The storm system that had been bringing us afternoon storms has taken a bit of a break (though our weather people say it will return in a few days), so we are enjoying a few full days of sunshine. My petunias are in, as are my tomato plants, and I have my geraniums in my pots in the front of the house.

Since the weather is so nice, not only have I been opening our front bedroom window at night, but I have also been opening our bedroom window that faces the backyard. That way we get a nice cross breeze all night long.

But here’s the thing. Remember my Butter Battle? Well now as the sun just begins to turn the sky a pale pink at four o’clock, the house finches in the backyard join with the chickadees in the front yard to give me a symphony of bird songs.

I really don’t mind as I find the chirping so sweet. But….

(Cue music) Dum dum duuuuuuuuum.

They have been joined by a murder of crows. (That is the correct term, by the way. A group of crows is referred to as a murder. I think it’s because as you listen to the truly unpleasant sound they make, you want to murder someone.)

I know that all creatures somehow fit into God’s plan. But I struggle to figure out the role of the crow. I guess it’s just to consume the dead squirrels that lie in the middle of the street post vehicular squirrel homicide. But seriously, that caw caw caw? What’s up with that? There is certainly not a thing pleasant about that sound. Especially at four o’clock in the morning.

The crows showed up last spring for the first time. Our neighbors – for reasons I simply can’t understand – choose to feed big birds such as pigeons. I don’t judge. Save for their flying over my house in flocks, the pigeons leave us alone. But I believe the large peanuts that attract the pigeons have also attracted the crows, and that’s just plain unpleasant. The crows like to gather in our trees, like some sort of Edgar Allen Poe/Alfred Hitchcock collaboration, and caw caw caw. It’s darn right creepy.

I didn’t have a great night’s sleep anyway. On Monday, as others were grilling their burgers and hot diggity dogs, and as Bill was working on our sprinkler system outside, I chose to have a movie marathon. I had gotten two wonderful movies from the library – The Music Man and Mary Poppins and watched them both.

I probably haven’t watched Mary Poppins since my son was small – so probably not for thirty-some years. As for The Music Man, I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since I was a small girl myself. But as I watched, I tried to figure something out. Those were not the days of DVDs or ITunes or You Tube. So – at least with The Music Man – I probably have seen the movie once. Maybe a second time sometime in my life. Same is likely true with Mary Poppins. I don’t think we ever owned the video tape when Court was small. BUT I KNEW EVERY WORD OF EVERY SONG IN BOTH MOVIES.

How did that happen? My speculation is that Mom owned the records. We always had music going in our house when I was growing up – either from a radio that sat on her kitchen counter or from the enormous stereo console that sat in the living room. She/he/we probably played those albums over and over.

But you know how a song can stick in your head? And then run through your brain during the night? I had a musical extravaganza going through my head all night long last night.

Sleep for a bit. Roll over and awaken slightly…..

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go do-own, the medicine go down.

Get up. Use the bathroom. Go back to sleep. Roll over and awaken slightly….

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade, with a hundred and ten cornets close at hand. They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuos, the cream of every famous band.

Roll over, fall asleep again, until…..

I love to laugh – ha ha ha ha – loud and long and clear. I love to laugh – ho ho ho ho – it’s getting worse every year. The more I laugh…..

Argh. Get up. Look out my window. Go back to bed and nod off.

Oh, we’ve got trouble (yes we’ve got trouble). Right here in River City (right here in River City). Oh yes we’ve got trouble, with a Capital T that rhymes with P and that stands for pool (that stands for pool).

I just kept thinking, there are two lovely, LOVELY lullabies in Mary Poppins (Stay awake don’t rest your head, don’t lie down upon your bed, and Feed the birds, tuppence a bag). Why-oh-why couldn’t those damn songs be running through my head. But noooooo…

So if I’m kind of crabby today, between Mary Poppins and Bert and Professor Harold Hill and Marion and my crows, chickadees and house finches, you know why.

After church on Sunday, Jen and I took flowers to Fort Logan National Cemetery here in Denver to place next to Mom’s and Dad’s headstone in honor of Memorial Day.

