Where is my watch?

Believe it or not, I was a very shy child.  Really.  When it was time to go to high school, I went to a coed Catholic school   I didn't do well.  After I survived one very unhappy year there, I begged my parents to let me attend the all girls Catholic school where a couple of my good girlfriends were.  I felt safe there with none of those annoying boys hanging around.  Yeah, I was spoiled.  I had no idea how expensive that place was.  But, I was happy there. In my senior year, we were offered the opportunity to go on a religious retreat somewhere in New York.  Yay!  I don't know who thought it would be a great idea to have an all girls school and an all boys school attending the same weekend retreat, but it was there I met the boy who was to be my first real love and my first truly devastating heartbreak.   David (not his real name...I've changed the name to protect the innocent) was so handsome.  He had long blond hair (this w...

I don't know when, but at some point my memory began to fail.  I'm 69 years old now, so perhaps I should expect this.  I don't like it and I don't want to accept it.  Being the hypochondriac that I am (that's a whole other blog), I wanted to see if my brain was rotting...or whatever brains do when they are no longer fully functional.  My long suffering primary care doctor (the woman is a saint) ordered a brain MRI.  The results: "Very mild chronic small vessel ischemic changes of the supratentorial periventricular and subcortical white matter." Sure.  That sounded troubling to me, but my primary care doctor wasn't concerned.   On the positive side, it's interesting to see all the new sights everyday that apparently I have seen thousands of times before.  On  the one hand, it's nice to be happily surprised...a lot.  I ask my husband, "have we been here before?" to which he often replies, "countless times."  Hmmmmm.  Nope, d...

       I have an ongoing battle with envy and gratitude.  I know how fortunate I am.  That good fortune began when I was born to intelligent parents.  We had a nice home in the suburbs.  I attended a Catholic grade school and, after a year in a regular (read: boys and girls) Catholic high school, I told my parents that I wanted to switch to an all girls' Catholic high school.  And off I went to Saint Mary of the Angels Academy.  I figured I'd be less of a loser in a school without boys.  Looking back, I'm glad I didn't ask my parents to send me to an all girls Catholic boarding school. One of my friends from grade school, a very sweet, smart, lovely person, was going there.  My parents would have gladly sent me off; I was getting to be quite the emotional handful.  Being a rather sheltered adoIescent, I was clueless about the cost of Catholic boarding schools.  I was clueless and confused and just plain scared of just...

        S e veral times a week   I drive by a lovely little white cottage near my home.  I don't remember what was there before the cottage appeared;  I think the former structure must have blended right in with the rest of the houses on the street, so I never paid much attention to it.        T he little white cottage is unique in many ways.  What occurred to me the first time I saw the place was that the owners must love their home very much.  Every season and holiday, they decorate the cottage beautifully.  The most recent theme was autumn; soon it will be time for Christmas and the little white cottage will be transformed in a winter wonderland.   The seasonal decoration is abundant; I find myself wondering where the heck they store all that stuff!!!  It's a lot, but it's a lot in a really good way.       Often, I thought to myself that I should just stop at the cottage and ...

  As I wrote in Part 1, Papa (my father) and Nana (his mother and my grandmother) were living with Nana's mother (my great-grandmother) in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania when Papa’s father/Nana’s husband committed suicide on December 22, 1916,  in Wilmington, DE.  Nana lived with Papa for the rest of her life.  Even after  he married and had children, Nana was a constant in his life and in ours. Given all of that drama, I always assumed that Nana and Papa had a challenging, difficult, perhaps even sad relationship.  As I wrote in Part 1, my father never wanted to talk about his life before his marriage. From bits and pieces of household conversation, I gathered that things were not always rosy in the Trower/Kelly household.  My great-grandmother was Mary K. Brown until she married Lee Trower in 1887.  Something happened that resulted in Lee Trower moving out of the house.  The 1930 Census data shows that he lived as a "lodger" with a woman named D...

