Monthly Musings-May

It's the last Thursday of the month which means it's time for the Monthly Musings link up with Holly (Pink Lady Blog) and Patty (Good Better Best). Feel free to play along...

1. What am I looking forward to most this summer? 

Lots of things...dining al fresco, lake floats, the 4th of July, sipping iced coffee beside the waterfall, sunset cruises...

...jumping off the dock hand in hand with my grands, homemade peach cobbler, and casual entertaining with friends and family. 

2. Any favorite summer traditions? 

Some of these overlap with my answers to the first question but...

I always jump off the dock holding hands with my oldest grandson to help kick off summer. Hopefully his little brother will join us this year.  I tell him he will never be too old. 

We'll have to see about Nana but so far so good. 

We always watch the fireworks from our dock and shoreline because we have the best view of my across the cove neighbor's spectacular show. 

I make one peach cobbler every summer because summer says you must. Same goes for home made ice cream. 

3. Any summer travel plans? Please dish. 

We typically don't travel in the summer months. We live on a lake so people travel here lol. 

We're a little out of the box this summer as we've rented a beach house for a week for the whole family, and I'm really looking forward to that. The trip won't happen until later in the summer so there will still be plenty of lake time before and after. 

4. How do you red, white, and blue?

First of all, I love the colors...so festive! July 4th is one of my favorite days of the year. We have the flag flying on our dock and on the boat too,  plus a windsock on the dock and flag bunting hanging from the deck of the house. 

I have several t-shirts with patriotic themes/colors so will wear one of those on the holiday. This year I bought cute dresses for the grandgirls and will probably find something coordinating for the boys. 

We typically have a crowd here on the 4th. My girls are usually here with their families and we sometimes have additional houseguests around that time too. Last year hubs brother and his wife came, and we're hoping they come back again this year for the holiday. 

There are a lot of firework shows around the lake, some put on by people who live here, and then the marinas have pretty big displays too, so we'll definitely see fireworks. Not exaggerating when I say the best show on the lake is the one my across the cove neighbor hosts. 

Boaters come from all around the lake and anchor, both in our cove and in the waters around it, and she does an amazing job. When there's an especially beautiful firework all the boaters honk and it's so much fun. It stirs up feelings of pride in America and I love that. 

Hubs will grill something, and I like to make some sort of patriotic dessert, sometimes a trifle since I feel like you need a lot of people to eat one and we'll have a lot of people around. 

Oddly enough we don't usually take the boat out on the 4th. The lake is so busy that day, and since we can boat anytime we opt out of the crazy this day can bring. 

5. Beach, lake, or pool. 

Since I live on a lake it feels wrong not to answer with that one. Plus no salt-no sharks so winning! We swim in our lake and it's crystal clear. 

6. Favorite summer sweet treat? 

Strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler, and homemade blueberry pie. Just give me all the fresh fruity desserts please. 

7. Favorite sunscreens and self-tanners. 

I don't use a self-tanner. I wear sunscreen every day and like a lotion as opposed to a spray.  We go through it here and I'm not particularly loyal to one brand. I've got Neutrogena Ultra Sheer,  Bare Republic Mineral,  Tula Daily, Coppertone Sport, and Hawaiian Tropic Sheer Touch which might be my favorite. 

8. Best flip flops or sandals? 

I need a little arch in my flip flops, and while they're not inexpensive I do love the Olukai brand. 

I think this is the pair I currently own. As far as sandals go I like mine cute. I also like cute tennis shoes for summer and have several pair. 

9. How are you staying fit this summer? 

Lake life means you stay pretty active. Hubs and I joke we make about fifteen or twenty trips going back and forth to the dock every day, and while it's not steep it's also not flat, so there's that. 

We have kayaks and paddle boards and I love to swim. We have a pool in our neighborhood too, and I like to swim laps there. 

10. Favorite summer themed movies? 

Here's my top five...The Parent Trap (the Lindsay Lohan remake), Jaws, Dirty Dancing, Mamma Mia, and  The Deep (with Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte). 

Come on summer...

We're ready for ya!

A Curious Hodgepodge

Welcome to this week's edition of The Wednesday Hodgepodge. If you've answered today's questions add your link at the end of my post, then be sure to leave a comment for your neighbor there before running off. Here we go-

1. What's something you're curious about right now? 

It's hard to narrow this down to just one. I think being curious helps keep you young, and I've always enjoyed learning. Here are just a few things on my list right now -

history, the end times, Gen Z, dough making and baking in general, skin care and aging, people and their stories, and the nagging pain in my ankle. 

2. If you could plan the perfect girl's weekend getaway, where would you go and what would be on the agenda? Do you have anything like this on your calendar in the next few months? 

