Sunday Stills – Retirementally Challenged

Looking Back on 2024

Another trip around the sun and here we are on the last day of 2024. Even though I haven’t made New Years resolutions in years and even coming up with a Word of the Year seems like too much pressure, it’s always fun to think about the possibilities in the year ahead.

But, before I turn to the first page of my brand new paper (yes, paper) calendar for 2025, I thought I’d spend a moment looking back on the year that will soon be over.

Travel

2024 was the year of Road Trips for us. An airplane gets you from Point A to Point B faster, but you miss so many interesting sights and memorable moments when you are in the air.

In the spring, we spent about five weeks traveling from the west coast of California to the east coast of North Carolina and back, visiting friends and family along the way.

We headed in a different direction at the end of July, driving north through California, Oregon, and Washington before crossing the border into Canada. Just like on our spring trip, this 6-week adventure included many interesting stops along the way as well as meetups with friends and family.

In October, we took a much shorter road trip up to Los Angeles to see family and explore the area. Our hotel was located downtown where there is a fascinating mixture of old and new, historical and modern, and decay and renewal.

Blogger Meetups

The year began with a lunch date with Terri (the first blogger I ever met in person, back in 2016) and a new-to-me blogger, Cheryl.

At the beginning of our spring road trip, we spent a couple of days in Tucson, Arizona, visiting Kathy and Thom. We saw them again in June, when they hosted us at their mountain cabin, and then again on our summer road trip to Canada.

And, speaking of our trip to Canada, it was Bloggerpalooza on Vancouver Island, where Donna, Deb, and Judith (who no longer blogs) demonstrated why Canadians get their reputation for being so welcoming and nice. We had a wonderful time hiking, chatting, attending concerts, chatting, exploring, hanging out, and chatting.

Ups

There were lots of ups in 2024, including having a backyard view of a few satellite launches, which provided quite a show as they streamed across the sky.

… and Downs

Three friends – a previous work colleague, a neighbor, and a friend that I had lost touch with – passed away in 2024. All were close to me in age. A sad reminder of the frailty of life.

Looking Ahead

We have a few travel possibilities for 2025. One is booked, the other two are in the preliminary planning stages. Our 2025 calendar already has several events, gatherings, and celebrations noted and I look forward to what the year will bring.

Thank you for following my blog, reading, and commenting. I wish all of you a happy and healthy 2025 full of grand adventures.

You can see more end-of-year wrap-ups by visiting Terri’s blog, Second Wind Leisure Perspective. It’s not too late to add your own!

Reuniting With Blogging Friends

I’ve been very lucky to have had the opportunity to meet multiple fellow bloggers – 14 at last count – over the years. Each get together has been enjoyable and uplifting and has reinforced my theory that we are pretty much what you see on our blogs.

A few of these bloggers have turned into dear friends who we’ve traveled to visit several times since our first meeting. They have also made it a point to visit us whenever they get close to our hometown.

Recently, my husband and I made our third trip to beautiful Vancouver Island, Canada, to reunite with several of these dear friends… and one very adorable bloggy doggy.

Our first visit to the Island in 2019:

In 2021, we crossed the U.S. / Canadian border on the day the Covid restrictions were lifted so we could meet again:

2021 meetup with bloggers and our all-male fan club.

This summer, my husband and I spent a leisurely week and a half driving north through California, Oregon, and Washington before taking a ferry to Vancouver Island. Along the way, we reunited with family, friends (including a couple we first met during our travels to Spain last year), and saw some beautiful scenery.

While on Vancouver Island we enjoyed fun times and fabulous weather but, most of all, we were embraced in the warm welcome of dear friends.

Enjoying lunch with Kathy (Smart Living 365), Donna (Retirement Reflections), and Deb (The Widow Badass)… I don’t believe the subject of blogging even came up.

Donna, Deb, bloggy doggy Bowser, and me.

Please check out Terri’s Sunday Stills post and follow the links to see how others have interpreted her theme for this week: Reunited.

Although we neglected to get a picture of our first meetup, Terri was the first blogger I met in person back in 2015. We’ve made it a point to *reunite* whenever we find ourselves nearby.

There’s Something Fishy Going On #WordlessWednesday #SundayStills

For Hugh’s Wordless Wednesday.

For Terri’s Sunday Stills.

