Older and Better with Shelly

Since most of the people that read my blog are known by the dreaded word “boomers” I thought I would get the word out to speak for us. I always thought baby boomers were special. We were going to change the world. And we did for the better. Our music was the best, our clothing was great. We knew how to have fun. We were never going to get old. For a long time I said boomers rule. Well the unbelievable thing happened, we actually somehow got old. I never use that word “old”. In fact, for over 20 years the AARP has been trying to get me to join but I won’t. Why would I want to admit to being old. Old is a state of mind if you ask me. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want to, within reason as you age. So a few weeks ago I read about a phrase called OK Boomer and it was derogatory. Well that got my boomer rage up. So of course I googled it. Isn’t that what you do every day about something you don’t know? Well I got more pissed as I read it. It seems the kids ...

The news is in. Our cockatiel Winston is a girl. But we hate the name “Winnie” and, since she has not objected, we’re still calling her Winston. Winston went in for a spa day. What is a spa day for a cockatiel? Let me tell you it’s getting her wings clipped so she doesn’t crash into mirrors, windows and walls, and break her neck. There are pros and cons about clipping the wings of birds. Nasty arguments. The same about getting your cats declawed. I don’t think a bird with clipped wings will have behavior problems like they say cats will. And if they do they will deal with it. It’s better than yours truly having a nervous breakdown over it. After watching Winston fly around the house, hitting everything in sight and then disappearing one evening, my old heart had it. She was at the top of our dining room buffet about 2 inches from the ceiling watching us run around the house calling for her. She went into house arrest immediately and was kept there until she had he...

So we bought a Roomba. We call her Dumba. Dumba The Roomba. It’s a girl you ask? With two male cats, possibly a male bird, and a husband, I need a female on my side. No one can clean as good, and be on time, and on budget, and not be a female. Roomba does it! All across the house she is doing her thing. You don’t have to nag her to vacuum. She doesn’t need any breaks, any tips and it doesn’t complain. She does her job. Doesn’t ask for a raise, and won’t talk on the phone while she's working. And she shows up on time, every time. Worth her weight in gold. She doesn’t even eat on the job. Doesn’t take long bathroom breaks either. She actually goes under and around the furniture, something I’ve been trying to get people to help me with for my whole life. Not even paid personnel understand that one. I figured at my age I was entitled to some help cleaning this house. A lot with two cats, one bird and one husband doing their best to make dust and crumbs etc. ...

So my sweet nephew goes to college in New York. He’s taking some kind of class that requires animals. Don’t ask, too complicated for me. There were a few chickens in this class. Real, live chickens. One of the kids in the class asked to take one home. The kid takes it and, after a while, lets the chicken go in the middle of Manhattan. I wouldn’t want to be left alone in Manhattan, not for all the money in the world. But a poor defenseless chicken, really? Who does that? The next day my nephew sees the chicken in the rain in Manhattan. The chicken was lost and not a soul around wanted to help this poor defenseless creature. We always heard New Yorkers were selfish. I heard they have rats bigger than chickens in New York. He could be eaten by one of those monsters. So my sweet nephew decides he’s going to catch this chicken. While he’s chasing it the poor bird gets entangled in traffic and gets hit by a car. My nephew notices the chicken is sti...

I read a lot. I am a valuable source of useless information. It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it. Well I noticed an article I just read about dead butt syndrome. That’s a new one for me. Apparently it’s a real thing and hundreds of Americans suffer from it. It comes from sitting on your butt all the time. I wish I knew about this when I was raising my kids. That may have scared them more than telling them if they don’t eat their vegetables they will get into trouble because there are kids starving in China. If I could have told my kids... If you don't get off your butt and do something your butt could be frozen! Now that could scare a kid. It even scares me. What about all these kids who incessantly play games on their phone. I’ve heard of kids going to parties and sitting next to each other all while still transfixed on their phones. We’re raising a generation of kids that do not know how to engage in conversation with each other. ...

It brings tears to my eyes. The sad Passover story? No. It’s that horseradish I am allergic to. When I was an eight-year-old kid my father, who was the sweetest human being on the earth, said you want to find out what horseradish smells like?   Being a gutsy kid I never backed away from anything. I don’t know what he was thinking but he liked stuff like that and I took a whiff.   It brought tears to my eyes and I’ve been crying ever since. My dad, who lived to only 82, even ate a raw onion the week he died. Turns out I am allergic to raw onions too. Speaking of crying, how about preparing a dinner for 15 to 18 people at my age? Now that’s enough to for an extra-large bucket of tears. A dinner this size requires a ton of plates. One for the fish, which you would not want to serve with anything else. Another one for the Seder plate, which has the nut, apple thing, and Passover wine mixture. A third for the soup, which I am proud to say is made by my s...

So our beloved cockatiel died a few months ago at age 26. In the words of my son, our bird had a good West County life. However, my husband began missing his little friend. He was the only one in the house that actually listened to him and talked back. We have three cats so we really weren’t planning on acquiring another two-winged friend. But the house was so quiet. We missed his chirping.   Our bird was always happy to see us.   He loved it when we came home from shopping or dinner with friends. He could hear us pulling into the driveway and would start chirping before we even got our car into the garage. Unlike our kids, he always was welcoming to his parents. We enjoyed him so much that we decided to get another one, a cockatiel. So we decided to visit a pet shop. A friend had given us our first bird, so going through a pet store would be a whole new experience. After doing some research we found a shop that sold all sorts of birds. They...