But I have Flowers!

I am happy to report that once again, I kicked a cold virus in the ass due to my willingness to sacrifice all and take a day off to sit on the sofa and nap. This proves, once again, that laziness does in fact sometimes have an undeniable evolutionary advantage.

So today I thought I got under-paid on my timesheet and contacted the gal at work who takes care of such things. She, in turn, contacted the lady who actually cuts the checks. They looked everything over and decided....I was in error. Pay stub was correct. Which, once I looked closely enough at my pay stub, I totally saw, too. Oops.

I'm pretty hard on myself for such human mistakes. I hate that I put my friend and coworker out for nothing and sent her on a wild goose chase. But here's the thing....I have flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. Mason jars, too.

Apology.

So tomorrow I will take my kind and patient coworker these, as a humble request to forgive this lady who doesn't see well without her glasses anymore and never should have been looking at her pay stub without them.

I also currently have dried figs, cucumbers, apple pie filling and preserved relish to get me back into people's good graces if flowers don't work.

For all my bitching about how hard it is to maintain this place, there is no denying that sometimes it pays to live here, especially when you need to make nice to someone because you were a ditz.

Hot and loud

You know how sometimes you don't notice something until someone points it out? I experienced this recently, when my blogger friend Stephen Andrew commented on the hot, saturated colors I put into a flower arrangement I brought indoors a couple of weeks ago.

COLORS!

And today I was outside in the back yard in the one place I allow myself to plant all manner of ornamentals....my large raised planter in the "pretty" section of the yard. Again with the hot colors. What in the world is going on with me?

Most of my life I've been a pastels kind of girl, who would no more choose hot colors than fly to the moon. OK to slightly clarify that, I would TOTALLY fly to the moon if offered the chance, and hot colors did once have a place in my life, when I was about 7 years old or so and the Raging 1960s were going strong. I was all about COLORS, and even had a Stingray bike with a sparkly hot purple banana seat and tassles on the handlebars.

An exact replica of my bike...think it's in the Smithsonian by now?

I dressed in what I liked. And sometimes those fashion choices worked out OK.

Coordinating with the bike.

And sometimes they did not.

That is my mother in the rear. How did she allow me to leave the house dressed this way?

So through my teens until just recently, I really shied away from those super "loud" colors. But in thinking about it, they are the perfect colors for someone middle aged and older to totally rock. I mean, you might as well get noticed for something right? And let's face it, your face no longer commands awe (except when someone says, "awww, look at that old lady trying to lift that bag of fertilizer. Let's help her.")  Honestly. Our dewey loveliness fades and pastels are no friend to faded hair and skin. And while we're discussing it, you're not going to get any attention for your legs, either, except from 80 year-old men with a Viagra pill in their pocket and high hopes. Heels are too damn hard on your back and anything form fitting is a sign that you really need to go home and take an honest look in the mirror at what your form actually is in the present day, not 1983. Blousing, ruching, and all things billowing are your friends now.

Yet we still have options to make a statement with, if we wish. If you wear a hot pink collared shirt or lime green suit people will sit up and take notice of your bad-ass-ness. The world is your freakin' oyster once again. 

WOW! No further comment needed.

I don't think The Queen would have been caught dead in this color 20 or even 40 years ago, but at her age she probably figures why the f*ck not? I concur. And so what's been happening subconsciously is now exploding into my waking hours, and I find myself looking for bright yellows, pinks, oranges and greens to augment both my wardrobe and my life in general.

I may not be "hot" anymore (except for hot flashes of course), but perhaps that's the perfect time to let hot colors make the statement that I've still got some color -- some "hot" -- in me.

Wine and little old ladies.

Running the world.

The wine dinner last night was wonderful, and despite all the great food and wine the best thing about the night was sitting next to a couple of elderly ladies (probably 75-80 years old or so) and getting to know them.

At first I was not happy to be seated at the "old folks" table rather than the younger set, since our table was definitely the quietest in the room. But as I talked more to these women, I discovered they were total badasses. One was a personal estate attorney who had, literally, just retired this month after an extremely long and successful career. The other was a former aide at the U.N., who told us tales of conflicts in Bolivia and meeting presidents and foreign heads of state.

