Month: August 2025

A woman once emailed to invite me to join her book club for lunch at a country club in Malibu. She offered to reserve a parking spot for me near the front door. It was a lovely gesture, but it would have been a 2,100-mile drive.

The trip would have taken four days, maybe five. I stop a lot for Diet Cokes.

Another reader wrote expressing surprise to learn I lived near her in Idaho.

I was surprised, too, because I do not live in Idaho. I know this for sure because another reader wrote to say she was glad to know I live in upstate New York.

I do not.

A woman once recognized me in a grocery store, introduced herself, named the neighborhood where she thought I lived and the church she thought I attended. When I told her where I lived and that I had never been to that church, she looked disappointed and said, “Well, that’s not what I heard.”

Mistaken identity and misinformation can grow tangled on my end as well. A reader once sent an email and mentioned aging, losing her spouse, living alone and having to downsize. She also noted that tomorrow would be 102.

I marveled to the husband that a woman about to turn 102 was writing thoughtful emails and navigating life online. Then I reread the email, noted she lived in Arizona and realized she would not be 102, the temperature would be 102.

It is humbling when readers take time to shoot an email into cyberspace just to say hello or to inquire as to whether we might be neighbors. I try to answer all the emails but sometimes fall behind and miss a few.

For the record, we live in Indianapolis and, what’s more, nobody we live next to gets all that excited about us. But then, most of us have known one another for years, or decades, and in several cases 40 years.

We’ve shared life through kids, graduations, weddings, deaths of parents and the arrival of grandbabies.

We’ve shared extension ladders, snowblowers, garden produce and chatter about the house down the street now on the market.

If you have been fortunate to have good neighbors, you know that good neighbors often become good friends and good friends become like family.

We stay in touch with the neighbors we had as newlyweds in Oregon in the late ‘70s. They lived in one half of the duplex, and we lived in the other. Their two adorable little girls were the inspiration for starting our own family.

We saw them on a trip to the Pacific Northwest last year and drove to the duplex where our friendship began. The place was a trainwreck that elicited gasps of shock and bursts of laughter. Cars were parked in the front yard, the siding was layered in moss and mold, and a rusted grill and mostly empty bag of charcoal sat on the front step.

Times and places may change, but the good memories last forever.

 

Our primary care doctor announced he is joining a concierge practice and invited us to follow him. We were excited, thinking this meant luxurious fluffy white robes in the exam room and 500-thread-count cotton sheets on the table instead of that crinkly deli wrap paper.

Visions of coffee bars danced in our heads. The concierge practice could keep our specialty coffee orders on file along with our cholesterol counts and lists of prescription meds.

I ventured there would probably be a masseuse and spa, too. “Where there’s a spa, there’s a shower,” I said.

“YES!” the husband shouted. “Free little soaps, shampoos and conditioners!”

We wondered if a concierge practice also included valet parking. If there was valet parking, there probably would be fitness-focused excursions—maybe even free membership to a pickleball court.

We were living the dream — until the dream crashed.

After further reading, several voicemail messages, and a slick mailing with a QR code for a video, we learned a concierge practice is where a doctor limits the patient load, guarantees a call back within 24 hours and focuses on preventive care, not just treating illnesses.

In exchange for an annual fee.

Annual means you pay it every year.

Several thousand dollars.

Per warm body.

There’s a shortage of primary care doctors and it is projected to worsen. More and more people are paying annual fees to see a doctor. Luxury concierge practices (the ones that do have fluffy towels and coffee bars) charge as much as $50,000. Our doctor was charging nowhere near that. But still.

If the husband lives as long as his dad did – until almost 98—his concierge fees alone could equal the price of a nice new car. Adjusted for inflation, it could be two new cars and a boat.

We love our doctor. His changing practices rips my heart out. (I’ll need a cardiologist for that.) We were some of his first patients when he began practicing. He gave us his home phone number in case we needed to reach him in an emergency.

We understand why he’s switching to a different practice. We’ll miss him.

Our main concern in choosing a new health professional is age. That’s right, we discriminate and are up front about it. We want doctors who are going to outlive us.

We both made appointments with a new fella. Mine was yesterday. I couldn’t tell his age from the picture online and was eager to see how old he looked.

