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Category Archives: senior musings
The Bathroom Window Does Not Disappoint
They’re back! An annual perk of Winter – stumbling into the bathroom at dawn to be greeted by ice art on the window. It has only just begun and so far the daily frost landscapes painted by nature have not … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather, Winter, Wow!
Tagged abstract ice, bathroom window, cold bathroom, cold mornings, cold weather art, crystal formations, dawn abstracts, from my window, ice, ice formations, my imagination, nature's art, view from my window, window art, winter art
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First Day of the Last Month
It looks like we might have our first significant snow storm of the season tomorrow. Of course that prediction could easily change, but I rescheduled a long-distance appointment anyway. As always, over the last month or so the geese in … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Autumn, Cooking, Dogs, Food, Holidays, House plants, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather, Winter
Tagged December, End of November, fallen leaves, impending snow, intention, Japanese Maple, medicine card, missing loved ones, move with intention, murmurations, my red tree, northern lights, one flower standing, onward, Papi-Chi, papillon, The Antelope
1 Comment
Between the Sounds
This unexpectedly came across my social media feed yesterday. These simple words hold such personal impact that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it – especially the last number of lines. They encompass a different kind of loss … Continue reading
Posted in advocacy, Aging, Coping, Deafness, disability, grief, Hearing Impaired, Perspective, senior musings, Uncategorized
Tagged a different kind of loss, Deafness, explaining hearing loss to others, filling in the blanks, grief, hard of hearing, hearing exhaustion, hearing loss, invisibly disability, left out, missed connections, missing sounds, navigating a hearing world, social disconnections, struggling to hear
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Streak
If there isn’t anything too pressing going on that I need to get up for and if it is still early enough, I enjoy playing a few word games before getting out of bed in the morning. These are mostly … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Coping, Humor, Perspective, senior musings, Uncategorized, Weird
Tagged connect the dots, dot game, flow free, game apps, game streaks, habits, haptics, phone games, puzzle apps, scores
3 Comments
Not Fade Away
I have often used the word “exposure” regarding my initial connection to the Grateful Dead. Having been in a series of relationships starting back in high school with fanatical Deadheads, tapers and jam band musicians, it was just natural to … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Flashback, Friends, Humor, Memories, Perspective, senior musings, Uncategorized, Weird
Tagged a woman in the band, Autzen stadium 1978, craze, donna jean godchaux, Early dead shows, eugene, Grateful Dead, jam band, jerry-garcia, LSD, misogynist fans, music, my hippie days, still a deadhead, the Dead, tripping, weird trip, worst dead show ever
2 Comments
Arrival of the Junco
A friend of mine stated that when the Dark-eyed Juncos show up at the bird feeder, Winter is surely on the way. They have arrived in all their rotund fluffiness, an announcement that Autumn is trucking right along. Although it … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Autumn, Gardening, Holidays, nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™
Tagged Arrival of the Junco, Autumn, Dark-eyed Junco, fading foliage, Fall, Fence Dinosaur, geese migration, Halloween, last colors of autumn, papillon, winter is not far off
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Redirection
This week I will share a few things that have provided a bit of joy, appreciation, awe, or curiosity during September. For the most part they are pretty simple things which have created a necessary and probably healthy bit of … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Autumn, Birds, Cooking, Daeja's Garden, Food, Gardening, Mushrooms, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather
Tagged ant vs. hornet, autumn light, Birds, bugs, Figs, flock of mourning doves, grandparenting, insects, polenta con fungi, rainbow soap, recipe, sage chips, sanity saver, scented clematis, September, september scenes, Spotted Lantern Fly, tea house
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Weather Roulette
As usual, where I start with these posts is not always where it ends up. One of my kids sent me photos of outrageously massive, crashing and cresting waves on the ocean near where she resides, an effect produced by … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Autumn, Coping, Flashback, kids, Memories, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, Uncategorized, Weather
Tagged 1960's parenting, big waves, childhood memories, climate change, dinner bell, earthquakes, first grade, flooding, geological, hurricanes, meteorological, microbursts, parental mistakes, parenting faux pas, running through the neighborhood, six years old, storms, tornados, walking to school, Weather, what was she thinking?, wildfire smoke
