• Category Archives Aging

  • Liverish Lips, Gray Hair, Needs Naps, Vertiginous OMG!

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc      Waning Wild Moon

    The stomach has begun to return to normal.  Vertigo much less.

    Got some pictures back from the retreat and noticed that my lips have taken on that old man’s coloring, a sort of liverish brownish red.  Goes great with the gray hair.

    Off to the capitol for a noon lunch with the Sierra Club lobbyist and the chair of the Legislative Committee.  We’ll discuss my role as the guy in charge of legislative communications.  I also plan to sit in on a committee hearing at 3pm if my need for a nap doesn’t over power me.  (Let’s see.  Liverish lips, gray hair, needs naps, vertiginous. OMG!)

    Gonna take my new netbook with me and join the crowds of under 40’s I see with their laptops everywhere.  When I went to the Jasmine last night for the Woolly meeting, the evening dinner crowd had gathered in the booths at the Bad Waitress.  5 booths along the window out of six had couples with food and a laptop each.  Most had their laptops on and were busy doing something.

    It reminded me of the Arlo and Janis cartoon a couple of weeks ago.  Arlo and Janis both have cellphones to their ears and their land line rings.  Arlo says, “This is ridiculous.”  Yep.


    Aging GeekWorld Politics 📎and tagged

  • A Locked Car Mystery

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc    Waning Wild Moon

    The Woolly’s met tonight at the Jasmine across from the Black Forest.  Food is noveau Vietnamese, French accents.  I had spring rolls and mangoes on sticky rice.  Just right.

    Got to give everyone a head’s up on labyrinthitis.  Tom has a friend who visited him yesterday and may be dead from multiple myeloma in two months.  Whoa.  Paul and Sarah have purged their home, shined up and have neared the day of the first open house.  Changes.

    Stefan locked the keys in his car while x-skiing at Hyland Park.  He asked a cop if he could help.  The cop said sure and gave Stefan a ride down.  When he got out to work on Stefan’s car, he inadvertently locked his keys inside as well as Stefan who was in the back seat.  In a police car.  A locksmith had to be called for both cars.

    The trip in is always worth it, a chance to connect and renew the connection.  Got several happy birthdays.  Guys just don’t remember birthdays well.


    Aging Friends Woolly Mammoths 📎and tagged

  • Tilt-A-Whirl Day 3

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc     Full Wild Moon

    69 computers missing from nuclear weapons lab
    by JOAN LOWY, Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 5 mins ago

    Nothing classified.  So they said.  What else would you say?

    I’m now in day 2 after the tilt-a-whirl.  After sleeping last night, I swayed and so did the room when I got up.  Stomach flipped and flopped a bit.  My nap went by the way so I would not have to lie down and get back up.  As the day wore on, I began to feel better and better.

    Tomorrow we see one of our financial advisers.  Later, Kate will give a very sweet quilt she conceived and managed.  It’s full of hearts written with messages for Dick, a colleague struggling with multiple myeloma.

    Now, back to sleep and to reset my labyrinth to its whirl position.  Sigh.


    Aging

  • The Tilt-A-Whirl and the Labyrinth

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc    Full Wild Moon

    When I woke up yesterday, my right eye began to jiggle back and forth.  The room began to sway.  OMG as the kid’s say.  I stumbled to the bathroom, hitting a painting on the wall.  My insides tried to come outside and a cold, clammy sweat broke out all over my body.  Yikes!

    At first I thought.  Flu.  So I waited for everything to calm down.  Everything did not calm down.  That was I hollered for Kate.  “Kate!”

    She came and took in what was going on.  “Smile for me.”  she said.  A peculiar response unless your spouse has a medical degree.  I smiled my most winning smile.  “That’s a test for stroke.”  Oh.  I passed.   Thank god.

    “Where’s your blood pressure cuff?”  I keep one to take my pressure every now and then.  She got it.  122/62.  Strange for a guy with essential hypertension.  But good news to her.

    She had me diagnosed.  Labyrinthitis.  A viral infection of the inner ear that plays havoc with balance.  Each time I moved my body put me into state I had experienced in full only once before.  That time came when I found myself in an airplane bathroom during  high turbulence.  The stewardesses though I was having a heart attack.  Hell, so did I.  But not Kate.  She got me a wheel chair, we got off the plane and waited until I calmed down.

    This deal though did not allow the body to calm down.  I had one position that did not produce vertigo and nausea.  I stayed in for the whole day.

    Kate got me some fancy anti-emetics that helped a lot.  She said it would lift in a day and it has.  I can move around now, but slowly.  And, oh, by the way she also said, “You can’t drive for six weeks.”  Six weeks!

    Well, better grounded than dead, I always say.

    One more piece:  the Jungian in me jumped at the chance to read the article on Jewish labyrinths in the new Parabola that came the same day.  More on that later.


    Aging

  • Retirement Parties, Funerals, and Hospitals

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter   Waxing Wild Moon (a wonderful thin crescent turned upward toward Venus, the bright evening star)

    Went into Mary Broderick’s retirement party this afternoon.  A fine affair with the obligatory good noises and a gracious speech by Mary.

    It seemed, though, a bit formulaic, a ritual with parts:  the buffet with an assortment of snack-like food, people milling around wondering how that one there knows our Mary, tables set out with small candles (though in this case they were small lights made to look like flickering table candles), a receiving line.  It was clear Mary moved these folks to good ends.

    The flavor of the whole had a heavy dose of institutional Catholic.  The decor while updated (by Mary) had a non-ostentatious feel, but a studied one.  Mary mentioned the several Catholic organizations with whom  she worked, thanking them.  I wondered how someone of her vitality and intelligence could thrive within the often sclerotic bureaucracy of Catholicism.

