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Archive through January 28, 2006

The TVClubHouse: General Discussion ARCHIVES: 2006 Mar. ~ 2006 May: Baby Boomers, Living Alone, Changing Habits (ARCHIVES): Archive through January 28, 2006 users admin

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Cndeariso
Member

06-28-2004

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 12:48 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Cndeariso a private message Print Post    
i personally don't consider looks to be the only thing that makes a person attractive. it's the whole package. there are many a person who had mr./ms. universe looks that are not worth spending two minutes with because of their personalities. if someone has the package that i find attractive then drop dead good looks would just be icing on the cake. but, it wouldn't change how i felt about them in total.

Yesitsme
Member

08-24-2004

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 1:06 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Yesitsme a private message Print Post    
I certainly don't believe looks are the only thing. Personally I like smart guys with great senses of humor, who are easily amused and not too tempermental. The most important thing for me as far as looks go is that they take care of themselves...basic grooming. They don't need to be traditionally handsome or have the best body in town.

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 9:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    


Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 12:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
Brenda, I'm watching Dancing with the Stars. Does that count?

Are any of you people who read this thread, journal writers? I'm a natural journal writer. That's what I tend to do when I'm depressed. It helps me focus on what's wrong.

But it has never helped me in the long run. In fact it destroyed my marriage. I was stupid enough to leave my journal in an unlocked place and I came home early one day to find my wife reading it! Well, she never got over it. Felt unloved.

I tried to tell her that I only write when I'm down, which is why the journal must have been 88% negative stuff. Who writes when they're happy? Well, I don't.

We wound up burning all my journals. Of course, I'm bitter about THAT. I thought I'd read them, in my leisure, when I had retired, to see how I thought when I was 25, 35, 45, 55, etc.

Was thinking about taking a journal writing class now, in an attempt to be social, sort of, and maybe take it up again, now, since I live alone and there is noone here to snoop in it.

But what's the point? I'm thinking now it's just better to write and throw away or write here, to a bunch of strangers, maybe get feedback, maybe not. Thoughts? Comments?


Max
Moderator

08-12-2000

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 12:38 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Max a private message Print Post    
Newman, she read your personal, private journal (which is a sacred thing, IMHO) and then had the nerve to be mad at you for what you wrote AND insist that you burn all your journals???? Yep, you had reason to divorce her right there!

Seriously, that was a major violation of trust. A journal is a place where you write whateer you're feeling, positive or negative, and it's ONLY for you, not anyone else. If you were a teenager and she was your mom and you had been behaving oddly, then she MIGHT have been justified in peaking to see if there were issues with drugs or whatever that needed to be addressed, but that's a long way from where you were.

Sometimes people really amaze me -- and it's not always a good thing.

:-)

Wargod
Moderator

07-16-2001

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 12:48 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Wargod a private message Print Post    
I agree Max! That is a terrible way to break trust. If someone wants you to read their journals they'll hand them to you, which you obviously didn't want her to read!

Journaling is a great way to work through things. After my step dad died, mom started going to a grief counseling group and one of the first suggestions she recieved was to journal, journal, journal. For the first year she wrote continuously. She filled several of them in the first few months (lol, I know becuase I was picking a new one up for her everytime I went to the bookstore!) It really seemed to help her during that time.

I could never imagine going through her stuff and readin her journals. She told us what she wanted to tell us, what she wrote down was stuff that she felt was personal and didn't want to worry us about. It'd be a very serious invasion of her privacy to read those even now!

Brenda1966
Member

07-03-2002

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 12:48 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Brenda1966 a private message Print Post    
I agree Max. You read someone's journal at your own risk because anything you find in there is off limits. Not a fair thing to do at all.

I try to journal to my daughter -- writing down funny things she does or says. I'm not very good at doing it regularly. I write about 1 page a month and I'm still working on November 2005. LOL.

I have journaled in the past when I was really down about something. I DO think it is therapeutic and helped to get it out there and on paper. Ultimately I burned them because that was also therapy and a way to move on. Some days I wish I had them to read and have a good laugh at what an idiot I was back then. :-)

As for Dancing with the Stars: it's a fun program to watch, but my one complaint is that it's all choreographed. I'm a big fan of lead/follow where the dance is more spontaneous and not planned out. But No, Newman, that doesn't count as dancing unless you're trying to dance along in your living room!

Yesitsme
Member

08-24-2004

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 2:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Yesitsme a private message Print Post    
I think journaling is very valuable, though I don't do it myself. I used to, but just do not have the attention span to continue. As someone who was raised that you don't even open someone else's junk mail, I would have major problems with someone reading my journal. Wonder if she would have told you if you hadn't caught her.

One of the reasons that it should be off limits is that journaling is not always a true picture of someone's thoughts....sometimes it is them just working through stuff, and (like with you Newman) it can just be venting about the bad stuff. That's not always fair or true (and journaling is a healthy way to come to that conclusion.) Reminds me of something that happened a few years ago....my mom gave me a box of junk from my high school years and acted a bit strange about it. When I looked in it, I found a story I wrote when I was in high school. Back then I always hated that I was so boring that nothing in my life was worth writing about, so the things that did happen I tended to embellish. I had taken an event that really happened, and upped the impact. I know my mom read the story (not really a major breach of privacy since it was in a box left in her house and she was trying to figure out whose it was) and thought that I had a major emotional trauma that she didn't know about. Cracked me up. Of course, she didn't mention it and I never told her it was mostly fabrication. If she would have 'fessed up, I would have set her mind at ease. Yes, I am an evil daughter. But generally emotionally healthy and she should know this by now!

I think a lot of us use this as a sort of online journaling. I've found people around here to give great advice and feedback.

Merrysea
Member

08-13-2004

Monday, January 16, 2006 - 4:58 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Merrysea a private message Print Post    
Newman, my ex also read my journal (for which he had to search to find), and that ultimately led to our breakup. My son, who is also a writer, burned all of his stories so his dad wouldn't find them. When I told our marriage counselor that I couldn't trust my husband, he asked if I thought he would have an affair. I said no, I didn't think that at all, but I couldn't trust him with accepting me for who I am. I still journal, but not as often, because I'm so much happier now! I don't think my sons are at all interested in reading anything I write, so while I don't usually leave it lying around, I don't feel the need to hide my journal anymore, either.

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - 11:58 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
Good to get feedback. Sigh. I do wish I had those old journals to read now. I think it would be alot more interesting for me to read stuff I thought was important back in my 20s or 30s, my feelings and thought, than say reading John Grisham or Dan Brown or phony memoirs that fooled Oprah.

Voluntary burning of a journal can be therapeutic, I guess, but not if it's done under duress.

Trust issues. They are so big in a relationship. Once you lose that trust it is so hard (impossible?) to get back.

My ex was jilted ? by her first husband...well, he had an affair, and that ended their marriage. I guess she really never got over that. I guess she didn't trust all men, including me, after that episode. Hmmm...

If I had to do it over again I would have locked the journal, and hidden it. Cheap locks can be picked, I know. Arrgghhh...if you have to go to all that trouble to write in a journal...you want to be able to just pick it up and spontaneously, quickly write down what you're feeling, without climbing to an attack, getting a key, unlocking the vault...

I do see her side though. My curiosity would tempt me greatly. If the shoe was on the other foot, I don't know if I could have resisted peaking at HER journal. "What does she really think of me? Does she ever think of me?" Those kinds of thoughts would be hard to ignore...


Jimmer
Member

08-30-2000

Tuesday, January 17, 2006 - 12:42 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Jimmer a private message Print Post    
One of the good things about journal writing is that some people bare their souls in a journal. They say things that they would not outwardly say in real life. They may also fantasize or talk through ideas that they may never seriously consider.

I don’t think that life would work very well if everyone truly said what he or she thinks. That is not to say that people have to go around lying to each other, but we all think some things that are better left unsaid.

In today’s technological age, one of the best ways to keep a journal is to do it by computer. That way it is fairly easy to hide and/or encrypt the file. But then you are limited to sitting at a computer. There is something special and personal about a hand written document.

On a lighter note, journals can be a lot of fun. My wife and I were visiting a friend that I have known since I was eleven years old. I never realized that he kept a journal but he has a huge number of them that he has written in daily over the years. So he pulls one of them out, flips through the pages, and says, “Want to know what you and I were doing on Saturday, June 18, 1977?”.

Needless to say I was a bit surprised that he had all this information written down. What was weird was that although I otherwise had no clue what we had done that particular day (trust me - it was nothing extraordinary), I remembered it exactly as soon as he read it to me!

