Why I Stay Home

I have another one of those social thingies to go to tonight. I was all hot-to-trot when I first heard about it, drinks at an Irish pub downtown, 6-8pm. I planned the 'when shall I wash my hair, do my nails' around it--all the girly stuff that makes going out an anticipatory blowout. But now that the 'witching hour is drawing nigh, I'm all--eh, meh, and bleh.

Because I would analyze the worm out of the wormwood, and because I really do see this as Getting In The Way of My Life, I'm ready to do some hard thinking-through. See if any of this sounds familiar to you--and if so, are there any ways I can outwit myself?

• Going out means getting dressed.
  
• Getting dressed means selecting from my wardrobe.
• Selecting from my wardrobe means confronting that fact that nothing fits--and if it does, it looks like shit.

which means....

• Confronting the ways in which my body has changed, much to my horror and dismay

which means....

• Confronting that I'm older, aging, past the halfway mark, over the hill, out of the running--

oooops. Out of the running: that resonates. Clangs, in fact, and starts me thinking about what it was that I used to like about going out:

• Picking a terrific outfit that would be the perfect costume (yes, as in theatre) for who I was going to be that night.
• Loving the look in the mirror. Not as in some narcissistic venture but as in, "Damn I look good!"
• Making my entrance, playing my character, seeing what kind of applause I would score.
• And maybe, if I was interested, scoring.

That's pretty much gone for me now. I'm just not really interested, and I don't have the goods to venture on the stage as a leading lady any more. So what I'm left with when I go out is--what? And is this a good or a bad thing?

Plastic Surgery: yes, no, and if not now, then when?

Aaryn Belfer's got an article in the San Diego City Beat in which she takes apart a new picture book for kids called My Beautiful Mommy. It was written by a plastic surgeon in order to help, he assures us, the children of his patients get used to mommy's new nose or belly or tits (I think he's a tad gentler in the book). I'm not going to name the good doctor because I don't want him to get more attention than he's already bought with (I'll bet) some megabucks PR firm. If you want to know more, go read Aaryn's article, which is one and at the same time funny and mad and incisive, in other words just the kind of writing I love.

Susan Myrland turned me onto Aaryn's article because she "wanted my opinion." I started to email a response to her, but I got wound up and wired and thought--whoa! plastic surgery, is this not the very thing for MidLifeBloggers? I had a selection of titles for this post. Cosmetic Surgery: Kindness? Cure? or Cruelty? But the c/k sound seemed a bit more alliteration that even I was willing to go for. Then I thought Plastic Surgery: Kindest Cut, or Cruelest? That was marginally better, but it really didn't sum up my thoughts. The title I've used above does just that.

One can't have spent as much time living in Los Angeles as I have without being exposed to a variety of what we euphemistically call Work. Some of it wasn't bad, and some of it was pig-shit dreadful. The Work that was good--well, that, like the cheerful American tourist, just passed on by without notice. Okay, there is one case where I visited a friend of mine post-face lift and to thig day, I wonder if her surgeon just wrapped her in bandages and told her she'd had surgery. Twentyfour hours after the lift, I couldn't see a thing except that with the full head bandages, she looked, as she put it, like a Q-tip. So, while I have never had Work Done myself, as we say euphemistically, I certainly can say my opinion is "informed" by visual sightings of the good, the bad and the truly awful.

Why haven't I had Work Done? That facelift that my friend, the Qtip, had was $20,000--and that was just the doctor's charge, never mind what the suite at the Four Seasons Recovery Unit cost her. So bottom line is really the bottom line; I just don't have the spare thousands. If I did, would I do it? I'm not sure. The idea of having the skin on my face peeled back, flayed actually, is sort of scary. Sort of--hah!

As I write this, I'm realizing that my reasons for not having plastic surgery are mostly to do with fear that I would be the dreaded After example. I'm scared shitless to let someone mess around with my face, I don't care how many letters after his name he has. And so I tell myself that I'm proud to wear my wrinkles and sags and bags and dips and brown spots and--oh my god, I am so depressing myself. I've earned every one of these little fuckers: yada yada yada, fill in the Jamie Lee Curtis tape.

