Always live up to your standards – by lowering them, if necessary. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook When “Bad Girls” fold towels, the corners don’t line up and they’ve learned not to worry about it. In fact, their towels probably remain tangled and wrinkling in the clothes dryer until dire necessity calls them
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Does your aging mom complain that her raspberries don’t taste right anymore? Is your husband pouring so much salt in his soup that you’re seriously worried about his hypertension? Do you notice yourself adding extra sugar to your chai latte? Most of us know that we’ll get a few “laugh lines” as we age, and
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Remember “that talk” your folks had with you when you entered the teen years and started dating? If you are over 50 and considering a
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For Judd and Jan Mangin, it started with the gift of carrot salad. For old friends Pat Dean and Paul Girard, a shared lunch opened the door to something deeper. Mary and Lee Heinen found each other online, and Frank and Marylin Martin met in more of an old-fashioned way – through an ad in
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Technology and online dating sites have opened up a great means for mature singles in the Mother Lode to connect with someone special, and more men and women are turning to the Internet to meet new people. However, Tuolumne County Deputy District Attorney Eric Hovatter advises senior singles to be extra careful when reaching out
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In 1983, 26 storefronts stood empty on Washington Street, Sonora’s main thoroughfare. Dorothy Brown pondered the situation. She and her husband, Jim, owned Gold Rush Printing on nearby Stewart Street, and realized the downtown needed help. Then Dorothy remembered a great Christmas parade she had seen years before in El Centro, east of San Diego.
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I have a precious friend, now in her late 80s, who is tough, bright and energetic (she still takes tap-dance lessons). She has survived a massive stroke and the loss of her husband and many of her friends, and through it all I’ve never heard her complain. But several years ago, elbows on the table
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Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias can rob your dignified, bright and gracious wife, husband, mother or father of a lifetime of social manners and skills. As the disease progresses, your loved one’s loss of cultural norms can create some of the most difficult and embarrassing issues a family caregiver faces. A friend recently talked about
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“What happened to me?” While some of the losses and demands of caregiving are large and immediate, many of the changes are more subtle, chipping away at your life one small piece at a time. Hobbies are set aside for the ever-increasing time it takes to care for your loved one. Exercise is traded for
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When our two-year-old grandson comes to visit, we always do a room-by-room sweep – removing breakables, fastening cabinets, checking baby plugs and securing the stairs – trying to use eyes of a detective to make sure our home is safe for the little guy.  It seems that he careens one step ahead of us, finding
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