EXTREME SPORTS

Those of you who know me are aware that I am a sports fanatic - baseball, basketball, football, NASCAR, tennis, etc. During the Olympics every two years I become an "expert" in gymnastics, swimming, figure skating, skiing, even curling! Darrin & I have been called Olympic Junkies as we text each other at midnight regarding the luge competition. Somewhere along the way I became a fan of a few somewhat obcsure extreme sports, too.

Back in the late 80s while on vacation, Darrin & I stumbled onto the venue of the one of the first X-Games in San Diego taking place near Sea World. Needless to say, the biking, skating, skateboarding & snowboarding (artificial snow in the 80 degree weather) captured our attention immediately!

A few years later the X-Games were held in San Francisco. Darrin & I volunteered in order to get in for free. The organization was pretty lousy & day two found us sitting for half an hour waiting for our assignments after we were ushered into the facility. We looked at each other, said "what the hell", took off our official volunteer shirts (which were over our regular shirts) & enjoyed the remaining events for free!

Several years ago I discovered American Ninja Warrior on TV. As many of you know I am a HUGE fan of the show & managed to recruit my son & granddaughter as HUGE fans, too. Charley loves it & has her own favorite Ninja nicknamed The Lizard. I save the recordings to watch with both of them. Can't wait to share them this Christmas!

Charley loves the chant of "Beat that wall! Beat that wall!" every time someone attempts the 14-1/2 foot warped wall. She gives me a play by play of the action each time I head to the kitchen to get her a snack, "Gaga, he made it through the Flying Squirrel & is on the Spinning Bridge now!"

I just finished watching my recordings of the finals of the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) competition held each year in Las Vegas. Somehow this past year I got hooked watching the PBR weekly events broadcast on CBS Sports. Those guys are fricking nuts!  Everyone of them is limping, grabbing an arm or doing their damndest to get their wits about them after a ride. Even those that successfully make the 8 second ride get beat to hell getting off & away from the bulls.

The expert commentators assure me that the bulls are well cared for & actually live a far better life than most cattle which are killed for food after a couple years. Plus they are only ridden, or attempted to be ridden, a few times a week. So basically their work week is pretty simple - buck like mad for 10-12 seconds to get the crazy cowboy off your back then go hang out in the corral to eat & drink.

I'm not quite sure why I have become so enthralled with the likes of Jess Lockwood (this year's PBR champion!), Chase Outlaw or Jose Vitor Leme among others. I just semi-binge watched 12 hours of the Las Vegas finals which I recorded last week. Apparently their season lasts about 10 months with weekly events around the country including one here in Sacramento in January. I checked ticket prices only to find out it is ridiculously expensive - like upwards of $150 plus fees for the good seats near the chutes. I guess I'll just watch on TV.

I always thought these bull riders must not have much sense since they are constantly injured attempting to stay on a huge bucking animal week after week. One guy rode twice with a torn ACL in his knee before the medical staff wouldn't let him continue competing. The "bull fighters" (used to be called "clowns") who run around & distract the bulls from going after a downed rider, took extra good care of him since there was no way he could walk!

My recollection was that they didn't make much money for all the abuse their bodies took BUT I learned that with the growing popularity of the sport (& those $150 ticket prices) the top bull riders can make upwards of a million dollars a year! Maybe they aren't quite as crazy as I thought.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!

Today would have been my dad's 91st birthday. We would have certainly shared a glass or two of wine & done some serious reminiscing during the day. But instead it has been a year & two months since he died. In some ways it seems like he was just here & in other ways it seems like forever since he's been gone.

The wonderful thing is that no one remembers him without a smile on their faces. Everyone has a story about my dad. I just saw a message on my cell phone from one of his friends from grade school - grade school! She & another friend from school kept in touch with my dad & saw him regularly. Who has friends from grade school they still visit? Anyway, she left a sweet message knowing it was my dad's birthday. I could hear the smile on her lips.

Yesterday while talking to Darrin he reminded me of a story regarding my dad. Back when Karen & I were kids, he would make a treasure hunt out of a birthday present by sending us all over the house finding notes that eventually led us to our gift. Things like "Look in the bathroom cupboard under the sink" where we found another note "Check the third drawer in your dresser." Depending on how ambitious he was there could be 4 or 5 or more hiding places until we finally discovered our present!