So what about some less INVASIVE procedure? Well, there's Botox. I would have Botox except that, drat it, I don't need it. My forehead has no wrinkles; it's as smooth as a baby's bottom, etc. etc. etc. I do have some crow's feet and I could get Botox shot in them, but really, they're not sufficiently bad, or maybe I just wear my hair hanging over my eyes and I can't see them.

No, the procedure I would have is something to eradicate those marionette lines that have now taken over my lower jaw. I'd like some Restylane pumped into them, not too much, just enough so that they're not so deep. I've noticed that when I look in the mirror and smile, they ease up nicely. And I find myself trying to remember to smile in repose. Except I fear that too much of that and people will wonder 'what the fuck is she smiling at?' I've got a big wedding in New York that I'm going to at the end of June. I'm thinking I'll make a doctor's appointment about the end of May. Or maybe I'll just smile at the wedding. Depends on where I am on the Adventure-O-Meter this month.

So the answer to your question, Susan, is: I'm not sure. I don't have a philosophical or moral or ethical problem with plastic surgery. I don't think it's a denial of aging; nor do I blame our youth-obsessed yada yada society. Frankly, we live where and how we do, and my feeling is we've got to deal with life as it best suits us. Not someone else. Us. Me. Jane.

And you?

Crossposted at MidLifeBloggers

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.

It's All Relative, Mr. Einstein

Age is, that is; relative, I mean.

Since we started the midlifebloggers conversation, a number of people have been weighing in about whether they are or are not midlife bloggers. In a post the other day, Catherine from [The Seventh Notebook] queried whether at 38, she qualifies to join the group. No, she decided; she's not midlife yet, even though she likes hanging out with us and she's doing that whole growing-out-my-gray number that we all think about from time to time. To me, both those facts point to her definite place as a midlifer. Others have gone through complicated mathematical equations, trying to determine if and when they'll be midlife. I hate to break it to you, but if you fall off a bridge tomorrow, then you were midlife in your teens. See, it's all relative. Which means that it's all in our heads.

As I'm working on the MidLifeBloggers website these days and thinking about who we are and what we want and/or need, the one thing I know we don't want--and I've said this before--is to put an age limit on us. You right there, you're just 37, so, nope, off you go for another couple of years. And you over there in the corner, you're 70--too old, too old. The world is already too full of people telling us why we're not right for one reason or another. The blogosphere is just another world and it, too, can operate on the exclusion clause. In fact, that's probably why it sometimes can seem just like highschool.

I'm envisioning MidLifeBloggers.com as a place where we gather to hang out and laugh or cry, to debate and console and teach and learn from each other all about The Great What's Next. We're peers, you know, some of us junior and some of us senior, but we're still all part of the conversation. I know for a fact that the ages of the women on the midlifeblogger blogroll hit every decade from the thirties to the forties to the fifties to the sixties. We all belong here; that's what MidLifeBloggers is about.

Tell me how you're envisioning MidLifeBloggers.com. What do you want it to be? What will make it yours?

How Old Are You?

I just did a brief drive by of all my unpublished posts, hoping that one would suddenly leap out and say, "Finish me, you twit! I'm so worth it." Alas, alack, and rue the day, none did.

I spent the better part of today trying to Get Things Done and being thwarted at every turn by, I dunno, the gods? First there were my taxes. I am now up to 2007, thank you very much, a year in which I was gainfully unemployed for most of the time. Thus, one would think my taxes would be a breeze to do. Wouldn't one? No W2s to mess about with. No, but there was that pesky little 1099B that somehow made it into my stack of documents. I'd never seen one of those before. I hadn't a clue what it could be for, and it seemed to be saying I had received a check, which I swear to god never made it to me--or had it?

I have a nasty habit (and you should know this in advance) of not opening my mail. It makes me nervous to open my mail. People want things from me, like money for goods exchanged. And while I may have enjoyed the goods initially, I'm so over them now and why are you bothering me! Did I not open the mail in which this check was sent? It's perfectly possible. I have a rather lax attitude toward money. It makes me nervous. Thus, I'd rather just not think about it. Maybe tomorrow, at Tara.