He swung open the door, said, “Hello” and extended his hand. I instinctively cried, “You’re young! You’re about the age of our son. He’s 43.”

He smiled and said, “I’m 41.”

I think we’re gonna like him.

We had a good-size crowd together this week. Three out-of-town grands and six grands who live in town, met up for three consecutive days. We rotated from house to house to house so that no one house would be singled out as a disaster area.

Due to the size, volume and rapid movement of the group, my intelligence gathering was limited to random conversations bits floating above the crowd or one-on-one exchanges in the car.

In the car: “Grandma, it’s easier to leave your house faster than ours because you don’t have to put up the dogs. If we don’t put them up, they eat all the food.”

“You mean they eat all the dog food?”

“No, they eat apples, avocados and bananas. Our lab can peel a banana!”

(Note to self: remember that the next time you’re at their house and they offer you a banana.)

Overheard: Nine cousins are about to eat lunch, then go to a neighborhood pool. A seven-year-old prays before lunch: “Dear God, thank you for this day and this food and please let us be the only kids at the pool.”

In the car: “Grandma, what does ‘occupado’ mean?”

“It’s Spanish for occupied. Sometimes you see it in English and Spanish on restroom doors like on planes. Why?”

“It’s what my dad says when he’s in the bathroom and the door is closed.”

Overheard: Three of the nine kids heading to a creek stomp did not bring boots. One of the kids yells, “Well, you can go barefoot in the creek, can’t you?”

“Mom says we’re not allowed to,” comes the answer.

Then another says, “Yeah, but Dad lets us!”

Overheard at the creek: A country cousin says to a city cousin, “I can bring frog eggs next time I come so you can catch frogs.”

Two of the older cousins, not present because they are at a church camp in Louisiana, send a text: “We took a boat ride on a river and saw an alligator. Did you know if you take a selfie with an alligator, you only have a 50% chance of survival?”

Nobody wants to ask which side of 50 they think they are in.

Early morning in the kitchen: Standing in front of the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, juggling ice cream bars, fruit pops and ice cream sandwiches to get at some ice, a small voice behind me says, “If you’re trying to clear that out, I can help by eating some for you.”

They’re all gone now — the kids, the dirt, the crud on the countertops, the wet swimsuits, water blasters, flip flops, soggy towels, butterfly nets and every last grass clipping stuck to the bathtub.

Like summer itself, the time passed all too quickly.

By the way, there were no other kids at the pool that day.

 

Hydration has officially become the cure for whatever ails us.

Feeling sluggish? Hydrate! Dry skin? Hydrate! Joints hurt? Hydrate! High blood pressure? Hydrate? Ingrown toenail? Hydrate! Don’t know what to make for dinner? Hydrate!

To join the wave of adequate hydration, one of our daughters thoughtfully gifted me with a pink XXL insulated water tumbler with an 18-inch straw. It’s like a sippy cup for giants.

My water bottle is so enormous it looks like something I would carry to do a triathlon. So far, my greatest distance has been from the kitchen to the garage.

When my XXL water tumbler is wedged into the cupholder in our car’s console, there’s no room for the husband’s coffee. Poor guy. With hot coffee in hand, he now makes left and right turns very slowly.

Not only does it take more time to turn, it takes more time to get anywhere. It now takes us three and a half-hours for a three-hour drive, due to more frequent stops.

For the record, the number of public restrooms has not increased in proportion to the number of giant water containers in use. Go ahead and drink more but prepare to stand in line longer. I now regret every family trip we ever took when I told one of the kids to “just hold it!”

The real debate in the water craze is not whether to drink, but how much to drink. Recommendations range from one-third of your body weight in fluid ounces to your full body weight in fluid ounces.

A Harvard website floats the idea of 4-6 cups a day, while a UK medical website treads water suggesting 6-8 cups a day. Will Americans rise to the challenge?

The ones who go pro in the name of hydration are the folks carrying gallon-size water bottles. Talk about a win-win. You can hydrate and tone your arms all at the same time.

At this rate, water tumblers will soon be the size of 32-gallon trash cans and require PVC pipes for a straw.

I do drink more with my new XXL tumbler, but it’s so big and clunky it often stays anchored to the kitchen counter. It doesn’t go with me, I go to it.

The real question in the matter of healthy hydration is not how much I should drink, but how much can I drink before I explode?