    It all had a Northeast flavor, the old Northeast, a Catholic immigrant neighborhood where caring for each other was the norm.  A mix of good will, old ways and downhome charm.


    Aging Woolly Mammoths

  • Weather Boring

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter      New Moon (Wild)

    The weather here has gone into a stable, cold pattern.  Just not very interesting.  No storms. No new snow.  No new ice.  No winds.  No warmth.  Some way below freezing cold, but been there done that this year.  It’s not been terrible for me because I don’t have to get out of the house and drive to work every day, fight the cold.  I’ve not even felt cabin fever set in and it usually does for me about now.  Must be the internet and substantial projects here at home.

    Funny thing.  When I write about weather here, it’s more interesting than when I write on my Startribune weather blog.  When I get on the weather blog page, I feel the need to go all meteorological.  The comments I’ve gotten though have come when I’ve given a bit more commentary.  I just copied the paragraph above and stuck it in my latest post for the Trib.  Context matters.

    Going into Minneapolis today for Mary Broderick’s retirement party.  Retirement parties, funerals, hospital visits.  That’s the golden years.


    Aging Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • I Have Not Mentioned Adam

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    5  rises 29.92  NWN0  windchill 5  Winter

    Waning Wolf Moon

    A full day Permaculture workshop.  This guy, who takes a nap every day around 1pm, suffers in mid-day at day long events.  In addition, I find that my mind gets overloaded, takes in too much.  It’s not that I can’t absorb and eventually integrate the material, but the pace of absorption has changed over time.  I need space between intake and digestion.  A day’s worth of basically new material wears me out.

    When I came back, Kate asked me what I’d learned and I had troubling with a clear answer.  The exhaustion played a factor, yes, but the tumbling pieces, the changing paragdigms and the altogether novel still raced around inside, had not come down to a place of rest. Tomorrow, next week.  Better.

    Rest tonight.  Then I’ll work on Adam tomorrow.  I haven’t mentioned Adam yet, have I?  He’s taken over my thinking lately. What was it like, I wondered?  What was it like to wake up, come to consciousness, breathe that first breath? What happened in the mind and heart of Adam when God blew into his nostrils?


    Aging Great Work Myth and Story permaculture 📎and tagged

  • No Title

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    8  bar rises 30.11  0mph WNW  windchill 4   Samhain

    Full Moon of Long Nights    Day  8hr  47m

    I hear you saying often that you’re not turned on to politics. Well let me bring to bear the lessons of history. If you’re not turned on to politics the lesson of history is that politics will turn on you.—Ralph Nader, Countdown

    Yes, Nader is right, but I wish he’d take his own lesson to heart.  Quixotic campaigns that drain the vote of the left and left independents have had their day.  Until or if the left can mount a credible candidate we should support the Democrats.

    In this and many other ways I can tell I have reached old fogey status.  Twice in the last couple of weeks I’ve sent notes to the Sierra Club’s legislative committee that reveal, to me later, and probably to each member at the time, my more conservative approach.  With a $5+ billion budget deficit I think we should pitch our stuff in light of savings to the state budget.  Instead my colleagues queue up to decide which expletives are more appropriate for sulfide mining.

    Used to be me.

    We’ve had a cold December so far, considerably below normal.  This is the weather most of us here yearn for and miss as the winter’s have grown warmer.  The snow stays on the ground; the air is crisp.   Sleeping becomes a treat, a warm bear-in-the-den snuggle.

    I have finally caught up, again, with my various chores including all the outside ones.  That feels great, but it does mean I have to reorient my daily activities and I’m still in the in-between place about that.  Soon.


    Aging Politics Weather +Climate 📎and tagged

  • Hunkering Down

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    33 bar rises 29.77  N 6mph windchill 28  Samhain

    Waxing Crescent of the Dark Moon

    The October financial storm gathered under the Blood Moon.  Obama’s election comes during a waxing Dark Moon.  Just interesting is all I’m saying.

    The red car in the Sandhills of Nebraska.

    red-car-trip061450.jpgPicked up the red car from its most recent series of procedures.  This time it got new front constant velocity boots.  They protect the main bearing from wear caused by road debris.  Two new aluminum wheels should solve the slow leak problem the back tires have experienced.  Various bulbs and other smaller matters–oil change, too–thrown in for the trip.  Each visit it comes closer and closer to Theseus’s ship.

    Kate continues to suffer with her cervical vertebrae pinching a nerve.  She’s so stoic, so careful.  Right now she’s stopped taking the prednisone which helped because she wants the imaging studies to be unaffected.  She can’t find a way to position herself that doesn’t hurt.  Like hell.

    Got tools for protecting the trees in our new orchard.  Later today or tomorrow I’ll install them and begin to put down the black plastic and straw to kill weeds along the forest’s edge.  Much cooler weather now, but it is still a good time to do this kind of work.

    This week will be the last for working outside for a while.    I’m ready to hunker down and get some reading and writing done.


    Aging Family

  • Lunch Reminder

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    83  bar falls 29.97  4mph NE dew-point 64  sunrise 6:21  sunset 8:11 Lughnasa

    Waning Gibbous Corn Moon

    Took Kate out to lunch at Bennigans to say thanks for cooking Monday night.  While there we watched a group of wheel chair bound residents of the Anoka Care Center load onto a transit bus after lunch.  A reminder of the ravages aging can create.  A good prod to exercise and healthy diet.

    Didn’t get outside yet today and I have to get those daylilies moved so I can move the iris.


    Aging Family 📎and tagged