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Saturday, January 21, 2006 - 10:29 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
I haven't been on this site for awhile. Vacation? No. Illness? No. Then why you ask? One word: Sudoku!

Are any of you into this number puzzle craze?! It's addicting. Fun. Challenging. Instead of reading the paper I'm trying to get numbers 1-9 in every row and every column and then in those pesky interior squares as well, with no repetition.

It's a logic puzzle. You can find it on the comics page of every American newspaper, near the crossword puzzle, the jumble, and the wuzzle.

I bought a book of easy ones from Target, to get my confidence up, and to maybe glean some advice from the meager two pages of instruction or hints at the beginning.

Give it a shot. I think us boomers need to keep mentally fit as well as physically fit. The Sudoku will get you thinking. Just do it!


Marysafan
Member

08-07-2000

Sunday, January 22, 2006 - 7:05 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Marysafan a private message Print Post    
I love, love, love the Sudoku

You might want to check out my second favorite website.

http://www.websudoku.com/

Schoolmarm
Member

02-18-2001

Sunday, January 22, 2006 - 7:59 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Schoolmarm a private message Print Post    
I love that website....it can really eat up your time, though!

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Sunday, January 22, 2006 - 8:36 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
Thanks for the website (I think). I don't want to LIVE on the computer. Balance is the key to a good life. GO BRONCOS.

Had a baby boomer alone episode last night. A friend is gonna have open heart surgery on Thursday. He's 60. Has a wife to take care of him during the recovery. I don't.

Naturally I started feeling "not right" in my upper right chest at night, when I'm trying to sleep. Maybe I'm just worried about the Bronco game or thinking about Fred or it was because I worked out at the club on Friday and did some chest exercises.

Still...anxiety...sleep...when it's 3am ...how do you people get back to sleep...??? Do you get up and do a "sudoku" to settle down, <laughing wildly as I type>. Maybe my sudoku craze is the major cause of my anxiety...

Am I having a heart attack or is it just anxiety? Let's get to the heart of the matter. I feel fine this morning. Solo anxiety. When I was married I didn't have this problem. Of course I had many other problems...


Rupertbear
Member

09-19-2003

Sunday, January 22, 2006 - 3:52 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Rupertbear a private message Print Post    
Newman...you are sweet...it seems as if you use this spot as a mini-bog or journal when you type.

Yes, problems...whether mental or physical can be quite easily magnified in the dead of night when one is alone.

I say...come check out the site...you know there will be someone who has just left a post and you will feel less like you are the only one not being able to sleep at 3:00AM.

And hot milk does work for me...not sure if it's the placebo effect.

Anyway...I always enjoy your contributions here...though for the life of me...I don't understand when people become addicted to online games but I suppose we all overindulge in what we enjoy!

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Sunday, January 22, 2006 - 7:58 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
Well, I haven't done the sudoku online yet. It's still just a pen and paper addiction and I think I'm overstating it at that.

I don't seem to be getting any better at it.

It was just fun to find something new, at age 56, that captures my fancy, amuses me, sparks some interest. That doesn't happen everyday, at my age, anymore.

I can't see me trying the warm milk remedy, Rupertbear. The thought repulses me. Maybe hot chocolate.

I also know enuf not to go online at 3am. Writing online jus revs me up. I need to wind DOWN.


Yesitsme
Member

08-24-2004

Monday, January 23, 2006 - 8:31 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Yesitsme a private message Print Post    
Warm milk is a nasty substance. Hot chocolate is good, but not sure if the caffeine in the chocolate will help you sleep (chocolate is worse than coffee for me.)

I never let people know my comings and goings, so I could probably be dead for days before anyone would find out. Figured a long time ago that I prefer taking that chance to having to remember to advise people constantly of my whereabouts. My sister-in-law and brother always tell me to call them when I get home from a trip....I keep telling them it is never going to happen. My sister-in-law keeps saying "But what if something happens to you on the road?" My response "So you'd rather know I was dead sooner?"

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - 10:39 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
Well, Yes, it's only a phone call. If the roads are icy, well, it would set their minds at ease knowing you made it home ok. Yes, I think you should start making those calls. New Year's Resolution.

I forgot that chocolate had caffeine. I have tried Sleepytime Tea in the past. A misnomer.


