It is a Small World...After All in Everyday Ramblings

Daffodils are hard to shoot because they throw off so much glare, plus here their heads are often down from the early wind, rain and gloom. I took this a few days ago when we had a sun break.

I joined Medium this week, something I have been planning to do, oh, for at least a year. One of the things I wanted to do was find a voice that I could use to write there regularly.

My concern about doing this is if I can develop some better editing habits. What I do here, (as any of you know who might read my entries right after I post) is go back and edit. An extra or duplicate word, a misspelling, or maybe even getting the meaning of a word slightly off… I could be on the bus looking at notes on my phone an hour after posting and see what all of a sudden looks like a glaring error. Eek.

Twice a week I write reminder emails for my students. It is a way to keep them informed, engaged and to build community. The emails are short but lately I have noticed after they go out (I usually write them a day in advance) that now and then there is a repeated word, or something that isn’t clear… and I am mortified.

Lately I have started writing the reminders in Word to pick up spelling errors and repeated words but sometimes in editing I drop a word or a letter, like this morning using tough instead of though. It is frustrating!

This all used to come so easily.

I noticed this at work the last few years. It is like a slight brain scramble.

I talked to my doctor about it and she is not concerned. It does appear be something I am stuck with. It all seems to be somewhere in the hand to eye coordination in terms of typing and the communication between the eye and the brain in terms od seeing what is there instead of what I think is there.

My brain is taking shortcuts to get by.

I read a book recently that I loved and was beautiful and I can barely remember what it was about. I know I read it, I know the general impression of it but not much of the content at all.

As I mentioned in some of my notes recently I had a long conversation on Wednesday with a lovely woman I met at the church Alliance luncheon. She lives now in one room in a group home situation (and is only a year younger than me) because she can no longer walk due to a lifetime of effects of being exposed to and contracting polio when she was 7.

From the vaccine, which is a whole other story…

She had some falls, broke both legs about 6 or 7 years ago and couldn’t use the modified car she had driven for years. (She has a college degree and worked downtown until then.) Her brother bought her a van that allowed her to drive without transferring from her wheelchair and she was so excited. But it was too much.

She said she never regained her confidence and was unable to fully grasp the uses of all the new technology available on the van. So now she relies on public transportation, mostly our local transit authority services for the disabled.

But also when she is feeling flush or it is urgent she uses Lyft (the ride sharing company) that contracts out with the services here that provide medical transportation for non-emergency medical appointments. Mr. Finch used them for all his radiation appointments and they were great.

That day the event that we were at was over at 1:30PM When Mrs. Sherlock came back to the church at 5:15PM for yoga class, this woman was still waiting for her ride! Wow. We were both distressed by that. I can’t imagine how she felt, all that waiting.

We also talked about phones and computers and adapting to the ever-changing landscape. I hear the iPhone 11 does not have a Home button.

The world gets smaller, our worlds get smaller when we can’t (or struggle to) adapt and we have to work so much harder to do things that used to be easy.

But that doesn’t mean we still can’t enjoy things.

Those of us who are frivolously ambulatory had fun at Body Pump class yesterday. :)

Last updated March 07, 2020