Yes, I know this is incredibly immature for one who is at--oh my god--midlife. But that's the way it is. Years of living have nothing at all to do with maturity, and all you babybloggers better get used to it. Some of the oldest people I have known have been years younger than I.

So now that we've settled that there's a strong streak of willful immaturity running through me--here's a question that I started asking people when I turned 40:

• How old are you?
• No, how old are you?

The answer to the first is rarely the same as the answer to the second, and it seems that the older one gets, the wider the gap. So--how old are you? No, how old are you?

All Dressed Up...

I was beSpanxed top and bottom, blown out and curled up (ever so softly). I wore a thin silk tunic and a shortsleeved tunic sweater just buttoned at its scooped neck. I deliberately chose not to wear my new killer 17" heels, so as not to intimidate. Instead I wore my black leather boots with the 3" heel. I was dressed for any meeting I have ever gone to in the past. But not for this one. This one, the other women wore arch-supporting walking shoes and bunion-enabling sandals. One man wore short shorts and a fanny pack; another wore a sweat suit. This was my first meeting of an organization about which I knew nothing, except that everyone was Jewish. And old. So old. No matter what their actual ages, I felt like I was sitting with my parents. And, really, not one cute person there. Yes, that's horrifically shallow and the fact is that I have zero, zip, nada interest in men these days, but somehow I'm still doing that kneejerk checkout for cute guys. Such a disappointment, all the way around.

What the hell was I expecting? I was expecting this meeting to be like the meetings I used to go to. Where the men all wore suits; where the refreshments were trundled in by bus boys; where the venue was a Hilton or its like. This meeting, this meeting was in the game room of an old age home. I don't mean to be shallow, but, jeeze, I got beSpanxed for that? I must go console myself with chocolate....

Blogging for Dollars

There's nothing like a little writing to make the insecurity meter start rising. And if it ain't about one thing, then it's about another. The NY Times helped the blogosphere out the other day by publishing an article that said basically, blog and you'll die. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times

God knows how many other bloggers picked up on it, but two of our midlifeblogger crew were hit: Merlot Mom and Ms Meta of Metafootnotes both wrote posts quoting the Times article. Their takes were somewhat different, but for both women, blogging is, along with the good, producing some, shall we call it, quiet anxiety. I can relate.

Why do we do what we do? Why blog? There's a huge conversation going on, some of which seems to be arriving as Tweets from Twitterers I follow, that seems to focus on the commercial promise of blogging and whether, in fact, that is its sole purpose.

I'm not immune to that argument, but I have found over the years that I've been doing this, that blogging for money is the road to ruin for me. When I have set out to make money with my blog, I have (a) failed miserably, and (b) felt, therefore, like a prize chump for even assuming I could succeed. When I keep my eye focused on communicating what I want to when I want to, then I feel good about myself and my work.

I have a blogging friend who supports his family by blogging. He's one of the guys that the NY Times article was talking about. He writes for umpteen commercial blogs. He's a stay-at-home dad and blogs about that, and he does some of those gossip blogs as well. But then there's his own blog and from time to time on that, his writer self just soars. Would that he had the luxury to let it fly all the time, but he doesn't. He has to earn a living.

I don't have to earn a living from my blog and that gives me a measure of freedom, yes. But the other thing that I don't have to earn from my blog is my sense of myself or my reputation as a writer. That's been well-established over the years and that, too, gives me a measure of freedom. It is, I guess, one of the perks of being a midlifeblogger.

I think that maybe all the talk of branding your blog or monetizing it--for a lot of people, it's just another way of saying, I matter. And for you???

I'm An Adult, Now What?

That's a subhead on an article in the Washington Post that Catherine Thatch over at [The Seventh Notebook] sent me the link to today. I won't give you the title, because Catherine and I agreed it was rather on the lame side (I think it may have been written by a junior intern), but I will, of course, link to it. It was written by Douglas LaBier, who identifies himself, thusly: "As a psychotherapist and a member of the booming midlife generation, I've heard many expressions of midlife distress...." His thesis is that midlife is what happens when you finally grow up. It hits some people hard; others barely at all.