When Darrin came along he was also led on several hunts for birthday gifts either perpetrated or inspired by my dad. Darrin said that Charley was making a treasure map for a friend & showed it to him while they Facetimed. That prompted him to tell her about my dad's treasure hunt creations. She said it sounded like fun.

Her birthday is the end of next month. We are planning an "Early Birthday Celebration" when Darrin & I are in New Mexico visiting. We are taking an overnight road trip to Carlsbad Caverns & a few other fun birthday things. Charley asked if maybe we could do one of Pop's treasure hunts for her. Well, of course, we can! Darrin is probably working on the notes as I type. The "tradition" continues.

I mentioned it to Karen when I saw her yesterday. Of course, the ever present smile when our dad is mentioned was there. We both recalled one of my dad's birthdays about 15-17 years ago when we turned the tables on him sending him on a treasure hunt for one of his birthday gifts. We had him going into his bedroom, the kitchen, the garage, etc., finding a note from us in each place. He was grinning from ear to ear!

Our dad & Darrin & Charley's Pop was such a special man! The last 13 years of his life could have easily been perceived as a nightmare - a previous stroke, two back surgeries, brain surgery, cellulitus, three foot surgeries including a partial foot amputation, numerous vascular procedures & being limited enough to need a live-in caregiver....just to name those I remember off the top of my head. BUT he rarely complained, kept a positive attitude & his sense of humor delighted us all.

I've shared this before but an example of his humor shined in the ER on one of his many visits. The nurse & I were in the cubicle when the doctor arrived. He was looking at his records & asked why he had his foot amputated. My dad immediately replied, "For fun!" I giggled, the nurse laughed out loud saying, "Mine is scheduled for next week!" & the doctor looked at us all like we were nuts.

Lou liked his comments when he met my dad for the first time about 18 years ago. After visiting for awhile, my dad announced that Lou seemed like a nice man for his daughter & "he wasn't a goofball." Guess he passed my dad's test!

Just a few recollections of a really special man who I was fortunate to call my dad! I will definitely lift that glass of wine in a toast to my dad this evening on what would have been his 91st birthday. Anyone who cares to join me is welcome to do so. Just make sure to raise your glass with a smile on your face!

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP - NOW!

As the events of this past week unfolded, I once again was screaming this question in my brain, "What will it take to make our country & our people put a stop to this epidemic of senseless gun violence?" It is out of control. Any sane citizen needs to acknowledge that & vow to stop this carnage.

Just over a week ago three people were killed at the Gilroy Garlic Festival & many more were injured. That was about 150 miles from our house & it only made page 7 in the local newspaper. Guess only three people dying at the hands of a deranged gunman just wasn't that important. Well, we changed that this weekend.

In the span of 15 hours, a gunman in El Paso, Texas, killed 22 innocent shoppers at a local mall & injured another 24. Later that same night someone gunned down 9 more people at a nightlife district in Dayton, Ohio, & wounded another 27 partiers on Saturday night. That at least made headline news but yet it continues.

THIS HAS GOT TO STOP! What has happened to this country that I love? I was certain that after innocent children as young as six years old were gunned down at school in 2012 at Sandy Hook in Connecticut the laws would change. All of us normal, law abiding citizens would certainly hold our lawmakers accountable saying, "Enough is enough." But that didn't happen. These were children.....innocent babies. My granddaughter is seven. I can't even fathom her & her classmates having the life sucked out of them by these deranged assholes. Who could do this to innocent children?

The Gilroy Garlic Festival shootings included a six year old boy & a twelve year old girl. Don't just skim over this, these are children. Imagine the terror they felt as bullets pierced their young bodies. And it didn't even make front page news. My God! Children were killed in the El Paso shooting at a mall where Darrin & I shopped often when he was working in El Paso for a year. How, in a supposedly civilized society, is this even remotely acceptable?

Our president has encouraged an atmosphere of racism & hatred. That isn't the cause of these massacres but it certainly appears to condone it & he is doing nothing to end this senseless violence. There is no leadership in our country when it appears to need it the most.

This has to stop NOW! Not a year from now, a month from now or a week from now......NOW! Don't tell me it can't be done. It can! New Zealand passed laws banning assault weapons six days after a mass murder earlier this year......SIX DAYS! Those of us who are outraged need to stand up to the NRA & its idiotic members trying to intimidate us with their "guns don't kill people, people kill people" bullshit & stop them. We have the numbers to say, "NO, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! GUNS KILL PEOPLE!"

