exactly how experienced are we?

Here's a memory: my grandparents were disapproving-- in the purse-lipped, silent way their generation did so well-- when I proudly told them I often paid my own way when my boyfriend and I went out on dates. Their values for dating were completely different than mine. They couldn't imagine dating outside of courting-- looking for a potential spouse-- for one thing. And for another, when the man pays, it shows that a) he is financially stable enough to afford it, b) he will (presumably) take good care of his future spouse, and c) he knows how to toe the line in a way that shows respect for the values of his elders. 

But I had been introduced to feminism by a bunch of feisty Californians, and even though it was the 80s, I was still in 70s second wave feminist mode. I didn't need a man to pay for me. I didn't need a man to support me, and I certainly didn't need to make my decisions based on an outmoded set of rules that no longer applied. 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I think about how my feminism is different than the feminism of women 15-20 years younger than me (and yes, it does shock me to realize that someone who is 15 years younger than me is in her mid-forties). Because probably when I gently (and unforgivably) point out the errors in their thinking, they're probably having the same reaction to me that I had to my grandparents back in the 80s. 

There are a whole cascade of things that are just so different now. We refused to wear a lot of makeup or dress in provocative ways, because our mothers had to do that stuff to be attractive/acceptable to men, and we sure as hell didn't need men's approval to feel good about ourselves. We were more than happy to use convenience food products or store-bought food because we weren't going to be trapped in the kitchen the way our mothers were. 

Aside: whenever someone goes off on preservatives in food. I have the hardest time not saying do you think Lewis and Clark, or Ma Ingalls, would have been interested if you'd told them that they could stir something into their food and never have maggots or moldy food again? Because, seriously.

But what we discovered when we jettisoned all of that happy homemaker stuff is that some women--maybe even most women, and a lot of men-- are happy homemakers. There are thousands, maybe millions, of people who get a huge amount of satisfaction out of making oreos from scratch and whipping up their own homemade ketchup and knowing that their children have never had a happy meal from MacDonald's. 

Me? I thought about buying stock in MacDonald's (symbol: MCD). I could sit and read a book while my kids played for an hour and half in the germ-filled ball pit and everyone was happy. I had a hard time limiting it to once a week. And also, I don't remember them ever getting sick from it, germ-filled as it may have been. In fact, they have the impressively robust immune systems.

It's just a different world out there. So when I said a couple of weeks ago that being a crone meant being experienced, what does that even mean? What good is experience if it's completely irrelevant? Because if we're going to be wise women, we need to have something to offer, don't we? 

I think this exact dilemma is what has led a whole bunch of the people who are 10-20 years older than us to turn their backs on any kind of mentorship at all. They're headed out to their second vacation home or their monster RV, and don't call us, we'll call you. 

That's what I'm thinking about right now. More thoughts to come. 

And by the way, thank you for clicking, if you did. The tally was considerably more than I was expecting in my worst moments, but not quite as many as I was hoping for in my more extravagant dreams. So what I decided was to keep posting until I finished my current crop of ideas and then decide what's next. In other words, nothing has changed. Ha. 

Call me Hecate

I told you a couple of weeks ago about my newly discovered crone status, and of course I've been thinking about that quite a bit, since over-thinking is my superpower.

Like any good survivor of 90s feminist spirituality, I can't think much about being a crone without thinking of the triple goddess archetype, The Maiden-Mother-Crone. Feminist spirituality is all about The Goddess and her three eternal faces, the virgin with her sweetness and limitless potential, the mother with her creativity at full power for self and community, the crone, the embodiment of wisdom and experience.

The idea got applied everywhere-- even as a description of business cycles and the creative process: the germ of an idea (Maiden, limitless potential), the hard work of making the idea into reality (Mother, the maker), and the successful ongoing idea (Crone, wisdom and expertise that come with experience).

I've been thinking about how this might apply to me. How different is it to be in the "experienced" phase of life rather than in the "maker" phase of life? In the maker phase, you are working your butt off to get your life the way you want it, or to hang on and survive the hard work of living out the vision of the idea you had -- for a family, or a business, or a career, or all of those. And maybe the idea dies or fails (you get laid off, illness strikes, your marriage fails, bankruptcy) and you have to start again, but always the idea is to make the life you want.

When you're in the maker phase, if the vision isn't working or if it implodes, sometimes it makes sense to blow everything up and start over. Move to a new town, end your relationship, change careers. But maybe once you're a crone, the priorities are different. That's not to say re-creating doesn't happen to older people-- women way older than me have blown up their lives and started over, sometimes by their own choice, sometimes because circumstances force them to.

But maybe being a crone isn't about a specific age, it's about being smart. Instead of blowing everything up, maybe there are minor tweaks, incremental adjustments that can be made that will be just as effective. I don't want to say being a crone is about maintaining, because that sounds like stagnation. Being experienced might mean you recognize that you've already built a foundation and now it's time to be smart about how you want to preserve what's good, while moving forward into what's coming. Blowing everything up and starting over may not make sense anymore.

Hmmmm. Lots to think about. I have a houseful of company coming tonight so not sure when I'll post again.

mental health at midlife, "one" more thing

At the end of my last post on midlife mental health (there's another one here), I said there was one more piece I wanted to tell you about but I had run out of room. And then life intervened, as it so persistently does, and I never got around to it.

But that "one more piece" continues to come up, and the first thing to say is that it is laughable that I said there was "one" more piece. There are a million more pieces. But that piece I was thinking about has been important, so here you go.

My family was pretty garden variety dysfunctional. I'm pretty sure my dad was a narcissist, and my mom an experienced enabler, but I've heard a lot of stories over the years from other people, and our particular mess was not out of the ordinary. And I say that with some sadness, because in the sixties, there were a whole lot of family dynamics that were weird and stifling and maiming, but it was just the way things were. My parents had their problems, but they also did a pretty dang good job considering the times and their own histories.

In the eighties, when I was in my twenties and psychotherapy was relatively new (at least to me), I was all about blaming my parents. I was so angry at them. I could tell you inside out how awful they had been, especially my dad. Some of it was necessary stuff that I need to process, but a lot of it was just me being young and self-obsessed. I'm not knocking therapy-- it helped, it helped lots. I'm just rolling my eyes at my youth, and my ability to think that my own pain was the most important thing. Maybe that's what a lot of us do in our twenties.

Anyway. Then I had kids, and once you have kids, it doesn't take long to realize that no parent is able to be the parent they wish they were. I was simultaneously developing the ability to protect myself better from my parents' ability to wound me,  and also becoming willing to cut them a whole lot more slack. They were doing the best they could. So I gradually dumped the whole digging-into-my-family-of-origin schtick because I just couldn't do it anymore.

I spent the next twenty-ish years aware that there had been some difficult issues in my family of origin, but not thinking about them, because I didn't know any way to do that without coming down on my parents with an attitude of self-righteous fury, and I knew that wasn't where I wanted to go. So I stopped (not overnight, but still a pretty thorough stop). And honestly, I had been pretty obsessed with it for awhile, so it was probably a good move at the time.

But recently, some things have resurfaced, and as I've become a student of my own brain and ego through meditation and whatever other tools I can find, I've realized that I still have a lot to learn from looking back and trying to understand some things from my childhood.

Not to sound like I'm overly wise or anything, but just to acknowledge the truth: if you let yourself, you do learn some things as you get older. I am wiser than I used to be, at least on this front. Because now I can look back and do it without blame. I can feel compassion for all of us, my parents, the community we lived in, the world we lived in, and see how we were all trying so hard to do things right, to do the things we thought we were supposed to do. And yet we were wounded, and we did some wounding. We muddled through, just like everybody does.