"Psychologically, midlife is the portal into full adulthood. Successfully crossing that portal involves addressing the question that lies at the source of most adult emotional conflicts: 'What's the purpose of my life?'"

But exacerbating that search for meaning is the fact, LaBier says, the our forties are when the emotional defenses that we successfully used in the past to shore us up are now, much like our bodies, starting to sag. It's this collision of the Search and the Sagging, as it were, that result in the midlife crisis. Some people start over and wrestle their way to new meaning in their lives. Others, says LaBier, more or less accept their situation and try, usually unsuccessfully, to define it as happiness.

Which are you doing? Me? I'm definitely one who starts over. I'm on my third or fourth career: journalist, English prof/grad student, therapist--and now I guess I'm back to journalism, of sorts. But what about you? Are you looking for a second or third act? And this time--whaddya want to be when you grow up?

MidlifeBloggers: The Blog Roll

So--my taxes did not get worked on today, because I've been reading and writing about this Midlifebloggers topic. It seems to be taking on a life of its own. Which is a good thing, because I don't hold out a lot of hope for our seeing anything soon on BlogHer. So I decided to start a BlogRoll here. And maybe down the line we can have something more.

If you want me to add your blog to the blogroll, just send me the url. I don't think we have any requirements. It seems to me that if one considers oneself a MidlifeBlogger, no matter your age, that's enough to be included in the group.

And keep talking...at least you know that we're listening.

MidLife Bloggers - We're Here!

There's a conversation going on at BlogHer that I've been having with myself for more than a year: Where are all the middle-aged women bloggers? | BlogHer?
Cecelia over at MetaFootnotes started it several weeks ago when she introduced herself to BlogHer. She wrote about trying to find "a voice that I want to hear." That voice is of a woman in her midlife (fill in the age range yourself; these days when 60 is the new 50 and 50 is the new 40--who knows).

"I'll admit it. I envy the mommybloggers. Twenty years ago . . . I would have found those sites a lifeline, a very Godsend. But, despite the obvious fact that theirs are among the most powerful and prolific voices on the Web, the Mommys don't speak to or for me. I have different issues now, and I'd like to talk about them and hear others talk as well."

Cecelia finishes by putting a call out:

"If you are a woman of a certain age (and doesn't that sound better than middle-aged?) and know of blogs that talk comprehensively about this wonderful, frustrating stage of life, please let me know."

Almost four weeks later, we're still talking and the topic is getting stronger and stronger. I'm going to link at the end to all the women who have (thus far) taken part in the conversation, but in this post, I want to highlight a few voices, as well as my own experience.

I've been blogging for, I dunno, four years now (see how the memory goes!) and for much of that time I've felt like I am swimming upstream. Or--here's another metaphor--battering on a door, saying 'Let me in. Hear me. Speak to me.' The problem isn't ageism. There are blogs out there that speak eloquently to and for the Elders. BlogHer has a subcategory just for them and Denise, who's the Community Manager at Blogher, point to that site." However, I am not an Elder. My interests have nothing to do with issues of getting old and infirm and living on a fixed income.

My interests are more in line with Tanis, who doesn't have a blog yet (but should!):

"I'm looking for an arena to be heard and to listen. A place to discuss teenagers, new relationships and a not so new body, a busy career or lack of one. Self discovery, confidence, what to wear, family dynamics, alone time and what comes next in life."

I too want to see myself on BlogHer. I brought it up last year at BlogHer '07, and I was told that someone was going to be doing it. But someone isn't. Debra Roby of A Stitch in Time says that's because it's too broad a topic. Middle-aged women don't blog about their issues "any more than young bloggers specifically blog about what it's like to be a college student, or a quarterlifer." Well actually, Debra, young bloggers do blog about exactly that.

My sense is that the reason we midlifers aren't seen and focused on as a viable community within BlogHer is that the powers that be, the decision-makers of BlogHer aren't in our demographic. That's somewhere down the line, when I get older, but definitely not now, is what I imagine them saying. Now I'm about getting and doing and being and making and--wow! there's the whole world out there to conquer.

