Oh yeah. It’s great and I didn’t want to sound dismissive.
And while I sort of have nostalgia for cleaning a record and putting it on the turntable. And those big massive speakers, It’s very nice to just tell Alexa to play pretty much anything I can think of. My wife and I listen about 3-4 hours a day.
That’s very nice about being old. Sit on the back porch, play chess and listen to Pink Floyd or whatever floats our boat.
My husband once used the expression “broken record” with an adolescent client. The kid had no idea what he was talking about.
I have that phobia already. Sometimes I have nightmares where I have to go over a tall bridge. That’s the whole dream. I don’t fall and die or anything, I just have to drive over it. Horrible.
No problem with mountain roads (used to navigate them daily). But roofs are a problem. I’ve replaced may roofs in my life. But certainly no more.
My balance has gotten wonky, as demonstrated by my bike riding skills and my skinned knee. But I’m still out there doing that.
Good for you! My 87-year old grandfather thinks he still belongs on roofs. He hasn’t dealt that well with the limitations of age.
Sheeesss. Last time I was on a 4/12 roof, I roped my self in. I threw the climbing rope over the house and secured it, and bought ascenders and a new harness (oddly, my old one shrunk) I was setting up my sat dish and had a bunch of tools to coral, so it was a busy place. But it scared me.
Hell, I’m 58 and I have that already. I’ve never liked sheer heights and was always edgy and hyper-focused driving the exposed edge of the old Devil’s Slide even in my twenties. These days as my reflexes slowly erode, if I am heading say up the coast to Bolinas or something I will comfortably drive north on Highway 1 on the coast on the interior lane. But I will avoid driving the stretch south say between Stinson Beach and Muir Beach with its hairpin turns and zero shoulders. I always cut inland at Pt. Reyes Station because driving that now makes me sweat and slow down and nobody following me needs to deal with that nonsense.
That’s not you becoming your mother, that’s you adapting to the reality of not having the reflexes of someone half your age. I don’t sweat it, nor should you 
.
Glad you overcame you fear of flying, which statistically is very silly.
But fears about driving on long bridges over water seem to me to be quite reasonable, especially for an older person whose driving skills may not be as sharp as they once were. It’s a phobia that I share. There’s one particular bridge in this area that is both long and high and crosses a large body of water. I almost never need to drive over it but absolutely hate it when I do.
It sure doesn’t help assuage my concerns when I sometimes hear on the news that the bridge is closed due to high winds. I don’t know exactly why they do this but I’m guessing it’s because vehicles with a large side cross-section relative to their weight, especially big trucks, could be pushed out of control in high winds. My phobia conjures up images of some truck careening out of control and crashing through the guardrail, taking two or three cars down with it into the watery abyss!
I’m 77. I just bought my first cane today (for my current hip arthritis, and to help with recovery after my hip replacement surgery). Frankly, I’m hoping that the results of the surgery will help me to feel less like an old person.
I was just at immigration today and there was this really old man also there. White hair, hearing aids and the whole works.
We all had our paperwork out so I could glance at his application, and he is only four years older than me.
My 4th graders last year kept telling me one of their teachers made them listen to 60s & 70s music ad infinitum. “Penny Lane” & “Sounds of Silence,” on repeat for an hour. Those are great songs, but I’d be tearing my ears off too.
What did he Google? Bangs and bad teeth Cher? from 1970?
Or Moostruck Cher from 1987?
Liza Minelli?
I once described my mother’s experience in a dark room for two weeks with the measles, before the vaccine, to some colleagues under 25. She got the radio in her room, because her family had the TV.
“They only had one TV?” 
"They only had one radio? 
And the procedure for dealing with her clothes-- she had to put them in a paper bag and close it, and the first few days, they were thrown out, but after that, some powdered bleach was tossed in, and the bag was shaken, then put outside for a day
“Why didn’t they spray it with Lysol?”
“Did her mom have to wear PPE?”
Never explained what one was, per se, but have explained a couple of times the trop, if I may use that term, of the strong man ripping a phone book in half.
Deterioration of the vestibular system is a symptom of aging. You can develop vertigo even if you never had it before.
