Share Your World 2-17-2021
To say that this has been a confusing times doesn’t even come close to reality. In the period since lockdown which took place the day after my last birthday on March 12, 2020, an awful lot of stuff has happened. Both of our Scottish Terriers died. It’s hard being without a terrier. We’ve had one for so many years. We were offered a great little dog last night, but it’s a boy and Duke bullies smaller male dogs. He was a relentless bully to Gibbs and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop it. I felt awful about it and I’m not going to put another dog through that. I have a feeling Duke is convinced he killed them because he really wanted to be the dominant dog and now, he is.
One of my best friends recently died. Technically, it was for no known reason, but I suspect it was a stroke. He had warnings, but mini-strokes don’t leave anything for tests to find. Realizing he’ll never call me again is strange and sad. I guess we aren’t going to save up for a trip to the west coast, though we might make it to the Southwest once more, if we live long enough. He had moved to Oregon, so we only communicated by phone — but still, I knew he was there and his “there-ness” was a comfort. Everyone seems to have remembered him for his technical abilities which were remarkable.
I remembered him differently. As the guy who taught me who was who and what was what in modern (rock, pop, folk, etc.) music. The person who gave me a love for music I had been missing because when everyone else was into modern stuff, I was wrapped in Beethoven, Bach, and Grieg piano sonatas. I remember him as the man who taught me how to make perfect matzah brie and the only person in my life who loved Jewish food and had a really powerful sense of “Yiddishkeit.” We could be “Jewish” together and laugh about things that were funny if you were Jews, but weren’t funny to people who were brought up in mixed households or weren’t Jewish. I know I’m not a very connected member of my tribe, but I treasure the food and the memories and the holidays. There’s no one with whom to share them anymore and even though he was a continent away, we understood each other.
Owen learned to bake. We acquired a ton of kitchen gadgets I swore I’d never own. The Ninja oven was a great — albeit expensive — purchase. The Instant Pot is one of the puzzles of my adult life. Sometimes it works and other times — using the same settings — it fails. Other people have complained about the same thing in reviews on Amazon. When it works, it’s fantastic, but when it doesn’t, it leaves you puzzled. This is one of the items for which a proper manual would have been a big help.
I have learned more about birds than I thought there was to learn and realize that there’s so much more to learn. I’ll probably never learn enough, but having more to learn is a gift. How can you get bored when there’s a world of knowledge waiting for you?
QUESTIONS
Do you feel you ask enough questions or do you settle for what you know?
I am forever asking question and when I can, answering them. It goes with what I just said. There’s a whole world of knowledge “out there.” The ability to learn is a gift, perhaps the one thing we were given by the gods that is uniquely human. We should definitely use that gift a lot more. Humans are frequently not as much stupid as willfully ignorant. Intentional stupidity is a non-starter. Abandoning thinking because you don’t know how? That’s how we wound up where we are and why, unless something happen to wake up everyone, our goose is well and truly cooked.
When did you fail to speak up when you feel you should have?
I’m sure there was such a time, but honestly — since adulthood — I can’t remember. I think more often I’ve gotten in trouble for speaking up when no one else was willing. I’ve lost jobs that way. I have tried to become less aggressive about my approach. Now that I’m not working, it barely matters, though a lot of the techniques I’ve learned help me when I’m trying to get stuff done. Now, if ONLY it could get me vaccinated!
When was the last time you felt lucky?
When I got myself into surgery despite the objections of my doctor and her idiot cardiologist. If I had followed their advice, I’d be very dead. The cardiologist told me I should wait for “serious symptoms” and then get it fixed. It turns out with this kind of obstructive cardiomyopathy, the first serious symptom is cardiac death. Was he out to save the insurance company money or just too lazy to figure out what was going on?
What is a boulder?
A big rock.
Feel free to share your gratitude with everyone!
I’m glad my granddaughter loved my camera because I have always loved it. Owen makes amazing bread. The birds are getting fat in the middle of a snowy, very cold winter. Now, if ONLY we could come up with enough money to pay the mortgage in full. We’ve paid off as much as we could. Now, we hope for government money which would dig us out and help set us to rights after a long painful siege of serious poverty.
Categories: birds, House and home, Kitchen, Life, Photography
So sorry for your loss.
