60 is a Surprise

Character Description

ruthdemitroff — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:36:29 +0000

“Not only did I believe Alexis’s rebel without a care attitude, I also never once found her over annoying and she didn’t judge people until they’d given her enough proof to do so. She was pretty open minded for being anti-social and no matter how hard she tried to push people away, she always ended up giving them a chance which I loved. She was also completely willing to speak her mind, even when what she had to say was not the most popular thing in the world. She was fiercely loyal to those she loved and incredibly brave (which is important for a lead in a horror novel). Alender was amazing at really showing us Alexis’s fear and making her push through it to get the job done, even when the task was hopeless.”
I found this character description written by this reviewer
rinblunderland.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-review-bad-girls-dont-die-by-katie.html
Stuck me as potentially being just about the most perfect thing that could be written about me. Of course as a clergy wife, being wildly rebellous requires less rebellion than even the most minimal level required for any other type of human being. Like most children, I was quite the stickler about things being fair/just. The difference between childhood and nearing 60 is that instead of fairness being about getting more freedom/rights, it becomes more about personal sins of omission and commission and not wanting to give up freedoms and rights unjustly given us with the passage of time. Softening one’s own heart truly is both a fearsome and hopeless task which we will be pushed to see through to our end.

Taking Blogging seriously

ruthdemitroff — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:59:18 +0000

If I ever intend to make progress, think I’ll have to become a more conscientious blogger. As I already have 4 blogs, I’m going to use each of them for a different area of my life that needs working on

http://ruthdemitroff.wordpress.com will be used to figure out what comes next in my life. What will life look like in 5 years when we get to make new choices? The children will have very independent lives by then and our time won’t be owned by my husband’s job. Think it will take those 5 years to build a more appropriate identify for the senior years

http://rdemitroff.blogspot.com is where I post about the various Massive Online Courses I take. As these courses seem inter-related, it makes sense to have the information in one spot. It’s also where I may finally figure out the answer to what I’d like to do when I grow up. I’ve taken piles of courses but I’ve never fit them together into something called a career. Think I got working life and retirement turned around. When others retire, I will be just beginning.

http://ruthdemitroff.blogspot.com was my original blog. I started it for people who wanted an update of what was happening with me since whenever I originally knew them. There’s been several school reunions since it started so I’m confident that anyone who was curious has satisfied her curiosity. Instead I’ll be posting about household matters like trying to simplify and organize my life and anything I decide to share about daily life in the real world

sparkspeople.com is where I have a blog about my health aspirations. It’s for motivating myself and hopefully others to make taking care of our health more of a priority. 60 is the time when one really has to commit to either working on remaining healthy or choose to give up and deteriorate at an accelerated pace.

These blogs are mainly about me wanting to be motivated, set goals and begin acting upon them. I’ve always confused thinking about achieving a goal being different than actually acting upon those thoughts. As a very distractable person, it has been hard to not let just about anything intervene between thought and action. After a lifetime of making the same New Year’s resolutions, it would be great to see some progress.

Twitter Instruction

ruthdemitroff — Mon, 23 May 2011 03:59:29 +0000

Reading my tweetdeck feeds turns up bits of information that I’d never have thought up. Last night I read a tweet written by a guy about to go to a bar and get drunk. That’s an activity older clergy wives like myself deny themselves. Anyway, this guy’s preparations were to get a black sharpie and write on his abdomen his name, emergency contact number and hospital insurance number. So that’s got me to thinking about when and what and why I would leave a message in black marker on my body. Well for sure if I were having surgery where right or left side really mattered. The last time I had surgery was 1973 so that’s a purely hypothetical reason for me.

The young have a different relationship with their bodies. They mark their bodies with symbols and messages. Mine is more of a blank slate. I prefer it that way.

