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Wrinkly Bits A Blog by Gail Cushman Christmas is Coming As you know, I have spent the last four months paring down, getting rid of stuff, and believe me it has not been easy! A trip to DC, an online garage sale, trips to the local landfill, known as the dump in Montana, and, of course, the various charities in Boise and Columbus. Now, I have just one pile left, my books, my Wrinkles, a few cartons that I moved from Boise to Columbus, Montana. There aren’t a lot, but Cowboy Bob rolls his eyes every time he straddles a box to get to his desk, so that he can write a Cowboy Bob blog. He mentioned that I should have a sale…and a sale I’m having. Here are the particulars: Available only on my website gailcushman.com…four autographed books (if that’s important to you) for twenty bucks!  Yes, that’s four for twenty as in $20, “Including mailing,” he said. He’s pretty serious, and says no more wine buying, stuffing Slowpoke’s saddle bags, or trips to anywhere until I have a sale!  Yikes, he is serious!   If you like my blogs, thank you for reading them!  The humor in my books is the same as what you read in my blogs, humor, senior hijinks, the foils and foibles of everyday life. My Wrinkly Bits series is about friends, lovers and adventures. In this day and age, for twenty bucks, you can buy a quarter of a tank of gas (maybe), four Starbucks’ lattes, or three Big Mac meals or spend the twenty bucks making the cowboy and four of your friends laugh, giving books to people you love, dad, mom, grandma, grandpa plus all those extra gifts you feel obligated to give…teachers, Sunday School teachers, bosses, secret Santa’s, dog sitters, and your bestie friends…you name it. Sale is on until 19 December or until we run out of books and/or Cowboy Bob can get to his desk. He promises that he will throw a pack saddle on Slowpoke and head to town, getting them to you, as soon as he sees the order. New books are coming. Flash of Time is nearly ready…hopefully December, but there are a lot of variables. Widows and Widowers   Dancing with a New Partner (about online dating and our story), and Murder in the Diocese, a murder mystery, coming in the spring. The magic code word for the discounted sale is “slowpoke.” Thank you for reading my blogs… I love writing them and even better, reading your comments. I’ve written nearly 300… I’m glad you have enjoyed them through the past 2 ½ years. Happy November. Gail     gailcushman.com

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Wrinkly Bits A Blog by Gail Cushman Lessons on Loneliness from Small Town America This morning I read a Facebook post talking about loneliness, that is, the difficulty of living alone. I get that. Being alone is hard, and unhealthy, according to experts smarter than I am. Being with others gives us the opportunity to laugh, argue, tease, and lament. How can I possibly argue the price of gas or lament about the cold weather or cuss out the politicians all by myself. For that matter, who wants to laugh alone? Laughter takes more than one person, and let’s face it: the late-night television pundits or evening sitcoms are not as funny as Johnny Carson and Lucille Ball used to be. This morning, the opportunity presented itself to have cup of coffee and a caramel sweet roll at a local restaurant. Great coffee and yummy rolls were guaranteed not to be on my perpetual diet, but I knew laughter and companionship surely would. The tiny restaurant is called Uncle Sam’s and it has about a dozen blue star checked tables and about a hundred wall hangings, all relating to military patriotism and support for the USA. Red, white, and blue, some of my favorite colors. The owner tripled as server, cook, and cashier and did all well with a smile on her face, a kind word, and a pot of hot coffee in her hand. She serves no fried food, and you can order a half order of most of the menu items. She has been at that site for over twenty-five years and said that she was told that a non-fried food restaurant would be a failure, yet here she is over twenty-five years, making breakfast and lunch for working people in a small town and she has a full house, day after day. It may or may not be the food, but the friendly atmosphere makes you want to come back. In the next room was a group of about a dozen men, doing the same thing we were, drinking coffee and sampling the breakfast fare. You can pretty much see this scene on any morning in any small town in America, people hashing over the weather, world events, and opinions about anything important in their life. On our second cup of coffee, about half of the men left and a woman, who happens to have political signs plastered all over town, strolled in and took a seat with the rest of the men. She was followed by a half dozen women, all of a certain age, comfortable with each other who joined in the conversation smoothly and easily, as if they were longtime friends, and they probably were. It is my guess that this gathering takes place several days of the month, maybe even daily with the same or different folks. The small-town culture requires that people talk to each other, get to know each other, worry about them when they don’t show up for coffee and sweet rolls. They put away their cell phones and look each other in the eye and talk about everything. They share. They share. They share and they aren’t lonely. As I thought about the FB post I received earlier and compared it to this happy scene, I wondered why some people are so lonely while others are bursting at the seams with friends and people they know. It seems they understand that loneliness is a paradox. If every lonely person sought out another lonely person, the ailment itself would disappear. For his birthday one year, I bought my son a book entitled, Stand Up, Shake Hands, Say How Do You Do. It’s a good book for teaching kids about manners, but actually, it really is a lesson on how not to be lonely. This is a good lesson for all of us at any age. Let’s get together to share a laugh face to face. By the way, the only cell phone I saw was mine. If you enjoy Wrinkly Bits, please share. All Gail’s books and blogs are available on her website gailcushman.com

