Category Archives: Whimsies

How Great Thou Art

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When through the woods, and forest glades I wander,
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees.
When I look down, from lofty mountain grandeur
And see the brook, and feel the gentle breeze.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art….

Though Bill is now a faithful Catholic, he wasn’t always. In fact, he was brought up to be a devout Baptist, a member of Morgan Park Baptist Church on the south side of Chicago. It was in that church that he spent a considerable amount of time in the youth choir (where he sang a solo – The Old Rugged Cross) and involved in other church activities. When he was 12 or so, in the manner of Baptists and other evangelical Christian churches, he was baptized by being fully immersed in water.

Bill, in fact, was not Catholic when we married almost 24 years ago. It didn’t bother me, though I am aware that it is nice when a couple can attend church together. And it was only a year or so later that Bill – on his own – announced that he wanted to convert to the Catholic faith. He had apparently been interested in Catholicism for a number of years. I couldn’t have been happier.

I think Bill would say he has come to love the Catholic Church and its practices. What has taken him a bit of time to get used to, however, are the hymns. Let’s face it, there is nothing like good old Baptist hymns to praise God in song.

Different Catholic churches have different philosophies about music. The church with which we are affiliated in Denver is old school. The congregation is largely older people who don’t want to hear guitars at Mass. The church we attend in Mesa has a much livelier musical philosophy, singing many songs with which I am unfamiliar but love. At the end of the day, I have to admit that I enjoy the Mesa church’s music more than our Denver church. I like joyful praise, I guess.

There are two songs often sung in our Denver church, however, that I can count on Bill singing loud and clear – Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art. I love both of those hymns as well, and I am particularly happy when the music board says we will be singing one of those songs. Why? Because I LOVE to hear Bill sing both of those hymns. He has a beautiful baritone voice and perfect pitch. I have never had a beautiful voice, and my pitch – which used to be acceptable if not great – is now nonexistent. I crack. I warble. I squeak.

Bill is a member of the Round-up Riders of the Rockies. RRR is an organization of men united in their love for horses and nature. Each year the group rides horses and camps somewhere up in the Rocky Mountains for a week. Among other activities, the RRR’s have a men’s choir that performs for the Sunday church service that is held wherever they are camped on that particular day. When Bill used to participate regularly, he was a member of the choir, which sang both Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art. Bill always said that he loved singing How Great Thou Art out in the wilderness because the words are so appropriate and it made him feel closer to God.

He told me that again after Mass on Sunday after we sang that hymn. It made me think about a hymn that my mother particularly loved when they lived in the mountains of Colorado. Here are some of the lyrics…

Sing to the Mountains, by Bob Dufford

Sing to the mountains, sing to the sea.
Raise your voices, lift your hearts.
This is the day the Lord has made.
Let all the earth rejoice.

This is the day the Lord has made.
Let us be glad and rejoice.
Death has lost and all is life.
Sing of the glory of God.

Sing to the mountains, sing to the sea.
Raise your voices, lift your hearts.
This is the day the Lord has made.
Let all the earth rejoice.

It’s wonderful to praise God in song!

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Saturday Smile: Could I Enjoy a Nice Rosé With My Lunch?

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The other day, Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole were visiting. As is typical, they were playing with Play Doh. At one point, Mylee brought one of her creations over and asked me to guess what it was. So I began guessing, quite incorrectly I’m afraid. Finally she said, “I will give you a hint. It starts with P.” I began incorrectly guessing P words. She began getting more frustrated, and started giving me hints.

“Pu, Pu, Pu,” she said. Nothing.

“Pru, pru pru,” she continued. Nothing.

“Prush, prush, prush,” she said, thinking I must be the biggest ignoramus of all time. Nothing.

Finally, she said, “Nana, it’s what I have in my lunch box every day.”

“Peanut butter?” I asked desperately.

Sigh.

“No,” she said. “Prosciutto.”

“YOU TAKE PROSCIUTTO IN YOUR LUNCHBOX?” I all-but-hollered. “YOU’RE IN KINDERGARTEN!”

12196257_10205207523173124_282126826617379693_n (2)

“What do you have in your lunch box?” I asked Kaiya.