Write to your representatives & senators - every week if we have to. Tell them you are fed up & won't vote for them unless they stand up & stop this - NOW. Tell them to grow a pair & do their job - NOW. This seemingly daily massacre of innocent children & others has to stop - NOW.

Thoughts & prayers aren't enough. Background checks aren't enough. Limiting sales & ammunition aren't enough. The Dayton shooter could have legally bought an automatic rifle. Stop EVERY sale of automatic weapons tomorrow. Not one more AK-47 or similar weapon can be put in the hands of deranged terrorists, period. Those out there need to be bought back....NOW! In every state in our country.

And when the NRA pitches a fit as we know it will do, all of us reasonable citizens need to stand up & say, "NO!" We aren't taking away your guns for Christ's sake. We are taking away the weapons of war that weren't even conceived when the second amendment was written. You can have your handgun & your rifle if that is so goddamn important to you.

I heard an impassioned plea from Beto O'Rourke, an El Paso native running for president, in which he said, "We need to stop this shit now & keep automatic weapons on the battlefield where they belong." He has my vote!

The rational, sane people of the United States need to take a stand & stop this rampant ongoing slaughter of innocent people in our country. And, please, for God's sake, stop the insidious hate in this country. Do it NOW - before any more people are gunned down just trying to live their lives.

PS: If anyone feels the need to tell me why I am wrong, don't bother. I don't want to hear it. I don't believe it & I won't waste my time responding to you because I know that stopping this senseless violence is the absolute right thing to do. And it needs to be done NOW.

I MISS SHIFTING

Last October I bought my 2018 bright red Honda Civic with some of the money my father left me when he passed away almost a year ago. I took my time looking & finally purchased the car that I wanted. Nine months later I still love it! There are times when I walk out into the garage & think, "Damn, that's my car!"

While talking to the salesman at the Honda dealer, I asked about stick shifts saying I've always driven one. I might add he sounded impressed that at 68 years old, I still preferred a stick shift. He shook his head & lamented, "I know what you mean. I prefer a stick shift, too, but it is getting harder & harder to find one. I don't think we have a single stick on the lot." Having read that automatics were now more fuel efficient than a stick, I made the decision to buy my first automatic.

My only occasional, very minor regret is that it isn't a stick shift - at least until I'm sitting in a traffic jam pushing the clutch in & out constantly or stopped at the top of a steep hill in San Francisco with a car behind me right on my bumper. That is when I appreciate the fact that I own an automatic

My dad was a car guy & I suppose I inherited some of that from him. From the time he was a teenager he loved his cars. No matter what car he owned, he would pretty much wipe it down daily. My dad's cars were NEVER dirty. Even his job revolved around cars. He was an autoworker with General Motors for 30 years.

In 1963 my dad somehow talked my mom into letting him buy a 1960 MGA from a guy at work who had an accident with it. He took over payments of $300 (total, not per month!) & paid him another $300. The fender was repaired & it was painted a metallic silver blue. It was a cool ass car & I loved it almost as much as my dad!

At 13 years old I would sit in the car in the garage practicing putting the clutch in & shifting through the gears on weekend mornings. When I was 14 my dad often took me to an open field & taught me the fine art of shifting smoothly. It took a long time & fortunately neither of us got whiplash as I jerked that little car hundreds of times. But I finally learned & was pretty damn good at it if I do say so myself.

The day I turned 16, I took my driver's license test in that MG & passed with flying colors! But I was a little pissed off at the examiner who had to find something to mark me off on - he said I stopped over the crosswalk at a stop sign. Hell, I don't think I did & I nailed the parallel parking on the first try.

Every car I have owned over the years was a stick shift. I've always liked the control that you have being able to shift yourself rather than rely on the transmission. There is a real knack to holding a stick shift on a hill by gently using the clutch & gas pedal. And being my dad's car girl I think I impressed a few guys back in the day. The first time I drove my car when Lou was with me 18 years ago, he exclaimed, "Wow! It's a stick!"

Darrin also inherited his grandfather's car gene since he, too, learned to drive on a stick shift (that's all we had!)  He recently told me my dad was instrumental in teaching him the fine art of shifting a car as well. Darrin also took his driver's test on a stick on his 16th birthday & may have even beat me by a point or two on his score. And, yep, he was upset he didn't get a perfect score, too! Like mother, like son.

