anger, part one

I've been sick this week-- not deathly ill, just viral yuckiness. I did finally get a covid test yesterday, which came back negative today, so at least it isn't that. But I spent an outsize amount of time sleeping and sitting on the couch, and not enough time thinking about what I wanted to write this week. So I'm pulling this one out of the drafts folder at 11pm on Thursday night, even though I'm not sure exactly where it's going. If I ever get around to writing part 2, we can both find out.

I've been thinking about anger, lots. Both thinking about it and also feeling lots of anger. I'm angry about so many things right now-- social injustices, lack of change, anti-vaxxers, corporations who are making millions off lies and "misinformation," things in my personal life, and of course there's always the hulking, looming shadow of the pandemic in the background. 

How can you be angry about a pandemic? It's completely out of my individual control, although of course I'm doing my part to stop the spread, and it's no one's fault. What a waste of energy, to be mad about a virus. It's just out there, doing what viruses do. And yet, I am mad about it. I'm mad that I haven't been able to travel freely in two years, I'm mad about events that have been canceled and plans that have had to be changed, social occasions that didn't happen, community groups that have acrimoniously split over covid arguments-- it just goes on and on. 

What to do with all this anger? Where to direct it? I don't know. I'm working on it. Maybe I'll have answers in part 2, but probably not. The thing I've been thinking about this week, though, is the frequent disconnect between anger and having a spiritual life.

Having a spiritual life is an integral part of feeling healthy for me, but it's hard to find a spiritual "path" (sorry, I know it's a cliché) that makes room for anger. Being "spiritual" is supposed to be the same thing as being calm and serene, right? It's supposed to be about floating through life on a fluffy cloud of unwavering trust that God is in charge (if you're theist), or peacefully (smugly) observing the crazy swirl of emotions and over-reactions of the less spiritual (if you're not). 

And that's just not going to work for me right now. Maybe it is because I'm immature and unevolved. But a spiritual life that's founded on dishonesty is hardly worth the effort, not to mention that it's pretty much the definition of hypocrisy. And if I pretend I'm not mad, or frustrated, or even sometimes despairing, I'm lying. I want to believe spirituality is about being real, being grounded in myself, in authenticity (hmmm, lots of buzzwords there). 

Maybe it's because traditionally, spirituality has been connected with various religious paths, and institutionalized religion has a vested interest in keeping its people wrapped in cotton wool, not asking questions, and not thinking about the ways you're being coached into supporting the status quo. 

No. I want a spiritual path that can deal with my anger. I want to be set free to feel what I feel rather than herded into following along. And that's complicated to figure out, because of course acting blindly out of uncontrolled rage isn't a great idea, either. I'm having a hard time right now untangling the beauty of a fully-present life, a life that includes anger and fear and jealousy and pain as well as joy and peace, from my own preconception of what a spiritual person should be like. And a spiritual person doesn't get angry??? That can't be right. 

Huh. That's where the draft post ended. No wonder I hadn't published it yet, because it's like half a thought. It may not even have made much sense. But maybe you will grant me a little leeway since I'm still feeling a bit sickly and I will try to explain better in part 2. 

In other news, one of the things that made me angry this week was watching women my age chase after youth. Give it up. Good grief. Why the hell do we care if a 16-year-old thinks skinny jeans have gone out of style? Why do we want to look like we're 35 again? (well, OK, you got me there.) but since it's not possible, why are we wasting time and money chasing after something we can't have?

Which is one of the reasons I post the nostalgia listens. It's a way of celebrating the things we know, the things we've experienced, that those teenagers haven't and never will. They do not know what it was like to hear "Sweet Baby James" when it was brand new, or "I Just Called to Say I Love You," or "I'll Take You There." And we do. So there. (We're also super mature. ha.) I'm adding links to those songs and they can be this week's nostalgia listens.

the morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age, which is terribly unfair.

I told you last fall that I suddenly realized I was a senior citizen, but I don't think I ever told you how that happened.

There were a bunch of small things leading up to it--a nick on my finger that would have been gone in a few days when I was 30 but now lingers for a couple of weeks. The sudden appearance of a muffin top with no changes to my eating habits. My total ignorance of 90% of the people who appear on the cover of People.

But what really made me wake up to my senior status was listening to younger women talk. In the middle of a pandemic, it wasn't my usual habit of eavesdropping in a coffee shop. I was listening to podcasts.

I somehow got into a circle of smart, interesting, thoughtful podcasts by women who were talking online about their reading, their houses, their kids, their skin-- really, they were just talking about their lives. They all seem to know each other. They appear on each other's podcasts, they @ each other on Instagram, they blurb each other's books.

Some of them are enormously appealing, and I found myself listening avidly, as if they were truly friends of mine. But the things they were talking about were... well, they weren't quite right.

You'll remember my frustration with their obsession about skincare. And then their endless discussion of home organizing techniques and "life hacks" -- everything from how to organize your spices to menu planning to how to work more reading into your day.

It wasn't that I don't care about those things, but I would see the topic of the podcast and think it was something I would learn from, and then I'd listen, and their advice would be so basic that I'd end up thinking, wait, you don't know that? You haven't figured out how to organize your kitchen drawers? 

But you know, if I'd heard this when I was in my late twenties or early thirties, I would have thought it was great. Because back then, I was figuring out the same things. But now, I'm not. Our house is never as organized as it could be, but it's organized the way I like it. I might pick up a tip or two, but for the most part, it is clear that I'm not their target audience.

I need to declutter (as always), but it's on an entirely different level than what they're talking about when they describe taking last year's fashions to Goodwill, or clearing out toys that their kids have outgrown. 

We married in 1984. I'll save you the math and tell you our 37th anniversary is coming up in May. If I had only accumulated one box of stuff per year, that would still be more boxes than would fit in any closet not owned by one of those people on the cover of People. The easy stuff-- the clothes I no longer wear, the books I've lost interest in, the DVDs we'll never watch again-- I know how to declutter those, and I do it regularly.

My problem is the boxes of stuff that are pushed to the top shelf of a closet and I'm not really sure what's in them, and when I open them, there's so much miscellaneous crap that I just close the lid back up again. There's a two foot high stack of flute music. There's Doug's old coin collection (which has not been added to in 40+ years, but probably has some valuable coins in it). There's a set of four silver wine goblets from my grandmother, and a shelf of cranberry glass, some from Doug's grandmother and some from my great grandmother. 

