I stopped at a shopping mall for the first time in recent memory on the way home from a haircut last week. I’ve already forgotten what small purchases I made.

Then, on a visit over the weekend from son Jeremy and his wife Katrina, another trip to the mall was required because Katrina’s suitcase didn’t make it to Boston and she needed to pick up a few necessities. A third visit the following day, was to meet Jeremy’s camp friend and his family for Sunday brunch.

The third visit’s mall parking lot was a sea of Sunday-shopper cars.  The jammed restaurant required a wait despite our reservation.   It was lovely to see Jeremy’s friend and his family, but as we walked around after brunch, this 80-something suffered a serious case of…

Mall fatigue.

Long-time 80-Something readers may recall that my favorite food is ice cream, especially coffee ice cream.  So, when I learned there would be an ice cream tasting to celebrate an expanded freezer capacity in the kitchen of my new residence, I was delighted.

The options at the tasting did not include coffee, but I’m flexible so I sampled other flavors.  They included: maple walnut, blueberry cheesecake, chocolate chunk, salted caramel and vanilla.  They were all quite tasty.

But not as tasty as coffee.

The Washington Post (2/21/26) offered some hopeful advice about delaying Alzheimer’s Disease.  Here are some highlights:

*Before 18 years old, being read to and reading books and spending five years learning a foreign language.

*In midlife, reading and writing, having magazine subscriptions and library cards (that you use) and visiting museums

* Later:  Doing crossword puzzles, playing chess and checkers, regularly listening to music or playing an instrument

* Still later: (around age 80 and older), doing crossword puzzles, playing games such as chess and checkers, and finally. dancing more than once a week

I was doing fine until the “people who dance more than once a week had a 76% lower risk of dementia”.

Alas.

There is nothing like a call from a grandchild to make one’s day.  Seeing my grandson Grady’s photo on my phone, calling from Wash U in St. Louis immediately lifted my (already pretty high) spirits.

But here’s what knocked my socks off.  The reading assignment by Robert Dahl for his government class was the same as my assignment for the political theory course I am currently auditing!  Of course, there are six people in his class, and I sit quietly in the back of a filled auditorium for mine. 

But still…pretty amazing…

Enough already!  

It’s been a long time since a winter with lots of New England snow, and I get the need for a reminder. However, I am ready to go bootless.

The other day, when walking outside after the sun made an appearance, my companion tripped as she stepped over some snow left at a curb by a plow.  She was not hurt, but a car stopped on the busy street and a young woman rushed over to help, traffic lining up behind her abandoned car.

The whole episode was over in minutes, but I haven’t stopped feeling grateful.

“Mansplaining” is a new word to me, but not a new idea.

It is defined as “the act of a man condescendingly or patronizingly explaining something to a woman, often assuming she has less knowledge or competence on the topic, even if she is an expert. Rooted in gender inequality, this behavior involves unrequested, overconfident, or interruptive explanations that undermine women’s expertise and confidence in professional or social settings.” 

Sound familiar?

At 80-something, birthdays are a gift, if you are lucky enough to still have them. 

I had no expectations about my earlier-this-week birthday but it was lovely, including phone calls, texts, flowers, my class, a walk, and a total of 12,226 steps.

On birthdays, one tends to think of past birthdays—and some really are memorable, like my 13^th, when I had six girls AND six boys for a dinner of my mother’s great spaghetti and an evening of bowling.  I got a birthday greeting this time from one attendee of that party. 

Would the others attend a party for me now? 

No idea.

The other day I dropped my take-out-lunch salad, depositing the full container of salad and its white salad dressing all over my black shoes (and the floor), demonstrating a spectacular amount of clumsiness.

The next morning, I decided that polishing the shoes might be a good idea. I managed to figure out where my in-recent-memory-untouched box of shoe polish was and found a mostly dried-out jar of black polish. I managed to re-constitute the polish and…ta-dah! my shoes look like new.

It’s the little things…

Growing up, there were plenty of kids on my street for after dinner hide and seek or capture the flag games, daylight permitting. However, I was often the first to leave because I had “things to do” (whatever that meant).

Seven decades later, I find myself without “things to do” sometimes. Yesterday when my every moment was scheduled, I thought about how times have changed.

I got an early start for my class in Cambridge because the snow accumulation reduces parking spaces.  From class I walked 20 minutes to meet friends for lunch, trudged back to the car and got “home” for a talk about medical aid in dying followed by eating my dinner accompanied by a Zoom meeting update on my now-almost-demolished former condo building.

The next day, I recovered.

Another reminder that 80-somethings are not what they used to be.Things

On Thursday, I said my final good-bye to my former home. It’s now 14 months since we residents of Riverview were told that our 1960’s-built, but now unsafe building would have to come down.  And the process has been slow until very recently.  On Thursday, however from as close as I could get (the property is gated and traffic is not allowed close by), the building was about half-gone, but 100% terrible-looking.  (See photo.)

I would say that my imagination has produced many life-altering situations that haven’t (thankfully) come to pass.  But I never, ever imagined I would have to leave a home because the building was unsafe for occupancy.  I’ll let someone else’s words explain that…

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”