Breaking News: Living Causes Death!

Well, the food "experts"  issued another warning this week -- we Americans consume vastly more salt than we should.  Last week sugar was the demon, and in the last few months we've been warned about e. coli in spinach and packaged lettuce (again), about villainous soup cans and plastic containers conspiring to kill us, fresh eggs and chicken ready to wipe out entire families, farmed fish (bad), ocean fish (badder), shellfish (baddest), alcohol (good/bad/good/bad), and white bread and all prepared food (THE WORST THINGS ON EARTH!).

Their message is clear -- eat anything and you die. 

I've got news for all these experts and for the news organizations that lead with their ridiculous pronouncements:  Life causes death.  Period.  It's the one constant of all life on earth, except for maybe bristlecone pine and redwood trees.

I'm SO tired of hearing this alarmist advice which is immediately challenged by food manufacturers (vested interests) and other "food experts," and often reversed in the weeks following the breaking news. I've fought my own battles with food and I'm no longer listening to "the experts."

I wrote here about my lifelong experiences with dieting, and I'm here to tell you that it only gets worse the older one becomes (if, of course, one survives all the nutritional pitfalls out there).

In 2003 I lost (mumble mumble) pounds and (harrumph!) dress sizes -- until my body went into absolute starvation mode and refused to accommodate any continuing efforts.  It may have been the longest "dieting plateau" on record, and I'll stick to my story that I stuck to my diet and exercise program over the next nine years with NO appreciable results.  Well, except that I gained back 20 of those mumble mumble pounds...the traitors.

I redoubled my efforts in January, tracked every single input calorie of food and every single output calorie of exercise with this dandy little free program, scavenged my Wendi Friesen hypnosis CD's from the depths of my closet and VIOLA!  I've lost ten pounds.  Hips, hips, see ya, hooray! 

I guess my metabolism -- the body's conductor of the weight maintenance symphony -- decided nine years was long enough to be on strike.  Seriously -- I'm doing NOTHING different than what I've done for the past nine years, so I'm befuddled at this recent success.  According to those same infamous "experts," roller coaster dieting can cause this kind of reaction and God knows I've been riding that roller coaster since I was a child.  Thanks, Mom, for those delicious pies, sugar sandwiches and your pork chops with country gravy.  Thanks, Dad, for your Lithuanian/Polish genes that made these thighs giant silos, eager to store every stray calorie. 

The bad news is -- at my mumble mumble years, losing even one pound results in the Catastrophic Aging Syndrome where one pound lost equals one year added to one's face.  Alert the media -- this is my own new algorithm, affirmed with every depressing glance into my mirror:  ten pounds exactly equal ten extra years tacked onto my already "mature" face.  Where before I had minimal and charming laugh lines, I now have ruffles of excess skin, and where I had actual wrinkles, I have chasms that rival the You-Know-What Canyon.  Dammit!  As this continues, I'm going to be known as the Anti-Olay Woman of the universe.  Those VERY expensive anti-wrinkle creams are not meant for someone my mumble mumble age -- they're meant for chickies approaching 30 who sport a tiny flaw on their perfect porcelain skin. 

What we need (are you listening, cosmetic manufacturers?) is thick, creamy spackle...true skin stucco, caulk or joint compound.  Just lather it on with a putty knife, cover with makeup and there ya go -- nearly human again.  It could be a whole new outcall service, similar to those makeup and hair artists for the richy rich.  I mean, we already have mani-pedis -- why not spackies?

Or, for extreme serial dieters,  maybe we could have little "eyes" inserted, like sexy piercings, into the skin at our temples, then insert hooks on the ends of elastic bands and pull the whole facial skin upwards and clip with a diamond-studded hair ornament.  No one would ever know.   (I suspect some of those aging movie stars do exactly this -- why, oh why, isn't this technology available to us ordinary wrinkly wimmin?)

I knew when I turned 50 that any further dieting would result in a choice between my fanny and face -- I just didn't know that the choice would be so devastating. I'm way beyond the age where anyone is checking out my fanny but, no matter how high I hold my head and tilt it just right, my face is out there for all to see.

OK -- no more whining.  I'm happy that the weight-loss factory is again working under full steam.  Maybe there are shorts in my future this summer ....(hahahahahahaha...uncontrollable giggles).... and maybe next year I'll apply to The Bachelor -- with a brown bag over my head.  In the meantime, I intend to add a little salt to canned soup, eat fresh spinach, and even buy an occasional loaf of sourdough bread.  Not being a redwood tree (well, except for the thighs) I have to die of something. 