Kids as Adults

ruthdemitroff — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:46:46 +0000

I have an update on the family blog at ruthdemitroff.blogspot.com Something about being a grandmother resulted in my not knowing what to do with the particular blog. I was comfortable about writing about my children when they were single. When they got married, it felt like increasing the number of my children and I continued to blog about family. Now they are having babies and suddenly they aren’t children in my eyes anymore and I have nothing to say about them. Their primary family lies somewhere else and I think it’s very important that they have the same freedoms that Stephen and I had to raise their children according to their own wisdom without comment from me. Actually it’s very fascinating to watch. Their approach is very different than mine but I’m good with that – I’m still content with my choices and I celebrate their choices. It’s like we’re different artists. I can admire their work, find the differences in style intriguing, and have no trouble with letting them put the brush strokes on the canvass, choose the colors, play with light and dark. It’s their turn to do the parenting and my turn to admire all that they are accomplishing. Life is good.

Travel Dreams

ruthdemitroff — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 05:12:22 +0000

I read someplace a long time ago that the number one reason that people don’t do all the travelling they dreamed they would do in retirement was they didn’t have the legs for it. Most great vacations involve walking and climbing stairs and going up and down rugged terrain. So I guess if you didn’t inherit Tina Turner legs, it’s probably a good idea to make them more of a priority in your exercise route.

The clergy have started travelling as a group. The first distance clergy retreat was to Israel. This year they plan to go to Rome. I don’t think we’re really the go on vacation with colleagues type. It reminds we a bit of being a frosh and getting a scavenger hunt list. The guys wanted to run through the city finding stuff and get back with everything first. I dropped out quickly because I didn’t want to slow them down. In the end, speed at finding stuff didn’t make the least bit of difference. It was actually supposed to have been to learn how to find our way around the city and get to know each other better.
But I walked away from the experience thinking that travelling with colleagues can have a bit of a competitive edge to it and whatever mood you happen to find yourself in will be your reputation forever. At the very least, we’d probably be the couple that most doesn’t know how to be casual about cost. We more the saving to meet the next emergency type than the saving to have fun type.

My husband started his ministry in the far North working with the Southern Tutchone. His idea of a great vacation is going out to the bush and hunting for deer. Our summer vacations when the kids were at home involved loading up the van with kids, their friends, pets and gear with a couple of canoes fastened to the top. We’d sleep in tents in sleeping bags with knitted caps on our heads and pray a lot that it wouldn’t rain. To me it was doing everything that I’d be doing at home only under much more primitive conditions. But I did it because it’s always good to know that your kids have survival skills. After 12, they switched from the family camping trips to military type summer camps where there was an unlimited supply of quality food and a bit of earnings for going.

Some of our friends in their 60s travel a lot and even do vacations that the young would have trouble with – climbing mountains, following difficult gold rush trails, riding camels – you name it. And other friends, have annual destination vacations with their families. And then there are cruises. I think I might be the Elder hostel type or the type of person who goes on a cruise and stays on the ship learning everything that’s being taught.

And of course, not all children settle close to home. We have one son in the navy which means if we do fly, it will be to see him and his family.

And what we also enjoy is spending a night in a hotel or bed and breakfast when we go into the city and making it a 2 day event instead of a rushed one. We don’t do it often but it is sweet when it does happen.

So I guess our travel dreams are more about getting away from the pressures of life and having a chance to relax than about seeking stimulation and having awesome moments. It’s not an age thing though but just being more so the type of people we always were.

60 is a Surprise

ruthdemitroff — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:00:03 +0000

I changed the name of my blog but when I added it to my google reader it appeared under it’s original name Right-sided Thinking. So I guess the only way for people to discover that my focus has slightly shifted is to create a blog post titled by the new name of the blog. The reason I decided to create a new name was because I couldn’t find what to expect when turning 60 by googling blogs written by 60 year olds. Out of nowhere I got my first line heading south from my mouth that looks like it should have a silicone injection. It didn’t start small and deepen. Or maybe it did – I’m not much for looking into mirrors. No I’m sure it just appeared overnight. This rectory has an abundance of mirrors. There’s a mirror in the foyer, a mirror in both bathrooms, a mirror over the kitchen sink, a mirror in our bedroom and a mirror in Peter’s bedroom. The clergy wife before me was a blonde, blue-eyed Southern belle. Don’t know if she liked mirrors or if they were just there. I’m not so keen on mirrors because I’ve had thin and getting thinner hair since my early 30s. It’s the kind of hair that is very electric so I look way too much like Doc Brown in Back to the Future. People who like mirrors tend to be the same people who have good hair days. However that’s actually less of an issue these days. If something had to go, I’m really glad it was my hair.

