A "Round" Birthday

 In Europe there is, or maybe was, a custom to call birthdays ending in a zero "round birthdays." They are a cause for celebration. From https://www.howtoliveindenmark.com/podcasts/danish-birthday-traditions/: "But if your friend is turning 30 or 40 or 50, that’s a whole different ballgame. That’s a round birthday. It’s a big deal." It's celebrated with big parties, or a trip. 

Five days ago I turned 70. Nothing momentous happened on my birthday -- cards, flowers from family, greetings on Facebook. It was very nice to be remembered. Being very much the introvert I definitely didn't want a big party. It's been on my mind though -- a new decade.

Do I feel different entering a new decade? I have more aches and pains and more medical appointments. But, I am basically very healthy and feel lucky to still be here and able to do so many things that I love and see the people that I love. 

It's sort of an artificial border. But people tend to perceive time-related events as significant. So I can think of this new decade as a time for more adventures, time with friends, books to read, concerts to attend, music to play... maybe new adventures?

Umbrellas, Stories, and Car Rides

 Summer in Chicago means concerts at Ravinia. For my husband and me it means Chicago Symphony concerts, outdoors, in a lovely park on the North Shore. I have been going to concerts there since I came to Chicago in 1975. Dean has been going even longer since he is a native Chicagoan. There are other concerts there besides the CSO -- recitals, popular singers, children's concerts... We mostly go for the CSO.

A week or so ago we were driving to Ravinia and I was working on trying to get an umbrella to close properly. It was one of those umbrellas that fold up quite small but one of the metal pieces was bent or something and it didn't fold properly. The umbrella made me think of Carl Sandberg's story, "Three Boys with Jugs of Molasses and Secret Ambitions," from Rootabaga Stories. My sister had the book when we were kids, given to her by our uncle who loved books and always gifted us with interesting selections. Later I became a Junior Great Books leader and this story was one of the selections - it made for interesting discussions.

The basic plot of this story is three boys whose mothers send them to get jugs of molasses but on their way home one jug breaks and the boys step into the spilled molasses and shrink, entering a world existing in the grass. They have adventures, including a visit to a parasol store, where the clerk informs them that they cannot buy an umbrella because you will inevitably lose it--

“They always come back. These are the famous twisted-nose parasols made from the famous pink grass. You will lose them all, all three. Then they will all walk back to me here in this store on main street. I can not sell you something I know you will surely lose. Neither can I ask you to pay, for something you will forget, somewhere sometime, and when you forget it, it will walk back here to me again."

I told Dean about the parasol store in the story and since he didn't know the story I looked it up on my phone and asked if he wanted to hear it. So I read the whole story to him as we drove toward Lake Michigan. He's not a fiction reader generally, but he listened intently to the whole story. It was lovely, getting to share a favorite of mine with him.

Shopping Spree

 Last week I wrote about our dryer woes. This week I'm wishing we had a clothesline in the backyard.

However, my husband and I went on what turned out to be a shopping spree at Abt, the local appliance mega-store. It is mega in the sense that the store is huge, but it's a local Chicago store, not a national chain. There is only the one store. I hadn't been there in quite a while and it has grown into a mall Besides shopping for all kinds of appliances and computer-related things, the store has become a sort of mall. There's an Apple store, a candy store, a luggage store... 

So we purchased a new washer and dryer which will be delivered on Friday. If I knew that the dryer would break down, I would have washed everything in sight. However, we getting along with what clean things we have. 

While at Abt, my husband also bought a computer thing to improve wifi reception in our house. We have dead spots that go in and out. In fact, I'm writing this from an on and off dead spot. That thingy was just delivered and installed this morning. 

Then, since there is an Apple store and I had been talking for months about replacing my Fitbit with an Apple watch, we bought an Apple watch. It had to be set up and linked with my Apple phone (do you see a pattern? I'm typing this on my Apple Mac) so the friendly tech guys gave us water bottles and sent us to the atrium to wait. The atrium has a fountain, an amazing sculpture thing with balls that drop through a vertical maze, and reclining arm chairs. If I had brought a book it would have been perfect.

All in all, quite a productive shopping spree. Then we went out to dinner to celebrate and recover.

