Betty Rhodes

Stop the merry-go-round, I want to get off.

My friend, Don Fraser, of St. Helena, sent me a vintage “Peanuts” strip from the 1940s in which Snoopy is watching a bird and saying: “Gee, it would be nice to be a bird and then if you weren’t satisfied where you were you could take off and then if you weren’t satisfied there, you could take off again… Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! Whew!

I’m not sure I could stand all that zooming.”

I can relate. I’ve been doing a huge amount of zooming and it’s time to put the brakes on.

I treasure leading a full and, hopefully, productive life.

It’s just that periodically, I take a little inventory. Is my life still the life I want to be living?

Am I getting the satisfaction from life I was six months ago? How’s the energy level?

I’ve just recently completed an excellent program in Leadership Napa Valley.

One of the things I learned was that I want to continue learning and that I want to find a way to give something back to our community.

I have many heroes here in the valley. Three who come to mind immediately are Napa Mayor Jill Techel, former Napa County Health & Human Services Director Terry Longoria and Napa Valley College Board of Trustees member JoAnn Busenbark.

Through them I have learned patience, to know my subject better than anyone else, to build a good team, and so much more that I hope to keep learning from them forever.

I know that I must never stop learning if I expect to keep reaching new goals. In my heart, I’m eager to get going.

But in stopping the merry-go-round, I realize that I’ve been neglecting myself.

This ol’ girl needs to get back to the basics of good nutrition and exercise and the occasional meditation.

I took my first step and signed up for the summer semester at the college for my favorite exercise class, Adaptive PE.

I’ll be jumping in, head first, this morning at 7:50.

Next on the agenda is tackling that eating thing. I’m a great fan of the occasional popcorn-and-beer dinner.

Or I’ll have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while leaning over the kitchen sink. Terrible —and how many times have I lectured in this column about good nutrition? I guess I’m just lazy.

Living alone doesn’t bother me. Eating alone bothers me.

A few weekends ago, my two granddaughters and I spent time cooking and freezing turkey chili, spaghetti and many other comfort foods, but that’s all gone now and I’m back to PB&J sandwiches again.

I just want something fast and easy. So my plan is to get over it.

Eating alone is not fun, but so what? Sometimes life isn’t fair and your buddy, partner, hubby is taken away from you.

My husband, Tom, would shake me right now and scold me for being such a wimp. And he’d be right.

Time to put away the peanut butter and stop zooming for a little while.

Senior Corner appears every other Monday, alternating in this space with Jim Ford’s Napa As It Was. Betty can be reached at bettyrrhodes@sbcglobal.net.