A good part of that conquering the world is making BlogHer a respected entity, building it into a viable player within the world of commerce. The Mommybloggers are at the top of the mountain, an acknowledged force to be reckoned with in terms of business, and an advertiser's dream. So in selling BlogHer, it's probably easier to sell them. Except--we, the midlife women, are a big, big piece of the advertising pie as well. We're the ones with discretionary income; we're the bigger spenders. So says Marti Barletta, who's known as the "First Lady of marketing to women" in her book PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders. This was the pitch that I made last summer after BlogHer, and this was the pitch that I guess was a dead ball. But I'm at it again.

As is Gena, from Out On The Stoop, issued a challenge to someone to "whip up a sample post and show folks what's needed." Karen from MidLife's A Trip, took her up on it. You can read her post as part of the comments here. She said something in one of her comments that really resonated with me. "I'm usually one of the oldest on the sites I visit--not a mommy blogger yet not an elderblogger either. It's kind of like being the middle child in a family--sometimes you feel like you don't quite fit in."

That's how I've felt. I'm not done being and becoming. I'm not finished have adventures, going places, trying and failing and trying again and, then, succeeding. In short, I'm not done living, and I want my site, my BlogHer to reflect that.

Here are some other midlife women who feel the same:
Carol at A Different Nest
Jill at Writes Like She Talks
Pundit Mom
Ladybeams
Anali at Analis First Amendment
JanMBSC
Rhonda at Recipe Carousel
Tara at The Princess and The Pea
Diary of a Midlife Crisis
Musing
Tiddlytwinks
Pamela Jeanne at Coming2Terms
Granny Sue

I can't tell you the exact age range of these women. Some are in their 40s, some 50s, some 60s. I can't tell you what all they write about either. There is no essential MidLife Woman, just as there is no essential Mommyblogger. What I can tell you is that they're looking for something they're not getting right now, a voice, and if not at BlogHer, then where?

Wired for another year....

I just bit the bullet and pushed the WIRED renewal card through the mail slot. I caved, I did, and signed up for another 12 months.

Why, you might ask. Because, I might say, as you my faithful readers well know, I'm a magazine junkie. This year, however, due to the absolute dearth of income coming into my house, I've decided I must, absolutely must cut down. So I let this one lapse
because really, now that I don't live in West Hollywood anymore, it's just not the same. Then it was my neighborhood rag and I would check it out just to see who and what was around the corner at Fred Segal's or Revolution....
and this one
because really, although I'm still a makeup and face care aficionado, there just isn't enough new stuff out there to catch my interest. I have read so many articles over so many years about face care, wrinkles, botox, plastic surgery that I could write them (hey, that's an idea: magazine editors...call me!). What I could really write is any of the features about the Sixties, because, guys, I was there! I actually walked the streets of London with Twiggies drawn down my cheeks, and trust me, reading about it just ain't the same.

These decisions to bail on the subscriptions are, I realize, a recognition of my having passed out of the demographic pool of their readers. I feel as if that passed out should be accompanied by a dirge because it really says something significant to me. What, I'm not quite sure, but I am certain it's significant. And sad. But also truthful. [Trust me to make a really big deal about magazine subscriptions....!]

And I had decided to let my sub to Wired go because, I dunno, there's just so much cool stuff in it, and it gets the geek in me all jazzed up, but then I fall flat to the earth knowing I can never catch up with the knowledge base enough to really be a player. Then last night I started reading the December issue, the one that arrived with a big THIS IS YOUR LAST ISSUE card attached. It's got such a pretty cover
but when I opened it and started paging through, I was struck by how this has become a guy's magazine. The Dillard's ads are all for men's clothing and the Garmin ad features a hot babe. Okay, that's fine. I've subscribed to other men's magazines, not for the ads, but for the articles. Here, though, is what I got at Wired this month: The "What's Inside" feature deconstructs athlete's foot cream and the How To section shows me four cool ways to lace my shoes. What's next, Fifty Ways to Blow A Fart? There's an article on aging, in which 20 is over the hill because only teenage thumbs are adept enough to win text-messaging competitions. Um, guys, who's your audience here or, as my college roommate might say, "who's editing this shit?"

