Get Out Into That Lovely Fresh Air/Sunday Selections

Some words come back to haunt you. I remember hearing my mother say this to us kids as we mooched around the house, getting under her feet, asking when dinner was ready, whether we were going to get ice cream tonight; there was nothing to do. And on and on.

I religiously passed these words onto my kids. The fresh air mantra. Was it lovely? Did it change your mood? Did you feel better afterwards?

Those questions remain unanswered. Still are.

Now I find I am at the receiving end of such advice from Daughter Number One.

And oh my dear god, it's so irritating.

She drills right down into it too, to make it all worse.

"It will do you a world of good, mum, staying indoors is not good, get outside. Go somewhere."

The following day, or days, she goes at it like this:

"Did you get out? How was it?" or conversely "Why not?"

I am back to being the defensive seven-year-old again, defending my knitting, my writing, my happy indoor life.

It's difficult to defend an aging position on life. I talked to another kindred spirit in the building. She's like me, content with her own company, her books and her knitting and old movies. She also bakes and I get to share in her largesse. Our daughters are the ones who turn our hard-earned little enjoyments into a major defect in our characters.

A few Sunday Selections, random photos from the past:

What I called "Golden Hour" on the beach near where I used to live.

This was taken from the front garden of my house.

I love this little bit of fog in the distance, hiding the ocean. This shot was taken from the front of my building.

Blessed

In many ways, I am blessed. For instance, I never remember being bored. In all my years (83) I have never, ever been bored.

My old school, St. Aloysius School, Cork. Much enhanced and enlarged since my time.

The science lab, in my time. Unheard of in any other girls' school in that era in Cork.

I remember being close to bored with the most appalling math teacher when I was around sixteen. I got myself a small drawing pad and sketched away quietly until one day she caught me and told me I had to stand in the back of the classroom facing the wall for the rest of the term. So, in between wiggling my bum to amuse the other students, I went to the headmistress to complain about the appalling teaching methods of this particular teacher who merely read to us from math books. The headmistress, a brilliant woman, listened carefully and within a week introduced six of us math students to the math teacher at the local boys' school who agreed to teach us outside of school hours.

I had always enjoyed math and under the tutelage of this challenging teacher, the six of us shone. I will never forget her vision for us ("the best," she called us) in an era when girls were educated to be good little housewives and mothers. We all went on to establish professional careers and toasted her memory at our 50th class reunion in 2011.

Maybe I have a rich interior life, but I truly enjoy my own company. I hear so many boredom complaints where I live now and I've observed some, when I pass in daylight hours, sitting staring at the TV screens in the stillness of their apartments.

I knit, I write, I read, I engage online, I limit my activism now, not by choice but by my bodily limits. I write in protest and complaint to the government on many issues. I am enraged at the treatment of seniors who are forgotten and dismissed, mainly by a government hoping they will lie down and just be quiet.

There are never enough hours in my day. I try to incorporate learning something new every day. Today it's my new Fitbit; my old one died a slow and lingering death. I loved it. This one is not user-friendly. At least elder-user friendly. Too many steps to access vital data, too many ads thrown at me about upgrading. All I need are my sleep patterns, my steps, my heart rate (iffy old heart here) and BP (likewise). Simple, right? Not to the new impressive sci-fi looking fitbit. So many steps to reach the info I need. But it's very pretty right?

Grim Reaper Time.

I don't think this is going to be a morbid post. Just merely a reflection of the last few months. As I age, I lose many people I care about or have good memories with.

In the last 4 weeks alone I have lost 3, 2 of my personal friends and one a dear blog friend many of you know.

I have written about the first two and not about the blog friend.

Joanne was known to many of us, she was a creative and an activist. She was brave and committed to family, raising her grandchildren, carefully balancing her budget, and making life decisions which inspired many of us. Particularly when she moved into an assisted senior living apartment with her big loom and her cowardly cat. I remember we wrote to each other about that particular transition when I was faced with a similar conundrum of selling up my beloved property and moving into an independent senior living building.

Her voice was loud when she saw injustice of any kind and she had many health challenges. She bought herself another car but then didn't hesitate to admit the mistake of this and promptly sold it. She continued working that loom and marketing her wonderful towels (I have a few and gifted quite a few) which are everlasting. Her struggles were tough in the last couple of years and blogging became sporadic.

She was blessed, as I am, with a caring daughter who watched out for her and helped when necessary.

These caring daughters should, honestly, get medals. I know her Beth (she always called her "My Beth" ) was a huge comfort to her.

I will miss you dear Joanne. I always looked forward to your posts and your adventures in the markets where you sold your goodies.

A bright star for many of us as you navigated your challenges, your hopes and your dreams.

"Rest Aisy" as we say back home. You were one of a kind.

Is Blogging Dead?

 I wonder about that. I look at my RIP list on my sidebar of bloggers now gone to the great beyond and am staggered at their number.

A few of us oldies are left. Many have also fled to Substack and I am giving that some serious thought. I do subscribe to a few, mainly in the political sphere so I don't feel so alone in this frightening stage of planet earth with AI running amok (rogue they call it) and threatening all human existence. And of course, while ignoring the only crisis that matters: climate change.

I live out here on a remote island which most have forgotten. We're off the beaten track and kinda hard to get to, which is a good thing if you talk to any Newfoundlander. 

I posted a photo of a scene close to my home in St. John's last night on Bluesky, and within a half hour it had 1,000 likes; this morning it was cracking 3,000. I let the photographer know, as I had given him full credit for the photo. Here it is:

This was taken at sunrise by Greg Follett looking out over our gorgeous harbour. The comments were full of longing. And I get it. I made one of the biggest changes in my life when I moved here nearly 25 years ago. And I have never regretted it.

I look down the live list of bloggers and fewer are posting. I remember even five or six years ago allowing nearly an hour to catch up on all my bloggers and now it's maybe 10 minutes. 

Anyone out there have thoughts on this?

Your giggle of the day👇👇 

And another one of President Connolly of Ireland giving the Felon the smallest desk she could find and having the entire press corps photograph him. 👇👇

An Odd Kind of Romance.

I was in a cafe today and jotted down the outline of this as I sipped on my cappuccino. I often get the writing urge in cafes when I'm by myself, hence I carry this wee blank journal in my bag.

I noticed D long before I actually met him. He was on the periphery of my life, as it were. He was, as my mother would have it, a ladies' man. We've all known them. He was attractive - a Liam Neeson look-alike from the North of Ireland, the "wrong side". A few years younger than I. 

The type of man I have always avoided, but would get snared in by the odd one. Men like that would view me as a challenge, my girlfriends would point out. I tended to believe them. D was a player. Big time. He went through my outer circle of female friends like a dose. 

I watched all this like it was a B movie. Some films you want to turn off but remain riveted. It's so damn awful and so predictable. He dropped women like flies. Their broken hearts kicked to the curb as he moved on to the next victim. I was in my latish fifties, he in his earlyish fifties when in a gentlemanly fashion he asked me to partake of coffee with him. I looked around me, thinking it was someone else he was talking with but no, it was the mere me he was addressing. 

Of course, I was intrigued. He was handsome, well-spoken, a gentleman but I had absolutely no intention of ever being a notch on his belt. 

What followed was two years of the most unusual relationship I have ever had. It turned out he was a secret writer. We began exchanging our writing for discussion and critiquing every week. He had a penchant for these 24/7 seedy old coffee shops, as had I. We would sometimes meet at one of these at 2 or 3 in the morning, fresh writing gripped in our hands and talk and talk. Often inventing lives for those around us. At times, we went for long walks on Toronto's boardwalk in the dead of night, talking, talking. A few times he made a light attempt to hold my hand but I would surreptitiously move it away. We spoke of everything and nothing, sometimes in our native Irish language. Or sing some ancient sean nos old tune with Lake Ontario murmuring in the background. 

We went to parties together, and when asked if we were a couple we each responded with laughter and moved on somewhere else with the conversation. We discussed prior relationships with others and drilled down on the mistakes made, the disappointments, the breakups. He had been married 3 times. All of short duration. He also shared the darknesses in his life, for the first time ever he had spoken of them. 

We made dinner for each other and found little restaurants off the beaten track. I bought little doodads for his cats; he bought treats for my dog. 

I was deeply attracted to him, and I know he felt the same about me. But I knew crossing the line would break my heart and cost me his friendship and respect. And trust me, it was one of the most difficult challenges in my life not to roll into the hay with him. 

Around the end of the two years, over dinner at a Thai place one night, he told me he had re-united with an old girlfriend now that her marriage had broken up. I asked him how this affected our friendship, and he said if he was seeing her, he felt it would be an act of betrayal to see me also. 

I was puzzled and he noticed and reached across the table and held my hands in both of his.

"You're the woman I've been the most intimate with in my whole life."

Our friendship held but not like before. I moved to Newfoundland and he would text and email me and send me prints of his artwork, a new talent of his. One he sent me was of a painting he made of one of my photos. 

He got lung cancer a while back. He linked it to the chemicals he worked with as he had never been a smoker. He also mentioned he had been celibate for a while and viewed it as a miracle and jokingly told me he should now be known as Father D--. 

He died in August, around the time of our birthdays (we shared the date). It took me a while to process it. And today was the day, in the cafe, when I felt the urge to jot down my notes of this strange but beautiful friendship of trust and sharing.

A once-in-a-lifetime kind of connection. I will never forget him. I should add I have no regrets. I would have missed out on something rare and unusual if I had given in to temptation. 

And I hold dear what he said to me at our last intimate dinner. 

Apologies

For the long absence and the lack of reading of your blogs. 

What can I say? Life got in the way. Other writing commitments - one a particularly long piece of the allowed 3000 words, but when it hit 5000 I had to start pruning like a madwoman. A history of my own feminism, starting way back when I was in my late twenties with two small kids and my head exploding with frustration and finding Gloria Steinem's writings. 

Then I started a large knitting project for a godson- ambitious. I knit a few hours a day on it but hell, it's only about 2/3's completed. Whelp. 

And oh yes, I was sick in the meantime too. I caught noro-virus again. The thing that hospitalized me the last time I caught it. This strain was milder but still awful for about 4 days. All the things. I lost a whack of weight and note in old age there is no "bouncing back". More like crawling up a steep incline with a shortage of breath and fighting the will to die.

I had a birthday thrown in there too. I completed 83 journeys around the sun. In a world where most of my dear ones are dead and some afflicted with the dreaded dementia, this is an achievement. 

And oh yes, I lost a dear friend too in the last wee while. I met him when he stayed at my B&B around the bay. He stayed for about 10 days (yes, he extended his original booking of 4 days). One of those people you click with immediately. Rare but treasured. We stayed in touch and he visited me in the spring and planned to move here. When wham, he was stricken both with Parkinson's and leukemia, both rapid and opted for MAID (medically assisted dying) last week. A huge loss of a genuinely kind and brilliant man. And handsome to boot.

So that's me, over and out. I will get caught up with all of you over the next few days.

My big project. I do love the colours.

The Theory of Crows was a beautiful read about a father and daughter reconnecting.

Daughter was in Paris for a while and brought me fresh Roquefort, the real Mccoy and it's orgasmic. I dole out little pieces to myself every night.

A bag filled with gifts from my darling sister on my birthday.