Curiosity Journal: January 26, 2012

Each Wednesday I’ve been recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the previous week using these tag words: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing.

I’m late this week, however, so I’m posting on Thursday.

Hope you don’t mind.

:::

Reading

A few articles, mostly about brain-sharpening:

• “A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond” from The New York Times
• “Buff Your Brain” from Newsweek (via The Daily Beast)
• Though I disagreed with a couple of the suggestions, I appreciated several ideas mentioned in “31 Ways to Get Smarter in 2012,” from Newsweek (via The Daily Beast)
  

Also, unrelated to the mind, I really enjoyed the article in The New York Times about Finders Key, the horse who starred in “Seabiscuit” and “War Horse.”

Playing

It’s been a big week for games. We’ve been playing Rummy and Bananagrams with my mom, who recently moved in with us, and one of my daughters has been challenging me to electronic Scrabble and Words with Friends.

By the way, the first idea in that Newsweek article about getting smarter in 2012 recommends playing Words with Friends to help reduce risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia, so…what are we waiting for? Anyone up for a round?

Learning

See “Reading.”

Reacting

As I mentioned, my mom moved in with us recently. Because the kids call her Grandma, I will on my blog here, too.

She and my son were playing rummy at the kitchen table the other day, candles left lit from mealtime still flickering. Sometimes Grandma would win, sometimes he would win. They’d laugh together, jokingly groaning if the other played a good hand.

As I puttered around the kitchen cleaning up, my son looked up and asked me, “How long is Grandma going to stay with us?”

“As long as she needs to,” I answered.

“You said it would be at least a week,” he said, “and tonight makes it exactly a week. And so I just wondered how much longer.”

“Well,” I said, “the doctor said she would need us to be nearby to check on her until she gets better, for at least a week. So she’s with us as long as she needs us, and she can stay as long as she likes.”

He nodded and grinned. “I like that,” he said. “I like that a lot.”

Writing

No writing projects of consequence to note this week.

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Credits: Banana Splits/Bananagrams photo by Sophie Marie. All other images by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.

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