My father wasn't always Dr. Kelly's husband.  But when I was growing up, that was what people called him.  It seemed to me that everyone knew my mother; she was a woman doctor in a time when there were very few women doctors.  She graduated from medical school in 1943.  As one of her two daughters, I was very aware of her importance in our community.  We couldn't go to the grocery store without what seemed liked hundreds of people coming up to us with, "Dr. Kelly!!!  Dr. Kelly!  Do you remember me?  You delivered my babies!  Oh, are these your daughters?  Aren't they pretty!  You look great, Dr. Kelly!  I am so grateful to you for all the care you've given me and my family.  Blah, blah, blah..."   But this blog isn't about her; it's about Dr. Kelly's husband, my father, Cyril Francis Kelly. My father insisted that my sister and I call him Papa; he thought that Daddy sounded too much like Dada...and that really bo...

  My patio is what I love the most about our house.  It's a covered patio, with fans, lights, a table and chairs, and lots of plants.  It's not screened, so we are open to the nature that surrounds us.  Just sitting out there cheers me.  Sometimes we are visited by critters, including lizards, frogs, raccoons, armadillos, and lots of birds. Occasionally, birds will nest in a plant on the patio.  I watch as the mom and dad busily build the nest; I wait for the appearance of eggs, mom and dad taking turns sitting on the eggs, babies hatching, mom and dad feeding the tiny arrivals.  I hear the faint chirping of the newborns and hope that I will be around to watch as the parents urge the little ones to leave the nest.  I've seen that nest-leaving operation only once, but it was a beautiful and life affirming event.   A few months ago, I noticed the frantic activity that accompanies nest building.  Two Carolina Wrens were tearing back an...

My husband has an enlarged heart, also known as Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.   In the past few years, he has noticed increased symptoms associated with that condition, especially a shortness of breath when he plays tennis or mows the lawn.  His cardiologist recommended surgery to reduce his symptoms.  She referred us to another cardiologist who has performed the surgery, a cardiac ablation, hundreds of times.  While the cardiac ablation was explained to me many times, I confess that I still have trouble understanding all of it, so here's a reference if you are interested:  Cardiac Catheter Ablation (baptisthealth.com) .  The bottom line, and most significant detail about this procedure, is that it is minimally invasive; it should require at most an overnight stay in the hospital for observation.  This all sounded good to us, so the surgery was scheduled.  I won't bore you with all the details of every test, exam, paperwork, bloodwork, MR...

I've noticed that my memory has been failing a bit over the last couple of years.  There are lots of reasons for this, I'm sure.  I'm getting older, which is certainly preferable to getting dead.  I'm no longer challenged by daily tasks that I faced in my career.   I was a librarian and an administrator at the college where I worked in the last twenty years of employment.   I retired two and a half years ago.  I have to say that  I miss my colleagues, I miss the challenges and the laughter, the projects, the successes, and even the failures that never failed to teach me something.   Between my retirement and the pandemic, my social interactions have diminished significantly.  That has been hard.  But, back to my memory concerns.  I discussed this with my primary care provider.  She encouraged me to have a "neurobehavioral status exam" to assess my knowledge, attention, memory, and assorted other brain related fun...

I admit that I spend more time than I should thinking about how I look.  I don't know about you, but I was indoctrinated at a very early age.  Like many newborns, I had blonde hair at birth.  That blonde hair usually doesn't last.  It didn't last on me.  I don't know exactly when it happened, but I remember that my mother poured peroxide over my hair when it started getting dark.  Now, my mother was an educated woman; she received her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois in 1943.  But, even an educated woman apparently wanted her first child to remain a blonde.  For years, she went to the drug store to get some Miss Clairol Blonde formula with which to keep me bright and beautiful (in her eyes, anyway).  I don't know how she found the time, but it must have been quite the priority for her.  This was a woman with a medical practice in our home who was very often called away to deliver babies.  Looking back, I am ...