There's an entire double-sized crate full of travel books and maps. Who wants old travel books? How do you get rid of them? And my beloved literature textbooks, which are so horribly out of date that they have no value to anyone but me. I've even thought about burning them, because the thought of sending them in a box of scrap paper to the recycling center just breaks my heart. At least I could imagine it as a ritual funeral pyre or something. 

It's an entirely different level of decluttering than the kind you need when you're 38. Compounded by living in a town where nothing sells at a yard sale if it's priced over a dollar, and the only estate sale/auction company specializes in farm equipment and auto parts. We've used them for some big ticket items-- large pieces of furniture, our old pickup camper-- but would they know what to do with cranberry glass? I haven't even tried to find out. The whole thing exhausts me before I've even started.

This is not the series I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but I can already tell it's going to be two or three parts. Have a great day, and apologies for posting late. This was supposed to go up yesterday, but even though we're no longer locked down, I'm having trouble remembering the day of the week. (just me?)

7ToF: Flatly I'll stand on my little flat feet and say: this post is all over the place. Good luck.

1. For some reason I had the urge to watch South Pacific this week, the 1958 version with Mitzi Gaynor as Nellie Forbush. It's an experience. My mom was a big Rogers and Hammerstein fan, so we listened to the soundtrack obsessively when I was in elementary school. Watching it again after not having seen it in at least 20 years was like being dumped right back into another time and place. 

It's often embarrassingly cringe-y. Bloody Mary, the white actors in full-body makeup playing Polynesians, middle-aged Emil creepily singing that he needs someone young and smiling-- Nellie can't be half his age. 

But considering the times, it's sometimes surprisingly sophisticated--that racism is carefully taught, not inborn; the hints of transgenderism; the moment between Nellie and Joe Cable, both of them madly in love with someone else, when they struggle with their pre-war small minds and the wider world they've encountered. (That's my favorite moment in the movie. Among other things to love--eg, the hauntingly bitter "My Girl Back Home"-- I can't think of another movie of that era that has a similar moment of pure friendship between a man and a woman. It's rare enough even now.)

2. But half the reason to watch it is so that you get the full impact of the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles' ironic South Pacific Medley. It's priceless.

3. There are a million and one reasons to be upset with the GOP leadership for caving in to Trump for the past four (five) years. But one of the worst is that they have erased the path out of the QAnon lies and conspiracy theories. There's not a chance in hell that the people who have been sucked down that rabbit hole are going to believe a Democrat, ever-- after all, we're the ones who are colluding in a Satanic pedophile ring, right? And we're bringing on Armageddon and the downfall of moral society and the demise of the family and all that rot. But no one the QAnon folks would be willing to trust is saying, "Look-- we're conservatives and we agree with you about a lot of things, but Trump is lying to you. There was no election fraud." (I mean, if the Dems had rigged the election, why did they lose pretty much every contentious down-ballot race?) So the QAnon people have no path out. Maybe that is the biggest failure of the GOP right now.

4. At the end of Avengers' End Game, I declared that I was done with Marvel. I've told you before, I really enjoyed the Marvel movies, especially some of the later ones (Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy). But it felt like they had their run and I wasn't willing to go back for more of the same. How many superhero stories can there be? I mean, when you get to the point where your superheroes are fighting each other (as they were in Captain America: Civil War), maybe the well has run dry. Enough already.

5. However. I keep hearing that WandaVision is really good. Hmmmm. Might have to try it. Let me know if you have.

Me, age 7

6. The photo is of me, as my ultra nerdy seven-year-old self. I'm putting it here this week because I've been thinking quite a bit about the blonde thing. I heard a black woman say in an interview last year that there is no more privileged person in the world than a blonde white woman. I wanted to object-- there's still the whole patriarchy thing going on, and you have to put up with blonde jokes and having your intelligence underestimated. But I also get what she meant. There are a whole bunch of men who are captivated by blonde hair. I don't understand it, and I don't buy into it for sure, but I also can't say I've never taken advantage of it. 

6a.  To be clear, I've never, ever, ever cried in front of a professor to get a grade changed, or to a police officer to get out of a ticket, or any of the other stupid things blonde women supposedly do. But I've politely accepted that certain older men are going to flirt or take extra notice, because even when it was annoying, it seemed fairly harmless.

7. You can see from the photo that I've been blonde for a long time. Sometime in my 30s, my hair darkened up enough that up until the pandemic shut down hair salons, I'd been getting it highlighted 2-3 times a year for ages. Once I couldn't get it done anymore, I decided that I would let it grow out and see what my natural color is at age 59. Honestly, I kind of liked it. It was a sort of caramel-y color, and in the summer when I was in the sun fairly often, it still had blonde-ish highlights. But over the winter, it really darkened up. So yesterday I went in, got an inch and a half hacked off (it was down to my shoulders), and got the highlights again. Mea culpa. It's the dumb blonde life for me.

Have a great weekend.

Fashion for Seniors

When I was in high school back in the 70s, there were all kinds of fashion trends that were way out of my financial reach--especially designer jeans, which were newly in fashion, even though it was a bit before Brooke Shields famously declared that nothing comes between her and her Calvins in 1980. 

But there were two fashion faux pas that were to be avoided at all costs: your bra strap showing, and highwater pants (pants that were too short to buckle on the tops of your shoes). 

We're so used to people flaunting their undergarments now that it's hard to even remember that feeling of intense embarrassment we had over a wayward bra strap. Ah, a more innocent time.

But the ideal of jeans gently bent on the top of your shoes was so deeply embedded in me that when cropped pants and capris came into style in the 90s, it was several years before I could bring myself to participate. 

Aside: as I'm typing this, I remembered the 60s. When I started elementary school in the midwest in 1966, we weren't allowed to wear shorts to school. We could only wear shorts under a dress or skirt. When we moved to Dallas in 1969--new for me, but a return to Texas for my parents-- our school allowed shorts as long as they were longer than your fingers when your arms were straight down at your side. Same for the length of skirts.

Anyway. Back to pants. Here is an approximation of a conversation I had with my 30-year-old daughter last month.

Me: (holding out my leg with my skinny jeans carefully rolled an inch or two above my shoes): I've noticed that we're rolling our jeans now

(Daughter smiles, holds out her similarly rolled jeans)

Me: But I was surprised to see bare skin showing over booties even when there's six inches of snow

Daughter: Well, we're trying to avoid this (in a tone of voice that indicates a moral travesty has occurred, as she rolls her jeans down to the exact length that I have always considered to be perfect)

Me: (looking confused) what's wrong with that?

