IT TAKES A VILLAGE

The Village movement is an all volunteer nonprofit membership organization that helps members age at home.  We provide community support, companionship and connections.

We two cities of about 30,000 each, put together a network of vetted and trained volunteers, local resources, and vetted vendors that provide a range of services, including transportation, household chores, errands, computer and technology support, companionship, social activities and more. We are currently a community of over 80 members.  With almost the same number of volunteers.  I am both.

There are two levels of membership, Associate and Full Service.  Associate is mainly the social and educational events and four “services” per calendar year.  Full Service has unlimited services (providing we can find a volunteer) and three transportation requests per week.

In the past few months we have added 8 new Full Service members, many of them over 85 (without technology) and still learning how to make a request.  We are a virtual office with just one phone number and ask members to provide their name, phone number, date of appointment, time of appointment, when they would like picked up and to ask their provider (doctor, mechanic, barber, physical therapy, etc)  how long the appointment will last.  Google records the message and translates it into an email which is sent to all 4-5 office volunteers.  Whoever is on call that day, returns the call and verifies the info then submits the request to all pertinent volunteers.  (Google translate is not always reliable)

These new members don’t understand the virtual part.  And why if they call one evening at 10pm no one calls them back until the next day.  They sometimes say “JB, why don’t you ever answer the phone”?  Our hours are listed as 10am til 2pm on weekdays.  Yes, I got one call last night at 9pm and two calls today.  One lady wanted someone to come over right away (Sat) and fix her TV as that is her companionship especially in the evening.  Fortunately, she called a few friends and someone’s son came over and got it working!

Some members ask for particular drivers.  We gently explain (every week when they call) that we are all volunteers and can’t always guarantee a specific driver (although with one 99 year old long term member, we usually call her favorites and ask them before sending out the request to 17 drivers)  And some members have been cranky and demanding and hardly anyone will volunteer to drive them.

I drove a member on Thursday to our local Adult Community Center for their foot clinic (he had to cancel his appointment with Kaiser as his Parkinson’s was giving him a rough time).  He had thought Weds was Thursday and called me wondering where I was!  When I did drive over on Thursday (I called him early to remind him) it took him five minutes to lock the front door.  10 minutes to get to my car.  He’s a very personable guy although deteriorating pretty fast.  His son has fresh microwavable meals delivered twice a week.  He has fallen a few times so now he has a wearable device on his wrist that goes direct to 911.  Now he has a helper come to the house 3 hours three times a week.

We got to the ACC and I wasn’t sure he could get himself out of my car.  I walked him in and got him seated then went back out and parked.  When I went back in he noticed he forgot his wallet!  The provider is cash or check only and I didn’t have $60 cash on me.  While he was getting his feet pampered, I dashed over to an ATM which was dangerously close to my favorite French bakery and so I had to get us both a treat.

It was a struggle to get into my car and home again.  He asked how much he owed me (which he knew from several conversations) and remarked that Kaiser only charges $30 and next time he would call them.  

Late that night, he called the office and thanked me for the delicious lemon blueberry danish ... whilst in the past he always calls me direct and I have to give him the phone number and ask him to call it through the office.

But I really do love my job!

LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING

Life isn’t always about the big milestones—it’s often the little things that carry us through. The tools we reach for every day, the routines that smooth our rough edges, the objects that feel almost invisible until we realize we can’t function without them. Today, I’m sharing a few of those unassuming treasures that have quietly earned their place in my world.

There are few things in my life that I don’t think I could live without.  But there are some!  Maybe you already have these and love them.  Or maybe you’ll discover something invaluable. And all of them very very affordable.

In the kitchen.  A very inexpensive 1/8” (paper thin) slicer.  I’ve had one with me where ever I have lived.  It's $10 or less in an Asian store.  Onions, radishes, cucumbers, potatoes (for potatoes dauphinoise or au gratin), fennel.  It doesn’t take up space and sometimes a recipe needs identical thickness.

Also from the kitchen… a three blade ground meat chopper.  To stretch our budget and appease kid appetites, we use ground beef or turkey a lot!  Jesse was more persistent in getting it all chopped up into tiny little bits when they boys were little and didn’t really like meat.  I was not … I don’t remember how I discovered this Oxo brand helper but he got one for Christmas.  Think spaghetti sauce, taco meat, lettuce wraps using ground turkey, sloppy joes, shepherd’s pie, lasagna etc.  A time saver for sure!

Although mostly useful in Maui when I had a lemon tree, this affordable plastic juicer.  Deacon loves to make lemonade so when lemons are affordable, its a fun hobby for him (and me!)  We all use lemons in cooking and this little gadget separates the seeds and the bottom part has measurements.  I keep it in my room as no one was putting it back in the same spot … now everyone knows where it is (I also keep large items across the top of my Ikea shelves for soup tureen, huge salad bowl, my cooking for one casserole dish, my serpent shaped olive dish, large serving platter … they only get used a few times a year and there was no space in the teeny tiny kitchen.  

I’ll end with my night time routine.  I use a delicious foaming face cleanser and decided to get a face brush.  What a difference as it does seem to removed old dead skin.  But this is a messy endeavor as the water used to run down my arms until I found these absorbent wrist bands.  The boys both have facial brushes (not pink) and their own wrist bands.