So, why, you're still wanting to know, did I sign on again for another year. For "Jargon Watch" and "Alpha Geek". For "Wired/Tired/Expired". For the "Wish List"--and, oh yeah, the articles that I might get around to reading now that my time isn't taken up with the likes of InStyle and Allure.

Maybe not good enough reasons. But maybe I'm just not ready yet to hang up my geek-credentials, such as they are.

A Song for All Ages

Have I mentioned before how much I love music? How evocative it is for me, an aural Proustian madeleine. Yes, I believe I have, in a prior post, somewhere. But I'm aging, people, and we tend to repeat ourselves as we go, so forgive me.

I was listening to the TV the other day. Literally. PBS was running one of their interminable pledge drives which feature a bar here and a chord there of songs from yesteryear. They have the original groups on, or what is left of them, to sing the full version of the hit, and the station splices that in between the pitches. I love the music. What I don't love is that the singers have aged so, so, ungracefully. By which I mean: they've gotten old. Lined, wrinkled, puffy, gray. Can I tell you how depressing it is to see the heart throb of your youth looking just like someone's grandpa? The only thing worse is the frequent cuts to the audience who are all bopping along to the song the same as they did the year it came out. Except they are really lined, wrinkled, puffy, gray. Probably, one must conclude, as is one, a thought which instantly stops one's own bopping on one's sofa.

So it is that I listen to these programs, but I don't watch. And thus am I able to preserve a modicum of self-delusion. That self-delusion enabled me to focus on the songs. It occurred to me as I was listening to the television that every major decade in my life has been marked by a specific genre of music. Wouldn't that be a cool frame for a memoir? A memoir! Shit, I'm not old enough--. Oh, I guess I am.

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.

Back to School, Back to Business--Back to Me

I hate summer. Always have. It's hot, and I get sticky, and body parts that were never meant to be revealed must be, for sanity's sake, on show. When I was in college, my parents had a pool. An in-ground, azure blue beauty. This was in Pennsylvania. No one there had a pool, but my parents were kind of reverse snobs, I suppose. They didn't want to join a country club, they did want to swim, so they put in a pool. I spent most of the summers inside, with a book.

I tell you this because it suddenly--d'oh--occurred to me on Monday night that Labor Day was over. The summer was over. And though I didn't have a school to return to, I could stop mooning around acting as if the world owed me a living. So I poste haste made a To Do list and Tuesday morning, I Did. As I am, again, doing today.

Here's what I'm doing:

1. Writing. Something I call, for now, The Night My Brain Burst & Other Stories. I don't know where it will go or what it will be. I do know that the fear of starting something that doesn't have a form petrifies me. Which seems good enough reason to do it.

2. Focusing on myself, rather than other people who shall be nameless. Everytime I think a thought about the Nameless One, I substitute my own name and cogitate on that. As in, The Nameless One is playing games with this not calling business becomes I am playing games with this not calling business. True. I am. I don't want to be out there dangling at the end of an unanswered I Want. Better to pretend that I don't want. Yesterday I returned my cousin's call. We had a funny, loving conversation that went on for exactly the right amount of time. She was delighted that I called her back. Small steps...small steps....

3. Isn't 1 and 2 enough? You want 3, already. Okay, here's 3. That little girl with Molly in the photo? She's my granddaughter. I'm choking as I say it.

4. Do I really think that all of you thought I wasn't old enough to have a granddaughter? You should know that my fear--you don't have to tell me it's nuts--is that you'll say, Oh, my, can't be your friend anymore. Didn't realize you were that old. That much out of our league.

5. Trying to unpack and deal with the shit I have about age. Be prepared: you'll be hearing a lot more about it, because--just because I'm working at not hiding any more. A long time ago, someone said to me, "You talk a lot, but you don't say anything." Weeeelll, not exactly true, but close enough. I am a BS artist, I know. I can sling a phrase and wield a pen well enough to provide my self with cover. I'm trying to stop that.

How I am and am not laboring...

