Heppy New Year (which is better than Hippy New Year)

Everyone I've read today is doing retrospective posts. They are fine pieces of writing, florid at times (and at times, not) that offer substantial summing up of 2008 (and at times, don't).

Don't worry: I have no such offering here.

I'm not one for looking back--or for that matter, forward. It's enough for me to concentrate on just what is right now. How absolutely, awfully, disgustingly Zen of me. Not to mention only true for this precise moment.

So at this precise moment, I'm feeling quite content with my lot in life, such as is it, ta dum ta dum. Here's what I'm liking, at this precise moment:

1. I FINALLY found the absolutely perfect template for MidLifeBloggers. It is installed--sort of. That means, that not all parts of it are operational, but they will be soon if not sooner.

2. This, the finding and installing of the template, is an excellent thing because until I did, I was ready to shitcan the entire site. IT WOULD NOT DO WHAT I WANTED IT TO. Not to mention that IT WAS STARTING TO BORE ME. And if it bored me, its mama, just imagine what it was doing to the rest of the world. But the thing was, I just didn't care. Because I COULD NOT GET THE SITE TO DO WHAT I WANTED IT TO. But now I can and, ergo, we're in business again. Sans orange...or as one of our regulars said, "so you've folded the orange tent." Yes, I have.

3. I'm feeling at peace with who I am, for the first time in I don't know when. How long this will last, I'm not sure. Just mark that on December 31st, 2008, I liked me.

4. Here's a pitcher of Julie, Max, and Brit on the boat fishing. Notice the life jackets, please. Julie and Mark (the photographer) are nothing if not perfect parents.

Death and Dying - at Midlife

I was out of sorts yesterday. Just felt meh-ish, after a several week period in which I was up-and-at-em. Am I crashing, I thought. Oh no, oh woe. But then I did what I have learned to do at such times (at least when I can remember) and that is to just accept that I'm feeling meh-ish. And know that it too will pass. While I was working at achieving this pseudo-Zen state--and wishing, really, that I could have a Stepford button installed in my brain because who needs to feel meh-ish even if you know it will pass--I realized the source of my state of mind. The day before my friend M called to tell me that our friend Sharon was dying.

I saw Sharon when I was in LA a couple of weeks ago. It was a reunion of sorts of our book club and Sharon, who hadn't been feeling at all well, particularly wanted to come. She needed to see her friends. The group of us hung out as we have done so many times in the past, and we talked, really talked, 'checking in' with each other as only women who have history together can do. My check-in was to relate not only the ghastly year I've had, but also the much more promising one that seems now to be taking place.

Sharon checked in with her medical report. The doctor saw a spot on her lung and said it was probably sarcoidosis. Or maybe lung cancer. Sharon wasn't buying that diagnosis; she much preferred the sarcoidosis, which is an immune system disease that is rarely fatal. She would do what she has always done (sometimes with disasterous results, it must be said) and trust totally in Alternative non-Western medicine. She was refusing the steroids that would be prescribed for the sarcoidosis and she was refusing the second CAT scan that would rule out cancer. But oh, she was so tired, and so weak, and so very very depressed. The doctor wanted her to go on anti-depressants and until now, she had refused them as well. But we, her girl friends (some of whom were loaded up on Prozac and Effexor themselves) urged her to reconsider. Think of the mind-body connection, Sharon, we told her. How can you hope to get well without your full emotional strength. And she finally agreed. When I hugged her goodbye, it was with the knowledge that she too would soon be loaded up on Effexor and feeling 100% in just a matter of time.

I don't think she ever got that prescription filled. The next day I'm told she was so weak that her sister came to take her to the doctor. She had the second CAT scan. Stage IV lung cancer; metastasized already to her bones. She died yesterday, just three weeks after I last saw her. When M called to tell me, I thought, Aha--the meh-ish feeling made much more sense than I had originally thought.

I've reached the age when I'm starting to lose my friends, all of whom are midlife women. Not that cancer doesn't take young people as well, but I am suddenly aware of how vulnerable we all are to the ultimate breakdowns in the body. How vulnerable I am. And it makes me feel--well, very vulnerable.

The Petard Upon Which I Am Hoisted

I wrote this post last year, September 10, 2007 to be exact, when I was feeling like the loneliest voice in the blogosphere talking about issues of aging. And in fact, there were no comments, nary a response to what I wrote. Rereading it now, and knowing that there's actually a dialogue going on, I'm going to republish it.

The original title was: Today's Blog Is Brought to You By......What I Read In Bed At Night. It was a rather lackadasical title, truthful but not especially meaningful, or appealing. Some titles are like that for me, but others come out of some hidden place and insist on being, despite seeming nutty, wild gibberish. Then after a time, I'll suddenly see how absolutely perfect the gibberish was, how it so summed up things I felt but couldn't articulate. The one for this post today is that kind of a title, and after you read this post, see if you can tell me what that petard is.


