Yes, even the Pope texts. More and more mature folk are texting.
And so it was only a matter of time.... Yes, this came in an email. But it is so good, so good. Creator unknown. Enjoy.
Since more and more Seniors are texting and tweeting there appears to be a need for a STC (Senior Texting Code). If you qualify for senior discounts this is the code for you:
ATD: At The Doctor's BFF: Best Friend Farted BTW: Bring The Wheelchair BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth CBM: Covered By Medicare CGU: Can't get up CGIP: Can't get IT up CUATSC: See You At The Senior Center DWI: Driving While Incontinent FWB: Friend With Beta Blockers FWIW: Forgot Where I Was FYI: Found Your Insulin GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low! GHA: Got Heartburn Again HGBM: Had Good Bowel Movement IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On? LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out LOL: Living On Lipitor LWO: Lawrence Welk's On OMMR: On My Massage Recliner OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas. PIMP: Pooped in my pants ROFL... CGU: Rolling On The Floor Laughing... And Can't Get Up SGGP: Sorry, Gotta Go Poop TTYL: Talk To You Louder WAITT: Who Am I Talking To? WTFA: Wet The Furniture Again WTP: Where's The Prunes? WWNO: Walker Wheels Need Oil GLKI (Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking In)
Now that we have the niceties out of the way, let me say that I think my brain is dissolving.
In case you didn't know, when you become peri-menopausal, your brain and body start to dissolve, mainly from exposure to the inexplicably high levels of natural gas you emit.
In fact, every time I bend, I remember that there is more than one meaning to the British signs along the trains: "Mind the gap." For real, there is a "Facts of Life" episode for every mid-life woman wherein she earns the nickname "Tootie."
I hardly recognize myself anymore. My kids want the mom back who never cooked well but did not ruin bowls of cereal as she prepared them. Currently, the only thing I am able to cook is marshmallows over a campfire and M&Ms in bowls because they do not require milk to be poured over them. In other words, if you have to add or mix an ingredient in any food, it is already too complicated for me.
My kids miss the mom who remembered their birthdays. They want someone who not only remembers a date but most importantly, buys a gift. Or two.
They want a mom who remembers whether or not they have had wisdom teeth extracted.
But apparently, that mom is no more. For I did indeed forget to buy the birthday gift two weeks in a row, and I had to confess to my son I could not remember if he had oral surgery, for Pete's sake.
Don't even get me started about senior pictures. I forgot I had a third child until about 20 minutes ago.
Recently, I sat sorting a box of beads I'm using for my new hobby: jewelry making.
Stringing beads. That screams "nursing home."
Anyway, as all four or three of my kids sat around me, I reminsced about when they were little.
"Just about every day, I read you this sweet little storybook called, 'We Help Mommy Every Day.' Do you remember that book? It began, 'We help Mommy every day. We help her in the morning, as soon as we get up.'"
It goes on to chronicle a day full of chores made lighter by little helping hands--sort of glorified child labor, and I was indoctrinating you, hoping against hope that you would think it was the epitome of both fun and goodness to dust a table and sweep a floor. Do you remember Bobby and Martha?"
My beads plunked into their compartments without a response from my kids. Unless you count expressions like this as a response:
So later, I was in the kitchen pretending to fix their lunch, and they were hanging out with me. Not helping, mind you, but hanging out, which is almost as good.
My son, Jordan, said to me, "Don't worry, Mom. When you are in the nursing home, we will come visit you every day. I will even read to you. Do you know what I will read?"
And then he launched into a familiar sing-song reading voice mimicking mine from so long ago:
"We give our kids our money every day. We give them our money as soon as we get up ...."
Oh, the orneriness. But what he doesn't know is that as clever as that brainwashing plan is, it won't work. Because I will not remember that I have kids by then - so who would I give my money to???"
In fact, I even went to college, but I was busy learning how to roll my stockings, wave a pennant and have my hair bobbed like the Flappers instead of learning that silly technology stuff that I would never need.
So my personal learning curve for anything technologically new is ... indescribably slow. Think about what the polar opposite of warp speed might look like, and there you have an image of me learning a new gadgety thing. Continents move faster.
So my 23 year-old daughter has been helping me every painful step of the way to get set up and prettied up on the new phone.
She has about three hairs left in her head from stress-pulling.
Here's the short list of my problems and complaints with which she has had to deal after I tried first and then burst into paroxysms of pseudo-swearing:
Fumbling hands that hit the side buttons all the time, causing the phone to speak out loud. I hate this. I do not want a talking phone--there is no need for a phone to speak up under any circumstances. "Shut UP, phone."
Font that is too dark/too small.
Having to remember to press the red function key before it will do half of the things on the keyboard.
Having to re-do all of my contacts because they wouldn't transfer from my old phone.
Putting contacts into groups only to discover I'm allowed a mere 10 friends or relatives in any group. Is this some kind of rule, that a person can't have more than 10 people in any group in life? There's no way the Waltons could have used the "family" group on this phone, let alone the Duggers.
Switching from vertical to horizontal keypad.
Sliding the front of the phone back to reveal the keyboard only to hit various buttons that change things I don't want changed.
Figuring out a ring tone for each family member, as if I'm going to be able to remember who is attached to which tone.
Finally, some real fun: getting LOST wallpaper and ring tone installed.
I'm serious--getting me set up on this phone took an entire Saturday that my daughter can never recapture!
But it's all put together now, and my phone--she's a "beaut." It's racy flamenco red, small, lightweight--nothing like that gray brick I inherited from a family member about 7 years ago. I would take that old one out of my purse and people would stare at it and then at me as if I had taken a banana out of my purse and tried to text on it.