But, alas, now both Darrin & Lou have had automatics for several years. They would occasionally drive my 6-speed Nissan Versa that I traded in for the Civic just to make sure they could still do it. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with a stick shift to drive sometime. But I have heard that it's like riding a bike, you never forget. I hope so.

What seems a bit sad to me is that Charley may never learn to drive a stick shift car. I plan to give her my little red Civic when she turns 16. My dad gave Darrin his Isuzu Impulse (a 5-speed) when he turned 16 so I want to continue the tradition. And I'm crossing my fingers that someone Darrin knows will own a stick shift that he can teach Charley to drive - just so she knows what real driving is like.

All this reminiscing came about today as I was driving to the store & thought, "I miss shifting." Sometimes it hardly feels like I'm driving. But, unfortunately, things change in life. And I will always have my memories of driving that super cool, bad ass, silver blue MG as a teen-ager!

PS: My mother & sister took the MG to the Cow Palace to watch a horseshow in the early 1970s. When they came out, it was gone! It had been stolen from a main street where it was parked. They found the license plates (BPU 419, I still remember it) in the trunk of another car a few weeks later. The police surmised that it had probably been sold for parts. Shit! It deserved a better fate.

GUEST BLOGGER

My friend of 25 plus years, Howard Deporte, wrote a delightful, insightful little ditty that I happened to run across on Facebook. His witty style & vivid descriptions were quite enlightening for this female. Howard gave me permission to share his encounter on my blog. Thanks, Howard! His account ran the gamut of making me chuckle quietly to laughing out loud. Without further ado...ENJOY!

Skilled urination, a generational divide.

The spent travelers catapulted out of the plane, exhausted by the flight, eager for bladder relief. Count me as a member of the XY hordes hell bent for the men's room.

I found my urinal, predictably attached to the wall, one of those new waterless types that leaves the depositor pondering, without an answer, how the hell do they do that?

A fellow traveler slipped into the sleeve next to me, a chest-high modesty wall between us. Even though I no longer can pee like a racehorse, I felt like one, next to a competitor, at the gate, ready to race. He's positioned no more than 12 inches to my left.

In the near distance is the theatre of expectant sounds: faucets running, nose blowing as if trying to expel an elephant, hand-blowers sounding like jet engines peeling skin off bone, automatic paper towel dispensers squealing and throwing a tantrum...the usual stuff in a men's bathroom at the airport.

Back to my fellow urinator on my left. Peripheral vision is a dangerous thing. Mine is fully intact. I was facing straight ahead when it was instantly put on alert. Not a "...he's peeking" alert. But more of an OMG, where have I been alert.

With his right hand he was texting, bringing his cell phone within inches of his face. I guess he wanted to make sure he didn't misspell. I can only imagine that his left hand was handling the other tool that was, apparently, effectively and accurately being utilized. This adds a whole new meaning to the adjective "ambidextrous."

Now that's some skill...generational, high-grade, practiced, young people's skill. I can't program a computer. I still don't understand megabytes of data (it sounds like a dinosaur from Jurassic Park) or linking to Wi-Fi or a hotspot. A laptop still amazes me and hand-held computers boggle my puny brain. Admittedly, all the computer-tech stuff is for the kids. But, whether young or leathered like me, we do share common ground. We all have to pee.

Begrudgingly, I have to admit, neither can I do what that guy did ! Show-off.

How does one do that? First, with the left hand, unzip, search, rescue and release, aim and fire, shooting a bullseye, all-the-while, with the right hand, in apparent complete control of all his digits, his thumb tapping away on the miniature keyboard with such speed and grace it reminded me of a Nathan Chen ice skating routine peppered with quads...how does he do that? Phenomenal, breath-taking, envious talent!

As for me, well, let it be said, I have no skills. I need both hands, complete concentration, total focus and good luck, lots of it. I have to watch the process from beginning to end, lest I step back from the urinal unawares of the rainstorm that curiously came out of nowhere attacking my pant legs and shoes.

One thing is for certain, a cell phone in my hand during elimination would end up at the bottom of the trough. I would immediately be horrified and reflexively try to retrieve it from certain death by urine and forget that my process of voiding was still engaged, until it was too late and I'd need a full change of clothes...the redeeming advantage of being in an airport, suitcase in hand.