First, a photo: This is Molly and her niece*, K. K is not riding her aunt; she is guiding her gently down the street via her leash. K does this incredibly well, especially considering she is only 4. But then she does most things very well, including--are you ready for this!--flossing her teeth. I couldn't believe it. My niece and nephew barely brush and K flosses! Wow! This is a testimony to her daddy who is a bit of a tooth care warden.
[*Quiz: what is my relation to K?]

We went to the beach--Molly got her feet wet. She is not a water dog, despite being half poodle. We sat in the sun. We collected shells. We did not get burnt because we were careful with sunscreen. Except for the tops of our feet. However, the Sacramento sunshine has already done it's job on this aging person. I have never been this brown before. I am freckled and age-spotted and--what the hell--my boobs have dropped too. Ah youth--would I have you back? Nope. No way.

Today I am laboring: varnishing clothespins. Yes, you read that right. I am creating, dollinks, and when done shall show all of you, not to mention the world of Etsy, the fruit of my labors..

On the First Day of Christmas....

...oh, wrong holiday.

I've just gone through the last three years of New Year's Day posts and they're less than scintillating. 2004--nothing; 2005--photo of my nephew and cousin; 2006--ah, this was the year I came into my own as a blogger. On January 1, 2006, I offered photos of the goose I cooked at Christmas (to be known forever more as either The CSI Goose, or The Only Goose I Will Have Ever Cooked); a little tidbit about the Rose Bowl, and a link to something about Camilla and Charles' wedding in which I made a prediction. I cannot be more specific about these last two, as I'm just not interested enough to reread them. Was I then? Or did I think that such links were what would make a Real Blogger of me? I suspect the latter.

I have no resolutions because I make them at Rosh Hashanah. And break them at Yom Kippur.

I am now in my seventh decade. Doesn't that just scare the fucking shit out of you (she says mostly to herself)? Particularly those of you who have resolved to quit swearing (yes, you over there with the Red Stapler). I would like to tell you that living all these years has made me a wiser woman, but--t'ain't so, McGee (that, I believe, is a cultural reference to a radio program from the 30s or 40s--I picked it up from my mother, who would be 98 this year).

The fact is that you are who you are no matter your age. It's kind of like that adage: you take yourself with you wherever you go. I don't know that stuff gets better; maybe you just don't care as much. Some days I accept who and what I am; some days I want a do-over.

I can remember looking at a photograph of my mother when she was a young woman and being amazed at how beautiful she once was. Didn't she mind, I wondered, getting old. When she looked at herself in the mirror now decades later, didn't she care terribly that she no longer looked the same? I think I asked her, as well as I could without coming out and saying, "Don't you just hate that you're no longer pretty and young?" To me, at that time, aging was a tragedy.

From this side of the mountain, however, it's not. Oh, I am not thrilled with age spots (for which Esoterica does nothing) or crepey skin or errant facial hair. But they don't define me. Somehow I have always had friends who were much younger than I (is this a sign of immaturity, that I play better with the little kids?), and I'm coming to realize that the age difference is more of an issue for me than it is for them. What is it that I'm nervous about?

Okay, here's the tell all. I'm scared of looking like a fool. I'm scared of being one of those old women who dresses like a kid. I'm scared of people saying about me, "why doesn't she act her age...find friends of her own...stop bothering us...stop thinking she has anything in common with us..."

Here's something I wrote, a poem I guess, dated August 20, 1973. I can tell from the paper I wrote it on that I was sitting in the Newsroom at the BBC. Make of that what you will:

To retain my cool at
any cost,
That is my heart's
desire.

For my biggest fear
in this whole wide world,
Is looking like a fool.

Thirty-four years later, what has changed? My biggest fear now, I'd have to say, is how much that little ditty still governs my life. How much I have sacrificed to not looking like a fool.

I think there may be a resolution in there somewhere, but as I said--I don't do them this time of year.

Christmas is officially over

Did you have a good Christmas?
Yeah, quiet, but good.
Whadja get?
An Ipod.
Which one?
The Nano.
Like it?
So far, love it.

I think I've got to accept that the thirty pounds I gained after the aneurysm were not from the Baskin Robbins diet, as I like to tell people. They were the fifteen pounds you gain when you stop smoking and the fifteen pounds you gain when you stop Hormone Replacement Therapy. Together, that makes thirty pounds. This is an important realization, it seems to me, because I don't think I'm gonna lose them just by watching what I eat. I think maybe they're with me for a long, long time.

