What Does Fishing and Blogging Have in Common? April 26, 2015

As I was eating smoked salmon this morning that we smoked from the fall salmon run our neighbor caught I was thinking about my next blog. That’s when the similarities hit me. Fishing and blogging are similar activates. Here are the attributes for both activities:

Patience

Action

Patience

Rejection

Action

Patience

Thrills

Rewards

Blogging requires patience to come up with an idea, then write it, then edit it, then think of ways to improve it and then rewrite it and then hope someone will read it and then read a comment from a reader and then maybe another comment! If you are really lucky your blog post will be picked up or run in a wider circulation venue.

Fishing similarities are requiring patience to wait with your line out, reel it in and recast, get a nibble but nope, recast and wait and then a bite and reel it in and you landed a fish!

 

Sometime a blog or a fishing adventure turns up nothing. No one comments, or you don’t catch a fish. Then other times the blogging and fishing Gods collide and you get many comments or reel in your quota of fish! Those thrills and rewards are what keep us going, keep us blogging and fishing.

Do you fish?

Do you blog?

A Profound Difference Between Men and Women, (according to my unscientific research) April 20, 2015

Here is the scenario:

You are preparing some food item and you are out of a needed ingredient. You are home from work and you have changed into comfy clothes.

Here is the question:

Do you get dressed and head off to the store?

 

Here are the answers from some of my 50+ women friends:

1. I have changed into comfy clothes; I’d make something else.
2. Maybe if I didn’t take my make-up off yet.
3. Did I take my bra off? If I did, no way!
4. If it is winter and I can throw on a coat.
5. Of course not. Go out that time of day after working all day? I would be too tired by the time I got back home to make anything!

 

Here are answers from some 50+ men friends:

1. Sure
2. Yes
3. I’d pick up something else too

Notice the men do not have any hesitations about changing back into clothes, underwear, makeup, and time of day or season.

I asked some women in their 20’s and 30’s the same question. Their answers were more like the men than the 50+-year-old women! So what happened? Here are my conclusions:

1. At 50+ we women know the one time we rush to the market without make-up wearing a baseball hat is the time we bump into several people we haven’t seen in a long time!
2. We 50+ women don’t have the extra energy.
3. Men at 50+ don’t’ care what they look like if they meet someone. In fact they might go out for a beer. Women would rather cut off their arm!
4. Men think it will just take less than a half-hour so what is the big deal?
5. Young women look good with little effort, and have more energy than their 50+ counterparts!

 

Tell me your answer. Do you concur or not?

A Conversation with My Hot Flashes and Night Sweats April 11, 2015

To those who have never experienced a night sweat or a hot flash I thought I would try to convey how they feel in this Q&A. Beware, I think Hot Flashes and Night Sweats have nasty replies.

Haralee: A Hot Flash feels to me like a tiny bit of foreboding, maybe a bit of nausea followed by sweat breaking out on my forehead and chest like I just finished a workout.

Hot Flash: Foreboding, nausea? You are such a dram queen! Yes I spike your internal thermostat, get used to it!

Haralee: My Hot Flashes can be so intense that I carry a fan and shower and change clothes several times a day.

Hot Flash: So what is the big deal? I am keeping you clean, wearing all your clothes and sporting a fashion accessory.

Haralee: I found some Chinese herbs that help reduce the intensity and frequency of my hot flashes. Since I had estrogen positive breast cancer, I can’t take any hormones, bio-identical or even plant estrogens.

Hot Flash: Whah-Whah

Haralee: My Night Sweats are so severe they will wake me up several times a night. Before I started wearing the sleepwear from my company, I was going through sheets, nightgowns and pajamas nightly!

Night Sweats: Lullabies are for babies. You are such a whiner!

Haralee: No one sleeps well when you are having night sweats. Covers go up and down and unless you are wearing wicking sleepwear, you end up hot, wet and then freezing.

Night Sweats: Sleep is so over rated!

Haralee: Insomnia is also a side effect of menopause. Often after a night sweat wakes me up, I can’t fall back to sleep.

Night Sweats: Whah-Whah

See how nasty they are? Have you anything to add to this dialogue?

Passover: Favorite Holiday Memories April 4, 2015

I hated helping with the Passover dishes. Bringing up set after set of dishes from the basement and bringing down the sets we used 51 weeks out of the year was an ordeal! Glassware, pots and pans and of course 2 sets of silverware needed to be lugged upstairs too. After spending almost a year in the basement everything needed to be washed. My parents did not have a dishwasher. I have lots of memories about Passover. Foremost as a kid was the work involved in preparing for the holiday.

The cupboards had to be scrubbed clean before the Passover dishes, cutlery, pots and pans and glassware could be put back. The refrigerator needed to be cleaned and all ‘chamatz’ brought down to the basement too. We must have made 50 trips up and down those stairs in just setting up the kitchen for the week. Then after the Holiday we repeated the process! Collective, OY!

My Mother made carrot candy for Passover. It was a big deal. Lots of cooking and laying it out across the kitchen table to firm up and lots of discussion if it was a good year or not. Carrots honey and sugar and lemon peel were cooked in a huge vat of water. To me it was never that tasty for the efforts, but it was my Mother’s Passover specialty so we ate it and said we loved it.

My parents usually hosted the Seder, sometimes both nights. Up to 25 people seated for the dinner was always fun. All the traditional foods and foods of the times like Jell-O molds were presented. The matzoh balls, were they light and fluffy or hard like rocks? My Grandmother made her own gefilte fish that everyone clamored for!

The best part about Passover as a kid was that my Father was off for the week. It was the only time of the year that my Dad was on vacation for an entire week. My Dad’s family owned restaurants and they closed them all for the week of Passover every year. Sometimes the Holiday coincided with school vacation and we would go on vacation for a couple of days. It was a treat to have my Dad home for dinner every night, and to eat dinner at home.

 

Passover is not my favorite eating holiday because I have a sweet tooth. I have never met a Passover dessert that satisfies my taste buds. Desserts aside, I have sweet memories of the Holiday. Happy Passover.