Closer to Sixty Than Fifty

This has been on my mind quite a bit, about how close to 60 I am approaching, and then a short 10 years later I will be 70!! I suppose for one thing I just don't think of myself as 58 because in my head I am not, I still think I am much younger; how much younger I don't know, but not 58 for sure.  I don't know how 58 year olds are supposed to feel, and maybe we all feel the same way about this.  I am betting the majority of us are thinking exactly this:

Because I know I wonder.  How one day you're graduating from high school and the next you're 58, married over 20 years, have bills, are a grandparent, in somewhat of a dead end job, and taking care of an ill parent.  No one tells you this is going to happen either, though I guess if they did you would just think, "Nah...that isn't going to happen to me. I'm going to live  a great life and I'm going to be young forever."  Yeah, uh huh.  Oh I know some people are lucky enough to, (well except for staying young, no one gets to do that, even with all the facelifts and liposuctions and exercise) and good for them.  But for most of us, I am guessing life is on the ho-hum side and you're wishing to be young again, like you still are in your mind. 

The important thing to do though is to stay young in your mind because I think it helps.  I would rather be young-minded than an old fuddy-duddy (I admit, I probably do have my fuddy-duddy moments though).  There is no getting out of being 60, so I just try and keep my sense of humor and pretending I'm 30 instead of 60, and hope for the best.

Still, I have to wonder, what the hell happened???

Favorites

Some of my favorite words:

Bubbles
Perfect
Sparkle

Some of my favorite things:

Starbucks                            my grandson
my cat RabbitButt              Casanova
See's Candy                        70s music
photography                        decorating shows
Facebook                             Pinterest
HGTV magazine                 Bon Appetit
Food Network magazine     sunglasses

Some of my favorite songs:

Kiss An Angel Good Morning                           Feels So Right
You Have Put Me On Top Of The World         When I Need You
You've Never Been This Far Before                  Dancing Queen
The Way We Were                                           

Some of my favorite singers/bands:

Alabama                           Conway Twitty
Barbara Mandrell             Barbra Streisand
Abba                                 Foreigner
Air Supply                       Earl Thomas Conley
Faith Hill                         Toby Keith

Some of my favorite food:

chocolate                                           bbq steak                              
 lasagna                                             baked sweet potatoes
spaghetti                                            chicken enchiladas
chocolate chip pecan cookies           fried chicken
potato salad                                       corn-on-the-cob

Some of my favorite beverages:

Pepsi                               Caramel Macchiato
milk                                 Sangria
Kahlua and cream    

Just a few of my favorite things.     

Nursing.....

is not my forte. That is all.

I Am A Night Owl

By nature I am a night owl. Always have been from the time I was a teenager, and always will be I think.  My grandma (Mom's mom) was one, and I can remember her staying up until 1 or 2, reading or playing solitaire or watching tv , and then getting up around 9 or 10 in the morning. I figure I take after her (though I can kind of recall my dad staying up late too, so who knows, but I would rather take after Grandma), because I love staying up late and I love sleeping in in the morning (which is usually when I get my best sleep anyway).

I also tend to feel more active and creative at night than I do during the day. Like writing these blog posts now at 1:23am, or when I did the dishes just a little while ago. If I could I would clean the house and vacuum and probably even clean the carpet which really needs it. Pretty sure Mom might object though, so I will just write instead.

Mom doesn't  understand why I like to stay up late and then sleep in late; she has always been a morning person and in turn goes to bed early,  so she just really doesn't get it. Which is very evident in the morning when she is super chatty and I just stare at her, bleary eyed and not talkative, which she doesn't even seem to notice. And at the moment my sleep schedule is wacky because I have to give her meds through her IV lines every 6 hours, so I have to give them to her at midnight and wait till they go through, which can take 30 - 45 minutes.  Sometimes I might actually be sleepy while waiting up until midnight, but after I am all finished I seem to get a second wind and am wide awake for another 2 hours and not get to sleep until 3am or so! Then I have to get up around 6:30 (she wakes up about then) to do it all over again. I go back to bed when I am done for 2 or 3 more hours but this is really screwing up a solid night sleep. Only 4 more days of this though hopefully.

Not that I won't stay up late then too, but at least I don't have to wake up at 0630.  I don't know why she wants me to get up early anyway; she always watches the news which I have no interest in, and she talks on the phone to her other morning people friends, and basically I just don't feel like talking in the mornings.  At work of course it is a bit different, but even then sometimes I wish people wouldn't talk to me until around 10.

Ah well. Can't wait to retire and I can be a night owl all I want and sleep in all I want. I know I don't ever want to be a morning person, those people are just too dang chipper for a night owl like me.

A Different Summer

My last post on here was about how different summer would be this year because we wouldn't be coming out to California and we would just be staying home. Well it has turned out different for sure.

Because we didn't stay home after all. Though I hadn't planned on coming out, a couple of circumstances had me rethinking it, and so after playing around with airfares, I found cheap ones to San Diego and decided that was sort of a sign to go ahead and go. So we flew out and rented a car to drive up to Fresno. We stayed a couple of weeks and had some of the normal activities we usually have, but some of the time wasn't so great as Mom was feeling really sick from chemo, and I don't think she was all that thrilled that we were there. But I figured it could be the last time she would see the kids, so there we were.

And now here I am again in California, because Mom got sick from blood infections, and dehydration, and needs to be taken care of. Not exactly the way I thought the summer would turn out, but with an elderly parent with cancer, I guess nothing is normal anymore. And how long I will be here is up in the air too.

I usually love summer but this one doesn't even really seem like a summer to me. Yeah it's hot outside, but that's about it. Even in July we only went in the pool once which is pretty unusual for us. I've also been to two funerals, one in July (Florence's husband John) and one just this past Saturday (Vanessa's dad), which I haven't been to a funeral I think since 1999. And of course Mom being really sick and knowing her time is limited is hard too.

Yep, this has been a different summer for me. And I don't like it.