This is also turning into a muddled mess, and I'm not even sure why I'm writing it, because I don't know if anyone else is going through it, and if you're not, that makes this an exceptionally boring bit of navel-gazing.

But if you are, just this: it can help to let yourself go back and re-experience some old hurts. Sometimes when I'm meditating (my current meditating theme is to let myself feel what I'm feeling), it hurts so bad it's almost overwhelming. But it's not happening right now, it happened a long time ago. And if I can sit for five minutes, one minute, and let the feelings wash through me, it feels awful at that moment, but then later it feels better. It really does. I don't know if this will make any sense, but I feel more clear-eyed than I have in a long time. Maybe ever.

p.s. the book that was helpful in thinking this through is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb. I had some problems with that book, but I still learned lots. Gottlieb, a therapist, says: "The purpose of inquiring about people's parents isn't to join them in blaming, judging, or criticizing their parents. In fact, it's not about their parents at all. It's about understanding how their early experiences inform who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits)."

Yup. Have a great weekend.

I'm Still Standing- midlife mental health again

I'm doing better. I don't know if you can tell. Mental health is such an individual thing, I'm not sure if writing about my own issues is going to help anybody else. But it helps me, so here you go. This got a bit long. Save it for when you're in the mood.

As I told you last time we talked about this, my mental health issues are depression and paranoia. I think I will always be prone to them. It's like being headache-prone (which I also am). You can figure out the triggers, avoid behaviors that make things worse, and do your best to be healthy. But I'm always going to have headaches, and I'm probably always going to go through periods of depression and paranoia.

So understanding my "issues," and having the tools to deal with them and know when I'm headed into a spiral (of either headaches or depression), is only going to help.  

I think part of what I've been going through is the longer-term adjustment to the empty nest. That kind of surprised me. MadMax left last week to start his senior year of college, so this isn't new. We've been empty nesters for three years now.

But there's the initial oh-my-god-my-children-have-moved-out part, which is hard enough but didn't last very long, and then apparently there is another longer adjustment that I am still navigating.

The first part, that wrenching feeling that you tore your right arm off and left it in that freshman dorm, is the more obvious one, the one everyone knows about, and it's not easy. But it's pretty fast. With each of our kids, by the time they'd been gone a couple of months, we were getting used to it.

And then there's Phase Two, which I was not expecting. Why should there be a longer term adjustment? I'm plenty busy. I'm involved in a lot of things in our community. It's not like my life revolved around my children.

But you know-- it did revolve around my children. I was never a helicopter mom, but having kids in the house was the organizing principle of my schedule from 1990 to 2016. That's a lot of years.

Apparently there is a longer term adjustment that I'm still figuring out. When you're a parent, you have obvious significance, even if it's just localized to your kids. You are that child's parent. You are needed. Even when they're 17 or 18, you keep at least some track of where they are, their dentist appointments, their parent-teacher night, their band concerts.

It's going too far to say it gives your life meaning, but it does mean that you've got a certain number of default things that can only be done by you, even if it's just paying attention and being there when they need you. There's a certain amount of purpose involved in that.

And figuring out what is going to take the place of that has been a longer process than getting over missing my kids. Whom I still miss, of course. It's not like you stop missing them, but you get used to it.

So, that's part of what's been going on. Another part of it is still related to something we've talked about before, which is that feeling that this is not the life I thought I was going to have. I guess it's regret, to put it plainly.

That has been a really tough one for me. I didn't think I was going to end up at age 58, living in a rural area with only a string of part-time jobs on my resume and no professional accomplishments.

This is embarrassing to admit, because it makes me sound like such a whiner. I have a hard time even typing it out without surrounding it with snarkiness because I know I sound like a spoiled brat. I am so blessed, so privileged. But the struggle is real, as they say, and pretending like it's not there doesn't help.

My adult life has been so contrary to the way we think these days-- if your life isn't going the way you want it to, change it. Get a new job. Move. Get a divorce. Have an affair. Join a commune. Take art classes, do yoga, change it up, make your life into what you want.

We believe we have agency, the power to make our lives into whatever we want. We believe what the individual wants should be, at least to some extent, more important than family or community ties.

But I couldn't do the life that I had mapped out in my head and have my husband, my children, and my integrity. I can run back through the decisions we made every time we decided to stay here and not move somewhere with more job opportunities for me (which we considered multiple times over the years), and even in hindsight, I would make the same decisions over again. At every stage, I made the decision that was the "right" one for me/us at the time.

It just was never the decision I would have made if I'd been single and childless and unattached. I kept deferring what I wanted to do, thinking someday my turn would come. But then I hit fifty, and I ran slam up against the realization that some of the things I had really wanted to do were not going to happen. Not helped any by the people I could see around me who at least appear to have it all-- family, career, living in the location of their dreams.

Then I had a conversation this summer that has really helped (beyond what we've talked about before, which is realizing how damn lucky I am). I had dinner with one of my college roommates a couple of months ago, the first time I'd seen her in thirty-five years.

I was talking through a brief version of this issue with her over dinner, the decisions I had made that weren't always the ones that I wanted to make. And she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, you made those decisions according to your values. You made exactly the decisions you wanted to, because those are the things you value.

It's one of those ideas that was interesting at the time, but later, it bloomed in my head. It's re-framed the way I think about the past and let me begin to be able to forgive myself for (supposedly) not being "strong enough" to "create the life I wanted."

I've been so angry at myself for not following through on all the things I felt like I should have done, all the accomplishments I should have under my belt. (I should have just put my foot down and demanded that we move!) But I was strong enough to make the decisions that deep-down were the ones that I felt were right for our family. And that's something I can live with.

Refusing to forgive leads to bitterness and hardened anger, even if the person I can't forgive is myself. I'm working on extending grace to myself for not being the person that I thought I would be. I don't think I'm quite there yet, but the more I work on it, the easier it gets. Work in progress.

There's another piece to this, but this has already gone on long enough. More later.

7ToF: Dooooo Yooooour Ears Hang Low, do they wobble to and fro?

Can you tie them in a knot, can you tie them in a bow?

It's possible I spent too many years at camp.

1. This is a No-Shame Zone (NSZ) for people with weirdly shaped ear canals. I can't possibly be the only person that can't keep earbuds in their ears, can I? I look at people wearing $200 airpods and think, well, that would be $200 down the drain for me. I'd lose them in twenty minutes. Maybe five.

2. But you know-- bluetooth listening is pretty appealing. I like listening to audiobooks and podcasts while I'm doing stuff around the house, and it's a lot simpler with something I can wear rather than something I have to carry around from room to room. So, as long as I'm not being too active, these work (they're wired to each other, but not to my phone). The rubber inserts keep them in my ears in a way those slick airpods can't match (and they're one-tenth the price, too). The link is to Amazon, which I know some of you don't like, but the only other place I can find them is on eBay.

(For the record, I am not an Amazon affiliate, I've never had the patience to sit down and figure out how to set it up. In other words, I don't make any money when you click on a link in my blog.)

3. Let's talk about Amazon. The more I find out about their business practices, the more disturbed I am about supporting them. But on the other hand, I can't tell you what an amazing resource Amazon has been for someone who loves to read but lives in a town without a bookstore (I've talked about this before, here). When my kids were little, and Amazon only sold books (remember way back when?), it was a miracle for me to be able to get online, scroll through a practically infinite number of books, and have what almost felt like a conversation about books by scrolling through reviews.