Last night, and the night before actually, [I was reading in bed] Living in the Light of Death and The Northern California & Nevada TourBook. The second was a function of the first and, obviously, they have very different authors and completely different subjects. The former (the first, that is) is a book by Larry Rosenberg on breath awareness meditation or, as the subtitle says, "On the Art of Being Truly Alive." This is so what I'm needing to foster in my life: breathing, being alive, and a knack for taking the piss out of topics that I really do believe in. Ooops. Can I suck that last sentence back? Or at least the final clause--or is it really a phrase with an adverbial in it?

But I digress. The TourBook is the AAA's tome on where and what to visit in--hey!--Northern California and Nevada. If you belong to the AAA, you can go to one of their offices and slide your card in the appropriate slot, punch the appropriate buttons and--woila!--maps and tourbooks come falling out. Sort of like the candy machine at a Motel Six (not that I'd know what that's like, since I foreswore motels with numerals in their names about a decade ago).

I got the TourBook (I hope you're noting the unique capitalization) several weeks ago when I was looking for a likely spot for Molly and I to visit. I found one, but we didn't go; we knitted instead. That is, I knitted at Knitique, my LYS, and Molly veered between greeting the customers and sweeping the floor searching for and finding all manner of crumbs, a task which leaves the floor cleaner and a black low water mark on her chin or beard or muzzle or whatever you want to call that curly white hair that grows on her face.

But again! I digress. I had the TourBook in bed with me because there are three practice centers for Insight Meditation in California, and I wanted to see which was near me. Instead, I got caught up the first chapter of Rosenberg's book: "Aging Is Unavoidable." That's a contemplation, and Rosenberg says it's one people want to avoid. They accept it intellectually--oh, sure, big deal--but to actually take in the real fact of it, of the eventual disintegration of the body--? Nope, that's for someone else. Part of it is a question of self-image, he says, and that, that point is where I got nailed to the wall.

"Self-images are a problem. They are designed to help us feel adequate and secure but also often cause a great deal of suffering. We all have them, and most of us aren't aware we do. We spend enormous time and energy and even money creating and protecting them, trying to keep them intact while our daily experience is chipping away at them. Then when someone sees us in a different way, we are shattered. They mention a senior-citizen discount, and suddenly we see ourselves in Bermuda shorts and canvas shoes, wearing a funny little straw hat. That isn't the image we want to present at all. The pictures we have in our own head are way out of date."

I've been thinking on that. It's a gendered description, so I'm not caught by the Bermuda shorts and funny straw hat. Except--except, the image in my head of a senior citizen is my mother. Short little Libby, who loathed being called cute. Who wore Bermuda shorts and Keds in matching colors. And berets--she was famous for her berets (in fact she was buried in one). There is a whole world of negative images that I have attached to aging, not only clothing, but behaviors and attitudes and ways and means of being that come from watching my mother age. Things I vowed I would not do or feel or say. Except...except...well, you know what I'm going to say, don't you.

The Martian Has Landed: A Post About Nothing & Everything

...earth to Jane, earth to Jane....

I must confess that I have been a less than constant blogpal lately. I went away and then I came back and somehow I just couldn't work up that much interest. And looking at my stats, the feeling must be mutual. Is it me? Is it thee? I dunno. My SOM* is OK, better 'n OK I'd say--and certainly my alliterative, not to mention rhyming powers are intact. So what gives?

For one, there seems to be an awful lot of babble on the net these days. Blog babble is one thing, but Twitter babble--that's just plumb ugly annoying. You know, we have monkey minds, as the Buddhists say. Thoughts, large and small, important and inane, are forever to-ing and fro-ing through the jungle in our heads, leaping and swinging and making incessant noise. Those who practice Mindfulness (hear monks chanting; smell incense burning) work to quiet that Monkey Mind. So what's with the Twitterers who are gleefully sharing each and every leap and swing, burble and belch with those of us who for whatever reason are their Followers (you asked me; you like me; you really like me). They must be practicing Unmindfulness.

I could work myself into a whole rant about this, but then I'd probably insult people, and, jeeze, that's not something I ever want to do. At least not on purpose. Unless one (the ubiquitous One) has pissed me off. Nah, not even then. I have a sharp tongue, but a soft heart. So, I've turned my Twitter phone messages off. That's what we call "taking care of oneself."

