Category Archives: MUSINGS

December 2, 2009

TELL THE MIDLIFE LADY WHAT SHE’S WON

By JL

My thighs are rubbing together when I walk . . . again.  I don’t know about the rest of you middle aged (and plus) chics but I’m getting fed up with this whole weight issue. 

After numerous months of struggling to tip the numbers on the scale below, uhm, a number you don’t need to know, about eight weeks ago the excess bulk started coming off.
And about two weeks ago, I noticed it creeping back on.  Yesterday, after my shower, when I felt that familiar friction of the skin above my knees I knew before stepping on the scale that I’d gained back every ounce.
Okay, so I indulged over Thanksgiving.  Yes, not on – over.  Over the entire week that I sat home on my butt enjoying a bit of leisure in my otherwise overscheduled, over-worked week.  That was my first mistake.
And maybe I’ve been hitting the chocolate again – second mistake.  But do I have to live on salads and whole grain crisps for the rest of my life just to keep squeezing my ever-bloomin’ ass into a pair of size twelves?  Really?
I’ve been wearing the same size jeans for close to twenty years now and something isn’t computing, because I certainly haven’t weighed this much for as many years.
It’s the dreaded back fat.  My sister warned me about this.
Back fat?  Back fat?!  Now I have to deal with more fat on a part of my body that I can’t exercise, even if I want to?  I’m not saying that I want to, but still –
Exercise – that E word. Not getting enough E.  Need more E.  Are you getting your recommended dose of E every day? 
“Pat, can I buy a vowel please, an E?”
“Vanna, do we have any E’s?”  (DON’T even get me started on Vanna)
“Is there an F, Pat?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, there is no F.”
Exactly, No F in’ exercise!  That’s what’s missing.
Seems I lost out in life’s wheel of fortune when the great metabolism I was born with went bankrupt. Gone are the days of eating a whole bag of potato chips with a container of dip.  Gone are chocolate malts, chocolate brownies, chocolate candy bars . . . straight shots of chocolate from the Hershey’s Syrup bottle (although, if you check the label it’s fat free).
I suppose I’ll have to make the E word part of my daily vocabulary if I don’t want to blow up like a beached whale.  So, I hit the road for a brisk thirty-minute walk yesterday. Then, last night before bed, I uncorked a bottle to celebrate – a bottle of extra-strength pain reliever to ease my Arthritic feet, bad hip, aching shins and stiff back.
Later today, if I can hobble to the grocery store, I’ll stock up on lettuce and some more of those cardboard crackers.  I wonder if they’d taste any better with a shot of Hershey’s on them?
. . . . . . mid
GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

3 Comments | posted in Beauty and Image

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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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