Shameless plug for Thursday night chats…

If it is Thursday, 9pm Eastern, I am either asleep or chatting on Twitter with my #ageop (Age of Opportunity) friends.  I admit up front to having a good reason to log onto #ageop, in that my daughter is the creator.  That said, I would have nothing to talk about here except that it is such fun and so inspiring to talk to people all over the world about important things and nothings.  Last night, we all took off on who we would most like to chat with and what we would talk about and what we would drink and and and…

What is #ageop, you ask?  My daughter said it best…”The Age of Opportunity is an informal think tank for people to discuss issues that affect the 50+ market — from media, entertainment, sports, health and more. The Age of Opportunity Chat happens live on Thursday nights from 9-10pm, on Twitter.com.”  Lest you think, however, that only old fogies would do something like this, what makes the whole thing so exciting is that each week, participants span a whole range of ages, occupations, countries of origin…if you think about it, what affects +50s also affects everybody else…so it is great to get everyone’s takes on topics.

I guess I just felt compelled to acknowledge all the incredible people I have met online.  I am somewhat of a pioneer in social media myself.  I have a group of women friends I met online some 15+ years ago, when we were all young working moms trying to do it all.  We have since met in person on a number of occasions, but we supported each other virtually through all kinds of personal tragedies and triumphs.  Another group of women friends is going strong 10+ years later, a lot of whom I have never met in person.  My daughter works for an established social media group called GrowingBolder, and through her, I have met some really inspiring folk doing and saying really inspired things.  And now there is blogging and Facebook and Twitterand #ageop.  I wonder what’s next and if I’ll take to that as enthusiastically.

A tip of my hat (except that I don’t wear hats unless I absolutely have to) to all my virtual friends…you have been and always will be a cherished part of my life.

Ugh…

The good news is that it is warm…we spend so much time complaining about the cold…not today, not this week.  80s and 90s, spatters of rain, gray and soupy.  I feel as if I’m breathing steamy air into my lungs.

The bad news is that it is warm…my closet is full of pieces…I wear mostly separates, mostly Chico’s separates.  Lots of things to wear under and over other things.  But there is a dearth of sleeveless tops in there.  I garden from end of winter to beginning of winter.  I am a weeding fiend.  But I am also really sensitive to bug bites…they leave ugly, long-lasting welts on me…yuk.  So, I’m not comfortable wearing sleeveless.  This is only a minus when our hot, steamy weather stretches over days and weeks.  Each morning I stand in my closet, shaking my head.  Let’s see what I come up with this morning.<G>

I am the happiest mother in the world.  My son called me the other day, not because he needed anything, not because he was in trouble…he called me because we hadn’t talked since his visit down here a few weeks ago.  The way to a mother’s heart.  My daughter and I are going to have a girls’ weekend in Boston later this month.  I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I have taken to following a group of healthy, young food and lifestyle bloggers (all of them recommended by my daughter, all of whom are probably her contemporaries in age).  A while back, a group of these bloggers got together and put together a weekend event, The Healthy Living Summit, to be held in Boston.  My daughter immediately emailed me to say that I MUST go.  Turns out there were only 125 tickets available and a few thousand people wanted to go.  So, surprised was I to learn that I won the opportunity to buy a ticket!  Since then, I have been really sad that my daughter, who was the perfect choice to attend, couldn’t because she is in FL and the event is in MA.  Aha, says I…we will use miles to buy her a plane ticket and she will attend the Summit in my place.  But she would have none of that.  She did some research and a lot of outreach and, due to the misfortune of someone else with a ticket not being able to attend, came up with a ticket of her own!  So, my daughter and I will spend a weekend together, all by ourselves.  We’ll attend the cocktail party Friday night, the day-long seminars and samples and fellowship of the events on Saturday and then she will either do the Sunday morning fun run or will walk with me…we’re taking a wait-and-see on that one.  If you have checked out any of the interesting young women I mentioned in an earlier post, you will see that the weekend will also be FULL of people taking photos of food and drink and fellow bloggers and architecture and fun.  I won’t come out of it with many photos, because there will be so many others who will take pretty pictures and share them with me!<G>

The week before the Summit, hus and I will take a trip to Ikea, pick up son and his love’s sofa (plus a surprise housewarming gift for their new apartment) and then hit the road for Vermont.  We will drop the furniture, hopefully take the kids (I can call them the kids if I want to, so there) out for a bite or a sip, then come home.  So I will get to see all my kids (minus only my beloved and talented son-in-law who is staying behind in FL to mind the furry babies) very soon.  Happy mom.