Just goes to show that you should never count the little old ladies out before getting to know them. Sure, they might be grandmothers who bake great cookies and bounce grandkids on their knees, but they might also be women who have been busy running the world for the last half-century, kicking ass and taking names.

I only hope I can do the same as I enter my golden years.

The Old People's Bus Stop

Carrie Fisher, then and now.

With "Star Wars" about to hit the theaters just in time for the holidays, I can't help but to have noticed a cry that's gone 'round the world. "What in the hell happened to Carrie Fisher?"

Most of these posts and articles feature side-by-side comparisons of Ms. Fisher -- one taken in her 20's, when she was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful, and the other taken on the current press junket for the new Star Wars movie  (almost 40 years after the first set of pics), where she....doesn't look as good. Big surprise.

There's not a lot of name calling, just a lot of speculation. Was it "life in the fast lane" that faded her beauty so dramatically? Bad plastic surgery? The cocktail of medications she's taken over the years for her mental health difficulties? The speculation goes on and on.

But lest you think this is unique, the same thing has happened to Meg Ryan in recent years. You remember Meg, with her peaches-and-cream complexion and curly blonde locks. At 60, she looks very different now. Meg Ryan is not known quite so much for her hard-living lifestyle, and so bad plastic surgery and too many lip injections are blamed for her rather odd look these days. Ditto for Melanie Griffith and Donna Mills.

In a way, these images of my former girl-crushes are very validating, because these were women I compared myself to and tried to look like throughout most of my teens and 20's. When I found out Carrie Fisher was just an inch shorter than I was but weighed only 103 pounds, I went on a diet. I was 5'4" and weighed 115 at the time. (!) I got down to 109 before my doctor told me to stop -- he said that if I continued, I would be forcing my body to eat its own muscle mass, just to hit a target number on the scale. 

I was a dancer at the time, and was pretty much all muscle, which I see now was a great thing to have going for you. But the doctor's orders did stop my diet, despite the fact that I was dancing on a national television show at the time and thought I looked too fat every single time I saw myself on camera.

Meg Ryan, then and now.

Anyway, here we are at the door of 2016, and we've all seemingly arrived at the same bus-stop now -- Me, Melanie, Carrie and Meg -- the stop where you can no longer go back. The stop where you step off and realize, as the bus pulls away, that you somehow left your good looks on the seat next to you. It's a vulnerable, naked feeling, when you look in the mirror and occasionally see an old lady you don't recognize. Department store mirrors are no longer your friends. Neither is fluorescent lighting.

And so, for some, the search for what you left behind on that bus begins. Carrie, Meg and Melanie all, I believe, have done their share of cosmetic surgeries, yet the final result was ultimately for naught. Full lips on a 50-something face looks ridiculous. So does skin pulled tight and pulled back to someplace behind the ears. (Is it tied into a kind of ponytail somewhere back there, hidden beneath the hair extensions?)

I still threaten sometimes to have a facelift when I'm 60, but the closer I get to it, the less dedicated I am about actually going through with it. I do admit to having some "fat packets" (as my doctor called them) scraped off my lower eyelids about 15 years ago to stop my lower lids from drooping after I started getting chronic dry eyes from the lids not being quite where they should have been to protect my eyes. After speaking to my mom, I discovered several women on her side of the family had ended up doing the same thing, either for cosmetic or medical reasons. So, in a sense, I've already had work and as a result, my eyes do look slightly different than they used to. But a full facelift or lip injections? Probably not for me.

No, the more I think about it, I'm going to sit here at this bus stop and not do anything short of coloring my hair for awhile longer. At least it's somewhat comforting to have so much company at this bus stop, including the "girls" (now women) I once tried to emulate, but no more. Sometimes fighting the aging process with injections, fillers and scalpels ends up making you look stranger than natural old age would. It's not pretty, either. But at least it's real, you'll still somewhat continue looking like yourself, and it's certainly a lot cheaper in the long run. 

