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.

7ToF: This one really is short. Sort of.

1. If you see me going into an office supply store or turning down the office supply aisle at Target, could you please just go ahead and whomp me with one of those Loony Tunes baseball bats? Every time I open another drawer there are more pens and markers and tape and post-it notes and pads of paper. It’s a disease.

A small selection of the pens available at our house. Want some?

2. I spent twenty minutes today trying track down the Summer Off Right reading challenge on Instagram before I figured out that it was actually the Summer of Fright reading challenge (hard to tell when the hashtag is #summeroffright) and therefore not something I am interested in. Horror is the one type of book (and movie) that holds no interest for me. I value my sleep, thank you very much.

3. I really do try to support independent booksellers as much as I can. Just last week I had a shopping accident in UTown at one of their two indies. I make a point of seeking out independent bookstores and buying books from them when we travel, too.

4. But they can be so annoying. Not long ago I went to the indie that is in the next town north of us, about 12 miles away, and asked if they had Strange the Dreamer. The woman got a smirk on her face and said, "I'm sorry, we don't carry that kind of book." I realized that a) she had never heard of the book, in spite of it being a prizewinner and NYT bestseller, and b) she thought I was asking for a romance novel.

But isn't a romance novel (although as I told you last week, I haven't finished it yet, so maybe it turns into one, but it sure didn't seem like it at the place where I stopped). The main character's last name is Strange, and he is a dreamer. And anyway, would it be so hard to carry it even if it was a romance novel? If you're the only bookstore local people have, can't you carry what they want to read? Apparently not. So in spite of it being the only retail bookstore in a hundred mile radius of my house, I haven't been able to bring myself to go back. Snobs.

5. All of that was in preparation for telling you that I had a major book shopping accident on Prime Day at Amazon. Oh, my. As if I didn't already have a stack of forty books to read. At least. But I am such a sucker for a bargain, and they had all kinds of buy this book and get a credit toward another book deals going and so even though I bought about eight books (several of them for kindle), I think it ended up being less than $40. Speaking of sicknesses. Books and office supplies.

6. So tonight I get to do every reader's favorite part of planning for vacation: figuring out what books to bring. Because yes, next week we are on our way to Southern California for Dean's big family reunion. We get together with his immediate family (siblings and dad) every year, but we haven't been to the big aunts-uncles-and-cousins version in a long time. None of us are big fans of Southern California, but it is supposed to be gorgeous next week and the kids are all old enough that no one will expect to go to the (hot, crowded, expensive) theme parks, so maybe it will be OK.

7. Next week was the week I was planning to re-post a bunch of old posts in preparation for new discussions, but I'm not exactly sure I'll have time to get it set up before I leave. If posts start appearing next week, you'll know I got it worked out. If not, I'll be back again soon.

Have a great week, and think of us sweltering on 12-lane highways. Or alternatively, hanging out with a good book at the beach. :-)

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: awakened by cat fighting at the last minute

1. The biggest challenge of being home alone for a week? No, it's not the lack of conversation. No, it's not the tiny bit of worry I can't quite escape. It's the damn pets. The dog is bored to death. The cat just woke me up having a cat fight under the window. The chickens really, really want to wander the yard, in spite of the frequent appearance of the neighborhood fox and disappearance of another hen (we're down to three now).

2. But at least now that I'm awake, I've remembered that I completely forgot to write a Friday post, and since I can't go back to sleep, I might as well knock one out, right? At least it will be short. Probably.

3. The mini-reading challenge isn't going very well. I think I'll have finished five books by the time my boys get home, which would still be too much reading in a week except that a couple of them were really short. Have been listening to David Sedaris read his latest, Calypso, so if I drive somewhere tomorrow, I'll get that one done, and it is good. I think especially hearing him read it.

4. Can a book be too long? If there isn't enough plot to make it work, then yes, I think so, but sometimes I suspect I'm just a slacker. Why would I want to read a 700-page book when there are so many good 300-pagers? But this week's interesting read is a blog post by a guy who agrees with me, so it seems like a reasonable opinion instead of laziness: Farewell Inspector Lynley. For all the times I've finished a overly long book with draggy bits and really wished the editor had more guts.

5. Have any of you tried sous-vide cooking? (actually, I know at least one of you has!) It's this gizmo that looks like a stick blender but is really a water heater. It heats a bin of water to a temperature of your choosing and then you can cook food in it. Perfectly cooked chicken breasts have an internal temp of around 150 degrees (fahrenheit). If you bake them in a 350 degree oven, it's easy to overshoot and dry them out. But if you cook them in water that is exactly 150 degrees, it may take a little longer, but at least you know they won't get any hotter than 150. I got mine for Mother's Day, so I'm definitely not an expert yet, but I've turned out perfectly cooked chicken breasts several times and steak once. I'm a fan.

6. Except the meat comes out bland and colorless, because it hasn't been seared. So you can (esp in the case of steak) sear it after you're done. Pro-tip from my friend who has been doing this a lot longer than me: if you're going to sear it after, set the sous-vide for five degrees below the desired temp since it will be cooking further during the sear. If you have more hints, let me know.

7. My favorite bookstagram pic from this week (account @bookspate): Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men. I was about to do a much more elaborate setup when i noticed that the wooly throw pillow on one of our living room chairs almost exactly matched the cover art. That was easy.

And that's it for me. Back to our regularly scheduled mayhem next week.