Daughter: (as if stating the patently obvious) It just looks so messy

Whaaaat? I have subsequently read in a couple of instagram posts something to the effect of "neatly rolled" or "neatly cuffed" pants, so I guess that is the prevailing wisdom. 

We're gonna dress like it's 1979

It occurs to me that when women our age are wearing something sadly out of date, it's not that we're "still wearing the styles that were in fashion in 1980," as we are sometimes accused. 

It's that we've been through so many different variations of hemlines (mini skirts, maxi skirts, midis, skorts, just below the knee, just above the knee, micro-mini), types of shoes (platforms, earth shoes, flip flops, gladiator, ankle straps, mary janes, ballet flats, block heel, stilettos--remember when 2 1/2" was a "high heel"?), length of shirts (belly shirts, low neck, tunic length), types of pants (bell bottoms, stirrup pants, jeggings, gauchos, flare legs, low rise, mid rise, high rise, and lord knows what else)-- we've been through so many of those, that we just can't be brought to care anymore. 

That's right. We just freaking don't care. Wear what you like. One of the joys of age-- you can ignore the trends, and instead of being horrified, people will just condescendingly assume that you're doddering on into old age. And secretly, we know exactly what we're doing because given the whole wide world of styles to choose from, why not wear what is comfortable and feels good. 

Amen.

ch ch ch ch changes

When I have my occasional a-ha!! moments, after they're over, they often seem so obvious that I'm a little embarrassed it took me so long to figure it out. Surely everyone else already knew this.

That's how I felt about my realization that at age 59, I am no longer in the same demographic that I was at age 49 (the original posts are here and here). Well, DUH, as we used to say when I was in junior high. How could I possibly have thought that I was? 

But I've continued to read and listen to people and podcasts, and you know what? I'm not alone. I'm not the only woman in her 50s who is having trouble making this mental switch. It's not so much that we mind our encroaching age. After all, by the time we've reached this age, we've lost friends and loved ones and we know how lucky we are to make it to 60. 

It's that we don't feel old, at least not the way our youth-obsessed culture defines old. We don't feel irrelevant, and that's how our society views "old" people. And my friends who have already turned 60 don't seem like senior citizens, at least not the way I thought seniors were when I was 40. I think that is more about my misunderstanding of what a senior is like than it is about 62-year-olds being different than they used to be. Our society really is remarkably stupid about aging.

I think the key is that we have to change how we think about age. We can't do much about changing how young people think-- I can remember being that younger woman who rolled her eyes when someone in her 50s would enthusiastically tell me that "50 is the new 30." That younger me was not convinced. 

But we can change what we believe about ourselves, and about age. We've internalized this idea that if you're not at the center of making things happen, your usefulness as a human being is gone. So we keep chasing after that feeling of being in the "maker" stage, the influencer stage, the making a difference stage. I want to feel like I matter.

But you know what? We do matter. We just do. We don't have to manufacture this, or change our culture, or convince anyone, we just have to believe it ourselves. Instead of trying (unsuccessfully) to continue to shoehorn ourselves into the mid-life category, we need to change how we think about people in their 60s. Yup, I'm old. Yup, I'm no longer on the center stage of what is happening in our world. But I am still a badass.

What if we just move forward? Instead of accepting what our culture tells us--that if you're not in that cultural sweet spot of mid-thirties to mid-forties, you don't matter-- how about if we dump our own anti-age prejudice and know down to our core that american culture is wrong about aging?

Because if we don't do this, if we continue to try to pretend that are in that center stage phase, that's exactly when we become ridiculous. To be clear: Do what you want, wear what you want. Ignore the YouTube tutorials about "seven things women over fifty should never wear" and "six makeup tips for looking 35 again." That's not what I mean. 

What I mean is: recognize that the generations have shifted. The women who are in their 30s to 40s have a different cultural context than we did. They have a different set of priorities and a different set of challenges. We can't talk down to them as if the things we did at their age were important, and theirs are just window dressing. We can't tell younger women that their a-ha moments are unnecessary because our generation already did that (not kidding, I came so close to actually saying that a couple of months ago).

Every generation has to figure out certain things for themselves. Their generation is being forced to manage their kids' online education while figuring out how to organize their homes during lockdown and track their Instagram feed and monitor their kids' use of TikTok and Snapchat. It's a whole different world out there. 

Our lives currently include aching knees, unrestful sleep, chin hairs, and not understanding why anyone would want four social media apps. Own it, my friends. We got this.

****** a blog note ******

Last week we spent the entire week smothered in a thick fog that was actually smoke, blown in from forest fires on the west coast. Like many people with allergies and smoke sensitivity, it was a miserable week for me. But-- of course -- not even close to as miserable for us as it is for the people who are actually experiencing the fires.

It finally rained a bit over the weekend, which at least temporarily cleared out the smoke and let my brain start working again. And when it did, I remembered the post I accidentally published last Monday. It wasn't supposed to go up until Tuesday, but it's easier than you would expect to screw that up. I quickly figured out my mistake and "unpublished" it, and for the first time ever, I managed to delete it before it went to the RSS feed so it never appeared in my reader. But then the smoke descended and I forgot about it until yesterday, so that is why a post that is dated last week was just published yesterday, and why those of you who are email subscribed received at least two copies of it (three?). Oops.

Friday deep thoughts

Mountain ash tree in our backyard

Maybe the only thing that is really true right now is that we are all alive. If I'm sitting here typing this, and you're reading it, we each have a pulse, and I can press a finger to my wrist and feel it. We're breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I can feel the keys under my fingers, I can see the cat sleeping next to me on the sofa, I can hear traffic in the distance through the open window, faintly taste the granola I had for breakfast. Maybe that's where we start. 

If you've been around for awhile, you've seen the quote below, because I think this is at least the fourth time I've posted it. It's my favorite quote from Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg, and one of my touchstones since I first read it a dozen years ago: 

"Faith does not require a belief system, and is not necessarily connected to a deity or God, though it doesn't deny one. ...faith is not a commodity that we have or don't have-- it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience.... No matter what we encounter in life, it is faith that enables us to try again, to trust again, to love again. Even in times of immense suffering, it is faith that enables us to relate to the present moment in such a way that we can go on, we can move forward, instead of becoming lost in resignation or despair. Faith links our present-day experience, whether wonderful or terrible, to the underlying pulse of life itself."  -- Sharon Salzburg, in Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience

"The underlying pulse of life itself." 

Have a great weekend. 

