Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

It’s not like I wake up every day in a cold sweat, worried that I might have Alzheimer's. Or that if I'm not actually presenting symptoms right now, I'll be presenting them soon. Sometimes I can go for hours before I grope helplessly for a word and remember I actually have something to worry about. Alzheimer's is the disease that took my mother; frankly, knowing it's often hereditary scares the (fill in the bleep) out of me. It wasn't death that took her, it was her gradual disappearance in the years before she died; day by day, week by week, and month by month, when it was so hard to find the woman I knew, the mother I remembered, inside. So, despite my husband and my son's insistence that my memory lapses are nothing to worry about, I do worry, and when I misplaced my phone this week, I couldn't help recalling my mother's constant refrain "Where's my purse? Has anyone seen my purse?" "Has anyone seen my phone?" I asked

Throwback Thursday. I sometimes use the day as an excuse to look back, pull up some older piece from the past. I don’t have the energy to do that today, not after  the monstrous mass murder of 17 people in Parkland, Florida yesterday. I’m not just heartbroken and heartsick, I’m sick and tired of it.  If I do look to the past, I know nothing will change. Nothing changed after the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012, when twenty—mostly small children—were killed in cold blood. Nothing will change this time.  Especially not with the current administration in place. Trump actually just rolled back an Obama era law that put those who  received Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database. [ NBC: Trump signs bill revoking Obama era law ] Trump basically said that even if you have mental health issues, go ahead buy a gun. Better yet. Buy an AR-15. Why kill one person when you can

The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens IF there is a heaven, it’s lovely to think that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are happily reunited for all time. Watching the second season of Victoria, Lord Melbourne finally out of the Queen’s head, we see the young Victoria’s absolute devotion to her handsome prince consort. I’d be swooning over Albert too if he looked like Tom Hughes. The real Queen’s devotion to her man—besides bearing him five children—begins with her commissioning of the Albert Memorial in honor of the prince consort who died in 1861. We ran into the Albert Memorial last year on our trip to London when we were walking in Kensington Gardens. As you can see in the top picture, the memorial is directly to the north of the Royal Albert Hall. Royal Albert Hall Victoria’s love and devotion is further evidenced—remember, Victoria wore black for all the remaining days of her life after his death—by her naming of the  Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences in 18

Photo by Adam Kloketka via My Modern Met I love the snow. As long as it’s out and I’m in. Despite the romantic appeal of the sound of the crunch of snow beneath a pair of brand new leather boots on a starlit Christmas night, snow is cold. Too cold for me. Growing up in Canada, winter days could get so cold that not only did the freezing temps blanket the ground with two feet of white fluff, a severely cold winter could cause the falls to freeze over completely. That's happened this year, the cold snap transforming the falls into something from a sci-fi flick. Back in my day, along with those snowfalls came some painful cases of popsicle toes. As a child, I’d hobble in from outside and stand next to the radiator, pain stabbing at my feet, tears pricking my eyes while my mother gently unbuckled my snow boots so she could rub my numb feet back to life.  Living in Southern California my snow days, thankfully, are far behind me. Winter—real winter—has just never been my season.