Yes, many of my blogmates are dropping off. I hesitate to email them in fear, you know? I'd rather they stay vibrant in my mind's eye.
I will officially change the name of my blog on my birthday, next Wednesday, where to my shock (and astonishment) I cross the bridge of eighty turns around the sun.
I am astonished because I lived for many years with a cigarette hanging from my mouth and a drink of rum and coke solidly in my fist. Both abandoned in humility and defeat nearly forty years ago - now that deserves an exclamation mark, what! Nick of time should be my mantra.
I hesitate to write here now and again as I feel I have nothing to talk about. There's always a lot, of course, but I am conscious of being one of those old drones who goes on about nothing at all.
I am busy (I use "busy" when busy is a full day because of One. Solitary. Task) formatting and editing the anthology which has been ongoing for four years now, my writing workshops sadly interrupted by Covid. Writing workshops, face to face, are, to me, essential elements of writing. They are stimulating, encouraging and inspiring and most of all, massively improving to the individual writing process.
But we are ready to roll now, the formatting has taken ten days due to the different platforms my writers were on and other issues like paragraphs tossed aside, fonts all over the place, spacing random, unessential capitalization, exclamation marks spattered like mud and, well, you get the picture.
I close with this photo I took a few days ago from the front of my building, which shows the lake on the right and the ocean on the left. Yes, I live in paradise and I need to remind myself of this when I whinge and whine.
and this gave me pause and then a huge laugh.
I love your view and am grinning at that final image. I hope to ruin my day myself - every day.
ReplyDeleteIt's intriguing how some people who've systematically abused their body with tobacco, alcohol, drugs, over-eating etc live to a ripe old age while others who've led supposed healthy lifestyles drop dead in middle-age. Anyway, happy 80th birthday!
ReplyDeleteThis hurt my heart, Nick as my healthier friends are all dead now. The ones who swam and ran and hiked hills every Sunday and watched their caloric intake. It's all so terribly random isn't it.
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I’ve never seen on of your post as being about nothing. My son-in-laws father will be 89 in October. When talking about him the family asks “who knew alcohol and tobacco were such good preservatives?” Happy Birthday!
ReplyDeletePreservatives indeed, Genie and thanks for your kind words. I was pickled solid for about twenty years. I blamed everything and everybody until I took ownership. It's truly odd how life turns out.
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I hear you on the fewer bloggers and fewer posts. Too sad. Keep writing and telling us how it's all unfolding and going. And congratulations on 80 years of living.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Delaine. I think aging blogs are important, those who have passed now, including our beloved Ronni, taught me so much. I remember Ernestine talking on everything falling apart at 78 when old bodily issues become large and unmanageable.
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There is the most amazing couple who has been attending our church for about a year now. They arrived in our very traditional pews because they loved the music in our service, and the church where they had attended for decades, and which they had even engineered the remodel, had changed to all contemporary music with more of a "club" feel. They are now 90 years old. Absolutely gorgeous people with the most wonderful outgoing personalities. I try my best to stop at their pew and chat with them before the service starts. They lift my spirits. I want more elderly people like them in my life. They inspire me.
Delete"Don't let others ruin your day...." that's going on a coffee mug! I love it.
ReplyDeleteI have days now where one major chore is all that gets done, especially if that one chore is changing the sheets. Dragging down that fourth corner on the fitted sheet is harder than it used to be.
When you say bloggers are dropping off, I think of my best days when I would blog maybe three times a week but it seems that I've said pretty much all I have to say after 15+ years and manage to scratch out some bit of trivia a couple of times a month.
ReplyDeleteHappy, happy birthday to you! Will you be celebrating? or maybe I should say HOW will you be celebrating?
I wish you good company and great cake and whatever else makes you happy!
Ah a kindred spirit. I'm celebrating with family only, my wish. My 75th was a surprise event (I'm not a fan of crowds and endless gifts and putting on Nice Face for a cast of forty) and I am asking for donations to World Food Programme and no gifts. Millions are starving while we eat cake. The irony does not escape me. And I don't need trinkets.
DeleteThanks for the birthday wishes!
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The Editing must be very difficult: and Time consuming !
ReplyDeleteyou Rather set yourself up for this reply!
...........Once seen at Full size, the photo is gorgeous.
Thank you Andrew. We are so close to rolling the anthology it excites me greatly!