Also...my favorite ZITE program brought me a link to this blog, which I'm sure many of you will find interesting -- I surely did.  It chronicles a man who has vowed to perform 366 acts of random kindness throughout this entire year -- pretty impressive so far.

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The Joys Of Aging -- Part 3

Continuing my complaining about getting older and not smarter, here is my list of ways you know you're the old person you thought you'd never become.  I'm sure there are other lists floating around the Internet in those "forwards" that everyone passes on like the herpes virus of the 70's, but I swear these are original.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE OLD WHEN:

• You start saving bread wrapper twisties, plastic closures and rubber bands from asparagus, just like your mom did (and you thought for sure she was a nut case).
• You also save paper and plastic bags beyond reason, never remembering that you'll get another supply with your next shopping expedition.  
• Speaking of Mom... you look more and more like her and use more of her methods, and those two things make you a touch suicidal.  
• You forget...pretty much everything...at one time or another, especially:  movie titles, movie stars' names, your grandchildren's names, your phone number (yes, I did), why you were heading to the next room, even if you're not sure which room that would be, which day it is (but does it matter?  One day is pretty much like another.), that you've read your current book before or seen this movie or TV episode before, and where you've put the list of everything you didn't want to forget. 
• You can't see to drive at night so you carefully follow the car in front of you, even when it turns into a shopping center you had no intention of visiting.  Maybe they should make "scout cars" to lead us to our destinations. 
• You look forward to telemarketing or survey phone calls (to which you used to scream profanities) simply because you finally have someone to talk to.  Even if it's an automated call. 
• Ditto the missionaries from the LDS, Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah's Witness churches.  It's particularly fun when you're Catholic and think you have ALL the answers to salvation. 
• Your shoes look like nuns' shoes from the 1950's.  Wait...they ARE nuns' shoes from the 1950's.
• Doctors' appointments are your only social outings -- and there are plenty of them.
• You have Facebook and Twitter accounts, but you're not sure what the hell to do with them.  Or why. 
• You might text on your phone, if you knew how, and if you could see the damn letters and numbers. 
• You're positive the school systems have not taught any English in at least 20 years.  You can't help but proof-read everything you see online, in magazines and newspapers (yes, you still read them,) and you remember with longing the days when subject/verb agreement was mandatory and when editors actually edited for accurate content and style.
• "I remember...." is the starting point for every conversations, especially when you're alone.  (But who are you kidding...you don't remember diddly.)
• You complain about your neighbor's stupid barking dog.  They complain about the volume of your TV. 
• The last decent pop music you heard was maybe in 1986, you still listen to TAPES of the Bee Gees and disco, you yearn for the 1970's and would also yearn for the 1960's but can't remember them... and this time it's not because you're old.
• The profanity and soft-to-medium-hard porn on TV and in movies makes you cringe -- even though your own language and past behavior couldn't stand up to any real scrutiny.  You also can't believe the lyrics in hip hop and gangsta rap "music."   (And you have to use Google to know how to spell both of those terms.)
• You wonder why the hell the government just doesn't legalize and tax pot, but you don't dare discuss it in front of your Republican kids and their kids.  How did they grow up to be so conservative, anyway?
• Speaking of kids and grandkids -- have you seen or heard of  helicopter parenting?  Does it make you crazy, too?  Do you worry your grandkid is going to want to take his/her wubbie (blankie) to college?
• You have plenty of time to blog and no end of subjects to write about, but most of your family and friends who would read your blog are either not computer literate or they're tweeting in the Great Beyond. 

And finally, you begin to wish you hadn't taken the advice so seriously to eat healthy foods and exercise...is there really a point to living until you're 90?  Email me at cynblogger@aol.com if you know a good answer to that question.

"Say Cheese" -- Then Slash Your Wrists

Continuing the whine from my last blog posting about transitioning to retirement, I had a most unpleasant experience this week -- a brush with reality.  In fact, Reality whacked the crap out of me and left me bleeding in an alley. 

In anticipation of selling and marketing my completed children's novel, I decided that now would be a good time (before I get one day older) to have professional photos taken -- you know, for the book cover, the magazine cover for my headline interview, the 10 x 20-foot still photo behind my interview with Oprah -- all the promotional stuff that goes along with enticing new readers. 

I happen to know, (by virtue of being his mother,) a young man who moonlights as a portrait photographer -- specializing in excellent pictures of individuals, families and school classes.  We set up an appointment for a sitting in a lovely outdoor setting with early spring light filtering through newly-green trees.  He brought his kazillion-dollar equipment, I bought a new outfit, slathered on the makeup, curled the freshly colored hair and whitened my teeth. 

