Category Archives: MUSINGS

June 1, 2010

ARE YOU MORE THAN THE SUM OF YOUR OLD AGE COMPLAINTS?

By JL

E-hem. Excuse me a moment while I dust of my soapbox.

As I stand here today, I have a simple request to make – nothing most of you can’t do if you’ll put your mind to it. Each day, as you hear that endless stream of mind chatter that rattles around in your head, try to remember that not all of your thoughts require a platform – and if you can’t keep it positive keep it to yourself!

For those of you around my age, you’ve heard this sentiment before, likely from your mother, who instructed you, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”

It was good advice then, and it’s even better advice now in light of the numerous forms of communication available today, including cyber formats which make it far too simple to give lasting exposure to fleeting thoughts.

Here’s an idea. Once you learn to zip it, maybe you can advance to a higher form of consciousness. Instead of just remaining silent and continuing to mentally brew your negativi-tea, why not take those thoughts and turn them around? Like the popular tune encourages us, “Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.”

What if the Higher Power, by whatever name we choose to assign – God, Goddess, Creator, All – is really that within us which aspires to manifest love in all things, that which reaches for the best possible outcome in any situation, that which strives for peace in all encounters? What if, in the battle between good and evil, the deciding factor is the energy vibrations we send out to the collective? Are you increasing evil’s number by your negative thoughts, words and actions? Or are you building the ranks of good, filling the cosmos with positivity to outnumber evil? Ever notice that good and evil are each one letter away from god and devil?

Heady stuff, MAD Goddess. Bring it down a notch or two.

Take aging, for instance. I’ve noticed that there are those who grumble endlessy about everything to do with aging and its particular challenges, and those who take it all in stride with a sense of good humor and grace – laughing all the way. I myself am guilty of more than a few snarky remarks about the aging process, but most often I have my tongue firmly in cheek when doing so.

The problem with complaining and never coming around to find the silver lining is that it’s a complete waste of time. It rarely, if ever, solves the problem and it’s contagious. We’ve all been caught up in that group of senior citizens who list their age-related ailments as if comparing war stories, each teller trying to outdo the other with their personal harrowing details of surgeries, replacements, aches, pains and general discomforts.

There are certainly plenty of challenges to aging, but there are rewards as well. Come on now, you know you’ve heard of them. More patience for one thing; it’s so much easier to watch your grandchild color on his mother’s walls and chuckle about it than it was when you caught her coloring on your walls.

With advancing maturity comes more self-confidence, less worry, and better understanding of the human condition. Who has time to sweat the small stuff? I think all these qualities fall under the label of wisdom, that proverbial acumen that settles upon us with age.

Surely all of this is worth the price of my stiff joints, failing eyesight, loss of hearing . . . you get the idea. The thing I don’t get about the complainers is, if aging makes you feel unwell, how does grousing about it make you feel any better?

To all the glass-half-empty people out there, regardless of age, have you given any thought to how your verbal downers can possibly lift your spirits? If not, have you at least given thought to how the negative nature of your words infects all those around you, let alone the unnecessary hurt inflicted on those at whom your judgments might be aimed?

It’s been said in many ways, by many people far better than I, but I believe that thoughts become words, words become actions, actions become habits and habits become your life.

So if you must speak, choose the good thoughts before you open your mouth.

. . . . . . mid

GET A ^ LIFE at MADGoddess.com

1 Comment | posted in Aging Gracelessly

April 24, 2010

WHAT A LULU

By JL

I’ve been quite busy since returning from my little island sojourn this past winter. Living in a 28-foot by 8-feet-or-so space for several weeks was much easier than I’d anticipated.

Sure, the quarters seem close sometimes, especially when spouses aren’t seeing eye to eye, but the perks of sunny skies and mild temperatures more than made up for lack of space. With a pool side chair and a good book, a disgruntled MAD Goddess can be a world away in a matter of minutes.

Back to the busy. Less than a day after returning to my cozy, three bedroom cottage the weight of life’s accumulations fell down upon me. What on earth do I possibly need all this stuff for?

Well, rainy, snowing, freezing cold, blizzard kickin’ me in the butt days are my first thought. Winters in my northern realm are long – very, very long. They are cold, as in twenty to forty below zero for up to a month at a stretch.

Some people living here don’t mind the weather. They like to ski, and ride snowmobiles, and snow shoe and hike and winter camp. Winter camping – nothing like s’mores that freeze before you can get them to your lips.

Anyway, I don’t like the cold and I don’t go out in it except for dire emergencies – like no chocolate in the house. Which means I have a lot of stuff to keep me occupied for the duration. Books, magazines, puzzles, paints (water color, acrylic and oil), needle crafts, bead crafts, and cook books.

The cook books require more stuff, cooking utensils obviously, but there’s also the fitness equipment – a failed attempt to keep the winter weight gain to a minimum. In Florida, my fitness equipment was a five-speed beach cruiser bicycle.

After a lifetime of collecting junk and junque – junque being the term for the flea market finds I filled half a garage and an overhead storage space with when I became obsessed with the “Chabby Chic” craze, I’m smothering!

Now that the weather has finally warmed up here, I have more than 1,000 square feet of garden beds to clean, weed and tend. I have 360 square feet of decking, with associated railing, to stain and seal. Virtually all of the trim on the house and garage needs painting. My husband can keep the acre-plus lawn mowed since piloting the lawn tractor isn’t too much of a strain on his heart, but all the edge trimming is my job.

