Progress

May 24, 2026May 24, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 24 Comments

Despite continued pain and swelling, my husband is attempting to get on with his life after two total knee replacements, the second of which took place on March 16.

Gardening is something he always liked and is good at. I’m very pro-gardening for him. I think it’s healthy and without the excessive strain and physical danger of his other hobby: powerlifting. (It’s like, you have two artificial knees dude…would you just not.) But as most people in longterm marriages know, you cannot control the other person. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do and you gotta decide if the good outweighs the bad. (You’re free to go, if you’re not into it.)

Therefore, I’m happy to report he planted a bunch of dahlia bulbs, trimmed some shrubs, planted my spur-of-the-moment purchase of a lovely lupine in bloom, bought some clones from the dispensary, and potted up two of them as gifts for our kids. This represents a small but significant return to gardening. Yay!

My new lupine, expertly planted by my husband who got his BS in Botany.

We bought 3 types of clones at our local dispensary’s big plant sale: The Hive (Honey Banana X Papaya), Terpgasm (Sin n Juice X Udder Madness), Tail Dragger (Alligator Wine X Pearl Cadillac)

Don’t you just love the names of weed strains 🤣

Q: Why are weed plants called clones?

A: Weed plants are called “clones” because they are literally exact genetic replicas of a parent plant (called a “mother plant”). Instead of using seeds, growers cut a branch off a thriving plant and encourage it to grow its own roots.

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UPDATE: photos of my husband kneeling for my friends considering arthroplasty

Right knee was replaced November 24, 2025

He says it feels weird to kneel but doesn’t hurt.

Supporting parents over non-parents?

May 23, 2026May 24, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 24 Comments

Sharing financial resources is a zero sum game. Someone’s gain or increase is going to be someone else’s loss.

Do you think parents of adult children have an obligation to financially help the ones with children of their own more than the ones who do not have kids? Or do you think parents should always maintain total equality in the ways they divvy up their support to adult children?

I have been on one end of this dilemma for over 30 years. I’m the one who stayed married and raised a family. My sibling had a lavish wedding (in two locales), but quickly divorced and had no kids. She never found a career she enjoys and is frequently unemployed, despite being very highly educated.

Now I am temporarily (hopefully) on the other end of it. My son currently only has himself to take care of and my daughter is building her family.

Hypothetically, if you had 10K to share at Christmas, would you give each one 5K? Or would you take into account the selflessness and outrageously high cost of raising a child through college and tip the scale towards the parent?

I think maybe you can tell which way I lean, but I know that there are strong counter arguments.

If you’re childless and found out your parents gave your sibling more money than you in their estate plans, how would you feel? Would you feel as if they didn’t value your life as much as theirs? Or would you understand that grandchildren were factored in?

What about an opposite situation, where parents support a single, childless adult daughter more than another one who had the benefit of a husband’s income? Do singles deserve more support than those who married and raised children?

Curious for your thoughts.

Sunday Selfie

May 17, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 33 Comments

I have been trying to figure out how to do my makeup for an outdoor photo session with my daughter’s family next weekend. I don’t wear much makeup these days and I want to use the products I already have, rather than buy more stuff. So, I did an inventory on the products I already own and made a list. I asked ChatGPT to make recommendations based on the list. It made me a step-by-step guide and I basically followed it.

I’m going to be 61 in a couple weeks and this is what I look like with some makeup. My grey hair is pretty minimal. (I don’t use hair color.) I’ve never tried Botox or had any cosmetic surgery. I did try eyelash extensions once, but that was many years ago.

I think I look pretty good, but I just ordered an eyelash curler. (I haven’t used one of those in decades. Hopefully they’re safer now.) I think that might help boost the mascara a bit.

I could not resist googling which Mar-a-lago Ladies are my exact age (born in 1965) and it turns out that RFK Jr’s wife—the actress Cheryl Hines— is 60 also.

IMO, her face looks relatively natural compared to some of them.

See Mar-a-lago Face

Too beautiful to paint

May 12, 2026May 13, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

I was lucky to visit the two most iconic US national parks over the last few years—Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.

I’m now realizing that trying to paint landscapes based on any of those photos is just going to be frustrating. Those views are just too beautiful to be rendered by an amateur painter. I should just be happy I got so many great photos with my cell phone. My pics take me back to the actual feeling of awe.

I want to try another landscape at some point, but need to try something more humble.

Really not happy with this. I’ll keep it out as a way of hopefully learning from it.

This area is called “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” in Yellowstone National Park.

Dream Flower

May 6, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

I have been patiently waiting for a magnolia blossom to fall off my neighbor’s tree. Yesterday, it happened. I found a blossom in the grass on my walk and brought it home.

