Dollhouses!

I got a tour of a friend's dollhouse. She has been furnishing it with the Past, and it is lovely. All the little details are there, well, not all, but so many, you get the idea. Some things are so tiny, and so fragile, but so right. When I was a little girl, I wanted a dollhouse, and I think my first one was made out of two orange crates nailed together, and my Mother made the fabric things, and where they got the furniture, I don't know, but they had made a peaked roof so I had an attic, and I made up such fun scenarios with that house. Then I got a manufactured house that was not as big, and really so precious that I was afraid to mess it up much, but I played with that as well.

I had paper dolls that I kept in a shoe box, and played with them a lot, and my dolls. I also dressed my cat, Mittens, up in doll clothes when she tolerated. My Mom would here a thumping and find Mittens coming down the stairs, dragging her back feet in the nightgown I had put on her, left in a doll bed to sleep, and gone out to play. Mom would take off the nightgown, Mittens would shake, sit down and wash, and then look for some treats. She was the most amazing cat putting up with that kind of play. Doing all these feminine stuff, you would never guess I was the neighborhood tomboy. I rode my bike vigorously, even standing on the seat, steering the handle bars with my feet, hide in leaf piles in the triangle, playing hide and seek, bulling neighborhood boys, walking the bridge railing over the gully near our house that was supposed to be full of bums, so 'don't go down there'! I also loved playing in the front garden with three cars I had, one being a yellow convertible. I would make houses in the dirt, with underground garages, and there would be roads all through the garden. My Mom would be weeding at one end, and I would be making roads at the other end. There were great big horse chestnut trees in the front yard, and the garage was separate from the house and you could climb on the roof from the next door yard. A friend and I would do just that when my brothers were in their secret clubhouse in the attic of the garage, and pound and stomp on the roof. We could always get away through the neighbors yard, but the boys would come storming out of the garage to 'get us'!

I walked to school, about four blocks, and I had to walk by a Dr.'s house. For some reason he would always call out to me, 'hey, wet the bed'! I tried to avoid that house, but if I was in a hurry, I couldn't. My Mom took me to him once because I was always getting sties. He pulled out all my eyelashes. Boy, did that hurt, and I still got sties, and I do not have eyelashes to brag about to this day! He was the Dr. of last resort! Our family friend was our Dr. He was the one who treated me when I came down with Scarlet Fever. I was in bed for three weeks with that, and he came to the house to check on me. That was when I read the entire Book Of Knowledge. He also took out my tonsils, and my appendix, delivered my first baby, and adjusted an ovarian cyst. I now have no idea what has become of him as when my Father had an acrimonious break-up of his last marriage, he took the side of wife. It was a peculiar situation and I do not know why we didn't make People Magazine. Poor Dad, it was the end of things for him. I think he had had it by then. He did not last long after that. He got badly burned while I was staying with him. He caught his bathrobe on fire, and things never being simple, my brother had made that bathrobe for him, and noticed it was gone. We had to tell him, thus causing guilt feelings. I burned my hands taking the burning robe off of him, and putting out the fire, and Dad just never recovered. He kept asking one of us for a gun, and none of us complied. He then just stopped eating. That did the trick. But I think we all had found some common ground with him during that six months, finding peace with each other, and understanding. We should all be so lucky!

Well, this digressed from doll houses! But it is all wound up with a life. From birth to death, there are memories. Take heart!

Mouth Tricks

I have begun the mouth restoration, new crowns to replace aged fillings that are cracking and leaking so I fill the thrill of cold air when I breath through my mouth. The beginning of this process was taking molds of my teeth for the replacement crown manufacturing. And then whitening to get my old yellow teeth back to their natural color so to match the crowns. The process is called Zoom, and it uses light and bleaching agents to whiten the teeth. It is a long complicated process where they stuff gauze in and around your mouth and teeth. The tech then puts some material along your gums and saps it to harden it to protect that area. She applies sun block to lips to spare them the intense light, and wraps gauze up over the lips. It looks pretty macabre. Skeletal, as a matter of fact. Then you go through what they call passes, four of them 15 minutes each, and they remove the material they have put on your teeth to accelerate the whitening process. By the end of the second pass I could feel my upper lip and told the tech, and she reapplied the sun block. I should have mentioned that I was beginning to feel the bottom lip, but didn't until the 3rd pass, and on we went to the 4th pass. It was just a fluke, I got burned, more on the bottom lip, and I am now feeling the slow healing acutely. It will take a week, probably for it to get back to normal. But my teeth look white. I think the last time they looked this good was 40 years ago. So was it worth it? Probably! Going along with my Whisker blog, and writing about aging, I do want to make it another 10 or 12 years and see what happens around me, so looking good is probably the call!