My grandmother relinquished her license voluntarily at age 88 (seniors get a state ID free when they do this, and it’s normally about $15). She had caused an accident that could have been very, very bad, and was not, only by grace of the fact that she was going slower than the posted speed, and another driver was a quick thinker. As it was, it was a one-car fender-bender.
The county where my grandmother lived motivated seniors to voluntary give up their licenses by providing free transportation services. There were vans that made regular rounds to popular shopping places, restaurants, etc., and would work you in where you wanted to go, albeit, you might not get your chosen time, they’d get you as close as they could. If you had a medical appointment, or something like social security, you had door-to-door service, scheduled to drop you off 15 minutes before your appointment. And its hours were something like 5am to 11pm.
It was so good, my grandmother was always saying that had she known, she would have turned in her license much earlier: it had been years since she’d driven at night, in bad weather, or on the highway.
She could have done a PSA for them.
FWIW: services for seniors in that state were supported by profits from the lottery, so, there was tons of funding for all kinds of things. It was a result of legislation my grandmother championed in the 1980s, when she was in her late 60s, and embraced aging by becoming an activist.
Was it at least a young person who replied? there’s a 25-yr-old at work who is always either misunderstanding something about the past, or making an incorrect pronouncement about it (“the Bicentennial wasn’t that big a deal either”). Then there’s a 22-yr-old who corrects her (the country was healing from Vietnam & Watergate, etc., etc.) She’s then going to have explain Vietnam and Watergate. And probably “tape.” Also, who Carter, Ford & Nixon were.
PS: I Googled up those images of Cher, but I can’t remember how to embed them. Can someone tell me? if I miss the window, I can send the URLs to a mod.
[quote=“ThelmaLou, post:316, topic:1009575”]
what you want is independent living like I have, not assisted living. [/quote]
When my mother moved to a “home”, it was an easy move.
The facility has 400 residents, (300 in independent apartments, the rest in separate wings for assisted care and nursing care.) The facility provided the moving service.
The mover sent a wonderful woman (half organizer-half social worker-half interior designer-half psychotherapist!) to examine the entire contents of the house, meeting many times over a week or two With my mother, she took inventory and they decided what was appropriate to take to the new, and smaller, condo in the facility
They measured all the furniture, sorted all the clothes, sorted all the relevant kitchenware, measured all the pictures on the walls, decided which knick-knacks to keep,etc.
On moving day–it was easy! The workers began packing at 7 am. By 7 pm, my mother moved into her new condo–completely and totally ready for use. In one day, the movers re-created a mini-version of her original house.
The pictures were hung on the wall in the same positions as before, the clothes hung in the closet in the same order, the medicine cabinet in the bathroom was full of the same items as before, the drawers in the bedroom dresser were full, the kitchen cabinets were arranged, the knick-knacks were on the shelf, the grandkid’s artwork was attached with magnets to the refrigerator, the bed was made and ready for sleeping in,
I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that Ethel Merman is Liza Minelli (I love a good conspiracy theory, but no), or that Liza Minelli knows who Ethel Merman is (almost certainly, but alas I have never taught Liza Minelli).
Wow! I didn’t realize such services existed! If I can find such a person – who would be worthy of sainthood – it would start to make the Big Move seem almost feasible!
A good real estate agent can also be helpful. My previous house was quite a different situation and a long time ago, but the real estate agent sent – and paid for – a cleaning service to scour the house clean from top to bottom. That was after she had recommended a couple of brothers in the renovation business to fix up a few things.
Is it a sign of aging when one of the highlights of the week is refilling your pill dispenser?
It depends on the pills you put in there:
(Which probably shows my age)
Interestingly, per Google,
Lysol was created in 1889 by German chemist Gustav Raupenstrauch. It was originally launched in Germany to help stop a cholera epidemic.
Yes, Lysol has been around for a very long time. However, the aerosol spray version (as per the quote from @RivkahChaya 's students, “Why didn’t they spray it with Lysol?”) was only introduced in 1962. Prior to then, it was only available in a liquid form, sold in a bottle.
50s are a weird age. Some people look 80. Some people look 35. Some people are grandparents. Some have very young kids. Some people have been married 30 years. Some are trying to date 25 year olds.
Sometimes these are the same people.