Aging from a useful man to something considerably less

@methel just today I experience, or re-experienced, one of the more hilarious things about being old and trying to hang on to gardening. We've been in a spring, summer, and fall long drought in Minnesota and I'm used to watering my vegetables from a rain barrel. That requires me to fill a couple of two and a half gallon buckets and Hike the water up the hillside in my backyard to where the plants are trying to live. This year in particular, I have regularly accidentally emptied my rain barrel but forgetting to turn it off after the buckets are filled. That's a pretty funny reminder of where my mind is going.

@twday67 Stop multi tasking and just think of what you are doing. Your mind always finds another topic.

I will fill a watering can and use it while the second is being filled. Works fine with the buckets close to the rain barrel. The problem is when I notice something and attend to it thinking I have time. I don’t.

Let that be our only problem in life.

It’s depressing and discouraging to concentrate on what I can no longer do so I don’t. I do the things I can with gusto. Now my wife may not agree on what I can no longer do and what I can still do. 😉

As my ex mother in law would say in her later years, "Old age is not for the faint of heart!" I sympathize with those who are aging alone having lost their spouse. I can't imagine what that would be like.
My father died of lung cancer at 77 and my mother died of, "old age" according to her doctor who put that on her death certificate. She was 97. They were very much in love and it was very difficult for my mother when my father died. Those 20+ years after my father died my Mom was never alone.
She sold the house and moved into a, as she called it, "Senior High Rise"! She, almost immediately, became the "Mayor" of the manor!
She organized day trips to the casinos; bowling teams and leagues, weekly swimming at the local municipal indoor pool; card games; birthday parties for everyone in the building; weekly outings to local restaurants; and, on and on! Residents that never left their rooms became active again. If they didn't, she would discover what they missed or what they enjoyed and got them involved. A silent building became a fun-house! Her mantra was "you're not dead until you are so, let's have some fun!"
I'm 80 in December and a physician told me when I was diagnosed with some aggressive cancer this year: "Men are living on the average until 82. You've got some years left!"
I thought about what he just said and I wanted to tell him what my Mom would have told him, "You're no longer my doctor, you're fired and don't let the door hit you on the way out!" She also would have added a few, as we call, "swear words" into that comment!
P.S. My aggressive cancer was taken care of by an excellent Mayo physician a few weeks ago and I plan to live until at least 98! Gotta beat Mom's 97!

As my ex mother in law would say in her later years, "Old age is not for the faint of heart!" I sympathize with those who are aging alone having lost their spouse. I can't imagine what that would be like.
My father died of lung cancer at 77 and my mother died of, "old age" according to her doctor who put that on her death certificate. She was 97. They were very much in love and it was very difficult for my mother when my father died. Those 20+ years after my father died my Mom was never alone.
She sold the house and moved into a, as she called it, "Senior High Rise"! She, almost immediately, became the "Mayor" of the manor!
She organized day trips to the casinos; bowling teams and leagues, weekly swimming at the local municipal indoor pool; card games; birthday parties for everyone in the building; weekly outings to local restaurants; and, on and on! Residents that never left their rooms became active again. If they didn't, she would discover what they missed or what they enjoyed and got them involved. A silent building became a fun-house! Her mantra was "you're not dead until you are so, let's have some fun!"
I'm 80 in December and a physician told me when I was diagnosed with some aggressive cancer this year: "Men are living on the average until 82. You've got some years left!"
I thought about what he just said and I wanted to tell him what my Mom would have told him, "You're no longer my doctor, you're fired and don't let the door hit you on the way out!" She also would have added a few, as we call, "swear words" into that comment!
P.S. My aggressive cancer was taken care of by an excellent Mayo physician a few weeks ago and I plan to live until at least 98! Gotta beat Mom's 97!

@mikead63 Excuse me, I mean your ex-mother-in-law.

@gloaming Obviously I am pretty confused and useless when it comes to most of accommodating lost capacity. And I only have about 50' of gutters to deal with, but they are 8-12' above the ground.

Last year I decided climbing up on the roof to scrape the gutters clear or balancing on the top of a ladder and pushing the junk out bare handed wasn't a good way to enter the fall mobile and unbroken. So, I bought about 8 ft of the lightest weight, then it's wall, PVC pipe I could find, added a couple of 90° couplings to make 180° bend to the end of it, attached the pipe to my leaf blower, and blasted all of the leaf and pine litter out of my gutters without having to do anything dangerous. I don't think they have ever been cleaner. And it took me about a half hour to do the whole job. Maybe that will be useful to you?

@mikead63 Excuse me, I mean your ex-mother-in-law.