Seniors Situation Room – 100 First Columns Book & Remembering Loved Ones

JULY 15, 2021 – A book of the best of my first 100 columns will soon be published. For more information or to register for a pre-book sale please email at: info@cornwallfreenews.com

The sitcom” The Golden Girls” was a very popular show that we all enjoyed. It was funny and entertaining show about how three women shared their living space.

In the July/August 2021 issue of the Readers Digest magazine is an article by Luc Rinaldi titled,” The New Golden Girls”. It is about four women who have bought a house and are sharing their living spaces together in co-op housing.

This concept was introduced a few years ago.

Also at one time people built a ‘Granny apartment’ onto the side of their homes. A friend did that and her Mom lived there until her Mom had to go to a LTC home. Afterwards, she rented the apartment to a friend.

In the article the women explain how they organized the legal and financial details of sharing a home and how each would have their own private space as well. Very interesting and informative article.

I heard President Obama on TV talking about something he called ‘hooey’. We might also use the term ‘bunch of baloney’. It means silly or worthless talk, nonsense, bunk, etc. On a web site it states that it is a 1922 American English slang word of unknown origin. Great word.

It has been a tough year saying goodbye to three siblings, my brother Ron last July, brother Ed in October and now my beautiful sister Evelyn has recently gone to her heavenly home. I was reading a poem given to me by the staff at St. Joe’s Continuing Care ( The Villa) when my Mom passed away in 1998. It is titled: “I am standing Upon the Seashore” by Henry Van Dyke, sometimes attributed to Victor Hugo.

“I am Standing on the Seashore:

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: “There, she is gone!”

“Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she is gone!” there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

And that is dying.”

Beautiful comforting poem . Evelyn was a sweet lady. We will miss her so much.

Remember when we were kids and when we saw a robin perching somewhere we used to say:

” Lucky lucky Robin.

Lucky lucky me

Lucky lucky Robin,

Bring good luck to me.”

We had to say it quickly because if it moved before you finished saying it, you were out of luck.

Here is a beautiful robin near a tree trunk just waiting for us to say the rhyme before he flies away.

Photo by Bob Katz

When July rolls around it seems to bring back memories of the old days when my Girl Guide company at Trinity Anglican Church would pack up our gear and head to Charlottenburg park, east of Cornwall for a few weeks of camping.

In this photo we are seated at a table, instead of a campfire. My friend, Frances Glass Irwin, one of our guides, took the photo. Now we are wondering why we were ‘dining’ at a table. in the middle of a campsite. Neither of us remember why because it usually was around a campfire.

In the photo on the left are: our Captain, the late Alison Maitland and Beverly Heward. On the right are : Myrna Plumley, myself and Ann Tabram.

Thanks, Fran, for sharing this photo with us.

Here is a funny limerick:

” A magazine writer named Bing

Could make copy from most anything.

But the copy he wrote

Of a ten-dollar note

Was so good he now lives in Sing Sing.”

Tiger has a new bed. it was time to throw one of the older ones out. He refuses to get into it. I put one of his blankets on it that was on the old one so the odour would maybe help but it didn’t. Boy, is that a cat for you!!!

Here is a cute joke:

A boy asks his father, “Dad, are bugs good to eat?”

“That’s disgusting. Don’t talk about things like that over dinner,” the dad replied. After dinner the father asks, “Now, son, what did you want to ask me?”

“Oh, nothing,” the boy says. “There was a bug in your soup but now it’s gone.”

Have a good week, Dawn

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