It is also called "taking care of oneself" to only read people and posts that interest me. This is a new tack: formerly I read just about everybody I had ever met or wanted to or thought I should. But it was taking me ages every day to work my way through this one and that one's whatever. In fact, some days it became the One Thing I Did: read every blog on my Google Reader. Good girl. Well done. Go fetch. What I'm finding with my new discernment (is there such a word? there is now) is that the blogs I am really attracted to are those where the writing (a) is really really good, and (b) the writer lets me in to their life. Right now these are the blogs I don't like to miss: Thursday Drive, Mad Marriage, A Walkabout's Weblog. Is it any coincidence that they're all writers? Hmmmmmmmmm? I think not.

*state of mind

Flotsam & Jetsam & Metaphors Galore

Last night I dreamt I got stuck in a steep ravine. I started to climb out and then stopped because I remembered how old I am. Too old to be climbing out of ravines, it would seem. In my dream, I found another way out, but when I awoke--now--I'm wondering if "too old" is a fact of life to be dealt with (as I did in the dream) or an excuse.

The brined chicken was not successful. Despite being all nicely browned, crispy even, on the outside, it was still pink--oh, yuck!--on the inside. I had to zap it in the microwave which, of course, left it dry. I'm wondering if brining does something to poultry that affects cooking time and temp. I find myself, in this current bout of cooking mania, very interested in the chemistry involved. It's as if--no, it is!--that I've suddenly discovered that cooking is really a chain of chemical reactions. Unfortunately chemistry was my worst, absolute worst subject in school...


The product of my weeding on Sunday: I chopped and trimmed and cut and eventually pulled out a dead bush . It was the sister to the bush below on the left. Why did one live and prosper while the other died? I'm not sure. Maybe it was the incredibly invasive vining weed that had wrapped itself around and through the bush. Or maybe it was just Its Time.

This is the clear space that's left, and now I get to decide what I want to put there. I'm thinking bulbs--I love hyacinths. And maybe herbs. I'm not sure.

When I typed that first sentence above, it came out as , "The product of my wedding on Sunday..." Today, actually, is the anniversary of my wedding nineteen years ago. Do I regret it? No. Do I regret its ending? In some ways, yes and in some ways, no. It is what it is and I am what I am, and today I'm happy with that.

Today's Blog Is Brought to You By....

...What I Read In Bed At Night.

Last night, and the night before actually, it was Living in the Light of Death and The Northern California & Nevada TourBook. The second was a function of the first and, obviously, they have very different authors and completely different subjects. The former (the first, that is) is a book by Larry Rosenberg on breath awareness meditation or, as the subtitle says, "On the Art of Being Truly Alive." This is so what I'm needing to foster in my life: breathing, being alive, and a knack for taking the piss out of topics that I really do believe in. Ooops. Can I suck that last sentence back? Or at least the final clause--or is it really a phrase with an adverbial in it?

But I digress. The TourBook is the AAA's tome on where and what to visit in--hey!--Northern California and Nevada. If you belong to the AAA, you can go to one of their offices and slide your card in the appropriate slot, punch the appropriate buttons and--woila!--maps and tourbooks come falling out. Sort of like the candy machine at a Motel Six (not that I'd know what that's like, since I foreswore motels with numerals in their names about a decade ago).

I got the TourBook (I hope you're noting the unique capitalization) several weeks ago when I was looking for a likely spot for Molly and I to visit. I found one, but we didn't go; we knitted instead. That is, I knitted at Knitique, my LYS, and Molly veered between greeting the customers and sweeping the floor searching for and finding all manner of crumbs, a task which leaves the floor cleaner and a black low water mark on her chin or beard or muzzle or whatever you want to call that curly white hair that grows on her face.

But again! I digress. I had the TourBook in bed with me because there are three practice centers for Insight Meditation in California, and I wanted to see which was near me. Instead, I got caught up the first chapter of Rosenberg's book: "Aging Is Unavoidable." That's a contemplation, and Rosenberg says it's one people want to avoid. They accept it intellectually--oh, sure, big deal--but to actually take in the real fact of it, of the eventual disintegration of the body--? Nope, that's for someone else. Part of it is a question of self-image, he says, and that, that point is where I got nailed to the wall.

"Self-images are a problem. They are designed to help us feel adequate and secure but also often cause a great deal of suffering. We all have them, and most of us aren't aware we do. We spend enormous time and energy and even money creating and protecting them, trying to keep them intact while our daily experience is chipping away at them. Then when someone sees us in a different way, we are shattered. They mention a senior-citizen discount, and suddenly we see ourselves in Bermuda shorts and canvas shoes, wearing a funny little straw hat. That isn't the image we want to present at all. The pictures we have in our own head are way out of date."

I've been thinking on that. It's a gendered description, so I'm not caught by the Bermuda shorts and funny straw hat. Except--except, the image in my head of a senior citizen is my mother. Short little Libby, who loathed being called cute. Who wore Bermuda shorts and Keds in matching colors. And berets--she was famous for her berets (in fact she was buried in one). There is a whole world of negative images that I have attached to aging, not only clothing, but behaviors and attitudes and ways and means of being that come from watching my mother age. Things I vowed I would not do or feel or say. Except...except...well, you know what I'm going to say, don't you.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho....