There are no hot 80 year-olds out there, after all. We're all going to look like old women sooner or later.

Yours truly, then (1985) and now. Hanging' in there, which just means it's all hangin' a bit lower than it used to.

The river and the falls

In a few weeks I will be 54 years old -- that's right, just one year away from all those senior discounts offered by restaurants, retail outlets and other establishments.  It will no longer seem out of character if we want dinner reservations at 5 p.m., or if we rarely get home after 11 p.m. or if we enjoy watching "Jeopardy" on television each evening. This next year will be my last as part of the "under 55" crowd.

Those are the light-hearted things that most people joke around about when it comes to getting more and more birthdays under your belt.  And while, for a long time, I never understood why people my age had a fear of aging, or worse, a midlife crisis, I now get it.  I get it completely. If you're not there yet, it works like this:

Imagine that life is a river you float down on in an inner tube.  At the end of the river is a giant waterfall you WILL go over.  People disagree about what's on the other side of the waterfall, but the point is, everyone goes over the falls in their inner tube.  There is no getting out of it.  

Now, for a long time, you are cruising along in your inner tube, taking note of the wonderful scenery on the banks and enjoying your life. You can't see up ahead, the river in that direction is always covered by a thick mist, but the mist clears as you enter each new section of the river and it's mostly sunshine. This is called "the present." Of course you never really know if you're close to the falls or not, but when you are young the probability is high you are a long, long ways away from them.

And then, one day, when you are about 50, you hear something, off in the distance.  And there is no question what it is:  It is the sound of the falls.  It seems like you just wake up one morning and it's there. You know the sound wasn't there before; it's a new sound.  And about the time you start noticing it, you realize that some of your peers -- people you loved or went to school with have already gone over the falls ahead of you. Holy shit. You can actually hear them when they go over. 

So let me be brutally honest with you.  At that moment, when you recognize the sound you are hearing is The Big Waterfall, you want nothing more than to start furiously backpedaling down the part of the river you came down from. You might even try doing just that, but you can't fight against the current.  You are meant to be carried forward, and forward you will go.   

So with that realization comes the knowledge that you're now geographically closer to the falls than to the start of the river where you began. 

How you deal with this information, from now until you inevitably go over the falls, is something I have been thinking about a lot lately.  I have complete and total faith that life beneath the falls -- after the fall over the cliff itself --is wonderful beyond imagining.  Yet the idea of going over the falls is still scary to me. The idea of hearing that sound of rushing water, louder and louder as I go on through life, is also unnerving.

Perhaps in time I will work it out in my own head and be OK with this, but for now it's something I think on often and am not yet comfortable with.  I believe this is the ultimate cause of the midlife crisis, the bad facelift, the insistence on wearing juniors clothing, and a whole host of ridiculous behavior. It's not wishful thinking. It's terror over where all that time went and how little seems to be left. 

So for now, my goals are easy: I am working on not doing any of the above things while also adjusting to the fact that the sounds of the falls is going to be with me from now on -- maybe for another 30 seconds, maybe for another 50 years.  The harder task is for me to make whatever time I have left on this river count -- to make people's lives better, to be a friend, a lover, a confidant and a mother, and impart the best of me to help make others better, and take the same gifts in reverse. And to try and ignore the rushing sound in my ears while I do it. Yet I also do not want to fill my life with meaningless distractions, trying to block the sound, but to be fully and consciously aware of my place on the river without feeling a sense of loss or desperation.  That's very difficult. To make the time count and matter, but still throw my arms up in the air and let myself be carried over the edge when it's time, with a whoop and a holler.

No mean feat, I'm telling ya.

The simple life, or a complicated one?

I have a relative who needs one of these.

This last week I had an elderly relative come and stay with us for several days, which is why posting was a bit sparse.  This relative comes about once a year and it's always a very stressful time for us all, due to their being extremely techno-phobic. For while the Simple Life may be an admirable way of living on the homestead, to completely unplug is to virtually guarantee trouble for yourself and those you love.