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A Wrinkly Bits Blog by Gail Cushman Simply Simple

In the past months I’ve been reflecting on my life, seventy-five years of life, love, and liberty. I’m glad I was born when I was, a baby boomer with my formative years in rural America in the fifties. We had a simple life, walking to school, sitting down to dinner nightly with my family, attending church, and enjoying being a kid without too many constraints. The terms helicopter parent and free-range parent had not been yet invented, and my parents were a combination, maybe boomerang parents, go far, but bounce back and don’t you dare be late for dinner. Remember, my brothers called my mother a field marshall. I was a defiant fourteen-year-old who was grounded a lot, maybe all of my eighth and ninth grades, but I survived and probably become a better person because of it. My granddaughter is still thirteen, but I can see that’s she’s following in Grandma’s footsteps. Yea…you go, Girl. Drive your parents crazy.

Social turmoil erupted in the sixties, seventies, and eighties and I was too busy with kids, college, and jobs to remember if those were simple times or not. I was in my forties and fifties, and it seemed important to make a difference, politically and socially and I probably did. My kids called me a German by birth, Marine by training and whatever I did, I did with gusto.

  But now, I’m back to simple things and find that simple things are what really matter. I no longer worry about making a splash, rather, I get a jolt out of the oddest things, like waking up and not hurting, having all the body parts working well and on time, drinking a good cup of coffee without spilling it on my shirt, and, maybe the best, having a good phone conversation with a friend. I love hugging my grandchildren, hell, I love hugging anybody, it just feels right. None of these things cost any money and make me happy. I should have figured this out years ago.

  This week our neighborhood withstood over 100-degree heat and enjoyed a Neighborhood Night Out, and about 40 or 50 people joined together to laugh and chat. It was delightful. I met a few neighborhood newbies, and it was a pleasant, although toasty, evening to shake hands, say how-do-ya-do, and hug.

Wrinkly Bits is a simple pleasure, too. It keeps me out of trouble and makes me happy. Hugs to you!

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Wrinkly Bits

A Blog by Gail Cushman

My Biological Clock is on the Fritz

Have you ever gotten out of bed and realized nothing was working right?  That was this morning. I went to bed at the same time as always last night and felt terrific and this morning I didn’t. Everything hurt. I didn’t know how many achy bones and joints are in this wrinkly body, so I checked with my pal, Dr. Google, and he informed me that while babies have 270 bones, the “aging process,” also called a “biological clock” reduces that number by fusing some of them together. Adults may have as few as 206 bones, all of which ached this morning. I didn’t know I was fusing, but I did it: 64 bones in 75 years. If I had known I was fusing, I could have used it as an excuse to avoid unpleasant tasks, as in “I can’t right now, I’m fusing” or “Excuse me, I’m in the middle of a fuse.” Maybe my aches and pains are from fusing, my “biological clock” being on the fritz, intent to make me miserable, stealing another bone or two.

I was not a happy camper, so decided to outfox my “clock” and take an early morning walk, thinking I could walk off the stiffness in some of my 206 bones and I walked about a mile before conceding that it wasn’t going to work. When I returned home, I checked out my Facebook page and saw the most beautiful picture of two sandhill cranes soaring in tandem through the sky, obviously adults, probably married, because I learned sandhill cranes mate for life and seldom divorce. The photo was taken by a friendwith an artistic eye and camera that is far superior to my phone camera. Dr. Google reported that cranes have 188 bones, 18 fewer than I have (but some have more because they have extra toes). Larry said they were following instructions from their built-in “biological clocks” to head north. That’s all well and good, Larry, but this girl’s biological clock seems to be on the fritz and has only two readings:  achy and breaky, which I don’t want to do. It needs some adjustment.

I have to believe that sandhill cranes and other critters also have aches and pains, but they keep on soaring, headed to wherever it is they are going. They don’t write blogs to complain to the world about their maladies, and I’m not going to dwell on it either.

Despite my current ache and pain status, I have a lot of living left and I want to soar, too. I want to head somewhere and if I give up, I might be headed nowhere. I’m intent on heading somewhere, soaring with my writing, traveling, and with things as simple as kissing my grandkids. If I have to fuse, at least warn me. Thank you, Larry, for today’s inspiration.