But now, when my spicy little phone rings, I hold it up high, loud and proud, like that dancer in the picture up there, not ashamed for anyone to see!
OK, well, I'm at least current now, and I do enjoy hearing the LOST theme.
Next step: Complete Ipod mastery!
So let's be honest here: How do you deal with learning new things?
Welcome to cawfee tawlk. I'm your host, Linda Richman. Er, Crow. Tawlk amongst yaselves; I'll give you a tawpic: Weekends. Discuss.
Ah, the weekend. Allow me to Back it up, Barkus.
Meandering Moment: Pre-retirement, my dad was a trucker. He drove an 18-wheeler, which meant loading and unloading at docks was a huge part of his life. One of his closest co-workers was a guy named Don Barkus, whom I believe is now passed on.
When my dad would talk in his sleep, even years after retirement, one of his most common exclamations, and I do mean exclamations in the sense of !!!!, was a phrase oft-heard at the docks:
"Back it up, Barkus!"
which completely cracks me up and causes me to look for opportunities to say it.
Thus, "Back it up, Barkus," has become synonymous with A) Physically step back, Dude B) Rewind mentally/verbally.
Where was I? Oh, backing up the weekend, Barkus.
I fell down Thursday night. It was bedtime, and I was walking through my fam room to the one step up which leads to a short hall which leads to the bedroom, when the step reached up and wrenched my ankle, which caused me to do what this model does in the video, although I wasn't carrying a watering can. And by the way, I feel sorry for model Kamilia Wawrzyni, one, because of the way I'm sure people butcher her name and B) There is actually water in that can (Why?) and III) That had to hurt.
So all weekend I have been dealing with "water can ankle."
But I didn't let it stop me from running, and Friday I ran 5.5 miles + walked a mile home. When I collapsed in the grass of my neighbor in Halteman Village, it may actually have been one of the proudest moments of my long life.
Jorge's flights from Ft. Lauderdale and Atlanta were both delayed, so I had one more evening by myself which I spent with Barbara Stanwyck.
On Saturday, I went to the beautiful wedding of the daughter of my friend, Diane, whom I've written about before who is battling cancer:
Saturday evening, my father went into the hospital with chest pains, and I stayed there until 1:00 AM when they admitted him. I went to bed at 2 AM, rose at 7 AM, went to church, then took my mom back out to the hospital and sat with them most of the afternoon. (I knew via staff he wasn't in apparent danger or even in severe discomfort. The chest pains come and go.)
Dad is 87 and is in remarkable health for his age. So far, all of the test results are good, don't think he had a heart attack. Monday morning at 8:00, cardiolyte Dip and Echocardiogram. Say a little prayer. He's such a sweet man and so incredibly hard of hearing.
Final note on the weekend--Pet peeve list addition: Docs with foreign accents who will NOT speak up nor slow down when speaking to obviously deaf elderly people. What is up with this?? Where is the bedside manner? I kept telling the hospitalists how hard of hearing Dad is, and they would repeat the question with the same speed and volume. It was incredibly rude and ridiculous.
Dad would stare blankly at the doc, then turn his head to Mom for help who is also hard of hearing and not accustomed to foreign accents, who would either answer incorrectly or look to me, then I would speak VERY LOUDLY to demonstrate what you have to do for him to hear you, and then the doc would say, "OK," and then ask the next question in the frustrating manner. We did this absurd scene over and over. I was a loose cannon by 1:00 AM.
I was ready to shout, "Back it up, Barkus, and turn it up, too!"
This is one of my best friends, whom I shall call "M," except her real name is much cuter (and longer) than that, and it sounds like "Madwoman," which I often call her. Amongst M's personality traits is a devotion to truth and knowledge. In a practical everyday way, this dogged determination shows up in the form of helpful email links but also in the debunking of urban legends by her checking with Snopes to see what's what. So, for instance, if I get a message forwarded from someone which claims that sleeping with a fan blowing on you all night will kill you, I just wait a couple of seconds to see if a follow-up message from M appears with the text, "False. [Inserts Snopes link.]" And this pretty much happens daily. Because people are not going to be fooled under M's watch. It's a mission.
And if you say to her in a nonchalant way, "Gee. I wonder [fill in blank with something like "Has Rupert Everett had plastic surgery?"] she gets her phone and Googles whatever topic you just wondered about and tells you the answer. Because people are not going to be befuddled under M's watch. It's a mission. Because, you know, knowledge and truth, etc., etc.
Two quirky traits we share are that we count a lot [random things, like number of steps from here to there or how many seconds at a red light] and we each fear that we will be detained somewhere like a doctor's office waiting room or the airport without a useful endeavor to pass the time, like debunking people's emails or having a book to read. She likes Sudoku; I like crosswords. We both have Yorkies, except hers, Petey, pictured at left, is a gigantic Yorkie who backs up into you to give you his version of "the cold shoulder," but it's actually the cold backside.
So the other day, I received this graphic from M, sharing straightforward, albeit depressing info about aging. Why she forwarded this, I did not know, unless she was compelled to make sure we would not be under any false presumptions that aging might be ... bearable. Because people are not going to wear rose colored glasses under M's watch. It's a mission.
Read these stats, and then I'll tell you why it's depressing.
It's depressing because I don't know about you, but by these determinants, I'm already old, and I have apparently been old for many years! This is my life on a graph, people! I mean, all that's missing is "1 hour per day plucking chin hairs and looking for the rheumatiz' medicine."
So I have Madwoman to thank for this, who just had to make sure I was in the know about Expectations vs. Reality regarding growing old. Wouldn't want to be wearing rose-colored bifocals, that's for sure. Makes me want to give her the Petey back-up!
Does this graphic represent your life at this point?