58 isn’t 50

ruthdemitroff — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 08:32:25 +0000

Well I’m not exactly 60 – more like approaching 60. Turning 50 was pretty exciting. We’d been living in the same community for a long time and all our children were living at home but getting closer to going off into the world. It felt like being 18 again. There was the anticipation of a whole new world opening up. Of course, reality is always a bit different than anticipated. I didn’t really expect that my father would be buried on an Easter Saturday and the very next day early Easter morning my oldest son would be catching a train for basic training. I also didn’t anticipate that the Bishop would be calling and we’d be making a major move the 1st of the following March. Our remaining 3 children decided they’d had enough of following their dad’s career and didn’t come with us. The two boys went into an apartment and our daughter moved into an academic residence. So within an 11 month period, all 4 of our children had left home and my husband had started a new job and we were in a new community. I felt a little lost – especially in the grocery store. Cooking for 6 definitely feels more worth the effort than cooking for 2. Moving had always followed a pattern. The children would race into the house to see who could get their fastest to get the best bedroom and by the time we had an armload of stuff to bring inside, the house was full of life. Then they’d dash out seeking new friends and on Monday they’d be in school and part of the community. Instead of feeling freer, I was missing my kids. They were the ones joyful to have their first taste of independence.

New Treatments for Trauma

ruthdemitroff — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:32:41 +0000

New Treatments for Trauma: Setting Free the Trauma Locked Brainhttp://www.nicabm.com/teleseminar/2010/trauma/

When I signed up for this course, I was pretty skeptical but it is well worth the investment of time. Everything I learned in Psychiatric nursing classes in the ’70s about treating PTSD was just about the opposite of what we should have been doing. Even at the time, we knew in our guts that exploring the trauma was only re-traumatizing the patient and not very effective at healing the psychological wounds. If it had worked, we wouldn’t have still had a Psychiatric hospital dedicated to treating WWII shell shocked vets 30 years after peace had been declared. Unfortunately from what I’ve read in the media, the current lot of returning vets are not getting much better treatment than the WWII vets did. Boot camp and a cocktail of psychiatric drugs isn’t the light to guide them out of the tunnel of their pain.

Re: Early Research On Mixed-Laterality

ruthdemitroff — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:04:59 +0000

The earliest paper I read on mixed laterality stated that the results differed on when the mother also had mixed laterality. They didn’t speculate about why the problems associated with mixed laterality were much less if mom and child were both right-brained with mixed laterality. I wonder if current research includes looking at the parents as well as the child. I suspect a parent models any effective strategies he/she has developed and has fewer expectations and disappointments about the things that are difficult/impossible to change. I have 2 adult children who are right-brained and 2 adult children who are left-brained. While I love them all equally, my left-brained children experience greater frustration with me. My right-brained children never thought I should be more like their teachers. My left-brained children would come home and tell me how their teachers did things thinking I should use them as role models. The right-brained kids and I experience the same tasks as difficult and therefore requiring a little extra help. The left-brained kids see the tasks as straight forward and don’t want to be involved in problems that simply require establishing a routine and working through the logical sequence of a to do list.

Quiz about Left-Brain/Right Brain Dominance

ruthdemitroff — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:03:27 +0000

The blog post “Understanding your Brain for Better Design: Left vs Right http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/11/understanding-your-brain-for-better-design-left-vs-right/ linked me to two quizes: Right Brain/Left Brain Quiz for Artists http://painting.about.com/library/quiz/blquiz-rightbrain2.htm and Right Brain vs. Left Brain Creativity Test http://www.wherecreativitygoestoschool.com/vancouver/left_right/rb_test.htm On the Quiz for Artists I was 90% right brained. On the Right Brain vs. left Brain Creativity Test I’m 38% left brained, 62% right brained. If only I had the talent and creativity that supposedly is going create a demand for right brained people.