I love cruise vacations.  What's not to love? There's lots of good food and drinks, beautiful scenery, and you go from one destination to another without packing and unpacking.  When my husband and I took our first cruise, we were on our honeymoon.  We didn't have a lot of money to spend, so we got a cabin in the bowels of the ship.  It was very small and dark with a porthole that didn't offer much light.  We were very happy, though.  We didn't know any better, and we didn't care.  Forty plus years later, I need my balcony, thank you.  Yes, I am a spoiled brat now.  I admit it. We wanted to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary with a cruise.  Due to the pandemic, our trip had been canceled and rescheduled multiple times.  Finally we got our cruise a few weeks ago!!!  Hooray!!! The ship was less than 50 percent occupancy, which was actually nice. On the first night, I had some intestinal issues (use your imagination; I'm n...

  Marriage isn't always easy, and it can be particularly challenging when opposites attract and commit to one another.  My husband and I are about as different as two people can be.  These differences were never more evident than during the pandemic and the Presidential campaign season.  There were many times when I had to leave the room, and sometimes the house, just to avoid saying or throwing things I would regret.   As I wrote in a previous blog, I am not a calm person.  Things get to me.  Sometimes I get so upset or nervous or worried that I become physically and mentally incapacitated.  Really. There have been a few times (not many, but enough to haunt me) when I became so overwhelmed that I lost my ability to speak.  Looking back, one of those times was when my husband had moved to Maryland for a new job and I was home in New Jersey with my three- year old daughter and my newborn son.  My husband called to check in and I was ...

  When I retired, I thought I would try lots of new adventures.  Nope, not so much.  But, I did try something new today, thanks to a good friend (I'll call her Merry, because that's her name).  Merry owns a kayak and belongs to a kayak club!  Who knew kayak clubs were a thing?  I know now. Our adventure started with me meeting Merry at a rather hinky parking lot.  I was parked in front of the Consuming Fire Ministries.  Merry told me to be careful that they didn't "scoop me up."  Yes, I am probably a candidate for the ministries, but they didn't notice me, so I wasn't set on fire.  Whew.  I followed Merry to her kayak club which was REALLY locked up tight, but, as a member, Merry had a key.  Hooray!  We made it.  That was the easy part.   Next, we had to get Merry's kayak out of her car, and my loaner kayak out of the club's kayak garage (storage area? locked place where they keep the kayaks?).  Some he...

Oh, Facebook, how I have missed you. My account was hacked a few weeks ago; I am grateful to my Facebook (FB) friends who were quick to let me know that they had received friend requests from me/not me.   I don't understand why anyone would want to hack my account.  Part of me doesn't want to know why...nothing good can come of this.   So, I posted on FB that my account had been hacked, and warned my FB friends not to accept friend requests from the imposter Victoria.  I realized that the chances of all of my FB friends seeing that one post were slim and none, but I wasn't sure what else to do.  I also used FB Messenger to alert some folks and asked them to spread the word to our mutual friends.  Then, I shut down my FB account.  I shut it down.  Yep.  All of this happened while I was out of the country celebrating my 40th (I KNOW!!!!  WOW!!!) wedding anniversary with my husband.  I was happily involved in an adventure, le...

How did I get myself in that situation?   It all began about ten years ago when my son decided to move to Fairbanks.  Of course we miss him so much, but he is happy there.  It's a very different lifestyle; people who live there take care of each other.   My husband and I have visited a couple of times.  The first time was during the summer a few years ago.  It was beautiful!  The place and the people could not have been more welcoming.  One of our son's friends had a barbeque in our honor just so we could meet some folks.  His  friends immediately became our friends; we worried less about him knowing that he was surrounded by good people. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I visited Alaska in the winter.  Our primary goal was to spend time with our son, but we hoped to see the Aurora Borealis (also known as the Northern Lights).  March is peak season for this sighting, so we had high hopes.  Also, we planned t...

