Author Archives: JL

October 27, 2009

IF WARMED WRINKLED PUPPIES ARE CUTE, WHY NOT ME?

By JL

My psychology teacher recently told the class that the early onset of puberty has been attributed to increased exposure to light – albeit artificial.  It all has to do with our circadian rhythm, more commonly known as our biological clock.

So if I’m following correctly, our body clock, which regulates our wake and sleep cycles according to the daylight to dark hours, contributes to the aging process according the number of days it perceives by sunrise following sunset.
Are you going where I’m going?  If I were to live in total darkness, would I stop aging?  Or worse, sun worshipper that I am, am I accelerating my aging by following the sun?  Well, of course, we know all about sun damage and aging skin, but I’m talking about over all, external and internal aging.
Should I be setting up camp at the South Pole?   Eschewing all forms of artificial light except perhaps the dim glow of a candle?
Well, I do look better by candlelight these days.   Recently, I caught a glimpse of my face in the side mirror of my husband’s truck.  It’s not often I have the opportunity, or the inclination, to gaze at myself in broad daylight under the noontime sun.
“Oh my Goddess!  Where did those wrinkles come from?”  I was getting to be okay with the faint crows feet (faint as long as I don’t smile or frown), but there are wrinkles on my cheeks.  Can other people see them?  Drat these cataracts and the sun exposure that caused me to have them (when I’m way too young by the way).
I feel like an addict who has finally felt the sting of betrayal from my drug of choice – knowing that I still won’t give it up.
I remember those winter vacations in South Florida when I was just a teenager; seeing all those wrinkled, leathery bodies in beach chairs.  I thought those bathing beauties were all well past eighty.  They were probably the age I am now!
A good friend of mine is a nurse (translate – should know better).  We’ve spent countless hours of countless days of the past 25 summers engaging in our favorite pastime – lounging on an air mattresses on any available body of water with the hot sun baking our skin to a dark brown hue.  Affectionately known to us as Float-n-Bloat (heat plus humidity equals water retention), we tried to soak up as much sunshine and we possibly could, futilely hoping to somehow store it for the long winter months.
It may have been fun and satisfying in our youth, when our bodies could conceal the damage.  Now we’re paying the piper and it’s a hefty fee.  Even so, I know any chance I get to feel that satisfying heat on my parchrd skin, to squint my blurry eyes against its glare, to lie in a stupor of heady satisfaction while I bake and flake, I will take it.
I’ve already missed the window to “Live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse,” so I may as well go to my grave all wrinkled and warm with a smile on my face.

. . . . . . mid

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Leave a comment | posted in Beauty and Image, Self Care

September 22, 2009

GREAT (BOOMER) EXPECTATIONS

By JL
Once again I’ve bumped into an old school chum in a place I never expected.  For years she was behind the counter at the family pharmacy in the neighborhood where we both grew up. 
In this age of superstore chains, it’s comforting to see our little drugstore still in business whenever I get the chance to visit.  Though my husband’s and my prescription needs are filled by the Veterans’ Administration via US mail, I drop in now and then for sundries; the occasional greeting card, small items to stock the medicine cabinet and perhaps something from their gift line.
This past week I caught sight of Mary pushing the pharmacy cart through the corridors of the hospital where my husband was paying a visit on the Cardiac Care ward (the phrase, paying a visit takes on a whole new connotation in the preset health care system).
Anyway, there she was, 15 miles away from the little neighborhood drug store.  Turns out she gave up the job she loved because her husband was laid off in the cut backs that swept yet another of our local industries.  Also turns out that it’s much easier for an older middle aged woman to find a full time job with benefits than it is for a man in the same age range.
Great.  We finally win a battle in the war for equality when we’re too darn old to even care anymore.
I am struggling through my first semester of full time credits in over 30 years.  Each time I dissolve into tears over a new chapter in my Business Math book, I ask myself why I’m doing this.
My husband is 100% disabled due to an increasingly complicated heart condition.  There is about a zero to one tenth of a percent chance that he will ever improve, and that would only be if medical science beats the grim reaper by coming up with some way to Roto-Rooter human arteries without completely destroying them in the process.
Here’s the catch 22.  IF there is some great advance (angiogenisis is proving promising) and my husband is suddenly “cured”, the disability income stops (as it should) and he becomes an almost 60-something man looking for a job in a crippled economy.  Ever hopeful for the chance that his health can improve, I figure we’d better be prepared for the consequences.
So when I burst into frustrated tears over math equations that, to me, are a foreign language, I practice by figuring out what our living expenses are, how much I’ll need to earn and the statistics of job opportunities in my chosen field. I work endless calculations figuring the cost of my higher education and the number of working years I have left to recoup and pay that debt.
Running into friends like Mary is a double-edged sword.  She is an inspiration—an  example that we are strong and capable.  It is also a reminder that this isn’t the midlife we expected.
But, really, how much of life ever turns out the way we expected?

. . . . . . mid
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3 Comments | posted in Self Care

August 12, 2009

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU

By JL

Last week I went in for my 50,000 mile check-up. When the doc asked how I was doing, for the first time in my life I answered, “Not so good.”


Welcome to middle age and beyond. Everything from here on out is down hill and I feel like Sisyphus trying to keep that infernal boulder from rolling into the valley. Yea, though I walk through the valley, I may fear not . . . but I’m lugging around twenty extra pounds, my back aches, my feet are sore and I’m just so damned tired all the time.


After eliminating any serious causes for my complaints, the doc asked me if I was experiencing a lot of stress. When I answered in the affirmative he said I had to learn to identify the source of the stress and eliminate it.


I told him that was a good idea but I’d probably end up in jail.


I thought being an adult, being married and raising kids was tough, but this empty nest thing is no piece of cake. I still worry just as much about my kids, but I have even less say in their life choices.


I may be dealing a lot less with the children since they’ve flown the coop, but thanks to retirement I have twice-as-much husband in this phase of life. I was the CEO of home and hearth for more than 30 years. Now all of a sudden it feels like I’ve been demoted to facility manager.


I used to be able to dismantle, paint and redecorate a room between the time my husband left for work and returned for supper. Now it takes me longer than that just to explain what I want to do . . . or rather why I want to do it. Being that I’m over twenty-one, I can’t quite come to terms with this permission asking thing.


He wants to know why he doesn’t have a say in how we decorate. I point to the NASCAR die casts that are now a feature of our living room.


He wants us to do everything together – Wednesday softball, Friday night races, and Sunday football game on the widescreen at the local bar.


A few weekends ago, I mentioned that a local band, including a few guys who used to play music with my brother, was playing nearby.


“So what?” he said.


I didn’t bother to explain the “what” was that I wanted to go listen to them. Any fun I might have had was spoiled by his obvious condemnation. Funny thing is I can act similarly disinterested in any number of sporting events yet he seems oblivious to the fact that “we” are not having as good a time as he is.


Cleaning the house and cooking meals apparently doesn’t come under the umbrella of doing everything together either, though cleaning the garage does.


I hate to complain. It’s not like I don’t want him here. After ten-years apart while he drove an 18-wheeler across the country, I really do want to spend time with him. Given the heart attack that should have left him dead in his truck somewhere in Indiana, I could be lamenting a very lonely life right now.


I thought mid-life was all about being stuck in the middle – somewhere between young and old, between raising children and aging parents, working hard and reaping rewards.


So why is it so gosh-darn hard to find the middle ground between too much alone and too much together?


. . . . . . mid
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2 Comments | posted in The Empty Next