age is just a number

sometimes i forget my age. in a physical sense, i feel it's what it is and yes, i'm 56. on a mental level, i feel nowhere near that. and which one counts? one, the other, both? i have no idea. i want to wear sparkly things and pretty shoes and plenty of highlighter. and at the same time, comfy sneaks and sweatpants and a hoodie are fine. what is age anymore anyway? we're expected to work into our 70s, but workplaces already write us off in our 50s, especially if you happen to be a woman. i'm more digital and plugged into what's happening in the world (chatGPT) and especially on tiktok (i'm looking at you, wes andersen trend) than many of my colleagues who are young enough to be my children. where does it leave me? age is both a reality and to some extent a social construct. 

i'm thinking about this because it occurred to me that it was around the age i am now that my mother was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. and one of the consequences of growing older is that it's hard to keep weight off. a long, dark, rainy winter didn't help that. so i went to the doctor for a check-up and i've asked for ozempic. i have to jump a few more hoops (blood tests, etc.), which are fair enough, but i expect to get it. 

i went to a running shop this week and bought new running shoes. i'll probably mostly walk in them, at least at first, but i'm also going to work on that. the guy in the shop was super kind to me. i even got on a treadmill and he assessed my running style (i told him i wasn't currently a runner), and made sure i got the right shoes. this is now known as no excuse. i'm even listening to born to run by christopher mcdougall, not because i expect to be an ultrarunner, but because it's inspiring. and it makes running sound like such a natural thing that we humans are supposed to do.

speaking of natural things humans are supposed to do, i'm so eager to get all the plants into the ground in the garden. we will still have frost some nights, so i'm going to try to restrain myself, but i am so eager to get everything planted. trying to be content with preparing the beds this weekend and then planting everything next weekend. we'll see how that goes...

midlife tuneup?

i read this long piece on doing a midlife tuneup in the nytimes today. some of it seemed a bit meh and perhaps even patronizing- exercise, eat right, get enough sleep (blah, blah, blah). although i'm skeptical of the mindfulness/life coach madness that's about in the world today, the section on mindfulness and what it does for the ageing brain seemed a bit intriguing, so i kept reading. the following section on a midlife mission statement also spoke to me (being inclined to the odd personal manifesto (hmm, that one still rings pretty true...)). i've already been actively trying to have better bedtime habits (no phone nearby being the main one, tho' i fell off that wagon after a late coffee one day last week and did NOT sleep well for a couple of nights). also, i appreciate the irony of the fact that it's currently 12:44 a.m. 1:13 a.m. and i'm still at the computer. but the last section - about building up your resilience really spoke to me. all year, i've been writing intentions in a journal and they have been optimistic and positive. it hasn't always worked and there have been some dark times of late with reorg turmoil at work and the departure of my wonderful boss, but i faithfully continue, confident it will eventually seep in. i like the advice in that section - there are several things i feel i can actually use - rewriting the story i tell myself in my head, helping others and i've already taken a stress break when i could see that a situation was going to be more negative and unproductive than i needed it to be. the stress break really helped, even if the effects don't last long enough. i also like the idea of finding my discomfort zone - as long as it doesn't involve heights, that sounds rather intriguing. and i would do well to remember the times when i came back from adversity. perhaps the best start to it all would be that good night's sleep they talked about...

invisiblity

it hit me recently that for the last half decade, i have felt invisible. it may have even been more than a feeling, i suspect i might have actually been invisible. i think it happens to women when we reach a certain age - and it really is a middle age - we're done having children, but haven't yet hit menopause. we become invisible somehow, perhaps biologically but certainly culturally. for me, a couple of soul-damaging workplaces didn't help. they shook the foundation of my very identity. and i struggled for a couple of years to not be where i work, but i also have to admit that it was a struggle that i lost. my work life fills a great hole within me and gives me a space in which i unfold who i am. this is both good and bad. because work can push me places that i wouldn't always want to go. happily, for a year now, that hasn't been the case and i feel like i have emerged and that i'm unfolding my wings once again and it seems like they still work and i can still fly. and i've become visible again.

when i am old i shall have a yellow pantry door

the pantry portion of my new kitchen is soon ready to start putting all of those cordials i've been making on shelves. husband sourced some cool old doors for the kitchen and i'm painting the one for the pantry a bright, sunny yellow. it will be on a wall that's otherwise painted with black chalkboard paint, so i think it's going to look really cool. it's going to be a sliding door, a bit like this pin. the other doors in the kitchen will also be painted bright, wow colors. i took my kitchen-aid mixer down to the paint shop and had her mix up a red to match for the door into the laundry room. i've yet to decide the other two. 

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honestly, i love that the russians granted asylum to snowden.

the guy should be given a medal for the unlawful acts he's exposed. 

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a group of bloggy friends is going to take food & culture

 and a writing course from the free online catalog available from MIT. 

if you'd like to join us, click this:

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i loved this piece on the daily routines of 12 writers.

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let's do this to all the walmarts.

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read about the awesomeness of the farm where we got our molly cat last summer.
it makes me sad that no one in this country thinks like that.

fading into the background

yesterday, i had, for the second time in recent months, a unique experience for me (i realize two instances makes it less unique, but bear with me here). i was forgotten, despite my presence. me. it was quite a shock. if there's one thing i've never been, it's forgettable. i tend to be one of those all or nothing, love or hate her kind of people. but forgettable? no way. never. i tend to fill up my space and then some and have rarely experienced that anyone forgets me (perhaps once a busy flight attendant on a plane, who couldn't remember where she left off with the drinks cart).

it is a more than slightly disheartening event, coming as it does in this middle age of my life, when i may already be beginning to suspect that i'm fading away, growing older, facing the prospect that there's an old greek woman inside me, trying desperately to get out (apparently via persistent small black hairs on my chin), looming menopause, a general loss of sparkle and a fading into invisibility. and a nagging feeling that i never really found out what i should be when i grew up.

so being forgotten, for the second time in as many months, hit me rather hard. i can't help but take it a little bit personally. especially since it's the same person who forgot me in both instances.

it makes me want to wear more colorful clothes and stand up a bit taller the next time. i shall not fade into the background. not yet.