Pretty sure I sound like a broken record, but I'd love a weekend away somewhere fun with both my girls. I suggested it to my oldest and said, 'we could even take the little girls with us (they're 1 and 2.5) and just leave the boys home, and my daughter said, 'well the girls are the feisty ones, so maybe they stay home with the dads too.' It's kind of true lol. 

A fun weekend away would include leisurely meals eaten on pretty patios, sunshine, shopping, matching pjs, and lots of talking about both the deep and the not so deep stuff of life. I think we'd all enjoy some sort of cooking experience along with what I've already mentioned too. 

I do have a fun girls weekend planned in August with some college friends. We were all in the same sorority way back when, and there are four of us who live in the same general area now, so the lake works. I think there will be about ten of us this year. One of the girls also has a lake house here, so we split the sleeping accommodations between the two of us, and do some meals here and some there. Mostly we spend the days floating and laughing. A lot. 

I see the 'locals' for lunch now and then, but I think the last time we had a bigger group get together was the weekend of Meghan Markle's wedding. 

Remember that? We got up at o'dark thirty and sipped Pimms on my screened porch and watched the wedding all together. 

Hubs acted as photographer. We met in uni so he knows and loves these girls too.

3. What's the most unique item in your refrigerator right now? 

I don't know how unique this is, but I keep these eye masks in my frig because they're better cold.

To be honest I kind of forget they're in there, but when I went to look for the answer to this question I put some on. They do feel so good on your skin. 

You'd also find a little bottle of super glue because that supposedly extends its shelf life. 

4. In this season of your life, what do you find most challenging? 

How I want to spend my time. Life isn't prescriptive the way it is with kids in the house, and while you might think there won't be enough to do in your 'retirement years' I'm here to tell you there are almost too many choices. We retired young which is a factor, but still it's not boring. I want to make the days count. 

5. Do you collect anything? If so why that? 

Not really. I do have a bit of a running joke with my daughters related to hedgehogs, so I have acquired a few things with hedgehogs on them, all given to me by my girls (and a couple from the hubs). 

They're the only ones I want doing that though. I feel like sometimes people hear you collect something and suddenly you're the hedgehog lady. 

6. Insert your own random thought here.  

We had our monthly wine dinner Tuesday night which is always fun. It's a nice group and the food is so good.  Here's a snapshot-

Let's begin at the end with dessert, which doesn't necessarily look special, but I'm here to tell you every single bite was absolutely scrumptious. African Almond cookies crumbled beneath a chocolate coconut sorbet. Yum! 

The salad was a standout too, warm eggplant and butternut squash with baby spinach, roasted peanuts and a tamarind vinaigrette-

There was also a spicy soup, lambchops which are my fave, and this wonderful fish which is a spiced bronzino with crunchy rice, horseradish potato salad and microgreenns. The portions aren't huge which makes for a pleasant meal. 

If I'm being honest, I enjoy the wine but I'm really here for the food. Can you tell? 

Hodgepodge Questions-Volume 602

Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here on Wednesday (May 14th) to add your link to the party. See you there!

1. What's something you're curious about right now? 

2. If you could plan the perfect girl's weekend getaway, where would you go and what would be on the agenda? Do you have anything like this on your calendar in the next few months? 

3. What's the most unique item in your refrigerator right now? 

4. In this season of your life, what do you find most challenging? 

5. Do you collect anything? If so why that? 

6. Insert your own random thought here.  

Video Killed The Radio Star

TGIV...we're on the home stretch in the April A-Z Blog Challenge with today's letter. 

V is for Velocity

'the speed of something in a given direction'

Let's talk tech. I know. Not my favorite subject either, but it's here to stay and we gotta deal. 

I'm of the generation who grew up with three channels on the family television set and now here we are posing questions to a genie in a bottle and getting entire essays written in response. Technology moves at the speed of something in a given direction alright, and that direction is forward. 

I want to keep up. 

Maybe want isn't the right word. It feels more true to say I need to keep up. I'm not going to be an early adopter to whatever the next new tech thing is, but I'll get there eventually. 

The generations behind mine have grown up unafraid to use technology, they've discovered ways tech can make some of our daily tasks easier (bill pay, online shopping, and grocery delivery to name just a few), and they get excited about the next new thing on the tech horizon. An unwillingness to acknowledge this marks you as 'old'. 

Now there's nothing wrong with old (it's all of us sooner or later me included), and I realize some of the above is generalizing, but I don't want to be discounted because of this whole glob of knowledge I'm oblivious to, or that I frown upon, or that I'm constantly criticizing.  

I have grandchildren who aren't going to know a world without technology at their fingertips and I want to understand that world. I want to be able to interact with them about the things they encounter on a daily basis and if I'm not keeping up with technology I won't know what in the world they're talking about. 

