Can we have a forum for "older" people with bc?

Our entire YMCA is open free with a Silver Sneakers card. I know when I was looking at other gyms before I joined the Y that the Silver Sneakers card allowed use to the cardio room and specific Silver Sneakers classes but not the other classes. But the YMCA just puts the Silver Sneakers card on file and gives you a Y membership card that is scanned when we enter. Lew had to reshow his card after Jan 1st to show he was still alive. When we spent Christmas in Brainerd the YMCA there did the same thing. I thought Lew's Silver Sneakers card was from his Medicare and had assumed I'd be doing the same later this year when I start Medicare. Will have to get that clarified before then.

Just did a google search, found https://www.silversneakers.com/tools/eligibility It says: The Healthways SilverSneakers Fitness program is an insurance benefit included in more than 65 Medicare health plans. Through SilverSneakers, health plans and group retirement plans provide a gym membership to their insured, usually at no additional cost.

So, it does sound like it's not Medicare itself but the associated health plan used. Worth checking into anyway.

Sandra: Glad that the doctor was able to reassure your hubby about the aneurysm. The cruise your planning sounds wonderful.

Carole, your hats are beautiful.  You are very creative. Will you give the instructions for the 3 hats that have the flowers on them.

Still at our sons house. So far it is okay. DH and I going to a dinner show tonight. We are going to watch an Elvis Presley impersonator.  Not sure why all these red lines are showing up.  We suppose to get a snow storm tonight. Right now it is just foggy and dreary. Our house in florida has been started. They sent us a picture of it. Still has a ways to go but at least we know it is started now.

Guess I'll close for now . These lines are annoying. Sorry ladies.

Have a great weekend.

Our NDSU Bison won! It was such a fun game to watch. Announcers started out talking about the "explosive plays" the other team is known for, and at halftime Bison were ahead 24/0, not an explosive play in sight, we shut them down. Final score 37/10. Our quarterback had broken his wrist and missed 8 games of the season, his first game back after the injury and he was ON FIRE. No one has done 5 consecutive national championships before at this level. 3/4 of the stadium in Frisco, Texas was filled with Bison fans who had driven from all over the country.

Jean, sure hope you are able to get over your cold and your hubby as well. It is annoying to say the least and no one likes to struggle to produce enough energy and stamina to take care of the everyday parts of our lives. Didn't mean get over your hubby, but that he too would be able to knock his cold down as well. Also hope you can figure out receiving posts.

Your games sure sound like they are exciting Puffin. I have such trouble following sports and keeping up that I quit trying long time ago, but I do admire those who 'get' it. Your quarterback sounds pretty impressive too after having been out that long. Determined I'd say.

We have some sun out ( thank goodness ) today, but the wind chill makes it 10 to 15 below depending on which news station you watch. It isn't much fun to go from the 40's one day and overnight to such wind chills ( I think our temp is actually about 0 ) and temperature the next day. A mite on the drastic side. I would imagine everyone is feeling great dislike. The sun will help. The city of St. Louis, Missouri got some snow --- maybe 3 inches, but we are about 75 or so miles due east here in Illinois and we didn't get snow-----just very, very heavy frost in some places, not everywhere.

I can't complain as we have had virtually no winter as yet, and I've yet to see even one miniscule snowflake ( that could change )but I like to gentle into these changes a bit slower. Having them be so abrupt is difficult. It was raining yesterday by the way.

Hope you are all fine and not having too many extremes, weather or otherwise.

Blessings,

Jackie

Bonnets, glad you are getting your voice back.

DH and I went to see the Elvis impersonator last night. It was fun. He also did what he called a Las Vegas section impersonating dean martin, Sinatra, Jerry lewis and a few others. He dressed the part for each groups of songs. Dinner was good also.

It started as rain yesterday morning and turned to snow in the afternoon. The ground is covered in white but not much. The temps dropped a lot. It is in the single digits today and I guess again tomorrow according to the reports.

Have a great day! 

I see everyone has enjoyed the holidays. IllinoisLad amen to your last post. Not posting very often as my DH and I are enjoying the children and doing some traveling. We went dancing at the Opryland hotel on new years, something we haven't done in years. Live, laugh and love. Lindab142 follow what your doctors say. I called my days of rads, groundhog days like the movie. I also took a half xanax to calm my nerves. The center had such nice nurses that cut up with me really helped. You can do it! Shuf

Compassion is the basis of all truthful relationship: it means being present with love--for ourselves and for all life, including animals, fish, birds, and trees. Compassion is bringing our deepest truth into our actions, no matter how much the world seems to resist, because that is ultimately what we have to give this world and one another.

Ram Dass

Our fire is easy. Just light the gas logs! I love our little fireplace. The flames are flickering now. DH and I are enjoying our before dinner cocktail. Dinner will be one of my favorites: grilled ribeye, potatoes and salad.

I didn't leave the house today except to go outside and shake out a rug and go out another door to add some black oil sunflower seeds to the bird feeder stuck to the living room window with suction cups. It's so nice watching Mr. and Mrs. cardinal at the feeder. There is also at least one tufted titmouse.

Hope everyone is warm and comfortable tonight.

Jackie, I am just curious as to where the feral cats stay when it is sooo cold. I feel bad for them. It is so nice of you to go feed them. I would do that if I knew where some are. I am such an animal girl.