Appliance Woes

 Our dryer developed a very odd problem. I was taking clothes out of the dryer and say that a sock seemed to be stuck near the top of the dryer, at the front. I pulled and it didn't come loose. I pulled harder and finally got it off, ripped to shreds and in two pieces. Poking around, I discovered something sharp sticking out that the sock had caught on. I pulled but it didn't budge. I got big pliers out and pulled -- nothing.

So we needed a service call. Naturally our appliance repair guy had disappeared -- most likely retired -- so I turned to online reviews to find a new person.I did find a new guy (are there no women out there repairing appliances?) and he came out yesterday. 

He had told me on the phone that he had never heard a problem like mine. But, when he looked into the dryer he almost immediately knew what was wrong. He said it better than me, but basically the whole inside mechanism had given up the ghost. He took it apart to show me. It would be about $400 to fix it. I said, well, we want a new washing machine, so we can just get a dryer to go with it. Nevertheless, he looked up parts and found that several important parts are no longer made. A new dryer for sure.

So we will be shopping tomorrow at the big appliance store. Today we are going to see Oppenheimer. 

Remembering a summer past sans electricity

The summer I am remembering was maybe 15 years ago. We lost electricity for several days. Fortunately the temperatures were reasonable. We bought a lot of ice and used our big cooler to keep perishables. We mostly cooked on our charcoal grill. And best of all, we spent time with each other, mostly talking.

Our daughter must have been away taking summer classes at college, but our adult son was still living at home. My husband and I were both teachers at the time, so we had the summer off. We have a small fire pit, the kind that has legs and looks a bit like a charcoal grill. We used it more those electricity-free days than at any other time. The three of us sat around the fire and talked. We talked and listened a lot. Our son had a habit of hibernating in his room, but those several days he sat with us and talked. 

The mother of one of my 4th grade students and I were talking about the days without power much later. She had taken her two daughters and checked into a hotel with a pool until power was restored. That was also a practical solution, but she was practically dumbstruck when I explained how we coped at home. 

It was pleasant, low-key. No television, no computer, just conversation and books if it was light enough to read. We were lucky it was summer when the backyard became an important "room." 

When the power came back on we drifted back to normal, less conversation, more electronics. More convenient for sure.

But when I think about those days I miss sitting around together outside and talking just to talk.

Motivation v. Discipline

 I play French horn, which horn players around the rest of the world just call the horn. I play because I love the instrument, I enjoy playing in various groups, and it's a discipline that I began back in high school.

The thing is, it's summer and most of my regular groups all take a break for the summer. My horn choir still meets every other week, but to read music, not rehearse for a performance. And I have had to miss quite a few of these rehearsals for other reasons. When I have rehearsals and concerts coming up, I practice. I need to learn the music and stay in shape. It's like any physical activity - if you don't play, your muscles lose their strength. And it's not like I don't like playing - I do.

So I haven't been playing much and I feel bad about that. Obviously I need to set some goals, or maybe challenges, like learning some new music. Or setting a challenge goal of how many days in a row I can practice. 

I have been using Duolingo for over a year to learn a language. It is motivating, keeping up my streak - I do at least a little language learning every day. (I could write another post about how irritating Duolingo can be, but not today!)

As I write this I am deciding that I will pick something new to challenge me and something I already know and love to brush up on. Will I need more motivation than that? We'll see!

A Visit from a Daughter

Our daughter came to visit for 10 days!  She lives in Houston where she plays French horn in the Houston Ballet Orchestra and teaches horn lessons. We go down to visit her several times a year and she usually visits us at least once. This is the longest visit since she graduated college.

It's always wonderful to see her. She always brings a measure of chaos with her. Our kitchen gets taken over by gluten-free items. She is also very into healthy eating -- lots of fruit, veggies, smoothies containing fruit, veggies, and assorted powders -- so the refrigerator is filled to bursting with kale, berries, spinach, fruit juices, etc. 

She moves back into her old bedroom which then looks like the closet exploded all over the room. 

And she talks. We hear all about her life, her friends, the people who drive her crazy, the students she is so proud of. And music - lots of talk about music and musicians.

We miss her when she leaves. But now that we have a grandson and she has a nephew... well,, she's coming back in August!