Pat Bean's blog

A Bug Named Chigger

April 22, 2024 by Pat Bean

In 2014, I bought this red car and named her Cayenne. She is not as shiny today, but driving her this morning felt empowering. Pepper, whom I’m holding, spent the last eight months with me during my RVing days before going to doggie heaven a few years after I moved to Tucson.

Aging My Way

I got behind the wheel of my car for the first time in over six weeks this morning. It was just a short drive, but after a knee replacement and three stents put into my heart, it was extremely empowering.

While most people I know, find driving, especially in rush-hour conditions, annoying and frustrating, the activity has long been my happy place. I think it began back in 1967 when I bought a 1963 red VW Bug shortly after I went to work for a small local newspaper.

At first, I used it just to get back and forth to work, but then I was promoted from dark-room flunky to reporter, a life-changing milestone that begin my 37-year journalism career.

Over the next four years, I drove that Bug over 100,000 miles to get to and from assignments all over Texas Gulf Coast’s Brazoria County. With five children at home, a lazy husband, and a demanding editor to please, driving in that car was the only alone time I had. Enclosed and sitting behind its wheel, I felt serene and at peace, about the only time I did during that period of my life.

***This is a 1963 VW Bug, like the one I put 100,000 miles on between 1967-71. Amazingly you can still find them on the road.***

When I moved to Northern Utah, I drove between there and Texas to visit family often, heady with each opportunity to find a different route for the journey. And when I finally retired, I spent nine years driving a small RV, with just a canine companion, all over America. I loved every moment of the 150,000 miles I drove exploring this awesome country. I found beauty everywhere I looked.

At 85, and with poor vision in the dark, I gave up night driving several years back. And I know there is going to come a time when I will have to relinquish my car keys because of my age. But thankfully, that time hasn’t arrived yet.

Oh, and by the way, I paid $600 for that Bug I called Chigger – and sold it for $900 four years later. It’s the best bargain I’ve ever experienced.

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.

Posted in aging, Dogs, journalism, Journeys, road trip, Travel, Writing | Tagged driving, VW Bugs | 2 Comments »

Life’s Landscapes

April 17, 2024 by Pat Bean

***When I was traveling, I always tried to be in Texas for bluebonnet season. — Photo by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way

One of my blog followers wrote yesterday that although we had never met, she had been following me so long that she felt I was an old friend. I don’t think there could have been anything nicer than that said to a writer. And comments like hers make me happy to be blogging again after my short sabbatical.

I’ve been blogging here on Word Press since 2010, the year I turned 71 and when I was still traveling around the country with my canine companion Maggie. The view then was ever changing.

***It’s cactus-blooming*** season in Tucson. One of the many things I learned while traveling is that beauty is everywhere. You just have to look. — Photo by Pat Bean.

Meanwhile, this will be my 1,588^th blog, and tomorrow I turn 85. A splendid view of the Catalina Mountains from my small Tucson apartment greets me each day, and my canine companion is named Scamp.

I wake up each morning with gratitude in my heart — for what I had in the past, and what I now have. I’m content.

Posted in aging, Journeys, Travel, Writing | Tagged Bluebonnets | 8 Comments »

A Healed Heart and Cacti

April 16, 2024 by Pat Bean

***Yellow is the color of happiness and sunshine, both of which I intend to enjoy whenever I can. — Photo by Pat Bean***

It’s morning. I’m sitting in front of my computer, writing. It’s exactly where I belong. And it feels wonderful. A feeling I haven’t had in quite a while.

The truth is, I’ve spent the past year slowly dying – and not knowing it. My heart was failing me, but without any symptoms, which I’ve been told isn’t uncommon for women, I simply attributed my sluggishness to being 84 years old, and a worn-out knee, which was successfully replaced on March 20.

Eight days later, I had a major heart attack, which in reality probably saved my life. Thanks to today’s awesome medical technology, I had three stents placed in my heart, and when I looked in the mirror this morning, I saw something I hadn’t been seeing for months.

A happy old broad, who will turn 85 in two days, was staring back at me. Hair mussed, wrinkles in abundance, but blue eyes sparkling and a smile that cheered my healing heart. And a saggy body that didn’t feel like it wanted to crawl back into bed and sleep the day away.

Picture of the Day

**Gypsy Lee parked amid the cacti at New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park. — Ph*oto by Pat Bean***

To give myself an incentive to start blogging regularly again, I came up with the idea of sharing one of the pictures that drops into my email daily as a memory from the past. The one I’ve chosen today is one of my RV, Gypsy Lee, in which I traveled fulltime around the country in from 2004 to 2013.

She is parked among the cacti in New Mexico’s Pancho Villa State Park, a treasure located near our border with Mexico. It recalls a peaceful week there enjoying the history and beauty of the area and as always birdwatching, an activity I took up when I was 60 years old.

Gambel quail abounded, and there was a roadrunner that frequently perched on a fallen branch in full view of a window where I ate my morning breakfast. Thrashers, red-wing blackbirds, cactus wren and white-winged doves were often seen.

As I think back now on those treasured days, I’m ever so thankful I didn’t miss one of them. Life is for living as well as dreaming, although I think all my adventures did begin with the latter. If I had to mark a beginning to my wanderlust dreams, I think it began when I was 10 years old and read a book called I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson.

It took me awhile to figure out that one didn’t have to be married to have adventures, but we’ve come a long way since I read that book back in the 1940s.

And now, thanks to modern-day medicine, I’m hoping to discover that adventures are still possible for 85-year-olds.

Posted in aging, Birds, Favorite Places, Journeys, Writing | Tagged Pancho Villa State Park | 12 Comments »

The Dance of Life

February 20, 2024 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

“We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once,” said Fredrick Nietzsche, an 1800s’ German philosopher.

Dancing, for a couple of years in my life, once gave me great joy. I did it most Wednesday nights when country swing was my jig of choice. Mostly I danced with a 6-foot-4 partner who was the boyfriend of one of my girlfriends who hated dancing.

He and I got pretty good at it and I continued to enjoy it even after he accidentally gave me a black-eye while we were doing a maneuver called The Octopus.

And that vivid memory was the first thought that popped through my mind when I read Nietzsche’s words.

However, since Nietzsche wasn’t a dancer, I can only assume he was talking more philosophically, like having something in your life that gives you daily joy.

I appreciate that deduction, since these days I can’t quite dance. My left knee — soon to be replaced, I note, which leaves me both happy and a bit scared – is quite wonky. And I doubt, even if after fixed, it’s going to let me dance with the ease I did in my younger days.

But I do have daily joy in my life. My canine companion Scamp, friends and loved ones who drop by or call, books, letters, birds that visit my small yard, sunshine, flowers, the satisfaction of completing a piece of art, or even just having a clean apartment polished up by my own hands,

These are all little things that have long been in my life, but which I didn’t always appreciate as much as I do now. I find having the time to do so now is one of the better gifts of aging.

So what if I can no longer dance? My cup is not just half full, it’s overflowing. Thanks, Fredrich. For reminding me.

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing | Tagged joy | 7 Comments »

I Simply Can’t Make Up My Mind

February 16, 2024 by Pat Bean

***Are you sure we’re going the right way? — Art by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way

Women just can’t make up their minds. That’s a comment I heard often, especially in my younger years. It was never meant as a compliment.

Age, however, has taught me that having the ability to change one’s mind, to make a U-turn, even if it’s in the middle of rush-hour traffic, is actually a strength.

I mean, we’re all human, men and women alike. And though there are some out there who think otherwise, none of us are perfect. I would hate to even start to count up the number of mistakes I’ve made in my 84 years. But I’ve learned that nothing stops me from changing direction when I do.

It’s actually a lesson that began filtering into my brain when I was about three years old, and innocent enough that I actually ate a spoonful of dirt at the urging of some older kids who were teasing me. They pretended to eat the dirt while telling me it was yummy. All I can recall of that incident, which is one of my first memories, is that I didn’t take a second bite.

Even so, I was almost 40 before I accepted that it’s not a weakness to change one’s mind. Since then, my life has been better – and oh so much easier because I no longer fear making a wrong decision.

After all. I’m a woman. And everyone knows, we women simply can’t make up our minds.

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing | Leave a Comment »

Watching TV Again, But Still Reading

February 9, 2024 by Pat Bean

Aging my Way

When I retired in 2004 and moved into a 21-foot RV, I got rid of my TV. It wasn’t a big deal. I had many other things to do. Even nine years later, when I left my wheeled home for a regular apartment, I saw no need to make a television a part of my furnishings.

But in January of 2023, my brother, an avid Dallas Cowboy fan, visited and wanted to watch a football game. My granddaughter and her wife, who had bought a new television for Christmas – and had been trying to give me their old one for a month – brought it over so he could watch the game.

It was supposed to go back to their apartment afterwards but for one reason or another, it didn’t. It sat on a bookcase for nearly a year, where the only comfortable place for watching it was from a prone position on my couch. I mostly watched it for my kind of soap operas, The Challenge, Survivor and Amazing Race, which when without a TV, I streamed on my computer.

But a few weeks ago, the girls came over and moved all my furniture around so they could sit comfortably on the couch and watch football game or a movie with me. And they moved my big old comfortable recliner into a prime viewing position.

I now watch TV more, which has me pondering if this is a bad or a good thing. I ponder a lot.

This week I’ve been binging on Call the Midwife, which usually ends each episode on a bright note even if life has been difficult for the characters. I’m a realist but I believe in silver lining endings.

Watching TV again has been pleasurable, but thankfully art and books still call to me. I just finished reading Bright Remarkable Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, which I highly recommend, as I do Call the Midwife.

Both kept this old broad up well after her bedtime. That’s OK. It makes me feel younger.

Posted in aging, Art, Books, Journeys | Leave a Comment »

The Murder of Crows

January 31, 2024 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I’m reading A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett. It’s a cozy mystery with an ecologist as the protagonist. With all the many, many books out there to choose from, I was attracted to this one simply because of the title. You see, I once was a member of a small group that called itself The Murder of Crows.

The group membership numbered a half dozen women or so, all well past the age innocence, with marriage, children, divorces and life experiences in our varied backgrounds.

We met once a week for lunch and got together occasionally for other activities and events. Our conversations were filled with interesting chatter, raucous laughter, irreverent remarks and commentary about politics and world events. We were a liberal group with four journalists, in various capacities, among us.

I was in my early 40s when I was introduced to the group by a younger female colleague at the newspaper where I had just been hired. She didn’t stick around long, however, as she soon departed to a job in another state. But by that time, I was firmly ensconced in the group.

We got our name from one of the women’s teenage sons who referred to us as a bunch of old crows. Instead of being insulted we started calling ourselves The Murder of Crows, which is actually the proper name for a group of crows.

We stayed together for the next 20 years or so before moves and deaths begin taking their toll. Only three members were left behind when I retired in 2004, sold my home and took off to tour America in a small RV. I kept in touch, but while I was traveling around another member died, and then after I settled in Tucson in 2013, one more death occurred.

That’s what happens to friends when they reach their eighth decades of life. I got to visit with the other lone Murder of Crows’ member when I visited my old hometown last September. And I got a nice long snail mail letter from her a couple of weeks ago.

While I hope there will be many more visits and letters, I know it’s important that I treat each treasured get-together and letter as if it were the last – because it just might be.

Now I think I will stop here and go write that return letter to one of the last two still-standing Murder of Crows’ members. It’s important to me.

Posted in aging, Birds, journalism, Journeys, Writing | Tagged murder of crows | 3 Comments »

Old Broad Pondering About Diapers

January 19, 2024 by Pat Bean

***We don’t have snow, but it’s been cold here in Tucson. — Art by Pat Bean***

Aging My Way

If I were to think about some of the important milestones in my life, I could start with an incident that happened during the early 1940s, when as a young child, I destroyed the family’s ration stamps. Issued by the government during World War II, the stamps allowed families limited purchase of such items as sugar, gas and meat.

The incident is not something I actually remember doing, but the story was told to me numerous times growing up. That I survived this family trauma has to mean something.

But not nearly as much as the milestone that I now look back on in disbelief. I survived raising five children at a time when disposable diapers were not easily available. And because the first four of my children were close in age, I once had seven years of uninterrupted cloth diaper changes.

Somehow, today, that seems as much of a milestone as giving birth to those five children. Perhaps it’s because after changing a few of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s diapers, I came to the conclusion that disposable diapers might be one of the world’s best inventions.

I think my next milestone, which happened when those five kids ranged in age from two to 11, was going to work for a newspaper, and getting promoted from darkroom flunky to reporter. It changed the entire direction of my life and gave me a career I loved for the next 37 years.

Looking back now, I feel that was the life I was meant to live, and I can’t help but wonder if fate played a hand in letting me find it. What would my life have been like if I hadn’t answered that newspaper ad? Or, if at 25, I hadn’t decided I wanted to be a writer?

As I sit here reflecting on these things, I realize how very thankful I am for the life I’ve had. But I also wonder how different things could have turned out, especially since all the milestones – and wrong decisions — I’ve survived in my life were not all that great.

There were a few experiences I wouldn’t regret having skipped. But then I wonder if I hadn’t experienced them, would my life have turned out for the better – or the worse?

Who knows? Certainly not me. I guess pondering about disposable diapers, and where your thoughts go from there, is just something you do when you’re an old broad.

Posted in aging, Art, Journeys, Writing | 4 Comments »

Here’s What I Know

January 17, 2024 by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

When things got tough in my younger years, I did what most of us do. I struggled on. Then, during one of the rougher patches, I came to an amazing discovery. Despite all the chaos that was happening around and to me, there was still a deep happiness inside me that had nothing to do with my present world.

Ever since that day, I’ve felt blessed. And as I thought about it this morning, I realized that if I ever needed that flaming spark of inner light to keep going, it is now.

While all the drama and craziness that’s been in my past life has faded away, I’ve found myself in a new kind of shit. Sorry if that word offends, but I can’t think of a better description to sum up what’s happening to my body after 84 years of living in it.

Bum knee, bum shoulder, thinning skin, thinning hair, sagging boobs, actually sagging everything. Yet, I still greet each morning with zest, and with thankfulness that I’ve made it this far in life, and also for the benefits of aging.

No longer are little things a matter of life or death, I have more time to read and learn, and stillness in my life for reflection. I finally realize my worth and that I am loved, two things that escaped my desperate search for them when I was younger.

But best of all, I’m learning to live in the moment. I enjoy each bird that visits my yard, each hug from friends and loved ones, each cuddle with my dog Scamp, and every sunrise, which is visible from my warm, cozy bed on a cold Tucson morning like today.

I’m just thankful to still be alive. This I know.

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, silver linings, Writing | 3 Comments »

That’s Not What I Meant

January 9, 2024 by Pat Bean

Some hummingbirds can flap their wings up to 80 times a second. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

With all this talk being thrown around about artificial intelligence, better known simply as AI, I’ve come to realize one of its uses has been both the savior and bane of my life for 40 years or more. I’m talking about Spell Check.

In the early years, it simply noted misspelled words; today it goes so far as to question context and meaning of words. I like it when it catches my typo gremlins, but not when it automatically changes a word I truly meant, sometimes even refusing to let me change it back.

This mostly happens when I text — and the most frequent irritation is when Spell Check changes Dawn to David. And just yesterday, I typed that I was back safely after taking my dog Scamp for a walk and that he had pooed. AI didn’t like pooed, so changed it to posed.

In 2020, Google wrote of its Spell Check Program: “The tool uses a deep neural net with 680 million parameters to better understand the context of misspelled words. It runs in 3 milliseconds — faster than one flap of a hummingbird’s wings.”

Now I don’t understand some of that, but I do know that some hummingbirds flap their wings 80 times a second. Then again, I don’t understand how that is possible either.

In my imagination, I see Spell Check and Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, coming head-to-head in a face-off.

Carroll, whose work was published in the 1800s, used such meaningless words as brillig, frumious, slythy, mimsy, burble, chortle, galumph, snark, frabjous, and burble – and meant them. Some of those words can now be found in dictionaries, like Jabberwocky, the name of a nonsensical poem by Carrol. Today, Jabberwocky, according to an Oxford Dictionary, means invented or meaningless language.

Will Spell Check block the creation of new words from joining our language – or will there be another author like Carroll to fight and win the head-to-head battle against the mighty AI tool?

This curious writer wants to know. Otherwise, I just want Spell Check to continue catching my typo gremlins, but to acknowledge I meant what I said.

That’s not asking too much. Is it?

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing | Tagged AI | 4 Comments »

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