The shoot was quick and easy -- pose, click, pose, click, smile, click, don't smile, click, turn, click, click, click, done.  By that afternoon the proofs were available, and Reality smacked me upside the head.

I wrote about "age dysphoria" here -- which posting I called "The Big Secret Of Life"  as no one EVER tells you that your self-image freezes at some particular age and you forever feel that same age "inside" -- no matter how the "outside" crumbles and decays.

What I found this week is that in addition to that skewed and flawed self-image, not only does your mind play this inimical trick on you, so does your vision.  Until I saw those proofs I had NO IDEA that saggies, wrinklies,  droopies,  puffies,  molies and spotties had, like creeping mold, taken over my once pleasant face. 

Who the hell stole that somewhat attractive woman and put this old bag in her place?  BRING HER BACK, I SAY!

I frantically emailed my son and begged (ordered) him to employ all the Photoshop skill he has -- which is considerable -- and take at least 10 years off my face.  So he did.  It didn't help.  I begged him to take me back another ten years ( to1991) and he did, and it still didn't help.  Apparently, there's only so much time traveling Photoshop can do, especially with a fatally flawed subject.  Where I had been expecting to see Princess Diana, what I got instead was Elton John. 

I finally figured out that for years I've only seen myself in my bathroom mirror (great lighting) without my glasses, and I'm so nearsighted I can't see my feet without them.  No wonder I hadn't a clue of what visage I presented to the world.  No wonder everyone calls me "ma'm" and treats me like a little old lady.  Apparently I AM a little old lady.  Who knew?  (Everyone else... but certainly not I.)

Those pictures have been consigned to Limbo until I can figure out a way, just this side of plastic surgery, to  seriously fool the camera.  Do they make filters that eliminate 30 years of living?  I'll have to check Google....

Also, I'm posting a comment on last week's blog about retirement that has some great advice, I think -- written by a friend who is SO much older than I and who has been retired, with his wife, for a few years.  Just scroll down to the end of the previous blog and click on "comments." 

The Big Secret Of Life

There's a day in seventh grade when male teachers take the boys aside and teach them how to spit, and female teachers give the girls their secret lesson -- how to change the toilet paper roll. These aren't the first Secrets of Life we learn, but they're right up there in importance.

Never once in my long life have I ever had the urge (nor do I have the skill) to spit on the sidewalk, the grass, the tarmac, the ball field, the church steps, the picnic grounds, out the car window, or the other ten thousand places ALL males choose to rid their mouths of (what IS that?) bodily fluid.

And, seriously, never have I lived with any male who knew how to exchange the little naked cardboard cylinder for a snow-white, squishy roll of fresh paper.

It's only partly genetic, however -- the other part is that males and females are consciously taught different life secrets. Pardon me while I indulge in a few gender generalities and stereotypes.

• Map reading........ definitely a male secret, possibly genetically linked to the Y-dominant spatial logic gene, but also taught by fathers everywhere, along with the skill of folding the damn thing.
• Identifying and fixing "that noise" in a car's motor..... also a male secret, one I suspect linked to the mechanical complexity of peeing while holding "it," and, again, fathers teach this.... my kids learned when their dad put Cheerios in the toilet as targets. It worked.
• Putting down the toilet seat. Never taught, thus never learned by males.
  
• Knowing how to talk to insurance, auto, appliance and small-electronics salespeople.... yet again, male...most likely linked to the Y-dominant bullshit gene but modeled by good dads everywhere.
• Decoding the organizations of NASCAR, NHRA, IHRA, SCCA, SCTA, ICSCC, UMRA, QMA...and all the rest of the alphabet soup of auto racing... oh so absolutely male. Women may be interested in the cute butts accented by driving suits, but it takes a male to want to power up the lawn sprinkler and race his neighbors. Trust me on this one.
• Likewise, learning how to find 75% off sales on makeup, shoes, handbags, jewelry and clothes of any sort .... well, duh...most little girls learn this stuff by the time they're four... from Mom.

You get the picture...we're taught life secrets in our early years -- and those secrets are reinforced by skills and patterns of behavior we learn the rest of our lives.

But wait. There's one secret we're NEVER taught...we have to learn it on our own, and some never seem to figure it out.