4. But I get it. Amazon is changing retail on a global level, often in ways that are destroying other legitimate businesses. I stopped buying anything from Amazon that I could get locally over a year ago, and I check our library website first for Kindle books. I do my best to support independent bookstores whenever I can (including the snobs at the bookstore in the town to our north, and the used bookstore here in our town, neither of which ever seems to have the books I want).

5. TV report: I've watched a few Dr. Who episodes over the years, but I've never really qualified as a Whovian. But we caught the pilot of the new series last fall, with Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor, and really liked it. So I set our DVR to record any Dr. Who episode it could find, and we now have over 140 episodes to watch. We're slowly working our way through them and becoming bigger fans with every one. I need a Tardis.

6. I went to Texas last week for my mom's 83rd birthday and my older sister's 60th birthday. I'm only two years younger than my sister, so 60 is definitely on my horizon. I can't say I'm exactly happy about it, but I don't think it will bother me as much as 50 did. If you've been around for awhile, you lived through that with me so I don't think we need to go there again. Anyway. The trip was fun and it was nice to be out of winter for a few days. It wasn't exactly tropical down there but there was no snow and the sun came out enough times to make me happy.

7. One midlife topic we haven't discussed much around here is caring for aging parents, and it's because I haven't had to do much of it. My dad passed away in 2011, well-cared for by his wife. My mom still lives independently, and although I can tell she's slowing down a bit, she's still sharp enough to be writing books. She's getting ready to self-publish her fourth novel. She's amazing. But she's not very mobile. She can still walk short distances, but she uses a cane. And I think she's in a lot more pain than she lets on. The last morning I was there, I asked her what hurt the most, since I know she's had trouble with her ankles, knees, and hips. She paused a minute, and then sort of laughed a little and said, "Well, you know, really I'm just kind of miserable." I'm a little self-conscious when I'm with her to be able to stride along, moving fast, walking and walking and walking with no conscious effort.

So our moment of gratitude for this week is for walking. If you can still walk with ease, don't take it for granted. Enjoy every minute.

Have a great weekend. It's good to be back, although I'm not promising to post regularly.

7ToF: we borrowed the flux capacitor to go back to 1983, but Hertz had no DeLoreans available so we got a minivan instead

Well, the short version of what happened in October is nothing much.

1. But we did go to our 35th college reunion. For years it interfered with our kids' fall break, so we had never been to a reunion. But now that we're empty nesters, we could finally go. Dean and I met in college, at a school that he went to all four years, and I started as a junior transfer. (This was back in the day when almost everyone finished in four years. Imagine.) So really, this was Dean's deal-- I think most college students bond most strongly with their freshman friends, and he had a bunch of people he was looking forward to seeing.

2. But I was kind of dreading it, since over the years I've become progressively less social and less interesting. Also, I'm a frumpy 57-year-old who weighs 40 pounds more than I did in college, and I'm unemployed and not really all that sure what I want to do with my life. By the time we left, I had worked myself into a state of neurotic certainty that I was going to spend the weekend feeling like a total loser.

3. But you know what? People are kind, and for the most part friendly, and it ended up being a lot of fun. I did have to take a break a couple of times, but it was easy to go off for a walk or to skip an event, and it turned out fine. And it helped me get back in touch with a more idealistic, less cynical version of me, which was kind of nice.

4. Also, it helped me realize that I really don't want to be any age other than the one I am-- so maybe I am finally through my midlife crisis. *throws confetti* When a woman we ate lunch with tried to start a conversation about how being 57 is the new 35, she didn't get very far because none of us really wanted to be 35 again.Why can't 57 just be 57?

5. And then of course we were pretty much the coolest people there since the rental car agency was nearly out of normal-sized sedans by the time I got around to making our reservation, so the cheapest option was-- a minivan. Nothing says cool like pulling up to your 35th reunion in a Chrysler Pacifica.

6. We had a gorgeous, sunny October with spectacular fall colors. But by the time we got back from our trip, it was cooler and raining--November weather, right on time. Honestly, after a long stretch of sunny weather, I don't mind a little rain. It puts me in the mood to sit by the fire and read mystery novels. Now I just need to find the time to sit by the fire and read mystery novels.

7. So I had my mini-trip to Oregon and Seattle back at the beginning of October, and I had a second mini-trip to the reunion, and those two breaks really did work to re-charge my battery. Here's a midlife celebration: long-term friends. Dare I say, old friends. I got to see a bunch of them this month, and it's a beautiful and luxurious thing to be able to spend time with people you've known and loved for decades.

I am, of course--now that I've committed myself to it-- wondering why in the world I decided to do the November posting thing again. I will try not to bore you. Or me.

Have a great weekend, and I will be back on Monday.

7ToF: I'm Nobody! Who are you?

1. It's a commonplace these days to say that women in their 50s are invisible. If you haven't experienced it, lucky you. You can read about it here and here and here and lots of other places.

2. I remember the first few times I experienced middle-aged invisibility were at restaurants, where the waiters are basically paid to be friendly to their patrons. That's a cynical way to look at it, but you get a better tip if your people like you, and the restaurant gets a better reputation, and everyone is happy. When I was younger, I took a waiter's attention for granted--if I was sitting in a restaurant with friends or my kids, the waiter (male or female) would take some time to talk (flirt) with me. But suddenly, somehwere in my late 40s, waiters started ignoring me to talk to my younger friends or my kids.

3. I'm not exactly a femme fatale, so there was no reason to expect that wait staff would fall all over themselves to socialize with me, but still-- the first few times it happened, it was so unexpected that it was obvious. I'd heard that middle-aged women felt invisible, but it was still a surprise to actually experience it. Oh, that's what they mean!! Now I get it!

4. Plenty of has been written about the larger cultural reasons why this happens, mostly about factors that have nothing to do with us personally (other than we keep getting inexorably older, silly us). But what I've been thinking about recently is the part of it that is personal to me. As an introvert who has never had particularly strong social skills, it was a surprise to me to discover that a small, unconscious, but signficant portion of my attention had been taken up with the who-gets-noticed, who-is-attractive, who-is-a-potential-sexual-partner game. I've been in a monogamous relationship with Dean since I was 21, so it never really meant anything, but it was still happening. Until suddenly it stopped.

5. So, this isn't anything earthshaking or personally shattering, but it did take a bit of adjustment and I'll even say a little bit of mourning for something that had been a kind of fun and interesting aspect of interacting with people. And oddly, as I approach 60, it almost seems to be coming back. Maybe the 50s really are just a no-man's/woman's-land. The culture doesn't know what to do with us, and we don't quite know, either. I find myself almost looking forward to 60.

6. This week's interesting read: from Book Riot, a list of contemporary books with strong women protagonists over age 50. My TBR pile for this fall is already full, but maybe I'll try some of these in the new year--the only one I've read already is the one about the two women in Alaska.

7. Here is a picture from Labor Day weekend. This is our usual: I'm sitting and reading a book, and see that tiny, blurry figure on a stand-up paddleboard in the background? That's Dean, being active. Yup.

Me reading, Dean exercising.

Quote of the week (which relates back to the fitness for couch potatoes post), from The Wisdom of the Enneagram: "...the basis of confidence, the feeling of being full, strong, and capable, arises from the instinctual energy of the body, not from mental structures. Thus, Fives grow by coming down out of their heads, and coming into deeper felt contact with their vitality and physicality." I live so much in my head, that idea is almost shocking to me. Really?

Cool. I can work on that. Have a great weekend.

