Parts of me keep leaking out. Nothing terribly embarrassing, exactly, but leakage nonetheless. One of the things that I have been revealing inadvertently is my California connection. You might think this would show itself as a penchant for surfing or a lack of winter clothing or, oh I don’t know, maybe a fondness for marijuana. […]
Tag: aging
Superficial Assumptions About Old People
I sometimes experience dismay when young people are surprised that I know how to use a computer, travel alone, or do household repairs. I have been doing all those things for decades and am not ready to stop doing them yet. The assumptions some people make shouldn’t surprise me, but they do. I am fully […]
Beautiful Night Guardians
There are lots of things that happen to your mind and body as you age; some of them you expect and some you don’t. This is about a couple of things I didn’t expect; long earlobes and insomnia. 1. Long Earlobes The older I get, the longer my earlobes get. They are not ugly, not […]
The Looking-glass Self
As in my previous blog post, I am rethinking my appearance which has devolved during nearly three months of being housebound. A bad fall has resulted in my spending most of my time lately in hospitals and at home in bed. I am now more mobile but still not getting out much. I have been […]
If You Don’t Mind, It Doesn’t Matter
When is a good time to stop colouring your hair? It’s not a trick question, even though it sounds a lot like “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” You could answer that you shouldn’t even have started colouring your hair, but it’s too late for many of us. We already did. I started colouring […]
How to Save Six Hundred Dollars
It happened again. Someone stopped me in the street and asked me what I use under my eyes. I’m starting to think my hard-earned wrinkles of experience are magnets for sales people with magic creams to sell. The last time this happened, the magic was supposed to be from the Dead Sea. This time, I […]
Memory Loss is Not Funny . . . Usually
There’s nothing funny about memory loss, except maybe this. About a month ago I got an email from the Canadian Association of Retired Persons that said: CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR MEMORY? Take the free online brain health assessment validated by scientists from Baycrest, a world leader in the research of memory and aging. It went on […]
Narrow and Broad (Perceptions of) Women
Listen up, media people. We want more women in our entertainment. Young women, old women, middle-aged women, gay, straight, and transgender women. We want to see people like ourselves. We want to see our mothers and grandmothers, sisters, aunts, daughters, cousins, and nieces. We want them beautiful, plain, or wrinkled. Firm and flabby, fit and frail, […]
Selective Observations
I am the kind of person who straightens misaligned pictures and who picks up litter. I notice a lot of things that other people miss, and sometimes I even pride myself on it, so it comes as a disappointment to realize that I am failing to notice some significant things. Maybe I’m turning into a […]
I Was a Bystander
I like sitting at the back of a bus. The seats there are slightly raised, so I have a better view of the scenery as we pass. That makes it easier for me to know when I have to ring the bell to get off at my stop. While sitting at the back of a […]
The Day My Mind Went AWOL
It has been a couple of years since I got my eyes checked and four years since I got new glasses, so I thought it was time for a review. I was expecting, if anything, that I needed a slight change in my prescription. I wanted some new glasses because I wasn’t thrilled with the […]
Being Invisible
The actor Matthew Mondine once totally ignored me. He was attending a film festival at which I was a volunteer usher, and his entourage was leading him towards the question-and-answer session he was to host. Obviously, he was focussed on his goal and I didn’t expect him to acknowledge me. I was totally irrelevant to […]
Rhymes with Dromebook
I have been travelling with a laptop that is smaller and lighter than my usual laptop, and it has been driving me slightly crazy. At one point I was tempted to throw it out of the window of a high-rise in Chicago. Aside from the fact that I am still familiarizing myself with its capabilities, […]
I don’t doubt it
My ventromedial prefrontal cortex is shrinking! At least, that’s my excuse. I recently read an article in the Globe and Mail which says that as we get older our ability to doubt is impaired because this part of the brain begins to shrink.* This means that we are more likely to believe Nigerians who want […]