There's also the social aspect to technology that I can appreciate. And sometimes hate, but I'm thinking more here of what I enjoy about online interactions. I appreciate the real life friends I'm able to keep up with online, old friends I've reconnected with, and new friends I've made in this little space right here. 

While my kids are living nearer to us now in terms of geography, that hasn't always been the case. Facetime meant we could be face to face via the screen and I think of all we would have missed without that virtual connection. 

In a completely different vein...have you noticed how much of our health care is now managed via technology? I get my lab results before my doctor's even read them, and I can track my steps, my heart rate, even my sleep via the watch on my arm. I'm sure all of this will only continue to expand in scope and capability and I want to be able to access the tools I need to navigate my own medical records and care. 

Do you play word games or Sudoku or something along those lines on your phone or computer? Work online crossword puzzles? Read books via Kindle? These are all things we used to do with pen and paper (and still do of course), but now we can enjoy them and exercise our brains while waiting for an appointment, cleaning house, or taking a walk. Too much of anything is too much, and that includes screen time, but it has its place and I want to keep up with what's new and fun.

If you don't keep up the gap just continues to grow and then feels too daunting to tackle. 

Technology doesn't mean I can't continue to make in person time count. I can still write letters to my grandchildren that are thoughtful and worth holding on to. I can read them my favorite books and teach them the board games I grew up playing. I can tell them the stories of my childhood and I can wish the world were another way. 

And I can let them take me by the hand and teach me something new. 

Life Lessons From the Window Seat

S is for Seven. After today that's how many letters remain in the April A-Z Blog Challenge. It's been fun and it's been a challenge. Blogging with a houseful of people requires a bit of finagling. Onward...

S is for Sunrise 

'the apparent rising of the sun above the horizon; 

also: the accompanying atmospheric effects'

If you've been reading here for a while then you know I have a small obsession with the sunrise. We have prime viewing out of any window on the backside of our house, but my favorite place to watch it happen is from the upper deck. 

And I like to snap a photo while I'm there. 

Or ten photos. 

Or possibly 365. 

Hubs teases and asks me why I take the same picture every morning but I assure him I do not. One sunrise is not like any other and my pictures are the proof. 

Recently Joanne (Slices of Life) shared some of her favorite sunrises and sunsets and it got me thinking about why it is I'm so drawn to the early morning skies. Why all the sunrises? And why now? 

One of the reasons I'm more tuned in to the sunrise in this house is because it's hard to miss. I step quietly out of my bedroom in the early hours of the morning and there it is. Sometimes soft and dreamy brushstrokes in a pastel painted sky...

...sometimes awash with all the colors of the rainbow. 

It can, quite literally, take my breath away. There are things about the sunrise that speak to me in this season that feel almost sacred. 

The sunrise tells me it's a new day, with no mistakes in it yet. A fresh start. Blank slate. No regrets. 

The sunrise fills me with hope. Anything is possible at the start of a brand new day. 

The sunrise says slow down. Breathe. Be present. 

It also tells me time moves fast. If you're not paying attention you'll miss it. Life is like that too. 

The sun rising fills me with awe for the One who made it, for the staggering beauty of this world, and the power so evident in nature.

 

The sunrise reminds me of the value of stillness and quiet, things I'm always looking for in this too noisy world.

The sunrise reminds me of the faithfulness of God. Every single day the sun rises. He never fails. 

My favorite verse, which is in my blog header but worth posting twice...

'The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; 

they are new every morning." Lamentations 3:22-23

Day 17 In The A-Z

Finishing out this week's letter in the A-Z Blog Challenge with my usual Saturday list of little things I love. Today's letter might be tricky so let's get to it...

Q is for A Quantity of Small Favorite Things 

quick thinking

questions answered

questions pondered

homemade quiche

quotes that inspire

Quilon (my England house)

quality time with my girls

quiet mornings

quarters won in Mah Jong

quarrels ended

queso 

fears quelled

quaint small towns 

decisions made without any qualms 

quirky roadside attractions

a bad habit quit

quintessential British speech

the music of Queen

no queue at the DMV

a cozy quilt 

Young At Heart

 Rolling right along with today's letter of the day...

O is for oxymoron

'a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction;

a self-contradicting word or group of words'

Let's talk about aging gracefully. Is that phrase an oxymoron? From the moment we're born we're all growing older, we just seem to remark on it in a more negative way after a certain point on the birthday timeline. 

So what does it mean to age gracefully? There are of course the obvious things we all know to do like eat right, drink lots of water, exercise, and get enough sleep, but what about the less obvious, but equally important habits we need to cultivate if we want to live a grace-ful life? 