Midlife celebration #8: adult children

(I'm not entirely sure which # number celebration we're up to, but I'm going with eight.) Both kids are home this week, and PellMel brought her boyfriend with her. Our house is full! PellMel turned 28 in May, and MadMax just turned 21. We went out to dinner last night and he could order a beer, have his ID checked, and be legal.

It's strange to think of them both being full-on adults. (Of course, maturity level is another question, but let's go with the legal definition for now.) It has only been a few days since MadMax caught his first fish at age 4, or PellMel went to her 70s-themed winter formal in a Goodwill dress that can only be described as a Twiggy-LisaFrank mashup. (I don't have time to dig up the picture right now but I will try to by Friday.)

Not being a born cook--as I know some of you are-- I'm good for about one meal a day. If I make breakfast, I don't feel like I should have to make dinner. If I made dinner the night before, I feel like you should be able to get your own breakfast together. Since we went out to dinner last night, and we'll probably be picking up takeout tonight, I made pancakes this morning. After breakfast, I went up to dry my hair, and when I came back, the kitchen was clean.

I'm telling you, adult children are awesome.

Also, they make me laugh. My kids have always been able to make me laugh--sometimes even when I was furious at them-- but it's a different kind of thing to sit around the dinner table and laugh with other adults, adults it turns out that you like as well as love.

Trivia I learned from the boyfriend: Cap'n Crunch is actually wearing a corporal's insignia on the cereal box, not a captain's. Who knew?

I'm sure I drive them nuts sometimes, and by the end of the week, maybe they'll be driving me nuts, but at this particular moment, I am beyond grateful for my adult kids. 

another old one (sorry): you'd be pretty if you just wore makeup

I came back with a doozy of a 2-day migraine, so you're getting another old post, slightly edited. I'll try to get back to posting new stuff by Friday. Hope you're having a good week.

This was originally the second post of a two-post series on makeup and me--and if you know me in real life, you'll know how ridiculous that is because I suck at hair and makeup. But apparently at the time I thought it was worth writing about, and now here I am re-posting it. *rolls eyes* The first post is here, but I think I've re-posted that one before, so you've probably already read it.

Originally posted April 9, 2015.
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I'm pretty pathetic when it comes to makeup, and also all things girly: hair, shoes, fashion, you name it. For most of my life, I looked at the amount of time and money those things took and rolled my eyes. Spend an hour in front of the mirror every morning? I'd end up pulling all my hair out instead of styling it. Spend $120 on a pair of jeans or $300 on a purse? I'd rather buy books or a laser printer. The tallest pair of heels I own? one pair of three-inchers, and I only wear them when absolutely necessary.

I want to breezily say that it's because I just don't care that much, and fashion is silly and frivolous. I have more important things to think about, right? It's what's inside that counts, not how you look, right?

In fact, the original version of this post was going to be a rant about how the beauty and fashion industry has ballooned to the point where it controls a huge amount of our national time and attention, not to mention money. I was going to critique how obsessed we are as a culture about how we look, and how we keep raising the bar higher, forcing ourselves to chase after something that is always out of reach.

I would have pointed out that all this stuff that I've always considered frivolous is turning into TV shows on what not to wear, fashion bloggers, endless Pinterest pins of clothing and hairstyles, entire websites devoted to critiquing celebrity clothes. Google "how to get the no make-up look" and I kid you not--dozens of results show up with "9 steps to achieving this important new makeup trend." Seriously? If I want to look like I'm not wearing makeup, I just don't wear any.

I remember reading in some feminist publication back in the 80s that the beauty/fashion industry was a patriarchal construct designed to convince women to waste time so they couldn't do anything of serious value. But whoever wrote that was wrong, because it's apparently not the fault of the patriarchy. Fifty years after the feminist awakening of the 60s and 70s, our obsession with fashion and beauty is stronger than it ever was. We can't blame it on patriarchy anymore. (I suppose we might try the capitalist-materialist hegemony with more success, but that would be a different post.)

But like I said, that's what the post was going to be about.

Now that I'm sitting down to write it, I can't quite get there. Because if I'm honest, I have to admit that I've realized that the reason I didn't care all that much about fashion and beauty is because until I hit my mid-40s, I was able to look pretty much how I wanted to look without paying much attention to it. I never did lose the last twenty pounds of pregnancy weight after MadMax was born, but I wasn't really overweight. I did my 6-8 minutes of hair and mascara everyday, and that seemed like enough. Good genes or just too dumb to care? I have no idea, but other than cursing the occasional zit or griping about my stick-straight hair or feeling vaguely guilty about the extra weight, I thought I was immune to worrying about my looks.

I was certainly never one to worry about age or birthdays or any of that. I flew right past 30 (I've had a 35-year-old personality since I was 8, I told people, 30 suits me just fine). 40 felt like I was finally a real adult. But turning 50 hit me hard. Starting a few years before, my skin changed and my body changed and I couldn't sleep--and I wasn't doing anything different. It just happened. What the hell is this? I've never been as skinny as I wanted to be, but I've never had a muffin top, not until one suddenly appeared a couple of years ago.

And that was when I discovered that I do care about how I look, in spite of having airily claiming not to my entire adult life. It was a little bit embarrassing and it made me mad at myself. Because suddenly I looked in the mirror and didn't like what I saw, and it upset me far more than it should have. Maybe far more than it would have if I'd been paying attention all along.

Since I've always been a bit opposed to makeup and obsessing about my looks, my first response was to dump the whole thing. It doesn't matter what I do, I'm still going to look like a frumpy middle-aged bore, so why bother? I said something like that to a friend a few months ago. I think I might have added, I have serious bags under my eyes, but if I use enough concealer to cover them up, I look like a raccoon. Why bother? She was silent for a minute, and then she said, Well, I do my makeup as best I can and then at least I can say I tried.

At first that response really bothered me. What are we saying here? At least I tried to cover up my ugly agedness? It sounded so close to apologizing for being older. I know I look like crap, but I'm doing my best to cover it up.

But as I'm reluctantly experimenting with actually wearing foundation on a daily basis for the first time in my life, I have to admit: it makes a noticeable difference. It feels like people respond to me more positively--which could admittedly be my imagination. But the part that I know for sure is that I feel more confident this way. A couple of weeks ago I went to lunch with a group of women who intimidate me a bit, and I definitely felt more confident facing them because I knew I'd done what I could to look good.

I guess I could say because I tried. Damn it. I don't want it to be true. I want it not to matter what's on the outside. It's what's on the inside that should count, right? And in the long run, an empty head or a cold heart can't be glossed over no matter how much makeup you put on, so it's still true.

But I have to admit it helps my confidence and my courage level to do what I can to look good. And this is certainly not the post I thought I was going to write. I guess there's a balance in there somewhere that I'm just figuring out at this late date. Advice and insight welcome, as always.

another old post: Long and Winding Road: marriage at midlife

 Originally appeared June 11, 2015. This actually ended up being more posts than I usually do in a week, even though I'm on vacation, I probably should have warned you about that since I know already as I'm typing this on Friday, 7/20, what I'm about to put you through. There's one more midlife marriage post, here, but I decided to just link to it instead of actually re-posting it since I've already put you through enough this week.

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I was flipping through a magazine last fall when I ran across an article about how to have a happy marriage at any age. You know how those articles work--In your twenties, do this. In your thirties, do that. la la la. For "in your fifties," the article said--drumroll, please-- in your fifties, the best predictor for happiness in marriage is a new partner.

I swear I'm not making that up. That's the best they could do? Once you're in your fifties, if you're still married to the same old partner, give it up. Find a new one, or else it's all downhill.