Oh, to be young again. Imagine. One day the magic man to my left will ponder the evolving skills of the next generation using the urinal at the airport...a cell phone in one hand texting of course, conducting a Google search which is being projected on the forearm connected to the other hand, all apart of an international conference call and verbal instructions to Alexa to manage the nimble but no-nonsense robotic urinal. Happy times ahead!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

First of all, let me wish every woman out there who has given birth to a child or raised a child or even mothered a dog, cat, horse or any other furry friend a VERY, VERY Happy Mother's Day! I realize this will be a belated wish but this post didn't come together until late this evening as I was reflecting on my Mother's Day weekend with a smile.

I am blessed with an amazing son who is not only a wonderful person but a fantastic father. While I feel completely loved & appreciated all year, Darrin has been doing special things to celebrate Mother's Day with me for as long as I can remember. I'm pretty sure the big events all started with a John Mellencamp concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater in 1997 that Darrin treated me to. Several other concerts over the years included Mark Lindsay (my teenage crush), Greg Kihn, Eric Burdon (of The Animals fame) & Lynyrd Skynyrd.

We have wine tasted a few times, hiked Mt. Diablo with incredible wildflowers, journeyed to the northern California coast several times & just enjoyed each other's company over the years. To any parent that is the best gift of all, your child's time. We have polished off several cases of wine over the years as we talked into the wee hours of the morning. Amazingly, we never seem to run out of things to talk about. And I'm totally convinced that we could solve every one of the worlds problems if people would just listen to us!

This Mother's Day was no different. We made plans earlier in the week for Darrin to come up Saturday & spend the night. I suggested we have lunch & hit a couple wineries then just enjoy the time together. So, we did just that. I'm sure that most mothers out there totally get it when I say I feel truly blessed to be Darrin's mom & Charley's Gaga.

He bought me lunch & a couple bottles of wine, but what totally turns on the waterworks are the heartfelt personal sentiments in his card, Charley's card & Lou's card. Those of you who know me understand that I am emotional. I cry at Ellen Degeneres giving money to deserving guests or any book or movie that is even remotely sentimental. Hell, I cry at commercials all the time. That one currently airing where the baby foal has gotten over the railing onto the roadway while the mother horse paces frantically on the other side as the man stops his truck & lifts the foal back over the fence gets me every time.

After another long chat session after breakfast, Darrin headed home early this afternoon. What was particularly moving to me was his Facebook post this evening along with this photo. He rarely posts anything on Facebook which made it even more special. Yep, I raised a real sweetheart!

Mother’s Day Weekend Checklist:
☑ Brunch
☑ Wine tasting
☑ Giants game on TV
☑ Sharks game on TV
☑ NASCAR race on TV
☑ Lots of basketball talk (only because there wasn’t a Warriors game on)
That’s my mom, and I love her!

And the icing on the Mother's Day cake was a 20 minute Facetime talk with my beautiful granddaughter, Charley. I definitely had to thank her for her personalized card. There just aren't enough adjectives in the dictionary to describe how wonderful I felt surrounded by the love of the people who I love the most!

Happy Mother's Day!

THE PETRIFIED CHEESE STICK

First of all, I don't mean "petrified" as in scared to death, but rather "petrified" as in turned to stone. This is an interesting story that our family has experienced & wondered about over the past nine or ten months. I'm sure you must be thinking I'm just a half bubble off of plumb, & that may be true, but let me back up a little & explain.

For as long as I can remember Charley has loved cheese sticks. You know, what I mean if you've been around kids, those round cylinders of mozzarella string cheese. They are about 4 to 5 inches long & 1/2 to 3/4 inch across. Back when she was two or three, I recall someone asking Charley what her favorite food was - she immediately & enthusiastically replied, "Cheese sticks!"

Last summer on one of Darrin & Charley's trips up here to visit us, Charley was hungry. Being the prepared dad, Darrin handed her a cheese stick. Soon after Charley was distracted with something either along the road or inside the car. After several minutes, she said, "Where is my cheese stick?" She looked all over for it with no luck. Not on the floor. Not on the seat. Not on her lap or with the ghouls she brought in the car.

Darrin asked if she had eaten it already. Charley insisted she hadn't eaten it but she did indeed have it at one point. Darrin agreed that he had given it to her. We know that Charley would not have forgotten that she ate it &, of course, she was still hungry. Darrin gave her another cheese stick which she did eat right away this time.

