I can't believe what I just wrote

I can't believe what I just wrote. I can't believe that I am no longer young. I don't feel old in my mind. And while I forget things, like where I put my watch (right now, I'm watchless) five minutes ago, I am still pretty smart, and still good at researching things on the WWW, and remembering how to do calculus, etc. It's just the up-close-and-personal things that I can't recall.

Since have several mini-strokes, and one fair sized one, I find that I can't form words or think of words as I used to (thus the repetitive use of one-syllable words in this BLOG). But I am, after all 65. In my youth that was really old. However, most of my neighbors are in their 80s. Now, folks, that's old. But those 80-somethings don't act old, and physically, many of them move better than Alan and I do. Case-in-point: My cousin Micki. She's 83, but vibrant, moves like a normal person, is not stooped over, and rarely grunts with pain.

I really never thought about getting to this age, and I thank God that he has given me life for this long. I don't understand why it has to be accompanied with painful arthritis, but Paul had his "thorn" so I suppose I do, too. My mom complained a lot about getting old. Dad never did. He hurt a lot because of arthritis, and he complained about that, but I don't recall him ever complaining or mentioning the fact that he was getting older.

I think of all the changes that have occurred during my lifetime for which I am so thankful -- even though I'd love to have lived during the time of Laura Ingalls. After spending a few days in hurricane-torn Florida several years ago, though, I realized how much I missed electricity. While I enjoy the ambiance of kerosene or oil lamps or candles, I prefer the switch.

I am thankful that during my lifetime we have the ability to BLOG and let friends and relations know what it was like in the "old" days.

I am thankful that during my lifetime Alan's aunt Marion can have open access to her missionary daughter and that family via the WWW. What a wonderful thing that would have been when Alan was in Africa in the 60s and I was in Runnemede pining away. How wonderful it would have been to have e-mail and been able to write down things as they happened, quickly, instead of getting out a pen and writing longhand a letter than cost a small fortune to mail and which, when I look back at those letters, said little of what was really going on in my life at that time.

I am thankful that I have a microwave oven. We have radios that are really small and don't take up a whole corner of the room. We have cameras that are as easy as the old-fashioned Brownie camera to operate, but what great pictures we get INSTANTLY, not two weeks or a month later.

Oh yes and lest I forget, cell phones -- where would we be without them?

Things have certainly changed since I was a toddler and for many of those changes I am thankful.