Author: Peg

That would be The Starter Husband. He put up with a lot.  Thanks, Chuck.(To the best of my knowledge he is still alive and with his wife in North Carolina.)

Today, I continued on the 7th Anniversary Old Bat’s Cave Cleaning. Disposed of pillowcases today. No reason to have 10 pillowcases when the Asylum provides the bed linens – and changes the sheets.

Also, dug the hair out of the desk chair casters. And, took the dust buster apart and cleaned all of its dusty dirty parts. Think that is something else that Mr C used to do and that hasn’t been done since he died. Tomorrow, I plan to attack the rest of  “The Office”. 

Meanwhile – back at the wild child garden box.

I plan to eat it right off the vine. Soon.

Really happy with the Origami Dojo. It is a perfectly delightful place to sit and fold paper. 

Today, I continued my 7-year anniversary cleanup. Today’s focus was the bathroom. True confession. I had some soap that had gotten moldy. That’s pretty lame. What was even lamer: I tried to figure out how to salvage said soap. Fortunately, sanity returned and the moldy soap went into the trash.  

The WiFi died this afternoon. (As did some of the house electricity and the house phones) This seriously disrupted a lot of essential things. Things like hot hors d’oeuvre with cocktails this afternoon. We had to subsist on cheese, crackers, and chips.

But, I was actually happy to have the WiFi off in the Old Bat Cave and the electricity ON. Because I was able to see what Alexa would do with my lights when WiFi was down. Happily, Alexa was able to control all the devices and lights using just its ZigBee mesh network. I knew Alexa was supposed to be able to do that, but I had never actually tested it. 

Why you might want to reconsider using stock photos.

I got an email today from my hospital trying to get me to come to a lecture about “Fall Safety For Seniors”. Fair enough. They used this cheery picture of perky diverse “old people”. 

But wait. I have seen these very same old people before. Where? On the Asylum’s corporate website. On the header/banner.

Most likely only a photographer would notice this. But… if I were considering moving to The Asylum I would wonder: What exactly do your real people look like? 

The hospital was sending an invite to a free lecture. They can use stock. But, The Asylum expects you to drop some serious money as a “buy-in”.  Never mind that we all know that actual old people don’t look like that! And that the stock image adds zero to the webpage. 

The Asylum is two buildings. The Old (ca 1987) building 12 stories and The New (ca 2008) 15 stories. I live on the 11th floor of The Old building. 8 years ago, when Carlton was still alive and I signed up for the waiting list I was sure I would be living in The New building. But 7 years ago, I moved into The Old building.  My little apartment is all that I need. And most days it is all that I want.

Speaking of the Old Bat Cave, I spent most of the day getting the Origami Dojo back in order after the butterflies. Also put on different bed covering and rotated the mattress. Figure that after 7 years it was time to do that. I believe that Carlton would rotate the mattress from time to time. “They” say that my mattress is really old and should be replaced. Well, it is old. At least 50 years. But, damn that mattress has a lot of memories. I’ll be lucky to spend the next 7 years on “Carlton’s side”.  

And thinking about Aibo.  

Finished up the butterfly project today. And, it got hung up in the Art Center. It could be better. But finished and installed is better than better. If you know what I mean. 

The art teacher did a modified version of the butterfly project on the “memory care unit” this morning and apparently, it was a success. The good thing about that is that she can always do the program again and everyone will have forgotten that “we just did butterflies”. 

Tentatively planning on doing an origami bat class in late October.  Bats are harder that this really easy butterfly. I really like people to be successful. So, I need to be a better “teacher”. 

Tomorrow I have to get the origami dojo back in shape. Do some bill paying. And get out for a walk.

The class made 156 butterflies. I will string them up tomorrow and they will be flying by Friday. I will most likely remove a couple of strings that I made so I can use all of the ones that the class made. Because wasn’t that the idea? Then I’ll have some butterflies that I can hang in my own window. 

As soon as the class was over, I hit the bar! 

Note to the young: Be sure to move into an old folks asylum that has a bar. You’ll need it. Trust me on this one. 

Here is the butterfly video again.

This was from my Sept 5, 2011 post.  Not a hell of a lot has changed since then. And certainly not for the better. 

Went to The Asylum’s indoor white tablecloth picnic for lunch today. Food was as OK as steam table burgers can be. But the company was great. 

Origami Butterfly class tomorrow.  I will be surprised if anyone comes.  But, my neighbor and origami haumāna will help me get the 390-strung butterflies down to the art center. We have 492 residents. And I have 30 that haven’t been strung. And, if no one comes we can just finish the folding ourselves. And, if anyone comes she can help teach.

I think this means that the 3 remaining strings will need to have 34 butterflies each. Do the math.

13 x 30 =  390
 3  x 34 =  102
total           492

Confession: I tried compression sox. They make my legs feel better. So, I guess I might be stuck with this old lady “fashion” accessory. 

Be Very Afraid. The Table of the Dead is empty. And you know how nature feels about vacuums. Sometimes it is filled to overflowing.  But, no one really expects to get out of here alive. I want my death announcement to say “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”. Or maybe the Bitch is Dead. 

I am very fond of the single green bean vine that is prancing over Ray the Rosemary. The beanstalk had a perfectly fine pole but decided to climb all over Ray. (Maybe I’ll get a green bean!)

And, that’s about it from the  Asylum on this last Sunday of summer. 

Found a penny today. Picked up the penny. Carlton always picked up pennies. I always figure that any penny I see is just Carlton stopping by to say howdy and to be sure I am picking up pennies. 

So, it is still pretty dark when I get up. But, it’s still a nice time for my  “fast” walk. Got it down to 16.4 minutes to do a mile. Think that is about flat out for me. My “big block” is 1.3 miles. So it takes a little over 20 minutes. 

Did a little personal bookkeeping, folded a nice origami box, returned some stuff I took from the Art Center for the Butterfly project, and took pictures of birds and bugs. 

And, that is not a bad thing. On the other hand, the day isn’t over yet. 

I did little stuff that needed doing today. That’s it.

But, sunflowers are fun.  

Another thing that is fun is getting on email lists on your travels. I just love getting my weekly email from the Norwegian RR. Haven’t a clue what it says. But, I still like it. And I get emails from hotels that I stayed in. Also a Doc-in-the-Box operation in London where I got a covid test. It’s just fun stuff to delete. 

September 1. Now I can say: I am going to Kona next month. Never mind that I am going on October 31. Next month just sounds nice. 

A lot of walking today. Well, a lot of walking for an old woman. About 3 miles. And, I added in a little extra uphill. In Kona, the grocery stores are all seriously up mauka. The good news is that it is all downhill back to the lodgings with the groceries. 

 

Headed off to the dentist this morning. Back to the old neighborhood. It was a lovely morning. Got the 6:30 bus and was back to The Asylum in time for breakfast. 

It was one of those late summer days with just a tiny suggestion of better weather ahead. Maybe even windows open weather. 

More bees. 

It doesn’t take much to amuse me these days! (The bees were all taken with my really old macro lens in manual mode.)

If I want to take more interesting pictures then I must to go somewhere more interesting!