Tag Archives: memories

Views from my trip

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The house I grew up in from second grade on. No we didn’t have a blue garage! What were these people thinking!

I grabbed the front of the house photo from Redfin.

After my aunt and I left Robe Valley and my mother’s ashes, we drove to my hometown, Snohomish, Wash. During our journey we detoured up Lord’s Hill to my old house that I lived in from second grade until I left for college. My mom sold it after “the divorce.” It was too expensive for her to keep up on alimony payments.

First street Snohomish
First Street, the touristy part of my hometown.
Snohomish first street
Another view of First Street Snohomish.

We stopped for lunch at Andy’s Fish House. The Pacific Northwest has the best seafood. I had chowder, salad and a piece of cod. My aunt had fish and chips. It was delish!

Oto Sushi
While I’m posting about food, I had sushi with my BFF from college at Oto Sushi near my brother’s house. This was called “Skinny Girl Roll” because it didn’t have rice. It was so fresh and yummy.
View from my brother's patio.
View from my brother’s patio overlooking a small lake. It’s a gorgeous home and location. Notice they have one of my flamingos in the backyard!
Nephew playing piano

My nephew played Moonlight Sonata and Für Elise as a tribute to my mom. He used his Covid shutdown days to learn piano!

13 Coins Seatac
The counter at 13 Coins, one of my mom and dad’s favorite restaurants when I was growing up.

My aunt and I spent the night at SeaTac airport after our adventure in Robe Valley and Snohomish. Next door to our hotel was 13 Coins which was a favorite memory of mine with my mom. My aunt said it was a place she and her husband frequented in the 1970s. Sitting at the counter is more exciting than in the booths, because it’s where all the cooking takes place.

13 Coins Seatac
The line action at 13 Coins by the Seattle airport.
brother with two sisters
Mom, her older brother and my aunt who is 11 years younger than Mom.

My aunt shared a small scrapbook she made for my mom’s 70th birthday. This was a photo in it that I loved.

cat on a suitcase
Olive immediately attacked my suitcase when I came home. She made the suitcase her perch for hours.

Thanks for taking a look at my week in the Pacific Northwest.

Beware the Ides of March

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Mom and me in the 1990s.
My mom and me in the 1990s.

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. The Ides of March. (Mom died New Year’s Day.) Today I’m going to my brother’s house and we will reminisce and have dinner with family including my mom’s little sister who is 13 years younger than mom.

My mom often told me that she raised her little sister.

My cousin wrote me a loving sympathy letter that included a funny story I had never heard before about Mom, my aunt (my cousin’s mom) and red squares.

My aunt had a friend over and my mom, as the older sister, had them in a competition to earn red cloth squares. I’m not sure what ages they were, but Mom had them busy doing chores. They would earn a red cloth square for finishing their chore first.

I talked to my aunt about it and she said whoever earned the most red squares won the grand prize. She said she wanted the grand prize more than anything!

She won — and the grand prize turned out to be a bigger red cloth square.

Mom was a strong Christian and I have memories of her giving us a Bible verse each morning. She typed hundreds of them on 3 1/2 by 2″ cards.

She was big on chores and that’s one thing I despised the most coming home from school. We’d come home to an empty house, as latch key kids when Mom was earning her degree in Music at the University of Washington. She already had a degree in Home-Ec Education. Mom would leave a legal-sized yellow sheet of college-ruled paper with both sides filled with chores to be done before she got home. She had an ineligible scrawl that was hard to read.

I realize now, she not only wanted dinner cooked, the dishes done, the house vacuumed, the garage swept (you get the idea) — she was keeping my brother and I out of trouble. She was keeping us busy.

Tomorrow we spread her ashes at our riverfront property.

Here’s a photo of her in her teens or early twenties at the river.

What chores did you have growing up? Did you have your children do chores too?

A funny memory

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bobcat
A bobcat in our backyard. I’ve seen this one lately, but haven’t gotten a new photo.

When I was first married and moved to the Palm Springs area, I worked for a Public Relations agency.