We do this every year if we are in town for Memorial Day. I think it’s a nice tribute to pay to our loved ones who have passed to the next world. Mom and Dad both loved flowers, so while I know they are so joyous in heaven, it makes me happy to give them this reminder that they are not forgotten here on earth. I really do it for myself, of course.

When I was a little girl in Columbus, we took flowers to our grandparents’ graves every Memorial Day. Mom would pick peonies (she had a whole hedge of deep rose-colored peonies next to our garage) and add in blooms of iris that grew on the south side of the house. She put the flowers in a basket, filled a jar with water, and off we went to St. Bonaventure Catholic Cemetery where she placed a pretty bouquet of flowers in the cemetery vases provided.

The cemetery is old but well-maintained. Despite its size, she never had trouble finding the headstones of Grandmother and Grandfather Micek. Next to their large headstone is a smaller headstone indicating the grave of one of Mom’s brother’s, who died a bachelor. There is also a grave of an unknown (to me) relative, who I would imagine was a sister of my grandma or grandpa. Shoulda asked…..

After paying our respects at St. Bonaventure Cemetery, we drove a short distance to Rose Memorial Gardens, where my paternal grandparents rest. Gramps died in 1969, but Grammie didn’t die until we had left Columbus and moved to Colorado. We left flowers there as well.

After Mom and Dad moved from Columbus, it was a very long time before I ever went back to the cemeteries. But a number of years ago, Bill and I were in town for one of my class reunions, and I decided to find the graves. We went to St. Bonaventure first, and walked right up to the stone, finding it immediately despite the fact that the cemetery is the old-fashioned kind with many granite stones marking the towns’ dead. But when we went to Rose Memorial Gardens, we walked and walked and walked and simply couldn’t find the headstone. This cemetery is – as its name states – a memorial garden, meaning no upright headstones. That makes it a bit harder to find the grave marking.

So Bill got the idea to go to the city library and look it up, something I wouldn’t have even known you could do. He learned the location of the stone, and we returned to the cemetery. Voila!

I don’t think people who aren’t part of the Baby Boomer generation feel the same way about cemeteries and ancestors’ graves as do we. We learned it at our parents’ feet, and they learned it at their parents’ feet. The reality is that we are so mobile these days that it is unlikely that Generation Xers or the Millennials or whatever our kids and grandkids are called these days even live in the same town as their ancestors. My guess is that the whole idea of paying respect to our deceased relatives came to a head following World Wars I and II.

I have a friend whose father, in his retirement, took to driving around the prairie towns of Nebraska looking for some of the old cemeteries, many of which had long been abandoned and fallen into disrepair. But he didn’t have just a prurient interest. Instead, he would use his own time and money to clean and repair the graves of the total strangers buried in these long-lost prairie cemeteries. I always thought that was a remarkable mission.

When Bill and I were last in Columbus (for another class reunion – we go every five years – Go Shamrocks!), we went to St. Bonaventure Cemetery and again found the Micek plot. Bill noticed the stone was looking kind of sad and dirty, so we went back into town, bought some cleaning products, and returned to wash and spruce up the grave. Bill, of course, never met my grandparents (I didn’t!), but it was important to him that the grave is well cared for. I’m telling you, we baby boomers are a good generation.

Anyway, back to Jen and my trip to the cemetery. In tribute to my mom, I also picked flowers from my backyard — iris and peonies and snowballs and columbine. I even clipped a stem from my geranium to put in Mom’s vase as she did love her some red geraniums! Fort Logan – being a National Cemetery – was very pretty as it is every year on Memorial Day. Little flags mark each and every grave, and large flags line the streets. While there is nothing prettier than an old well-kept cemetery, I am happy that Mom and Dad are buried at Fort Logan as it is always well-maintained and pretty. Bill and I will end up there too.

Funny post today, and hopefully not too macabre. I hope everyone had a good weekend, and gave at least a passing thought to those who went before you.

