Mastering life changes

Posted on February 6, 2026 | 1 comment

The latest newsletter from Stanford’s Longevity project has an article on mastering life transitions at any age.

I pulled this quote from the article because it spoke to me on so many of the the levels of what I’ve been reading and thinking about:

a well-balanced life has three ingredients, which he calls the ABCs of meaning.

A is Agency — what we do, make, build or create; often that’s through work.

B is Belonging — your relationships, family, colleagues and friends.

C is a Cause — a calling, purpose or something higher than yourself.

It’s a short article, but it gives you some deep material to ponder. If you read it, let me know what you think.

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The distractions aren’t bad things…

Posted on February 1, 2026 | 9 comments

…but then I forget what I was going to do next.

There is so much to do each morning after hopping out of bed, and even more in the cold winter months. First of all, in winter time, I have to get socks on because the floors are cold. And that means two pair of socks because the floors are cold and one pair is heavy and has to be removed to put on shoes to go outside. And an old sweatshirt pulled on over my pajamas.

All the cat chores (litter boxes, feeding, clean up, moving barriers put up for overnight [that’s a whole ‘nother story], refilling the food supply in the house), unloading the dishwasher, making the bed, and this morning putting away laundry that was done too late in the day to get dry so stayed on the drying rack overnight.

This morning I was distracted by an envelope on my desk–a card from my sweet babboo. A card to celebrate our 51st wedding anniversary. I had left a card on his desk last night but he hadn’t gotten to it yet. That distraction made me forget that I was on the way to make the bed. One of the cats came to help (just I was getting the bedspread pulled up) so I sat and petted her and told her what a good cat she is. That reminded me I had not yet done my sit/stands so that was next on the list.

I’ve been up for over an hour, so decided now was a good time to sit here at my desk, before I start breakfast preparations, and write a post about all the distractions. Another distraction, but not a bad one. The rest of the day will have many more.

A postscript: for those of you who follow Shirley’s Boots and Braids blog out of San Bernardino, you have probably seen her last post–her twin daughter has died. When I told Terry about it (I talk about my dear Readers and blogging friends like they live right around the corner) he said he already knew the story as it had made national news! And it has, big time. Her daughter was famous for the work she did with skid row in Los Angeles, I just didn’t realize HOW famous. Hug the people you love. Update your blog. Share your concerns. Let us all know what’s going on in your life, no matter how distracted you may be.

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It’s been awhile…

Posted on January 28, 2026 | 5 comments

The days have flown by. That’s my whole excuse for not sitting here and writing sooner.

Well, I could say I have a lot to do, and that is true, but I could take some time and sit here and write. Instead, when I had some extra time I have been sitting with a book I just started over the weekend. The Good Life, Lessons Learned from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz. The whole idea of the decades-long study shows that strong relationships make for a good life. I found this book through a newsletter that I receive after signing on to Stanford’s longevity project.

I had been a part of a teacher cancer study for decades, begun at Stanford when I first started teaching. Although closed to new participants for a decade or more, that study is still providing amazing details, but the researchers use the material that has already been collected. Stanford asked if I would like to sign on the longevity project since I was now in a position of having lived a LONG time. Okay. Sounds good.

I’ve done a couple of questionnaires, but mainly I just get their updated research, which is eye-opening. The newsletter always has lots of material that interests me, especially a list of books, which is where I found The Good Life. One of the authors, Robert Waldinger, also has a TED talk (or more) that piqued my interest, so I had to get his book.

Other books that have been recommended are Elderhood by Louise Aaronson (very wordy), Built to Move by Kelly and Juliet Starrett (great piece on literally moving into really old age), I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years by Ilchi Lee (which made me totally change my thinking on how many years I want to live), Deep Medicine by Eric Topel (AI and healthcare can go together), Super Agers by Eric Topel (let’s look at longevity in a different way).

And, the sun has been shining here while the rest of the country is getting very cold storms, so I am out working in the yards and enjoying sunlight which gives me a whole better mood.

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It’s January: it’s cold & gray & foggy

Posted on January 22, 2026 | 3 comments

Cold, gray, foggy weather here in central California. We’ve not had rain for many weeks. The rain and wind would chase away the fog, but as early as it is in the season (before Valentine’s Day), we would probably get more fog after the rain. The fog has not been this thick, or hung on this long, since the 1970s. It is history-making fog!