Mentor in training

Another memory: about ten years ago, I was eating dinner with a group of friends, mostly my age except Liz, who is about fifteen years older. My friend Ann was struggling with how to deal with an opinionated and adversarial daughter-in-law after her son's marriage a few months earlier. (We've all heard about dealing with your mother-in-law, but more and more of us are discovering how difficult children-in-law can be, yes?) 

Liz, my older friend, had kids who had been married for years, but she listened without comment while we all commiserated with Ann over how difficult her daughter-in-law was being. We encouraged her to stand up for herself, not let the young woman manipulate her, etc. We were being supportive, because that's what you do with your friends.

Finally, Ann turned to Liz and asked her if she had any advice, since she'd been dealing with this for years longer than any of the rest of us. Liz said, a little sheepishly, "I think you should let it go. You're in this for the long haul. They've been married less than a year, and she doesn't know you or trust you yet. If you make a fuss about this now, it could be years before she gives you another chance."

Which led to dead silence because of course Liz was right. Then we all started laughing, because we were so far off base in our response. Why did I think Ann needed my opinion? My kids aren't even married!

Maybe I'm making too much of this, but it keeps coming to mind when I think about being a crone/wise woman. Liz listened. She didn't jump in with her opinion. She waited until she was asked for advice. (Oh, lord, do I have a hard time with that one.) She stated her opinion and her reasoning without making it sound like she was the ultimate arbiter of the right thing to do. She was talking about a subject where she had direct experience, and she knew what she was talking about.

In other words, she was helpful instead of overbearing. I could choose a worse role model.

(as always, the names in this story have been changed)

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.

7ToF: changing my demographic, headaches, and my favorite Kind bar

The color of spring

1. Years ago, I realized one day that one of my best friends was the same age as my younger sister (i.e., less than two years younger than me). When my sister and I were young, twenty months seemed like a huge difference. But with my adult friends, I never think about age differences. It's always seemed like all women between mid-thirties and some unspecified older age were my peers.

2. But it has been gradually and then suddenly dawning on me that this is no longer the case. Finally at some point last week the whole idea burst into bloom in my head all at once: I'm in a different age bracket now. I think it's been evident to my younger friends for years now-- no, you are waaaay older than me, not just a little bit-- but it was news to me. After the initial shock of realization, I'm totally OK with this. I am embracing my inner crone. I envision rocking on the front porch with friends and a pitcher of vodka tonics and cackling over inappropriate jokes. I think it took me so long to figure this out because I was still a mom with a kid at home until I was 55. That's my excuse, anyway.

As you can imagine, there will be more on this topic in the future. Can this still be a blog about mid-life? Am I a senior citizen now? The AARP has been sending me stuff for years, so they certainly think so.

3. Since I may be offline for a couple of weeks, here is the headache update. I am way better, and same as the last time I tried an elimination diet, there weren't any foods that made a difference. Stretching and working with my neck and shoulders seems to be the key-- which means I need to avoid spending all day hunched over the computer or curled up with a book. DAMMIT. So I've been getting out more and reading less, and reminding myself to get up and stretch, etc etc.

4. Elimination diets are interesting. Since I've never done one unless I was desperate--three weeks of headaches will do that to you--I never do it in an organized enough way. There are so many variables, and unless you can go live in a convent somewhere, it's just impossible to shut everything down. Or at least, it is if you're me and you don't really care about it that much. I ended up going about two and a half weeks with no alcohol, sugar, or artificial sweeteners, and about one and a half weeks with no dairy and no grains (gluten or otherwise). I've slowly been adding stuff back over the past ten days or so, and since at the moment I've only been headache free for five or six days, I don't think it's any of the food items.

5. Over the last few days, I've added back corn-- I waited on that one since I was a little suspicious about it. The worst migraine I've had in a couple of years was after I had tamales for dinner the previous night. But I've had corn every day for the past three days, and I feel great, so I think that's ok. I still haven't had any peanuts or peanut butter, so that's the only thing left to add back in. But I think it's going to be fine.

6. The "no dairy" and "no gluten" evangelists, I think, would say I didn't give it long enough. And yeah, maybe they're right. But I know people who are gluten sensitive or lactose intolerant, and they can tell within hours if they've eaten something they shouldn't have. If that were me, I would totally get on board. It wouldn't take five minutes for me to sign on to that program if it made that big a difference. But if you have to avoid something for weeks, and then three days after you add it back in you still can't tell any difference, I'm not convinced it's a problem. The stretching and the activity level seem to make a much bigger, more noticeable difference for me.

The color of spring #2

7. But there are headaches, and then there's how I feel in general. And doing this did remind me how much better I feel (headaches aside) when I avoid sugar. I feel no need to become a zero sugar person, but I do feel better if I limit sugar, and if you want specifics, at the moment that means that I'm avoiding anything that has more than 6g of sugar, which I somewhat arbitrarily picked because my favorite Kind bar has 6g of sugar. I feel noticeably better when I'm not eating a sugary snack two or three times a day-- and that can happen if I'm not paying attention, because I have a definite sweet tooth.

On an entirely different topic: I've been learning a lot recently, and we've had a couple of significant life changes--like MadMax moving back home after college-- but it's not stuff I'm ready to type about yet. And also, we're headed out to our favorite lake for the holiday weekend, so I'll be out of range for at least a few days. And since I'm supposed to be spending less time at the computer, I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to be offline for awhile. So, not sure when I'll be back-- probably soon, I don't seem to be able to stay away-- but I hope you have a great weekend and a good start to your summer.

Things worth reading/listening to:
- This older post about writing and storytelling from Jenny Crusie
- Modern Mrs. Darcy's Summer Reading Guide (you have to sign up with your email address)
- Book rec: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (heavy on the profanity but sharply observed)
- Fascinating podcast episode of the week: An interview with Ezra Klein on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, episode #248. Klein dissects our polarization and what can (and can't) be done about it. I'll be thinking about this one for weeks.

Day Whatever; getting better at balance

I decided a couple of days ago that I needed to stop being online so much, so I spent the last couple of days being offline. Mostly. But that didn't work either. I've been getting a little crazy.

Then I finished a zoom meeting with some of my friends a little while ago and listening to all the online resources they're using right now, I realized that what I need is to be more judicious about where I'm spending my time. Less news, more interactive socializing. Less helpless anger, more trust in the essential goodness of the universe.

I'm a little astonished at how much that zoom meeting cheered me up. Remember a few months ago when I told you that women in groups made me crazy? Well, apparently sometimes they don't. Picture me eating major crow. This was exactly what I needed, and I am feeling so grateful for my women friends right now. We've had each other's backs for a long time now-- this group has met in some form or another for at least a dozen years now.