This week was filled with grandkids’ field days — at least the early part of this week before the storm system arrived that brought daily rain, hail, and trips to the basement. Baby Cole, almost three weeks now, showed up at his sister Kaiya’s field day sporting hair just like his dad’s.

Court…….

Cole……

I asked Court if they used the same hair product that he uses to get the hair to stick up straight.

“Yes,” was his reply. Then a pause……”Well, to be honest, it sort of started out with spit-up.”

And sometimes it takes a lot of spit-up.

Nana’s Whimsies will not be published on Memorial Day.

Have a great weekend.

First Columbine of the season in my garden.

It is springtime in Colorado. Well, actually it is springtime all over the United States and elsewhere, but I currently live in Colorado so I will talk only about our spring. And it is decidedly spring right here. Know how I know?

Chirp.

We have a hedge of boxwood bushes along the front of our house, starting right below our bedroom window. Since we have lived here (so, for over 20 years), a flock of chickadees has lived in those bushes. I see them fly in and out. Sometimes one or two might stand watch on the garage roof or fly in and out of the gutters, but mostly they just hang out in those bushes. When we trim the bushes, they make themselves a bit scarce, but they don’t seem to mind. They know they can come back. And they always do.

I like the little birds. During the day I can sometimes hear quiet chirping letting me know they are still there and doing little birdy activities right there in my bushes. I don’t want the chickadees to leave. I just want them to know that we are in a fight.

Here’s why.

Now that it is warm out, I like to open my bedroom window at night. During Springtime in Colorado, the nighttime temperatures cool down to the high 40s or low 50s, and it makes for great sleeping with my comforter over me and my husband next to me. But birds are early risers. Would you like to know what time my chickadees arise?

Four-Oh-Oh.

It’s like they have a little birdy alarm clock. They don’t start chirping at 3:58. They never choose to sleep in until 4:07. Every morning they begin their day at four o’clock. Therefore, so do I.

Sometimes I awake around 3:30 or 3:45 and can anticipate the chirping by closing my windows. Doing this allows me to “sleep in” until 5:45 or 6. Otherwise, I am – as they say – awake with the birds.

Here’s a funny thing about my birds. In our back yard, we have house finches. I put out a bird feeder, and sometimes it’s covered with the sweet little birds. The females are brownish/gray and the males – as God so unfairly prescribed in many species – proudly boast a beautiful orange head and breast.

But the house finches and the chickadees – well, in the words of Rudyard Kipling….

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;

But there is neigher East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

I never see a chickadee in our back yard nor a house finch in our front yard. It’s like Dr. Seuss’ Butter Battle Book.

But, for the first time ever, I did see a goldfinch at our bird feeder….

So beautiful. Apparently he’s choosing “butter side up….” (back to Butter Battle Book reference).

Another surefire sign that it is springtime in the Rockies is the weather pattern we are now experiencing. Warm mornings with mostly blue sky turning into cloudy afternoon with severe thunderstorms. This pattern will take us into and through much of June. Not every day, of course. But we are definitely in that pattern this week.

Bill doesn’t park his car in the garage. He has a fancy-dancy sports car that gets his spot in our two-car garage. So he worries when we are in this weather pattern because “severe thunderstorms” generally include hail.

Yesterday afternoon as the sky darkened, he informed me he was going to go to Walmart so that he could park the car in the covered garage. I was delighted, as I had some things I needed and didn’t relish the idea of going myself. I couldn’t go because I was in the middle of making blueberry preserves. (Yum, by the way).

While he was gone, the sky got darker and the tornado sirens began wailing. I turned on the news to learn that, while we were definitely in the tornado range, it was centered more to the northeast – right by Denver International Airport, where Jen was in the process of dropping off Maggie, Austin, and Lilly following their week’s visit.

My phone rings. It’s Bill.

“I’m here at Walmart and they have hustled us all back to the shoe department for safety, so I will be awhile,” says he. Apparently flying shoes aren’t as big a concern as flying hunting gear or cutlery or women’s-sized blue jeans.