Long-term relationships--and I'm not talking about three years or seven or even ten, but really long term relationships, are a complex topic. No surprise there. If you've been together for a long time, lots of things have happened. You've seen each other at your very best and your very worst, because you've been there, right there, the whole time.

Dean and I are both pretty nice people. We're fairly easy-going, don't fight much, manage our day-to-day life pretty well. But still, each of us could tell you stories about the other that would curl your hair. Not because we're so awful, but because we've been together since 1981, married since 1984, and when you've been together that long, there's no hiding yourself.

You might be able to put up a good front and look awesome for a few years, maybe even six or seven, but after three decades together? Nobody is that good at acting. Just look at the math--even if I only had one total bitch-a-thon every three years, that's eleven bouts of ugliness that Dean has had to live through--and trust me, there have been a lot more than that. With the hormonal mood swings of menopause, we're lucky to make it a week.

So what's a married couple to do? Do we just resign ourselves to living out the rest of our lives in bored tolerance because we don't have the courage to branch out and start a new life? That's the impression that this article gave.

The assumption seemed to be that if you've been married that long, you've changed significantly (and that's true--we have). So there's no way the person you're married to can still be the "right" person. You're better off cutting your losses and finding someone who suits the new you.

Sometimes maybe that's true. But like I said, long-term marriages are complex things. You can't ditch the relationship without ditching years and years of intertwined experience.  In sickness and in health? check. For richer and for poorer? check. Good times and bad? check. You know each other's siblings, you were there when your partner started his/her career, you've watched your children grow up. Perfectly suited or not, there's no replacing that.

I know most of you who read here regularly are in this category--some of you have been married or together longer than we have. So you don't need advice from me. In fact, several of you would do a better job writing this post than I can.

But I'm watching the marriage of some of our dearest friends disintegrate right now, and I've been thinking about this quite a bit. I listen to my friend talk, and many of the things she's upset about are things that I could say about Dean. But we're not splitting up.

What I think I need to tell her is: you just have to let go of the idea that you'd be better off married to someone else. Even though it might be true, no good can come from thinking that. Dean and I don't share many interests outside of our kids, and over the years, we've each grown in different directions. We met and fell in love when we were too young to really know what we wanted. Neither of us is the same person we were when we said our vows. Of course we're not. No one could be nearly 35 years later.

But we're still here, and we still like each other, and even if we're not the ideal partners, we are in this relationship and have been for a long time. It's our reality. We can't ditch each other to find a better-suited partner without losing all those years of inter-mingled experience, the base of solid togetherness that has taken us decades to build.

Would my friend be happier with somebody else? Would I be? Maybe so. Maybe not. There's no way to find out without destroying what we've got, and what we've got is worth quite a bit.

When I was thinking up a title for this post, I tried to decide if a long marriage is a midlife celebration, or a midlife problem, or both--as I sometimes specify in the title. I'm still not sure. You certainly can't be in a 31-year marriage if you're in your twenties, so it's a topic that's specific to middle age.

You know what it is? It's a privilege. To be with someone who has been willing to put up with me for that long, just as I have been willing to put up with him. We're pretty lucky.

Go, us. And all of you who are hanging in there and making it work: Go, us.

still on vacation: celebration 7

This one was originally published May 11, 2015, apparently after I'd been sick for a few days.

The funny thing about a blog is that if you don't post for awhile, it looks like nothing has happened. But usually, probably, the opposite is the case--you're not posting because you're too busy to sit down and type. Or whatever else is going on. At the moment, unfortunately, none of our goings on are interesting enough to make into a blog post, unless your idea of a good time is to hear about me being sick and sitting on the couch reading. And then, I turned the page! And then, I turned another page!

So back to celebrating midlife.... Celebration #7: We've been around for some great music. Dean and I were staining the uprights on our deck this weekend (once I started feeling better) and listening to the Oldies playlist on my phone. Lots of great stuff back there. I should be embarrassed to admit that I love the old pop stuff just as much as the classic rock, but I'm not.

I've got Elvin Bishop singing "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" and Earth Wind and Fire's "September" right next to "Fool in the Rain" and "Southern Cross." As old as we are, we're actually a bit young for the classic rock stuff. When we started college in 1979, there were plenty of aging hippies still hanging out on campuses telling us that we were sellouts and that we missed the glory days of student activism. They could be pretty annoying, but they were also playing all their old music, which I grew to love.

So I get it, and I have days where I drive around getting my Led out, but I also love "Good-bye Yellow Brick Road" and "Heat of the Moment," even "Can't Smile Without You." There. I said it. Maybe there should be a 12-step group.

I'm all right, don't nobody worry about me. you got to give me a fight, why don't you just let me be?

OK, sorry. If you're my age, now we'll both have it in our heads all day.

throwback post, because I'm on vacation: celebrations 4, 5, and 6

Originally appeared May 4, 2015. Fortunately the angry phase I talk about in this old post only lasted a couple of months. I still get mad sometimes, of course, but not like it was then. The joys of hormones.

The next thing I'm ready to celebrate about being middle-aged is (Celebration #4): we've already been through a full 25-year cycle of fashion, so we remember the current fashions the last time they were popular. I was around the last time maxi-dresses were in style, so I already know that five years from now we're going to wonder what the hell were we thinking? I can save myself the grief and not wear them.

Celebration #5: We don't expect to be happy every single minute. This one has been major for me. When I was younger, I would get to a good place and be happy and think,  this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life. Then I'd get stressed or busy or down about something and wonder what was wrong. Something must be wrong if I'm not happy, right? But at 53, I know that nobody is happy every single minute. Enjoy the good moments when they come. Don't get too upset when they go. The good times come back, the bad times eventually go away.

Celebration #6: We know that you don't have to wait until everyone around you is happy to be happy yourself. You can be happy even if your friend is down (although you might want to be careful not to rub it in her face). You aren't responsible for making everyone around you happy before you can be happy yourself.

You know what? fuck it. I don't feel like celebrating today. Here's the real thing I'm dealing with: I'm pissed. I seem to be pissed all the time. I know women who sail through menopause like it's no big deal--one woman told me, "I wish I'd known that was going to be my last period. Maybe I would have done something to mark the occasion. But they just stopped. I've had no symptoms before or since."

I seem to be at the opposite pole. The three years before my last period were the most miserable of my life, health-wise--floodlike periods, migraines, depression. Thank God, the health part of it is way better now. Now I'm just a fountain of negativity, bitterness, and anger.

Here's my theory. You know if they pump lab rats full of testosterone, the rats become aggressive, violent. If they pump them full of estrogen, they nest, they make everything nice for everybody around them. What if estrogen masks what you're really feeling? Maybe now that my body isn't producing estrogen so much anymore, suddenly I'm having to deal with every little bit of anger and frustration that I avoided for the sake of nesting for the past --oh, how long was I cycling? Forty years?

It's not like I never got angry before, but this is different. This is like a well of dark, bitter, ugly stuff that bubbles up and I can't get to the bottom of it. I'm doing my best to just have faith. Everything I know from psychology, Buddhism, Christianity, even just my experience with life, tells me that if I just keep letting it go, eventually I'll get to the bottom of it. But I'm starting to be afraid that I'm just turning into a dried up, bitter old shrew.

At least I do have some skills for dealing with it these days. I used to have that "I'm feeling angry and I'm pushing it away at the same time" thing going on--like when you're letting yourself indulge in chocolate, but at the same time you're thinking I shouldn't be doing this I shouldn't be doing this I shouldn't be doing this. I mean, if you're going to indulge, you have to just let go of the guilt and the shame and indulge, or else what's the point?

