Summer break ends: What changed while I was away

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Summer break ends: What changed while I was away

Grandma’s Briefs is back! Yep, the summer break I announced at the start of June is officially over.

While I was away from the site, a few changes took place. Some big, some small. Here’s a (relatively) quick update:

For starters, one blog change is that Grandma’s Briefs hit the 10-year mark in July! Hard to believe but true, as you can see from my very first post, published a decade ago.

Another blog change is that you’ll see a few new faces in the Meet the Family section of the sidebar, those being of Andrea’s new …

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Flashback: 10 signs of aging gracefully

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Flashback: 10 signs of aging gracefully

Dear readers: This piece on the secret to aging gracefully originally appeared on Grandma’s Briefs on March 24, 2013. Six years later, the signs still resonate with me. I hope they do with you, too. Thank you for reading my rerun.

When it comes to aging gracefully, forget the face creams, hair colors and exercises — the physical manifestations others see as we rack up the years. Instead, I prefer to focus on a different kind of trait that others see, one I think trumps the physical when considering how gracefully others are aging and how gracefully I'm aging myself.

That trait? It's attitude. For, as age is just…

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Disrupt aging: Today's grandmas smash the stereotype... even when embracing it

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Disrupt aging: Today's grandmas smash the stereotype... even when embracing it

Disclosure: This post made possible with support from AARP's Disrupt Aging. All opinions are my own.

When I first started my blog in 2009, one of the "editorial guidelines" I set for myself was that I would not post photos of myself on my website. At that time I had been a grandma for a little over a year, and in those twelve-plus months, when I shared my grandma status with strangers—retail clerks, random folks encountered while out and about, friends-in-the-making, and so forth—I was more often than not met with the comment, "You don't look like a grandma."

As a goal for my blog was to establish myself as a go-to guide for all things related to the grandmother lifestyle, I determined that—based on such comments—posting pictures of myself might…

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Saturday movie review: Still Dreaming

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Saturday movie review: Still Dreaming

As our parents age and we consider how we can best assist and accommodate them in their later years, we baby boomers become more and more familiar with assisted living centers, nursing homes, and similar facilities Mom and/or Dad might at some point consider home. Many of our parents already reside in such spots, others of us may be in the researching-for-someday phase of the sandwich situation.

As is the case with most things, negative stories and worrisome aspects of assisted living centers and nursing homes get the most headlines, cause the most headaches. Yet there are indeed many positive—and true—tales to tell of facilities doing fun, fabulous, innovative, and invigorating things for the elderly folks they care for and, in many cases, consider family.

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Grandma salutes Shinedown

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shinedown in Colorado Springs

One of my earliest articles published — in a newspaper, not on a blog — was in the early '90s and was titled Mosh-pit Mom. My husband and I used to go to a lot of concerts back then, most of them the rockin' kind with moshpits on the floor, all of them during the years I was a mom with three fairly young daughters.

It's been a few decades since I've had to protect myself from flailing feet on a concert floor, quite a few years since I've marveled at the moxie of the moshers from afar. Due to lack of funds as well as lack of touring bands we were willing to shell out our pennies to see, my husband and I have...

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Saturday movie review: Youth

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The movie YOUTH has a lot going for it. Beautiful imagery. Dreamlike cinematography. A soul-stirring score with ethereal notes floating throughout. A superior cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Paul Dano, Rachel Weisz, Jane Fonda. Poignant scenes featuring that cast, all marked by longing, melancholy, loneliness, folks young and old searching for wisdom, connection, contentment.

YOUTH movie

What YOUTH doesn't have, though, is a satisfying story. I watched and waited, often...

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Saturday movie review: I'll See You In My Dreams

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I'll just come right out and say it up front: This is a lovely film! You should see it!

 i'll see you in my dreams

I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS has a lovely cast. Of older people! There's Blythe Danner, Sam Elliott, Rhea Perlman, June Squibb, Mary Kay Place. All older, all lovely, all a joy to watch in this film. There's a younger guy and gal, too: Martin Starr, whom I...

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Fearless at 50: AARP spotlights feisty female skateboarders over fifty

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skateboard moms

The older I get, the more I consciously strive to engage in experiences that scare me a bit. Just this past weekend, in fact, I climbed to the very top of five lighthouses in Michigan in the face of fears my MS would keep me from going all the way to the light—and back down again—without fumbling, stumbling and falling flat on my face or fanny.

Also over the weekend, I took an aerial flight in an itsy...

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Saturday movie review: While We're Young

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If you're one of those people who, regardless of your age or stage of life, still feel like you're not quite one of the grown ups, that you're a youngster pretending to do and be what folks your age should be doing, then WHILE WE'RE YOUNG will resonate. I assure you I am one of those people, and I assure you the recent dramedy from writer/director Noah Baumbach hit home—and the heart—on multiple levels.

While We're Young comedy

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts, both teetering on joining the 50+ club in real life play 40-something Josh and Cornelia, a...

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Saturday movie review: Cyber-Seniors

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I do most of my connecting with my grandsons and their mama (my daughter) in various long-distance manners, most of which are online or via FaceTime. So I fully understand the value of being online and the importance of helping seniors get online.

Which is why I believe the documentary CYBER-SENIORS should be viewed by anyone who has an elderly parent or other loved one who could connect with friends and family online but has been hesitant to learn how to do it.

Today, though, I'm actually with my grandsons and their mama—visiting them in the desert rather than seeing pictures online or chit-chatting over FaceTime—so this movie review must be quick...so I can get on with the visiting. Here goes:

Cyber-Seniors documentary

Bare bones, bottom line: CYBER-SENIORS is super! And the poignant...

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