When I think about this, I think of my mom, in the last months of her life, looking at her cancer-emaciated body, and saying, "Look at me. Look how thin I am. When I think of how hard I tried to lose weight, and now look at me." I don't want someday to find myself saying the same thing.

I don't like to [mis]quote Wordsworth lightly, but: "What though the radiance which was once so bright/Be now forever taken from our sight/..../We will grieve not,/But rather find strength in what remains behind."

So maybe I should sit shiva for the body I once had. Maybe I'll take a sewing class, so I can learn to alter my clothes to fit the body I now have.

Today is...

...my 19th anniversary. Can I tell you how that shocks and scares me. It's not that I never thought D and I would get this far; it's that I never thought I would get this far. And I don't know what I mean by that. I don't think it has to do with the D word, as in divorce. Nor do I think it's that other D word, dying. No, I think this anniversary is another crashing reminder that--holy shit! I must have grown up! Because only a grownup could be married for 19 years, right? So how come I don't feel any different from November 20, 1986?

This is the thing about aging that is so peculiar, not to mention wondrous and amazing. You are all of your ages in one and the 22 year old gets to comment on the 54 year old who is sharing a moment with the 42 year old who is amazed that she looks better than she expected when she was 32, but jesus, at 60--at 60, shouldn't I feel different? Except I don't, not really.

It's peculiar and wondrous and amazing to me in the same way that a pregnant woman is. She's standing there, whoever she is, but inside her is another person. Weird. And this too, the fact that I am inside myself all the Me's that have ever been. Weird. And exceptionally fun. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

In Which I Confess...

...that I've been unfaithful these past months. To ByJane, that is. I have another blog. But I've only posted twice, I swear. Does that make me bad????

It's called Looking For Libby. I started it right when I was looking for a job and there were whole bunches of things (tell me that's not articulate) I was feeling that I didn't want to put in ByJane. It think I explained why in the first post of LFL, so if you're interested, you can read it there. So why am I now coming clean? It has something to do with the level of comfort I now feel revealing myself here. And that's a function of my sense that I'm part of a community of women doing the same. And part of it is a function of my having gotten to that age where "I give a fuck" is a more ready response.

LFL is the place where I'm going to talk about two things: aging and mothers. If you're interested in either of those topics, check it out.

Why A Wife Leaves Her Husband's Bed...or Kicks Him Out

I am so groggy, I can barely keep my nose from plunging into my keyboard. I want sleep. Good sleep, kind sleep, silent sleep. The kind of sleep I last night did not get (the Latinate form, I do believe).

Molly, the world's best dog, last week began a bout of wee small hours shitting on the living room floor. For those of you who have dogs, you know that this act is always accomplished on the carpet, even when pristine tile is so readily available. And you also know that one pile is never sufficient, when multiple drops will do. We had to break her of the habit fast. So last night, we closed her in the bedroom. Our bedroom. Where she normally spends the night, or so we thought.

A word about dogs and their nocturnal habits. As with so much about her, Molly's sleep style makes us smile. It is based on we know not what. Here's how it goes. She starts off the night stretched out between us on top of the covers. A part of her body must be touching a part of each of us. At some point, she goes to the bottom of the bed. At some point, she goes under the bed. At some point, she gets into the bed, on D's side. All of this is done silently, effortlessly, even I would say delicately, for I am never waked/woked/awakened by her journey.

If I were, she would not be near the bed. This was a condition of getting her, that she couldn't keep me up at night jumping on and off the bed. As our last dog, the beloved Pupi, did until the point when I could no longer take it and left our marriage bed to her and D. For a number of years, we had separate beds. Sometimes separate bedrooms. Yes, dear reader, we were that kind of couple.

But at least I was getting a good night's sleep. Which at my age is no small thing and much to be grateful for and more important than lots of other things one once thought was crucial.

Last night, Molly channeled Pupi. Tonight if she doesn't go back to her former sleep habits, I'm off to the guest room.