“Edamame,” she answered.

Cole looked at the meager hot dog I had given him for lunch, and raised one eyebrow.

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

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Settle Down
We will be leaving on Tuesday to go back to Arizona for about a week so that Bill can finish some dental work. This going back and forth is about to kill me. I want to be settled one place or the other for some time. Frankly, where I want to be settled is Denver, because as I look around at our house and our yard, there is a lot of work to be done. I was staying with Cole yesterday while his mommy volunteered at school. As we played outside, I found myself thinking, “I should come over here and pull some weeds for Court.” And then I stopped myself. What was I thinking? Before I volunteer to pull someone else’s weeds, I should pull my own.  Kaiya and Mylee helped a bit on Sunday, but even Kaiya was overwhelmed at the number of weeds that needed our attention. They decided the playhouse was much more fun.

Terrific Twos
And speaking of Cole, I spent much of the day with him yesterday. Seriously, is there anything cuter than a 2-year old? They are just learning to talk. They think Nanas are the BOMB. And they have developed a sense of humor. I laughed so hard at some of his antics. And he laughed just as hard at some of mine. He thinks I’m so funny, I should get a show in Cleveland. When I first got there, he was absorbed in what I guess is his very own phone – a hand-me-down following the purchase of one of his parent’s new phone. He, of course, knows how to maneuver his way through everything. It never fails to astound me…..

Cole playing with phone 5.16

Television Notes
In the course of moving from Denver to Phoenix for the winter, I was unable to watch the second half of How to Get Away With Murder. So the past couple of days I have been binging on HTGAWM, watching the final shows of this season almost nonstop. Wow. That’s all I’ll say. Wow. But while I’m on television, I want to put in a pitch for a really good program on Netflix called Grace and Frankie. It stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as two 70-something women whose husbands leave them for each other. If you are avoiding the program because you’re still mad at Jane Fonda, you need to let it go because you’re missing an exceptional show aimed at baby boomers. That doesn’t happen very often. Fonda is good – very good, in fact. But Tomlin is so funny that I seriously laugh hard enough to cry. Thus far, there are two seasons on Netflix.

And the Band Played On
Tuesday night we watched the three youngest McLain kids perform at the Southmoor Elementary School band and choir concert. Alastair plays trombone (or at least tries to, as he had gotten his braces the day before). Dagny and Magnolia sing in the choir. And Dagny plays flute in the band. For the most part we enjoyed the concert, though there was one song that was so awful that people were visibly cringing. As for me, I very unprofessionally began to laugh so hard I had tears. Addie leaned over and asked me if I was laughing or crying. I told her both. Here is a photo of Dagny and Maggie singing. You can identify them from the arrows….

maggie dagny arrows

Ciao.

Making Nice

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I’ve been grocery shopping since I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 years old, after I finally moved into my first apartment. Oh, don’t get me wrong. Prior to that, I would go to the grocery store and pick up a few necessities on occasion. Ice cream. Tortilla chips and salsa. Ibuprofen. Sometimes when I was a kid, my mom would send me off on my bicycle to the neighborhood IGA store to pick up a few things. That abruptly stopped after she sent me to the store one time to pick up a head of lettuce and a can of corn and I returned, flushed from riding my bike, with a head of cabbage and a can of hominy. Hey. I was 8. Cut me some slack.

But I didn’t do any once-a-week kind of shopping until I had my own place and cooked my own food. So that means that I have been grocery shopping for 40-some years. And I will tell you that it isn’t one of the jobs that I hate to do. Those include emptying the dishwasher, folding laundry, and defrosting the freezer in the garage. I find grocery shopping to be kind of fun and relaxing.

Now, having said that, I have to place some caveats on that statement. First, though I do so regularly, I HATE shopping at Walmart. There is simply nothing fun about it. If it wasn’t for some of the things that I buy that are cheaper at Walmart, I would never go. I am not a Walmart hater. I just think they are uninteresting, seem to often have empty shelves, are staffed by crabby cashiers, and are visited by people who maybe should have looked in the mirror before stepping out of their house. Including me.

