New Series of Old Coot Ruminations

Again sporadic in posts.  This is really frustrating because: 1. I have plenty of time to write. 2.  When I sit at the computer, I am sorely drawn to Facebook where I find the latest word from many of my grandchildren, though I tire occasionally of the obsesssion with Harry Potter and Dr. Who.  ( I have to admit to a small obsession with Dr. Who when it was the real Doctor  with the scarf reaching his feet.) 3. My brain is so fuzzy that it prefers Spider Solitaire to anything that requires thinking.  4. Etc.

I sometimes wonder which is more frustrating, not being able to remember the names of friends  (I get along with looking them in the eye and saying “Hi, buddy>” .  If I have to talk about my friends, I can usually describe them well enough that Janet (my wife) can fill in the blanks; or having to ask my son to unscrew the lid off the jam jar (ore even worse the Diet Mountain Dew bottle.

I am astonished at the way physical durability diminishes.  About a year and a half ago i dug foundations and laid a combination of railroad ties and concrete blocks to lay up and level a space for a back patio, which space, with the help of my son Stuart I filled with and packed down dirt, then hauled in a trailer load of concrete pavers with which to cover the space.  The pavers still sit solemnly in stacks at the end of the patio, and  the ground to which they belong  is no longer level (Erosion and the habit of the dogs belonging to my children of digging little dens in it to cooll off have had their effect.  My back yard is such a shambles that if I didn’t have a six foot fence surrounding it, the neighborhood association vigilantes would have long since strung me up.

With all this, the most frightening and frustrating thing in my life is the pain Janet has,(a few years ago, she came to hear me sing with a choir in a university Christmas concert and fell off a badly designed step landing which had no rail and broke her femur in three pieces, which was fastened back together strongly but not painlessly with metal patches on the bone installed by a brilliant orthopedist.  WE were advised to sue the university because of the unsafe design but the lawyer we hired surrendered because the university was declaring some kind of “eminent domain” for itself.  (The good thing was that they repaired  and put rails along the landings ---there were more than one dangerous landing -so it won’t happen again.)  Her leg still gives her terriible pain, and her health is much worse than it was,   But we keep plugging along.