“Have fun with all of your little Walmart friends,” I told him, stirring my blueberry preserves and listening to my telephone incessantly give me warnings about an imminent tornado.

Shortly after the warnings lifted, my phone rings and it is Jen.

“I have just been in the tornado shelter at DIA,” says she. “We were there for quite some time. In fact, Maggie had to nurse Lilly at one point.”

As for Austin? According to Jen, he just couldn’t understand why everyone was so concerned about the “tomato warnings.”

And just for the record….

Tornado….

Tomato….

Tomatoes are considerly less dangerous.

A guest post by my truck driving friend, Bob B.

On the road again….although lately you really have to be looking hard to find something interesting.

Spring is popping out all over. We have had temps up into the 90s, and then had The Interstate closed last week due to heavy snow. Nebraska people know what I mean by “The Interstate”, but for those of you not lucky enough to be Cornhuskers (or Bluejays), The Interstate is I-80.

Last week the lilacs started blooming in force, which means –as my dad used to say –the white bass are running on the Wolf River in Fremont, WI. Lilacs blooming always remind me of fishing with Dad and brother Tom.

Then, as soon as the lilacs looked like we were going to have a beautiful, bumper crop of purple blooms, it turned cold and rainy, and then they were gone.

Now the spirea are in bloom. Spirea, the bush with white flowers that look like miniature wedding bouquets are widespread throughout the Midwest, and are simply awesome in full bloom. Long hedges of spirea grow in both the city and the country. They look like snow covered bushes during the first week of June. Normally, this is quite a sight during the summer but with as long as winter has been hanging on, this year it’s not that impressive. In fact, it might be downright depressing. What? More snow!?

My travels take me past some famous and impressive fishing waters. Nebraska’s “Big Mac” Lake McConaughy; South Dakota’s Lakes Francis Case, Lewis and Clark, and huge Oahe; and North Dakota’s Devil’s Lake and Lake Sakakawea. The northern pike and now the walleye runs are heating up. I keep looking for a way to stop and get some fishing in, but it has not worked out…yet. Driving across the dams these reservoirs have is always a thrill in the big truck, especially when the wind is blowing down the lake. Hang on tight.

‘Til next time, turn on those headlights when you need to use your wipers, or at dusk and dawn. Remember, you may be able to see us, but we might not be able to see you. And, when it comes to cars v. semis, semis win, or at least tie. Be safe.

In our family, when we use the word “fiesta,” that always means either Jen or Maggie are cooking up some green chili and refried beans. There may be other things added, but those two items are always present or it isn’t a fiesta.

I have posted Jen’s delicious green chili recipe before on this blog. It’s a great recipe with the unique ingredient being ground beef instead of pork. She learned it from her former mother-in-law and has perfected it. Quite an accomplishment for a fair-skinned woman with blue eyes and blonde hair.

But the ingredient that can’t be changed out, of course, are the green chilis. Jen always uses Hatch’s green chilies that she buys at the end of the summer when they are being roasted throughout Colorado, filling the air with a delicious odor that will take your breath away (quite literally if the capsaicin fills your nostrals). She buys a huge quantity, then spends a day cleaning them and getting them ready to put in the freezer where they will be available to her all year long.

She takes some to Maggie if possible, because for whatever reason, New Mexican chilies are not common in Arizona. And any other chili simply isn’t the same.

So I was delighted when I found these in my neighborhood Whole Foods freezer section…..

Last night I prepared green chili using these chilies and Jen’s recipe. I will admit that while these chilies are very good, they aren’t quite as good as freshly roasted. However, my green chili was quite yummy, albeit not nearly as spicy as I would like it. I highly recommend them in a pinch. Great product.

I filled my tortillas with homemade Quick and Easy Refried Beans, a recipe I have posted before.

Recently my nephew Christopher introduced me to fresh, uncooked tortillas, prepared and ready to finish off at home. The tortillas only need 15 seconds on each side in a very hot skillet until they bubble and become brown. They taste just like Grandma makes (well, someone’s grandma; mine made bratwurst)…..

