I’m an eternal optimist – always looking for a silver lining. I turn the other cheek with a firm belief that I won’t get slapped a second time, I believe that good triumphs over evil and I’m sure that a positive outlook is half the battle.

Take this current economic downturn. Could it possibly have a more optimistic label? What our grandparents called a Great Depression, our parents called a Recession. Leave it to the Baby Boomers to call it an economic downturn, just a little obstacle along The Road to Shambala.

Or perhaps, it’s a redirection from the detour that had us traveling the fast lane to play-now-pay-later, where the credit card companies set the pace in a pied piper’s parade.

Maybe as a midlifer unafraid to sieze opportunity, you were on the route to early retirement with a high yield, high stakes, quick return investment portfolio. That didn’t exactly turn out the way we’d hoped.

If there is any good that can come from this financial crash, I am hopeful that it is the return of a couple of old concepts – cash and carry and slow and steady.

When my parents passed on a few years ago, they left a house full of furniture, appliances and electronics. I’m not talking faded flora sofas, an avocado refrigerator or the old Hi-Fi record player. In my mother’s life-long quest to remain young at heart, she refused to let her lifestyle, or her home, date her. At eighty-plus years old, Mother still took every chance available to redecorate, rearrange and restock.

I was often the recipient of this or that piece of furniture or some small appliance, which she told my father I needed. Usually, it was indeed something I could use. The fact that my mother then purchased the new and improved version (or maybe just a different color) certainly didn’t negate her generosity and resulted in a houseful of some pretty good loot at the end of my parent’s days.

When that day arrived, being firmly ensconced in middle age with all the accompanying accoutrements, my siblings and I wanted little more than a few keepsake pieces. With six adult-on-their-own-children among us, we opened the house up to free shopping. Three floors of inventory was reduced by a few glass end tables, a bed frame and some small kitchen appliances.

Then came the estate sale. We couldn’t give the stuff away. Two, almost new 27” televisions finally sold for $10 a piece – to go in a cabin on the lake (this was long before anybody knew about the digital change to come). We did manage to give a computer away, just to save us the disposal fee.

I’m not trying to imply the stuff was worth a fortune. I was just shocked that there weren’t young people anxious, dare I say grateful, to find a kitchen table with four matching chairs for $25. They spend that much to go to a movie or have a manicure.

And then I got it. They can’t shop estate sales with a credit card – that little, magic piece of plastic that allows them to purchase a new kitchen set at three times the price, for the promise of making a payment less than half of what we were asking.

Except now, too many people are realizing they’ll be making that payment for the rest of their natural life-time. Or that all of their pre-tax dollars invested for fast growth, fat retirement accounts, might have been better kept in a simple (FDIC insured) savings account – or maybe used to pay cash for all their stuff.

So where is my bright side? First, there’s the satisfaction, of course. As a parent who never stopped nagging her kids about the dangers of accumulating credit card debt, I have the time honored privilege of saying “I told you so.”

Second, these financial challenges we face are forcing all of us, across generations, to take a look at what’s important in life.

We have to ask ourselves, is that bigger house with granite countertops and quarried-tile floors, an SUV or the latest electronic, virtual experience game worth the price owed in the end? Do my children or grandchildren really have to go to Disney World?

How about the simple pleasures of life? How about having time to spend with family? How about a day at the State or County Park (there are plenty to choose from around the Twin Ports area).

Instead of granite and tile – a weather worn picnic table and sand will do just fine. Let’s actually throw a ball, jump rope or just play tag, instead of exercising a joy-stick. As for Disney World, we saved, we went, we saw. In my opinion it’s overcrowded, overpriced and overrated.

As Dorothy discovered, if you can’t find happiness in your own back yard, you won’t find it Oz, or for that matter, Disney World, Shambala or anywhere else. And as we are all discovering in the aftermath of easy payment plans, the more you own, the more you owe and off to work you go, and go and go.

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GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

Recently I was asked to read some of my essays to a group of women from middle age through golden years. About half way into the gig, I noticed that many of them looked like frightened deer frozen in the glare of oncoming headlights.

I realized that they had never heard another woman speak about mid-life frustrations with such candor – well not publicly at least. I admit it – I’m not one to mince my words these days.

One woman asked me if I’ve ever regretted anything I’ve written or said publicly. No. I haven’t. I dare to say out loud:

• Marriage isn’t perfect and is sometimes a hellofalota work. Oh my!
• Kid’s aren’t perfect and they are most times a hellofalotta work. Oh my!
• There are things about my husband I don’t like. Oh my!
• There are things about my kids I will never understand! Oh my.
• There are days I wish I had no husband and no children and I could just go where the wind blows me! Oh my!
• My humor is sometimes (okay, most of the time) sarcastic. Oh my!

“Doesn’t your husband take offense to what you say?” an audience member asked me.

My husband doesn’t read this stuff but all of my children do. Some of my words get spit back out in conversation. I’m sure they all wish I would retire to my rocker with my knitting and crossword puzzles. Instead I get up on my soapbox and poke holes in the pretty bubbles of familial dysfunction.

51 lashes with a wet noodle to me – one for every year I have dared to live and not be always perfect, or always kind, or always understanding. After I’ve taken my lashes and paid my debt to society, might I be able to presume I’ve earned the right to believe that as an adult women, nobody has the god-given or any other kind of right to tell me what I should do, what I should think or what I can say? Might I go one step further and presume that any sane woman would get pissed off when she is told those things.

We all live and love, we all laugh and we all cry. As women we all share our joys and sorrows, our ups and our downs with the people in our lives. We do it over a cup of coffee at a friend’s kitchen table, with the phone in hand late at night, in an email or maybe in a blog. I write what I know, what I live.

I could be mistaken (it seems nobody is talking about this), but I think I have also said . .

• I love life and I love sharing it with my husband, children and grandchildren.
• I have thoroughly enjoyed being a mom and I couldn’t be prouder of my daughters.
• I am proud of all my accomplishments – those I’ve achieved on my own and those I’ve worked at with my husband.
• I won’t give up on my future happiness no matter how far out to sea my ship may be. And if it springs a leak, I only hope my loved ones are willing to keep bailing with me.

I have no interest in telling other people how they should live, but I certainly do hold an interest in telling them how I would like to be treated – or not treated as the case might be.

If any of you are fans of the Red Green Show on PBS, then you know the mans’ prayer (my husband hates whenever I bring this up). “I’m a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.”

Then there are the women. We have spent a life time giving to and taking care of everybody we love and for some reason we can’t quite figure out, they haven’t put us up on a pedestal like a queen. In fact, they kind of stomp all over us like a door-step. Can’t say I blame them. We’ve trained them to be well taken care of. The more we give and do, the more they come to expect it.

I would offer this as the woman’s prayer: “I’m a woman and I just know that if I work hard enough and keep right on trying, I can make everybody around me happy and they will treat me wonderfully. I just haven’t done enough yet – or maybe I haven’t done it right yet, but I’ll just keep trying, I guess, until I get it right.”

And then one day, we become MAD Goddess women. We become exhausted. Finally, we are transformed into that fury for which hell hath no comparison.

“I am a MAD Goddess woman and I am not required to contribute to the happiness of any person – husband, child, parent, friend or co-worker, who refuses to participate in manifesting my happiness as well.”

Think of it as a see-saw. It doesn’t work if each one of you isn’t lifting the other one up.

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GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess