Running Behind Myself

 It's odd that. I leap ahead to the old me and often get caught up in breathlessness or pain and I'm really, really slow in learning the lesson of slowing down. Honouring the what is and forgetting about the what used to be.

I always moved at the speed of sound just about, multi-tasked ad finitum, accomplished so much in one day that others were astonished.

I've done enough reading to know that I was a type A personality, always eager to prove myself (to whom, you might ask, but I really don't know) and a classic workaholic.

All is changed now that I am a few weeks into my 80th year having just reached my 79th a week or so ago.

Grandgirl is here and staying with me until next weekend which thrills me no end. Our twosome time. She's enormously attentive to my needs and even to my wants. Her cooking is amazing and we plan to catch some movies and/or series in the time she's here. She will be working remotely for a few days, which is fine by me. She's a federal economist and we are so proud of her as she is - seriously - quite brilliant. Her long term partner is staying with his parents who have moved here as his dad, though quite young, is terminally ill. A real tragedy.

I am busy counting all the gratitudes in my day as I tend to lose track when my health distracts from such feelings.

I am so grateful she is here and so very thankful for our long close relationship since I first laid eyes on her. 

I have much to catch up on, calls to return, emails to respond to, half done knitting to complete, so while she's here I can get cracking on all of that as even in this small apartment we have two separate rooms to work in. 

We also plan some wonderful beach time at this glorious place a few miles from my house.

Elder Musings

~~I am thrilled with a new project I was fortunate enough to get.

~~However, I am slower, do you guys of elder vintage find that tackling work that was formerly a kind of I-can-do-this-with-one-hand- tied-behind-my-back is now an-all-hands-on-deck situation? And speaking of all hands I find that a sporadic carpal tunnel problem I had returned and boy was it a challenge to heal, older tissues, repetitive strain injuries take triple the time to heal including an arm splint to bed, oh gawd was that awful. I digress, it is now healed with the odd twinge to remind me not to abuse it again.

~~I'm also aware that the the 30+age gap between my clients and myself has me faltering a lot with business language. It's not that I don't know it, it's that it is more difficult to retrieve out of my brain files, particularly in business conversations. This morning on a 3-way conference call I found myself fumbling mentally with what term I could use for my PC(personal computer rather than my smart phone), thinking: is PC still used? So I blurted "Main frame." Now there's a blast from the past. I've been 40 years using these suckers. They let it go, tho surely they must wonder what I meant or what decade of the ought-oughts I was in.

~~See what I mean?

~~My wee friend whom I've mentioned before (under 30) wants a coffee date late tonight and my mind immediately goes to bedtime interruptus now: my nightly routines of a bit of Netflix, my book, my games of online scrabble and I want to decline but hey, I know this stuff is good for me too. Break the old routines, get out there.

~~Daughter wants me to meet 2 of her friends and host them to brunch in my place next weekend and I'd thought: no more of these get-togethers when I moved here, just hermitize. And hermitizing has not been good as my inner slob takes over and things need to be put away rather than gaped at in puzzlement as to where to put them. There's very little excess, but photographs, binders of writing, old laptop, wools, crafting supplies, multiple unhung pictures, you get it. But I mulled and thought well: incentive. In the past friends and I always joked that the best housekeeping system is to entertain once a month and I've followed that for years and years now. So yes, I need to do this, there's nothing like new friends and seriously I'm quite proud that Daughter likes to air me and share me. The maternal age-gap has shrunk between us which is quite lovely. And rare. And I treasure it.

~~Impatience with myself - that internal voice. I must slow down as I drop things in my speedy old way of doing things. Spoons, pens, phone, blue tooth ear piece, papers and I find myself castigating myself. Slow down, honour the crone.

~~One thing at a time is important. I can't do everything in one day and mornings are the best. So I do one thing on the to do list every day, or more if I can manage it, and the current day's wee jobs too, but I list them all as I learned in that Living with Chronic Diseases Workshops so I know that I've accomplished something at the end of the day, even if it's self care.

PS Photo is not me, but hey, I can sometimes feel like that.

Riff on the First Snowfall

And it's just about gone now. I like the monochromatic aspect of it all. The fluffy new blanket cuddling the brown earth, smoothing the rocks and shingles of the shore, mothballing the trees for the spring.

My clever birds burrowed deep into the bird feeder and yelled to each other that the food conundrum was solved for another day. The pecking order took over, bluejays first, juncoes next and last the sparrows, patiently waiting, flipping the soft flakes from their wings as they stood in an orderly line on the railing.

I was deliberately slowing down myself. What the hell is my hurry most days I asked myself. In a life of rushing around I have to tell myself it is perfectly OK to slow down now, stroll, don't run. Savour the air, breathe in, breathe out, stop even. Slow down the world for a minute or six.

It is alien to my nature not to rush about the appointed tasks, hurry the phonecall, pile the fire high all at once, add more baking to the floured board, make three dozen more.

I think I know now why some elders slow down to a crawl. It is not physical or mental limitation at all.

It is a conscious choice - to savour all we could never do before. Finally we are stopping to smell the roses. And the cedar and the woodsmoke and the ocean.

Time. So precious. I'll have eight more lifetimes, please.