This is because the technophobes or Luddites among us continue living in the same world we do, only without the conveniences.  And because of that, their technophobia is, rather than a statement about how simple their lives are, instead a signature characteristic of someone who manipulates, cajoles, or otherwise manages to get others to do their techno-bidding so they don't have to live in the same century everyone else does.

Seems like a good compromise.

See, the thing is,  all those techno-chores the Luddites scorn still need to get done. By someone. The Amish solicit automobile rides, when necessary, from non-Amish with cars, and borrow telephones when they need to.  They also use the bus systems and bring their children in for 21st century medical care when needed. 

Maybe there are people in Alaska or someplace like that, living off the grid and off the radar of the government, banks, etc., but for most people, at some point they need to make contact in a 21st century way, and the way technophobic people do that is to task their connected friends and relatives to do it for them.  So they don't really eschew technology,  they just pass the buck onto someone else to do the heavy lifting when they want or need something.

Take my relative's arrival, for example. I had to go online to arrange transportation from the first US airport they flew into, because they did not have a credit card to book a shuttle bus or hire a car.  If they got stranded, there would have been no way for them to let me know, because they refuse to own a cell phone. And without a debit card, they could not even have used an ATM to take out enough cash to pay a taxi.

Be a Luddite at your own risk.

All of this avoidance of modern technology is actually a source of stubborn pride with this relative -- they actually believe they are living a simpler life because they are avoiding all that technology.  Instead, their lives balance on a fine thread of a) well-meaning people willing to help out, combined with b) the luck that nothing will go wrong.

Because, like it or not, we all need our credit card in times of emergency...or our cell phones...or our checkbook. To live without those things in this day and age is inviting disaster. 

This relative finally moved on to someone else's house after a week with us, and I have to say, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Yes, we live the simple life here on the homestead; as I write this there are sweet cucumber and tomato seedlings growing in the conservatory, and a nice strawberry-rhubarb pie in the oven.  Later tonight, I will light the candles and get ready for bed, thankful for another day of home-grown simplicity.

And yet, when I cash my check at the bank tomorrow, it will be at the ATM, and I will pay my bills online after that. Because to try and do otherwise -- to live without computer, without plastic money, without a checkbook, and without a cell phone -- would make my life more complicated, not more simple.  

Yes, we all sometimes long for the days when those things were not part of society.  But not having any of them does not mean you have successfully turned the clock back.  All you've done is made doing life's business more difficult for yourself and, inevitably, for those you love.

Sometimes, living a truly simple life means living a hybrid one, somewhere in between our grandparents' century and this one. So my advice is this:  farm, eat and consume in a 19th century manner...but for heaven's sake,  bank in this one.

Relevant

Getting old sucks, there is no question about it. I am never one to mince words here, and so I'm telling this to you today in the spirit of 100 percent honesty.

One of the biggest problems is that older Americans are less relevant, in general, than ever before. I don't know how it is for other middle-aged folks but for me it's the single hardest thing to deal with about growing older.  Our culture is not one that venerates the wise elders as leaders and advice-givers. Instead, we smile indulgently at them and talk about how nice they are. Seniors, have, truly, becomes a second type of child in our society.

I can see it in how my best friend and I talk about our 80-something mothers. At their age, they are often opinionated without knowledge, stubborn without reason, and difficult because they will not listen to modern ideas that could make their lives better.  They can be hard to manage, and hard to help. In many ways, they remind us of our children when they were little.  And so the idea that they are really just big children emerges, not without reason.

But if you're in middle age, eventually you come to the realization that, like it or not, you are on the same road that your parents are.  And your ultimate destiny is either to be a pain the ass or become cute.  Maybe both.

For instance, there was an older gentleman (probably late seventies/early eighties) in the winery the other day, dropping off a product he was selling.  He had his own, homemade receipts, and kind of fumbled around trying to get his materials and invoice together. We were very busy, and so while he was poking around in his box looking for his paperwork, I was glancing anxiously back to the bar and the customers seated outside.

And after he left, we were talking about him behind the bar. "Did you see that old man today, dropping off his stuff and giving us his little invoice?  He was just so sweet."

"I know," the other gal behind the bar with me said, "so cute."

