A Walking Stick (aka cane)

 

It is a turning point in my life.  I am trying to be thankful and not sad.  I definitely have mixed feelings.

Jim ordered me a cane through our three month opportunity to spend $40 with United Health Care.  He did not surprise me with his purchase.  He showed me what he wanted to do for me.  I did not say "No." 

The package was at the door already the next morning.  I used the cane when I walked to meet my friend Peggy at our usual spot near the clubhouse where we often sit and chat for a while.  Peggy was pleased with Jim's purchase.  

It is a recognition of aging and increasing fragility and that makes it hard to accept.  But it is also a way of being able to walk with less uneasiness.  I hope my pride doesn't get in the way of my using it! 

Jeff's reaction to my sending him a photo of the cane was a statement we had used with him ever since he was a little fella--"It's another sign you are growing up."  I appreciate Jeff's sense of humor.  Hmm.  Growing up or just growing old! 

  However I will be thankful I am growing old and can still (there's that word "still" again) walk on my own even if I need a visible sign of help. 

-----------------I just read Alice Fryling's  Aging Faithfully which was on my Kindle app for quite a while.  It was the right thing for me to read today as I accept the changes in my life and deal with them with Thanksgiving. 

Our Basketball Teams

 

Last week the Notre Dame women won the ACC basketball tournament.  We enjoyed watching freshman Hannah Hidalgo who was named the ACC tournament MVP.  She is so feisty; she steals the ball from opponents.  If she is double-teamed, she finds her teammates and gets an assist. So now we get to watch them again in the NCAA tournament beginning on Saturday.

And we watched the NCSU men surprisingly take the ACC tournament championship after playing five games in five days to do so.  They beat Duke, Virginia, and Carolina.  When they were playing Virginia, we turned the TV off when it looked like a lost cause--and then they tied the game at the last second and won in overtime.  We decided it was good luck for them if we turned the game off.  

So when they were playing UNC and were not doing well, we turned it off again.  And then UNC's star player, RJ Davis, stopped hitting all his shots and NCSU's star player DJ Burns (the body of a football center with the feet of a ballerina) continued to do his thing and they won!  Thus they were able to be in the NCAA tournament--winning was their only chance to do so.  So we can watch them later this week too!

March Madness is always fun and now we have two teams we care about that we can cheer on to victory--unless we decide again that we bring them bad luck and thus have to turn the games off.

---------March 31  ND's women lost to Oregon State but NCSU's men won over Texas Tech and then this evening over Duke in another great DJ Burn's show.  This means that NCSU has both men's and women's teams in the Final Four.  To be continued!