Last week I wrote about my journey to receive the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.  In Jacksonville we were well on our way to getting folks vaccinated...until yesterday when our mayor announced that, due to a "national logistics issue," local vaccination sites may run out of vaccines by the end of day tomorrow.  My husband tried to get his first vaccination dose last Thursday, but all of the approximately 500 daily doses had been claimed by folks arriving earlier in the day.  He plans to get to the vaccination site early tomorrow morning and wait in line with hundreds of others.  Fingers crossed. So, to continue my vaccination story... When I arrived at the site, there were a lot of cars and a shortage of parking spots.  Police were directing the slow-moving traffic.  I rolled down my car window and asked them where to park (of course I did; it's what I do).  "Anywhere you can find a space," one answered.  Cars were in the grass on the side of...

I live in Jacksonville, Florida.  We have our moments, especially yesterday when the national news on our local television channel was interrupted by the MAJOR BREAKING ANNOUNCEMENT that Urban Meyer, former college football coach, had been hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars.  Hoorah!!! (I honestly don't care, but lots of people do) The highlight of my day yesterday was receiving the first of two vaccinations for COVID-19.  The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is administered in 2 doses, 3 weeks apart.  I'm not a fan of needles, but I am concerned about my health and that of my family, so I was happy for the chance to get the vaccine. Jacksonville, like many cities and states, has struggled with the distribution of this vaccine.  Here, the city began by offering vaccinations at a downtown convention center, by appointment only.  People 65 and over as well as front line medical workers were eligible to be vaccinated.  The immediate problem was getting an appointme...

I am not, nor have I ever been, a calm person.  I am the opposite of calm.  I searched the Web for antonyms of calm; results include: frenzied, worked up, agitated, unnerved, restless, jittery, jumpy, troubled, uneasy, fearful, impatient, and Victoria McGlone (I made up that last one).   How wonderful calm must be.  What would life be like if I didn't worry and stress from my waking moment and all throughout the day?  I think I've convinced myself that by worrying about something I am improving the chances of its success.  If I stress about getting to work on time, I WILL get to work on  time. If I worry enough about my children, they  WIL L  be healthy and happy.  My presentation  WILL  be amazing if I lose enough sleep over it.  Worrying about the amount of gas in the car  WILL  ensure that I never run out of gas.  Proof of this last one  is that my husband, who never seems to worry about anythi...

Clothes: we wear them, we need them, we are judged and judge others for clothing choices.  I hold onto clothes when they no longer fit, or are acceptable in public.  I fall into the trap of what is "in style" and make ugly,  unfortunate mistakes.  For example, I have a lot of leggings!!!  Someone my age, with my wiggly skin and not-so-tiny butt should not wear leggings.  Yet, I convinced myself that I could get away it.  I can't.  Well, maybe I can if I am home alone with no intention of going out...or if I am at my WW meeting where we don't judge.  Leggings weigh very little, so they are perfect for my WW weigh-in.   I think I struggle more than most people when it comes to confidence in clothing.  I could do what I usually do, and blame my mother.  But, this time, I'll blame twelve years of Catholic school (well, I guess that is my mother's fault, too...hmmm).  For twelve years I wore a uniform to school every day....

I'm not young, but I don't feel old.  I have trouble accepting the fact that I am in my sixties!!!  Yes, sixties!!!  (I know, my friends, I DO look so much younger 😉.)  When I buy things, I check the warranty and the "use by" date.  Will I expire first?  Hmmm. I could spend my time, and yours, complaining about the challenges and difficulties of growing older, but I think it's helpful to look on the bright side.  So, I'm going to list a few of the good things about this time of my life. 1.  Great discounts!  Yes, I now have Silver Sneakers through my Florida Blue Medicare!!  Yay!  Among other benefits, my YMCA membership is now FREE!  Yes, FREE!!!  (I know I may be a little too excited here, but I attend a number of classes at the Y, so this is a huge win for me.)  Many companies offer senior discounts, and I have an AARP membership.   2.  W hen I get bored,  I can watch my upper arms wiggle endle...