A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

Some things are perfect just as they are. They have no need to change and efforts to change them should be resisted. I’ll start the list with some objects of perfection:

1. Windows XP. The most perfect computer operating system ever. Now, alas, its economic utility to Microsoft is over, so Microsoft will no longer sell it (forcing us all to purchase Vista instead. Not me. I shall resist to the death!)

2. Toll House Cookies made from the recipe on the back of the Nestles Chocolate Chip bag. No additions and no substitutions, please. Don’t muck with perfection.

3. Oatmeal Raisin Cookies made from the recipe under the lid of the Quaker Oats Oatmeal canister. Sometimes it’s printed on the side of the canister and sometimes it’s called “Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies”. As in #2 above, no additions and no substitutions, please. Don’t muck with perfection.

4. The 2004 Subaru WRX with the Turbo-charged Boxer engine. This is my car, selected for me by my son. He selected it for reasons of safety, economy, durability and coolness. I have a heavy foot and a competitive nature…so if you beat me off the line at a stop light, it would be because I let you win. There are teenage boys who drive trucks in Howard County who will never be the same. Oh and the Viva Viagra middle-aged boy in the Mustang….no contest!
I’ll add to the list as I notice perfect things…you should add, too!

“Who wears short shorts?” Remember that pop song?

I know that I don’t wear them anymore. And except during rare and fleeting periods in my life, I couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t have worn them. And I don’t think that I’ll be wearing them anymore because they just don’t seem right; they make me feel inappropriately exposed.

Is this an mid-life modesty that I eschewed in other decades? Or is it an acceptance that short shorts are wrong for my body-type? Has my self-perception changed so that there are now some clothes that are simply “too young” for me?

Do you wear short shorts?

I stumbled across this “everywoman” quote while I was reading Page Six online this morning (ok…that’s one of my dirty little secrets:  I read Page Six online and am verily addicted to it.  But I do NOT touch the tabloids in the grocery store checkout lines!)

Read on - are you “like every other woman” as described by Stella McCartney (remember that her father, Paul, was the cute Beatle.)…

“I’m like every other woman. I don’t want my underwear to make me feel fat” - Stella McCartney in Vogue . . . ”

Think about it.  Does your underwear make you feel fat?  What does that mean?  What kind of underwear could that be, other than ill-fitting underwear or a thong?  Do men have this problem?

I know that I should know the fancy way to do this so you could just point and click and read this. But I keep forgetting. So just cut and paste this URL into your browser if pointing and clicking doesn’t work. The topic: why to STOP doing a thing. Hit the back arrow on your browser to read on here when you’re done there. Or, read on now!

http://www.43folders.com/2007/11/12/vox-populi-reasons-quit

I post this for all of us with bags of yard and piles of new fabric from project ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time…endless lists and half-started novels. Unfinished stanzas. There’s new stuff bubbling up all the time and we need to make room and time to accomplish it!

There comes a point, I think, in every endeavor when you’re pretty far into it, but you can’t see the end. So you forget why you started in the first place, but you keep going. Sort of. And either it gets finished or not. Either way, the project hangs over you and saps energy.

If you’ve forgotten why you started, maybe the reason for the doing is no longer there.

Just a pre-dawn thought today…

Kerch has a real “thing” for purses. I have recently come to the conclusion that being “current” each season is an itch that I can scratch by simply buying a new bag in the “it” style. After all, everything goes with black pantsuits, right?
And you? How many purses do you own? And why? Point and click and read on here.
Enjoy!

Just for the record, I finally quit smoking today. The final catalyst for action? Well, actually, there were two:

1. After 37 years, the smell of my own cigarette smoke is disgusting.

2. Chantix. Pharmacology is a wonderful thing!

This afternoon my brawny stagehand son was teaching my brawny Marine nephew the finer points of whipping cream by hand for the strawberry shortcake that was their grandmother’s birthday cake.  My almost-daughter-in-law and I just got out of the way.

While the “boys” were whipping cream, my now 76-year old mother was on the deck explaining to my ex-husband, my brother and his wife that the ducks that currently inhabit her waterfront must be homosexuals, since there are no female ducks.  This - of course - does not explain the appearance of baby ducks.  She doesn’t have any problem with that apparent contradiction in her thinking. 

My Donald is working in Detroit at the moment.  I hope that when I tell him these stories, I can give them a “you were there” feel!

Clearly not the Cleavers.

I’ve been reading a lot recently about women-in-their-middle-years (I guess that means post-menopausal, a period in one’s life formerly referred to as “middle aged”) who are “re-inventing themselves”. 

And I find myself reacting oddly to the Dennis Hopper television commercials for some financial services company’s retirement planning services.  Hopper looks intently and Hopperesquely into the camera and says firmly and boldly:  “Your dreams are now.” 

Finally, there are the cialis/levitra/whatever ads that talk about “when the time is finally right” and the ads end up with the couple relaxing separate-and-apart in adjacent clawfoot bathtubs that are in some meadow overlooking the horizon.  I am confused as to whether or not the time was EVER right for that particular dosage!

These three thoughts are connected to a concept of endless and fairly limitless possibility.  It’s almost as if we can reconnect to all of the bright potentials from our youth with enough money, the right drugs, through the right re-design.  Life 5.0, perhaps?  What’s Jane Pauley doing these days?

I’m wondering if re-inventing is really about re-imagining.  Those imagination muscles may be the most atrophied of all.  What’s the process for getting one’s imagination back into shape?

As always, suggestions welcome!

Susan Reimer’s column in The Sunpapers this morning gave lots of reasons why women delay having a mammogram. Read all of that faulty thinking and dangerous logic here.

I won’t rant, or go into what Kerch calls “the full Leslie.” I will however say that there are really only two reasons why smart women don’t get regular mammograms: Fear and Stupidity.

Ms. Reimer ultimately posits that money and pain are the chief reasons why women don’t get regular mammos. To which I say: having a baby was expensive and giving birth hurt, but we did that. Isn’t your own life worth the same?

Clearly I feel very strongly about this, given that I am a breast cancer survivor since 2000 and my early stage cancer was detected by a mammogram. I was 46 (which is “young” by breast cancer standards). And while we’re on the subject, colonoscopies fall into the same category.

If you’re smart and you want to live, you do what you can, right?

Just do it. Now.

Getting ready for something new - preparation - involves choices. You need to determine what you want and what you need to do to get it. “Taking a journey” is a pretty shopworn metaphor, but I am actually taking a vacation! So for me, getting ready involved not only “things to do”, but “things NOT to do”. Listen as we talk about it.

 

 What do I really need to do before I go away. [13:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download