Aging Un-gracefully

I was never "the pretty one."  When I was growing up, I had the nice singing voice, the book smarts, and "great feet."  My first husband almost never looked at me as if he was appreciating what he saw.  I was scrawny, curveless, lanky, and (like most little girls I've learned) didn't feel pretty.

Then, I got divorced and found me in my mid-twenties. Gosh, I loved me!  My body wasn't perfect, but whose is?!  Anyone?... Yeah, that's what I thought. I have a great sense of humor. I love people -- helping them, listening to them, getting to know them.

A few years back, I broke my coccyx.  That was only the beginning.  I graduated from college and started working desk jobs.  Let's face it.  I've got curves now. My weight hovers around the same as the ninth month of my third and fourth pregnancies. I jog. I yoga. I dance. I walk. I play. But, I also eat what I want when I want. I had to curb the eating a little because that metabolism that burned so hot for three decades recently tanked.  I actually feel full for a while after eating.  This is brand new to me, so I'm learning to adjust.

I'll be 38 years old later this year, I've given birth to six human beings, my hair is beginning to show white, and those awesome dark, course hairs I used to loathe tweezing from my mom's chin are now popping up on mine. I'm not blind people.  I can see the roundness on my arms, my belly, my chin, and my thighs.  I know I'm aging. But, I think I've earned every single solitary wrinkle.  So, why not just let me LOVE ME instead of taking every opportunity to point out the parts of me that you believe are flawed?

Do you know what it's like to have people shocked by the way you look because of the extra 25 pounds you're carrying? It's awful. It makes me feel self conscious. I'm beginning to not want to take pictures (or pull apart the ones I am in) and not get dressed in the morning to go out in to the world.  Why do people do that?!  WE'RE ALL FLAWED DAMN IT.

And, p.s., when I was that scrawny little twig girl in junior high AND high school, I used to look at Greco-Roman art and LONG TO BE lusciously curvaceous like their women are portrayed. Muscular and strong, but also completely soft. 

This week, I walked up to the building I work in now (mirrored glass) and saw that long ago desired figure.  And I thought to myself, I love me.  I'm okay with me.  I've earned this body. Today, someone said something about the recent roundness of my face as if it were a derogatory characteristic and now I'm sitting in my bedroom crying and writing this to the empty cyber world where no one will read it and no one will change, but I will be able to say it "out loud."  I LOVE ME. I am growing OLD.  I will get wrinkly.  Stuff will sag.  My hair will be white.  And I plan to LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, and PLAY all the way through to the end.  I've EARNED this body. I might even start wearing a toga. So, keep your damn derogatory insecurities and commentary to yourself.
 

Guest Poet: Jason VanDaam

A big shout out to my poet buddy and Ping Pong Poetry partner, Jason VanDaam.  You can find some of his published works, such as "It Seems I Have Heart Trouble" and "Plato's Pawn Shop" in the WSU interdisciplinary journal Metaphor or you can follow him on twitter @wordalchemist1. If you ever get the chance, Jason's distinctive voice is best heard live at a local Poetry Slam. He is currently working on a compilation of his best hits.  Watch for it!

Adventures in Feminine Hygiene

A recent Russian Tampax commercial demonstrates their "leak proof" technology by having the other girl eaten by a shark. If you're a girl, you know there are a lot of choices when it comes to making sure you're covered when facing the "sharks" of this world who will eat you alive over embarrassing leaks.  What you might not consider is your very own busy brain.

I know I didn't...

Once upon a time, I brought some reading, a chair, some water, and the camera.  All these things made it quite clear that I had no plans of getting in the lake to swim with my children.  It's one of my very most favorite things in life, but there I was on a spontaneous trip to our favorite swimming spot wearing a pad and not a tampon.  I was not going in. 

Until hubby decided he wasn't going in either.  What?! We have two small, non-swimmer children wearing floaties out there.  Come on.  I was so concerned about their safety, I completely forgot about my little "situation" and dove in.  The good news?  Pad technology has seriously come a long way in the past few decades -- no falling apart, bloated, floating pieces. The bad news?  Realizing I didn't have any replacement equipment in my purse and there was no way I was going to sit in the car wearing this thing.