While our skin may shrink, shrivel and wrinkle like an old apple, while our joints may creak and freeze up like the Tin Man...while our memory sputters and sparks feebly so we can't find the precise...you know, dammit, what is that WORD we're searching for...while the hip hop music in the car next to us makes us wish road rage were an Oscar-winning event -- we never really age on the inside. Like our joints, our own perception of ourselves and our relationship to the world freezes at a particular decade...or even year.

You know I'm right. Do YOU feel your chronological age? Or do you feel frozen about 20 or even 30 years ago? My money's on the latter.

This is how a gaggle of senior women giggle like teens, go "shopping with the girls," still take dancing, art and water aerobics lessons, flirt with waiters their great-grandson's age... and enjoy the hell out of life. Their inside orientation hasn't advanced with their outward appearance...not one bit. I'm reasonably sure that the image shown by every mirror used by a mature woman is closer to that of 35 than her true age. Even though their eyes may be filmed with cataracts and clouded by those annoying little floaters, their vision wouldn't dare show anything but perky, ripe breasts, tight bubble butts and slim legs free of purple squiggles -- after all, that's their internal reality...it's how they FEEL.

It's also how portly, balding, farty gentlemen, with nose and ear hair, bad breath and loose dentures, still openly lust after hot women and place ads on respectable dating services (and Craig'sList) exclusively for "trim, fit, active, sexy, sensual" companions -- as if they themselves are the very essence of virility, the choicest catch of the century....which maybe they were 40 years ago. Their self-image, fueled by fading memory and stale testosterone, tells them it's still their prerogative to choose the most luscious babe (who would, of course, consider it only if a large portfolio were involved.)

I'm not sure why no one tells us this particular secret when we're young. It would be comforting to know that even as the outer shell disintegrates, the inner meat stays juicy... that there really is life after 40 or 50 -- or, for all I know -- after 60 or 70 or 80.

Maybe the signs are there early on, though -- signs that we just don't recognize. Maybe this condition is the source of the intense embarrassment parents cause their teens when they (parents) act younger than their kids. I certainly remember being frequently humiliated by my mother, who was far too friendly and flirty with my high school boyfriends, and wondering when, if ever, she would "grow up." Come to think of it, she never did.

Maybe this "age dysphoria" is also the source of the rich and fulfilling relationships that exist between adult children and their parents -- at last they meet in middle ground when everyone is about 35 mentally. It could also account for the unique relationship between grandparent and grandchild. Once the responsibility and authority factors have been one generation removed, it can be great fun to be free enough to play with children, who always seem to respond to the one adult in their lives who isn't full of behavior rules and schedules.

I will offer a disclaimer on this theory, though -- I'm not at all sure any of it applies to anything to do with pop culture or interactions with young people between 17-25.

Even as we morph into fossils of a particular age, we also seem to settle in to the culture of that time and become hopelessly nostalgic for that period. I may squirm when I see the old rockers groaning and sweating on stage at their "reunion" concerts, but I understand the appeal....there hasn't been any decent pop music since the mid-80's. Who ARE these weirdly-named, electronically enhanced, blue-haired, naked, perverted, pierced entertainer babies? I won't even go into the gangsta and hip hop stuff -- it's more foreign to me than a Parisian taxi driver.

So much of our current American culture seems literally foreign to me. For instance, I am admitting here that I am a text virgin.... not once, not even close. Hell, I don't even know how to access the phone numbers I laboriously stored in my cell phone one day at the dentist's office (no magazines). Computers I can manage since IT was my former profession, but anything smaller than a regular keyboard freaks me out. (Well, I do have an MP3 player, but I also carry the operating instructions on a tiny piece of paper.)

What's worse... I don't want to be part of the pop culture. It's loud, it's rude, it's irritating, it's very in-your-face, it's...much too young. And as for dealing with anyone between the ages of 17-25, well, they're loud, they're rude, they're irritating, they're in-my-face and way too young.

I stand by my theory in all other cases, though. Having worked my way through three careers, I still find myself wondering what I'll be when I grow up...what other pursuit will draw my interest and tap my energy. My head still twitches when some young twit calls me "ma'am" in the grocery store, and it's certainly not the men my age who look yummy to me. As for my mirror... it must be a Halloween trick showing me THAT person instead of the real INSIDE me.

Think about it... and the next time you see a little old lady at church with her rheumy gaze fixed on eternity, her polka-dotted hands folded quietly in her lap, wispy white hair tucked under a hat that belongs at a garage sale and shoes that would make a 1950's nun envious... know that it's not God she's dreaming about -- it's those racers' butts at Daytona. It's Life's biggest secret and inside joke.