The cold, gray weather has done little for my mood. I need warm sunny days. I need to rake leaves. I need to be in the backyard with the kitties. But, alas, I stay cooped up in the house. I am, indeed, a fair-weather soul.

We are getting back into routine around here. Terry is off to cardiac rehab this cold, gray, foggy morning. Then he will go by the hardware store to pick up parts to fix the shower faucets. He worked on them earlier in the week, but realized he needed certain supplies. I don’t ask questions. I just appreciate his work.

Laundry. It’s always my heaviest task around here. Well, maybe after meal prep. I’m not real good at that anymore. But laundry. It’s always there. Terry had to wash all of the bedding from his isolation days. That took all day. Today I am getting to the bag of clothing he used before and during his isolation.

I will say, I am good at laundry. I organize it in very prescribed ways. I know the length of each load’s wash and dry cycles. I time everything in a most methodical manner. I have laundry OCD! Oh, and I am fanatical about getting it out of the dryer and hung up and/or folded and put away.

One additional note: I am very grateful for my decision to step away from reading to the first and second graders at Columbia. I miss the teachers, the children, the stories, but I realize I could not have handled that responsibility along with the planning, the work, the details of Terry’s visits to Stanford and the follow up of work here at home. I am also very grateful for our critter/house sitter. Without her, we could do none of this.

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Looking more like normal

Posted on January 19, 2026 | 3 comments

Monday morning, Day 4 after the PRRT treatment Terry did on Thursday at Stanford Medical. We obeyed all the precautions and are now getting back into our regular routine.

But first, all of the linens must be washed, and his clothes, kept separated for these four days, must be washed separately. Terry is moving all of his “daily living” artifacts back into their usual places after making his daily habitat in our bedroom for 4 days. The confinement was the hardest part, but he managed very well. And, best of all, he feels good.

The cats really had a hard time with that closed bedroom door. They have always been able to come and go as they wish. A few sleep with us, too, but not for the past four nights. I’ve had three cats with me, on the guest room bed, and another two lying on the dresser across from the bed.

I wanted to vacuum the house on Sunday, but I knew the cats were already traumatized with Terry’s “hiding away,” so decided I’d just wait and let Terry vacuum when he returned to his usual routine. One of the elderly cats walked around “talking” on Saturday, very disturbed about the situation. I had never seen her act like that. This morning she seems her more normal crotchety self.

If we are friends on Facebook you may seen my post about the coffee making. This morning Terry made the coffee again. That is really “back to normal.”

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Although back home, not back to normal

Posted on January 17, 2026 | 8 comments

It is a very foggy Saturday morning here in the San Joaquin Valley. In our neighborhood there is no sound, whatsoever. No cars going down the street. No yard tools being used. No one out working on their cars. Nothing. Just silence. Of course, the fog is so thick that it’s a bit hard to see across the street, but I hear nothing. Eerie.

There has been discussion on Facebook about the Valley fog this week. It really hasn’t been this thick, this deep, or settling in so early and staying so late, for decades. Many of the younger generation are struggling with it.

Those of us raised here remember this kind of fog from our growing-up years. The 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s had this kind of tule fog. But, there has been a decline in the fog, so much so, that tree and vine growers could tell a difference with their crops. It was investigated, and sure enough, the fruit trees and the grape vines like the fog in the winter while they rest. I, personally, hate the fog and didn’t complain when there was less of it.

Fortunately, we didn’t have thick fog Thursday evening as we drove back from Stanford. Although we left Palo Alto at 2:40 p.m., the traffic on Hwy 101 was so heavy (I drove 5 mph in some places) that it took us 6 hours to make what can be as short a trip as 3 hours. We did make 3 stops for bathroom breaks and to switch drivers. I cannot drive at night, and by the time we left Gilroy, it was already sunset. If traffic had been normal, we would have been home by that time!

Terry is isolated in our bedroom suite and doing fine except for being in small quarters. He will be able to take a walk tomorrow. He feels fine, no aftereffects of this treatment. If you are on Facebook, then you have seen my posts about this. We are so grateful for how easy this was, except for the drive home. Three more such trips through July.

I think the hardest part is going to be the 3-day isolation. Our cats hate having the bedroom door closed and not being able to sleep on our bed. I’m sleeping in the guest room which has my childhood French Provincial 4-poster bed. The cats come in, but it’s not the same as having both of us in the bed. I’m the only one they can annoy!