Upon their arrival in Sacramento, I was informed that there is a missing cheese stick that "just disappeared" in the car according to Charley as she raised her hands in the air for emphasis. Darrin looked everywhere in the car to no avail. He reached under the seats, felt in the crack between the seat & the back, even moved the car seat - but no cheese stick was discovered.

Since then the story of the missing cheese stick was related to other friends & family members. Several times in conversation over the past months the mystery of the disappearing cheese stick has been discussed. How it just vanished has continued to stump us.

Fast forward to this past Saturday. Darrin drove up to spend the weekend with us. While he was here, he decided to vacuum his car really well since our garage makes that task a little easier. He couldn't remember the last time he had worked on cleaning the inside of his car. I can totally relate to that, like mother, like son. I talked with him outside for awhile then went back in the house.

A few minutes later, Darrin comes in & rather excitedly says, "Guess what I found!?", holding up a yellowish colored stick. "Omigod!!! You found the cheese stick!", I exclaimed. Apparently, it had fallen under the front seat & rolled up against the frame work where he couldn't see it or feel it until the seat was moved all the way back. Yay!!! The mystery was solved!

But here is the really crazy & somewhat unnerving part. The cheese stick was literally hard as a rock! It definitely appeared to be petrified, honestly, like wood in the petrified forest. It wasn't slimy or moldy or gooey or anything weird. It looked almost like a dog bone. Both of us were a bit flabbergasted that the cheese stick had hardened into something that was not about to break but still retained the approximate shape & size of the original. Bizarre!

We Face Timed Charley saying we had something funny to tell her. Darrin said to her, "Do you remember last year what was lost in the car? Charley immediately shouted, "The cheese stick!" Darrin held it up & said, "I found it! It was under the front seat where I couldn't see it before." Then we banged it on the table to show her how hard it was. She was really surprised, too, & excited that the cheese stick was finally found even if it was now "petrified". Darrin saved it to show her when we see her later this month.

Last night I was relating the petrified cheese stick story to my sister. She, too, became slightly excited & said she remembered hearing about the cheese stick that just disappeared. I'm pretty sure our family just might be a little wacko but I love us all just the way we are! Not to mention that we are the proud owners of a fossilized cheese stick. How many people can say that?

ADULT ORPHANS

It has been six months since my father passed away. My mother died almost twenty-eight years ago. There is a strange phenomenon that comes about when your second parent is gone - you become an adult orphan.  In my case a 68 year old orphan.

It almost seems silly at first thought to call yourself an orphan when you are in your fifties or sixties or even seventies. When I first thought of this concept, I did an online search for "adult orphans". Low & behold, there is a ton of stuff written about experiencing life as an orphaned senior. I learned that I was far from alone in feeling like a grown up, or even elderly, orphan.

Like me, many people have had the responsibility of caring for our aging parent. I spent over thirteen years as a caregiver for my dad. I talked to him daily, drove him to medical appointments, ran his household, managed his finances, coordinated caregivers & spent countless hours doing numerous chores or making decisions for him. I learned far more about wound care, physical therapy & other necessary medical procedures than I ever dreamed possible.

Fortunately, at the end my father didn't suffer. We had visited him that morning & he was his normal self. That afternoon he apparently had a massive heart attack. Paramedics got his heart beating & inserted a breathing tube allowing us to make it to the hospital. Paperwork was in order & his wishes were honored. He never regained consciousness & when the breathing tube was removed, he passed quickly with me holding his hand in the ER just a couple months before his 90th birthday.

An article I discovered online summed up some of my feelings pretty well: "Some of us expect to feel relieved when we no longer have these responsibilities & are blindsided by the depth of the empty hole left by the passing of our final parent. For others, the shock comes from feeling like an orphan. Realizing that the last person who loved you from the day you were born is gone, & with it, the generational layer between you & your own death can be overwhelming." I won't say I was blindsided or overwhelmed but I definitely had similar thoughts.

Another website compared losing the role of caretaker to that of an empty nester when your children left home. Suddenly, you were no longer responsible & involved in the day-to-day lives of someone extremely close to you. It can be quite unnerving to realize that as an adult orphan not only have you lost your role as someone's child, but you are now next in line to leave this earth.

As life would have it, one of my best friends who is three years older than me, lost her mother at age 99 just a few months after I lost my dad. She is my friend of 45 plus years who moved to Australia over 20 years ago. We have spent many hours on the phone discussing this crazy concept of being 68 & 71 year old orphans. But both of us have felt disjointed many times since losing our second parent. At times we were caught by surprise by these feelings.