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I felt the same about my age when I turned 83 earlier this summer and realized that it now has been 30 years since I stopped smoking. I had to wait for the Nicorette gum to become available. It was such a horrible addiction. Anyhow, happy birthday in advance, should I forget to come back here for the real day. As I said, I'm 83 and must be forgiven for any forgetfulness. Have fun on your birthday!
ReplyDeleteOh, Inger, your reply here resonated with me so I clicked over to your blog and was delighted with what you had written and I see you are down the road from me a bit. I'm in Fresno and had another blogging friend in Tehachapi. I cannot reply on your blog as it only allows Blogger accounts to do so, so I am hoping you come back here and see this. I will look for your posts here and try to keep in touch with your blog. Delaine Zody
DeleteThank you Inger, your greetings are taken to heart and welcome to my blog world. I quit cigs cold turkey, the Alan Carr book and grimly kicking my two pack a day habit. It was so horrific I decided never to go through it again. And I stuck to that.
DeleteAnd I had kicked booze about two years before. A lot of wake up calls and I do believe I wrote about it on here many moons ago.
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Spammed again, sigh.
ReplyDeleteWhat happened River?
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Editing! nuff said! Thanks for the laugh, and good job on the quitting. I quit smoking now over 37 years ago, and finally! am not missing it any more. Happy upcoming birthday, I'll hopefully remember on the day, but I feel as old as you are :( (18 years younger in fact).
ReplyDeleteYou're a baby Charlotte. Thanks for the good wishes. I cherish all of them.
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Where has all that time gone? Haven't been here until a few months ago....between Covid and my return to breast cancer after 20 yrs.....I was a bit of a mess. But so delighted to have still found you so I'm selfish - don't go away. I always loved St. John's and had a friend who was born in Newfoundland have a special spot in my heart. Happy to know you are having another birthday and will enjoy a low-key celebration. Many more good days to come. Wishing you all the very best. Hugs from the base of the mini-mountain in Maine - Regina.
ReplyDeleteSo good to hear from you Regina, I do hope you are feeling much better, an awful shock having the return of a disease you had thought beaten. The uncertainty of life. I honestly thought I would never come back from a few years back, I could hardly move. But life is full of surprises. Thanks for your lovely wishes.
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Delaine, I came back here for some reason, something I never usually do. It was so nice to see your comment and think I will write a post about restricting comments to bloggers only. I guess I set it up like that when I first started blogging, maybe thought it was safest. I would like to see what other bloggers think and do about it.
ReplyDeleteYour posts are always interesting, never about nothing. Though, as an only occasional blogger now, my excuse is that I feel I don't have much to say that would be interesting, and what I could write would set the page on fire - best to hold my noise! BTW, I finally got hold of Ghost in the Throat - looking forward to reading it. And I wonder if you've read The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning? A small, humourous, but also serious book about freeing ourselves from the load of material things we accumulate over a lifetime. It has greatly inspired me to speed up the process of letting go. Good on you with the upcoming publishing of your book! Cheers!
ReplyDeleteThat was me, Molly.
ReplyDeleteMolly your posts, I assure you, are always so very good. I am so disappointed I don't see more of them. But then, like you, our energy is limited and needs to be shepherded. I have bad spells of zero energy, much of it used for the endless rounds of medical stuff, lab work and specialist appointments. So little left over at the end of the day. But lately I have felt more like my "old" self, the one in her early seventies still doing the 10 mile races. Not that I'm there, lol. But even small step days are a bonus.
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: )
DeleteSuper blog
ReplyDeletePlease read my post
ReplyDeleteThanks for the photo and then the laughs at that last bit, I hope you don't stop blogging. You have never been boring. Well done on your forty years of sobriety and happy birthday,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much e, we definitely enjoy each other's postings.
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"one of those old drones who goes on about nothing at all."
ReplyDeleteI think this about myself all the time, and I'm only 64!
I've been at the lake for the past week, and when I'm here I try to read through at least one of my old journals. This year it's been journals from 2001 to 2003, and it's often like reading someone else's journal because I've totally forgotten things that I'm so glad now to be reminded of. I often fear I drone on about nothing in my blog, and yet faithful longtime readers come back for more. You can say the same. That should tell us both something! I never, ever find your thoughts to be uninteresting. I love hearing you. -Kate
Darn! Just wrote a paragraph-long comment and had it disappear. So irritating. Suffice it to say, you don't "drone." I'm always interested in what you have to say. Keep on, please. I find in my own blog that the more dull I think what I'm writing is, the more responses I get. Always surprising. -Kate
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