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We have come to a point in life where friends are dying. We always know it will come, yet somehow, until it begins to happen, it’s not real. Thank you. There have been so many losses in the past few years that it is hard to keep track of them.
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I think I may be just a few years younger than me and am starting to recognize that as my future. It’s a little unsettling. Life is like that, isn’t it, the different stages? Funny…
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We all know we will get old but we don’t absorb the information. No kid thinks about what life will be like in another 70 years. I don’t think the idea ever crossed my mind until suddenly, I realized WE were getting old.
Old is a different world than young. Things that were unimportant are suddenly very important. A lot of stuff about which you didn’t care suddenly pops up as critical to survival.
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I remember my grandmother, well into her 80’s telling me she was ready to die. I was in my late 20’s and so hurt by that. She said “All of my friends are gone, all of my siblings are gone, my parents, my cousins…” I said “but you have us”,
She said “you have your own lives and little time for me”. She told me that 30 years ago and i think of it often, more often as time goes on.
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All the people my age I know who moved far away to be near their children and grandchildren found that they didn’t see them any more than they had before. The young are always busy and don’t have time or patience for the elderly. And oddly, we’re pretty entertaining. We haven’t lost our sense of humor or our intelligence and we often know things that others might find useful. But no one even tried to find out what we know. We are the vanished people. As long as we have each other, we manage but i can see where, after a long, long run you might feel you’ve had enough.
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Thank you Marilyn for Sharing Your World! It’s always sad when a piece of our past dies. Things we have known forever it seems, which are suddenly not there. I hope your friend passed in a peaceful way, strokes aren’t always so kind. Take care of yourself because grief (even for a good friend) diminishes our personal reserves. I hope you get your vaccination AND your mortgage issues resolved quickly. You don’t need the stress at all! Thank you sincerely too for sharing all the wonderful bird photographs you’ve taken recently during your bird count. And that beautiful cardinal in this post too! Have the best possible week you can!
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He went instantly and probably painlessly which is as good as death gets, at least for the dying. It’s harder on family and friends who never got to say goodbye. I’m feeling pretty burned out. I spent almost all day hiding from the world while reading a book. There are other things I need to do, but I wanted time off. Remember when asking “how are you” was a casual thing, kind of another way of saying hello? It sure isn’t anymore!
The world has changed and yet I have a feeling when this pandemic ends, everyone will forget it in a a few weeks and act like it never happened. We want to forget. Life is easier that way. It’s also why we never make great strides to fix our problems. I feel as if we are all flailing at shadows, accomplishing nothing. We NEED to accomplish things but we are worn out. In our EAGERNESS to forget lies the ultimate human tragedy. I’m glad I won’t be around to see it — unless someone invents a “live forever” drug,
You know, we worry about dying, but can you imagine the horror of living forever? That sound far worse. Living longer might not be bad, but FOREVER? Yikes.
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So sorry for your loss Marilyn. Losing a friend is so hard.
I hope the mortgage issue is resolved.
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We have lost many, many friends and all of the older members of the family. We ARE the oldest generation now. I suppose at a certain point in time, loss becomes normal. We are all going to pass. When the average age of your friends exceeds 70, it becomes far more normal than you imagined it could be. It brings sadness and pain, but there’s no surprise in it.
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
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Yes, loss is a part of life and losing someone close to your age brings home the truth more strongly than anything else.
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I quit going to funerals a few years ago. There were several every week and eventually, I couldn’t handle it anymore.
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I can understand.
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I’m sorry for your losses. And from this younger lady, you and yours deserve all the good life can give you. There are things in your world in which I relate (dogs, Instant Pot, and definitely, questioning and new learning). But I can’t have your wisdom because I need 20 more years. So I listen and learn and empathize and cheerlead.
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I don’t think I’m wise. What I do have is experience. I know how computers work because I owned one when it couldn’t do anything except be a paperweight on your desk. I remember Windows before it had numbers and owned the first usable Macintosh (I owned one of each and still do). If you don’t forget everything, eventually you know a lot. It’s not wisdom, but it’s useful and can help you and other people in your life survive.
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I hope I continue to remember as I’m using experience as my lesson.
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The best benefit of a long life is that you learn so much stuff, your mental hard-drive gets overloaded. Unfortunately, no one has an external hard drive for our memories. I keep hoping someone will invent one. I could use some more room up there in the brain region 😀
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