So I'm sorting through and figuring out what works for me. For example, I've never been a big Twitter user, but I've checked it every ten or twelve days, and it has never failed (in the past) to cheer me up. People can be so creative and funny, and since I wasn't checking in very often, I only saw the highly rated tweets--which apparently in my feed means the funny, uplifting ones.

But every time I've checked in on Twitter over the past three weeks, I've come away angry and depressed and frustrated. I'm not sure what the difference is, but no more Twitter for me. Likewise, Instagram has not really been a source of support recently. But oddly, Facebook-- which I've barely tolerated for years now-- has been great. And zoom meetings with friends have been a lifesaver.

The Ten Percent Happier app, which I've talked about before, is hosting a daily free live meditation at 3pm Eastern during the coronavirus shutdown, and although I have yet to make it to the live version, I've listened to several of them the next morning (they're recorded) and they're helpful and uplifting. My friends talked about free classes they're taking and thoughtful resources they're reading, which I'm going to check out. I need to do better at staying sane, I think.

And if my rant from a couple of days ago came across as too much, apologies about that. I should have held off for 24 hours before posting it so I could tone down the wording a little. It's certainly not the fault of these women that they're pushing my buttons about aging. My problem, entirely. When we lived in North Carolina, they had an extremely useful phrase when someone was being obnoxious-- "she really showed her ass"-- and I think I've been doing that a fair amount over the past few months (occasionally here, more often irl). I may show my ass, but I'm learning.

Have a great weekend. If you want to watch a silly, funny, not-oscar-worthy movie, we enjoyed Spies in Disguise, which I barely even knew about since we're empty nesters now. It was a slow starter for me, but then I giggled all the way through.

Day 19: in which I revisit (of all things) skin care

I told you last fall how tired I was of listening to women I admire go on and on about skincare. As I said at the time, it's not that I'm opposed to taking care of my skin. In fact, in the very next paragraph, I undercut my entire complaint by telling you about a new favorite skincare product. I did that on purpose to confess that as bored as I am with the whole topic, it's still something I think about. The hypocrisy is right there.

But it keeps happening. Last night I finally figured out why it bugs me so much--hence, this post.

I am 58, which means (obviously) I am knocking on the door of 60. And when I hear these women, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, going on and on about skincare, what I hear is an undercurrent of panic about aging. I am determined not to look old. I am not going to look like someone who doesn't take care of their skin. I am not going to be one of "those women" that people look at with pity and think, she sure hasn't aged well! 

And I get that. I can sink into that panic. I am almost sixty. But here's the thing: it's age shaming. What's wrong with looking old? What's wrong with looking your age? Is it so horrible to look like you're 58? I mean, if we're lucky, we're going to get old. Why are we looking at it with such deep-seated shame and dread?

Even if you haven't "aged well," it's not necessarily a horrible thing. If you've got wrinkles and lines and leathery skin, but the soul peering out of your eyes is vibrant and kind and compassionate, you're the woman I want to emulate.

There. I've said my piece. Apologies for the rant. I finally had to unfollow one of my all-time favorite podcasts (not one of the bookish ones), because they just couldn't leave it alone.

7ToF: my favorite books of 2019, and some odds and ends

1. Have you looked at any of the dozens of "best books of 2019" lists that have been published in the last couple of weeks? Maybe I'm just reading a strange bunch of lists, but what has struck me is that there is very little consensus. The Nickel Boys and Normal People (neither of which I've read) are on many lists, but not all. Other than that, it's kind of a grab bag. Seems odd to me, like part of the point this year is to prove that you read a bunch of obscure books.

2. When I was thinking about my personal favorite of 2019, three immediately came to mind: The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai), The Friend (Sigrid Nunez), and Washington Black (Esi Edugyan). So that's that, I thought. But then I started scrolling through Goodreads, and was surprised at how many books I had given five stars and then forgotten. (Is there a lesson there?)

3. So for the record, here are ten favorites that I read this year. I was going to list all the ones I gave five-star ratings, but there were twenty, which seems like a lot. So these are just ten that stood out when I scrolled through the list:  

The Intuitionist Colson Whitehead
Mary Poppins on audio with Sophie Thompson narrating
The Great Believers Rebecca Makkai
Less Andrew Sean Greer
The Friend Sigrid Nunez
What Truth Sounds Like Michael Eric Dyson
Born a Crime Trevor Noah, on audio
Matilda by Roald Dahl, on audio narrated by Kate Winslet
Washington Black Esi Edugyan
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
Runners-up: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson, Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer

Pretty good, huh? I still have a few more I might get through before the end of the year, so maybe there will be more. I can hope.

4. I wasn't thinking about the End of The Decade until I recently saw a list of the best books of the decade. Whoa. The top one was Visit from the Goon Squad, which I haven't read but which was fortuitously available immediately from our library website, so maybe I will get it done before The End of The Decade.  Ha.

5. The Reading Glasses Dilemma, otherwise known as, How To Find a Pair of Reading Glasses When You Need Them. My solution for the past ten years that I've been wearing cheaters is to have a dozen pairs and spread them out--a pair in the bedroom, a pair in the kitchen, etc-- so I could always find one. But of course it didn't work. I could never find them. My new solution, which has only been for three weeks but is working much better: I have a ceramic jar on my kitchen counter and I keep all of them there. So any time I see a pair, I bring them to the kitchen and drop them in the jar. The only ones that aren't there are the ones in my purse, which I try to never take out so I always have a pair with me when I'm out of the house. So far, there has always been a pair in the jar. If you've got a better plan, please let me know.

6. Dean's solution, in case you were wondering, is to wear Clic Magnetic glasses, which are split in half at the nose piece and join up with a really strong magnet. Hard to describe, you'll have to go look at the picture. They hang around his neck almost all the time so he never loses them. But the band that goes around your neck is stiff, and it doesn't fit right under my hair, so I haven't been able to use them.

7. If you're in despair about today's young people, I strongly encourage you to show up for some activities at your local high school. Check the school website and show up for a play, or a band or choir concert, or a volleyball game. We've been to a couple of events recently, especially the winter choir concert, and the kids are bright, talented, and enthusiastic. They have worked so hard. They're going to be just fine, except they've got to deal with the mess we made.

And that's it for me. Hope you have a lovely rest of the holiday season. I'm not sure when I will post again but it might be after the New Year.

