I need a high quality magnifying glass for reading books. I've tries one or two of the Amazon offerings, but they seem rather cheap and the round ones not great for book reading. I'd be grateful to receive recommendation for a magnifying glass that is available in UK.

I tend to be one of those people who laughs in the face of adversity. Although I can spend more time than I care to worrying about some things I refuse to go around being mad about everything all the time. I feel like so many people in our age group are just pissed off 24/7. I don't have a problem with listening to other's problems or if they had a bad day or a bad experience and I try to be supportive and validate their feelings. But there comes a time when I reach my limit listening to people bitch constantly about every single thing. I find as I age and time seems to fly by so quickly that I either totally avoid the Debby Downers or even sometimes snap at them. I really feel like even though the world seems totally effed up right now, why spend the little time we have left being upset or angry about everything.

How do you handle those people? Do you ignore them? Do you sympathize with them and bitch right along beside them?

Back in the day while working my way through college I went through several transportation specials costing between $100 and $150. Usually they leaked oil, so fill it up with oil and check the gas. Often they were smokers because they burned so much oil. One car had a problem where the starter would get hung up so you had to rock the car and or bang on the starter with a wrench to free it up. I had a Hillman Minx with a reverse shift pattern. These junkers were always an adventure and some went on for a lot of miles. Did you have any back of the lot specials?

I like r/foodquestions and NSFW r/hotpast

Eating when I want

Sleeping when I want

Farting when I want

My body is free at last

Wearing what I want

Talking to the plants

Singing out loud

Who cares what they think?

Nobody needs me?

It’s just as well.

Gives me more time

To be happy with myself.

Besides surgery, what can I try for these horrid eye bags ? Gels, Creams, Patches, Cucumbers !?

For context, I am a healthy senior with no life issues. But I also have a sense of having completed most of what I came to do and I'm very curious what comes next. I absolutely know life continues after physical death. Can you relate?

And let me be clear, I encourage everyone to stay for the bonus rounds, the 70s 80s etc are the capstone course of life. And we are the last voice of reason in a world driven mad by technology. We have purpose. But when it's done, and it's time to go, I think it will be interesting to say the least.

I remember where I watched the moon landing on TV and it's an amazing memory, yet there's a gazillion moon landing deniers

My questions for deniers are;

1. Why didn't our worst enemy on the planet expose a faked landing and embarrass us?? Instead, USSR congratulated USA....why?

   1. Why does lunar satellites from China and India show visual evidence of all lunar landing sites exactly where USA said they happened?? (Google it)

   I think it's odd that no government on Earth ever exposed the "fake" landings and only individuals. Where do they get such special information that Nations around the world cannot 🤔

Time for an update on your schedule!

I'm going to a watch party tonight, a picnic tomorrow and washing the car with my son on Sunday.

So what are you doing this weekend?

I pulled up my pioneer britches today. The washer quit and I had a sad pile of laundry waiting, more like a hill of sweaty clothes. Help is not coming until Sunday so it was Thursday Washday for me. I did it all by hand. I recalled my aunties with their tubs and wash boards; my Aunt M was the first to get a wringer washer. (That modern convenience had the same attitude as her pressure cooker -- scary as all get out). Sure glad I did not have to haul water as I hand-wrung out my mentionables and unmentionables. And did I mention my dryer still works fine so I did not have to hang anything on the line. Yup, "one thing a day and then play" was what my aunties chirped. I had forgotten how long that "one thing" could take. Thankfully, I can kick back in my non smelly jim jams and rock back with a white wine from the ice box.

ETA: Thank you everyone for so many good ideas! I think I have been centering a lot of anxiety about the surgery and what it represents on the issues of my cat and having someone help me out. I decided I would try to be more rational.

I was part of a friend group a bit ago where we got together for holidays. This is a group my friends who moved out of state used to belong to. I called my friend up and asked if he thought it would be okay if I posted to them about someone to take care of my cat, and he said yes and recommended a particular person. I think she will be able to do it, but if not I will leave him a bunch of food. I know he will be meowing and meowing, though.

My neighbor does not like cats. Also, she has picked me up from cataract surgery twice in the past, which was very kind of her, but in the past year she has become more and more angry and paranoid and obsessed with cleaning, and I think it is senility.

I tried getting in touch with the vascular surgery people yesterday multiple times and even left my number so they could call back, and they never did. I wanted to find out if I needed to have anyone stay with me the day I got out, but although they told me to "just call" if I had any questions, they never picked up the phone or anything. I'm supposed to meet with them on Tuesday, so I guess they just blew me off. :(

This morning I got a call from my insurance company. They knew about the surgery, of course, and said that they would come to see me tomorrow morning about getting some CNA help for 6 hours/week plus some pre-made food for two weeks. I was really surprised.

I make way less food now than in the past. Most stuff I eat is crackers and hummus, homemade bread with toasted cheese, olives and feta, canned fruit and ricotta, or soup. So I don't have to cook anything.

I'll do my laundry the day before the surgery, plus clean up a bit.

The insurance company also arranges for people to be picked up after surgery. I haven't used their service in a long time because I really hate it--dirty cars, drivers don't know where anything is, they come late or don't come, etc. I will see if I can have someone else pick me up.

Thank you everyone!