It lasted about a day in a small dish of water.

On Day 2, I attempted a technique that was demonstrated in my watercolors class, but it didn’t really work. The idea is to press flowers and leaves into wet paint and get an interesting effect. You can also paint the veiny side of a leaf and press that onto white paper.

The image was not really recognizable as a flower after I pulled it off the wet paint. I ended up painting in some petals.

This could make the cut as a greeting card.

I think I might like it better vertically.

April showers

May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

One thing about being older is that you have so very many snippets of songs, poems, sayings and jingles floating around in your head. Literally decades worth of popular culture is lodged in the ole memory. Half the time, you can’t remember why or from where you know something.

Apparently “April Showers Bring May Flowers” is a saying from England that dates back to at least the 1550s. Imagine. That saying has been kicking around the English-speaking world for over 450 years.

The flowers that bloom in the spring,

tra-la.

OK, just Googled and that’s from The Mikado, which makes sense. I was in that show in high school (embarrassingly, in full yellowface). Gilbert & Sullivan are responsible for a great deal of brain clutter in older people who like musical theater.

Springtime for Hitler and GER-MA-NY

I wish that one from The Producers would leave me, but it just won’t. Must be lodged too deep in the grey matter.

Spring in general has more songs, poems, and sayings than all the other seasons combined. Don’t you think?

What pops into your head when you experience the miracle of spring where you are?

Budapest 1987

April 15, 2026April 16, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 36 Comments

I’ve posted a couple times about my trip to the Soviet Union in college. I was with a group of students and history professors. It was a big deal to go “behind the iron curtain” back then, so we prepped for this trip for many months—studying Russian history and learning how to behave in a communist country. (They didn’t want any of us to end up in a Siberian prison camp.)

In addition to stopping in Helsinki (Finland) on the way into the USSR, we stopped in Budapest (Hungary) on the way out. Back then, Hungary was firmly part of the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc. And we happened to be there in the immediate aftermath of an epic snowstorm. Other than the snow and total paralysis of transportation on the streets, I remember kind people and one particularly delicious hot meal in a restaurant with some young musicians who gave us a cassette tape of their rock band.

In light of the recent good news that Hungarians dumped their far-right leader Viktor Orbán (a buddy of both Trump and Putin) on Sunday, I dug out my Budapest pics. Google describes Budapest in 1987 like this:

Budapest in 1987 was a city in late-communist Hungary characterized by economic scarcity, socialist architecture, and a quiet, daily struggle, yet it was on the cusp of major political change. The city experienced a historic, paralyzing snowstorm in January 1987 and was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site that same year.

I’m not in any of these photos, but I took all of them. None are particularly good, but as a group, they give you the vibe.

Fun fact: Budapest is actually two cities—Buda and Pest. In this pic, I’m standing in Buda looking over the frozen Danube River towards Pest. The large domed building on the far side is the Hungarian Parliament in Pest. (Pronounced PESHT)

The famous Fisherman’s Bastion is a fairytale-like, Neo-Romanesque lookout built between 1895 and 1902.

An Aeroflot route map in a Budapest window. (We flew sketchy Aeroflot into Russia.)

My friend Lincoln standing in an alcove in Budapest.

My friend Rob playing a balalaika at the Budapest airport.

Walking was the only option for seeing anything at all while we were there! The city was paralyzed with snow and the authorities really couldn’t deal with it.

Two of our professors at the Budapest airport. The one on the right, Dr. James West, taught Russian history and was one of the best teachers I ever had. He’s one of the reasons I majored in History.

Speaking of wonderful history professors, be sure to listen to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson’s letter from Tuesday that explains the connections between Viktor Orbán and the American right: https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/restore-america-to-its-own-people?r=j2aww&utm_medium=ios

Bread offering

March 10, 2026 ~ MaryG ~ 26 Comments

At certain points during his recovery from his first total knee replacement, my husband described me to others as an “Angel of Mercy.” Believe me, he is not one to toss out religious metaphors (nor am I particularly angelic), but he was in so much pain, that I apparently glowed with an angelic light and golden halo as I fetched his ice and doled out his Oxy.

Now that he feels better, but total knee replacement #2 is less than one week away, I’m wondering if I’ll achieve “Angel of Mercy” status again. Our joke is that there’s an equal chance I’ll be more of an Annie Wilkes from Stephen King’s Misery (famously played by Kathy Bates in the 1990 film) this time around. We even joke that if he totally annoys me, I’ll use the mallet we have around to break up bags of ice and the foam roller from PT to “hobble” him like poor James Caan in the film.

Given the Annie Wilkes possibility, he’s been extra helpful these past few days. Cooking, fixing stuff, and baking many loaves of his incredible homemade bread. It’s soooo good.