And I think the same thing applies with all this negative stuff. I've got it, but I don't want to have it, so at the same time I'm feeling it, I'm pushing it away. I hate feeling like this, I don't want to feel this, I shouldn't feel like this.

Now I know I've got to stop with the pushme-pullyou thing and immerse myself. It's the only way to get where I want to go. But God, it sucks.

I'm on vacation this week, so here's a throwback post

When I first started this blog, it was supposed to be about celebrating midlife, and to some extent it still is. But early on, I was trying to speak for all women in their fifties, and after a few months, I realized I couldn't do it. The experience of women in their fifties is just too diverse. It seemed like I was often wrong, and I hate being wrong. So I went back to writing purely personal stuff.

But you know what? As I went back and read through old posts, I realized a couple of things. One is that I really have lost my sense of humor. I used to be a lot funnier. The second is back to the topic of having opinions. I'm a middle child, or maybe that has nothing to do with it, but I like people to get along. I don't like disagreements or confrontation.

So over time, I've (mostly) stopped expressing  opinions I thought might be objectionable. But having opinions is what makes reading a blog interesting. Not sure what to do about this one since I still don't like controversy (not that I ever was particularly controversial). Hmmmmm. Thinking.

On with the midlife thoughts. The first three appeared in a 7Things post, so I pulled them out and here they are. Originally appeared April 24, 2015, slightly edited.

- OK, so let's start celebrating midlife. For my short story class yesterday we read two stories (Updike "The Happiest I've Been" and Tillie Olsen "I Stand Here Ironing") that are at least in part about learning from the past. So Celebration #1: We've got lots of past to learn from. Of course you're never past the age of making mistakes, but one of the best things I've learned from my past is how to learn from my past. (2018 editorial comment: sometimes I learn from my past.)

- It also came up in discussion of those two stories how many mistakes we make when we're young that are unavoidable. You don't know anything when you're young, in spite of the fact that you think you know everything, so you make mistakes. It's entirely possible that the wisdom of being older is simply knowing that you don't know everything, therefore maybe being a little bit gentler, a little bit more humble, which makes mistakes less glaringly obvious. So, Celebration #2: we cover up our goofs better.

- Celebration #3: A few days ago I was reading over some drama on FB that one of my younger women friends posted and I thought, OH MY LORD I'm so glad I'm past that age. My irl friends and I have our ups and downs, but I am so thankful that I'm past the age where a single remark or a snipe-y interaction can ruin my day.

to be continued.

Kitchen sink, because this post has a little bit of everything

1. You know how sometimes you run across a random object and you get practically knocked flat by memories and nostalgia? This week it happened to me with a box of hot chocolate packets. Since we live in the land of eight months of winter, when the kids were younger, I could not keep enough hot chocolate in the house. Every time they came in from sledding or skiing or even just school, they wanted hot chocolate. Even in high school they would dump a packet into their coffee. So whenever it was on sale, I bought a bunch. And of course you don't learn to buy less stuff when the kids are gone until suddenly it starts to pile up. I ran across a stash of three boxes of hot chocolate mix this week and it brought those days back so sharply it took my breath away.

2. I feel like I'm figuring some things out (finally) and I have to confess that the instigator of the positive changes I'm making is understanding more about my personality type. I know I keep harping on this, but it really has been helpful. The Enneagram thing-- I am enneagram #5, the Observer type-- has been the missing piece that has helped me put some things together. (for more posts about personality types, try the second half of this post and the first half of this one and this one. that's not even all of them.)

I still don't have my enneagram book, but the gist of what it said for number fives is that an observer's main area of growth is learning to break out of observer mode and participate to create the life you want. Obvious, right? But in a way, it was news to me-- I mean, of course if you had asked me I would have known that you need to participate in life, but I hadn't put that together with my natural reluctance to move out of my comfort zone, which is observing and analyzing.

3. The specific wording was something to the effect of "Fives naturally feel that they need to protect their inner resources by maintaining their distances as observers, but they need to understand that if they move out of their observer stance, there are resources and energy that will rise to meet them." The first time I read that, I stared blankly at the page and thought, "there are??? really? how come no one told me this?" So that's what started this latest round of positive growth. I may be almost 57, damn it, but I can still learn new things.

4. Example. Years ago, I was in a women's group that would pick a book and read through it together. We met weekly, and part of the meeting was check-in time, when each of us gave a brief summary of how we were doing. One of the reasons I immediately resonated with the type of Observer is because in situations like this, I always prefer to listen to everyone else rather than take my turn. I don't feel like I have anything to add-- not in a pathetic way, I just would rather listen than talk (until something sets me off and then you can't get me to shut up). So I always ended up going last, because really I didn't want to say anything at all.

At some point after many months of this, one of the women said to me that she thought it was unfair of me to always wait until last to take my turn as if I thought I was more important than everyone else. I was speechless, since she had so completely mis-read what was going on in my head. I don't remember what I replied, but I probably totally blew it because I didn't know what to say.

5. Now that I have a better understanding of being an introvert and an observer and a thinker (as opposed to a feeler) and an obliger, I have a better way of understanding the dynamics of what is happening in group situations like that. Although I still probably wouldn't know what to say to that woman (who actually stopped speaking to me and dropped out of the group shortly thereafter)(that's how I know I blew it). So I've been working on better ways to be part of a group, but it's hard for me to break out of the role of observer. Work in progress. But at least I understand better what is going on now.

6. OK, I goofed up. On Friday I told you about my sous-vide cooking adventures, and I told you perfectly cooked chicken breasts register 140 degrees, but I was wrong-- it's 150. And the package of chicken breasts I opened tonight said quite prominently on the label "Cook thoroughly to 165 for safety." So, use your own judgment. I'm still doing 150 because they turn out just right. If I die of salmonella poisoning, you'll know why.

Apologies to those of you who are email subscribed (as far as I know, I have no way to tell who you are), but I had to go back and fix that, and it took two tries. Also I forgot to tell you that sous-vide is pronounced "soo-veed." So now you know.

7. And I did not even come close to finishing my mini reading challenge-- I did finish Calypso, so I made it through four books, but then the boys came home a day early and I didn't finish the fifth one until yesterday.

This was supposed to be short because I didn't start it until 11:15pm on Monday night but it ended up long. I'm hopelessly wordy. Have a great day.

7ToF: Ding-a-Ling

1. I waited awhile to tell you about this to make sure I was going to stick with it, but I have a new hobby. Avocation. Fun thing to do. Back in February, a friend of mine invited/coerced/strong-armed me into join a New Horizons band, an organization devoted to giving senior citizens the opportunity to play in a concert band. Our local group is not just seniors, it's open to anyone interested. Skill levels range widely, from people who are quite accomplished but haven't played in years to people who know music but are learning a new instrument to people who have no prior experience at all.

2. The first night I was there, I was one of six flute players--which is four too many if you ask me-- and also the music was ....basic. But I've always secretly wished I was a drummer. So it occurred to me that I could learn a new instrument. I talked to the director, and later to the percussion section leader, and it turns out that all of their percussionists hate playing the bells. I can read bell music, and voilà, I am becoming a bell player.

3. It is so fun. If you haven't picked up a totally new hobby recently, I highly recommend it. You make new friends, it wakes up your brain, you learn a new skill. What's the downside?

4. But the funny thing is, I had to really push myself to make it happen. I worked up the courage to go talk to the conductor, which was hard enough. Then she wanted me to try clarinet, since they had a shortage of clarinet players. But I have no desire to play clarinet, just drums. So I had to push through my obliger feelings of I should fill the role they need me to fill, and get up the courage (again) to say, no, I really want to play the drums. It's surprising how hard that was to do. It literally felt like I was pushing through my reluctance to go against expectations.