These tortillas are readily available in Arizona, found in the section where you find canned biscuits. However, I was unable, despite exhaustive research, to find them here until I thought about Costco. Sure enough, they carried them, located near the prepared guacamole. Of course, the package contains enough tortillas to feed a small village in Mexico – 44 to be exact. So I will be doling them out to family and friends.

In the meantime, I have been making suggestions to my various grocery store managers to consider selling this item. I hope you can find them in your markets.

Adios.

I’m not sure exactly how or why it happened, but sometime recently I received information in my email inbox about a cruise line called The World. The difference between The World and say, Royal Caribbean or Princess Cruise Lines is that The World’s ships provide permanent luxury residences. Emphasis on luxury. There have been rumors circulating for years that there are people who choose to retire aboard cruise ships. According to some, it is cheaper to permanently cruise around the world than to pay for living in a retirement community. I can’t confirm that this is in fact true. But the idea intrigues me nonetheless. After all, you have on-board doctors, entertainment, restaurants, lecturers, church services, 24-hour food, chocolate buffets and a 70s night once a week. What more could you want? Not that I plan on doing it, mind you. According to my brother, cruising – just like riding roller coasters – is tempting fate. He says sinking – or running into an ice berg (even if you are sailing the Caribbean) – is, well, just a matter of time. But Bill and I do like to travel on cruise ships. Our first cruise was sometime around 2006 or so, a Caribbean cruise on Princess Cruise Lines. Having not done it before, neither of us was certain whether we would love it or hate it. I think it’s hard to feel neutral about cruising. We love it. So in 2008, we boarded a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in Galveston, TX, and spent two weeks traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to Barcelona, Spain, where we began our three-month adventure. We did the same thing a couple of years later when we traveled from Miami to Rome, spending two weeks crossing the Atlantic. On that trip, we actually stayed in the same room on the same ship, and traveled around the Mediterranean, where we visited such places as Egypt and Greece. We were on that same ship for a total of 28 days. I never once got tired of it. Of course, there is a big difference between 28 days and 365 days year after year. Out of curiosity, and after watching the seductive video included in the email, I looked online to find the cost of buying a residence on The World. Bill and I could buy one of the 200 residential units aboard The World for somewhere in the vicinity of $3 million up front and an annual maintenance fee of up to $270,000. I guess if I had to ask the price, I couldn’t afford it. Of course, if I can afford a condo costing several million plus a three-figured maintenance fee, I can afford to fly home and visit my grandkids. Being a half world away from them most of the time would be one thing (in addition to the imminent ice bergs) that would prevent me from living aboard a cruise ship. But I am seriously curious to know if it is actually affordable and sensible to spend one’s retirement years aboard a regular cruise ship. Our rooms on the cruise ships were tiny and plain. It worked just fine for our time at sea. But it might drive me crazy to live in such a small space permanently. Maybe it wouldn’t. After all, you have the whole ship on which to wander around. And it would always be reasonably warm because the ships generally cruise the Caribbean in the winter and the Mediterranean in the summer. You might have some chilly days on the way to and fro, but most days would be quite pleasant. Wouldn’t they? Of course, you have the whole issue of medical care. There are on-ship doctors who could treat colds and the flu, but what about serious illnesses? We have an acquaintance who fell on a ship and broke his arm. He ended up in a hospital in Naples, and doesn’t have especially fond memories of his experience. But if the fine folks of Napoli can’t provide good health care, they certainly can compensate by making delicious pizza. Perhaps in order to even consider this option, you have to be fairly active and healthy. After all, no matter where you live, your body is however old your body is, and your bones are the same age. Perhaps being 75 years old and living on a ship that occasionally lists violently is not a great idea. Just for the sake of comparison, here is a photo of a suite on The World….   On the other hand, here is a photo of Bill standing in our shower aboard the Royal Caribbean…..   And I’m quite certain the room stewards wouldn’t walk into a suite aboard The World and see this (which our steward frequently did)…..   I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t allow the Clampetts to sail aboard The World. All-in-all, I think I will stick to the occasional Caribbean cruise and not choose to retire upon a giant floating city. It would be nice to wake up just outside Florence, however.