Carol, I am going to PM you about Pinterest.

any puzzlers here? It was a tradition in Lew's family to do a big jigsaw puzzle over the Christmas vacation at his mom's house. When Mildred moved into the nursing home I missed doing a puzzle so started doing one in January when it was too cold for outdoor activities. Friends gave me a 1500 piece puzzle for Christmas (largest one I've ever done), pretty outdoor scene with lots of flowers, a pond with a footbridge over it. Sure wish I had Millie's big dining room table right now. I'm working the main puzzle on the kitchen table, have all the pink flower pieces set up on a card table in the living room, and various cake pans of sorted pieces. You know it's going to be a hard one when you can't get the border totally together.

When you live in the present moment, time stands still. Accept your circumstances and live them. If there is an experience ahead of you, have it! But if worries stand in your way, put them off until tomorrow. Give yourself a day off from worry. You deserve it. Some people live with a low-grade anxiety tugging at their spirit all day long. They go to sleep with it, wake up with it, carry it around at home, in town, to church, and with friends. Here's a remedy: Take the present moment and find something to laugh at. People who laugh, last. -Barbara Johnson

I had a puzzle last year that I could not get together. I worked on that thing for ages. Finally the cat landed on the board it was on and it hit the floor. I didn't try to get it back together. I was relieved, to tell the truth. Now I do puzzles on AARP games site. I do the easy crosswords too. I think the person writing the crosswords is very old. They use words I've only read in childhood books like Nancy Drew.

Puzzles are a fact of life at my house and I've spread the love of puzzles to many others. From the first year I was married (1970) I got a new puzzle for Thanksgiving. It was set up on a card table and family members were welcome to work on it off and on through the day. I also have one for New Years Day and enjoy working on it while watching the parade. When we cruise, I bring along a puzzle for sea days and always make new friends who want to help me. Years ago when we started going to a friends house to visit on Thanksgiving afternoon I brought along an easy puzzle. That group has grown from about 6 people to 40 or more. At least 10 of us work on the puzzle and now it just wouldn't be a holiday without a puzzle. We started doing it for the annual Super Bowl party for the ones who don't watch the game and now that's a tradition.

At the Senior Center near our house, there is a room dedicated to puzzles with completed ones (glued together and framed) decorating the walls and cabinets full of puzzles. I took puzzles on our October trip to the Florida Keys and to my solo trip to Chicago for Christmas. The proof I am an addict is on my cell phone and Kindle. I have apps that are jigsaw puzzles. They aren't as good as the real thing, but come in handy often.

As long as we are talking about addictions, I must confess my addiction to adult coloring. I've amassed quite a collection and enjoy sharing them with people at the senior center. I just sit at a large round table and invite any who stop to see what I'm doing to choose a picture from one of the books and join me. Some have started bringing their own books and colored pencils. There's a good sized group that is growing every week and today the director told me we could have our own official Adult Coloring Group. We'll be on the printed schedule and get to meet in the arts and crafts room. I'm delighted. For once I'm doing something trendy! My new books are ones on Victorian Houses, 1950's fashions, and First Ladies throughout the years. Amazon has them from $2.99 up.

Puffin, I too am a crossword addict--the tougher, the better (even those British cryptics). My favorites are diagramless--I've exhausted all available books of all but the boringly small and easy ones--and NY Times Acrostics. I started doing them because I am a fountain pen collector and love to solve puzzles in ink with a smooth-writing nib. Unfortunately, these days the paper is much pulpier and the nib catches and the ink bleeds. It can get expensive and wasteful to scan or photocopy each puzzle on to smoother, fountain-pen-friendly inkjet paper. I currently do the NY Times crosswords online. I get bored with Mon. thru Wed.--they aren’t hard enough to be fun until Thurs. Saturday is my favorite (it’s even tougher than the larger, themed Sunday puzzle). I used to love the New York Magazine crosswords, but they’re no longer as cleverly written as they were back in the 1970s-80s. I find the puzzles in the Chicago papers to be no challenge at all.

My theory about why dumbed-down gossipy tabloids are so popular in the UK? Because so many British readers' brains have been fried by those devilishly difficult cryptic crosswords! (Those are the only kind I found for sale in London bookstores).

Sandra, I think I may try Amazon for the coloring books you mentioned. Almost all the ones I found at Barnes & Noble were just pages and pages of patterns. I ended up buying one of VanGogh's most famous paintings (with full-color thumbnails for reference). I looked online for Venus Paradise blank color-by-number pictures, but they're insanely expensive because they're now collectors' items. (And the numbered pencil sets are used, and mostly incomplete). I loved Venus Paradise back in the day because they were actual pictures, with guidance as to which colors to put where. (If I could choose colors myself, I'd be coloring my own sketches instead--but I draw like a kindergartener). There are plenty of paint-by-number sets, but they're messy, not very portable (and the oil-painting sets give me asthma from the fumes and can permanently stain).

Hi gang,

In pain from yesterday's treatment and the area around my nipple is grayish and hard. Didn't sleep much. I finished working 2 hours from home to finish a project and I'm going to have some hot tea and sleep for a little while.

I'm not handling this rads biz very well. I feel it doing something to me and am wondering if I can negotiate with my Dr. to do 16 total treatments with boosts instead of 16+5. Think today is 9 or 10.

Have never been into puzzles, but I like the word search games and we have an app called Dropwords on the tablet.

I have 1 adult coloring book and some sheets friends have copied for me. My phone doesn't have enough storage to do it online.

I used to really enjoy making and selling jewelry, but it's a little less now; it's the slow season. I may take apart some items and redo them.

Here's my latest creation - a tree of life bracelet.

Hope you all have a great day,

Linda