It's coming up on three years since I started my blog. Blogger is an easy enough site to use, even for people as non-savvy about tech stuff as me. I don't have anyone to assist me with this. I also don't have a proof reader or any editorial advice and I like it that way. I think, though I'm not certain, that I once turned off the comments option, at least as far as the general public's ability to add a comment, as I didn't care to hear what they had to say. I do occasionally get a comment from a friend or family member, but these are also not available for the general audience to view- I think.
Shortly after I initiated my blog, I opted to choose a word for a theme and follow it for two or three blogs. For the month of October I'm going to return to a form of that method. On I will parse about my St. John's Wort Blues.
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This is a beautiful, unusually warm October, so far, out here in Privatopia, actually in all of northern Illinois, including big broad-shouldered Chicago. Lots of reasons to be joyous and I am, but there remains a nagging bit of melancholy that I can't shake, you know the way a cough can sometimes linger long after you've recovered from the cold?
So, Reliable Husband sends me a link earlier this week. We have a digital news subscriptions to the Washington Post and the NY Times. He also reads the WSJ, USA Today, and such. He will often share with me interesting articles he thinks I might have missed. Anyway this particular link says, "End of the World on Wednesday, Says Religious Group"- "Have any plans for Wednesday, Oct. 7? You better cancel them… " begins the article. It turns out those same bible-thumpers from Pennsylvania who predicted back in May of 2011 that the world was ending, have now corrected their calculations and come up with October 7 of 2015 as the new date of the complete annihilation of good old planet Earth.
Now, I'll give Reliable Husband (RH) the benefit of the doubt that he sent the article not knowing I was malingering in my melancholy. But, it does set me to thinking again about the short sweetness of life. "Hey," I ask RH, "If the world was to end today would you do anything different?" Being of the male species, RH pauses a second and quickly mentions sex, the shed we were planning to have built and a red pickup truck he's been thinking about buying. He notices the dismay on my face, laughs, and says, "What? Wrong answer?"
"Well, it's just that I was thinking along the lines of completing a halloween project with our youngest grandchild and making a last visit out to see the older two grandkids in Virginia. But, along with you, RH, my regrets are few. I am completely happy with my lot in life." He smiles contentedly and returns to his coffee.
There are many blessings to aging and retirement. "Oh yeah, like what?" you ask. Well, such as being free to do things that interest you, but that you never had time to pursue. I bought myself a guitar at a local flea market, which I am now trying to teach my arthritic fingers to play. And RH and I no longer have to worry about food, shelter and college tuition for our now grown children. But, now that I think about it, these sorts of benefits may be offset by the the new problem of worrying about every ailment that comes up. I was never really much of a hypochondriac, but I do give pause now, when I feel a pang or a sensation of general malaise. Is this it? The beginning of the end? RH confesses that he does the same. But, we continue to eat our veritable "apple a day" by exercising, eating healthy and using safe driving practices.
I make my usual super-duper breakfast smoothie, the base of which is 4 ounces of Naked Juice's Kale Blazer to which I add some plain yogurt, any fresh fruit I have at hand and a large handful of additional raw kale or spinach, when I spot the date on the container, "Enjoy by October 7, 2015," that date again! Would we live our lives differently if we knew our own expiration dates?
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| What if we came with expiration dates? |
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This week we were joyfully playing with our youngest grandchild in Chicago. I'm not allowed to post any photos of him on "social media." But, I don't think they'd mind this pic of his back. Isn't he cute?
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| Walking the same beach as Reliable Husband and I did as children |
The daytime temps are still in the 70's in the city, so we grab a chance to enjoy the beach before the cold sets in. There are a few people who have the same idea. A couple of young mothers with toddlers in tow, a man in his 60s who is continually swimming lengths of the beach, a stand-up-paddle boarder way out past the beach buoys, a young couple, nestled together and sipping takeout coffee as they gaze out at the water, and a homeless man who is doing various physical exercises as his just hand-washed bedding, slung over the railing adjacent to the beach house, dries in the sun. Don't believe all those stereotypes about the homeless, I remind myself.
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| Flower added to keep homeless guy anonymous |
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| Older man doing beach laps |
This is Chicago's Foster Beach. RH and I grew up within walking distance to this very beach. And now we watch in awe as our young grandson frolics in careless innocence on those same sands. Okay, poetically the same sands, as I've seen the Chicago Park District refresh the sand every few years or so.
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Well, the world did not end on October 7, 2015, at least not the world in the parallel universe in which I currently reside. Yup, life sure is sweet and I wouldn't change a thing.
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