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Repairs in the new year

Posted on January 7, 2026 | 10 comments

This first week of 2026 has been a whirlwind of activity around here. And, no, none of the activity had to do with Christmas decorations. I don’t do those any more. That would just add to my workload. You have to “un-decorate” and clean before you can put out decorations. And, you have to go get the decorations, the bulk of ours in our storage unit.

If you have cats like we do, there are just too many things for the cats to play with and destroy, so it works better to just keep things very simple. I took out our Christmas mugs that are stored in the cabinet in the garage. I can easily store the regular mugs there while the holiday mugs reside on the mug tree in the kitchen. I also have holiday linens–towels and napkins–that reside in the linen closet at the end of the hall. Again, pretty easy to replace twice a week when I launder the linens.

There are still Christmas cards lying around but most have been put away in my journal for the month. Next year, when I retrieve this year’s journal, I will be reminded of all the people who sent greetings. I did a Christmas letter this year in place of cards, and may do that again next year, depending on just how the year goes.

As for activity around here–whew. We are busy setting up our master bedroom and bath for Terry to be sequestered for three days after his next round of treatments. Also, getting things lined up to be gone for three days next week takes some extra effort. Our grandson has a band concert we will attend on Tuesday. We will spend time with family on Wednesday, and then off to Stanford early Thursday morning and back home right after the end of the procedure. Terry has a lot of appointments and video calls this week to make ready for the start of this new treatment.

Then there is the matter of eating. Gosh, meal prep can be a big drain on one’s energies. Our microwave has been out of commission since Christmas. I’ve had to rethink all of my meal prep from original prepping to reheating the leftovers. We have managed just fine, no one is starving. I just have to think ahead and allow time for doing prep in the oven and on the cooktop. Also, that means more pots, pans, dishes. The dishwasher, which, Thank God, is working quite well, gets run three times a day. Having an appliance go down sure makes one appreciate the other appliances that keep running very well.

Speaking of repairs, Terry bought a new sink faucet for our master bathroom. The old one, original to the house built 50 years ago, had developed a leak that could no longer be fixed. He found, though, that he was unable or unwilling to pull out one of the pipe fittings for the replacement so called our plumber. He remembered a similar situation when he replaced the hall bath faucet 15 years ago.

The replacement 15 years ago cost $60 for the faucet and $130 for the plumber. This time around, $70 for the faucet and $600 for the plumber who was here over three hours. He also did a replacement of a drain due to a leak he discovered, but WOW. That was an expensive fix. I can remember when you could renovate a whole bathroom for $600. Life is not only more hectic, it’s more expensive.

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Let’s see what 2026 brings us

Posted on January 1, 2026 | 7 comments

2026 started off, here, with bangs, lots of bangs, and I don’t mean the kind that hang down in your eyes!

Fireworks seem to be the rage in this community. Fourth of July, Super Bowl, World Series, New Year. All occasions to light up the dynamite and create big explosions.

I was awakened at midnight to such nonsense. Around 2 a.m. the music started, although muted, I knew someone close by was having a party. And, it was pouring rain. The indoor cats were all twitchy. They are still upset this morning. Two have thrown up in the hour and a half that I have been up.

The GE repairman came yesterday. The microwave stopped working just as we returned from Stanford a couple of weeks ago. The microwave that is only 1 year and 3 months old. We have had a few microwaves over the 45 years we have lived here, and they usually last around 10 years. I was flabbergasted to have this one stop so soon. The part has to be ordered, and although it will arrive next week, the repairman had no appointments available until January 12, the day BEFORE we head to the Bay Area. Cutting it close. He said he would call us if anything changed.

In late 2024 our dryer was the problem. Out of commission for almost two weeks. Fortunately we were home the whole time and I could wash small loads and hang the items to dry on a rack I have for items that cannot go in the dryer. I made do. The microwave has been much more of an inconvenience as we use it multiple times a day and I have almost forgotten how to prepare meals without it. I get an item ready to reheat or to warm, and then realize there is no place to put it and have to “repackage” it for reheating in the oven or on the cooktop.

It is pouring rain on the first day of 2026. We are way over our normal rainfall for this time, and if it continues in the new year as it has for the past two months, we will break records for rainfall.

Thank you, dear Readers, for your solicitous kind remarks to my last two posts. Life. It’s not always a straight, neat path. The road gets bumpy and the detours can aggravate. But, for me, as for most of you, the road continues as does our journey.

