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Archive for the ‘aging’ Category

A New Frontier to Conquer

Posted in aging, Journeys, Writing, tagged on September 1, 2023| 4 Comments »

Aging My Way

Even if you’re not a Star Trek fan, you’re probably familiar with the phase “…to go where no man has gone before.”

That’s exactly where I feel I’ve taking a journey to and through — in the here and now. While the feeling certainly has to do with aging, that’s not all I’m talking about. I’m constantly being bombarded with new thoughts, new ways of thinking, new words, new ways of working, new ideas and new gadgets.

The world is changing faster than I can keep up. And while the good old days were not all good, these days aren’t either.  As in almost everything, yesterday and today have both positive and negative attributes.

Getting from there to here has been a chaotic journey that continues to have this old broad dodging potholes to stay on the right path, the one I’ve chosen to travel while still being kind. thoughtful and updated.

Life has had me discarding misconceptions about almost everything, from race and gender to religion and morality. I even had to disregard my high school geometry teacher’s conviction that man would never make it to the moon, never mind traveling in space farther than that.

So, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard I’m ready to board the Enterprise, because I’m going where no 84-year-old woman has gone before. I’m greatly looking forward to the adventure.

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.

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My Dog Scamp

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys, Writing on August 22, 2023| 9 Comments »

Aging My Way

One of the best things about being retired is that you are not usually beholden to someone else’s schedule. And one of the more dubious things about being retired is having a full day ahead of you and deciding how to make it count.

I’ve been retired for 19 years now, and you would think I had that aspect perfected. Ha!

It was easier the first nine years, when I lived in my RV full time and had road trips to plan and all of this country to visit. It was even easier for the next five or six years when I was more mobile and could still hike a trail.

But my mobility became a bit restrained this past year. I’ve become mostly a nest dweller. Now, it’s a nice nest, with good neighbors and a caring granddaughter and her wife living just next door, so I’m not complaining. The truth is, I’m really enjoying this period of my life.

But that still leaves me waking each morning and wondering how I’m going to spend the day. Not so easy as it seems – especially because I’ve never wanted one day to be like the next. It helps, however, that my activity basket is quite overflowing – and my daily self-generated to-do list is always too long to finish.

I do art, I write, I review books, I judge books, I birdwatch, I watch TV, although I read much more than sitting in front of a screen. I also listen to audible books.  I keep up with all my own household chores except ones requiring heavy lifting, and I even do a little yard work. I email and have snail-mail pen pals. I journal and moderate a writing chat group. I cook. I visit the library, go to a play, attend a movie, or even party with friends. And I walk my dog, which gets me outdoors where I can do a little nature observing. I also try to learn something new each day, even if it’s just a new word.

But I’m always open to something different. And I found it a couple of weeks ago. I’m taking a poetry class – me who in all my nearly 60 years of writing never wrote poetry. So, here’s my first assignment. Of course, it’s about my canine companion.

My Dog Scamp

A lap full of hair

A nose full of sniffing

Four prints in the sand

And a tail always wagging

A tongue full of kisses

A belly full of rumbling

Brown eyes that melt hearts

And ears up for alerting

A balance to my life

A companion worth having

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It’s Darth Vader Laughable

Posted in aging, Journeys, tagged , , on August 10, 2023| 4 Comments »

Don’t laugh. But if you look you may find Darth Vade atop the Washington National Cathedral.

Aging My Way

I have funny bone that’s ticklish. It doesn’t take much to make me smile or laugh.

For example, it got a good workout this morning when I read a story about the Darth Vader gargoyle that sits atop the Washington National Cathedral. Reading that in an Atlas Obscura article had my jaw dropping with a giggle.        

Wait, I thought. Isn’t the Washington National Cathedral much older than Star Wars? So down the online research rabbit hole I went. Alice has nothing on me.

The cathedral, I learned is officially known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, and while construction began on it in 1907, renovations have pretty much been going on ever since.

The Vader gargoyle was added in the 1980s, the result of a contest to design a sculpture for a new section of the famed building. A child drew the Vader sculpture, and it was selected for the third-place prize, which included addition in the renovation. I suspect the selection committee had a sizeable funny bone, too.

As an aside about gargoyles, I’m currently reading the series Midlife Magical Madness, which is generously populated by shifter gargoyles. The books have been feeding my funny bone, which is a good thing for this old broad, who reads the daily news, to have.

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.

