You know you're old when ...

A million years ago when I started this blog, or actually "A Bead a Day" it was called then, I did it to advertise the jewelry I was making and selling on Etsy. There is still a link at the bottom of my blog I think, to my shop. My shop that is closed. I haven't made, much less sold, jewelry for quite a while. But I want to. At least I want to make some.

But my bead room is A HUGE MESS.

For various reasons I took 3 days off work which gave me a 5 day weekend - part of which I meant to use to clean up my bead room and get it usable again. 

So funny I thought I could do that!

Tuesday after work, I picked up my granddaughter from preschool and brought her home. Getting her out of her car seat, something I have done a hundred times before, I fell out of the back seat of my own car. But not only did I fall out - I fell out backwards, with my feet still in the car, and my arms and head - still in the car - so you know what was outside the car? Yeah. My butt.

Landing on asphalt with all my weight on only my butt and small of my back was .. well .. jarring, to say the least.

They say if you fall and everybody laughs you're still young. But if you fall and everyone gasps and asks if you are okay - you are very old.

There was a car turning onto the street and the driver slammed on their brakes when they saw me fall. I guess that means I'm old.

I jumped back up pretty quickly, mostly out of embarrassment but also because I had suddenly dropped out of sight and my granddaughter was yelling "Grandma! Are you okay??" Yeah, she thinks I'm old too, and she's too young to get the joke!

Needless to say I didn't do anything productive while home for 5 days. No bead room clean up, not even laundry. Sigh-h. 

And yeah, I'm okay. Thank goodness! You know, because it's frequently a fall that starts the decline in the health of the elderly. Ahem. But I'm good. Really.

Yesterday it was 90 degrees - wasn't it?

Chicago is a city of extremes.  Not sure I've ever seen us move gently from one season to the next and more often than not we speed wildly from cold to hot to monsoon to draught with nothing in-between.  This year looks to be no different.



Guess I wouldn't know what to do if we had a warning when the season was going to change.  Oh - the calendar?  *Snort!*  Doesn't mean a thing around here.

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Tripped and fell

My daughter has been telling me how much she likes Stumble!. I understood the premise, skipping around the internet at random, guided by some categories you have checked indicating interest. I know myself well enough to know I can while away hours at a time doing something like that so I have resisted. Until last night. Now I am considering uninstalling it because I am a sucker for mindless surfing and cool pictures.


Still, I was somewhat bemused to find myself here.

For those of you that have been looking for it, I found it.





Apparently it's a happy place. And it loves me.



**Edited to add - I have just uninstalled Stumble. I have spent almost 2 days doing nothing but. I cannot be trusted to leave it alone.

Are we related?

Yesterday my kids went to The Art Institute of Chicago, a membership to that institution was one of my son's requests for Christmas last year. The two of them when to see - I think they said - the Jasper Johns exhibit. Or was it the John Jasper exhibit? I wouldn't know.

Today the two of them drove up to Milwaukee to see another art exhibit, somewhere up there, yah hey dere.

I enjoy flea markets and art by anybody if I think it's nice. I have never taken any kind of art appreciation course and the art museum bores me silly. At least it did when I last went, I'm pretty sure I was about 18 years old and we really don't need to discuss how long ago that was. Okay, we are definitely talking decades. Multiple decades.
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I suppose what I am getting at is - are these my children? I mean, who taught them this stuff, guided them in this direction? I pushed both of my children in one direction, toward doing what would make them happy and getting the education behind them to do whatever that turned out to be.

I am incredibly proud of my kids but I am a little bewildered. They are turning out to be people who appreciate art and literature and things I know nothing about. It amazes me that both of them have this kind of bent, both tend to be more intellectual than not. More intellectual than I am, that is for sure. They are their own people, with opinions (oh my God the opinions) and tastes and likes and dislikes of their own. And they are very different from me and mine.

So for me the question becomes, where on earth did these kids come from?
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