At the movies: Tag

It seems to me that one of the keys to liking a movie is to go into it thinking you're not going to like it. So making a movie recommendation seems a bit counter-productive, because then you'll walk into it expecting great things, and inevitably you'll be disappointed. But I'm doing it anyway, because I went to see Tag this week with some friends, and it was really fun, way more fun than I was expecting it to be. The gist of the plot is that a bunch of guys in their forties have been playing a game of tag during the month of May since they were nine. Antics ensue.

Reasons I went to see Tag: 1) It is largely set in Spokane (pro tip: pronounced Spo-Can), and when you live in a big, sparsely populated state, a city that's a mere four and a half hours away is practically your next door neighbor. When we first moved here 26 years ago, back before we had Wal-Mart and Costco and Home Depot/Lowe's, everyone in town drove to Spokane a couple of times a year to stock up on whatever we couldn't get here locally. It was like living in pioneer times and driving your Conestoga over the pass (except it only took 4 1/2 hours).

2) At the end of the movie, when they show a photograph of the real men who inspired the movie, the guy in the priest duds really is practically a next door neighbor, since his parish is one town over from here, a dozen miles away. So of course, because this is still a relatively small town in spite of the fact that we now have all the above-mentioned stores plus two Starbucks (three if you count the one inside Target), there was a big spread about it in our newspaper.

and 3) there was absolutely nothing else I wanted to see (that I hadn't already seen) and we really wanted to go to the movies. So, it's fun. But probably not fun enough to have gone on and on about it. If you can manage it, go in with low expectations. You do wonder what the deal is with Jeremy Renner, because he is (of course) awesome at the action parts, but whenever he has to actually act, the scene goes flat. I love Hawkeye so this was disappointing to me, but it's possible they had to film around his busy schedule and none of them were in the room at the same time. Fair warning: lots of salty language, which doesn't bother me, but one of my friends was unimpressed.

I was going to do this as the first part of my Seven Things post for this week, but it got so long that I'm posting it separately.

My mini-reading challenge, cliffhangers, and the thing I apparently can binge on

Well, you may just get Seven Things posts for the rest of the summer. It's all I've got the energy for. Because summer. And who's going to complain about that?

1. Dean and MadMax are on a week-long fishing trip in a remote location that involves a 22-mile hike from the trailhead to the river they're planning to float. Yikes. But they're experienced backpackers and floaters, and they're well-prepared, and they're part of a group of five, so I'm assuming that no news is good news.

2. This will be by far the longest I've ever been home alone. It will be interesting to see how I respond. I know I'm good for a few days, but it's entirely possible that by Wednesday or Thursday I will start hanging out at the mall just to see people. And the dog is already driving me crazy. She wants her boys back because they are way more fun than I am.

3. I've set up my own mini-reading challenge for the week. I want to see if I can read seven books in a week. I'll let you know how it turns out. They're mostly books that have been on my TBR list for months (even years), but I admit that I went through and picked books that were less than 300 pages, so it's not all that many pages, really. *cough*

4. How do you feel about books that end on cliffhangers? I've been burned by them often enough that I decided several years ago that I would not start another trilogy-or-similar until all the books were out. Which is why I still haven't read Game of Thrones, in spite of the rest of my family getting into regular conversations about various characters and plot points.

Or Patrick Rothfuss, who published the second book of his Kingkiller trilogy in 2011 and still hasn't announced the publication date of the third (or at least, not that I could find with a brief google search). Dean loves those books, and I'm pretty sure I will, too, once they're all out.

5. So before I started Strange the Dreamer (by Laini Taylor) last week, I checked for a cliffhanger, since the author has written a trilogy in the past. I couldn't find anything that said first in a new series, so I thought I was safe. Authors who write series also write stand-alone novels, right? But about halfway through, I saw someone on Instagram had posted a picture of it with the caption #worstcliffhangerever, and a several comments agreeing, and I dropped it in mid-read. Even though it was shaping up to be one of the best books I've read in a long time, with genuinely interesting characters and premise.

Fortunately I discovered a few days later that the next book in the series is going to be published this fall, so I can figure out what to do about it then. If you don't mind cliffhangers, highly recommend it. And if you read it, let me know what you think.

6. I read Zealot (Reza Aslan) last week, a book about trying to understand who Jesus really was. It's been out for several years, and at the time it was published (2013), it made a big splash as being boldly controversial. To be honest, I didn't think it was all that wild, but I didn't agree with him, either. If it's a topic that interests you, I wrote a review on Goodreads that you can read here.

7. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote an entire post about how I can't binge read/watch books or TV series? Yeah. Well, be careful what you say. Just about every time I make a lame statement like that, I end up finding out it's not true shortly after (what do you want to bet that I end up reading a doozie of a cliffhanger by the weekend?). Because I discovered something I apparently can binge on, and it's podcasts. I've listened to so many in the past month that they're cutting into my reading time and everything else, and also I'm getting sick of them. So I think I'm going to stop listening to back-episodes and just listen to new ones as they come out.

And I really wish I had thought of something interesting to say..... maybe a few days from now when I'm desperate for conversation I will write a long post about something fascinating. Or not.

QoTD: things that matter

In the middle of a discussion of the Buddhist idea of emptiness and impermanence, Susan Murphy says:

And yet! Every being we love is irreplaceable and matters terribly. Personhood matters dearly. Character--or the way realization forms us and learns to walk upright in the world, in the most ordinary and understated way--matters, and the particular way clear action radiates out effecting change in ways that can't and do not need to be counted, this, too, is inexpressibly dear.

 -- Susan Murphy, in Red Thread Zen        

Resonates on several different levels at the moment, although I think sometimes muddled action can have similar results. I'm not reading this book straight through, I just pick it up at random when I'm in need of some thoughtfulness. So far, highly recommended.  

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.