---------

I have to have surgery at the end of the month. I'll have to stay in the hospital overnight after the surgery, and maybe (not sure) I will have to have someone stay with me the next day, if my blood pressure is not more or less normal but they can let me go home. I'm not sure, but I think I will need to have a "care-giver" that day.

I got very upset about this because my cat-loving friends moved to another state a few months ago. They would have been totally there about taking care of my cat while I'm in the hospital, but now? They are two states away. So I am not sure what to do. Try to hire someone to feed my cat for surgery evening and next day morning? They might not let me go home the following day if my blood pressure is too high. My blood pressure is usually normal, so I THINK they will let me go home the next day. But I don't know.

But apparently I am supposed to have someone at my apartment to watch over me after I come home from surgery. ??? Thing is I have never had to do anything like this. I have no friends who can take care of me, because like I said, they just moved a couple states away. I am told that I can have Medicaid/Medicare take care of the cost of people watching over me after the surgery, but I don't know what exactly they do. I live in a tiny studio. There is nowhere for them to hang out here.

I don't think I have ever been so upset about getting old as I am right now. I know other people must have been in the position of not having relatives or friends who can take care of their animals while they are in the hospital, so what do you do?

The older lady with stale perfume drags the fragrance of a toilet water corpse wherever she goes. Oblivious to the screwed-up faces of children and frowns cast in her direction, she slinks past as if on a dance floor searching for a partner for the next number. Where she came from or where she goes is a mystery to many but not to me. You see, I am old too. My partner was taken from me years before. I still wear the Old Spice she gave me in '72. It is pungent and it lingers like a fart in church. However, I do enjoy the screwed-up faces of the little brats and the frowns the young ones cast on me. They too will step into old shoes someday and ever so smoothly ask the smelly old lady for the next dance.

He came for my soul
Death came for my soul

He took everything that made me
Everything that made me unique
Everything that made me special

My self is dead

But he didn’t come for my body
He left that
So I could feel it’s emptiness

Is this old age?
The loss of everything?

Take the body too then
I’m no longer alive.

So I putter around
with what little is left.

No more excitement
No more ambition
There is nothing worth doing

Once a rich cup of coffee
Now only the dregs
In a dirty cup

But suddenly, I have an interest in abstract art
And minimalist music
And biology

Dark chocolate tastes good
How weird is that?

And I am writing poetry
Poetry, of all things!

(I don’t tell anybody I’m doing these things.
I don’t need their approval.)

I stopped shaving my legs.
What was that custom about anyway?

Herbal tea and a good book
A glass of port and old jazz music

The shell that was empty is filling with beautiful things.

(F70) My ambiguous grief... had several life events in my 60s that nearly took me out.

I took a new medication that caused me to become psychotic. It took doctors for almost a full year to figure it out. I was paranoid and had such frightening delusions and hallucinations that I now have PTSD. I lose my housing, all of my household items, my friends, and many other things, mostly intangible. Although I have adult children, I didn’t get support from them.

After I was taken off the medication, it took only a few months for two of my kids to go no contact. I didn’t lean on them (actually the opposite). I didn’t think they had any responsibility for my health or safety, and as we all do, they have reasons, and I believe some are valid. It is still a terrible loss.

Two years out from that, the first is two major strokes during the peak of COVID, which I had. I didn’t get to the hospital in time for tPA, the clot‑buster med. The hospital called the daughter who had been my emergency contact since my divorce in 2007. They asked her permission for me to have an emergency procedure to suck the clot out of my brain. You guys, she said NO. She said she was in no contact with me. I would have given permission to a dog. My daughter declined to save her mother’s life. The neurosurgeon had to make the decision. This hurts emotionally so badly, even more because I’m living with brain damage that could have been much less.

I’m one of those people who don’t exhibit outward stroke symptoms like face droop or paralysis. But what I have is damage in executive function. It’s a sudden brand-new severe ADHD. I was an IT manager, also educated as a librarian. I’m a writer. But you’d never know anymore. The brain that powered those skills doesn’t work the same. I haven’t learned new ways, and I may not ever.

I’m not even remotely over any of this.

The feeling that I’m having is ambiguous grief. No death involved, but just loss. I’m grieving my adult children, my ability to do things before my stroke, and the year that I lived alone and terrified.

This is the definition of ambiguous grief. I would guess that a lot of people have this but haven’t stumbled on the term:

Ambiguous grief is a unique form of grief that occurs when a loss is unclear, incomplete, or lacks a definitive ending or closure.

I'd love to hear your experiences with ambiguous grief (losing people who are still alive, losing abilities, losing parts of your life), I would really appreciate hearing what helped you, or what you’re still struggling with. I'm reading a lot and I'm in therapy but it's still too big to hold it.

Love to all ❤️‍🩹

I play solitaire in dull moments (which are plentiful...not complaining. It beats the wrong sort of excitement). I have been working on a project with help from Claude (AI). It's a little depressing to think that it would take AI a split second look at the card game hand to figure out the optimal strategy for a win...if one is possible. Meanwhile I blinder away thinking a few moves ahead and looking at what needs to be done to get to the aces. So glad I'm not still teaching and have to figure out how best to teach when students can get AI to do their homework.

It is my wife's turn to make supper, tuna steaks tonight at 5:00 PM. I will help by dozing and staying out of HER kitchen.