7ToF: BETWEEN TRIPS, which means I am both happy to be traveling, and also completely nuts

Very cool succulents at Desert Botanical Garden

1. We went to Phoenix last weekend for a trip that was business for Dean, and nothing but fun for me. I wish we could do that more often-- Dean's air fare, the rental car, and the hotel room were paid for, we just have to pay for my airfare, food, and all the books I bought. Then on Monday, I'm headed to Texas to spend a few days with my mom and then go to Dallas for the big mystery readers/writers convention, Bouchercon. I've never done anything like this and I'm really excited about it. I will report back.

2. Highly recommend Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. It's the story of Wash, a young boy who starts life as a slave on a sugar plantation. The brother of the plantation owner takes him on, and then the two of them are forced to flee when Wash is implicated in the death of a white man. It obviously has some parts that are difficult to read, but for those of us who are Highly Sensitive Readers (a title I claim with some embarrassment), it's readable. You can do it. Edugyan's writing is wonderful, the voice of Wash is mesmerizing.

3. But I was struck by something that I guess is a sign of the times. (Minor spoilers ahead) Wash starts a relationship with a young woman several years after his escape. Even though they are clearly living together, at no point do they worry about getting pregnant. I've noticed this in various historical romances, too. Even though there weren't really any effective methods of birth control in the nineteenth century, somehow the author projects her own lack of worry about pregnancy back onto her characters. It is so weird. In my generation, as soon as you became sexually active, you worried about getting pregnant. Even when I was married, I worried somewhat obsessively about getting pregnant when I didn't want to. But apparently, today's young women are so confident in their birth control options that they don't know what that obsessive dread of getting pregnant is like.

4. On the one hand, I'm really happy about this. Women will never achieve economic stability if they can't control when they get pregnant, and this tells me that we're getting there. These young women don't seem to know the psychic burden of worrying about getting pregnant. That is great. But on the other hand, it's so not accurate. The consequences of an accidental unwanted pregnancy back then would have been enormous.

I guess it's the same argument as using a Bible that has the pronouns updated to be more inclusive, or Hamilton, where we are reimagining the past the way it should have been. And I am entirely in favor of both of those, so I think I am deciding that this is a good thing.

5. You know what I am tired of? (this is starting to be a regular topic: things that make me grumpy) I am tired of obsessing about skincare. MY GOD. I have a skincare routine--it even has several more steps to it than it did when I was in my 30s and all I had to worry about was preventing breakouts. So it's not that I'm completely uninterested in the topic. But suddenly it seems to have become The Thing to obsessively listen to skin care podcasts and read blog posts and spend hundreds of dollars on trying out new products. It's ridiculous. There are no men who are doing this. It is just women. What is it with us?

6. But now that I've said that *blush* I have to confess that I did a three-week test of a new skin care product someone raved about on buzzfeed. The skin of my chest, which I think we are supposed to call our décolletage, is covered in moles, age spots, dark patches, and red dots (yes, the dermatologist did tell me the technical name and no, I cannot remember it). The dermatologist told me that it's just the joys of aging, and we have to claim our wisdom and our years and whatever other bullshit they tell you, and there was nothing to be done. The downside of a northern European gene pool, I guess. I don't very often envy younger women, except when I see someone with a perfectly smooth décolletage. Then I want to scratch her eyes out.

7. So anyway. I tried Stila's One Step Correct ($36 at Ulta) for three weeks. I even took before and after pictures so I could tell what really happened, and as you might be able to predict, there is not a chance in hell I am posting them. But you know what? While it made zero difference in the number of moles/spots/skin tags, it made a huge difference in how my skin looks. I was, honestly, kinda shocked, because I am a pretty big skeptic about skin stuff. I'm going to keep using it. That particular product may not work for you, but I guess I can't turn my nose up at people who are trying different things, because sometimes you find something that helps.

That's it for me. Have a great weekend.

7ToF: Catching up, reunion version

1. Remember how I smugly told you in my last post that I never buy books from amazon anymore? Yeah, well, less than TWELVE HOURS later I bought a book from Amazon. I didn't even realize the horror until several hours later. *rolls eyes at self* But I also said the exceptions were gifts and Kindle sale books, and it was a gift to myself. That's my story.

2. It was a gift to myself because yesterday was my birthday, so I am now 58 years old and sixty is looming ever closer on the horizon. I can't quite believe I'm this old, but other than that, it feels pretty good. I don't think sixty will bother me the way fifty did.

aside: I think the age I feel is mid-forties, maybe 46? Some days it's even mid-thirties.

3. The book was Evvie Drake Starts Over, which had been recommended as a fun read at least half a dozen times recently. Since it was my birthday, I let myself read a lot longer than I usually do and I finished it late last night (with some time out for a) boring errands and b) birthday fun betwixt). It is indeed a fun book, and even made me laugh out loud once or twice. It's fairly short--less than 300 pages-- and that is both part of what makes it fun and part of what makes it a little thin. There were a few things that felt under-developed. But you know, fun reading isn't supposed to be dense and heavy. I gave it four stars on Goodreads.

aside: I decided after typing that that I am going to make a push to bring back the use of betwixt. Great word.

4. So, I think I told you that I had three reunions in a row during my two week vacation. There was a week in South Dakota with us and 30 of my cousins and their families, my mom, and an aunt and uncle. Fun and relaxing. Then there was the one night 40-year high school reunion, which was also fun, but since it involved four plane flights in about 48 hours to make it happen, it was a little stressful. Maybe I will write more about it later. It was fun to reconnect with people I hadn't seen in decades, and also to see a couple of friends that I do see more regularly. In fact, that was the best part.

5. Then the second week was here locally-- we rented a place on a lake near here and Dean's siblings and their families and his dad and wife came and spent the week. We weren't really officially hosting since we've all known each other forever and we don't really need a host. But still, it's our home town and we felt responsible-- and the weather was not good. Unlike our usual pristine July weather (which coincidentally we are having this week), last week was rainy and windy and cool. No one --including us-- wanted to hang out and swim at the lake, which was pretty much all we had planned. But we managed to come up with things to do, and I think everybody ended up having fun, even if it was a little disappointing.

6. All of that meant that when things finally calmed down this week, I felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation. I was worn out, and you know-- introvert with two solid weeks of fairly intense socializing. Ouch. I plowed through the mountains of laundry, dealt with leftover food from the rental last week, unpacked, ran errands, paid bills, etc etc and then yesterday for my birthday, I gave myself the day off. It was great. I don't usually do much about my birthday because I've never seen the point of big birthday celebrations-- it always feels like just another day to me-- but it was pretty nice yesterday.