Second, I am retired and so can shop at a leisurely pace and at a time of day and week that is quiet and less stressful. It’s a whole different ballgame if one works full time and is trying to grocery shop with two fighting kids and at the same time as everyone else who works.

I have found Tuesday mornings are a great time to shop. Mondays the shelves are often empty because of the heavy shopping traffic over the weekend. By Tuesday, most shelves are stocked. And if you go around 10 o’clock, you miss the morning donut-and-coffee crowd and the stockers (who apparently no longer work at night) are almost finished with their work.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I worked at Safeway in Leadville. That was back in the days before computers, so cashiers had to look at the price tags and key in the price. I was FAST. VERY FAST. And because of this, I was very popular. The lines were long at my check stand. I was proud to be so good at something.

This is a long post about nothing in particular, so I will get to a semblance of a point. There is a cashier at the grocery store at which I shop in Denver – King Soopers – who has worked there for at least 23 years (as long as I have shopped there). He isn’t particularly quick; in fact, he’s quite slow. But that’s because he chats with his customers. Now, it’s true that if I’m in a hurry, I avoid him. But I wasn’t in a hurry yesterday, and went through his line. And what I noticed is that he is apparently the cashier-of-choice for the over 55 crowd, because, while there were other cashiers working, his line was the longest.

He’s nice. You don’t meet a lot of nice people these days. And here are a couple of things that I learned from him as he leisurely bagged my groceries. One, it’s not good to microwave things twice. So when he buys the already-prepared mashed potatoes that are in the dairy case, he – being single – opens up the container, takes out what he wants to use, and then reseals it. He then microwaves the smaller amount.

Two, the jars of sweet pickled cherry peppers like I bought used to contain garlic, but no longer do. It is an addition that he apparently misses. So he opens the jar and adds a bit of garlic powder and mixes it in.

groceries (2)

 

I’m not sure that either of these suggestions are earth-shattering or even something I wouldn’t have thought of doing myself if, for example, I wanted my pickled peppers to be garlicky. Still, I loved that he and I built a brief relationship for that small period of time. I would say that I wish more service people would do the same thing, but then I would be writing a blog post about how annoyed I get at cashiers who talk too much and are slow.

Today, however, I’m going to accentuate the positive!

Seeing Red

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7fa6c4dae8070e069915e71a14ef253cThe second I walked into church on Sunday, I knew that once again I had blown it. I looked at the bright red banner that draped the ceiling above the altar, the red ribbons that festooned the front pews, and then looked down at my white sweater and black pants. Just like every Pentecost Sunday of my life, I forgot to wear red.

I don’t know why it’s suggested we wear red on Pentecost. Corpus Christi I could understand.  You know, the Blood of Christ. Pentecost, I don’t know; it seems a stretch. It apparently is to represent the fire of the Holy Spirit, but to me, fire is yellow. But no, we wear red. As it happens, even if yellow had been the color of Pentecost, I would still not having been appropriately attired. Sigh.

I tell this story every Pentecost, but it’s my blog, so I can tell it again! Eight years ago we were in Barcelona on the Monday following Pentecost. We didn’t know, however, that it was Pentecost. We had, in fact, attended church the day before, but it being in Spanish and all….. Well, what can I say?

So we wandered around town for almost three-quarters of that Monday wondering why nothing was opened. We finally approached a tourist information place and, in very rudimentary Spanish, asked that very question. And in very rudimentary English, she told us it was second Easter, and so, a national holiday. We nodded as if we understood, but really didn’t. And then I began leafing through my Rick Steves guidebook and learned that in fact, Pentecost is (or at least was) a national holiday in Spain, so important, in fact, that the holiday continues on the Monday after Pentecost. Who knew?

And it wasn’t until this past Sunday that I finally understood why the young women called it second Easter. Easter Sunday is the beginning of the Easter season, and 50 days later is the official end of the Easter season, according to the Catholic Church, and many other churches. So what I believe the young woman was saying was not that Pentecost was in any way Easter, be it first or second, but that it was the END of the Easter season.

