Seniormemos.com documents the “journey of an only daughter navigating the waters of senior care for her parents.”

The daughter lives on the East Coast and her parents on the West Coast. They see each other several times a year and stay connected via the phone. But each new year proves more challenging than the last.

Some fixes are simple, like this one about finding an easier-to-use toilet. Others are much tougher, such as this one where the daughter decides to downsize after seeing she has bought into the same “Bigger-Better-More” lifestyle that has complicated her parents’ lives.

In this post, the daughter writes a 10-tip list of what she’s looking for in helping her parents explore senior living options. The list is concise and helpful and we especially loved Tip No. 10:

“Use your nose. This was a tip I got from a nurse I had a conversation with on the airplane coming back from a visit to my parents. She has worked in retirement/nursing homes for over 20 years and told me that if you walk into a place and it has an odor in the common areas … walk away. She said it’s the easiest way to determine if a facility is staffed properly to maintain sanitary living conditions.”

Eds Note: It seems impersonal calling her “the daughter,” but she has chosen not to identify herself on her site, a prudent choice given today’s lack of privacy on the Internet.

Eileen is a Chicago “Trend Spotter” who’s still working while thinking about retirement. She’s reached the point where comfort is a priority, especially when it comes to dealing with her arthritis.

She speaks for many of us when she writes about adjusting for comfort at home, including what her comfort-level demands in the way of clothing:

“It’s making me pickier and pickier in terms of clothes. Clothes that stretch and don’t get in the way when I need to bend my knees or reach over my head.  Coats and jackets that are light in weight so they don’t drag on my shoulders when I’m driving or walking, especially walking quickly.   Sweaters that keep me warm but aren’t itchy, especially around the neck.  (I just decided to give away a super-warm Missoni sweater meant to wear at some ski lodge that is knit beautifully but out of scratchy mohair).  Shoes that don’t pinch my toes or have too low or high a heel; boots that let my ankles bend and have rubber soles to help keep me from slipping on snow or ice.”

(via Life Meets Work)

Muffy Jorn, a registered nurse who blogs at Big Grey Birds, posts about a funny, but not funny, night of sleeplessness. Unfortunately, too many of us can relate:

Since the whole rheumatoid arthritis thing really blew up, my sleeping has not been so great. I am sure it is at least partly medication related; for instance, steroids cause insomnia, and I have been taking them for four years straight. Sometimes pain has kept me awake, and then if you throw the peri-menopausal insomnia into the mix, it is probably surprising I sleep at all. Oh-did I mention jimmy legs?

In this post, she writes about finally falling asleep only to be jolted awake by hiccups so severe it leaves her dogs thinking ala Dorothy Parker, “Hmmm. What fresh hell is this?”

We don’t believe these are going to catch fire, so to speak, and appear in many homes, but it’s good to know you can, if you wish, warm your breasts with a computer attachment. (Did we really just write that?)

On the one hand, just the idea of USB breast warmers seems so silly. On the other, there are many times we can remember when “the girls” seemed eternally frozen while our feet had booties and our hands had mittens.

Where would you use these? Maybe plugged into your laptop computer in the stands at a Green Bay Packers Football game? Not likely, though the Japanese-based firm Thanko seems to think they will sell somewhere.

Eds. Note: We can’t imagine they would be very comfortable, and comfort is what we are all about. At the end of a long day, our favorite saying is “Time to let the girls out.”

(via BoingBoing)

Liz McLellan is on a mission to turn front and back yards everywhere into gardens of abundance. She’s the founder of Hyperlocavore.com, a new Web site dedicated to hooking people up to yard-share in urban and suburban areas.

A hyperlocavore is a person who tries to eat as much food as locally as possible and, as Liz says, “growing your own is as local as it gets!”

Here in The Gimpy Gardens, we - Cait & Marty - share a large backyard packed with metal garbage cans and discarded livestock water and feed troughs used as raised beds. Come summer, it is a veritable suburban Garden of Eden.

We’ve signed on as members at Hyperlocavore and encourage you to do the same. It’s a great way to match people of different physical abilities to get more from the land and life.

You can follow Liz here, where she alerts us to the latest videos and news on yard-sharing.

Three sisters who own and manage wild bird specialty stores use their decades of experience to show you how to make your backyard a bird oasis.

Through their book, Anne Schmauss, Mary Schmauss and Geni Krolick explain what birds are looking for in terms of food, water, habitat and nesting every month of the year.

In 224 colorful pages, these three bird experts share their time-tested tips and tricks for attracting the most interesting variety of birds to your backyard.

To enter, leave a comment below about what birds are in your backyard now, what you enjoy about birds or a vexing problem you have in attracting and feeding birds. Winner will be chosen at random Feb. 28th. Because of shipping costs, you must live in North America. Sorry Timbuktu.

In this video, a New York City dance company called “Gimp” turns a prevailing notion of physical handicaps on its head with leaps and lifts.

Click here, then press any key and drag.

check out this 9-month-old baby’s 4-hour play time smooshed into two minutes of video.

And were these girls really girls?