THURSDAY, SETEMBER 2, 2021

 Thursday, September 2nd!!

Inertia.  

An object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist changes in its velocity: whether in motion or motionless. Newtons laws of motion.

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Newton says “Inertia is the tendency of an object to resist changes”

I’m finding inertia in my life.  I’ve settled back into predictable actions.  

My activity calendar was just liquid cement not so long ago but has hardened into stone.

Monday and Tuesday nights are now symphony rehearsal nights.  I don’t get to the Georgetown Recreation Center on those nights.  

Tuesday has granny basketball practice 

Thursday has my bridge club.

Wednesday night and Saturday mornings are Bible Study groups.  Sunday is Church.  

But, unfortunately, I’m finding another inertia starting to take over - my rocking, rotating, recliner.  

I sit in this particular chair way too many hours a day.  

Went I wake up, boom, I sit in my chair.  I check my Mail, play five games, surf the web, and, boom, it’s 10:00 and I haven’t done anything!!  Some days I don’t even fix breakfast (other than making coffee).  I write my blogs from this chair, even more so because my better computer got shipped back for repairs, and on my old computer the I, O, and P keys work about 5% of the time. 

For someone who loves to write, I write a sentence then I take five minutes (or longer) finding an O and copying it appropriately.  And, sometimes that I, O, or P needs to be capitalized.  Sometimes the automatic spell checker makes a good suggestion and most of the time it doesn’t!!  Picture writing the word “point”.  I’d type it - and sometimes (rarely) I might get one of the letters to work.  Then find a “p” copy it and paste it, then the same for the O and the I.  

I was a great touch typist.  In college, I typed papers for other students.  These were the days before personal computers-AND- It was a manual typewriter!  No spell checking and any mistakes required using “whiteout”, painting out the mistakes, then typing the correct letters.  Being an accurate typist was definitely an asset.  I made a little spending money typing at 25 cents a page!! 

Of course, Word Processing changed that.  But to write two pages for a blog without those three letters is aggravating!!  

So picture me this morning on my phone - using one finger to type this blogpost!!  (And sitting in my recliner- inertia!!)

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Partially related.  Last week I took one of my shut-in friends to get a new TV.  She offered me the old one.  And I took it!! (Oh woe is me)!!  I can imagine sitting in my recliner for hours mesmerized by the images on a little screen!  Now that would be inertia raised to the second (or third or tenth), power!!  

I still have her old TV (which she insists is great), and my brain says “I could watch football again”.  And I hear the control part of my brain screaming “NO NO NO”.  

My parents lived into their upper 90s.  My mother died at 98 and my father at 97.  I remember visiting them in their assisted living apartment - with their television going full blast (yes, they had hearing problems ).  My mother knew the TV schedule and what programs she watched.  Dad would have baseball games to watch.  

My brain still says NO.  No television- or I will be glued to this recliner- get to the rec center - play my tuba - whatever - but (at least for several more years), keep my brain thinking -without the “idiot box” controlling my life!!  

Life is so much more -even for a senior - than to be entertained by an electronic “babysitter”. 

And, I am going to buy tack strips to put on the seat of that recliner!!  

Get up and get moving, Karen!!  

(Love isn’t going to win if a TV is in front of me!!)

And, yes, love does win!

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I am on my trip. Tonight if all goes well I’ll be in Dubuque Iowa, and tomorrow I’ll ride the Fenelon Elevator (funicular)- and see some of God's awesome beauty!! 

Karen