Category Archives: Beauty and Image

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
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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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April 3, 2009

SPRING PASSAGES

By JL

March winds blow in the season of April proms and May graduations. Being an empty-nester, I am so done with all of that.

Proms are a fun and exciting time, especially for the mother of three daughters who each attended three proms. Do the math – I could be driving around in a cherry, classic Mustang convertible for the price. Add in the grad portraits and I could have some impressive custom wheel covers.

I am eternally grateful that we snuck by on the cheap with the first two girls – that’s the middle daughter (in the middle) wearing my early 80’s disco diva dress. You can see by the expression on her face that the girl has attitude. With the third daughter, we managed to keep a firm, though somewhat weakening hold on the budget – from her first prom (less than $200 total expenditure) to her last prom, in which she went all out.

Being the baby in my own family, I remember my mother’s excuse for everything I got away with (according to my older siblings). “I’m old. I’m tired,” she said summarily dismissing the ranks. Oh, how true. It becomes so easy to choose your battles when you are road-weary from traveling that path before.

I am enjoying a window of respite from this season of high emotion and high priced necessities before my first born grandchild is ready for her first prom. I admit, I’m a little (okay a lot) excited about dress shopping when the bill is on her father.

Of course, this grandma might be tempted to fork over the extra dollars for that dress she just has to have or she knows she’ll die. Ah, the payback is rich! For now, I am thankful to sit back and observe this season of young adult passages.

Like all grandma’s who sit in their rockers thinking their thoughts, I can’t help but wonder at how things have changed.

Several years ago in the autumn of the year, a college administrator sent a memo to his staff reminding them of the things the incoming freshman had never experienced. The list became somewhat famous, and now current versions can be easily found on the internet. Here’s my spring passages version ~

The young folks shopping for proms and graduations this year have never known a world without malls and chain stores. It’s unthinkable that they might wear their sister’s or cousin’s prom dress from two years ago. And they can’t believe that dress shops never“registered” your dress so that no other girl at your school would show up in the same one.

They have no idea what polyester is or what leisure suits were and have never danced with a man in stacked heels as high as their own (thank the goddess for small favors!).

They can’t imagine being restricted to going to prom as couples only or arriving in their parent’s four door sedan. They wonder if we didn’t have limos in our days.

Their feet never danced across the floor of a crepe paper festooned gymnasium. They rent ballrooms and receptions halls and drink punch (we can only hope it is only punch) in engraved stemware.

They’re dumbfounded by the suggestion that one or two poses are enough for graduation portraits. What about the sports pose, the sexy pose and the outdoor pose? What about touch-ups to remove glare from glasses, pimples on noses and flyaway hair? What about the Photoshop special effects – black and white drama with pseudo hand tinted accents?

They expect full scale receptions for graduation parties, complete with music and dancing. If they were given a suitcase (the classic gift from my day with the hint that it was time to move on being apparent) they would expect it to be the “gift box” containing their tickets for a graduation trip to Cancun.

Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “The only constant in life is change.” Bob dylan expounded on this theory in his song The Times They Are A-Changin’. As Dylan so aptly sates, we parents and grandparents can either keep up or get out of the way:

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
and don’t criticize what you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.
Your old road is rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand,
for the times they are a-changin’.”

. . . . . . mid
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4 Comments | posted in Beauty and Image, RITUALS & PASSAGES