The Textures of Life

When I saw the theme for Terri’s Sunday Stills photo challenge this week, I knew that I wanted to participate. Textures are among my favorite things to photograph. While others are capturing a sweeping landscape, I’m often focused on the peeling bark of a tree or a vine climbing up a weathered wall.

Textures, of course, are everywhere. Whether smooth or rough, puffy or flat, texture is the tactile quality of the surface of an object. We all know the comfort of a soft blanket and the coarseness of sandpaper but even if we can’t actually touch the object with our hands, we can often imagine what our fingers would feel if they could.

I had a hard time deciding which images to share for this challenge. Just like textures are everywhere in our world, they are everywhere in the two-dimensional world of photography. My final choices fell into one of two categories: close-ups of textures found in nature and contrasting textures.

To see all the images, click through all four slide shows.

Natural Textures

Contrasting Textures

(The last picture of the red door was taken by my husband in Oaxaca. All others are mine.)

Head on over to Second Wind Leisure Perspectives to see more interpretations of Texture and link images of your own.

Orange you glad it’s almost fall?

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself… but, with this week’s Sunday Stills theme being orange/gold, the advent of fall comes to mind.

Although we don’t get the volume of spectacular autumn leaves here in Southern California, we do see changes here and there as one season morphs into the next.

I’m not sure what type of tree this is, but it puts on quite a show every autumn.

Our neighbor’s huge Liquid Amber tree is a stunner as its leaves turn orange and gold.

And, what we lack in deciduous trees, we more than make up in succulents, native plants, and glorious flowers that give us color year-round.

Many types of Cycads are becoming extinct in the wild. Fortunately, they are fairly common in drought-tolerant Southern California landscapes.

Cycads thrived in the Mesozoic era (65 to 230 million years ago). They were believed to be a main food source for herbivorous dinosaurs.

The orange blooms of the Aloe arborescens contrasts against the bright blue sky.

It’s easy to see why Euphorbia tirucalli is also called ‘Sticks on Fire’.

A golden bee harvesting pollen from an orange and yellow sunflower.

Fall is also the beginning of sunset season as wind patterns and the sun’s angle combine to create spectacular orange, pink and purple displays among the clouds. I’m looking forward to filling my camera with pictures of Mother Nature’s glorious artwork.

Plunging into the new year

… and, by “new year” I don’t mean 2023, I mean “new year” as in embarking on my latest year-long journey around the sun. I turned another year older a few days ago.

Birthday celebrations now are very different than they were when I was younger. I don’t want to open gifts or go out to a fancy dinner. I’d much rather spend the day exploring someplace interesting, enjoying a home-cooked meal, and, of course, consuming a piece of the delectable Caramelized Orange Cheesecake my husband makes me every year (happy wife, happy life).

Check, check, and check.

You may have read about all the rain California has been experiencing lately. Gosh knows we need it, but maybe not all at once. Here in the southern part of the state, the weather has been milder, but the king tides and stormy surf have brought big waves and some flooding to our coastal areas.

On my birthday, following a day of especially high tides, my husband and I drove to a local beach to watch the pounding surf and see the aftermath of surging water, seaweed, and sand.

This boardwalk is usually filled with walkers, skateboarders, and bicyclists. It will probably be a few days before all the sand is back on the beach… where it’s suppose to be.

Although we missed all the excitement, we heard tales of waves plunging over the seawall, leaving a thick layer of sand that will have to be shoveled back onto the beach.

Our walk also took us to Belmont Park, a beachfront amusement park built in 1925.

Although the interior has been modernized, I’m glad they maintained the Spanish Renaissance style façade.

When I was very young, our parents often took my brothers and me swimming at The Plunge, a huge indoor pool located in the park. The building and pool have recently been renovated, but the sound of kids playing, and the smell of chlorine still brought back many happy memories.

After visiting the pool, we walked around the arcade and midway area for a bit of people watching. That’s when I decided I had to ride the Giant Dipper—the historical wooden roller coaster that was also a part of my childhood—again. Although the roller coaster has been refurbished since I last rode it, it still had the bone-rattling twists, turns and downhill plunges I remembered from my youth.

There is something about a roller coaster that brings out the kid in us.

Topping off the first day of my latest journey around the sun, I dug into a yummy husband-cooked meal before plunging into my favorite birthday treat: Caramelized Orange Cheesecake.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

This week’s Sunday Stills prompt is Plunge. Please visit Terri’s site to see how other bloggers took the challenge.