What could I do?  Well, there's always the Business section of The New York Times...

Do You Know My Voice?

Every author has a voice of their own.  Without any audible sound, one can come to recognize a favorite author or other individual authors based on their distinctive imprint on the way they put words together.  One of my poet friends and I like to challenge each other with games of Poetry Ping Pong.  What follows is the context of a recent game (played over texts) without any edits -- completely raw (other than line spacing I am adding here).  Do you know which stanzas are mine?  Can you guess the identity of the other poet?

Sinners either run
or they sit, stuck in the mire
loving the cool earth smell,
birth smell with less blood
and sweat.  Running makes
a body tired.

Eventually...

each of these choices reflects
the same color, earth-toned
and salted sour aftertaste as it is just pain
leaving the body replaced
with hope.  This palate sweet dew,
heavy with sacred time. 

St. Peter vacations here during Catholic holidays.

Sometimes, when the heat of hell
overlaps the space in the year
for salvation, as the choirs of heaven
take a break and watch reality TV
Harlem shaking a Gungham-style Macarena,
it is the more in everything
that ruined it for the rest of us
have enoughs.  American birthing pain
during a scheduled patriotic C-section
during the delivery of a stillborn
child named freedom.  R.I.P.

It is the whistle warning song before a firework bursts,
before the baby's mouth opens wide to wail against the world,
before the heart break happens and our feet do their own choosing
Payless size nines with a man-made upper.

Man is always on top,

even when he's on the bottom,
in the pit, bottomless, running again,
carrying sin like a flag with thirteen stripes
of red.

Castor oil covered, foul-tongued, ostrich-feathered
girls fill themselves, leaving me
empty, tattered and torn, like a national flag
of a country that no longer exists as it was
full of generous peoples.  This is archaic,
unrealistic and silly.  The world now demands
selfish self centered plastic media driven

images that have forced a national forgetting

of a simple hug.  Revelry sounds shrill,
automated.  Leaving the listener lonely,
satisfied in the fact that choices are limited
for peaceful, satisfying breath. So, I dance
like everyone is watching secretly folding
the flag with pomp as it will wave once again
when we remember we are we

or even...

just part of something greater.

Chore Joy

Isn't that an oxymoron?

I wonder why we started calling our household duties a "chore."  With synonyms like "drudgery," "burden," "gruntwork," and "rat race" attached to it, it's no wonder we look forward to doing them as much as having a tooth pulled without anesthetic by a dentist smoking a cigar.  Yet, we expect our children, who prefer the whimsical and delightful (or, at least, the "what's in it for me?") approach to life, to dive in with both hands singing as cheerfully as Snow White without any help from her Seven Dwarfs.

As a mom, I've attempted the Snow White approach.  It is actually the one that works the best in my home.  If I say "all hands on deck," the dwarfs -- I mean, children -- come running.  I sing at the top of my lungs and turn up the music and we all dance the dust, laundry, and dirty dishes away.

But, it turns out that "all hands" are not always near "the deck" and sometimes Snow White's singing voice is just not available to inspire the masses.  What then?

We've tried the Chore Charts, the Privilege Points, the Raffle tickets, and the Treasure Box.  We've tried the FlyLady and her Zones, the Morning Checklist, and even the Free-to-Choose method.  Nothing seems to work.

The Ten-Minute Tidy is the ONE thing that my children are completely attached to.  There was a time when I used this method at the end of the day just to prevent myself from tripping on a toy during a middle of the night bathroom trip. It was combined with a Saturday Morning "all hands on deck" tackling of the Deep Clean along with hit and miss attempts at the above mentioned methods of keeping the house in some semblance of Order.  It was granted as a way to acknowledge teen participation in extra-curricular activities and stellar school performance (i.e., hours of homework).  It was even used on Snow White's Sick Days...just to make it through.  But, now, if they are asked to put their hands in for more than ten minutes, it's like signing the Declaration on World War III.