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Drifting
This morning I decided to tackle some of the worst of the weeds in front of The Urban Porch. Although I’m not all that worried about neighborhood appearances (when you live across the street from a hoarder, everything looks better … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Daeja's Garden, Gardening, Memories, nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, summer, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather, Wildlife
Tagged aquarium, beach, Childhood, cicada killer, cloud formations, clouds, communing with the octopus, drifting through life, Family, Flowers, how to dry overalls, July flowers, lake, late summer blooms, mesmerizing jellyfish, noisy overall buckles, ocean, octopus, overalls in the dryer, spacey
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Muggy and Buggy
Those of us who can are spending as much time hiding in air conditioned spaces, parked in front of a fan, submerged in the water, or escaping the area altogether for cooler climes. Hitting 100°F with humidity is a condition … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Cooking, Daeja's Garden, Food, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, summer, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather
Tagged bad hair days, buggy, cold summer meals, days of watermelon, firefly season, gazpacho weather, heatwave, hot weather dinners, humidity, matcha, mosquito hell, muggy, overpopulating, overpopulation, summer heat, tomato face, too hot for little paws, too hot to move, too hot to weed
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Sometimes I Feel Like Margot
The story takes place on Venus, where it rains all the time, the sun only appearing every seven years and lasting for one precious hour before the endless rain begins once again. Just one child in a classroom of nine … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Coping, Daeja's Garden, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, summer, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather, Wildlife
Tagged antisocial, art exhibits, dog vomit slime mold, FOMO, FOMO as a catalyst, garden, Gardening, isolation, life, Little Rudi, look for the rainbow, mosquitos, only one bloom, original illustrations, papillon, Rain, Ray Bradbury, roz chast, si, so much rain, summer garden, summer wildlife, tulip tree, Weather, weeding, wet summer
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Purple
Right on schedule, it’s Purple Time on and around the Urban Porch again. It’s been raining, raining, raining, adorning the petals in watery gems. Stopping by a friend’s house over the long holiday weekend past, I was met with the … Continue reading
Posted in Daeja's Garden, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, Spring, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather, Wow!
Tagged Bearded Iris, clematis, colorways, End of May, Flowers, garden, Gardening, Ground Ivy, Lavender, Lobelia, May, may flowers, may garden, meaning of purple, nature, northeast in May, purple moods, purples of May, Salvia, Siberian Iris, so many purples, Spring, spring flowers, Wisteria
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My Regression
The backstory is that the only place to park my car behind the house is underneath a rather large Japanese Maple tree. Over the last number of weeks it has been dropping clumps of red seeds, pollen and other combinations … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Humor, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, Spring, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Wow!
Tagged carwash, carwash as art, cheap thrills, child-like, eccentric or just fun?, entertaining myself, Japanese Maple, laughing alone, pollen, spending time alone, tree gunk, tree junk, weeks of rain
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Another Year of Two Springs
I’ve been away from this page, having had the good fortune once again to dwell amidst spring blooms in the west first, which will be followed a few weeks later with newly emerging blossoms of the east. This post will … Continue reading
Posted in Daeja's Garden, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, Spring, Travel, treasures, Uncategorized, Wow!
Tagged April, California blooms, Color, falling into spring, flower crazy, Flowers, garden, Gardening, Gardens, Napa, nature, NorCal, patterns, photography, scent of flowers, Sonoma, springtime, west coast, wine country
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Hey April!
Made it to April! Depending where you reside, so many experienced what felt like an endless stretch of cold and darkness. Around here you can almost hear sighs of relief echoing from all directions (regarding the weather, anyway). I’m going … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Birds, Cooking, Daeja's Garden, Food, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, Spring, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™
Tagged ant farm, bird in the house, curious turkeys, Dutch Baby, fancy crocus, harbingers of spring, house wrens, it begins again, robin, scilla arrives, seasonal reunions, sunny daffodils, turn turn turn
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Oh Say Can You See?
