Scientists say that we need to be learning and doing new things to keep our brains plastic and to stave off mental decline of one kind or other. So I have been trying to do some new things now and then.
I have been studying Russian and have made a little progress. It is fun to learn some basic vocabulary and perhaps be able to communicate somewhat with my daughter-in-law's mother when she comes to visit again. Perhaps we can do better than to point and play charades and then give up in exasperation after trying to communicate the simplest thing. It's been interesting just for some appreciation of the language, if for no other reason.
After Christmas my husband and I went to the open mic night at an ice cream parlor uptown and listened to the music. I even played a simple piano piece that I had composed for the 6 or 10 people attending. To do that was something new for me. Might do it again sometime.
I've got to go out and plant potatoes today. I cut them in pieces yesterday, each piece with an eye or two and most had already started to sprout. I've never planted potatoes before so had to Google how to grow potatoes to get some tips.
I entered a haiku contest recently that an independent newspaper in our town put on. I hadn't written a haiku before either so decided to and won 2nd place. Yay! My prize was a gift certificate from Pamida.
I have been thinking lately that the older you get, that doing something that you haven't done before seems to be harder, especially anything that involves a major commitment. Partly it's that you've got about all you can do to just keep up with all the things that you need to do on a daily basis. You've joined a few organizations each of which takes a certain amount of time. You have some hobbies and skills to maintain and that take time. You have people in your life who need your help (husband, children, grandkids, etc.) and when something new comes into your life, it just piles on top of your load. You are less and less likely to want to take on anything ELSE and unfortunately that includes doing very many things that are new!
When we were first married I recall how when we were on our way to Pine Ridge, SD, where my husband had landed a teaching job and stopped in a gas station in Chadron, NE, about 40 miles from Pine Ridge. A guy was showing us a litter of baby toy poodles which he needed to give away. We decided right then and there, "Sure, we'll take one!" The man said to come back in a couple of weeks when the one we picked out, a gray one named Sherman, was ready to be taken from his mother. We didn't think ahead of the responsibilities of feeding, training, grooming, finding someone to care for him when we would be gone--all that might go on for years. I suppose the dog's adoption was mostly a good thing even so. We had him for seven years and was a dear little pup. Finally he died after several months of having some kind of seizures. I know we wouldn't do such a spontaneous thing now!
Also when we lived in Pine Ridge, a town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, we got a phone call from an organization called Youth For Understanding that was looking for homes for two foreign exchange students from Chile. One of them, Erik, was 15 and Carlos was 16. We thought that sounded exciting so became the "parents" of Erik. We were only about 28 and 26 ourselves! Carlos went to another family in town. This was right about the time of the 1973 Wounded Knee skirmish when the American Indian Movement, a terrorist group, burned down a church in Wounded Knee, a tiny town on the same reservation, ransacked and destroyed a general store owned by an old couple, and generally disturbed the peace for many months on the whole reservation. This was another "Sure, why not? --sounds-like-fun" decisions, hardly a time to take in a foreign exchange student but we did. Due to the general instability of the reservation at that time they both moved up to Hot Springs, SD, and stayed with another couple until the school year ended and in the summer they both took a trip with us to Winnipeg, Canada.
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