When I transitioned from Stay-at-Home Mom and full-time Undergraduate Student to Working-for-Money-and-for-Free-as-a-Mom full-time, my time with the people that matter most was so limited, I decided not to fight about chores.  I decided to just dig in, get it done, and hope to heaven I would be able to see straight on the other side of the sunrise.

This morning, I started something new.  It's a "Chore Choice List".  I write down -- very specifically -- the things I'd like done today (there is even a "little kids" list).  They initial what they want to do and cross it off the list when it is done.  If they complete it, they get the password to the computer. If not, they don't.

I like to keep things simple.  Wish me luck!

Wreck it Ralph

If you are looking for a family cartoon that is not only creative, but sensitive, sweet, laugh-out-loud funny AND a dazzling display for your eyes -- look no further.  Every member of our family LOVED this movie.  It was worth the hurry-up dinner and the rush-out-the-door crazy.

Maybe I don't want my kids to repeat the Bad Guy Mantra -- "I'm bad and that's good...", but I do want them to know that it's excellent to be who they are and to love the work that they do.  Every member of our family is valuable -- whatever their role -- and this story sends that message right to the heart.

Carpal and Ulnar

Theses nerves are getting on my nerves.

A lady at church qualified the success of her surgery to the apparent failure of mine by saying, "I stopped doing all of the things that bothered mine."

My inner response?
a)  if you STOPPED doing all of the things that irritated the nerves in the first place, your surgery might have been an utter failure too.
b)  if you STOPPED doing all of the things that irritated the nerves in the first place, you must not have very much to do.

For all of you that believe that typing this blog is the only thing causing a problem, here's my list.

All of the Things

buttoning buttons

zipping zippers

jewelry clasps

hair brushes

tweasers

holding a book

turning a page -- every page

holding a pen

or a pencil

texting

holding a phone

folding laundry

(especially socks)

scrubbing
whisking
curling
peeling

holding the stearing wheel

braiding hair 

holding a camera

pressing the shutter button

applying chapstick

holding a fork

(or spoon or knife)

shoveling the snow

scraping the windshield

cuddling with my husband

holding my son

(and my daughters...for long periods of time)

giving massages

putting on socks

(and taking them off again)

taking out the garbage

raising my arms above my head

making a fist

(all right, I can't actually make a fist anymore)

sleeping

This list may not be all of the things, but when you read it, you may notice that my nerves are getting in the way of many of my favorite things.  What helps?  Daily yoga, dancing (with lots of long arm styling), ice, and ulnar glide stretches.  

Now, if only people would realize their perspective is just that -- their own.

Charm

Friday, I attended the fundraising performance of the Weber State University production of "Charm".  Written by Kathleen Callahan, the play was described as "...a blend of fact and romance, magical speculation and storytelling skill that details the life and times of Margaret Fuller, a 19th-century woman ready to transcend even the transcendentalism made popular in her day by Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who are featured in the play. Fuller worked with some of these men on “The Dial” as one of its first-ever female editors."

What I didn't know was that I would laugh out loud for 2 full hours -- that my eyes would need to actively flit from actor to actor to catch the facial expressions and their reactions the writer/editor Margaret Fuller.  She was me living in that time and very much NOT me in her desperation to transcend her body and know the bliss of love through physical touch, she reached beyond convention and pushed every boundary she could.

Her pillow fight with Count O of Italy (a certain play on words) was inspired.  It made me want to go straight to the craft store, fill up our normal pillow cases with feathers and go to town!  So fun.  There were magical, creative moments when the costume design brought to life for the modern eye the very real distance that the "yards of fabric" created between a man and a woman.  The ending was shocking -- breathtaking even in the unexpected and suddenness of it all.  I didn't know any of the history of Margaret Fuller's life.  I could make no assumptions about the way the play would come around and finish.  It was really a Sparkly ending.  No matter how cool Callahan thought she was being.  But, when she felt the muse -- "Oh!  An idea...for a story!!"  She followed it to fruition and I am SO glad for the laughter.

Good luck to the WSU theatrical team as they take this production on to the national level, which you can read about here.