Yes, the older you get, the more you get relegated to The Cute Zone, along with toddlers, kittens and internet videos of goats climbing on stuff. A lifetime of bruising experience, real world crisis management and raising the next generation to responsible adulthood, and the result is becoming just ... darling!

It's maddening, except of course that to some extent, it is absolutely appropriate and correct.  

And here's why it makes sense: When you are in your 30's, you are absolutely essential to your children's lives, and probably equally as essential in the workplace.  Were you to depart at this time, the ripples in your part of the world would be significant and long-lasting. There are many people who would, literally, never get over it. Should you die before your parents or while your children are little, that is absolutely 1000 percent true.

That kind of importance declines on a kind of slow, sliding scale until, let's say, you are 70.  At age 70 our children may love us, but odds are we are no longer essential in their lives.  We are probably no longer essential in the workplace either, having either already retired or getting ready to.  So our true career days are over. Our grandchildren probably love us, but they don't really need us the way they need their parents.

And this is exactly the way Mother Nature designed it.  About the time you are at an age to sign out and move on to Whatever's Next, your presence is no longer essential here. It kind of works.

And so from now (sometime between 50 and 70, depending on your stage of life) until the time they call your name to cross the river between the worlds, well, now you are in the process of becoming cute. And sweet, and stubborn, in the same way a toddler can be sometimes. And a little behind the times, but charmingly so.  In short, irrelevant.

I guess what I never knew when I was younger is that the people in the process of becoming irrelevant are acutely aware of it.  I'm 53 and I can see it quite clearly. Not all of us can.  There's a guy (quite a bit older than me) in our local paper, who writes a weekly opinion column that usually has something to do with "the way things were," never realizing that the next generation tires of this kind of talk quite easily. Oh sure, we might enjoy hearing about the heyday of Hollywood or the price of gas in 1955 -- for about five minutes.  But what was an interesting, fascinating and memorable era in his life is just a story for us. The past is a place we like to take a quick peek at, but have no interest in hearing a play-by-play repeat of (unlike, often, the person telling the story).

I used to lament that my generation had little access to our great-grandmother's homesteading skills, but I was wrong.  With the advent of the internet, a whole new generation is becoming competent in canning, farming with horses, growing food from seeds and making medicinals from wild plants and herbs.  Those skills may not be common in society, but those skills will carry on thanks to a few young people who've mastered them. That's good news, because someday, they may all become essential skills again, and it's nice to know they will abide over time. The human race, may literally, depend on it someday if things continue along the path they are.

But this new generation's competence in the "old" ways also proves, more than anything, that the former generation is somewhat disposable, and that can life go on successfully without your grandparents, then without your parents, and eventually, without you. But before you go, if you are relatively healthy, your life does go on awhile -- in cuteness rather than importance; at a charmingly (or annoyingly) slower pace than the rest of society, and in memories more in the distant past than the recent one.

So stay tuned, folks, because in the next 20 years, I have a feeling this blog is going to damned...CUTE! But one thing I promise you ... while I may still offer tips on canning and growing food, I will try and refrain from waxing nostalgic over the price of gas in the 1970's. (Which was $.65 a gallon, in case anyone cares.  Which they really don't.)

Losing our #1 farmhand

This week Groceries will travel to an area military induction center, get a complete physical, swear his oath, and join the Navy -- for four to six years.  He's decided to study nuclear engineering care of the military, and (pending the successful outcome of his physical) they are anxious to have him.

And while that means the start of a great life adventure for him, for us it means not only the final  (assuming we get no rebounds) emptying of our nest, but also the loss of our strongest and most dependable farmhand.

In a rural environment, strength counts.  Right now I'm in the process of moving two cubic yards of enriched soil into our raised beds to bring them back to being full (decomposition and runoff all deplete the soil levels of raised beds and chicken compost alone is not enough to keep them full).  It's not backbreaking labor, which means it's something I can accomplish on my own.  For heavier jobs, I will usually ask Big Ag to take over.

I've got this. But other farm-upkeep tasks are beyond me at my age.