As I contemplated Pentecost on Sunday, and my not-red-clothes, it occurred to me that up until the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, the friends of Jesus had sort of sputtered around, unsure of what to do next. Jesus knew they needed a little boost to get into the, well, spirit of their task. And the bible tells us that the Holy Spirit came down to the apostles looking like tongues of fire. Whoa! That must have given them a start. And then there was the whole idea that they were speaking in such a way that everyone could understand them no matter from whence they came.

I’ve never quite understood the Holy Spirit. God is complex and mysterious, but understandable. Jesus is easy to figure out as long as you have faith. But what about the Holy Spirit? What’s up with that?

And yet, it’s the Holy Spirit to whom I pray whenever I’m asking for help in something that seems insurmountable, which is, frankly, every day. Holy Spirit, give me courage to face the next obstacle. Holy Spirit, bring my boy back to his faith. Holy Spirit, give me strength each day to accept Bill’s Parkinson and bear my own health issues. Holy Spirit, help us to love one another and give me the patience to forgive.

I think I pray to the Holy Spirt because somewhere in my faith, I believe – just like Jesus’ apostles – that I need a little boost, and the Spirit is the one to give it.

Holy Spirit, help me remember to wear red next Pentecost.

Chillin’

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There are three reasons why a new refrigerator currently lives in my Denver kitchen.

First, the ice maker stopped working in our old refrigerator. For a while before we left for Arizona, I made do by purchasing ice from the grocery store. That worked reasonably well, though it was admittedly kind of a pain in the, well, you know. But for some reason, since we’ve been back in Denver, I have been wholly and completely unable to remember to buy ice. I put it on my grocery list and still don’t buy ice. It only becomes a crisis when I go to make a gin and tonic and I don’t have ice. Similarly, a martini cannot be either shaken OR stirred without ice.

Second, it came to my notice several months ago that on the television program Elementary, the refrigerator which Sherlock and Joan Watson have in their PURPOSELY VINTAGE NEW YORK CITY KITCHEN is the exact same refrigerator in MY VERY OWN KITCHEN, which is not vintage. Or at least not meant to be vintage.

And third, Bill and I moved into this house 23 years ago. One of the first things we did was to replace the existing appliances. Since I can’t remember what I did yesterday, I certainly can’t remember why we were so hell-bent on replacing the appliances, but we were. And the first thing we replaced was the refrigerator.

“Let’s be cutting edge,” either I said to Bill or he said to me. “Let’s not get a white refrigerator. Let’s do something a bit different.”

Back in those days, stainless steel was not really an option unless you were purchasing appliances for a restaurant. Black may or may not have been an option, but we instead chose to go with a sort of off-white beige color, thinking that we would then buy all of our appliances in that color. Live like it’s your last day!

What we didn’t account for was the fact that there were NO OTHER APPLIANCES sold in that color. In-wall ovens, dishwashers, range tops – none of them were made in that particular color. And so for a 23-year period, we have lived with a refrigerator that doesn’t match any of our other appliances. While it hasn’t bothered me all that much, I’m sure every visitor I’ve ever had to my kitchen has cringed when they noticed that my fridge was a peculiar color.

Old Fridge

But given the no-ice thing and the fact that the refrigerator looks like Ma and Pa Wilder might have used it in their little house on the prairie, we elected to bite the bullet and purchase a new refrigerator.

We made a couple of trips to the Sears Outlet Store and eventually decided on a nice, contemporary-looking, WHITE refrigerator. I hear the gasps that we didn’t go with stainless steel, but I’m old-fashioned and I like my white appliances. I just don’t like my off-white appliances. And besides, last summer we purchased a new dishwasher in white, and I didn’t want to go off on the same tangent as 23 years ago. White it is.

new refrigerator 2016

It was kind of sad to see my refrigerator go on Saturday when the extremely nice and extremely strong refrigerator delivery fellows took away our old fridge. Still, I don’t have a list of fond memories of the thing, though it has served me well. In fact, about the only refrigerator-specific memory I have of old Mr. Chiller is an incident that took place shortly after Bill and I got married. It’s safe to say that we had a bit of a difficult time figuring out just who wore the pants in the family for a while, until we realized that neither of us did. Anyway, one day I got mad at Bill for something, what, I don’t even recall. But I was MAD. So mad, in fact, that I took an as-yet unopened Taco Bell burrito and threw it at him, as hard as I could. He, being quite agile, ducked. The burrito missed him and went under the refrigerator. And so, rather than having a satisfactory ending to our fight, it just sort of petered out as we had to work as a team to move the refrigerator away from the wall and find the burrito. Not one of my prouder moments.