Goddessatlaw
Member

07-19-2002

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 6:58 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Goddessatlaw a private message Print Post    
Newman, that's some violating crap that your journals were read by your now-ex. Seriously, for many people writing down their thoughts is their only means of expressing their deepest feelings or just working things out for themselves, and clearly unless the journal were handed to her, left accidentally/on purpose on her nightstand or published, what was in the journal was not hers to take. I stopped keeping a journal when my mother read my diary (I was about 12). There was nothing in there that was problematic and I was having no behavioral problems that would have caused her concern, so I was left with just feeling so damned violated. As a result there are many events in my lifetime I have no record of and fading memories because I did not write them down. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Sleep aid: Melatonin. Gets your circadian system right back on track in just a couple of days. I take it a couple of days maybe every couple of months and I'm good to go. Colossus goes through some hellish sleep-deprived cycles depending on work and time of year. Right now he's in the waking up at 3:01 a.m. and cleaning out the garage-type-cycle. He won't even try melatonin, so I wind up fingernail-fairying his back for however long it takes for him to fall back asleep. I don't mind at all, but then I'm up for the remainder of the night. Not alot of sleep going on around these parts.

Yesitsme, you're lucky to have people to care whether you get home safely. You should call them when you get home.

Schoolmarm
Member

02-18-2001

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 7:19 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Schoolmarm a private message Print Post    
I often used to get up at 3:15 on the dot. It was useful in grad school as I just got up and started working.

Now, I get up sometime between 3 and 4:30. I usually just look at the clock and roll over and go back to sleep until 5. Sometimes I get up and work. I can take a nap later. I never have to fight to get to sleep at night, though, so I can't help you with that.

Yesitsme
Member

08-24-2004

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - 10:07 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Yesitsme a private message Print Post    
LOL....Nope, I am not going to start making those calls! I have an attention deficit problem and in my mind it is worse for me to forget to call them (which used to happen), then decide on the way home to stop and stay with a friend overnight and show up 24 hours later to worried family, friends and needlessly utilized law enforcement. It is only in the past 5 years that I have lived around my family, so I just never got into that habit of checking in with anyone as an adult. Heck, we battled the whole time I was in high school about me letting people know where I was, and I knew it was my parent's right to know then. But I think that that kind of worry for an adult is needless and doesn't accomplish anything. Usually my younger sister knows where I am and if I were missing for a few days she would notice. But regardless, if something happened to me, I take full responsibility.

But I do think this is a privilege of life as a single and it is different if you are married. I would be fine with letting my spouse know where I was at all times and calling when I was away. Though now I say that it occurs to me that I couldn't be married to a clingy type who cared to track me every second! Darn it, something else to add to the list.

Newman
Member

09-25-2004

Saturday, January 28, 2006 - 7:09 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Newman a private message Print Post    
Goddess, I agree. Ever since my incident with my ex, I've stopped journal writing. Started picking it up again lately, but I'm wary of it.

It is a two fold problem. Or more. I want to write to work things out AND to re-read later to remember my life. However, let's say I start writing things about my kids, who are adults now. I die. Then they read the stuff later. Some of it may be negative. Like, how come Colin NEVER CALLS or emails? Doesn't he love me? Sigh...

Maybe it's best to write on the computer, maybe in a disguised folder labeled "Butterfly mating habits in Equador". Then others are not likely to open it, or they won't have your password, or...you'll probably give them your password on your deathbed so they can get the money, and not the government...

Since I pay everything? online, I would want them, or the eldest son, to stop the automatic deductions from the checking account...another good discussion topic actually. Do you pay online or thru snail mail or over the phone? This is a identity theft fear question...


Mocha
Member

08-12-2001

Saturday, January 28, 2006 - 10:40 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Mocha a private message Print Post    
Just create a blog online. No need to keep a file on your puter.

Max
Moderator

08-12-2000

Saturday, January 28, 2006 - 10:54 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post Send Max a private message Print Post    
I've been thinking about starting a blog, but more for talking about some of my hobbies than really journaling. Just need to get some time to check it out and figure out which service to use. :-)

As for bills, I have as much as possible set up on automatic payments either directly from my checking account or from my credit card (so I can get points/mileage). The rest I usually pay via my credit union's BillPay system, but sometimes I'll send a good old fashioned check via snail mail. :-)