Tuesday, November 19, 2013

My Brain! My Brain!

I regularly read Louis Plummer's blog The Chattering Crow.  Recently she wrote about Luminosity, the website which touts games to retain one's brain life as one ages.  I had visited the site once, and after reading her blog entry, I was reminded about the site.  (OK, it already does not bode well for my brain, if I have already visited a "brain" site, but don't recall it until I read another blog about said site.)

Here's what I wrote in a comment to Louis Plummer's blog entry:

"I am 53 and in serious trouble.  I went to Luminosity this morning.  I have only been to this site one other time.  I forgot my login email, and my password.  Luminosity cheered me on:  'You're doing great!  Almost there!'

I played a Find the Grackle and Remember the Number game.  I earned four cards, to make a heron.  Then I wondered if I needed to remember that it was a heron that I earned?  Was this a trap?  As I was musing this possibility, I missed the next two turns.  And then i earned a card with 1/4 of a white bird's head.  What kind of bird is that, I wondered.  Oops.  Missed another turn.  Earned a card on next turn.  Was that a goose?  A bald eagle?  I successfully earned all four cards to reveal an albatross.  That made my mine go to Samuel Coleridge... "


So, today.  I did a 7.5 mile walk/run.  (I walk till I feel like running, and then run till I feel like walking.)  As I was out on this jaunt, I noticed, most of all, the clouds.  So pretty!  The sky was the blue that makes one want to see the Mediterranean.

And the mackerel-sky clouds were layered, perhaps every 3000'.  I went to a church ladies' meeting this afternoon (Lydia Circle) during which we went around discussing blessings of the day.  I described the clouds on my extended walk, and finished by saying that people on LSD probably enjoy that same view.  I am not sure how that came into my head, but I opened my mouth and out popped the words.

After Lydia Circle I headed back home to rural Kansas to finish out my day.  Nearly home, along our rural highway, I spied two large-ish bovine (bull or steer, I don't know which, but surely large) out on the highway.  Seconds before, an on-coming semi had braked to a halt.  No one wants to hit a cow.  I knew who to call (I have all our surrounding ranchers on speed dial on my cell phone.)

Ring, ring.  "Hi, Trish."  "Hi, Joe.  How are you?"  "I am fine.  How are you?"  "I am just fine, thank you very much.  You have two cows out ...blahblahblah", as I gave the precise directions.

Here's the funny.  I spent part of my morning yesterday determining in my memory where the !&*#@! grackles were in the Luminosity game, and here I am, a day later, playing "Where Exactly are the Bulls?" with a rancher neighbor.

He asked, "Are they in the grass?"  I thought.  And thought.  "Well, they WERE on the highway." (What grass?!)  "Now they're in the ditch.  Is there anything I can do?  But I don't want to get out of my car.  They are kicking their heels up and feeling frisky."

I heard him sigh.  No, he'd be down in a few minutes.  At this point, the semi had passed, the bovine were in the ditch, and I was headed back home.

Rural Kansas.  Luminosity.

1 comment:

Louise Plummer said...

HA! All of life is a brain game. What you need to know about Lumosity is that you spend the first few weeks just learning how to play.

Then you learn that you don't have to accept a low score. You play the game until you get the score you want. Things smooth out from there. Just don't look at what your score means for age thirty.

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