Monday, Monday…

I love weekends so much…this one was especially nice because hus was home…lots of together time doing puttery stuff, lots of good (and healthy) grilled and rotisseried food (hus never stops raving about his new rotisserie…he loves loves loves it), lots of lazy, doing nothing productive time.  So far, I haven’t been able to make the mental shift back to heading back to the office.  Maybe by the time I get there…

Beets…we harvested beets this weekend and will harvest the rest next weekend.  So, a lot of my weekend has been spent googling beet recipes.  But simple is often the best.  I made cubed beets tossed with lemon olive oil and salt, roasted in a hot oven.  I am NOT a beet eater, but these are incredible.  The roasting seems to do something to the normal “dirt” taste of the beets…YUM!

Hot, gloomy and drippily humid…not New England’s best.  My fishbelly white arms aren’t tank top ready, so I’m mentally scanning my closet for cool, sleeved tops to go with my white NYDJ capris.  I’m thinking Chicos gauze over tiny tank top…

It’s raining, it’s pouring…

…and I don’t have to water my gardens!  I’m worried about all the ripe berries being dashed to the ground, but maybe that will make it easier to harvest our dessert for tonight.  It was so nice to wake up to the sound of wind and rain against the windows.  Of course, now I can’t mow the lawn for a few days and it needs it, but oh well…I’ll take the rain.

The cats are all prowly and present this morning…could it be because hus got home last night and they are jazzed?  I know I was happy to see him (although I must admit to falling back to sleep shortly after his midnight arrival).

A good friend had to put an aged and ill pet to sleep this week and I am thinking of her.  Hus and I have had pets since we met 36 years ago and we have had to make this decision so many times.  Because I tend to get two animals at a time, it happens in cycles.  Right now, we have a 14yo or so old Maine coon cattish boycat and a pair of 1yo dilute calico sisters, so we hope we don’t have to make that decision again for a long time.  But, good friend, just wanted you to know I am thinking of you…Kona now joins all your past pets wherever it is that past pets go.

Work on Prelude To a Kiss continues (I’m directing it this fall)…I need to be really creative with my set and sound and lights, do as much as possible with as little as possible.  Even when I’m not really working on it, my brain is mulling it all over.  Auditions September 1, 2, maybe 3, performances first two weeks of November.  Some really fun parts.  Hope I can cast it appropriately.  Have a new stage manager I’m really excited to work with and old friends, too, doing sound and lights.  Should be fun.

Also theater-related is the ongoing work of taking a new season from paper to website and on…so much to do.  We need to let actors and audiences know what we’re doing so they can mark their calendars.  We need to recruit members and advertisers and sponsors and volunteers and audiences.  It never ends.  Good thing I like my fellow board members, because we do tend to spend a lot of time together or on email.<G>

FRIDAY!!!!  It’s Friday!!!  Need I say more?

Sunny bits…

Gorgeous weekend…a little on the hot and sweaty side, but I am making an effort not to complain.   Woke up to sun through the shades…ahhhh…I’m happy to pay for it with a few thunderstormy days later in the week.

Didn’t get my biggest project even started this weekend, despite the sun…two rehabbed window frames on the front of the house are awaiting stain…it weighs heavily on my mind.

Did get my most important things done this weekend, though.  Spent Saturday morning walking the streets of Boston with an email friend…she is as awesome and inspiring as anyone else I know…I’m trying to style myself after her in a couple of areas of my life.  Then spent Saturday afternoon with a friend in need.  I tried to help keep her brain untaxed by making her pick her own bowl of raspberries for our snack and making her watch me water all our porch plants.  Sunday was a quiet day…woke up with a looming migraine, tried to ignore it…HA!  Weeded outside on a hillside, using it as a stretching exercise…lasted 45 minutes before pouring sweat made it just too uncomfortable.  A couple of headache pills, stretched out on the couch in a dark and very cool living room (thank you, window units) and my blanket over my head and suddenly, a few hours had miraculously passed and my head was well enough for me to rouse myself and head off to bed.  I was amazed that while I was awake then until nearly midnight, I got a good 5-1/2 hours to top off the 3 or so earlier in the evening.

My attention is starting to turn to my fall project…I’m directing a play, Prelude To a Kiss by Craig Lucas, auditions in September, performances in October and November.  I have been working on little bits for a long time…trying to come up with a logo for publicity use, taking the script apart, making notes and trying to hone my vision of the play.  The biggest hurdle I will face is being able to cast it.  I am trying to think only positive thoughts in that direction.

I have my annual physical this week…I have a list of things to talk to her about, but still need to update my list of medications and supplemnts.  I dread getting on the scale…these days, my blood pressure (which is often 90/50) starts off the appointment very high and I am convinced it is because I get weighed right before they take my blood pressure.  I know there is thyroid bloodwork in my future and suspect perhaps testing for Lyme disease.  Don’t think I have it, but I have been badly bitten for the past two summers…not always sure what is biting, but they take big bites!<G>  So, we’ll see what the doc says about everything.

I’m going to focus on making today a good day…having the sun shine into my office that is a 2nd floor, converted sun-porch and I am surrounded by tree branches…listening to the birds outside my windows…maybe even getting those boxes of files out of my office and over into the garage to make my office a little calmer.  Ahhhh….