As long as we own this house, that stuff has to be taken care of. So I’m on a rampage to get rid of the other stuff. I want the spartan existence of snowbird – if it doesn’t fit in my RV, then apparently I don’t need it. And the more stuff we rid the house, garage and yard of now, the less we have to worry about when we are ready to sell it.

We (that’s the collective we, here, as in you too) don’t own stuff. Stuff owns us. It takes our money and our time and our attention. Free at last, free at last, good Goddess help me, I want to be free at last.

But there’s an unhappy trend afoot here. My hubby isn’t on the same (ram)page as I. To him, all this stuff is good stuff, valuable stuff. Let me just offer a favorite quote here:

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”
— William Morris

Or in the words of Red Green, “Remember, if your wife doesn’t find you handsome, she better find you handy.”

In the meantime, I’m starting with my things, the ubiquitous flotsam of 33 years of home ownership.

I love gardening and home decorating magazines. I have stacks of them. Can’t throw these out! they are dog eared and have notations written on the covers for things I am going to do.

Laid low with a nasty cold, bored to tears, I thought it might be a good time to tackle the magazines, at least get them sorted, organized into some kind of reference library. Between the sniffle-nose, sore throat virus and the dust laden magazines, I broke. Some of the magazines were more than five years old. If I haven’t made the whimsical stepping stones, a watering can fountain or rain chains in the last five years, chances are I’m not going to get around to it in the next.

The magazines are now sorted and bundled by category. I’ll offer them up to home and garden enthusiast friends first, but if there are no takers – off to the recycling bin they go.

I’m planning on tackling closets this week. I’ve finally given up the idea that I’m ever going to workout hard enough to fit into my skinny jeans again. Instead, I’m going to splurge and spend more than $19.99 on a pair that fits and flatters the body I have.

I don’t need a work wardrobe for the time being. If I need one again in the future, I think I’ll buy new stuff. Long dresses left over from formal occasions. Hhhhmm. All but one of my daughters is married, and if she ties the knot, again, I think I want a new dress for the occasion. Out they go.

(THESE DRESSES ARE BAD ENOUGH, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT HAIR? from Dallas Vintage Shop)

Craft supplies. I hit the jackpot here. A friend that works with a non-profit in a near-by metropolis is looking for donations of any craft items. All I have to do is box it all up and give her a call.

I’m tackling one bunch of stuff every week. Want to join me? I’ll be posting the details and challenges on my Facebook account.

Join us – Ladies United to Lighten Up – LULUs

. . . . . . mid
GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

2 Comments | posted in RITUALS & PASSAGES, The Empty Next

March 15, 2010

DRIVING MS BLINDASABAT – The saga of aging and cars continues.

By JL

I had dinner with two high school chums this past weekend. We had a blast from the past. By a huge (wait – HUGE) stretch of the imagination, you might say we felt like Barbie, Ken and Midge. Of course, you’d have to imagine the threesome age appropriate, not frozen in plastic. And you’d have to imagine that trips to the soda shop were code for bar hopping. And you’d have to imagine that those yummy looking ice cream beverages had no less than three shots of rum in them.

Hey, that’s what Barbie was all about, right? A girl using her imagination.

So, this past Saturday Ken cooked for Barbie and I, and we all ate heartily. No skinny model fare for these aging dolls, we partook of roast pork and potatoes in gravy and washed it all down with red wine and beer. Well, they drank beer. I drank the wine, the whole bottle, by myself. Beer makes me bloat.

I brought dessert, which we forgot to eat because we were busy finishing off the shrimp appetizers – two kinds. Of course, if we’d had the leisure of more time I’m sure we would have gotten to my dessert . . . and I to the second bottle of wine.

“What was the rush?” you might wonder. Our chauffeured four door ride arrived on schedule to pick us up. I mention it was four doors because I totally embarrassed myself earlier in the evening proving that point.

Upon setting out for our friendly tête à tête I opened the front passenger door, pulled the seat lever to allow me into the back seat, the polite thing to do since our driver was Barbie’s hubby, and was quite confused.

The seat didn’t slide forward to allow me access. How could I possibly maneuver my ample, aging middle aged Midge body through that tiny crack of space between front seat and car frame? Then it dawned on my slightly sluggish brain that this must be a four-door sedan.

Yes, indeed, there was a back door for the back seat into which I climbed, laughing at my own foible. Not quite as hard as Barbie was laughing though – that bitch.

I mean, it’s not like she can see any better than myself. Which is exactly the reason why her accommodating hubby was driving us 25 miles to our dinner destination with another man, and then returning to pick us up at the appointed time.

“You’ll have to drive,” she said to me when we made our plans. “I have terrible night vision.”

“Me? Drive? I won’t be able to have any wine.” It was of course an excuse, and the jig was up the minute I tried to shimmy my ample ass into her backseat from the front door of the car . . . in broad daylight.

Can’t find my car in the parking lots, can’t drive after dark, can’t afford a full time chauffeur. Good thing our hubbies take such good care of us. You see, it wasn’t just Barbie’s wedded beau. My darling spouse made up the second half of the relay, picking me up at end of evening at Barbie’s pad and safely delivering me the rest of the way home.

This is truly sad. Not only do I lose my car in average sized parking lots in the middle of the day, now I can’t drive the dang thing after dark.

I think for our anniversary I’m going to buy him a black leather jacket and one of those jaunty chauffeur’s caps. The alternative of course, if for Ken,
Barbie and Midge to just start having sleep-overs.

. . .. . mid

GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

3/19/10

Bab’s requested this updated photo of her to be posted. Your wish is my command, dear friend.