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The Snake and the Chinaberry Tree

Posted in aging, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , on August 2, 2023| 2 Comments »

As a kid, I gathered up these berries as ammunition for the neighborhood kid wars. Today I wonder why kids engage in war games? What does it say of the human species?

 “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” — Plato

Every time I pass the chinaberry tree that grows in a neighbor’s yard, it takes me back in time to when I was a young girl joyfully climbing the one that grew in my grandmother’s backyard. The tree was located in a fenced area behind the house where my grandmother raised chickens, rabbits and pigs that eventually found their way to the dinner table.

Beyond this area stood a wild blackberry field that stretched for several football fields down to train tracks. It was in this tree that I often watched the Texas Zypher fly past. The sight of that silver streak may have been the beginning of my lifelong wanderlust, as I always wondered where that train had been and wished I had been there.

And as the zypher passed, I always waved at the engineer, imagining that the whistle that blew in response was just for me. Adulthood eventually inflicted me and I realized that the whistle was blown because of the nearby railroad crossing and not for me. It’s not easy growing up.

Anyway, one day when I went out to climb that chinaberry tree – and to collect its hard green berries for a neighborhood kid’s fight – there was a huge rattlesnake sunning itself on the large rock I used to reach the first limb. I screamed and ran back into the house and never climbed that tree again.

But, without nary another thought about snakes, I continued collecting blackberries, my child’s mind not connecting the fact that field was where that big rattlesnake surely had come from, and had relatives as well.

Instead, I continued enjoying those blackberries with a little sugar and milk

in a bowl, and in the blackberry pies or cobbler my grandmother baked.

It’s kind of funny thinking about that now, which I did during the big monsoon storm that shook up Tucson this past week. There is nowhere Mother   Nature, with her hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, avalanches, hail storms, floods, deadly winds or just a lightning bolt out of the blue, can’t get at you.

I eventually overcame my fear of snakes, although I still keep my distance, and I learned not to let fear of what might happen keep me from living a full life. Growing up is not all bad.

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.

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An Old Underwood Typewriter

Posted in aging, Journeys, tagged on July 7, 2023| 7 Comments »

Aging My Way

I taught myself to type back in the late 1950s on an old Underwood Typewriter that I bought for $5 at a thrift store. I remembered this because I came across an ad this morning from someone wanting to sell an old Underwood for $475.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if I still had that old typewriter lying about somewhere. But too many moves, and my habit of getting rid of everything I don’t use or love, reminded me that my old typewriter had long vanished from my belongings.

I taught myself how to type on that Underwood back in the 1950s because I thought it might make me employable as a clerk or secretary. I became just good enough that I got a job typing Western Union telegrams that people called in on the phone. It was a brief job, and my best memory of the time is that I took a telegram from Ernie Ford, a radio personality, singer and early-day television host.

I bet not too many of my readers out there will even remember him. Maybe not even telegrams.

I spent the next years after that job being a wife and changing diapers – five kids’ worth of them – before I once again entered the working world. The year was 1967, and typewriters like my old Underwood were being replaced with electric models, and shortly thereafter computers.

I was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram when I was forced to use one of the new-fangled contractions for the first time. No way, I thought, would I ever be able to write on it. But two weeks later, typewriters became one of those non-useful things in my life that I would get rid of.

Meanwhile, I’ve become daily hooked to my computer. I use it to write, to learn from, and to communicate with. And I paid just about the same thing for the computer laptop I’m writing this blog on, as what someone now wants to get for an old Underwood Typewriter.

Life is strange.

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.

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OK! So, Do Something Else

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Journeys, Writing on July 4, 2023| 9 Comments »

Sitting under a large old tree in the shade is what appeals to me today. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

My granddaughter Shanna and her wife Dawn are cleaning my gutters. I came in from watching them because I felt useless – and because I got antsy about their safety climbing up and down the ladder.

But I knew it would be annoying to tell them to be careful, because at their age I was the one climbing the ladders and putting myself in even more precarious positions. It’s what you do before you reach your eighth decade. And I found people who told me to be careful, or especially “You shouldn’t do that,” quite irritating.

Meanwhile, there are a lot more things than cleaning my gutters that I can no longer do, or have to do differently, than when I was younger.

I use my rollator to bring in groceries and take out trash because carrying anything more than a few pounds hurts my back. I also use the rollator to walk my canine companion Scamp. I use a pair of pliers to open water and soda bottles because my hands aren’t up to the task any more. Household chores are accomplished a small bit at a time here and there during the day with occasional help to lift something heavy or move a piece of furniture.

Some years back, I took up birding when my white-water rafting and tennis activities seemed a bit too much for my years. And over time, I eased down my 20-mile hikes to five-mile hikes — until my knees said no more. My birding these days is mostly done from a shady place to sit to watch and listen.

The thing is, I’ve found ways and things to replace what the years have taken away from me. I make use of my time to read and write more, and to piddle with my watercolors. I also take online classes and try to learn something new every day, even if it’s just the meaning of a new word – today it was polymathy, which means having encyclopedic knowledge.

The plus side of aging is that the years have also taken away all the angst, insecurities and unnecessary drama of my younger days. Most days I feel as if I’m living my best days.

  It’s good to be an old broad, especially when you have loved ones like Shanna and Dawn to clean your gutters.

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.

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I Am Woman. Hear Me Roar

Posted in aging, Journeys, tagged , , , on June 17, 2023| 6 Comments »

I fear weeds have invaded the beautiful flowers. — Photo by Pat Bean

Aging My Way – Pissed and Speaking Out

One of the reasons I left the Baptist Church when I was 14 was that a hell fire and brimstone preacher replaced the calm, gentle pastor who spoke mostly of God’s love for us. He recognized his congregation’s goodness and focused on that instead of calling us all sinners, whether we were or not.

I later quit the Mormon Church, among other things, because as a woman I was a second-class citizen who couldn’t reach the highest degree of glory without a man. I’ve never thought of myself as a second-class citizen, especially since circumstances pushed me into being the family breadwinner, a position which many women find themselves in, want it or not. It wasn’t easy, and for years I fought against a system that paid men more than women for the exact work, and in fact often still does.

I’ve long looked for an answer as to why I was drawn to organized religion in the first place. My parents never went to church, but I felt a need to do so. I’ve never found a satisfying answer to my question. But today, I’m pretty much an atheist, although I shy away from that word. I do believe in a higher power, but I think it’s inside each of us and we have to find it on our own.

Meanwhile the years, particularly recent events, have brought me to the conclusion that some of those who call themselves Christians are the least Christ-like of all. Racism and bigotry have infected their circles. And, more personally, they are advocating, in one way or another, that men are better than women. And women who were raised that way believe it.

The most recent examples are the Baptists expelling churches that have women pastors, and the Shiny Happy People documentary that exposed the IBLP (Institute of Basic Life Principles) which teaches, among other insidious things, that females, from birth, are to be subservient to males, even their incestuous brothers.

Sounds to me like it’s the men writing the rules – and always has been.  

I’m pissed – and scared that this kind of thinking will become more acceptable in the world I live in. And also sad that so many women in the world are still treated as slaves and servants without even the ability to leave their homes, and may even be married off when they are still children.

This is not the kind of blog I like to write. But if we women — and men who don’t have to dominate women to prove they are men – don’t at least speak out against this kind of thinking … well, I fear it’s going to be a sad place for the futures of our female great-grandchildren, of which I now have four.

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.

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Tears, Cows, Dogs and Laughter

Posted in aging, Books, Dogs, Journeys, Travels With Maggie, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , on June 15, 2023| 5 Comments »

From my journals: The day I brought Maggie home. She accompanied me in my RV travels for eight years, and was the inspiration for the title of my book, Travels with Maggie. She experienced my laughter more than my tears.

Aging My Way

A character in a book I was reading said that if you ever needed a good cry, do it around a cow, because dogs notice and come around with licks and kisses to cheer you up.

Thinking about the five dogs that have been my companions over the past eight decades, I couldn’t help but agree with the comment. The dogs, in their turn, each knew when a soft nuzzle was needed. And their warm bodies cuddled up next to mine always comforted me.

So, despite agreeing with the fictional character, whose name I can’t recall right now, I think I’ll stick to dogs when I cry. That even makes sense since there are no cows nearby.

Tears have long been a part of my life. I cried a lot as a child, my favorite place being inside a hedge with a small black mutt, whom I had uncreatively named Blackie. I cried because I was not popular, because my family wasn’t the fantasy one portrayed on television. I cried because I thought no one loved me. I cried if I thought someone looked at me wrong.  

I was a foolish child usually crying over nothing, but the tears soothed me. In later years, I learned that tears have actually been scientifically proven to be beneficial, that they detoxify the body and restore its balance.

