Category: 2024
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Detour to a Bygone Era
Mom lives on Long Island, New York, a place populated with too many people, cars, traffic lights, paved roads, parking lots…I live in New Jersey. Hub and I drive the Garden State Parkway north, cross the Outerbridge Crossing (a bridge) to Staten Island, navigate the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn, meander on the Belt Parkway to…
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Best Of Boomers Labor Day Edition
It is hard to believe summer is almost over. Not according to the calendar, but in the daily lives of folks I know. Grandkids head back to school, vacations end, summer residents pack up and move on. Hours of daylight contract, and oppressive humidity and 90-degree temperatures vanish. The holiday weekend ushered in perfect transitional…
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The Demise of the Passenger Pigeon
I doubt anyone or anything – newspapers, magazines, TV news shows, or tweets – will commemorate the landmark event of September 1, 1914. No drum roll, no banners, just a sad asterisk in history. On September 1, 1914, Martha, believed to be the world’s last passenger pigeon, died. The passenger pigeon numbered in the billions…
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Summer’s Curtain Falls and I Make My Fall To-do List
Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. – William Shakespeare The curtain closes on summer as fall creeps in. Hot weather still prevails, but evenings grow cooler, humidity drops, and darkness arrives before I am ready to move inside. There are too many things I want to do before it is too late seasonally… I…
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Musings on Other People Moving
My neighbor is moving. She knocked on our door one day, came in for a few minutes of small talk and said, “I want you to know before I do anything. I’m selling my house.” We knew this day would come. Her brother moved to a town 50 miles away, and she often drives to…
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A Proud Cat Lady Confesses
I grew up a cat girl. I don’t remember NOT having a cat roam around my house. Cats birthed kittens and my family often kept one or two of the offspring. Our cats ran free outside, never confined indoors. Black was the most prevalent color, Midnight an example of an appropriate name for one of…
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Musings on the Transformations Around Me
Like life, my neighborhood changes over time. Homes transfer ownership. New people spend weeks and sometimes months renovating, redecorating, refurbishing. Or they tear down a fine old home – one that needs updating, but has a warmness and positive vibe not easily duplicated – and build a larger building, a three or four-story house that…
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Musings on Becoming Irrelevant
My Florida family rented a home in my resort community for two weeks. Teenagers now, the grandkids’ are immersed in their generational lifestyle. Friends rule. Family time is enjoyed until teen goings-on beckon. Their parents’ lifestyle is not a lot different than their kids. With friends who live in the Northeast, a shore vacation offers…
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Fitness, Friends, Ghosting and more from the Best of Boomers
My Florida family traded the mid-summer oppressive heat and humidity of their home state for two weeks at the Jersey shore. This year they decided not to squeeze into my house – spacious enough for hub and me, but far from roomy for a family of five, including three teenagers, and visiting friends. They rented…
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Why is Simple Sometimes Not So Simple?
Is it me? Am I so techno-mechanical dumb that a step-by-step simple task turns out to be, for me, not so simple? At times an item supposedly user-friendly and easy to assemble morphs into an undertaking difficult to complete or never accomplished. How many gray hairs and sparse spots exist on my head because I…