There are traits I associate with the term, and also with women I know who I think are aging gracefully, that I want reflected in my own life as I lean into this third act. Here's some of what I've observed and also what I aspire to...

have a positive outlook

laugh a lot 

forgive easily

stay curious about the world around me 

be gentle in speech and action

live with an open heart and open hand 

stay grounded

be humble

self-aware

accepting of change

grateful 

Easier said than done some days, but I'm still a work in progress. 

I read somewhere the opposite of aging gracefully would be aging poorly or prematurely, which I don't think anyone aspires to yet many end up doing just that. I like having this list written down. It's a visual reminder every day is a gift and I get to choose how I live it. 

'Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.' Psalm 90:12 

Pressed Between The Pages Of My Mind

Whoohoo! We've reached the halfway point in the A-Z Blog Challenge today, with 13 letters down and 13 left still to write. Go us!   

 M is for Memory

'the power or process of recalling what's been learned and retained, 

especially through associative mechanisms; the fact or condition of being remembered; 

a particular act of recall or recollection  

In this season when we refer to the term memory we're talking about one of three things- 

Remembering...pretty much anything. Why did I walk downstairs? Into this room? Out to the garage? Why did I come into the pantry? What did I do with that statement-receipt-document? What did she just tell me her name is? 

Names are tough in this season. I used to never ever ever forget a name. I was once the Director of a large preschool and kindergarten and I knew 300 names and the faces to go with. Now someone introduces themself and my brain short circuits. I try to give myself a mnemonic when I meet someone new to help remember their name, otherwise it flies right on out into space.

Initially when things like this happen you wonder if you have some sort of serious memory disorder, but most of the time it's just plain old aging. Not always of course and if you're truly worried you should see a doctor, but everyone I know who is my age-ish says the same thing. They're not as sharp as they were a decade ago. They don't remember names the way they used to, and multi-step tasks require greater concentration than one would think. 

Less multitasking, more let me give this my undivided attention and get it done. 

Hubs and I have many a conversation that goes something like this-'What't the name of those people who lived next door to us in xyz state? They had a daughter who was friends with our daughters and he worked for a software company and blah blah blah.....' 

Then hubs will answer with a name that's close but not quite right, like he'll say Joe and I'll say no it was Jim, Jim!! Yes! Jim!! And then we put our heads together and come up with the last name and a few more details and then we congratulate ourselves and also feel a little bit like we just finished a 5K. 

A lot of thinking in this season requires a collective brain. Truth man. 

Remembering the past...if you're on Facebook I'm sure you'll agree those timehop photos are like a zinger to the heart. You're scrolling along when all of a sudden BAM! there's your daughter at her high school graduation. 

So you look at another picture, then another, and before you know it two hours have passed and you haven't done any of the things you intended to do, because you've spent the better part of a morning traveling down a rabbit hole. 

And then there's your children having children. Few things wing you back a couple of decades the way your kids having kids of their own does. I think we're always looking for all the ways our grandchildren are similar to their parent, the child we birthed.

And when you do get a glimpse, in a look or a gesture or the way they turn their head just so, it makes your heart go squish. 

Watching your grown children feed and love and care for their children takes you back to that time in your own life...to the exhaustion and the frustration and the sweetness most of all, and how ding dang fast it's all gone by. 

Making new memories...this is true and important in every season, but I think I'm more aware of it in my third act. Hubs and I are both currently healthy and we're active people. I was at the doctor Monday for my physical and she asked if I'd had the pneumonia vaccine and I said 'am I 'old' enough to need that?' 

Sometimes I forget my age. 

I want to enjoy spending time and doing things with the people I love, talking to the most interesting little people I know hearing about all they are discovering, wondering and loving. I want to meet new people and see new places, hear other people's stories, what they've experienced in their lives. 

On the whole I think we remember the milestone events that happen within the life of a family, but I want to remember some of the smaller moments too. I so wish I had more pictures of my girls with my own parents. We never lived in the same town, so photos with either set of grandparents are typically of the birthday or holiday celebration variety. These are of course very special, but it would be sweet to have more of the everyday ordinary snaps taken with them. My mom played such great imaginative games with my girls and I wish I had captured more of that. 

My grandchildren (and my children for that matter) don't always want to have a picture taken, but I annoyingly persist and eke out a few every now and then. They'll thank me someday. My dad died unexpectedly young and I treasure the pictures I have of him with my girls. It's cliche to say it I know, but it's also true...we're not promised tomorrow. 

Easter, 1992

We have today and today is as good a day as any for making a memory. One that will feel tender and precious as we look back on it in the years to come. 

Linking this post with Talking About It Tuesday hosted by Joanne at Slices of Life