a significant other doesn’t mean they were any less meaningful.
I have a photo of myself as a kid where I look quite adventurous. I'm heading up a ladder with a big smile on my face. My Mom told us that she saw me going up the ladder and snapped the photo. Then she put my twin sister on the ladder and took her picture, but you can tell from the photo that my sister was not a happy camper about the experience. In my mind I always saw myself more like the tentative little girl in my sister's photo than the adventuresome mini-me in the other picture. Sometimes I look at that photo and wonder where did that little girl go? When did I loose that fearlessness? Twins on a ladderI babysat a friend's five-year-old granddaughter over the weekend. I don't have grandkids, so this was an opportunity to be a pseudo grandparent. It was fun, but I am 62 years older than this child and I felt every one of those 62 years just watching her play. She is very physical and fearless. She climbed and scrambled over every piece of playground equipment at the park, and ran through a trail in the woods, with an energy and gusto that was boundless. Even when she fell, she got up with a smile on her face as if falling was part of the fun. I don't think I was ever like that. In my earliest memories I was cautious and afraid of anything too physical. I remember a friend of my Dad's who visited us and liked to rough house with kids. I was NOT into rough housing. My Dad was more cerebral. We spent a lot of time fishing, picnicking, looking for berries and wildflowers in the woods, and going to the library and reading books. I loved every minute of doing these things with my Dad, and they were all very low key activities. They were not the kind of thing you could base a reality TV show on unless it was something like "Extreme Picnicking," or "Super Wild Wildflower Identification," or "Library Book Selection Mega Challenge." I think that risk-taking was not high on my family's agenda. I could probably analyze my childhood experiences and come up with a lot of reasons why risk-taking is difficult for me as adult, but what's the point. The fact is that this is who I am. I am fascinated by that photo of me on the ladder, however, and I would like to recapture that part of me and put it to work in this phase of my life. I know I do embrace adventure and risk taking in some things in my life, but not when it comes to things that are physical. A couple of years ago my "little old lady with cats" foot went sideways into a hole in the sidewalk and I ended up with a broken ankle. I'm not anxious to repeat that experience. Still, I wish I could be more like my friend's little granddaughter and look at falling as part of the fun, even if it's just in the spiritual sense.
I feel very spacey and disconnected this week. Sometimes I feel like one of those astronauts you see in movies, floating around on a spacewalk. They are tethered to their craft but they don't have a lot of control over where they are going and all around them is the endlessness of SPACE. ![]() This image reminds me of watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” on TV. I used to go over to a friend’s house and we watched it together. It seems like it was (as Carl might say in his slightly lisping voice) billions and billions of years ago. We all felt so inspired and lifted up after watching “Cosmos.” I did a painting for my friends of a galaxy, all purple and swirling with sparkly stars. I think it was a fantasy of what might lie ahead. I had just gotten divorced and I was petrified and excited about the future at the same time. Once again I am looking at the future, but now there is less of it. Although it's a little unsettling, the fact that I have more space and time than I did when I was caring for Dad is appealing to me. I have a strong desire to clear out my house and get rid of the things I don't need any more. Doing this kind of clearing out takes time, and although I do have more time right now, sometimes it feels like I don't have enough time to do all things I need to do. I’m flailing around, like that tethered astronaut, trying to create a more balanced life. What would that look like for me? It wouldn’t be about perfection. There would be room for making mistakes. There would also be time for doing the things that make me feel like I did after watching Carl Sagan explain the magic of the cosmos. Right now I'm teeter-totering around with food and exercise but my art projects have been abandoned in the garage. I'm writing every day but in a compulsive way that puts me in a recliner with my computer on my lap for hours. I feel so out of balance. I had a very cool image during a meditation workshop that I went to recently that gave me a little relief from that feeling of being lost in space. It was an image of the embrace of God. I pictured giant arms and hands wrapped around a whole community of people. There were so many I couldn’t even tell who they all were. I know my friends and family were there, even the ones that have passed away. My cats were there too. It was a sea of faces and bodies. At first I was facing them but then I joined in the group, looking out from this crowded embrace. It was a secure place and I could see an endless sky spreading out in all directions. My back was towards the crowd. I could feel a gentle push. It wasn’t a "fling me out into the cold cruel world" shove. It was a gentle, encouraging movement out into the unknown. Not a scary unknown, but a beautiful blue SPACE. ![]() I don't like the way my iPad screen magnifies my face when I face-time with my sister. Every little wrinkle and brown spot shows up in HD quality. I remember the first time I discovered wrinkles on my face. I was not even 30 and I was casually looking in a mirror. There it was, the first faint hint of puppet lines on the sides of my mouth. I panicked at the thought that my previously flawless complexion was flawed. How could this happen? Now I WISH I had those puppet lines. The ones I