But there are other chores which require two strong men, and in that area we are going to be missing a farmhand once Groceries departs for points unknown.  So right now we are trying to get what we can accomplished.  The barn quilts need to be finished so they can be hung. (They are quite heavy!) The chicken run needs to be moved so I can finish painting the coop wall behind it.  These are not things I am strong enough to be much help with, and so we're figuring out what needs to be done before we no longer have Groceries and his strong arms and back with us.

After this, I'm not sure what we will do when we need an extra pair of hands.  We have neighbors we can ask for help, and there's always the option paying a professional to do the things we can't (something we probably need to get used to doing as we get older).

But there is no question that aging on a farm presents challenges.  Everyone loves the archetypical story of the little old 80 year-old lady who still manages her own property, butchers her own chickens and turns her own garden, but the reason we marvel at stories like it is because it's relatively rare that anyone can really do that.  Especially if you farm, by the time you reach 80 your body has endured a host of injuries as well as just the breakdown of your body from age itself, and so it's not wise to assume how you feel right now is how its always going to be.

And so as we ponder the potential departure of our middle son, we realize we will not only miss him being around the house -- his great sense of humor, his calm and dependable nature and willingness to help out -- but also his strength, his common sense, and his youthful enthusiasm to get a job done.

But nonetheless, I say with a heart full of pride: Anchors away, my son. Anchors away.

Hot Flash HenHouse

Today I had the privilege of going to the chicken coop and finding an egg.  This used to be something that was a given for me, in fact just last summer I was giving away many more eggs than I used. But I now have three hens over the age of two and two more hens not yet 22 weeks of age (typical age when laying starts), so eggs are like liquid gold here right now.

You can tell this because I no longer crack open an egg without good reason.  I have three in the fridge right now, and will use two of those to make some ice cream tonight, which will accompany my first berry pies made from our berries down in the south acreage. But here's how desperate the situation is:  I wanted to do an egg wash for my pie crust, but just couldn't bring myself to use a whole egg for that purpose. I did a milk wash instead. Can't waste those eggs.

Of course a sensible person would just head to the farmer's market and buy some eggs, but I'm not sensible about raising my own food.  I don't want those eggs. I want my eggs, warm and big and sitting in the nest box each morning. Substitutions are not wanted.

Red, my Rhode Island Red, is my biggest producer at this point., but will be re-homed soon due to her aggression with the younger hens.  My two gentle and lovely Buff Orpingtons lay only rarely at this point. For a long time I rationalized the decreased egg count by first thinking it was too cold for them to lay a lot...then too rainy...then too windy and hot, etc.  

Golden Girl.

But I have to face facts. My girls are looking more like Bea Arthur, Betty White and Estelle Getty every day.  They're Golden Girls, in the Golden Years of their lives.

More Golden Girls.

So right now I have three menopausal hens, and it happened faster than I thought.  So many people I know have chickens, but if you intend to keep them and not butcher them when they stop laying regularly, you need to think about how much your population is going to swell as your egg producers age and you bring in reinforcements to bolster your daily egg count.  The other day I was in the feed store and they had Welsummer chicks -- the kind that lays chocolate brown eggs. I almost walked out with a couple,  but thankfully I took stock for a moment and realized I would then have four young hens all laying at once, and once again I'd have too many eggs.  And in three years, I'd have four aging hens who weren't laying, yet still took up space and needed feeding and care. And of course then I'd need laying replacements for them.  Very complicated, but if you can do math, you can calculate when you have too many animals -- either more than you can afford, or more than you want to clean up after. 

So I'm going to hold off and get a Welsummer or two -- next spring.

The Hot Flash HenHouse.

We do have a new chicken coop and are building a larger run, which means we actually could have 15 or 20 hens without any problem, but I'd like to keep the number to less than 10, retirees and layers included.  I want them to have more than enough space, and I actually don't want a huge surplus of eggs. Plus 10 hens is a lot easier to clean up after than 20 would be.

And so, temporarily, common sense has won out over desire, and I will hold my hen count at five for now. (Actually four once Red is gone).  

It's only rational if I want to plan ahead for hot flashing hens in retirement, living the good life and being Golden Girls...while still getting enough eggs to hopefully be able to egg-wash a pie crust or two.

