By Pam “Gates” Johnson It’s not spring, so why has the spring cleaning bug landed on my shoulder and begun to scream in my ear? It is telling me … PURGE! CLEAN! DOWNSIZE! I ignored the screams until they started to drown out everything and take over most of my waking thoughts. Okay. I get it….
By Pam (aka Gates) Johnson When you think about it, sleep is kind of a weird thing. It is an altered state that can creep up on you at any time, day or night. When you are in it, you don’t know what is going on around you. Sometimes it is deep and unconscious. Sometimes…
By Pam “Gates” Johnson You have to be a friend to make a friend. As I get older, I’m realizing how true that old saw is. It was a lesson that took a long time to learn. So here we go into the way-back machine. When I first came to Vashon, the only person I knew…
By Pam (Gates) Johnson Sometimes, living in an apartment doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Let me give you a little backstory. I’ve been living on my little farm since 1975. It has a house (duh), a barn, an orchard, a garden, a big lawn, and fenced pastures. My life-long dream was to live on…
By Pam (aka Gates) Johnson Oh yeah, everybody says it’s better than the alternative, but I’m not sure. Nobody I know has tried the alternative enough to give me a firm evaluation on the pros and cons. I’m not saying that I am ready to shuffle off this mortal coil just yet, but again, getting…
By Pam (aka Gates) Johnson If you’ve read a few of my columns, you probably guessed that I like to cook. Nothing much pleases me more than to prepare a meal for friends and family. Back in my school-working days, I would make meals for the entire McMurray staff, 30 people or so. It was…
By Pam (“Gates”) Johnson The on-going health saga of Ma Johnson continues. After a little heart-related health scare recently, the doctors decided that the root cause may be sleep apnea. We all know at least 10 people who have sleep apnea and are getting along just fine with a CPAP machine, so my fear-ometer dropped…
By Gates Johnson What does one my age do when the holiday chaos has passed? Remember all those appointments and meetings and lunches and whatnot that got put on the back burner while attending to more pressing things? Well, the time has come. So, here I go. First off, those visits to specialists that were…
By Pam (aka Gates) Johnson Seems like this time of year, it’s all about the food. I spent five days and about three hundred bucks preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for just seven people. If you are brave enough to read this to the end, you will find out the answer to an important Thanksgiving-related question….
By Pam (aka Gates) Johnson One of the great things about aging on Vashon is Tuesday at the local IGA. If you are on the south side of 50 – or is it 55 – you get a 10% discount on your entire order every Tuesday. This is a serious bonus if you, like me,…