Category: Uncategorized

Book Binge

BooksI am on a serious book binge, and when I say serious, I mean a major hording episode.  I mean I am exchanging baby pictures with the UPS man. I mean OUT OF CONTROL.

I have adored books since I was a little girl when we had Scholastic Book Club in my Catholic grammar school. Several times a year our nun-teachers would solicit our book orders , but the biggest and most exciting order was the one for our summer reading lists.  After more than 45 years, I STILL have some of those books, including Candy Stripers, Willow Hill, Everybody Calls Me Father, and one of my all-time favorites, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  I still can feel the thrill of getting that order of brand-new, off-the-press paperbacks: smelling the fresh ink and fanning the pages. Bliss.

You know what? I do the same thing today. I smell the ink and fan the pages. In fact, friends and families find my page-smelling habit rather peculiar. I say, let them smell their roses and leave me to my book bliss.

Body Shaping 101

I was reading one of the women’s  magazines yesterday and I was struck by all the dieting, exercising, fashion-ista-izing, and botoxing articles it contained. Now don’t get me wrong – a healthy diet, exercise – all to the good.  In fact, I’m a great proponent of exercise – have been running, swimming, walking, etc. since I was a teenager. I also eat healthy, sleep well, and try to manage my stress levels.  Where I draw the line is in taking my natural form (body) and shaping, molding and squeezing it into clothes that are simply not designed for it.

Now, as I ‘ripen’ into my more fruitfully robust years, so does my body morph into a still healthy state, but somewhat altered shape. This shape is, truth be told, quite comfy and insular. It is fit, tight and well-tuned. What it isn’t, is sculpted. What it never will be – sculpted.

However, along with  this altered state comes a dilemma. It is called waistline. It is called great discomfort with many at the waist ‘cinches.’ My dilemma is that what’s comfy at the waist is huge everywhere else, and what fits elsewhere feels like a tourniquet  keeping the blood flowing to my lower body.

So what’s my point? It’s actually threefold. One, I am happy as a pig in a mud puddle in my own skin, ripened waist and all. Two – clothes designers of the world: TAKE HEED!! We Baby Boomer women are not of the ilk to sweat, starve and carve our way into your clothes. Third: I am here to sing the praises of elastic waistbands (… as long as they’re not too tight ….)

Life Skill Inventory

100_0612As it so happens, many of us take periodic inventories of our lives – where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going. These should be productive inventories, not great ruminations on past blunders and mistakes. I like to think of it as a take stock time when I can tally my new skills and see how they can benefit me as I move forward in life.

Today I discovered one such skill that I’d not previously recognized in proper context.  What is it? The art of picking up dog poop in a grocery bag during my twice-daily walks with my Boston Terrier Brinkley. (Aside: Way back when I had 4 other BTs, someone asked Brinkley’s name, and when I shared it, they said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t go out and get Huntley.’ It’s been 7 years: so far, so good).

Anyway, back to poop-bagging. Today, when I grabbed Brink’s poop in the used Wegmans  grocery bag, I used a smooth flicking motion with my wrist – it was almost poetic in its grace — deftly turning the bag inside-out, complete with poop inside. A single motion: swish and plop!

Maybe this is my new career: Poop bagging: a way to be a responsible dog owner/walker and a Zen type practice in wrist flicking. Face it, poop bagging is a hell of a lot better than shoveling all that shit you find in so many other (corporate) jobs.

Shattered Heads and Mugs

Humpty Dumpty
From: http://www.npengage.com/operations/lessons-from-humpty-dumpty/

I have to face the fact that for me, anyway, menopause has ushered in an era of ultimate klutz-hood. I am constantly tripping, dropping, banging into stuff and slipping, and why I am not yet dead is beyond me.

Example: my ‘sort of’ mother-in-law (another story for another day) was coming later in the day on Sunday, and I was in frenetic cleaning mode. I’d finished vacuuming the family room, and bent down to unplug the vacuum, when I felt searing pain and the flow of liquid to accompany it. . I’d rammed my head into the edge of the buffet, a mighty sharp edge, might I add.

The liquid was red and it was everywhere. My head hurt like samurai sword had stabbed it, and I wondered if I should call someone, drive myself to Urgent Care, or stick my head in the toilet. I did none of these things. Instead, as a good First Aider, I kept tons of paper towel with tons of pressure against the wound and wandered around the house alternately cursing my clumsiness and feeling deprived that  no one was home who would give me the appropriate sympathy.

mug
Similar to My Little Mug

Today: another tragedy – I dropped my beloved and totally funky little coffee mug. I have a thing for hand-made pottery, especially coffee mugs, and my favorite haunts to find them are thrift stores. A few months ago I found this squat, round-like-a-globe, blue and white mug that felt so good in my hand and reminded me a bit of my own mid-section rotundness.  I was whizzing around in fast-forward and I thought I placed my mug on the counter, but alas, it fell before I could catch it and shattered into myriad fragments, just like Humpty-Dumpty.

So, I am grieving my mug. I am pissed about my klutziness. I think it is time to slow down.

Maslow vs. Menopause

Have you ever felt like you were outside yourself? Like you’re sort of outside looking in? It’s a feeling like you’re watching, judging, and controlling your actions, your thoughts, your BEING from the outside. Like instead of walking down the street and thinking of whatever, like what you’re going to have for dinner, you’re walking down the street watching yourself walk down the street, and thinking about the fact that you’re walking down the street instead of just doing it.

I suspect this is one of those things in life that many of us go through until we achieve what Maslow calls self-actualization: realizing one’s potential, achieving self-fulfillment, and seeking growth and peak experiences.