My rangetop and my double wall ovens, though they will likely show up on some television show or other (maybe Antique Roadshow), are here to stay for a while. They work fine, and we always come back to our same mantra: WWWD. That is: What Would Wilma Do? And as long as something works, she would keep it.

And we will too. Unless it somehow comes between me and my martini. That’s the death knell for appliances in our household.

This post linked to the GRAND Social

Saturday Smile: Go State!

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Early one morning this past week, my telephone dinged early, indicating a text message. I wondered who would be texting me at 6 o’clock in the morning. I, of course, expected bad news.

So I was delighted with what I saw.

Joseph and Micah, though far away in Vermont, have been indoctrinated by their mother Heather, and their various aunts and uncles, all who attented Colorado State University in Fort Collins. While I am a graduate of the University of Colorado, and therefore a foe of CSU at least one day a year (when the two teams play each other in football), I like the CSU Rams. After all, some of my money went there for two years when Court attended CSU as well.

So this picture made me smile, if for no other reason than I can’t get enough of seeing these two lovely boys’ faces….

Joseph and Micah CSU

Have a great weekend.

Thursday Thoughts

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Tick Tock
My first thought for this Thursday is HOW IN THE WORLD IS IT ALREADY THURSDAY? What happened to this week? It flew by.

Power Lunch
I had lunch yesterday with the newly-appointed Director of Product Programs at Pearson, the world’s largest education company. I got that verbage from their website, and the director with whom I had lunch is my son, Court. While we have lunch regularly when Bill and I are in Denver, this was our first opportunity since his promotion. I’m pretty sure he even looked different. I think he is wearing his hair in a more director-like style. I remember when I used to change his diapers.

NanasWhimsiesShop
Business hasn’t exactly been booming at NanasWhimsiesShop, my shop on Etsy. My lack of sales is likely due to the fact that I stink at the marketing aspect. My sister-in-law tells me it’s all about the tags. For me, it’s all about the crocheting. While I would love to be actively selling the things I make, I seriously just love crocheting and looking at my finished results. Perhaps I am somehow exuding negative energy because I’m so annoyed that I can’t put an apostrophe in my shop’s name. I did, however, have my second sale – or at least am about to. A friend ordered sun hats for her great niece and great nephew, and I am happy with the result…..

norma's hats

Seventy-Six Trombones
Last night we attended the Hamilton Middle School spring band concert. We are not simply gluttons for punishment with an unceasing desire to see how the youth of today spend their after-school hours. Rather, our granddaughter Adelaide plays clarinet in the band. In fact, last night, not only did she perform, but she conducted the band during one of their performances – March on a Welsh Air, and did an outstanding job. There is, of course, no blood relationship between Addie and my father; nevertheless, it makes me very happy that she plays clarinet as did he. Here is a photo of the band, and one of Miss Addie conducting….

seventh grade band addie

 

Addieconducting 5.16

Russian Joy
It will not surprise you to learn that once the 7th grade had concluded their performance, Bill was hard-pressed to stay awake during the 8th grade portion of the show, though he admittedly did quite a fine job. At one point, I nudged him to tell him that the next song was a Russian folk melody and so it would likely be zippy and wake him up. Ha! I forgot that Russia doesn’t do cheerful. The song was slow and somber, and reminded me that, by the end of both the movie and the book Anna Karenina, we were all begging her to jump in front of the train just to end our own misery.