7. So, back to it today. I shouldn't even be sitting here typing this! Hope you have a great weekend, and that you get to relax and read a fun book.

7ToF: how much of this stuff can I take?

1. I had a bad migraine today (as I'm typing this, it's Thursday), so I'm not sure I'll make it to seven things today. But I'll give it a shot.

2. I've been having a lot more headaches than usual recently, which-- to be honest-- sucks. Plenty of people have worse health problems than I do, so I'm not going to complain too much, but when you have a headache for ten days in a row, it's hard not to get frustrated. And it's hard not to spend entirely too much time trying to figure out why. My usual is 1-2 headaches a week, and just a few months ago, I went nearly three weeks without having any headaches at all, so I know it doesn't have to be like this.

3. So I'm thinking about hormones again. I don't think I have many (any?) male readers right now, so I can be snarky and say I used to think it was unfair that women had to deal with hormonal issues so much. But we've been watching various sporting events recently and there are endless commercials about male hormones and testosterone supplements, so now I'm thinking eventually things even out.

4. I had a rough time with peri-menopause and menopause, including terrible migraines (much worse than now). But things got significantly better when I started using over-the-counter supplements like black cohosh (sold in combination with other herbs as Estroven and Remifemin), Dong Quai (a chinese herb that is supposed to balance female hormones), and a progesterone cream.

5. But you're not supposed to take them forever, so for the past couple of years I've been gradually phasing them out. The cream was the first thing to go. Last spring I stopped taking the dong quai and started cutting the Estroven tablets in half. This fall I switched from Estroven to Remifemin, which seems to me to be a little less potent (ymmv).

6. Now I'm wondering if I need to just stop taking them entirely. As someone who is headache prone, it's hard to tell if my recent increased headaches are because I'm taking too much of something, or not enough. Either way, my body would respond with headaches (I know that from experience). The only way to find out is to stop taking them entirely, but the last time I tried that-- last January-- it turned out to be premature (resulting in--you guessed it-- bad migraines). Maybe I could try every other day? Maybe I should stand on my head and hold my nose and take a quarter of a tablet? I swear that's what it feels like sometimes as I try to figure this stuff out. If you have any advice, please please let me know.

7. This isn't really seven things, obviously. I'm just numbering paragraphs. So let me see if I can think of something entirely different for #7. OK, here is something I haven't told you. We took advantage of one of the many pre-Black Friday sales to get a new TV. Our old one was at least 10 years old, did not support HD, and was pre-smart TV. The new one is not that big compared to what's available, but it's considerably bigger than our old one, and the picture is an order of magnitude better. I like it. So maybe we will spend the weekend watching movies.

There. Made it. Have a great weekend!

Types, and my formative years

I think most of us around here are about my age, in our fifties, a few of us a bit younger, a few a bit older. So we spent our early, formative years in the pre-feminist era. Feminist ideas were hovering around, waiting for the match to spark the flames, but really, feminism, or at least the second wave of feminism*, didn't get started until the seventies when I was halfway through grade school and able to at least partially understand what the issues were.

So we're a funny hybrid. I can't imagine that anyone who reads here would argue against the basic ideas of feminism: outside some minor limitations of upper body strength, women can do whatever jobs men can do, if they are so inclined. Women should not be defined by their reproductive capabilities or lack thereof. Women are not here to be support staff for the important work that men are doing. We should be equally supportive of all human beings, regardless of race/gender/orientation/religion/whatever.

And yet we were raised back in the early 60s, in a world where the old ideas were still strong. Women could maybe have other interests on their own time, but really their primary job was either to be supportive of, or ornamental to, the "real" world of men. We weren't valuable on our own (which is why it was so supposedly awful to be unmarried), but only to the extent that we were helpful or pleasing to the men in our lives. And we raised children.

I was not raised to think that I could be of value just exactly as I was--a sometimes moody, sometimes dreamy, definitely shy, bookish, nerdy girl. How could that possibly be of value to the people around me? I believed that I needed to be cheerful, friendly, uncomplaining, and attractive (thin), to be of worth. I'd never even heard of being an introvert. It wasn't an option.

Whether or not that was what the people around me intended, that was what I picked up, and that was how I modeled myself. I developed a perky, enthusiastic social persona that sometimes worked, and often didn't, and that got me through my first twenty-two years of life. (Nowadays, I can tell when I'm feeling really stressed about a social situation, because I'll find myself pulling that persona out again. If you ever see me being perky, pull me aside and tell me to calm down.)

But putting on that cute, friendly act exhausted me. I still remember the night when it broke beyond repair. I don't remember the exact date, but in late August 1983, after I graduated from college, I was starting grad school for a master's in English, and I went to a meet-and-greet for the new grad students. There might even have been ice-breaker activities.

In other words, it was what I now think of as my worst nightmare. But I didn't know that then. I thought I was supposed to enjoy getting to know my fellow students. About an hour or so into it, I found myself uncontrollably on the verge of breaking into tears. I couldn't stand it for one more minute. I left early, drove myself back to my brand new apartment and cried for hours.

It was weeks, maybe months, before I could begin to understand why I was crying. But now I know: I had reached the end of being able to pull it off, the illusion that I was this eternally cheerful, outgoing person. That minor breakdown started a couple of years of deep confusion for me, culminating in my mid-twenties with the deepest depression I've ever experienced.

I ended up dropping out of grad school, and it wasn't until a couple of years later when I had a job and several months of therapy under my belt (yay for work benefits that include therapy) that I started to feel like I was putting myself back together. Or maybe putting myself together for the first time.

And it wasn't until a year after that that I learned about being an introvert.  It was like suddenly someone handed me a Get Out of Jail Free card-- I was flooded with relief. OH! THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME! I'M JUST AN INTROVERT.

And to this day, that is what I love about personality types. For me, the primary value is validation. Here you are, and you're just fine exactly the way you are. And 30+ years later, the Enneagram did the same thing for me in a different way, and that is why I am so fascinated by it at the moment.

I listened to a guy, an Enneagram "expert," on a podcast yesterday who said that the danger in using the Enneagram for validation is that it becomes an exercise in narcissism, and I thought: you only think that because you're a man. You've never needed validation. It was a judge-y and catty (and probably unfair) thing to think, but that's the first thing that popped into my head.

(It probably has less to do with gender than whether or not you're already comfortable with who you are.)

Well, this time I didn't get anywhere close to where I wanted to go. In fact, I'm even further away than I was at the end of the last post. But this is plenty long enough. Have a great day.

