Just call me Froggi... Hopping thru my days with the ramblings, musings, & thoughts of my life
A recent blog post from a friend reminded me about high school reunions. I’ve attended two – my 25th and my 40th. The 25th was a resounding success, a comeback for a very shy student. I got to attend with my husband/soulmate (found after two divorces).
I’ve always said I couldn’t possibly be a senior because I was never middle-aged. Middle-age was always at least ten years older than me. Well, that argument went out the window when I hit 70. There’s something about being a septuagenarian that changes your perspective.
I saw a photo of a friend zip-lining and it struck me that I’ve done some things in my lfe that I never expected to do.
As I look back over the past over seventy years, I realize my priorities have changed and there are some things I just won’t do anymore.
As I watched an action movie on Netflix the other night, I realized something. Most movies don’t thrill me anymore. There is a lot of “sameness” to them and I get the “I’ve seen this multiple times before” feeling.
A fellow blogger posted this and it got me thinking. How much attention do you pay to the dates stamped on food packaging? Do you find the various labels confusing? Will you toss out any food that has passed whatever date shows up? Or will you go ahead and consume it if it still looks and smells okay?
A post I read a while back rang a bell for me. I tend to like routine, comfortable things, and simple foods.
Our school did annual eye exams although I’m not sure at what age/grade they started. I do remember 6th grade. I was told I was near-sighted and needed glasses. Horrors! I felt ugly enough with buck teeth and dark natural circles under my eyes. But when I got them, I suddenly realized there was a clock on the wall in the front of the classroom. I’d never noticed it before. That meant I could sit in the back of the room instead of the front row and my shy self liked that.
Did you know that not all hallucinations are visual? Neither did I, until I experienced the phenomenon. But let’s take a step back in time.
I came to Florida right after high school graduation, at age 17. Everywhere I looked there were the old people. Of course at my age, anyone over 40 was old, including my parents.
I spent over thirty years in Florida, not all at one time, but interspersed with job related moves to other states. But there were always the old people. Shuffling and hobbling along, wearing outdated clothes, buried under big hats and in many layers of clothing.
I was 55 when I learned to ride my own and it was a rocky start. I had never considered learning to ride, preferring to be a passenger. But when my husband was diagnosed with cancer, he spent the six weeks of radiation time convincing me I needed to learn. If he didn’t make it, I’d have family to ride with. At that time, both brothers and both their wives, a cousin and her husband, another cousin, my son, as well as my husband’s nephew all rode.
Throughout life our priorities change. When we are children, we just want to be adults. Then, suddenly we ARE adults. Careers, family, and our status in life drive us. We strive for being the best in the areas that are important to us. Some choose careers first, some choose family first, some just survive. We each define our own “best life”, choosing through the decades as we age what we perceive to be our first priority.
I’m a baby boomer, through and through. My pre-teen years in the 50s brought a love of doo-wop music as well as the classics from Rick Nelson, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, Frankie Avalon, Everly Brothers, Dion & The Belmonts, Del Shannon, and many others.
Last week, I talked about our rings. Now a bit about our wedding…
When we met, we were both widowed from twenty year marriages and those were not our first marriages. We had both done the “official” type wedding and we wanted to keep this one low key.
I’ve noticed I am much more impatient as time passes. anytime I am waiting for the coffee to drip, the microwave to ding, the TV show to load, I tap my foot, I count, I pace. Why is this? I don’t remember being so impatient when I was younger.
In 1985, when my late husband and I were married, we had next to no money. I charged my JC Penney card with the purchase of his nugget ring (which I still have, resized for me to wear on my right hand) and I wore my late mother’s wedding set (which I have passed on to my oldest daughter).
As a teenager, I had diary. I don’t think I used it all that much but I had friends who wrote down everything that happened every day. What a fun read that would be now. All my high school memory items were lost in a move many years ago including my scrapbook and diary.
Comfort. Comfortable. Comforting. Yes, I’m still stuck on the letter C.
For some, it’s food. Ice cream, cakes, a favorite candy or beverage. Pizza. Meatloaf. Lasagna. Something that brings about positive memories.
I thought about this incident last night before I fell asleep. On a past cruise, a younger woman we met (maybe in her 40s) said this to me after meeting us and chatting a while. “I don’t mean to be mean, but I thought you were his mother.” Um, really?
Having been in two heavily blended families, I have ended up with several names as a grandmother.
It’s never easy losing a loved one. Aunt Fran wasn’t an aunt by blood, she was a foster sister to my mother. Her parents, Reatha and Thornton Burns, took in three foster girls in their teens as companions to their daughter Frances.
The thing I dreaded the most was taking my younger brothers to the movies with me. It was in a neighboring town and I used my babysitting money to go. I was maybe twelve or thirteen, so they would have been six and nine. I remember whining that my other friends didn’t have to bring their brothers with them. Needless to say, I made them sit far away from me.
I tend to be somewhat compulsive in certain areas. Am I OCD or just trying to keep control? Perfectionism is a sign of needing to control things. I used to have two recurring nightmares. In one, I would go completely blind unexpectedly.
It was New Year’s Eve, our tenth anniversary. Where were we? Why weren’t we celebrating together? Here’s the true story.
While living in Colorado Springs in the late 1990s, my late husband, Mike, and I became good friends with several other couples around our neighborhood. Several of the husbands were members of a local four-wheeling club and mine joined them on several outings. Back woods camping, no shaving, lots of beer and tall tales, or so I suppose.
My body seems to have an affinity to crooked seams. I remember wearing stockings with seams (many years ago) and it was always difficult to get them straight. Now it’s my newer leggings with seams. I pull them on straight, I swear I do, but next thing I know, they’re crooked.
My mother died from a heart attack in 1985. She never met my late husband Mike nor my current husband, Stu, but I hope she is watching over us and that she knows how wonderful my life has been. She was 61 when she died, I’ve outlived her by almost four years now.
Guess what? It didn’t bother me! Nope, not one little bit. In fact, I felt proud that I’d made it. While I still have a couple of years to live longer than my father, I’ve way surpassed my mother who died at sixty-one.
As a little girl, I loved to play-act. I was the only girl in the immediate neighborhood with two brothers and five other boys around the same age. We were all middle-class, both higher and lower, but one family definitely was in the upper level. Their father worked in Boston as stock broker, driving out on Sunday night and not returning until Friday night.