Yesterday my six-year old grandchild was out shopping with her mother and spotted this car with a decorative tire cover on the back. This morning she mentioned to her father, “I saw America’s butthole!” ~*~
A Few Days From Now
A few days from now we will hit the official Spring Equinox. On and around The Urban Porch, things are happening. Rain has been softening the earth to quench and coax emerging growth. Sun-warmed, once again the crocus and the … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Cooking, Dogs, Fashion, Food, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, Spring, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather
Tagged banes of curly hair, basking in the sun, Cleopatra haircut, crocus, curly hair, curly haircut, Dutch Baby of the week, Fence Dino, first bee, full worm moon eclipse, gray curly hair, janis joplin pants, long curly hair, lunar eclipse, malachite clouds, nature mimics nature, papillon chihuahua, sparkly pants, Spring, tiny daffodils, two springs, wall of chocolate, warm sunny days
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Radiant
There is a bit of magic in waking up to trees glazed in icy wonder. As the sun dodged in and out from wolf-gray clouds, I kept stepping outdoors into the frigid air for brief moments to admire the prisms … Continue reading
Posted in nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather, Winter
Tagged diamonds, frozen, frozen world, glazed trees, ice, photography, pine needles, prisms, radiant sparkles, rime, shadows, silhouettes, sparkles, stalactites, unicorn icicles, winter gifts
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Fighting Windmills
Early on I had a gut feeling where this would be heading and how it would most likely end up, but decided to hold out in the (futile?) hope that there might be some righteousness in all of it. Once … Continue reading
Posted in advocacy, Aging, Are you kidding me?, Coping, Deafness, disability, disability accommodations, grief, Hearing Impaired, Perspective, Rant, Regrets, senior musings, Uncategorized, Vent
Tagged Anthony Bourdain, bad closed captioning, business, CC out of sync, closed caption, closed captioning, CNN, CNN accessibility discrimination, CNN documentary series, CNN out of sync, CNN Sucks, corporate disrespect, deaf discrimination, discrimination, FCC Disability Rights Office, hard of hearing, hearing discrimination, hearing loss, Jake Tepper, left out, Linda Ronstadt, Martha Stewart, news, Stanley Tucci, The New York Times, Tom Hanks
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What’s On Your Nightstand?
It has been too easy to hunker down, gazing at winter skies, finding excuses to ride out the coldest moments indoors (unless you are one of those winter outdoor types – me, not very much). Despite a predisposition to remain … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Earworm of the day, Flashback, Food, Friends, grief, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, Uncategorized, Weather, Winter
Tagged a lot of books, books, books on my night table, cozy, distractions, e-readers, friends passing, papillon, reading, reading more than one book at the same time, snowy days, the nightbird, too cold, unfinished, unfinished books, winter
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The Road to Uncle Moustache
It is beyond explanation why I often awake in the dead of the night with odd memories or curious questions about random subjects, some which can send me scrolling through the internet for verification and answers before being able to … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Dogs, Flashback, Food, Perspective, senior musings, Travel, Uncategorized
Tagged 1970's jerusalem, 1970's old city, Damascus Gate, existing, falafel stand, Herod's Gate, life, Memories, my hippie youth, old city, strange days, street food, thoughts in the middle of the night, travel, why am i awake?
