notquiteold

Nancy Roman

Category Archives: Aging

The Popular Table, Part 1

I had excellent friends in high school. They were smart and funny and generous. We went to basketball games, and talked about boys, and complained about parents. We sat at the same lunch table every day and laughed and cried over our tunafish sandwiches. But still, there was this tiny disloyal part of me that …

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The Horrible, Though Imaginary, Family Secret

My maternal grandparents came to the US from Poland before World War I. They came separately – they didn’t meet until they were here for several years. As a matter of fact, my grandfather met and married someone else first, a young woman who died in the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918. I don’t know …

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I’ve Changed My Mind

About eight years ago, my husband and I moved to the country. Okay, not “country’ country. We’re one mile from the highway. But it’s a very second-rate highway. And there’s a sheep farm down the road. And watching those sheep, and driving around our little patch of rural Connecticut, I have been overcome with desire. …

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I’m Exhausted

My exercise schedule is wearing me out. Not the exercise. The schedule. I readily admit that I am not the busiest person in the world. Every single person with a kid or a grandkid is busier than I am. But still. How in the world am I supposed to obtain a gorgeous body that my …

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Eureka, Sort Of

Today I will meander through a couple of little stories, but eventually I will stroll on over to the point. When I was young I had a secret ambition (which I still have but I’m not young and it’s not a secret) to solve some great mystery. This desire started of course with Nancy Drew books. …

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Dis-Stressing

Since I am committed to  Improving My Perfections, it is probably not a surprise to you that I love Self-Help stuff. Books, articles, TV shows.  I want to learn the True Secret of  Eternal Happiness, and I am sure someone must have found it, and would like to make money off of it.  And I …

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Practically Perfect

When last we met (well, almost every time we’ve met), I discussed a few of my husband’s little quirks. It’s probably my laziest subject – there’s not much challenge here. He has so many quirks and I watch him – and them – incessantly. But fair is fair, so I figured I should now reveal …

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Inherited Quirks

My mother-in-law raised her boy with a few of her little quirks. I think I have mentioned before (maybe five or six times) that he never throws anything away. When he gets a new J.C. Whitney catalog, he puts it right besides the seventeen old ones. When I gently (but perhaps not in my inside …

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I’m Taking It As A Compliment

I’m a late bloomer. Like really late. I was a cute kid, but in a weird-looking half-elf/half-orphan-from-Ellis-Island sort of cute. No one would have wanted to cast me in a commercial, although I was hankering strongly to be in one. “I can do that,” I said to my mother. “I can eat Wonder Bread. I …

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Not Mad As Hell

But definitely peeved as all get out. Does anyone even used the term “all get out” anymore?  If not, then THAT peeves me too. I have had a very peevish week. It started last Saturday. I ran into Target to buy the Easter equivalent of stocking-stuffers for the little ones in my family. I knew …

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