I have two smiles today (though I PROMISE you I smiled more than twice this week).

First of all, six years ago yesterday, our little Magnolia Faith was born. Bill and I were on our big adventure, and we were in Arles, France, when we got word of the birth. I remember sitting on the patio of the café which was the inspiration for Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night and talking to our daughter-in-law on the telephone, getting all of the details. It is a memory I will never forget (and it was very difficult to wait almost three months to hold little Maggie). This bright shining star with her grown-up vocabulary and breath-taking smile has brought us six years of joy. Many, many more to come!

Smile Number Two involves Kaiya and Mylee, with whom I have spent a considerable amount of time this past week to give Mommy a chance to catch up on some zzzzz’s when the baby sleeps since Dad has gone back to work.

We were driving to my house after having picked Kaiya up from school, and somehow (who knows how these conversations start) we began talking about being naughty and time-outs and such. I told them that one time when their daddy was about 3 years old, we were in a 7-Eleven and we bought him a Slurpee. He didn’t like the flavor we chose and proceeded to throw it down onto the ground.

“Well,” I told the girls, “that didn’t fly with his daddy and me. Your dad got into a lot of trouble that day.”

Their response? Not a bit of concern about their dad’s punishment……

“What flavor was it? What flavors did they have? What flavor did he want? Did he like Slurpees?”

I then told them about a time when I was naughty.

“I once threw a burrito at Papa because I got mad at him,” I said.

Mylee’s immediate response?

“Did you fix yourself another burrito?”

I love to see the world through the eyes of kids.

Have a good weekend.

Union Station at night

I worked in downtown Denver for 20 years. Actually, I started out working on Capitol Hill, which is just a short distance east of downtown. A couple of years after I started working for that company, it picked up and moved to what was then called lower downtown – or the Skids.

It seriously was quite depressing. Female employees were walked to their cars on dark winter evenings. We witnessed homeless couples making whoopee by the dumpsters outside our windows. There wasn’t a restaurant to be found within a reasonable walking distance. Our executive director told us we were being “trailblazers.”

Well, he was right. Several years after we moved, the Colorado Rockies organization built Coors Field literally across the street from our office, and the rest is history.

When I left, Lodo was thriving, though there were still undeveloped areas. Light rail had begun, but there weren’t many lines. Condos were being built, but they were few and far between, and terribly expensive.

I get downtown on occasion since I retire when I have lunch with some of my old friends. Each time I exit the light rail train and head towards my old office, I tell myself I HAVE to bring Bill downtown as he will simply NOT believe the difference.

Well, tonight we pulled on our big boy and girl pants (as my sister Bec would say), boarded the light rail train, and headed downtown.

Our first stop was a reception at a hotel steps away from Sports Authority at Mile High. We got off the train at the Mile High station and began heading towards the stadium.

Have you ever walked the Strip in Las Vegas from one end to the other? You know how the Stratosphere looks like it’s on the next block, but when you start walking, it gets further and further away? That’s sort of the way we felt as we walked toward the stadium. It just kept inching away from us. When we finally reached the stadium, the hotel still looked a mile away. Bill looked it up later to learn it is 1.3 miles from the rail stop to the hotel.

The reception was for members of Bill’s Parkinson’s Support Group. It ended up being less of a social reception and more of a meeting/discussion about doctors, medications, tips on living productive lives after being diagnosed. They are nice folks and we got some good information, but I can’t say I was sad to say goodbye. We were, after all, on a mission of fun!

The group’s organizer suggested we ask the staff at the front desk if they had a van or could they call us a taxi that could take us to Union Station, where we wanted to begin our evening. Sure thing, I said, knowing full well that Bill McLain doesn’t do taxis or hotel vans. Not when he has two good legs with which to walk. I’ve traveled Europe with this man. I know how he rolls.