5. But I did it, and now I'm taking private lessons once a week and going to band rehearsal once a week. The other drummers have been amazingly supportive and patient. So far, I've mainly played the bells, although I've filled in on crash cymbals and slapstick and triangle a time or two. I am learning to play snare drum, but since I have zero skills there, it's a much slower process than bells, where I have flute music-reading skills and long-neglected keyboard skills to draw on.

6. A strange feature of this is how weird it feels to publicly display my incompetence. I think probably most of us at midlife have stopped doing things we're not good at. It's a very strange feeling, and not one I like, to openly display my meager skills. But there I am every week at my lesson, stumbling through various exercises and simple songs. A weekly lesson in humility. As someone wise said, in order to learn to be good at something, you have to be willing to do it badly--and that's exactly where I am.

7. Wednesday we had our first concert since I joined. It was outdoors at a local historical home. They serve "free" ice cream on the Fourth of July (donations requested), so there were two hundred-ish people there for the ice cream to listen to us play various patriotic and nostalgic songs. It was really fun, and I managed to not embarrass myself. I forgot to tell Dean to take a picture, but here are my bells (on loan from the band, but I think I've convinced him to get me a set for my birthday).

So if you've got a secret longing to learn to weave, or make birdhouses, or bake bread, maybe now is the time to push through and do it.

Have a great weekend.

7ToF: Will you help him change the world, can you dig it? yes I can

I've been waiting such a long time, for Saturday....
Listen children, all is not lost, all is not lost....

Love that song. Not feeling even slightly apologetic for putting it in your head, too.

1. I'm trying to stop reading on my Kindle. Only temporarily, because I love the thing, and there is nothing better for reading in bed at night. (We've discussed this before.) But I'm not reading the actual books that are sitting on my shelves, and there are a bunch I want to read. I'm so attached to my Kindle that this oddly feels a little scary. (how weird is that?)

2. My waitlist of e-books at our library's website has coincidentally come to a halt-- my next one is Amor Towle's Rules of Civility, which I'm supposed to get in six weeks, and the next half dozen are stacked up after that, so it's a good time to do this instead of rooting around for more kindle books to read.

3. This week's interesting column, from the UK version of Elle: I stopped eating carbs after 2:30, not because I think we should stop eating carbs at all, ever, but because of the discussion toward the end about how everyone processes carbs differently, and we each need to figure out our individual metabolism. I think this gets discussed way less often than it should be-- there is no one healthy way to eat that works for everybody. What looks like a healthy diet for you may not be healthy for me. And what worked for me twenty years ago is not going to work for me today. I guess the key is to pay attention to how my body responds to different things and figure out my own healthy way of eating.

4. Update: you may remember that a couple of months ago, I told you that I was going to try exercising more without dieting to drop the pounds I gained over the winter. I hate to weigh myself, but I thought this was working because my clothes fit again the way they did last summer, and I'm definitely stronger than I was when I started this. But then I had my annual physical this week, and not only had I not lost any weight, I'd actually gained some. I know, I know, muscle weighs more than fat and I can tell myself that the workouts are working and etc etc etc.

5. But at some point, I have to be shocked that I weigh within a few pounds of what I did when I was nine months pregnant with MadMax, and I gained forty pounds during that pregnancy. I am not a skinny person who is obsessing about a couple of extra pounds, I am a dumpy (plump?) 56-year-old who weighs more than 170. I really should not be carrying this much weight. So how can I work on this without a) obsessing about it, or b) beating myself up about it (because I got a thumbs up on everything else in my checkup, including all the bloodwork)(except I'm low on Vitamin D). I guess it goes back to the previous Thing: pay attention, and figure out what works for me.

6. And the most important Thing to remember: I have a basically healthy body that is taking good care of me. I need to continually remind myself of that-- to be gracious and thankful to my physical self for allowing me to be here--rather than to feel that stupid frantic sense of panic that I let myself feel all to easily-- how the hell did I get this heavy?? I'm a whale! I'm a disaster! No, actually, I'm not. On the whole, my body is coping remarkably well with the challenges of menopause.

7. I'm taking a Facebook vacation for the rest of the summer. I took about ten days off recently (partly because of being out of town), and when I went back to it, in ten minutes I was stressed and depressed. I do have my beloved groups there, so I won't be deleting my account or anything drastic, just taking a break.

Also due to my mental summer mode: I may not be posting regularly. Not sure about this yet, but I may ignore the usual Tuesday/Friday schedule, and get back to it after Labor Day. Also, at some point I am going to re-post the "Celebrating mid-life" posts from a couple of years ago (which, in spite of the name, are not always celebrations) so we can get started on that again.

And that's it for me. Hope you have a great weekend.

7ToF: mid-life aches and pains. Also what I learned from podcasts this week.

I added an email signup over there on the right side so you can type in your email address and receive posts in your inbox as they are published. Thank you for being interested, person-who-asked-for-it!

1. Fair warning: I am bad about editing and re-publishing my posts, so if you sign up, they may show up in your inbox more than once. All I can say is that I'm better about it than I used to be. (Originally this was followed by a long discussion about self-editing and the pros and cons of writing snobbery, but it was way too long so I'm moving it to a later post.)

2. A friend of mine who has young kids looked at me with panic in her eyes when she told me she had read my post about de-cluttering. For the record, the kind of decluttering project I'm doing right now probably wouldn't be possible with kids around--and is way less necessary, anyway. You've only got ten? twelve? years of stuff, not thirty-four. It's an empty nester project. I probably should have said that in the original post. When I had young kids, I was lucky to make a sweep of unwearable clothes and broken toys every year or two. Don't panic.

3. Dean and I were on one of our evening walks this week and the topic of aging came up. You spend your whole life knowing intuitively that you get older every day (and for the first half of your life you're really excited about that!!). We all know from our parents and grandparents and popular culture that getting old involves aching joints, less refreshing sleep, wrinkles, and an endless series of tiny indignities. But still, in spite of knowing this practically from birth, we are both frequently surprised and personally outraged as each new sign of age appears. And then, every time I adjust to the new normal, it gets worse. *grimace emoji* Aging is not for sissies.

4. I have a friend who told me once that Aleve worked as well for her as codeine, so I went out and bought some that day. But you know what? Aleve does nothing for me. And I bought the Costco size bottle. So since I had that big jug of Aleve, I've started taking one Advil and one Aleve when my particular ouch-y spots flare up, instead of my usual one Advil. The combination works better than either one of them alone.

Full disclosure: Dean, the medical professional, says-- with a barely suppressed eye roll-- that's because you're taking two painkillers instead of one.  You be the judge.

5. Also, arnica. May God bless the person who discovered arnica with an unending rain of blessings (seems likely that it was an Indian or a wise woman, since *clears throat* unnamed medical professionals are skeptical). I hesitate to even say this-- because the surest way I know to experience one of the signs of aging is to smugly note to myself that at least I don't have that yet-- but so far my knees are good. *knocks on wood* But when I do something a bit out of my normal level of athletic activity, they ache, and arnica clears it right up. What works for your aches and pains? Am I the only one thinking of trying copper?

6. I Heard It On a Podcast #1: From the 10% Happier Podcast, episode #133 with Catherine Price. Before you figure out how to eliminate the negative side of obsessive phone use, it's a good idea to figure out what positive things you want from your phone. Back in Jan/Feb when I was trying to dial back my phone usage, I spent lots of time figuring out what I could eliminate, but I never did the opposite: what do I want my phone to do for me? This seems worth some time. Texting-- the #1 benefit of my phone. GPS. Information like weather, movie times, business phone numbers and addresses. What else?