Whiskers!

We are back in the mountains, waiting for snow to fall, which it did, but soon melted. And I am taking meandering walks with the dog, getting lost in thought, astounded by the views, feeling the wind after hearing it sweeping down out of the upper climes, and thinking of things that have nothing to do with really anything. Thus, I thought of my little grandmother, who I now realize was really little, but when I was young, 8 or 9, she was my size. I used to stay with my grandfather and grandmother when my parents did things I don't really remember, or maybe I just stayed there because I was the youngest and my Mom wanted space. I don't know. But there were things that I would do whenever I was visiting. When we would get up we would have breakfast in our pajamas. then when we would get dressed my grandma would have me stand over her on the bed and lace up her corset. Didn't everyone do that for their grandmother? And she would often have me pull her whiskers with tweezers sitting in the sun by a window. So where is the grandchild that will pull my whiskers, or even tell me that I have this big whompen whisker sticking out on my chin! No one! They won't tell you either cause you are not that important to them.

I discovered this summer when I visited my Internist for the usual updates of prescriptions, that I have graduated. Now that I am over 70, I have graduated to where doing tests, and updating health things really aren't that important anymore. When I mentioned a Pap Smear, she said, 'oh, you can wait on that for a year, I suppose.' OK, what about mammogram and bone density, which just a few years ago were hurriedly reminded to me to get! 'Probably you ought to get the mammogram, but have you broken anything lately?' 'Well, no!' 'Then you can skip the density thing.' I am not going to matter anymore! Oh, great, and I had such high hopes for lasting another ten years or so!

I have really suddenly decided, well actually this happened several years ago, to really try and keep this old body in good shape. I keep track of the veggies I eat, and how many fruit things, and I only try to have two hard candies in the evening after I eat my dairy things. And fibre, yes fibre, you need it, and apples give you a good supply. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, oh yah! I have a high incidence of heart disease in my family background, so I realized some time ago that I don't want to go there. I take a pill for blood pressure and a hiccup in the heart rhythm that I noticed several years ago. I am taking red yeast rice for my lipids, especially my triglycerides, which run high, probably genetic, and watch the weight gain and loss. I try doing some weight lifting, small amounts for my shoulders and my back muscles, and a stationary bike in the winter and a road bike in the summer for my thrills! So far things seem to be working, but who knows. I can walk up hill here on my mountain at 9500 feet without getting out of breath, or panting anymore. But I am pudgy! Pudgy is good, my Obgyn says, 'you need a little fat to replace those hormones you are missing.' Whoopee!

I have a friend who has had bariatric surgery, and she is so inspirational to me, I seem to be able to keep doing the things that have gotten me this far in the mathematical equation of aging. I also have too much yarn and need to knit it up, and lots of books still to be read, and a dog and a cat that need me around, and that is my excuse for wishing I had someone to pull my whiskers. I want to look good! Oh, and that is why I have finally given in about my teeth. I am going to get some cool fangs to replace some quaking aging old filling teeth that look kinda yellow and old. I remember when my Dad was in the hospital in his last months after being burned badly from a bathrobe that caught on fire, a tooth fell out. He felt so bad about that gap in his smile, and wanted the tooth put back in fast, and he was laying in bed with bandages on these awful burns on his back and arm. We do want to look good!

Aging is not for the faint of heart, it has been said. But there is the alternative, others have said. And why not stick around to see what is going to happen this time. Will the earth get too warm and not be able to recover, or will it launch into another ice age, and what about all those guns going off all over the world taking out this person and that person, and for what reason. We seem to have forgotten something along the way. What was this experiment all about. Why were people evolved to live on a planet that appears to be one of a kind and is turning into a trash dump and fought over for religious purposes to further this need, and that need, and for what? Whoa there, lets stop and figure out what that need is, and why. Look around you at all the wasted stuff, souls, and hearts. Take some breaths and think. Where am I bound, and is it worth it, or should I just look for someone to pull my whiskers!