Is It Just Me Or Is It Old In Here?

Four wonderful inches of rain! But that's not what I'm talking about today. It's about my reading -- which, though I'm still hard at it with Miss Birdie, I do a bit of every day -- at breakfast and lunch, while I take a tub bath, and before I fall asleep.

I've noticed something odd. First I read A Place Called Canterbury. The author grew up down the block from our family -- I knew him slightly; he's a few years younger than I. But he's writing about a 'geriatric apartment building' in Tampa -- a place where those who can afford it go to spend their so-called Golden Years. I actually know some of the folks he's talking about so the book was of particular interest to me. And the lesson I took away was this -- even with money, there's nothing "golden" about getting old and helpless and, worst of all, senile.

But it's a good, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, read which I recommend.

So what do I read next? Four little books written by Effie Wilder, an eighty-something year old lady who's living in a retirement home. They were given to me to pass on to an eighty-something year old friend of mine who's (you guessed it) in a nursing home. I read the first one, wanting to make sure it wasn't too fluffy or silly (my friend is fragile but no fool). Well, I found it quite engaging; enough so that I read the other three.

Then I pick up something to re-read: Fannie Flagg's sublime Fried Green Tomatoes -- forgetting that much of the action takes place in (all together now) a nursing home! As I read, I realize that I, too, have written about nursing homes -- in Art's Blood and again in In A Dark Season.

I shake my head -- time for a change.

So I pick up Water For Elephants, which comes highly recommended and has been sitting on my TBR (to be read) pile for months. It's terrific -- a beautifully told story about life in a small traveling circus during the Depression. Oh, and the narrator's a ninety-something year old man, living in a . . . nursing home.

My next read is going to be Winnie the Pooh.

And on a different and cheerier note -- here's a link to an video of twin baby mooslings playing in the sprinkler.

http://www.maniacworld.com/twin-baby-moose-in-sprinkler.html