Confession is good for the soul. Or so they say. So I guess it’s time for me to confess that I almost forgot to write this month’s column.

When it dawned on me, earlier this week, that I needed to get with the program and have something written by Thursday (‘cause that’s the day Saturday’s Daily World is assembled) I started panicking. I had no idea what to write about.

Then I remembered my column of December 2014 — in honor of my 67th birthday — “I may be old, but at least I am.” I decided to do a 10-year anniversary of that column.

So, here I am still working late into my 7os and as I’ve been known to say many times in answer to the questions about when I’m going to retire — “I’m here until they close the place down or decide to kick me to the curb.”

I really like my job and the folks I work with and I’m afraid if I did retire, I would go stir crazy. I don’t know what I’d do with all that spare time. I don’t have any hobbies — I don’t sew, I hate gardening and I can’t think of any clubs I’d like to join or places I’d like to volunteer. I do enjoy spending time with our kids and grandkids but they live several hours away and after being together for three or four days I’m worn out and ready for the peace and quiet of our Central Park home and getting back to work. I do enjoy a good book and of course, I like to sleep. The only other thing I really like to do is cook and bake but when there’s only two of us in the house, all those calories can be real dangerous.

Over the past several years, stairs seem steeper, cupboards are higher off the ground and it’s much harder to get down on the floor to look for my crochet hook or TV remote that might be hiding under the couch. I’ve learned to always hold on to the railing going up or down any stairs, only using my right foot ‘cause my left ankle likes to give out every once in a while with no warning. I keep a small stepstool ready to reach those rarely used large bowls on the top shelf in the kitchen ‘cause my shoulders don’t extend as far as they used to and my fingers can’t grasp as tightly as before. And when I do drop something on the floor before I get down on my knees to retrieve it, I have to make very sure there’s a chair or couch or stool I can use to hoist myself up. And it’s still a struggle with a lot of groaning and complaining.

The most obvious issue that I’ve noticed within the last couple of years is my brain not being as fully engaged as I remember it being.

Like how aggravating it is when simple words get stuck somewhere in my brain and don’t want to come out. It doesn’t happen every day but often enough to be a bother. They’re usually everyday words — like when I was telling my husband about this fantastic play they showed on Monday Night Football. “And he caught the 42-yard pass and scored a …..” and then I’m stuck trying to find that word. I finally end up saying, “Can’t think of the word — you know — when the guy crosses the line and scores 6 points — oh yeah, touchdown.”

Or the other day when I told my granddaughter I thought she would be excited that we were having asparagus for dinner when what I meant to say was “applesauce.”

And then there’s the times I find myself going to the kitchen to get something but as soon as I get there, I forget what I’m after. So I do something else, go back where I came from and sometime later (could be hours/could be days later) I remember what it was I didn’t do. My brother used to call this the “Here After Disease” — that’s when you walk into a room and say “What is it I’m ‘here after’?”

And the most frustrating part for me I think, is how difficult it is to learn something new. We recently bought a new TV and thank goodness our youngest daughter and her family came down from Maple Valley for our early Christmas weekend and they were able to set it all up for us. As they worked on getting everything plugged in and then programmed the remote, I thought to myself “There’s no way Mike and I would have been able to do all that.” We had a couple of hour-long “let’s practice how to use the remote” sessions, as well as instructions I wrote down on my steno pad and three or four videos they made for us — “How to use the new TV,” “How to find premium channels” and “How to get out of closed captioning.” And so far everything is working well.

Well folks. That’s it for 2024. One of my new year’s resolutions is to start working on my columns earlier in the month, but we’ll see how that works out!

Karen Barkstrom is the editorial assistant for The Daily World. She can be reached at 360-537-3925 or karen.barkstrom@thedailyworld.com.