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on a happier note, this luscious article makes me want to book a table at NOMA immediately.

fascinated by the notion of the green man. 

still reading roger deakin's wildwood - it's nature writing as philosophy. beautiful and fascinating.

it sucks to get old but at least we have spring

have you ever gotten new contacts and had them make you sick? i got a pair of contacts with two strengths in them - bifocals, if you will (it seemed appropriate on my thirty-thirteenth birthday) - just to try them out. they have the bit in the middle for seeing your book or your knitting (which have been a bit fuzzy around here of late) and your real prescription around the outside edges. apparently, your eye will work together with your brain and figure it all out and eventually, you'll clearly see the things you need to see. however, apparently my brain and my eyes were not speaking, because they made me almost instantly nauseated. and i stupidly kept them on for several hours. even after i removed them, it took hours for the nausea to wear off. and kinda ruined my birthday dinner. so anyway, for lack of anything better (and because i'm getting up at the crack of insanity to drive three hours), i give you signs of spring...

flying the coop

don't these parent birds look a bit like they'd like to get the hell away from the teenager birds?
or at least as if they don't really want to be seen with them.

when i found husband, he was someone else's husband (which is surely a whole 'nother story for another occasion) and that means that he came with a couple of complementary kids. daughters. husband is a filly producer, as my mother would say.  they're good girls and have always accepted me, so i've honestly avoided much of the drama (tho' not the angst) of being the step-mother. mostly because i've never tried to be their mother. you see, in my eyes, they have a perfectly good mother and the last thing they need is another one. so i've always tried to be the perhaps a bit aloof, cool aunt kind of person. the one who takes them exotic, exciting places (the philippines) and who cooks strange dishes and fabulous cakes. i've pretty much succeeded in that role. which is good, because i designed it myself and it would be a little bit sad if i couldn't even succeed at something that was exactly how i wanted it.

but today, in the throes of PMS and dread about being away in the coming week, the teenagers had me pretty close to the end of my rope. the whole morning, listening to vapid conversation peppered liberally with incredibly annoying poptøser (one of those words that's just better in danish) slang, i held on to the thought that i'd leave it all behind for a blissful hour and a half when i took sabin to riding. during that time, i'd be able to forget all of the signs of aging that it surely represents that i have no patience for all that teenage stuff and i'd be able to breathe and hear myself think. but no. there were people coming to look a the house at 2 and so we had to be elsewhere. that was convenient for sabin and me, because she rides from 2-3 on sundays and we leave at 1:30 to go saddle the horse and get ready. so as i was leaving, i asked husband where the girls were going to be. and he informed me that they were going with me. which he was not, he was going to look at farm place with some friends with whom we might be interested in going together to buy a big farm place.

i can tell you that this did not please me. i informed him that if we did not return, it was because i had managed to find a large horse to throw myself under while we were away - in the interest of that being less painful and a veritable pleasure in comparison to spending the day in the company of vapid teenagers. however, sabin was riding the largest horse (felix) and i hated to scare her, so i restrained, but still, in retrospect, it would have felt better than enduring the emptiness of the exchange between the 17- and the 14-year-old.

and it's not to say that i wasn't undoubtedly as empty and vapid as a teenager. full of made-up crap, quasi-dirty lyrics to songs that were undoubtedly just noise to my parents, and self-centered, look at me me ME dance moves and lots of too-loud laughter and an appalling vocabulary. but sometimes, it's just too much. and i'm grateful that my full-time child is only 8 and that those days are still a few years away.

so am i getting old or what?

did any of that edukashun stick?

i was reading an article in the IHT the other day. the article was on the golem and how the little monster figure is on the ascendence again in prague. the whole notion of the golem rang a bell deep within the recesses of my graduate school brain. the article defined it as "The Golem, according to Czech legend, was fashioned from clay and brought to life by a rabbi to protect Prague’s 16th-century ghetto from persecution, and is said to be called forth in times of crisis." i couldn't really place the golem thing, tho' it's undoubtedly some central european lit i once read. i like the idea of a golem, actually, a kind of protective figure. i think we could all use one of those.

but it got me thinking about what other remnants of grad school are there lurking between the song lyrics that are cluttering up my thirty-twelve year-old brain.

: : lots of marxist rhetoric.

: : oddly filtered through ayn rand.

: : and even more oddly which involves the chasing of little green bits of paper and ascription of meaning thereto (or it thereof?).

: : a residual embarrassment of not getting pilnyak's naked year on the first read (and admitting as much to the professor--tho' that was as an undergrad).

: : occasional musings on how master & margarita might be a modern example of menippean satire. (thank you bakhtin.)

: : an unhealthy adoration of derrida, tho' in retrospect, i had no idea what he was talking about.

: : ditto foucault. and baudrillard.

: : an ability to turn to whatever scene you reference in my copy of dostoevsky's brothers karamazov in under ten seconds.

: : a desire to frantically and thoroughly clean when a deadline looms.

: : the time my serbo-croatian teacher said, "spanish is easy, you can learn it in a weekend."

i'm sure there's more, but half-watching a total crap movie about stewardesses starring gwenyth paltrow (which cured me of that stewardess envy thing, by the way) has so thoroughly numbed my brain that i can't come up with them now. t.v. is evil.

happy monday, everybody.