7. I Heard It On a Podcast #2: From The One You Feed, episode #224 with Cheri Huber. Everybody gets stuck in a downward sprial of negative thinking occasionally, and it gets worse when we're stressed. I'm the worst person ever. I'm such a failure. We've been endlessly told that the solution is to think positively! But unfortunately that usually means saying things we don't believe: I'm awesome! I'm amazing! I can do this! 

Really what we should be doing is telling ourselves things that are true: I love my family. I have good intentions. I care about the outcome of this situation. Even silly things like I love the color blue. Music makes me happy. Whatever you can tell yourself that you know to be true can break the cycle of negative falsehoods, because --I'll let you in on a secret here-- none of us is really the worst human being ever. 

p.s. Cheri Huber, who must be a genius to have come up with this, actually recommends recording yourself saying the true things so that you can play it back when you're down and hear your own voice telling you true, positive things. I'm not sure I'm quite brave enough, but I'll try it if you'll try it. We all have voice recorders on our phones, I guess.

Have a great weekend.

7ToF: I found the simple life, ain't so simple

1. At the food bank this week, I was bagging some donated restaurant food across the table from another volunteer, an amiable homeschool kid who is 14-ish. Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil" came on the radio, and since I'm not exactly overflowing with topics of conversation with 14-year-old boys, I told him the story of how Michael Anthony, the bass player for Van Halen, used to play the opening notes of the song with his tongue. The kid was suitably impressed, and added, "I've heard this song about a billion times. My grandparents are so into this stuff."

*pause*

his grandparents? OH, THE PAIN. THE PAIN.

2. Remember my gush from last week about events celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death? Well, it turns out I have to hope they release the Royal Shakespeare version of Much Ado on DVD, because I can't go. There's yet another end-of-the-year event at MadMax's school, and I'm not missing any of them. I may be a Shakespeare fangirl, but I'm not missing a single bit of the end of my youngest kid's senior year. #emptynestlooms (also #emptynestbeckons, but I can feel both, you know)

3. But one thing I can do, probably as you read this, is drive down to Missoula to see the First Folio that is traveling the country this year, on loan from the Folger Library. The First Folio is the reason we have copies of Shakespeare's plays-- back in the day, plays were meant to be performed, not read, and printed copies of them were rare. A few years after his death, a couple of Shakespeare's acting buddies decided someone should pull the bard's works together, hence the First Folio. 750 copies were printed, of which 230-ish survive, and one of them is in Missoula right now. I'm driving down to see it and attend a couple of events.

4. The history of the first folio is surprisingly interesting (well, to me, anyway). I'm reading The Millionaire and the Bard, which is the story of how Henry Folger, of Folger Shakespeare Library fame, became obsessed with the First Folio, and thus amassed the greatest collection of Shakespeare stuff anywhere. Good read.

5. For years I have planted window baskets with masses of trailing wave petunias and bacopa. Some years, they've been spectacularly gorgeous. But I'm not doing them this year. I might not plant any flowers at all. Part of my ongoing midlife crisis, I guess. I just can't quite bring myself to care. Dean is predicting I will change my mind when it gets to be flower weather. (around here you plant them in May and hope there's not a late frost. flower weather doesn't actually start until June.)

6. There's no way to get into our house without going up a bunch of stairs, and since we have several friends and family with mobility issues, this has been a problem. So Dean put in a wheelchair accessible path. It's a pretty amazing piece of work. It might be a bit of a wild ride in a wheelchair, but do-able. Little did we know the first person to make use of it would be MadMax with his post-surgery crutches. Which, I am pleased to announce, he no longer needs.

7. (WW update) Although I am still going to weight watcher meetings (much to my surprise, they are pretty fun and interesting), I seem to be taking a break from weight loss. I've weighed exactly the same for three weeks now, and since the WW scale measures to a tenth of a pound, that's kind of odd. Even though I'm only a little more than halfway to my goal, still I've lost fifteen pounds, which is more than I thought I would ever lose. I never imagined I could actually do this. So part of me is done. I mean, FIFTEEN POUNDS. That is amazing. I'm still figuring out whether this is a midterm slump, or if I'm going to quit. The good news is: now I know how to maintain my weight. To the tenth of a pound.

I've talked to so many friends in crisis this week. I hope we can all find a bit of calm in the midst of the crazy this weekend.

mid-life transitions: the cog feeling

I've talked to two women in the past few days about being in our mid-fifties. Each of us is in a unique situation, but I'm not sure anyone is getting through this lightly. There are physical changes and life transitions and readjustments of expectations.

Since we're all unique, I suspect we feel alone, like we're each the only one going through this. But some things seem consistent. I keep hearing the same things: I thought I would feel different/better/more accomplished. More adult. I thought I would have done something significant by now. I thought I would feel more useful. I thought all this effort, all the gazillions hours of my self that I've poured into my kids, my job, my volunteer work, my music/writing/dance, whatever, would feel more worth it.

Instead, at least for me, I find myself feeling more and more like a cog in an enormous machine. Like everything I've done has mainly served to just move things along, keep the wheels turning. When I was studying theory in grad school, I read Althusser, who proposed that there is no such thing as individual identity. Instead, he thought we all occupy predefined roles (subject positions) in the massive machine that is our culture (the hegemony). When I first read that, I thought it was absurd, but now I wonder if he developed that theory in his mid-fifties, because that's how this feels some days.

(aside: it's entirely possible that was Gramsci and not Althusser. My brain is dying, and I don't care enough to go back and figure it out.)

I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days. This isn't depression-- as you know, I've been through that, and this feels different. Depression is like an endless well of blackness inside me. This doesn't have that black hole feeling, it's just ended up with me re-evaluating the things I do and jettisoning quite a few. I'm reconsidering what's really important to me at this stage of life, and aligning my activities to match.

Maybe the cog feeling only happens to those of us who were dreamers, who fantasized that we would really help change the world, that we would be part of something big. I believed that wholeheartedly when I was younger. But I've told you before, I'm convinced now that the only way we change the world is in the small things, the little ways that we connect with the people around us, the way we carry ourselves in the world.

So the only thing I've come up with so far to work on this is to adopt a defiantly positive attitude-- yeah, well, my life may be a boring and insignificant cog in a machine, but it's my cog, damn it, and I'm going to do the best I can with it.

As with all of these posts, I know this doesn't apply to everybody. There are plenty of people who hit their fifties at full stride and never look back (I see them on Facebook and I sigh with a tiny bit of friendly envy). But I suspect there are more of us uncertain ones out there than are admitting to it.

(This has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of weeks now. I've re-written it at least three times. Maybe part of the re-evaluation thing is wondering if there's any point in posting stuff like this. But it's late, and I've missed posting on Tuesday for the past several weeks, so here you go.)

Mid-Life: the Empty Nest

All around me, friends far and near are sending their kids off to college. We did it with our daughter seven years ago, and we'll be doing it again next year--our son is a senior in high school this year. It's a well-known stage of parenting, just like potty-training, PTA, and surviving The Talk (the birds and the bees one).

It's not an easy thing to do, even if you're ready--and we were; there's nothing like spending a year with a 17-year-old girl to convince you that you're ready for her to move out.  And she was more than ready. We have plenty of other things in our lives to keep us busy and happy and entertained. But it was still like lopping off my left arm and driving away.