WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR MARCH 2025

Awe, I bet it was, and you got lots of smiles and thumbs up. My husbands scooter went fairly fast. Better than his past ones that runners would pass him up!

Rebecca Whidbey Wa

My chiropractor told me to ice and rest my shoulder and if the inflammation doesn't come down, I will need to arrange for an ultrasound and steroid shot.

I've never had a steroid shot, but I remember my mother telling me they are excruciatingly painful.

So I have been icing and resting and even set up my pillows so that I can't roll onto my left side.

I am more of a 'find a solution' person than a take meds or get a shot person. I think just popping my shoulder back in place has helped.

M in Oz

Your experience with the social security office is discouraging, Barbie. I will be waiting to hear updates on how it goes for you.

On another topic. If you all recall some time ago, we had a poster who was assaulted in a women's bathroom because she asked someone to stop talking on her phone. It was horrible, but at the time, although I didn't mention it because it was really not pertinent to her experience, I wondered why she was offended that someone was talking on her phone in the bathroom. If she had been talking to a friend with her in the bathroom, she likely wouldn't have told them to stop talking, I assume.

I'd forgotten about this until yesterday, when my husband mentioned that Amtrak does not "allow" people to talk on the phone in their seats. They request that if you need to talk on your phone that you move to the viewing car. Again, people talk to their seatmates or travel companions without having to move to the viewing car, why is talking on the phone different?

We talked about it for a while, and we couldn't really come up with a satisfactory reason why talking to someone on the phone in public is rude but talking to your friends in person in public is considered normal.

I'm not talking about if you are at a table with friends and one of them is talking on the phone to someone else. I get that. That is super rude, but it's rude because they are with you and should be giving you their full attention. A stranger talking on the phone? I don't want to talk to them, so what do I care?

Thoughts? I'm just curious because obviously with Amtrak's policy, there is something socially unacceptable about talking on the phone in public that I am not understanding.

Flea, in the land of the Space Needle

Everyone take care, Sue in WA

That's an easy question to answer!

Volume.

When people are talking to each other in person they tend to do so at a relatively low volume.

But when people are talking on the phone they tend to yell. They also tend to put the other person on speaker phone or turn up the phone volume to maximum so that we get both sides of the conversation. And for some strange reason there tends to be a lot of swearing, screaming, weeping and wailing when people talk on the phone.

I had someone sitting quite close to me on the bus today, and the whole bus heard her phone conversation. Fortunately her conversation seemed fairly pleasant.

In my hundreds of bus trips, I have heard all sorts of conversations all at top volume! And mostly conversations I really did not want to hear that went on and on and on.

I would rather have someone at my table in a restaurant take a call because there the conversation is usually short and quiet.

Machka in Oz

Machka and Kylia - I stopped bringing work home a few years ago and now I don’t have work emails on my phone. I completely changed my thought process on this. I used to think the more I did the more it was acknowledged and it just isn’t. I value my home time, and don’t want to use it for working with no pay.

Tracey … one unit I worked in a couple years ago used Teams for every communication. I would start getting Teams messages at about 7 am and they would end about 11 pm. About half were work-related and the other half were just chat. Plus they liked people to be available outside of business hours from time to time to assist medical staff. I got so incredibly stressed there.

Where I am now, we're not supposed to work outside of our 7.6 hours a day, and if we do, we're supposed to keep track of it and take a day off in lieu.

But because my term position was ending and now I'm transitioning to a new position, I ended up with a massive pile of work … to wrap things up.

Fortunately, I have handed one project over and I'm close to handing another one over. I'm taking the third one with me into my new position. Then I'm hoping that work will settle into work hours.

On weight … I was thin pretty much from birth to my 40s. But when I was in my late teens, I had a surgery and gained a tiny bit of weight which I started working on losing by running, lifting weights, counting calories and eating less. Then, in addition to that, through my late teens / early 20s, I was stressed by finishing high school and starting college … and when I get stressed, I stop eating. My weight dropped until I was underweight and I struggled with the whole idea of eating for a while.

That happened a few times through my 20s and 30s. I'd be stressed about something, I'd stop eating, I'd lose a bunch of weight until I was underweight or close to it.

Back then, people didn't talk much about body image - it would just come up occasionally
A lot more people were thin then so being a little underweight or close to it felt normal.
Hardly anyone talked about stress and our reactions to it. We were meant to just power through on our own.

My weight pops up every Monday, as well, more salt as Corey tends to cook all the meals, plus I do tend to move a lot more on weekends to keep up with him. I'm teaching him (finally) to relax on weekends, but it's all according to the weather.

Lisa … It's actually nice when we've seen the pattern and we know what to expect. It's nothing to panic about … just something that happens and it will go down toward the end of the week.

Loving the castle room… makes me very happy.

I'm really enjoying that particular colouring book! The drawings are so good and it inspires me to pick colours to show more light and dark etc.

I love that sunset shot. You may need to add photography to your list. How is DH doing with his recovery from his Achilles tendon surgical repair?

Mo … Yes, I do enjoy photography and I've taken a photography course. I feel like I haven't had the time to do much with it lately.

My husband is coming along. His surgeon is happy with his recovery to this point. His physiotherapist has told him that he is to wear the boot when he goes outside, but he can wear a shoe with a lift inside.
He has also been cleared to ride his recumbent bicycle indoors a little bit at a time.
And he can start swimming a bit too if he wanted.

Slowly but surely.

Machka - thank you for all of the info on the International Space Station. For some reason I thought there was a period of time when there were only the 2 of them up there. I knew 4 came back. Sounds like Boeing's return vehicle had to go to the shop for the "check engine" light and they couldn't come up with the part. 😁

Did you feel any of the earthquake that hit NZ?

Lanette … 😁 yeah, that was basically it with the return vehicle!

No, I didn't feel anything of the earthquake. We did get a notification that we were not likely to be affected by a tsunami.

Machka in Oz

❤️

Betsy in NW WA

Barbie when I applied they wanted me to do it over the phone I chose to into an office. It took me a half a day. I had to get into the que just to talk to the right person (an hour and a half) then another hour and half weight to see the right person. Once I got to the right person it was very quick.

If you do it over the phone you have to have a way to send the a picture of your birth certificate, marriage certificate, and a driver's license or passport with a picture, if done over the phone they also may require a selfie. You can do this by taking a picture with your smart phone of the above documents and pictures. I would send them to your e-mail account and then you can download them onto your computer. Then when they ask for them you can send them the down load or go back to your pictures in your phone and send them to the email they request.

It sounds like they are insisting people go into an office instead of doing it over the phone like I suggested.

Another thing you could do ahead of time is set up an e-verify account with the SSA. You might be able to get some of what you need to do done ahead of time.

This is part of why I suggest to those who still have living spouses to have an account in your name with 4-6 months of available cash to tied you over while your loved ones account is being settled plus be aware funeral are 4000-15000 and the funeral homes do not do credit. The funeral home wants you to put it on your credit card or pay upfront.

In my circumstances it took about two months to get the social security account straightened out. If I had done it over the phone it would have added a month and a half to the timing.

With what is going on now I know it is worse then what I had to go through. My thoughts are with you Barbie. As I went through the process I had to remind myself to take my patient pill. Getting worked up and upset over this only hurt me not them.

I did report one of the BOTs. I must have gotten at least three from that person with three different names and or pictures (one was a doctor) NO Thank you! At the bottom of the e-mail that alerts me to a friend request there was a way to report it.