I'm Havin' a Freakin' Heart Attack

We are supposed to live to about 72. If you divide that in half, and 36 is your middle age, then, my friend, guess what? You are now this side of Middle Age. More than halfway through your life. Sure, it would be easy to pretend that 40 is the new 30 or, um, 50 is the new 36, but no matter how you mathify it, it's on. Middle Age is here to stay in your life.

Still think you can remain in denial? Forget the math then -- find out the truth your answer, by taking this specially tailored comprehensive quiz compiled by an on-that-side of middle age expert: *coughthatwouldbemecough*

1.  The fashion headbands advertised on your Facebook sidebar look adorable on the 18-year-old model, but make you look like Crazy Mary who used to sweep the bridge downtown during rush hour.

2.  Red fingernail polish and red lipstick may be in style, but on you they’re Cruella Deville.

3.  When you walk downstairs in the morning your knees sound like pop rocks.

4. There was a time when a tankini and skirted swimsuit were enough, now you need a burka.

5.  While grocery shopping you blissfully hum and skip to the piped Muzak version of “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher.

6. Lift more than four grocery bags at a time and your brain actually starts shouting “I’m Having A Freakin’ Heart Attack!”

7.  You shoot dirty looks at cars driving alongside you with their bass pounding to Kesha.

8.  After shooting the dirty look, you pull over, *safety reasons*, and call in a complaint to the non emergency police number reporting the Kesha-loving driver. (extra middle age points if you politely stress the non-emergency part of the phone call)

9.  Your kids see pictures of you from twenty years ago and ask who the pretty lady is.

10.  The face you see looking back at you in the mirror isn’t yours, it’s your childhood Aunt Rosita's.

You can keep your answers to yourself, of course, but ask yourself this:
Does your neck look like your knee?

Welcome to the club.

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I Don't Want Them Back After All

It's been twenty years since I last saw them.

Twenty years of missing them, and fantasizing of their return.

Wishing hasn't gotten them back, half a lifetime of trying to win them back, in which none of the ways were easy or without sacrifice. Pining their absence, feeling where they once used to be.

But then, in a sobering moment, no more. 

I was at a 6th grade basketball game, and No. 24, a small wisp of a blonde boy, 68 pounds at most, was thrown a surprise pass, which sent him first spinning, and then flattened, to the floor. Stomach first, down, on the wooden gym court floors that might as well be concrete. I couldn't help but watch his face.

Contorted in pain, eyes closed, mouth open, head thrown back. If he could have cursed without having his mother pull him off the court by his ear, he would have. He was speechless, his lips pressed together in agony, I was ready to fly Samuel Jackson here to do his swearing for him.

Jiminy Christmas (we'll pretend that's what he was thinking) that hurt like a *$*#- er. I could read it in his face.

He had bounced like a Frisbee and landed full force on his hip bones. The very anatomical protuberance I had been chasing, coveting, daydreaming about one day seeing back on my own body. I instinctively pulled my shoulders up to my ears in sympathetic pain for the poor boy and in a flip-switch of life, I was instantly cured of my symmetrical bone longing. 

*&#*@! I DO NOT MISS HAVING HIP BONES, I know I said it out loud. Un-huh. Because in that moment, I was jerked back in time, to my pre-children body, and I felt every slambang that my own  jutting cow bones had endured. Sharp edged counter tops, pointy school desks, car doors left ajar, kitchen sinks, parking meters, bathroom doors, and exposed basement pipes. Even a damn roller coaster that knocked me repeatedly in the left hip until I thought I'd have bone meal shakes to sell.

No sir, I DO NOT miss my hip bones. I said it, and meant it more with each time I said it. No sir. I do not.

Five minutes after witnessing the 12:38 p.m. Hip Bone Slam, I slapped my thigh, once more declaring and this time owning it. I DO NOT MISS HIP BONES. If someone had a hard time with me standing up and blocking their view of the game, I didn't care. The enrapture of an epiphany is too intoxicating to not be vocal. 

Thank you, No. 24, for what you did for me today. I'm hoping you're able to walk by Monday. In the meantime, please know, that twenty years of shameless pursuit were released like a thousand balloon launch. After the game, I hurried home to celebrate my new skeletal liberation by creating what I now realize I truly want: some more of this wonderful built-in protective fat padding.

I can't think of anything more up to the task than macaroni and cheese with crumbled bacon on top.

 

hip bones? they were here 101520900 minutes ago.

 

 

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Controlling Online Life So You Can Get Back to the Important

Focus and discipline are the keys to production. Production means you produce and all the precious time we have results in an outcome. If you (read: I) were to manage that scrolling and clicking and stayed OUT of those time consuming rabbit holes, yes, this means BuzzFeed videos (seriously, is BF not killing it with those videos lately?) then we'd have something to show for our hours in front of the glow of the screen.

 

We all know about the time we spend online, just like we know but don't understand that weird time/space slinky action thing that warps the minutes we're on the internet into hours. Now you see it, and zaaaaaaaaaaaap snap, now you don't.

 

Where DID those two hours go? Last thing I know I was searching for *Lunch Boxes+Sturdy* and then I'm looking at a video of Taylor Swift sliding down a snow covered college campus hill on a lunch tray. 

 

This can't go on, I'll tell you, there are things I need to get back to doing that I did before I moved online. 

 

Important things, like this list right here of how I'd be spending my time if it weren't for the seduction of the internet:

--Staring at my fingernails, willing my lazy butt to get out of the house and get a manicure.

--Poking around the snack cabinet deciding on what to have for second breakfast.

--Walking around the house with two pairs of socks on to stretch out my new winter boots.

--Letting my Bethenny Now! exercise DVD play in the background while I finish up the sweet-n-salty chips the kids left out last night.

