My 65th birthday
June 23, 2008 LuLu
LuLu, our cat, has been with us for six years. She has brought much affection (at her discretion) and amusement. She is always waiting for us when we get home. She usually meets me at the door. She is one of the most self-centered creatures that we know and we love her for it.
Taking Care of Yourself
When my husband Alan and I started preparing for our Third Age, we vowed to put more priority on taking care of ourselves. Since my professional background was Nutrition and Aging, we took a strong interest in aging well. Besides, we kept telling each other that we didn’t want to push the other in a wheel chair due to lack of good health. We have established regular exercise schedules (sometimes hard to stick to), established healthy eating patterns (not hard since we ate pretty healthy to begin with) and to keep mentally alert (not too difficult being close to MSU). We both have chronic conditions that we must mange so in addition to listening to our physicians, we try to keep up with new research by subscribing to three newletters:
Tuffs Health and Nutrition letter
published by the Friedman School of Nutrition and Public Policy at Tuffs University,Consumer s Report Health Letter
published by Consumers Union,Dr Andrew Weil’s Self Healing Newsletter.
We try to keep in close contact with family and friends and to learn new skills and sharpen old ones.
Exploring
I decided that for my birthday, I wanted to attend one of the American Harp Society concerts in Dearborn. We attended the Opening Night Concert and Gala at the Henry Ford Anderson Theatre. The keynote speaker was Glenn Kurtz, speaking on his book PRACTICING: A Musician return to Music. Practicing tells the story of youthful ambition to achieve musical artistry, the collapse of that ambition in his twenties and the surprising return in later life. This book weaves together the intense private experience of practicing and the thoughtful healing appraisal of youthful passion. When her begins to practice again after so many years of not touching the guitar, he was struck by the power of practice of a metaphor. We think of practicing as something to do every day. But practicing encompasses larger cycles for life. He found that the idea of practice expressed the larger, profoundly human experience of returning to something deeply loved, yet difficult and painful, in order to understand and grow. Excepted from Randomhouse.com
We also heard harpists Calvin Stokes with three other musicians, Park Stickney, and Edmar Castaneda also with three other musicians, at the concert. They were all wonderful. Not your ‘pearly gates" type of harp music but good jazz. (I like pearly gates harp music too). We were both thrilled when they jammed together at the end of the concert. Following the concert, we had a chocolate reception. We stayed all night in a hotel in Detroit and due to Alan’s new GPS system, we got around perfectly. All in all a Perfect Birthday.
Of course, one of the joys of our lives is our daughter. She took me to a Williams Sonoma cooking class that was a great addition to my birthday week.