As a young mother and wife, I cried because my own family was not the everyone-lived-happily-ever-after kind. I cried when my children were hurt, and when my marriage dissolved.

Later I would cry because I couldn’t find my perfect soul mate. Those tears were usually shed at midnight when I was curled up beneath a quilt, and often interrupted when my dog, a faithful cocker spaniel named Peaches back then, would wiggle beneath the covers to comfort me.

 I don’t think a cow could do that – not to mention I wouldn’t want it to. And neither, I eventually decided, did I want, or need, a soul mate. I was my own soul mate, and I had a good life, and a good dog. This is probably why I rarely cry these days.

Luckily, I laugh a lot. And science has proven that laughter is quite good for the body, too.

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.

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Peels and Books

Posted in aging, Art, Birds, Books, Journeys, Writing, tagged , , on June 6, 2023| 4 Comments »

Tucson’s saguaros are now in bloom — and the Gila Woodpeckers love it. — Art by Pat Bean

Aging My Way

I shared some potato salad I had made with my friend Jean the other day, and she asked: “Why did you peel the potatoes? “Because I don’t like potato peels,” I replied. To which she said, “I do.”

I thought about this yesterday while reading Vegetables Unleashed, a cookbook by Chef Jose Andres who talked about vegetable peels, clearly stating that he always peeled his vegetables, even tomatoes.

“If the skins don’t bother you, you can skip that, but I’m not sure we can be friends,” he wrote. The comment, I suspect, was written as a joke. But then it reminded me of something I had read the week before in a post about books. Yes, I know. My over-active brain is always trying to connect dots.

Anyway, the earlier comment, was “I don’t think I could be friends with anybody who doesn’t read books.”

I thought that was a bit self-absorbed, even though I realized on reading it that my conversations with other book readers were always more fun, especially when discovering that the two of us liked and had read many of the same books.

Andres’ comment, meanwhile, was way over the top. I mean my friendship with Jean, who is also a chef, isn’t the least bit unhinged because one of us likes peels and one of us doesn’t.

Differences are what makes the world go round, or so I’ve been told – and believe. So as long as you don’t make me eat potato peels, or ban me from reading whatever I like… Oops, now my over-active brain is thinking about people who want to ban books.

Now those are people I’m sure I could never be friends with.

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.

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A Stubborn Canine Companion

Posted in aging, Dogs, Journeys, Writing on May 3, 2023| 2 Comments »

There’s a reason why, after originally naming him Harley, I shortly, afterwards renamed him Scamp.

Aging My Way

No politicking today. Instead, let’s talk about my canine companion Scamp.

I’m a morning person, normally ready to get up with the sun each day, and so is Scamp, who is immediately ready for his morning walk. The combination usually works well.

Last summer, I moved to a ground level apartment with its own fenced-in small yard. One of the goals was that when I wasn’t up to walking him, Scamp could do his business in the yard.

Scamp, a shelter rescue who my granddaughter says landed with his butt in the butter, had other ideas. He decided his yard was the last place he would pee or potty. Even retrieval of the poop of a strange dog, which was not picked up by its asshole owner, that was retrieved to be placed in our yard would budge him. Nor would walking him inside the yard with a leash. Even two full days of no walks outside the yard would budge him.

That latter effort made him sick, and at that point I gave up. It’s not often I find someone who is more stubborn than me, but Scamp ups me.  So, I learned how to walk him using my new rollator. He gets long walks when I’m up to it, and very short walks when I’m not.

Meanwhile, I quickly learned that he had no problem peeing in my neighbor’s yard while I was talking with him, nor in my granddaughter’s nearby yard in the same apartment complex.     He just didn’t want to do any business in his own yard.

So now let’s talk about what happened earlier this week.

I had stayed up into the early hours listening to an audible book, so when Scamp was ready for his walk, I wasn’t. Being hopeful, I slipped out of bed and opened the bedroom’s sliding glass door that led into the yard.

Scamp moved to the bottom of the bed and stared outside for about 10 minutes, then returned with kisses and chocolate brown eyes that said: I really need to go for a walk. So, get up and take me!

As usual, I gave in and got up. Scamp then went outside but just to sit and stare at me with a look that said hurry, hurry! When I was finally dressed and picked up his leash, he did a Snoopy happy dance.

It was so cute that I forgave him for making me get up. Then, while I was fiddling to open the gate, Scamp lifted his leg and peed on my new garden gnome that stood nearby – inside the yard.

Scamp’s lucky that I love him as much as I do.

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.

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