WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR OCTOBER 2016

Katla49

Penny: The party in the Arctic Circle sounds wonderful. I am so happy you shared because reading about it has put a smile on my face. :bigsmile:

Alison: Sending good thoughts for Homer. :flowerforyou:

Pauline: Welcome to a great group! I live in Oregon, too. We live beside the Columbia River, downstream from Portland. What part of the state do you live in? :huh:

Tammy: We welcome newcomers. Tell us about yourself. Where are you from? :flowerforyou:


I think moving the newer mattress from the guest room to our room is a success. DH is still unsure but I envision buying another just like it and sending the old mattress we were using to the dump. Our bed-frame needs to be replaced, though. We bought it in the 1970's for a waterbed. We've been using it ever since with conventional mattresses. It has drawers under it and is rather high, especially with a thick mattress on top. When I was a little girl my mom dad would tell me to climb into bed and here I am, past 60, climbing into bed again. :laugh: I don't mind but DH isn't crazy about it. :noway:


Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison

tngram2seven

Hello everyone,

I find myself looking forward to checking in with you. Quite a change in my attitude compared to the last several months. This is day 4 of my renewed journey. I feel strong, encouraged, and determined -one day at a time!

Welcome, Tammy. You're right. This is a wonderful group for encouragement and support.
Glad you are here, Pauline. This is a great place to be.
Re, love your attitude. Keep up the good work.
Penny, it sounds like the people way, way, way up north know how to have a good time. I think it would be very interesting to be with people from so many different places and cultures.

Hubby has today off so we are going to run some errands and go out for a late lunch. Looking forward to seeing teacher friends who are on fall break later in the week. I still work at the Y about 18 hours/week.(Fri.-Sat.-Sun.) It is just the right mix for me.


TN Toni

cityjaneLondon

Hi all!
The pic of me in my silly sun hat is on my phone, so you will just have my chat.
Neither of us slept too well. Too much fino and Manzanilla sherry. And too much tapas! Much against my better judgement I had some fried squidlets. Delicious, but oh that batter! Did better in another place with grilled veggies.
It was great to be sitting outside in the evening, in just a t shirt, people watching and sipping an ice cold fino. Iberico ham to nibble. Lots of wandering about trying to spot the perfect place for another glass and another dish.

I've done better today with a sensible lunch of grilled bream and salads. No alcohol yet. We bought our train tickets for tomorrow, got a taxi back, (we walked there) and visited the Picasso museum. Then my lean lunch.
Afterwards we did Picasso's birthplace and another small museum. Wonderful to see his family stuff and the toys he played with. You could see the painter emerging.
Then it was the Alcazar - a Moorish fortress on a hill. Great views and tranquil gardens and a good Islamic pottery display.
Freshly squeezed orange juice was our reward, then it was back to the hotel for a nap.
We're off in a minute to walk the streets looking for a tapas place. We will limit the sherry tonight. I am after some more fish.
Going to glam up, Love Heather, currently in Andalusia.

oceanmelody

I have nothing to report, just have to try this color thing haha
do I have any purple prose?
Betty YES!

jmkmomm

Penny and Heather, we need pictures. Please??????

Tammy, we are always open to new and old members that are coming back.

Mary, I am sure many of us, including me is jealous of your hair. It looks think, or at least full.

I didn't sleep well at all last night. I wanted to stay up yesterday evening even though I was loopy. I wasn't drowsy, just loopy. But I feel beat up this morning. Don't like this feeling.

I looked at my cell phone and saw I had a call from my doctor's office at 9 AM. So I called them and they had got the report of my MRI. Was totally shocked since it was last night at 5 PM. Moderate foraminal stenosis on the left and right. So they are setting up an appointment with a surgeon. That doesn't mean I will have surgery. I looked at the condition on line and surgery is used when the stenosis limits your movements and life. Although this does affect me I'm not sure if it is enough for a surgeon. I know that holding a cell phone with my right hand and using it with my left hand, since I am left handed, it sure hurts. Hurts a lot for me to bend my head down and hooking my bra. So am in limbo again.


Joyce, Indiana

Katla49

Joyce: I looked this up on the internet. It seems as though a good surgical outcome is quite possible if surgery is necessary. I hope you'll keep us in the loop when you have your appointment with the surgeon. You have enviable skills to draw on when it is time to make a decision. I'm sure you'll make the right choice for you. (((HUGS)))

Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon


"So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it's also the enemy of the realistic, the possible and the fun."

suebdew

DJ-thinking of you as evacuation are being ordered for SC coast. Please be safe
SueBDew

1948CWB

drkatiebug

Katla49 wrote: »

I think moving the newer mattress from the guest room to our room is a success. DH is still unsure but I envision buying another just like it and sending the old mattress we were using to the dump. Our bed-frame needs to be replaced, though. We bought it in the 1970's for a waterbed. We've been using it ever since with conventional mattresses. It has drawers under it and is rather high, especially with a thick mattress on top. When I was a little girl my mom dad would tell me to climb into bed and here I am, past 60, climbing into bed again. :laugh: I don't mind but DH isn't crazy about it. :noway:

Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas A. Edison

Everytime we have ever bought a new mattress, they have taken our old one away when they deliver our new one.