When I mentioned these thoughts to another friend (also in her early 70s) who lost her second parent many years ago, she commented that due to Alzheimer's, she had become an adult orphan long before her mother passed away. If any of you have similar adult orphan thoughts or feelings, I'd love to hear them.

I'm still kind of at loose ends & wondering what life after prolonged caregiving will be like. Of course, my son & granddaughter take center stage in my life but my major daily responsibility is gone. I don't take my cell phone upstairs every night anymore. I'm not awakened at 7 AM by a phone call from a caregiver. I can go on vacation without worrying about my father. An 800 number call doesn't scare me (it may have been Life Alert calling that my father fell, again).

For now I'm enjoying doing not much of anything. Watching "Ellen" or "Rachel Ray" is my guilty pleasure in the afternoon. Going to lunch with friends is just a fun afternoon rather than a respite from caregiving. Sure, I miss my dad. I still think, I have to tell Dad something I see or recall. I wish he was here to watch sports with like we always did. And, he was my best wine drinking companion a couple afternoons a week. I'll always miss that. Such is the life of an adult orphan.

MYSTERY DRUGS

A couple months ago I made a puzzling discovery in my medicine cabinet. Sitting on one of the shelves, kind of hidden by a few other things, was a huge bottle of bright orange ibuprofen tablets. I pulled it out & wondered how it got there. Upon further inspection it was Kirkland brand & there were 500 pills in it.

Those of you who shop at Costco probably recognize Kirkland as one of their store brands. I realize that isn't anything unusual except that I don't belong to Costco & don't shop at Costco, except on rare occasions with my sister who has a Costco card. I had no recollection of her giving me a giant bottle of ibuprofen but I was thinking that must have been the case since I don't know anyone else who shops at Costco. And certainly no one who would share that with me. The bottle had not been opened & had an expiration date just a few months away.

That reminds me, I want to share the results of a study regarding medication expiration dates that I ran across a few years ago. An independent company did testing on prescription & over-the-counter medications potency after their expiration dates. It found that virtually all medications were still effective two years beyond their expiration dates. And some were still effective up to 15 years after the expiration date! Even if you took a long expired medication it would not hurt you but simply wouldn't be as effective. I was amazed & figured I could safely use things up to two years past the printed dates.

But, I digress, back to my mystery bottle of medication. Since my hip surgery & my constant foot pain issues, I do use ibuprofen fairly regularly. Given the fact that my current bottle of 100 was good for at least another year & a half, I decided to open my newly found enormous container of 500 & use them first since their expiration date was April 2019.

A few days ago, I finally remembered to ask my sister if she gave them to me. Nope, she didn't give them to me. I described the Kirkland name & really big bottle of 500 orange pills but she said she hadn't bought those. However, she had seen them & knew what I was talking about. She added that they come in a sealed pack of TWO bottles. Of course, they do, it's Costco. Everyone needs 1000 ibuprofen tablets.

So, they didn't come from my sister. I decided to ask Lou next thinking maybe someone had given them to his father who can't take ibuprofen & he brought them home. I showed him the bottle saying I found it in the medicine cabinet. He shook his head & said, no, he hadn't seen them before. The mystery intensified. Where did they come from??? They didn't just materialize inside our cupboard, did they? I was at a loss to explain their appearance.

It was after my dad died that I found them & briefly wondered if I'd found them at his house when we cleaned it out. But he couldn't take ibuprofen due to using blood thinners & all of his caregivers knew that. No one would have brought them to him if they even shopped at Costco which I don't think they did. And I may be a little crazy once in awhile but I certainly did not bring home that huge bottle, put it in the medicine chest then wipe it from my memory with no recollection of doing it.

To this day I have no idea how we came to have a gigantic unopened bottle of Kirkland ibuprofen in our downstairs bathroom. If they were just conjured up by some unknown super natural phenomenon, I guess that's okay but why couldn't it have been something a little more valuable or exciting than pain relievers? How about a bag of gold coins? Or what about a box of diamonds? Hell, maybe even a couple of tickets to a ball game?

Since I have no clue where they came from or any more thoughts of who to ask, I am resigned to the fact that their presence may well remain a mystery. But, if by chance, any of you gifted me with all this ibuprofen, please let me know. That will solve the mystery of where the ibuprofen came from but will bring a new question - where has my brain gone?