Wild Kingdom
We have gotten used to seeing foxes in our back yard. In fact, since we have been gone so many months, there are three foxes that act like the yard belongs to them instead of us. So much so, in fact, that Bill carefully walked around the yard to see if he could find signs that their den was in our yard. Thankfully, there is no evidence. But last night as we were eating our dinner, I looked out and saw two Mallard ducks swimming in our pond. A male and a female. And let me assure you, while we do, in fact, have a small pond, it is nothing to write home about. There are much better ponds and/or lakes within an easy duck flight. We have seen raccoons, coyotes, foxes, the obvious squirrels and birds, and now our own little Wild Kingdom has been increased by two.

ducks

Ciao!

Forge Ahead

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Much as we love spending the winter in Arizona, we are always happy to be back in Denver, for a number of reasons. We are lucky enough to be able to enjoy a second springtime. We see the cactus flowers in Arizona in March and April, and we are back just in time to see the end of the forsythia blossoms and the beginning of the lilacs and the iris. I love to get my garden planted – mostly herbs and a couple of tomato plants – and will put in my petunias just as soon as the tulips die completely back and make room for them.

The pitiful end of my forsythia blossoms

The pitiful end of my forsythia blossoms

Tulips with their BFFs, the dandilions

Tulips with their BFFs, the dandilions

This spring, I have made a few resolutions. It makes sense since most of the resolutions I made in January have been forgotten. Not just neglected; I can’t even remember what they were. Sigh.

I have been feeling like a slug because we got out of the habit of exercising, something we had done faithfully for a long time. And I have been putting on weight, something I conveniently blame on my low fiber diet (rich in carbs and sugar), forgetting that one can eat low fiber without eating ice cream every night after dinner. Sigh again.

So I am facing the upcoming warm months with renewed energy and commitment. I started by going to the gym Monday, and plan to go every Monday, Wednesday and Friday beginning right now. Tuesdays and Thursdays I will lift my measly little weights at home. Hey. It can’t hurt.

Furthermore, while I’m not going on a diet (diets don’t work for me; all I think about is food), I am simply going to cook healthier meals.

While in Mesa, I walked over to our nearby Basha’s most every day of the week. I am determined to walk to the grocery store here as well. King Soopers and Whole Foods are a bit farther away than Basha’s, but no matter. Even if I don’t do it every time, I can do it regularly.

There are simple things around the house that will get me better organized. For example, when I want to remember to take something upstairs, I put Whatever-It-Is on the steps. And then I step over them again and again because heaven forbid I would bend over to pick Whatever-It-is up. And then I would just have to PUT WHATEVER-IT-IS AWAY!

No more! Whatever-It-Is will go up with me the next time I climb the stairs.

And speaking of the stairs, I am determined to stop thinking of walking up the stairs as undertaking the Bataan Death March. The other morning I used the last tissue from the box in the kitchen. I found myself using paper towels or toilet tissue to wipe my nose until I finally realized that it wasn’t going to kill me to walk the exactly 14 steps up to the linen closet upstairs where I keep my boxes of tissues. Our house in Mesa is small, and 14 steps will get you practically anywhere in the house. But I don’t live in Windsor Palace, so the stairs will become my friend.

Sometimes I come to the sudden realization that my glasses are so dirty I can practically not see out of them. I am going to use my handy-dandy microfiber cloth to clean my glasses each and every morning before I put them on.

As part of my healthier eating, I found a recipe for a casserole that uses ground chicken for the meatballs. I halved the recipe and we enjoyed it for dinner, with plenty for leftovers.

Chicken Parmesan Meatball Casserole, courtesy Buns In My Oven

chicken parmesan meatball casserole

Ingredients
For the meatballs:
1 pound lean ground chicken
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 egg
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup milk
For the casserole:
1 pound campanelle pasta (any small shape is fine, such as ziti)
1 jar (24 ounces) marinara sauce
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

Process
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the pasta. Cook for 1 minute less than package directions state.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

While the pasta is cooking, prepare the meatballs. Add all of the ingredients to a large bowl and use your hands to mix them together well. Form into small balls, about 1 inch in diameter and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes or until cooked through and no longer pink. Remove from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Add the pasta sauce to a large bowl and stir in the cooked pasta and meatballs. Stir gently to coat everything in sauce.