Color My World… Vivid

Like so many changes we experience as we age, this one occurred slowly, over time. I’ve worn corrective lenses for distance vision since I was in my twenties but was able to read even the tiniest fonts close-up, without glasses. Several years ago, I became aware that my corrected distance vision was becoming less clear. Driving at night, I saw starbursts from the lights of oncoming traffic and, even during the day, road signs were harder to read. I also started to have problems reading print. Type that had always been crisp and clear was now blurry. I tried cheaters but they just magnified the blurs.

A visit to my eye doctor confirmed my suspicions: like so many people of a certain age, I was developing cataracts. He said that there wasn’t much he could do by adjusting my prescription, but the cataracts weren’t quite bad enough to warrant surgery… yet.

Surgery isn’t normally something I look forward to—I’ve had a few and none have been voluntary or enjoyable—but I was anxious for my vision to get bad enough to have my cataracts removed. I knew several people who had the surgery, and they told me it was no big deal. Painless. Almost instant improvement.

Finally, earlier this year, my sight was deemed sufficiently deficient. In late October, I had surgery on my right eye and, two weeks later, my left. Just like I was told, the surgery was quick and easy, and the results were immediate. My foggy vision was gone.

Here’s what they didn’t tell me: as my eyesight had gradually gotten more and more blurry, cataracts also impacted my perception of colors. Over the years, so slowly I didn’t even notice it, my world had taken on a yellowish hue.

After my initial surgery, the colors I saw through my corrected eye were much brighter and more vivid than what I saw through my other eye. The blues were bluer, the greens, greener. The white walls of our living room no longer looked like they needed re-painting. When I looked at the view from our back deck, it sparkled, just like it used to. Suddenly, I was seeing things as they are, not as they appeared through a dingy lens.

During the two weeks in between surgeries, I kept shutting one eye, then the other, marveling at the difference in color perception. I felt a bit like Dorothy opening the door in her sepia world and entering a technicolor Oz (okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but…wow!).

Prior to my second surgery, I thought it would be interesting to document the before and after as best as I could so I wouldn’t forget what my washed-out vision looked like:

Vancouver, Canada, before and after cataract surgery.

Thanks to the miracle of cataract surgery, my world is vivid again.

Check out other examples of Vivid at Terri’s weekly Sunday Stills challenge.

The Long and Winding Path Towards the Right to Vote

This post was inspired by a recent article by historian, author, and Boston College professor, Heather Cox Richardson. My blog title reflects Terri Webster’s Sunday Stills theme this week, Paths and Trails.

The path towards the right to vote in the United States has not been a straight one, nor without dangerous twists and turns along the way. But, like with so many of this country’s struggles, there were many brave advocates who risked their reputations, their freedom, and even their lives to secure the ability to have a say in how the government was run.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former enslaved people—and guaranteed all citizens the right to vote. Except, “all citizens” didn’t include women, in fact the amendment was the first time the Constitution included the word “male.”

Again, in 1870, when the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, there was still no mention of women’s suffrage. The Amendment which states: “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude” didn’t include a woman’s right to vote.

After years of advocating for their rights unsuccessfully, women suffragists attempted to vote in the 1872 presidential election, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment recognized their citizenship. In fact, Susan B. Anthony was able to cast her vote but, three weeks later, she was arrested for voter fraud.

Not as well known as Anthony, but just as important to women’s suffrage, was Virginia Minor of St. Louis, Missouri. When she tried to register to vote in 1872, a registrar by the name of Reese Happersett refused because of her gender. As a woman, Minor was not able to sue, so her husband sued in the case (Minor v. Happersett) that eventually went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court’s decision, handed down in 1875, acknowledged that women were citizens, but that fact didn’t mean they had the right to vote. According to the Supreme Court, state governments could discriminate against their citizens so long as that discrimination was not on the grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

That ruling helped to usher in a multitude of voter eligibility limitations that skirted the Fourteenth Amendment, by imposing requirements like education, proof of tax payments, etc. As long as it could be demonstrated that the requirements weren’t based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude, they were allowed.

It wasn’t until 1920—just over 100 years ago—that the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women the constitutional right to vote. Sadly, it was another forty years before voting requirements such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and other rules designed to keep Black people from voting were found unconstitutional. The Supreme Court finally decided that voting was a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Even today, barriers put in our path can make it harder to vote.