have at this age are less faint, and more Howdy Doody. I really shouldn’t complain. I have been blessed with great skin. I still don’t have an overwhelming number of wrinkles. I definitely inherited my skin from my Dad. He always looked 20 years younger than he really was. Still, the wrinkles are there, lurking on my saggy neck and threatening to get deeper on my forehead and the corners of my eyes. I have found that smiling is a good way of minimizing the look of puppet lines. It emphasizes the “happy face” as opposed to the “cranky face” that appears even if I’m not feeling cranky. ![]() My hands are showing signs of wear too. I love my hands, but now they are covered with “crepey” skin, and brown spots, and moles. I do feel happy that they still perform well. Unlike the rest of my body, my hands are very coordinated. I can do all kinds of intricate manuvers with no problem, like knitting, threading a needle, painting, typing, using a screwdriver, and picking cabbage worms off of the broccoli plants. They are strong too because I use them a lot. My twin sister and I compare wrinkles along with other signs of aging. We are not identical, so we don’t have exactly the same changes happening. I noticed my neck is wrinklier than hers. She came up with a unique idea for dealing with the wrinkle issue when we were talking about going to our next high school reunion. She calls it a “Senior Burka.” It’s modeled after the traditional burka with your eyes being the only visible part of your body. Instead of drab black it could come in an array of fun patterns and designs. I envision mine in a cat print. When you want to go out without feeling burdened by the self-consciousness of looking older than you used to, you simply throw it on over your clothes. Not only are your wrinkles shielded from public view, any "little old lady with cats" fashion faux pas in your outfit are neatly hidden under an attractive and colorful tent. It has the additional advantage of making you stand out in a crowd, at least until it becomes wildly popular with more seniors. We thought we might create a new fashion trend at our reunion. I try to take care of my skin. I use an exfoliant and a moisturizer with sunscreen. I cannot stop the march of time, however. I have learned to live with most of the changes of aging by staying in the moment and not worrying too much about the future. At least when it comes to wrinkles, it’s not going to get any better than this. ![]() Yes, to both. I look and listen for bloggable things in my life. Yesterday while I was having breakfast with a friend a woman came up to our table and offered us a giant piece of chocolate cake that no one at her table could eat. This is a bloggable experience. My friend’s reaction, my inner thoughts about her reaction, my addiction to chocolate, these are bloggable things. I will probably write about them. In this way, my life guides my blog. In the process of writing about them I will scrape the inner workings of my brain. Questions and feelings could very likely arise. Why am I uncontrollably drawn to chocolate? Why is my friend able to make an immediate decision based on her health, whereas I have to bypass my addictive brain before I can even respond to the magical draw of a tempting piece of chocolate cake? What did I learn about myself and my friend from this seemingly innocuous encounter in a restaurant? In this way my blog guides my life. It forces me to openly explore things that would have bypassed my conscious brain and gone right into my subconscious where they would loose themselves for a while, only to emerge later in some crazy dream or some other encounter where my addictions lurk. It is an interesting dance and one I didn’t expect to be doing when I first innocently accepted my friend’s suggestion to write a blog. It’s what keeps me writing. I never know what minor moment in my life will turn into an opportunity to write. I can’t even begin to guess what the process of writing will reveal.
One of his sweaters was not acrylic. He made a very nice sweater in a beautiful brown wool. Unfortunately it’s a sweater VEST. Who actually wears sweater vests anymore, unless they are trying to channel that homey "Father Knows Best" image from the '50's?
Ever since I saw the modern, minimally decorated homes on a home tour I went to with a friend, I have been wanting to minimalize my own home. I have way too much stuff, including things that I saved from Dad's apartment. I have been putting off cleaning and organizing but I know I can't hang on to these things forever. Eventually someone is going to have to go through my things just like I went through Dad's. I don't want to burden someone else with making decisions that I have put off making about what is important to save and what can be given away. It will be bad enough for someone to go through MY clothes and try to find someone who might want a "little old lady with cats" wardrobe. I loved my Dad. I loved the fact that he was so willing to try anything, including knitting. I love his "Ugly Sweaters." Although they are a wonderful reminder of him, I don't need to keep them in order to hang on to my memories of him. I wish I could find a good home for them, but even If I can't, I know I need to keep the pictures of them and give the sweaters away |
Leslie Masona woman in search of her post-retirement future Guess what! By subscribing, you get notices about the latest Little Old Lady with Cats posts sent to your mailbox!
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WHAT IS A LITTLE OLD LADY WITH CATS - REALLY?
(from an entry posted on 5/1/2015) “I definitely fit some of the characteristics of a little old lady with cats: Retired - check, Single - check, Like to knit - check, Have cats - check. . .I do not want to get stuck in my Little Old Lady persona, however. In fact, this blog is a risk taking experiment in exploring and redefining what I want my retired life to look like.” Categories
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