--Going to the basement with intention to cull toys, DVDs, books. Walking back upstairs after surveying area for three minutes with my hands on my hips.

--Be at the local yoga class where the teacher there waits until I'm *this close* to falling asleep to sneak up on me and make me jump ten feet in the air by whispering "namaste" into my ear.

--Or I could be at Zumba, where the instructor there tries for the 7th time to talk me into leading her Zumba Silver class.

--Pull the blankets off the beds to let the sheets "breathe" as Martha Stewart Living advises. Consider that my housekeeping for the day.

--Decide to have lunch with my youngest at school. Surprise him with McDonald's only to have him grab the bag out of my hand and say, "Thanks mom you can go home now. No. Really. You can go home now."

--Notice that my jeans have permanent knee mounds, take myself to Old Navy for new pair, where all are too long and too tight. Refuse to try the larger size up. Drive to Hefner's Cup O'Custard, stay in their parking lot and lick my wounds, metaphorically through Death by Chocolate triple scoop in cup. Consider Death by Chocolate a literal invitation.

--Drive to an afternoon matinee. Suffer through Playing for Keeps about hyper-sexed soccer moms wanting to do aging soccer star Gerard Butler at every which way while he coaches their little ones on for a team win! Play a game with myself and try and guess which mom is the one who gets behind the scenes special skills "reffing" session.

 

--Rummage through my husband's sock and underwear drawer. Hoping to find something linking him to exciting past Bourne Identity double-agent life. Find only saved tags from the past ten years of boxers in case new ones don't fit.

I've got so much to get back to from the old life. If you want to get back in control of the life you had pre-internet, then it's time to download some of that software that locks you out of Facebook and gives you only 5 minutes of twitter. Or.... you can stay online with me, and send me your answer to "What Kind of Egyptian Queen Would You Be?"

 

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photo credit: The Daring Librarian via photopin cc

It Lies Below The Land of the Remembered

For as long as I can remember, my mother has talked about her fear of being dead.

Not of dying, she looked forward to that. To seeing her mother again, her husband who had passed away when he was 39 years old, of being with her four gone before her brothers.

I must not be forgotten. If I am forgotten, my body is alone. I cannot bear to watch and know, that my body is alone.

I would sit on the edge of the bed, and listen to my mother's phrases of worry. She never asked any of us if we would visit her grave, she assumed she would be buried, and then forgotten. So sure was she of being left entombed and unattended, that her fears kept her roaming through the house at 3 a.m., consumed with the vision of a stark, physical afterlife.

I would hear the floor creak as she paced in the dining room. I would hear her in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, then half an hour later, another glass. Her mouth made dry by the anxiety of the future. Sundays were the worst, after church when the priest would talk of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. It was then, that I think she first came to think of cremation.

She was Catholic in the strongest definition of the word, she had grown up being told Catholics could not be cremated. But I remember the day that I was driving to my house, with her in the passenger seat beside me.

The priest say, I can be cremated. It is not a sin.

Oh? I didn't know it was a sin. Was it a sin?

We were told to only be buried. But, now he say yes, and I will do it.

She burrowed through her ever-present purse and found what she was looking for. A small business card with information, numbers, check amounts, and contact procedures. All of this, on thin white card stock of two by three inches.

This is what I want.

To be cremated.

The priest say, I can do it.

When my mother did pass away, she was cremated. I kept her card in my coat pocket during her burial, patting it every few minutes, making sure it was there, in case any family member questioned her request.

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There is a scene in the movie, The Book of Life, that jumps, sudden and swift, out of nowhere. It is in undeniable contrast to the rest of the film, and is of The Land of the Forgotten.

When I saw this scene for the first time, I gasped. I sat between my two children and said to them, “THIS is why my mother was so afraid of being buried! The Land of the Forgotten! Do you hear what they're saying about the Land of the Forgotten!?”

On screen, we see black against grey against another grey hue, barren and stripped, no color in sight, nor vibrancy of life. No visitors. And more haunting than the lack of others, is how quickly one can arrive in the Land of the Forgotten.

"One only has to be forgotten."

My mother's body was turned into ash, this is the insurance she needed to be sure that her bones were kept out of the Land of the Forgotten. But for me? Her fear has become my vigilance.

I say her name every day, I keep a candle in front of her framed picture. With my sentinels at the gate, she will never feel or hear the empty gusts that blow across the Land of the Forgotten.

 

Life Changing Stories

photo credit: Reid Peterson Life Changing Stories

Everyone should be free to live a life that celebrates who they are. Living with joy and without the weight of things that hold you back, things like shame.

I have often spoken on shame and how it keeps us from feeling included, accepted, and understood. Reid Peterson, of the podcast Life Changing Stories, contacted me after hearing me present for The Moth, and asked if I would explore the topic of shame for his listeners. I was honored, and couldn't wait to share my experience of how letting go of that emotion set my life on a new path, one that was made of a sense of solid self-worth and value.

We spent a great half hour talking to each other, and I'm proud to share our dialogue of that with you, via his podcast, Life Changing Stories.

If you know of someone who needs to lighten their load on this life journey and has been carrying the burden of shame for too long, please share this with them.

Thank you so much, for hearing, and listening.

http://lifechangingstories.me/31/

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About Life Changing Stories: "I was inspired by stories shared from The Moth, I realized that we often hear someone tell a story but seldom hear what the person learned from the experience. That’s when I thought “Man, if people share more of the wisdom of what they went through, it could be extremely supportive and inspirational to the listener!” That’s why I do Life Changing Stories. To give you more meaning and depth- of what someone goes through. To provide more hope, inspiration, and support in your own life." ~ Reid Peterson

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