The fight for suffrage did not follow a path that was easy or smooth and this right should never be taken lightly. I sometimes wonder if I would have been as brave as those who struggled so many years ago. Would I risk going to jail to have my voice heard? I hope so but I don’t know. What I do know is that I will always value this fundamental right and never miss the opportunity to cast my ballot.

I hope you will to.

Constructive Musings

The theme for Terri’s Sunday Stills challenge this week is “Under Construction. It seems as good an excuse as any to dip my toes back into blogging after taking much of the summer off. Part of my absence was construction-related, but lazy summer days and lack of inspiration are mostly to blame. Although I have continued to enjoy reading other blogs, I couldn’t manage more than three posts of my own since mid-May.

Deck Construction

We actually did have a rather large construction project this summer, which took a lot of my time (full disclosure: it took much more of my husband’s time). Our 20-year-old deck was starting to show its age, so we decided—just when costs ramped up, and supply chains broke down—it was time to repair and re-surface it. The good news is that we found a nice young couple who wanted the old material, so we avoided sending it to the landfill. The bad news (besides cost and availability) is that the project was more work than expected (more full disclosure: it’s still not 100% done).

We are happy with the way it turned out, though, and hope it will last at least another 20 years (seeing as we’d be in our 80s then, I imagine that we will decide to ignore any flaws and grow old with it). In the meantime, we are enjoying our new deck and slowly forgetting the effort it took to build it.

Blog Construction

Even though I haven’t been writing many posts lately, I have made a few minor adjustments to my blog.

One that I should have done a while ago: after reading a head’s up on Hugh’s News and Views, I added some copyright verbiage at the end of my posts and made it a recurring block. I also plan to routinely watermark certain photos. I doubt if this will stop anyone determined to steal my words or images, but I hope it will stop some. I am not happy when I find what I’ve shared on my blog appearing elsewhere.

Another change was suggested by Terri when we had a blogger meet-up a few months ago. I believe that I “may” have been whining about all the spam comments my blog was getting. WordPress does a good job filtering them out, but I still look at each one before deleting to assure that a diamond hasn’t gotten swept up with the dregs. Her suggestion of turning off comments after a post is over 120 days old has helped immensely (thank you, Terri).

Travel Plan Construction

My husband and I are planning a road trip later this year and we are looking forward to getting away for more than a few days. Although our itinerary won’t take us anywhere we haven’t been before, what will be different is that we are driving our electric car. We’ve driven the EV on some mini-trips that have required one mid-point stop for re-charging, but this will be the first trip where charging will be part of the planning process.

We love our electric car, and it is perfect for our day-to-day driving needs, but its 260-mile range won’t get us to our destination on a single charge. Driving an EV on an extended trip will take a bit of planning but there are a lot of online tools and fast charging stations available, so we see it as adding to our adventure. Since there is an increase interest in electric cars—including, unfortunately, a lot of misinformation—I plan to share our experience after we return.

Thanks for the inspiration, Terri, it’s good to be posting again.

Sunday Stills: Looking Back at 2021

One of my favorite times to scroll through the photos on my phone is at the end of each year. I find that it’s a great way to remind myself of things that I’ve done, the fun I’ve had, and what I’ve accomplished (and, if taking a lot of pictures is an accomplishment, I’m a rockstar) over the past year.

For this week’s Sunday Stills theme, Rear-View Mirror, I chose one picture from each month in 2021 to remember what brought me joy – and there was a lot – during this very strange year.

January

Our first vaccinations! It felt monumental… like we were really, really going to beat this thing.

February

Despite some activities being curtailed, we still enjoyed getting out to explore our beautiful city.

March

Less actual grocery shopping and more experimentation with kit meals shipped to our home.

April

Good times and interesting conversations when friends Kathy (SMART Living 365) and her husband Thom came for a visit.

May

Our blueberries begin to ripen.

June

More good times and interesting conversations when we visited Kathy and Thom at their mountain get-a-way.

July

Sunflowers and bees with pollen booties… is there anything better?

August

We crossed the Canadian border the first day it opened. A month of blogger buddy meet-ups, hiking, and experiencing the beauty of Vancouver Island commenced.

September

After our stay on the Island, we ferried over to the city of Vancouver for more exploration and fun.