When I Grow Old

Put some more candles on that birthday cake.

I recently had the chance to spend several days with an elderly relative and, like most encounters with my family, it filled me with resolve not to do certain things, or behave in certain ways.

This time, it was a period of reflection followed by a list of things I promised myself I would not do when I get older. There is no question that I am headed into the crone phase of my life, and for the most part, I am happy with it.  Oh, sure, I'd love firmer skin, clearer eyes, and ankles that don't creak first thing in the morning.  But on the other hand, I'm a lot wiser, more at peace, and the feminine products aisle in the supermarket is no longer of any interest to me.  Those things alone may be worth trading some wrinkles for.

But there are things I need to make sure I do if I want to be the kind of senior citizen people actually want to hang out with.  Therefore, I hereby proclaim the following:

1.  I will try my best to not become a wrinkled teenager, meaning I will try not to be stubborn, insist that everything I know is right, and become disdainful of people trying to help me.  I'm not sure what it is about aging that brings out a certain rebellion in 80 year-old women, but if I am lucky enough to live that long, I'm going to make sure I'm still pleasant and agreeable, even when I don't agree. Being old doesn't automatically you right, anymore than being young makes you wrong. 

2.  If I need a hearing aid, I will wear one, because even though that skin-toned piece of plastic in your ear is a pretty reliable indicator that you're now in the second half of your life, having to 1) constantly pretend you actually heard/understood what someone said, or 2) say, "whaaat?" all the time is worse.

The old gang.  Literally.

3.  Eliminate the perfume:  Once my sense of smell is not what it was, I will not marinate in my favorite scent, even if it means I have to bathe more often.  No one ever overdosed from the clean smell of soap, but they most certainly have from some old lady sitting next to them wearing way too much eu d' cologne, toilet water, and actual perfume. I have, anyway.

4.  When it's time, I will relinquish my car keys.  I've already told my son this, and if he wants I will put it in writing.  There will come a time when my reflexes are not what they should be, and when that is the case I should no longer be driving. I have friends who literally had to take the battery out of their parents' car to stop them from driving, and I never want to bring my children to that point.

5.  #5 is the hardest one to write.  When I'm no longer safe and self-sufficient living here on my beautiful hill, I will give it up and move someplace in town.  Everything has a season, and life on a homestead is one of those things.  While I think I have a couple of decades more here (at least) I do understand that maintaining country property may someday be too much for me.

And whenever that happens, you can expect dispatches to begin from the Hot Flash Senior Home, full of rants about old ladies who wear too much perfume and old men who refuse to wear hearing aids. Only they will be my roommates by then.

Preoccupied with the vanishing celluloid crowds

I see dead people

OK, some people might feel like this post is a downer, but I have to be honest about where I'm at, which is somewhat reflective right now.

For those of you not there yet, I will tell you something:  Your 40th birthday is no big deal.  You're still good-looking, fit, and if you've taken care of yourself, still part of the "young" half of the planet.  You're a little (or a lot) wiser than you were at 20, and maybe you have a few gray hairs or a permanent slight mini-pouch from your pregnancies, but all in all, things still look pretty good.

50 is another story.

50 is different not because you necessarily feel any differently than you did at, say, 49, but because the number is significant.  It's half a freaking century, for heaven's sake.  And unless you are someone special (like my Uncle Earl, who passed peacefully in his sleep at the ripe old age of 104) there is every chance in the world that you are well past the halfway point of your life by the time the big 5-0 comes to call.

Your fifties are also the age when the generation that came right before you is on its way out.  My mother is still with us and still healthy, but she's 80 years old and is losing siblings and friends right, left and center.  My godmother has dementia and can no longer remember her grandchildren or what she had for breakfast today. My father's ashes were scattered at sea 25 years ago, and my grandparents are also long gone, relics from the bronze age at this point.

It's a sobering thing.

