Category Archives: Health and Long Life

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Music and Theatre, Religion, Uncategorized

The Bucket List

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Definitely, it goes on my list of movies I want to see.  It is also reminiscent of my thinking and Blog writing of last year at this same time, Ten Things I Want to Do Before I Die. 

On Sunday morning I heard a “Bucket List” message at church, complete with trailers from said movie.  The speakers said that a survey was taken of folks in their 90s. Following are the top 5 items on the bucket lists of those elders:

1)       Reflect more

2)       Live life like it is an adventure

3)       Leave a Legacy

4)       Give other people Joy

5)       Have Joy in my own life 

Not bad.  I kinda like that list; in fact, I think I will reflect on it in the coming days and see how well it fits my current list of Ten Things I Want to Do Before I Die.  

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Religion, The Petty Pace

Here’s to an Addiction Free New Year!

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 Information you need to know from Christian Counselor and Life Coach, Maryellen Stipe:

Caretaking can be an addiction, an addiction to other people’s problems.  When you fill your life and brain with obsessing on other people’s issues and fixing them you mood alter on that (worrying, catastrophising, planning to control the chaos, etc) and you do not feel your own pain, or take care of the issues in your own life.  You are so busy living someone else’s life that you don’t live your own life or dreams or purpose. This is why co-dependents are called “co” dependents—they are also dependent or hooked on the addiction of their significant person.  Taking on the role of savior in another person’s life is intoxicating because the co-dependent feels so powerful and comforts himself or herself with what a good person (s)he is to look after this loser in her life.  Caretaking is one of the legal addictions of Christians.  It can seem noble but it also steals one’s life away.  Instead of taking her (or his) cues from the Lord about how to live her life, the co-dependent takes her cues from the problem person.  The co-dependent’s life orbits around the problem person rather than around the Lord.  God’s Lordship in his / her life is diminished.  The co-dependent is not free to obey God’s bidding.  He / She lives life focused on the problem (s) of the significant other.  This kind of activity is modeled in many Christian homes and passed on to generations

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, The Cabin, The Petty Pace

Life Right Now

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Life right now is:Teaching K through Sixth Grade Music

Teaching private piano lessons at home

Rehearsing the children’s music and drama team at church for a Christmas production

Rewriting the Mythical Musical for the 6th grade at school so that everyone who wants to speak can have a part

Encouraging and challenging a talented 16, almost 17, year old

Getting the Cabin ready to show and sell

Feeling hopelessly weighed down with debt, bills, and splintered relationships

Knowing that I have changed and that some around me may never

Loving the fact that another young adult has launched and is a successful college freshman

Struggling to light a woodstove after 6 years of practice and success

Searching for kindling in the snow

Sweeping up the mess of sawdust and chips after lighting a fire

Trying to keep sinks clean when the men are working dirty jobs

Going outside and down stairs to the composting toilet because the septic holding tank is full

Putting my boots on and lacing them just to walk to the car or the downstairs

Actively trying to find and build relationships with other women while knowing I may move soon

Wanting to give my best to those close to me and knowing I am empty emotionally, and bankrupt financially.

Remembering to make my walk and sunshine time a priority as a spiritual, emotional, and physical health prescription

Why do the essential things always get crowded out in the clamor of the urgent?

Emotional Health, Family, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Music and Theatre

Dancing the Night Away

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We did it!  After 53 years of living with a great sense of toe tapping rhythm, but not knowing which foot to put where.  After years of childhood in which I felt condemned if I danced and knew I would pop if I didn’t get the rhythm out somewhere.  After learning the drills for marching band and the choreography for stage productions; after sending my kids to Cotillion to learn social grace and ballroom etiquette and joyfully experiencing Colorado Children’s Chorale performances where-in my son eclipsed my wildest dreams by singing and dancing internationally; we finally did it. 

Doug and I took ballroom dance lessons for three months and then, early in November, we bought tickets to the Jazz Dinner Dance at the high school.  Sure, it was a fund –raiser for the instrumental music department where our kids have enjoyed a combined five years of music experience, and just as sure that we could have enjoyed hearing the music for free by signing up to set up, serve, and clean-up.  I have done that a couple of times before and each time I got very itchy feet, had no partner, and surely didn’t know which foot came first. This year was my year.  We dressed up.  We went to the dinner.  We ate.  We danced to all the Jazz band standards.  We were uninhibited enough to cut up the dance floor; laugh at our faux pass, hazard some turns and twirls and work up a healthy glow. 

Done.  One more thing crossed off my “to do before I die,” list.  

By the way; I highly recommend ballroom dance lessons for married couples!  It can be a great “reframe” at the end of a tense day.  It is good to learn something together.  It is great exercise.

Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams, Health and Long Life, Uncategorized

Today I Became a Queen

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Yes as a symbol of my advancing (ahem) years and maturity, and in an effort to gather like minded friends about me for walks, book discussions, writing inspiration, and general yakking and philosophizing, I founded my own Red Hat Society Chapter, “Purple Mountain Majesty’s Little Red Writing “Hood.”  My title, of course, is Her Purple Mountain Majesty I, and I look forward to adding Majesties II, III, IV and up to my list of walking, talking, reading, and writing buddies. Our ‘Hood will meet as often as possible to hike and write and read what we have written and talk about what we have read and wear what we have red (and purple).

Family, Health and Long Life

Tips and Whine from the Vine

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Perhaps wine is an unusual subject for me to tackle; since the sum total of my 3 decades of imbibing would probably fill a 10 oz glass; but it so happens that everyone I correspond with regularly has been mentioning the heart healthful benefits of the fermented fruit from the vine.  While all my correspondents are in favor of the healthful benefits, it so happens that none of us are particularly enamored of the taste. I quote my SIL: “Oh, got some red from Italy.  Sterilized the drain with it–just plain
battery acid.  I don’t know, I just don’t think I will ever like wine…”  On the heals of her comment came a response from a cousin in the North West who tries to take a little wine for heart health but has never liked the taste of it. I myself always thought wine could do with a lot more sugar. My standard response is that I like about 2 ounces of rosé with a two inch wedge of cheesecake.  That’s good for my heart, isn’t it?  Last week another SIL sent me a bottle of homemade, vintage 2007; a product of her new hobby and wine-making kit (she grew the grapes herself). Upon uncorking, I was disappointed to find that it didn’t fit in the sweet comforts category any more than the others. A couple of days later I was chatting about all the foregoing wine experiences with an acquaintance of over thirty years who just happens to own a vineyard on the Western slope of Colorado. She passed on some expert wine lore learned from a veteran vintner: Men, it is said, usually prefer red wine because they tend to sip it to the sides of the tongue where it registers sweeter.  Women usually find white wines to be sweeter and thus prefer them.  This is because white is sweeter when sipped through the middle (across the tongue) as is the habit of women.  Simple, but, it makes sense.  Apparently my bites of cheesecake cause the red or rose wine to make a detour to the sides.   So here is my advice:Ladies, slosh that wine around in your mouth like a man.SJO and DMH, quaff that wine with little less manners and a bit of a redneck attitude and you may enjoy it more.