one %

"99% of people born before 1946 are already gone."

That seems to be about right.  I seem to meet fewer and fewer people who are older than me.  Sooner or later even that percentage will shrink.  Maybe that is why having friends who are the same age or older is so special.  Or is to me, anyway.  Thankfully, most of my older mates are quite inspirational.  I'm going to visit one such older friend next week, a lady whose life in older age is not at all easy but she smiles  through it all, and her mind is as sharp as ever.  Until now I've never given much thought to growing old gracefully.  Now might be the time to do so.

I'm enjoying this spring season, I think I'm becoming more observant.  Having the time to do that is a gift.

I'm  trying to start each day being thankful.  Not just for waking up to another day, that doesn't actually cross my mind.  This might sound a bit silly but right now here is what brings me joy.  At this time of year around the time that I wake each morning, a light shadow crosses my bedroom wall almost exactly in the same place where the light falls in this photo which I took at the magnificent abbey at Mont Saint Michel in France in 2015.  It has yet to align perfectly, either the outside sun isn't bright enough or the time isn't quite right but any day now it might be.

I call this photo the stairway to heaven.  I took it after climbing the 350 steps up the abbey to where a grilled gate blocked any further access to tourists.   So I stuck my camera through the grill and was lucky enough to catch the sun's rays lighting the way to what I thought must surely be heaven.

The photo is fading a bit now and I've though about having it re-printed but my eyesight is fading, too, so it doesn't seem important.

My cat could tell you I'm definitely getting soft in my older age.  I haven't got over feeling guilty about the trauma I caused her by moving here and do my best to make her life happy.  I think she knows and is now manipulating me.  I don't know why she thinks she owns the little desk which is shared by my sewing machine and laptop.  She sits behind the machine and  scowls at me when I use it, obviously doesn't appreciate the vibrations.

I put the laptop somewhere else when I'm sewing, then the machine gets pushed to one side to  make room for it when I want to visit blogland.  Which inconveniences her considerably.    It seems a bit churlish to mention the difficulty I have using the mouse.