We were housed in a small building named for Bob Hope on a hospital campus that has President Eisenhower’s name. A number of rich and famous were associated with the hospital including Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope.

One of the accounts we worked on was the Bob Hope Classic, a golf tournament that raised millions for local charities.

The first year I was working the Classic, I answered the phone and got a request from Rick Dee’s secretary that he’d like to play in the tournament. At the time, Rick Dees was a local Los Angeles DJ. It was before he went national. I had moved from Washington state and never heard of him. I told the woman on the other end of the phone, “No.”

We were well into organizing the tournament and I didn’t think we could allow more players.

Next, I got a call from Rick Dees himself. I told him no. He called back two more times and I hung up on him!

One of my co-workers overheard and asked, “Who were you talking to?”

“Some guy named Rick Dees. He wants to play in the Classic and he called me three times!”

“You hung up on Rick Dees?”

The boss immediately found Rick Dees number and called him back and apologized. Guess what? He was allowed to play in the tournament.

Fast forward six or seven years, and I was at the Classic with my husband, who had our one- year-old son on his shoulders. We walked along the golf course and I spotted Rick Dees.

I walked up to him and said “I’m the woman who hung up on you years ago.”

He laughed and said he remembered. My husband asked for his autograph. Rick Dees was friendly and signed my son’s baseball cap.

What are some of your funny memories during your early working years?

A Tip to Fall Asleep Quickly

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A firestick plant at a neighbor’s house. They are beautiful but toxic succulents.

Lying in bed each night, Andy Buelow often finds himself thinking one thought over and over: How awesome it was to ride the ferry across Lake Michigan as a kid.

Mr. Buelow pictures himself back on the ship, imagining the whir of the engines, the smell of steam, the rushing water and the cold spray on his face.

“When I remember the feeling, I am asleep within minutes,” says Mr. Buelow, 61 years old, the chief executive of a symphony orchestra in Muskegon, Mich. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-happy-memory-can-help-you-fall-asleep-if-you-know-how-to-use-it-11674527348?mod=life_work_lead_pos4

That is the opening of a story from the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Bernstein called “A Happy Memory Can Help You Fall Asleep, If You Know How to Use It.”

According to the article, sleep researchers say what we think about before we fall asleep is as important as having a relaxing routine, turning off our screens, etc.

Here’s another excerpt:

They recommend that as we prepare to drift off, we practice something called savoring, which is imagining a positive experience we’ve had in great detail.

Savoring is well-studied as a strategy to improve our general well-being. A considerable body of research shows that it can boost mood and help reduce depression and anxiety. Now, psychologists believe it can help us fall asleep and have better sleep quality, and are starting to study its effectiveness.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-happy-memory-can-help-you-fall-asleep-if-you-know-how-to-use-it-11674527348?mod=life_work_lead_pos4

So here’s the question, if you choose to try “savoring” what memory will you be thinking about?

A simple pleasure

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mother daughter sailing
Sailing in Santa Barbara with my daughter on a friend’s boat.

Yesterday I got a pedicure. I last got one during our beach vacation in August. My daughter and I used to get pedicures together. It was a ritual that we loved, sitting side by side getting pampered. I’d read a book, she was on her phone. Although we weren’t talking much, I look back on those memories with tenderness.

Even when she went to college, we’d make time for pedicures when she’d be home for vacation. Or, if I was visiting her for a swim meet, we’d get pedicures together.

Then the pandemic hit and the nail salon by our house closed. Since I moved away, I’m not sure if it ever reopened. So many small businesses closed forever. I’ve had two pedicures since COVID hit.

Yesterday was a treat to be pampered. But it was bittersweet. I missed my daughter sitting by my side.

Do you have any simple pleasures with your loved ones? What do you like to do together?

Letting go….or not

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My daughter’s pug Waffles on our “chaise and a half” at our old house.

When we moved, we debated about moving the chaise lounges we’d bought decades before. To me it wasn’t a debate at all. They were coming with us. I had memories of the kids piling on me when they were young. I’d sit and stare at the stars from the chaise lounge with Angus our yellow lab laying next to me.