1948CWB

Katla - We recently moved our pillow top mattress into the guest room and put my mom's really old flat top on our bed. We are overall sleeping well. Even though the mattress is old, it was not used very much at all. Now I need an orthopedic pillow for my neck pain.

Carol in GA

Lagopus

Joyce wrote: Penny and Heather, we need pictures. Please??????

For you, Joyce, anything See this post as a soothing ice pack to put on whatever is causing you pain at the moment. :flowerforyou:

I wrote earlier that we went out on the fjord in a little boat. So here's what that was like.

The weather is all-important for any activities in the High Arctic. If the weather isn't cooperating, you just accept it and wait for a better day. For the first few days we'd had quite a bit of wind and rain (RAIN!) and weren't certain of being able to go out on an excursion at all. We wanted to, though. The glacier at the inner end of the fjord has been very active this fall, calving every 10-15 minutes. It's over 10 miles from the village but we could hear it clearly - it sounds like thunder. A glacier calving is a majestic sight, so we wanted to see it (as did the visiting TV-teams from National Geographic and British channel 4), so we kept our fingers crossed.

Early Monday morning the sky and the fjord looked like this.



Perfect conditions! So right after breakfast we put on survival suits and hopped into a rigid inflatable boat (sort of like a Zodiac, but sturdier). Our captain, a thoroughly loveable Polish man who I would... no, who I HAVE trusted with my life on stormy waters, piloted us with a steady hand to the glacier front. The media people wanted to go ashore for more stable filming, so our captain steered toward the beach and we prepared to jump out.

As we approached land, a huge section of the glacier fell into the water. We knew we had to be quick, because the waves could wash us ashore and damage the boat. In the confusion, the journalists and I all jumped from the prow of the boat and waded the last 5 yards to land. But the waves were coming in fast and our captain had to retreat with the boat for fear of damage to the hull. My husband was still aboard - and he was the one with the flare gun and the rifle, the one responsible for protecting us from polar bears.

Luckily, there were no bears around, and a few minutes later the waves had subsided and my husband could come ashore.

Here's a view of the ice-strewn beach, the boat, the glacier, and the spectacular mountains. The glacier front is about a mile away. The ice stands about 100-150 feet above the surface of the water. The wave breaking on the shore was caused by a relatively small calving event.



We walked around on the beach for a while and the media people did their filming. One of the features of a place a glacier has just vacated is that the ground is undependable. In three steps you can move from solid but slippery ice, to hard-packed gravel, to quicksand that looks fine until you put your weight on it, and then it turns to thin liquid mud and you're in it up to your ankles (or worse). The media folks were blissfully unaware, and were dashing here and there as if they were on a picnic. My poor husband, who felt responsible for their safety, kept telling them to walk slowly and test the ground at each step. In the event, no bones were broken, but several people got extremely muddy.

Here's a picture of our landing site, taken from the plane later that day. We were at the very end of the narrow tongue of ice that sticks out from the glaciers on the left.



While the film teams were doing their thing, I just stood there entranced by the soundscape. I've already mentioned the thunder of calving glaciers. Glacier ice is full of bubbles under pressure, and when the hunks of ice floating in the fjord melt, the pressure is released with little snap-crackle-pop sounds. (You can sell glacier ice to upscale bars for a small fortune!) Then there was the whisper of the little waves and the wind. I could also hear a meltwater stream rushing down the slope below a niche glacier about a mile away. And behind it all, the endless brooding silence of the Arctic. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.

After an hour or so, our captain collected us and we took a turn closer to the glacier front.



Not too close, though. Glaciers are dangerous! Then we headed back to Ny-Ålesund, where lunch was available from 12 to 1 - basta. Come late and you go hungry. And boy were we hungry! Still, we had to linger on the way to admire a huge turquoise iceberg. This one was about 30 ft high above the water line, and 80 ft long. Guess why I love the Arctic...



The sad thing is that for every piece of ice that falls off, the glacier retreats. As I said earlier, it has been calving like crazy this year. The experts think that by the end of the year it will have retreated more than half a mile - in just one year.

/Penny, thoughtful at the North Pole

Katla49

Dr. Katie: Our DDIL ordered the most recent mattress from Sam's Club. It was shipped via UPS directly to our front door. Getting it inside, upstairs & out of its shipping box was up to us. We tried to shop local before this and it netted us 2 garbage mattresses, so the local furniture store will not supply our next mattress. We're not members of Sam's Club so I'll ask her to order another if DH says he likes this one well enough.

Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon

janetr7476

Penny, awe struck, I have no other words. Thank you.

This afternoon we rode thru cotton fields as far as the eye could see. The last two days I've been nauseous and dizzy so had hung around the motor home. It was nice to get out. It's almost 90 degrees outside, supposed to cool off to 60s by this weekend.

Janetr

pipcd34

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ilikegardens

Penny, Amazing, beautiful, stark...I loved your descriptions of the sounds of the Arctic.

KarenE

oceanmelody

Penny, thank you so much for photos and description!!!
Betty

margaretturk

Penny WOW!

pipcd34

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KetoneKaren

Penny

Karen in Virginia

tngram2seven

Penny - beautiful pictures and description of your adventure!

Toni in Tennessee