Yummy bits…

Had the world’s best dessert last night…I took my little bowl out to the berry garden and picked a big bowl of raspberries…along the way, I found about 12 ripe blueberries which I added to the bowl.  A sprinkle of powdered sugar (totally unnecessary but…), a little milk and can you say YUMMMMMM?

I had a really weird dream last night.  I was acting in a show…it wasn’t opening night, rather right toward the end of the run.  I came in to the theater and couldn’t find my costume.  It was dark everywhere and it was really hard to see, so I had to keep looking in the same places over and over again…down long hallways, in closets, piled in corners…my costume was nowhere to be found.  At one point, I was looking for my script and couldn’t find that, either, which so would NOT happen…my script and I are one during the entire process of rehearsal and run.  I searched as the show went on without me.  The weirdest part was that NO ONE MISSED ME!!!!  I asked the actors after the show what they did and they acted as if they didn’t even know I hadn’t been there!  I guess that says something about how I’m feeling about my acting these days.  Of course, I haven’t been acting much (it was WONDERFUL playing Clairee last fall), so maybe that’s it.

My boss is in Israel.  How yummy is that?  I am chuffed for her.  Can’t wait for more photos…

Young foodie bloggers…

OK, in a blog a while back, I mentioned the fact that I am following a new-to-me group of young ladies introduced to me by my daughter (I would link her blog except that she hasn’t updated it in ages because she is too busy DOING! <G>).  Now that I know how to insert links, I’d like to share these impressive women…

Carrots ‘n Cake, Eat, Live, Run, Hangry Pants, Kath Eats Real Food, LovINmytummy, The Actors Diet and The Inner Workings of a College Graduate…I don’t eat or exercise like they do and I don’t take pictures of my food, but I just LOVE reading and looking at how people make healthier choices.  And it does make me think about food in a different way.  You go girls!

Light…

The sun was shining when I woke up this morning.  It is forecast to be shining tomorrow and Wednesday mornings, too.  Joy!

Pinched a nerve or somesuch so that pain radiates down from glutes into uppermost back of my leg.  I’m fine once I get upright or seated, but getting there is quite amusing…

Hus found a giant flea market he wanted to check out yesterday, so we had a lovely drive in the beautiful weather out into the country.  The flea market was kind of creepy…some tables of folks who collect and then sell household type stuff, some tables of folks who sold totally junky dollar items by the thousands…nothing wonderful.  Ah, well, it only cost a dollar to get in, it was a nice day for a drive and we got a good walk out of it.

Many thanks to one of my favorite blogfriends, RagtopDay, for helping me insert a link into my post…my next post will be full of them!

Ittie bittie bits…

Sun!  I woke up to sun!

Oh, Red Sox…you’re breaking my heart…

Hus LOVES the rotisserie I got for his beloved Weber grill…

Ticks…ICK!  I break down and put gross chemicals on my cats and still the ticks come in.

I am lovin’ my latest Dirk Pitt/Al Giordino adventure on audiobook…this one is Treasure of Khan.  These books are comforting because they are so predictable.  No sex, just tough nice guys who always win in the end.

OK, could some loyal reader please tell me how to insert hyperlinks into my WordPress blog posts?  I know it can be done, I just can’t figure it out.  I see an Add New under Links, but ????

34th anniversary approaches…a long, hard road with lots of great scenery along the way…

Brain fluff…

I’m falling into the trap of being hyper-focused on the weather.  It has been so rainy and gray that a day of sun, even an hour of sun, seems noteworthy.  But today, at least this morning, it is just plain dull.  Gray and not raining.  Don’t know what to wear…cheery and bright to counteract the gloom or black to give in.

I just set off the smoke alarm with my essence oil lamp…oops!  Gotta love these sensitive, hard-wired systems!<G>

Every time I pass the swamp where live the family of herons I think of Ragtop Day, one of my favorite blog friends.  I have never been able to get a photo because there are no pull-off places over the swamp.  Yesterday, three herons of equal size were sitting side by side (or is it wing by wing) on the edge of one of the nests…I think the babes are mostly grown now and are just enjoying the comforts of home too much to leave just yet.

Had to love a conversation with my son the other day.  He and his girlfriend spent 4 hours shopping in Ikea, furnishing the apartment they are moving into next month.  He sold his super gaming computer and used part of it for “splashing out” (gotta LOVE BBC’s Cash In the Attic <G>) on matching bedside lamps and a dining table…he said it is a major step on the path to growing up.  Love it.

The whole subject of Michael Jackson is so volatile, I won’t touch it, except to say  I have really loved all the old photos, old videos and the memories they evoked.  I didn’t get to watch or listen to anything live yesterday, but enjoyed 48’s MJ special last night.  A supremely talented man with a supremely weird path from childhood to adulthood.  Gotta love the music and the dance.