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How do you spend the day after Christmas?

Posted on December 26, 2025 | 10 comments

Our “day after” has always been pretty quiet, except for a couple in history. And even when sorrow might hit the day after, it was still a quiet day.

My mother died on early Christmas morning, 2000. The care facility called to tell me she had passed away. Our daughter was visiting from seminary. She and Terry took off to see his mother. I stayed home and dismantled the Christmas tree and put away all the decorations, anything that looked like Christmas, stored away. Later my sister and brother and I would convene to make plans, and by New Years, our mother had been buried.

I received a call in 2011 that a very dear friend had passed away the night before, while hospitalized for heart failure. It was not a big surprise, but, even to this day, it hurts. It was now up to me and another friend to close out our friend’s home, make all the arrangements for her possessions to be taken away or shipped away. We did our best to have it done by the first of the new year. Christmas was in the rearview mirror.

In 2018 I came home from our Christmas church service to hear a message on our answering machine from my nephew’s wife. It could only mean one thing, as this woman NEVER called me, my sister must be gone. And, that was exactly it. Gone very quickly. Just as she would have wanted. This time my nephew and his wife stepped in and took care of all the arrangements.

This year the day after Christmas has been used to plan and prepare for the next step in Terry’s neuroendocrine tumor treatment–radiology. I have the hotel reservations made. I have the dates set with our critter/house sitter. We ordered items for Terry to use while he is sequestered. I have made a list of things to move to storage and items to rearrange in the house.

Much of what happens in the house must be in place when we leave for our grandson’s band concert in mid-January. After the concert Terry will head to Stanford for the treatment, and upon completion, right back home, secluded for three days. That first recuperation will give us a feel for what the next three, spread over six months, will look like. We won’t be done until the middle of summer. Feels a bit strange, setting things up the day after Christmas for something that will take us all the way into the middle of 2026.

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It’s beginning to look like 2026

Posted on December 23, 2025 | 7 comments

There are but nine days left of 2025. And one of the nine is TODAY. A Tuesday, the day the garbage cans are picked up.

It has been my responsibility for the past three months to get the cans to the curb. Oh, and I say cans, but they are really three large, tall rolling bins–compost/green material, recyclables, and household waste. Some weeks the contents in these bins is quite heavy, making them harder to maneuver, but I manage. I tell people, when I’m hefting heavy packages in stores and they ask if I need assistance, that I lift weights every morning just so I can do this kind of stuff.

I’ve also been the one to make the run to the cat food store for these three months. Again, lots of heavy lifting. Terry has done this for years, and he has a very precise method. I do not. My method is one I can manage. Again, lifting cases of cat food and 21 pound bags of litter. I’m thankful for the ability to do it.

We have to make some arrangements for the new year for Terry’s 3-day isolation periods after his next round of neuroendocrine tumor treatment with radioactive materials. That’s why I’m really looking at 2026 and what needs to be put in place. One of the reasons for such a quick schedule is that Terry is the perfect candidate for the procedure as well as being set up at home for the isolation. We have the bedrooms and bathrooms that allow for him to be isolated.

However, we realize that we need to outfit our bedroom with a small fridge, table, chair, small hotpot, disposable tableware. Some of my daily items will have to be moved to the guest room. I’m thinking I can move a tall chest into the guest room that will allow more space for Terry’s chair and table. Here’s the rub, though. It’s only a three-day period every other month. Do I really want things turned topsy-turvy for the next seven months, or do I undo and redo each time? I’m having some conversations with God about this.

Actually, I have lots of conversations with God, so that doesn’t look any different for 2026. This past year, with all the travel and new experiences, I have spent a lot of time talking to God about all the planning it took to make the year happen. And happen it did, and it happened very well.

We stay in a hotel, most times, when we are in the Bay Area, on the fourth floor, and we take the stairs except when leaving the hotel because our car is in the underground garage and there are stairs to that level. As I walk down the stairs, I pray, one word at a time, for all the many blessings God has sent down. When I walk up the stairs, I send up all my petitions for myself and the world around me. One of my prayers, going down and coming back up is thanksgiving for the ability to take the stairs, the ability to heft the cases of cat food and my suitcase.

So, one thing that will not change in 2026 is my daily exercise routine, both on the floor, and with my weights, and all the movement to keep me flexible. I will definitely need to be flexible in so many ways in 2026.

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