And so we set off. We headed towards Lodo, and reached it without any trouble at all. (Bill looked it up later. We walked another 1.2 miles.) It was so much fun to see how much the downtown area has changed even since last fall when I was there last. Denver really has moved from being a total cow town to putting on its own big kid pants and being a genuine grown-up city. And really, you can see so much more on foot than you can riding in a cab. I have to grudgingly admit that.

We had dinner at Proto’s Pizzeria Napoletano, a Italian-style pizza restaurant that has been there for some time, and serves delicious food. We enjoyed our pizza and wine, and had an interesting conversation with the manager about eating pizza in Italy. Comes to you uncut. You eat it with a knife and fork.

Since I was downtown last, the powers that be (The City? The Regional Transportation District?) have completed construction of Union Station. Well, I should actually say the reconstruction as Union Station has been there as a train station since the 1800s. Now it is the downtown hub for light rail and buses coming downtown, and will also be the hub for the train that will go to the airport when it is completed in 2016. Seems like forever. Anyway, it is a futuristic looking addition – really beautiful and magical when it is lighted at night.

In fact, our whole evening was magical. As we waited for our train to take us back to our dull house just inches from the dull suburbs, we contemplated all of the new residential units that have been built. We watched bicyclists and joggers and people walking their dogs enjoying the chilly but clear evening. My favorite was a condo directly across from the train station that was glass windows from top to bottom. The lights were on so we could voyeuristically look right inside. There was scarcely any furniture except for a red sofa and a shiny black grand piano. Magnificent.

All the way home, Bill and I kept saying how much fun we had. We were kind of like kids with their big boy and girl pants. We must do it again soon.

I have seen it coming for quite some time now, but I fear it is now true beyond a doubt. I no longer am in anyone’s demographic group.

I suspect  businesses – and their marketing staff – are missing the boat. Not only are baby boomers still a large portion of the population, but many of us have a certain amount of expendable income since our homes are paid off, we don’t have college loans, our children are financially self-sufficient, and we have time on our hands.

It was the random red couch that really crystalized this notion of being a purchaser without a company interested in selling to me. McDonald’s new ad is a total mystery to me. It involves a series of people sitting on “a random red couch” and eating their Big Macs as a really annoying song plays in the background. As often as I watch these commercials (and I try to fast forward past them as often as possible), they just are totally and completely lost on me. And they don’t make me want to eat a hamburger from McDonalds or anywhere else.

The other commercial that leaves me completely flummoxed is the Sprint ad in which the family members are talking about how a number of people can be on one calling plan. The father is a hamster. Every time I watch this commercial – every single, solitary time – I ask Bill – no, I beg him – to tell me why the father is a hamster. Are there people – maybe people who are twenty-something – who find this comical? Is the hamster a symbol of something that I am missing? Still, it is enough to make me want to change my cell service to whatever service has the commercial featuring that sweet young man talking with the children around the table. I am that demographic, not the demographic with the talking father/hamster. Or is it a gerbil? Am I overthinking it all?

A number of months ago, I touched on this issue as I lamented that Dancing With the Stars was changing its format to try and appeal to a younger demographic. They changed the music and the format and the set to encourage that beloved 25 – 45 demographic group to watch ballroom dancing. I don’t know if they have been successful. What I do know is that Candace Cameron Bure has made it to the finals and she can’t dance a lick. What she can do is appeal to the over-45 demographic because of her strong religious beliefs. So there.

The other day I turned on the radio in the car. The lead story on the local station was that state and local officials had just broken the news to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra – THE COLORADO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA – that they were not going to be able to proceed with their planned BYOC concerts. That is BYOC as in Bring Your Own Cannabis. Yes friends, THE COLORADO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, that distinguished and talented gathering of musicians playing Bach and Mozart and Rachmaninoff, in celebration of Colorado’s liberal marijuana laws, wanted to play music before people who perhaps would rather be at a Bob Marley concert.

I’m sure my parents felt this same way as they grew older as well. Maybe it really is just me struggling to accept that I am no longer a child. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that I am very happy when there is a commercial where one of two things happens: either all members of the family are human or all members of the family are animals.

And McDonalds, can we go back to “two all-beef patties special, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun?”