My husband had other plans.

The chaise lounges arrived in our new backyard and I was shocked when I removed the weather covers. The upholstery was starting to shred. A friend of mine had re-covered them twice through the years. The third time, she made slipcovers from Costco towels (see photo above). You didn’t need a towel, because the covers were towels!

Those were starting to shred also. It was time to get them redone, but unfortunately my friend with the upholstery/sewing business didn’t move with us. Since we moved out of state during the shut down, I didn’t know where to get the work done. They sat for another year under weather covers.

One day, I was sitting by the window writing and I saw a chipmunk running back and forth with a big white fuzz ball in his mouth.

I went outside to see where he was going and what the fuzz was. I saw him run under one chaise lounge.

I took off the cover and there was a giant hole where the chipmunk had been busy stealing the stuffing for their nest somewhere in the surrounding desert.

This week is bulk trash pick up. I decided to get rid of the chaise lounges. We obviously haven’t sat in them once since moving.

But then I thought, I’ll get rid of the cushions and get new ones made. If I don’t get around to it, I can take the chaise lounges to the curb on the next bulk trash date.

I dragged the cushions down to the curb. I was wearing work gloves but cactus spikes went right through the gloves into my fingers. That little chipmunk dragged bits of cactus onto the cushion with the hole.

My friend with the sewing business told me where to go in Phoenix to get the cushions made. She suggested keeping the undamaged cushions to have them recovered and then only having the one with the chipmunk hole thrown out and replaced.

So I dragged the salvageable cushions back up the driveway…

My extra wide chaise lounge with the Coscto towel cover.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of inanimate objects that hold dear memories.

Do you have trouble letting things go? Or not?

What are you forgetting?

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Olive cat in the morning sun.
Olive’s memory is just fine.

Have you noticed yourself forgetting things lately? I have. I can walk into a room for something and forget why I am there. Also, I can’t go the grocery store without forgetting items on my list — or things I forgot to add to my list. I also am forgetting names and words. I notice my husband is in the same boat.

I found an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Why We’re All Forgetting Things Right Now: Short, temporary moments of forgetfulness are happening to more of us more often these days, memory experts say” by Elizabeth Bernstein. She writes for WSJ’s Life and Work section.

Here’s an excerpt:

Short, temporary instances of forgetfulness—those ‘senior moments’—are happening to more of us more often these days, memory experts say. We’re finding it difficult to recall simple things: names of friends and co-workers we haven’t seen in a while, words that should come easily, even how to perform routine acts that once seemed like second nature. 

We’re living in yet another moment of big change as we return to offices, create new routines and find our footing in yet another new normal. (And don’t forget a scary war in Europe on top of that.) All this change consumes cognitive energy, often much more than we think, neuroscientists say. It’s no wonder we can’t remember what we had for breakfast.  Our minds are struggling with transition moments.

“Our brains are like computers with so many tabs open right now,” says Sara C. Mednick, a neuroscientist and professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. “This slows down our processing power, and memory is one of the areas that falters.”

The chronic and cumulative stress of the past two years has taken its toll, too. Research led by Dr. Shields shows that people who have experienced recent life stressors have impaired memory. Stress negatively affects our attention span and sleep, which also impact memory. And chronic stress can damage the brain, causing further memory problems, says Dr. Shields, an assistant professor in the department of psychological science at the University of Arkansas. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-were-all-forgetting-things-right-now-11649166214?mod=life_work_lead_pos3

The article also said we are bombarded with too much information and scanning through info on our phones isn’t helpful. Another thing that an expert pointed out was the sameness of every day during the shut down. Apparently we need novelty to help our memories.

They offered suggestions on how to deal with memory loss. If other people are noticing it, you should probably see a doctor. Also, don’t try to force it if you forget something because that’s counter productive. Stay calm and turn off the TV and phones to be present in the moment.

Have you noticed a lag in your memory or a spouse or friends since COVID hit? What types of things do you forget?