I use a head band to keep my hair off my face (also when I take the time and trouble to wear makeup).  The boys started using one also so I bought two sets.  They are very comfortable to wear during the day while on my laptop as they curve back and it is more comfortable to wear my glasses.

   

What are YOUR products you can’t live without??? 

CREDIT CARD THEFT FATIGUE

There are still repercussions from enduring the theft of my credit card number back in July.  Sixty days ago.  Two months.  UGH. 

Remember when bills came in an envelope? A real envelope. With a stamp, a return envelope, and sometimes even a cheery insert trying to upsell you a second phone line or an encyclopedia set? You wrote a check, licked the flap, and felt the deep satisfaction of done.  Those were the days.

Fast-forward to now. Every “bill” is buried inside an email or an app, with logins, two-factor authentication, and dropdown menus that look like a video game. Instead of a sense of closure, I'm still getting a glowing red banner:  “There was an issue with your recent payment that will impact your insurance coverage. Your payment of $1,616.30 scheduled for 9/12/2025 was declined by your financial institution.”

Well, excuse me. I’m not trying to run from the mob here — just paying my insurance premium. But the way these systems word it, you’d think I was laundering money through an offshore account.  Every day charges were easy to upgrade to the new number, expiration date and secret code.  But some are things I pay less frequently.

And here’s the kicker: back in the envelope days, if a check bounced (rare, but it happened), the bank politely mailed you a notice on heavy paper stock. Now, it’s all caps and exclamation points, as though I need to be marched down to the Fraud Department in handcuffs.

Meanwhile, the subscriptions I didn’t ask for renew quietly in the background: a streaming service I watched free for a week last spring and missed the cancel date by 3 hours so I had to pay for a whole month.  (Silver lining in this one, they lured me back with a half price membership if I signed up for a year!  Yea BritBox!) 

Maybe the fatigue isn’t just about money. It’s about the constant management. A lifetime of collecting stamps, licking envelopes, and trusting the U.S. Mail trained us to believe payment was an act of closure. Now it feels like a full-time job: monitoring apps, double-checking logins, and proving to robots that I’m not a robot.  Not the end of the world, for sure, but annoying anyway.

Still, I keep plugging away, because that’s what grown-ups do. But every time I get another “issue with your recent payment” message, I want to dig out my old checkbook, write the number in perfect cursive, and send it off with a 20-cent stamp. Just to show them who’s boss.

 

GOOD GRIEF

Where did that saying come from?  It should be BAD grief.

Maybe I am just at the age where dying is happening all around me.  Which reminds me of my greatest loss 12 years ago (death of hubs).  Along with Facebook reminding me of him when they do those flashback photos and posts.

I live in a condo community of 112 units.  We are now considered to officially be a NORC … a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community.  Mostly 65+ and aging at home as long as possible.  We see ambulances about every other week.  As well as fire trucks.  (Usually to help someone get up).

Wednesday night we heard a loud thump after midnight, like our upstairs neighbor had fallen.  The next morning an ambulance arrived and took him with them.  He spent the night somewhere (?) and I saw him Friday morning limping to his car with his hand on the small of his back.  Yes, he drove off in that condition.

My high school buddy (and maid of honor) lost a sister-in-law then a brother-in-law six days later.  All out of state.  We were all raised Catholic; my buddy is still a practicing Catholic.   The SIL was not religious, more of a hippie agnostic, until she became terminal.  She found some out of the norm Catholic Church which buddy seemed to think was some sort of cult.  

Her description of the funeral was chilling.  Everything in Latin and the Mass was over 90 minutes.  All the priests had long Amish style beards and in the eulogy no one mentioned the SILs name.  At all.  Or why they were even gathered there.  She is now one of six people buried there.  Attendees were not allowed to receive communion, just her husband and the priests.  A very odd event for sure.

(from the church's website)

I have not been to a funeral in 30 years!  It was for our elderly friend we “adopted” who became a local Grandma for my daughter.  We had such a good long in-depth friendship for many years.  She loved to cook and entertain.  They lived in a condo complex with a pool and invited us over frequently.  When she passed away, her husband was in the hospital for a quadruple bypass.  When he returned home, he asked if I would be his friend.  We met at least once a week for the next 12 years.

For the sad finale, my WLLO coworker lost her youngest son (55) two weeks ago from suicide.  He has had several mental illnesses since he was age 14 … bipolar, schizophrenic and borderline personality disorder. He lived about two hours from here and she would visit about every 6 weeks or so.  Fortunately, he would call or text daily which eased her mind.  One day he did NOT contact her and would not answer his phone.  She drove down and discovered him in a such a state she had him taken by ambulance for a psychiatric hold.  She cobbled together some in-person help twice a week to bring groceries and remind him to take his medication.

Which didn’t last very long and he let them go.  His Mom, Sister and visiting cousin went to visit and he had lost 50 lbs, hadn’t let his four dogs out for days and the cycle started all over again.  A week after he checked out of the hospital he called his Mom to say goodbye.  She asked her daughter to drive down and check on him as she was entertaining visiting relatives again.  She found him dead.

And that’s enough sad news.