I do not espouse to having achieved self-actualization in the true Maslow sense, but I do know that something is different. The question I pose is this: when did this ‘different-ness’ happen? When did I stop looking from the outside in? When did I feel comfy dashing out the door clad in sweats, no makeup, and hair askew? When did I stop being a waffler, a woman without an opinion and too scared to express one even if I did?

This new place feels free, fresh and exhilarating. It is sans the hellish ups and downs of the monthly hormone cocktail. It is gray and wrinkly and puffy in the middle. It is be healthy but have fun. It is a damn good place to be. It is menopause and I made it here in one piece!

 

 

Baby Boomers and STDs

boomers_rect-460x307Baby Boomer or not, this you’ve got to read:

In 2011, the most recent numbers available, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified more than 12,000 cases of gonorrhea, about 2,600 cases of syphilis and more than 22,000 cases of chlamydia in people ages 45 to 64.

This sure isn’t the world I grew up in where not only was the word sex forbidden, and I mean as in speaking it, but so were any unfortunate consequences which could only be spoken of in hushed tones, behind hands cupped in morbid secrecy. I mean, this was the era when I thought the nuns who populated my primary school never went to the bathroom! As in never, ever!

Well, things have changed, and it’s for the good except now we have to get the age-old sexually-transmitted diseases under control. Somehow, though, I think they will remain around to haunt us until the sun sets on time.

picture courtesy Don’t trust the boomers, Salon

Is Red Red and Is Bipolar Bipolar?

I have bipolar disorder (Note the distinction between I am ‘having’ bipolar disorder instead of I ‘am’ bipolar). I am thinking of writing about it, as in a book. After all, aren’t all we writers just a little bit ‘off?’

However, as I ponder this potential work,  I cringe and here’s why:  I do not want to write from the woe is me, life is so horrific standpoint. Because it’s not. Oh perhaps at one point it was, but isn’t that true for everyone?  I mean, what’s the difference between severe PMS mood swings and bipolar mood swings?

I am not denying this diagnosis of mine, which was made just 8 years ago, and I do not mean to demean those who truly struggle on a day-to-day basis with the horrendous symptoms of some forms of this disorder. Rather, I think there are a ton of us who fall into some chasm between the limited categories of bipolar in the DSM book. As a consequence, some of us don’t so much struggle with symptoms as we do with the wondering, ‘do I really have bipolar disorder or am I just on the edge of  what the DSM defines as ‘normal?’  In fact, I object to the word ‘disorder.’ Why not syndrome?  It’s like when I was a kid and one day I questioned the names of colors and what people actually saw. For what we all call red, did we all see the same color? Or did some people see ‘purple’ or ‘green.’ Is there any way to know? Likewise with bipolar disorder. Perhaps those of us thusly classified are the true normal?

Okay, so there’s bipolar I, bipolar II and bipolar ‘not otherwise specified,’ or NOS, and this is what my doc has diagnosed me as. Here is the definition put out by the National Institute of Mental Health:

Bipolar Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (BP-NOS) is diagnosed when a person has symptoms of the illness that do not meet diagnostic criteria for either bipolar I or II. The symptoms may not last long enough, or the person may have too few symptoms, to be diagnosed with bipolar I or II. However, the symptoms are clearly out of the person’s normal range of behavior.

So I then wonder, what’s the difference between this and ADHD? Or having an ‘edgy’ personality? Or simply reacting to a life with ups and downs, such as the severe economic depression we are now emerging from(?)

Anyway, back to the book. As I ponder it further, the drama – is it any more than anyone else experiences in their lives? The pain–how can we measure the comparative value of pain?  The difficulty of navigating this life of ours – isn’t it difficult for all at some level or another?

So I ponder this book for those in the middle, those who wonder, question and hide their  bipolar because of shame, embarrassment and doubt. And for those who on a daily basis say, “Do I or don’t I?”

A Pen in the Hand

StaplesHave you noticed that the pen selection in Staples, Office Max and Office Depot is dwindling? Likewise, leaving is the wide assortment of paper-based notebooks? I love pens, I love paper. As a true gourmet of pen styles, types, and inks, as well as an expert in paper thickness, color, and size, I am beginning a period of mourning for not only the imminent end of these tools, but more important, the end of an era where a person interacted directly with her words.

Oh sure, you could say the same is true with a person typing away on a keyboard – she is interacting with words, right? Wrong. She is interacting with an intermediary that is steps away from having her words on the paper. She is missing the touch, the feel, the smell, the Zen of putting a pen to the paper, and perfecting the swirls and flourishes of handwriting.

Believe it or not, I love my laptop, adore my Kindle and can’t live without my Smart phone. In this world, there is a place for each of these things – an intrinsic, necessary and vital place – in education, business, government, and play. What I don’t love is the disappearance of life’s graces and refinements, those things, those practices, that make us truly purposeful. Consider: a thank you note written by hand on sweet-smelling stationary, not a cryptic note sent by impersonal email; a poem penned under a shade tree on a sultry summer day, not typed away inside on the laptop; a recipe, hand-printed on an old-fashioned recipe card decorated with red and white gingham borders, not one printed from the computer .

006My point is not to condemn technology, nor is it to say everything we write should be done by hand. The monks from many moons ago taught us that copying the Bible by hand was not an efficient, cost-effective way to go. Rather, my point is to make a case for the pen in hand, to teach kids penmanship, to encourage the Zen of writing, and to preserve some priceless, irreplaceable measures of humanity.

Afternoon on Winter Trails

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Morning Magic

We woke to a spectacle of prisms and white — everywhere white — this morning. Big, billowy puffs of snow that have covered trees and bushes for two days. Enough of words, let the pictures speak the volumes I cannot.

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