So here's how it hits me:  I watch old movies on television, and they get to me because, lets face it, if it's from the 1940's or even 1950's, almost everyone in them is dead.  That's right, while others see crowd scenes filled with hundreds of costumed extras and crowds of background performers, I see a crowd of....well....dead people.  Plus, depending on the film, dead horses, long dead dogs, and a way of life that is completely changed.  

Now lest you think I'm a total downer, I'm not.  In some ways, it's kind of fun seeing the phones that plug into the wall, the old automobiles, the bullet bras and the odd kitchen gadgets.  But the faces haunt me, because I know they're either gone or so old as to be unrecognizable. And I'm conscious that the things I remember from my own childhood are getting to the same obsolete place -- fast.

My friend Rod's mother, for instance, was a dancer on the stage and in film.  She was in the first stage company of "Oklahoma," was featured on the cover of "Life" magazine, and was a principal dancer in both the film of "Oklahoma" and the movie "Carousel."

My friend's mom, roof dancer on the far right

 I saw her on TCM last weekend and there she was, fresh, young and lovely, dancing her way across the locations and movie set of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic film.  In today's world, she is very old and stricken with dementia if I remember correctly.  But on my television screen she is young and vibrant, once again and forever.

And that's the thing about those of us who were born in the 20th century.  We are among the first generations who have ever been archived, documented and preserved so well for posterity -- on celluloid, on Kodak, and on readable disc.  But while the images of us that flicker across our screens will never change, we most certainly will.  And seeing the generation before mine begin to pass out of existence is a hugely sobering thing.

I try not to dwell on it in a depressed way, but rather to take note of it in a way that gives my life more meaning and makes the days more important.  When I realize that my entire generation is going to pass away along with me, I feel better, because I realize I have comrades in arms as we get ready to shoot the rapids into whatever comes next.  But to realize that we're next generation into the boats, it certainly gives me pause to reflect.  I see it in the mirror.  I see it in the faces of the crowds in the films, the crowds of people who are all gone now.  

And I see it in the world around me, which is now centered around the young adults of the next generation, as it should be.  As it was when I was their age.  And I turn my face towards those rapids, those most certain and unavoidable rapids where the generation before me is passing, and where we're headed next.  

And sometimes I look backward to what was with a little nostalgia, some sadness, and the realization that someday, my generation will be just like the crowds in the old movies I watch now -- long gone, us and our horses and our dogs and our gadgets. And it's a strange feeling, a feeling I wish someone would coin a term for, but they won't, ever, because we never coin terms for things we're too uncomfortable to acknowledge, however universal and inevitable they may be.

Poor Demi Moore

Turns out, according to The Gospel Of "People" Magazine (which I read religiously, anytime I'm waiting in my dentist's office) that actress Demi Moore got together with Ashton Kutcher out of an intense fear of growing old.  I had always thought she was trying so hard to keep her youthful appearance and demeanor because she'd fallen for a younger man and the idea of being the "older woman" in the relationship was a torment to her.  Turns out it was the other way around.  The younger man was a symptom of her panic over getting old, not the cause.  At least if you believe what the "People" people are telling us.


For years, a lot of middle agers (especially women) have somewhat jealously thought of Demi Moore as a kind of got-her-shit-together cougar, a woman who produced films, raised a family, and could still rock a bikini whenever she wanted.  But it turns out all those twitter posts and self-filmed videos were a mask, hiding a terrible insecurity that came from knowing 1) if you're middle aged, the looks you have now are on their way out, and 2) you are living in a society where looks are king.  Double if you're a Hollywood type.


And while I feel bad for her and everything she's been going through, I think regular women can also breathe a sigh of relief and learn from her sad situation.  The quest for eternal youth rarely ends well or happily, and those of us who have chosen not to fight every wrinkle and roll have probably taken the more gentle, more kind path with ourselves, although some mornings when we get up and look at what's in the mirror we may not feel that way.  


Getting older is inevitable.  Looking older is also inevitable.  Cosmetic surgery can fix some things, but eventually it leaves you looking like a freak show, which nowadays also translates to old. And while you might vow to spend your life fighting the aging process with every bone in your body, do you really want to spend the next 40 years fighting an enemy who will eventually win out, no matter what?  I don't.