5 Comments
The Panettone
She’s been gone many years now, but every December I can still hear my mother’s voice in my head talking about the panettone. “Would you like this nice panettone?” “Here, take this lovely panettone home!” She would offer, urge, somewhat … Continue reading
Posted in Are you kidding me?, baking, Food, Holidays, Humor, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, Uncategorized, Weird
Tagged Christmas, holiday customs, i hate raisins, italian raisin cake, my italian mother, pannetone, regifting the pannetone, the gift pass on, who eats this stuff?, who likes pannetone
4 Comments
The Dawn Abstracts Return
Once again, the bathroom window has provided. The first ice pictures of this winter have arrived. It is a seasonal event, an arrangement of ice particles that develop on the (okay, not too clean) east-facing bathroom window on the coldest … Continue reading
Posted in nature, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Winter
Tagged abstract ice, bathroom window, cold mornings, cold weather art, dawn abstracts, ice art, ice crystals, ice formations, ice pictures, my imagination, winter art, winter dawn
2 Comments
Diversions – A Few November Details and Images
I’ve stopped watching and reading most of the news these days. Never one to hide my head in the sand, at this point I’m saturated and have had enough. All this angst in the media can’t be healthy. My gaze … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Autumn, Cooking, Coping, Food, Gardening, Holidays, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, treasures, Uncategorized, Weather, Weird
Tagged black and red cowboy boots, childhood memories, cloud dolphins, cloud whales, deities, ghost cat, halvah honeycomb icecream, lenticular clouds, light a candle, media anxiety, off-loading my cowboy boots, plantar fascia tear, prayers for my mother, radioactive dinosaur, seed catalogs, shakshuka, super moon, thanksgiving snow, the beast from 20000 fathoms
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Retrograde
Whenever a string of mishaps and unfortunate events of daily living transpire, inevitably someone I know will say “Mercury must be in retrograde.” Considering the backward-moving appearance of Mercury that occurs a few times a year is merely an optical … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Autumn, Coping, Dogs, Earworm of the day, Friends, Holidays, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™
Tagged a string of mishaps, Autumn blessings, everything is broken, Halloween, homecoming parade, look for the light, mercury, my sick papillon, nostalgia, parade, retrograde, when things go wrong all at once
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Assumptions
I was driving around looking for a good space in a rather large parking lot that serves a number of chain stores. The plan was to meet and accompany a friend who had a few errands to run in those … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Are you kidding me?, Perspective, Rant, senior musings, Shopping, Uncategorized, Vent
Tagged aggressive-looking vehicles, assumptions, big black trucks, don't ding my car, not always as it seems, not what you imagined, old guy, parking space hog, perspective, taking up all the spaces, what an asshole!, who taught you how to park?
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Paint It Black
In NYC, wearing all black appears to be de rigueur. It has been an observation over the last number of years that the sudden appearance of so many people dressed primarily in black has often been one of the markers … Continue reading
Posted in Are you kidding me?, Earworm of the day, Perspective, senior musings, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™
Tagged black exterior paint, black painted houses, exterior paint trends, goth houses, Paint It Black, spooky color houses, trending house colors, urban sprawl, urban transplants, witchy houses
2 Comments
Silver Linings
There has been a dark cloud around my heart lately. It happens sometimes. I think pretty much everyone knows the feeling. Late afternoon, heading out the door with the dog, leash in hand, pausing for a moment on the porch … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Coping, Earworm of the day, Perspective, Photography, Seasons, senior musings, summer, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, treasures, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™, Weather
Tagged cloud rays, clouds, dark cloud, dark feelings, emotional pain, God-light, grace, Grateful Dead, hope, hopefulness, light beams, onward, silver linings, sun rays, Touch of Gray
2 Comments
On August and Letting Go
The waxing moon has suddenly taken on an orange glow this week, due to drifting smoke from the fires up in Canada that tinge the atmosphere. It hangs in the sky much like a leftover hunk of yellow cheddar, perhaps … Continue reading
Posted in Aging, Coping, Daeja's Garden, Gardening, nature, Perspective, Seasons, senior musings, summer, The Urban Porch, The Urban Porch ™, Uncategorized, Views From he Urban Porch ™
Tagged August, blue dayflower, blue winged wasps, cheese moon, end of summer flowers, exhaustion, going to seed, invasive vines, ivy overgrowth, keeping up with the yard, letting go, mid-august, overwhelmed, trumpet vine, wild grape invasion, wildfire haze, yardwork
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daeja's view 