Spread half of the pasta and meatballs into a 9×13 baking dish. Top with half of the mozzarella cheese. Repeat layers. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning. Bake for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. Serve immediately.

Hachi? Gesundheit

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Bill Kris Wilma 5.16We are back in Denver following our visit to Chicago to see Bill’s mother. She is in assisted living in an extraordinarily nice retirement community that offers accommodations ranging from independent care all the way to memory care. I’ve mentioned before that she found Smith Crossing all by herself, and subsequently made the decision to sell the house where Bill spent his formative years on the south side of Chicago and move to this retirement community in Orland Park, a far-south suburb.

I have always been proud that she was so wise and recognized that the house in which she lived was going to become unmanageable for her before it actually was unmanageable. Oh, that I should be so wise when I’m in my 80s.

As Bill and I have become older, there have been a number of times in which I’ve looked at our big back yard that takes Bill literally several hours to mow and trim each week, or faced having to come up with something interesting for dinner when nothing sounds good, and thought, hmmmm, maybe Smith Crossing wouldn’t be so bad. The food is good and someone else plans the meals, cooks the food, and cleans up after. The grounds are nice and Bill doesn’t have to break his back caring for it.

“I’m thiiiiiis close to being ready to move into something like your mom’s place here in Denver,” I have told Bill several times.

Until this recent trip.

I’m not sure exactly what the difference was. Maybe it’s that she now lives in assisted living rather than her own independent apartment. Maybe it’s because we stayed in the guest room right in Smith Crossing, and so we saw many of the goings-on as we walked back and forth from our little guest room to Wilma’s unit.

All I know is I’m not quite ready to throw in the towel yet.

This is the conversation I overhead at which time I firmly decided we will stay put right where we are: A husband and wife were walking down the hall together – dueling walkers — and I was behind them. The husband said to his wife, “I recorded the dog show today.” She answered , “What dog show? Was the Westminster Dog Show on today?”

He quickly explained, “No, I recorded Hachi the Dog.” She looked puzzled. “You recorded what?” she asked. “Hachi the Dog,” he repeated.

“Spell it,” she commanded.

“H-A-C-H-I,” he said. “It was a movie. I recorded it.”

“Was it the Westminster Dog Show?” she asked again.

About that time, just as I thought my head would explode, they turned the corner and I could no longer hear their conversation. I therefore have no clue just how long this conversation went on. All I know is I don’t think I’m ready to have this be the conversation at my dinner table yet.

Hachi: A Dog's Tale

Hachi: A Dog’s Tale

Westminster Dog Show

Westminster Dog Show

I mentioned in my Saturday Smile that there is a pub. I noticed one day on the list of events for the day that at 6 o’clock, there would be Pub Games in Smitty’s Pub. I was curious about what kinds of games were being played. Did they play poker? Maybe some kind of trivia. My curiosity forced me to go down a little after 6 that evening to see what game was being played. What I saw was a group of woman playing what was basically Bingo; however, instead of calling out B-6 or N-4, they called out Manhattan or Cosmopolitan, or Draft Beer. Apparently Bingo = pub games as long as you use names of adult beverages. You can take the 80-year-old woman out of the bingo hall, but you can’t take the bingo hall out of the 80-year-old woman.

Residents were, however, selling chances on the Kentucky Derby. Having not purchased one, I can’t tell you what they were charging for a chance. But there was a card table set up outside of the dining room staffed by a woman wearing a cardigan over her shoulders and sensible shoes, hawking chances.

“Buy your Kentucky Derby chance right here,” she called as folks walked by. I’m not sure it was all entirely legal, and the staff people were walking by quickly with their eyes decidedly looking at the floor.

One day I went to chair aerobics with Wilma. There were about 10 women sitting in chairs doing a variety of stretches, sometimes using bands to provide resistance. As little exercise as I have gotten of late, I can’t say anything bad about this activity. And God bless the exercise instructor who could be working at LA Fitness but has chosen instead to keep seniors healthy.

All-in-all, Wilma lives in a really nice place, but not one that I aspire to very soon. And now I’m going to go watch Hachi the Dog. Bill recorded it.