* the feminism that swept the country in the seventies is called "second wave" feminism. The first wave was the suffragettes back in the early twentieth century. And the third wave is where we are now, with a plurality of different ways to be empowered human beings.  

7ToF: Oddly happy

1. It is an absolutely gorgeous fall day here, while on the East coast they are bracing for hurricane Florence. We have family in the Carolinas, so our hearts are definitely with the folks who are bracing for impact.

2. You probably think that when I say I write this blog for me, I'm just saying that. But it really is true. Every day since I posted the phone update, I've reached a point where I've been on my phone five minutes longer than I meant to be, and I've caught myself before it turned into an hour, thinking-- I said I was working on this. I'd better stop.

3. Even though I'm not working, I've signed myself up into busy-ness this fall. I've never stopped doing the food bank on Tuesdays, and now I have choir on Monday night, band on Thursday night, and I started a three-year term on my church's session (leadership team) this week, which looks like it will average out to about one meeting a week. Plus our book club, and blogging and instagramming. It's less structured than work, but I think it is going to be good. In fact, I'm more excited about what I'm doing right now than I have been for a couple of years.

4. I even caught myself with a generalized feeling of happiness this week. I've been happy plenty of times over the past few years, but it was usually connected to a specific event or situation. It's been awhile since I've felt that sort of generalized contentment. And that makes me-- um....., well, happy. :-)

5. Deb Perelman, of Smitten Kitchen fame, has been the source of some great recipes PellMel and I have tried over the past few years. This week she pulled together her favorite recipes with 5 ingredients or fewer. I'm equally grateful for the recipes and that she said "fewer" and not "less."

6. Dean and I were in the mood to watch Jane Austen this week. We started with the BBC's 2009 version of Emma, starring Romola Garai as Emma and Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley. Emma is a horrible snob, so it is only due to good writing on Jane Austen's part and good acting on Romola Garai's part that you end up liking her in the end. And she and Mr. Knightley have some great, very entertaining arguments. The first time I saw this version four or five years ago, I didn't care for it, but it's grown on me. We both give it thumbs up. And yes, I do realize how lucky I am to be married to a guy who will watch Jane Austen.

7. I'm writing this on Thursday, and one of the Instagram photo challenges I follow had this prompt today: "[post a photo of] a book that was released the year you were born." I had no idea what books were published in 1961, but of course Google knew. Turns out I have copies of four books published in the year of my birth: James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart, and The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie, which I just picked up at a used bookshop last week. Since James and the Giant Peach and Phantom Tollbooth were two of my very most favorite books when I was in elementary school, and even better, today was coincidentally Roald Dahl's birthday, it has made me oddly happy.

Hmmmm. Oddly happy would be a good title for this post, yes? Have a great weekend, and if you're on the east coast, be safe and stay dry.

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.

7ToF: in which we discuss fitness for couch potatoes

If you're someone who already has a fitness routine or exercise program going, move along, there will be nothing for you in this post. This is for those of us who are naturally sluggish (which sounds slightly nicer than saying we're lazy), but you know, at midlife, we'd probably better stay active. Damn it. You know how the saying goes: if you don't use it, you'll lose it. I hate that.

1. We've all read those articles that tell you in order to get the full benefit of exercise, really you should be exercising at an elevated heart rate for 45 minutes, five or six days a week. Five-ish years ago when I was in the midst of my determined (and unsuccessful) plan to regain my 40-year-old body, I proudly told my primary care doctor that I was exercising for 30 minutes, 6 days a week. She told me that really I should bump it up to 45 minutes.  *auntbean deflates*

2. But I am not a person who is going to exercise 45 minutes, six days a week. It's just not gonna happen. Everything I most love to do involves sitting on a couch or in front of a keyboard. So then for about a year I did nothing, which is when my weight skyrocketed up to an amount that was not OK with me, which led to the Weight Watchers stint, etc etc etc. You've heard that part.

3. So now I find myself looking for a fitness routine that's first and foremost sustainable. A fitness routine that I can really do long-term, because in spite of my desire to sit on the couch all day and read, study, write, and/or nap with a cup of tea and snacks within reach so I don't have to move ONE CENTIMETER, I know I need to move. For one thing, I'm stiff enough these days that if I sit still for 45-minutes, I'm creaky when I get up.

4. So I started with doing squats in the shower as I dripped off. That makes it sound like a real exercise, but honestly the first time I did one, determinedly bracing my feet against sides of the shower, I could barely make my butt drop a couple of inches without feeling like I was going to fall over. I think I did two sort of half-assed mini squats that first time. I've gradually worked up to doing six or eight real ones. It's not much, but you know what? It only takes about 30 seconds and it has made a noticeable difference. I can feel how much stronger my legs are when I'm just walking across a parking lot.

5. And since that worked so well, I've gradually worked on adding other things. My post-shower routine is now up to about 3 minutes of neck and shoulder stretches plus two sets of squats. And a few days a week I fit in five minutes of working with handweights and/or a walk, and it feels manageable, like something I can keep doing long term. It sounds so feeble--seriously, this is a total of about an hour spread out over an entire week-- but it's made a remarkable difference in how I feel. Maybe I'll keep adding to it, but maybe this is it, my lifetime fitness routine. I should write a book.

(aside: squats may not work for you, especially not if you have bad knees. If you want to try squats and you've never done them before, watch this 2-minute video about how to do them without hurting yourself. And I should probably say something like check with your doctor before beginning any exercise program and don't sue me if you hurt yourself, etc etc etc.)

6. Do you still take a shower every day? More and more of my friends say they don't. I still do. I've always had oily skin, and although of course it is way less oily now, I'm still a mucky mess when I get up in the morning. I'm a sweaty sleeper. I'm not even going to dignify that by saying I "glow." I wake up gross. So yeah, I still take a shower every day, although I only wash my hair every 2-3 days now, after religiously washing it every day from about age 13 until a couple of years ago.

7. The other "types" post I was going to write was a long one about how I figured out what my Enneagram number is, because I think it's fascinating. But I was telling someone else about it last week and it was about 30 seconds before their eyes glazed over, so maybe it's only fascinating to me. I had an image of myself formed decades ago based on one of those family myths, and it turns out that I'm really not that person. This has been huge for me, truly transformative. If it's a topic that interests you, highly recommended. Try this book for the brief overview, or this one for a more in-depth explanation. (Those are Amazon links, but just for informational purposes. I am not an associate, I don't get anything from them.)

that's all from me. Have a great weekend.
p.s. Apologies if you got this early, I set the publishing date wrong and it was sent out yesterday before I had edited it. Oops.