...'tis off to BlogHer I go. And if that little ditty doesn't stick in your brain, here's another one. "Leavin' on a jet plane/don't know when I'll be back again...." Except I do, Sunday night.

Of course this trip has been in the works since the winter. But yesterday I decided that I absolutely had to get my hair cut. I went to Chris, at Something or other Spa and Salon. I picked him because he was incredibly freaky, and freaky is familiar to me, coming from West Hollywood. Chris would have fit in very well at one of the leather bars there. How he manages in Elk Grove, I'm not sure. I told him I wanted something 'edgy.' He wanted me to define edgy. "You know, edgy. How do you define it." We discussed etymology and I guess we were each satisfied, because he picked up his scissors and began.

I don't have a photo of what I looked like at the end. I have, as well, managed to repress the few glimpses I got in the mirror. Suffice to say, I had a bundle of hair in the back, some awkward tendrils at the nape, and a long curving payess jutting out from the front of each ear. The whole mass was such a gooey glop of product, product and then more product that I had to get in the shower when I got home.

D arrived today to stay with Molly and said, "oh, you decided to cut your hair." He was trying his best to be diplomatic, and really he was, but one of his strong suits as far as I'm concerned is that I trust his judgment about how I look. So I asked him, and he answered: "Well, it's kind of wild." I was thinking I could get away with a mop-of-curls, je ne sais quoi look, but maybe I was a bit overly optimistic. "Do I need to get it cut again?" "Yes," he said, and D isn't a man who is affirmative that often (mostly he likes to hedge). So I hied myself to SuperCuts, where Verushka applied her magic scissors to my head.

Is it better? That's debatable. But it is what it is, isn't it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, is my Zen for the day.

I'm taking my laptop, of course, but last year the wireless connection at the hotel died from time to time, due to hundreds of women tap-tap-tapping away. This hotel in Chicago is much fancier, not to mention expensive, but what that will mean connection-wise, I'm not sure. So you may get full-blown posts or I may be updating on my Treo.

Blogging From My Bed....

Last night I couldn't fall asleep, I was so wired. My mind was a Tilt-a-Wheel, with Debate, Blog, BlogHer, and D, all careening madly around, crashing into each other. I finally gave up and came into my office. Maybe I could purge myself on line, I thought. It sort of worked, but really, I'm thinking I should get a cow. That way when I get up in the wee small hours, I can go milk her.

The clashes from the crashing Tilt-a-Wheel yielded the following sparks (with apologies to the late Marlene Marks, who used to keep my metaphors in line. But Marlene's gone so now there is no one to squelch my urge to, as she once put it, "put the bow on the box.")

1. The Debate: I Twittered it, and you can read my comments, such as they were, there. I've avoided reading any commentary today; isn't my own opinion enough, for god's sake! Which is:

• Hillary--looks good. She's witty, warm, strong, smart and there's no doubt she could conquer the world.
  
• Obama--eh! He is long on slogans and short on substance. I don't get what the fever about him is.
  
• Edwards-- I like him too, and he's got passion in the right places, but I think he's stronger on domestic, than foreign policy--and god knows we need a savior out there in the world.
• Biden--can't keep his foot out of his mouth. I'm sure the NRA guy appreciated being called nuts, which maybe he is, but still, Joe, not nice, not nice.
  
• Dodd--he comes across as mad, rather than impassioned, which I found somewhat threatening.
• Richardson--another one who comes across as mad
  
• Gravel--really furious, really scary
  
• Kucinich--I just want to bat this guy. He's like Howdy Doody--yap yap yap.
  
• Cooper, Youtube & the debate: loved it. Not just for the clever videos, but for the ones that put the metal to the pedal (is that right? or is it the other way around? and what does it mean, really?). I thought it really gave the candidates a chance to do more than sloganeer and some of them took it. Not Obama, though, Or Kucinich. I have loved (in the most filial way) Anderson Cooper since he was hosting The Mole. He is my kinda journalist: a human being reporting what he sees and feels and thinks.
  

2. The way I am getting through the whole D situation is by sticking my toe in Zen, meditation, sitting--whatever you want to call it. That I don't know what to call it speaks to my pre-newby state. I'm thinking about starting a new feature/regular post here to chart my entry into the world of mindfulness.

3. BlogHer ought to put me on as a Contributing Editor to write about life at the far end of the baby boom. They have superb coverage of most other aspects of any woman's life, but there's no one talking about those of us who are war babies. We're not Elders and we're not, even if we are, Mommy's. Our issues are unique, and I don't see anyone covering them. So Jory, Elisa and Lisa--how about it?