A new stage....let the spotlight shine

Recently my body caused me to cart it to the doctor's office. 

Specifically the OB/GYN. 

I no longer use the OB part, but hoped that the GYN portion would open up secrets my body was keeping from me. 

I am not silly enough to think that this 53 year old body is at all youthful.  The hot flashes I have been experiencing for the better part of a year now have made sure I did not forget my advancing years.  When the blood work came back and the sweet, 12 year old nurse called me with the results, I wasn't exactly stunned and yet I wasn't sure what I was hearing. 

"Well, Mrs. 53 year old," she said in her young, high pitched voice, "the tests show that you are definitely post menopausal."

"Okay," I replied.  "What does that mean?"

"That your done with menopause," she said.  I could actually hear her smiling. 

Probably thinking she would never experience this.  And if she did, she wouldn't sound as confused as I did.

"What else?" I questioned. 

Now she was confused and she offered to return me to the scheduling desk so that I could make an appointment with the doctor.  Apparently my question was too large for her to answer.

So I did what most of us do when faced with a question we need an answer to ~~~

I consulted the oracle.

Google.

Post-menopause basically means a cessation of menses.  Well, duh.  I knew that.  But what does that mean for me. 

Obviously, I'm not having any more children.   

I seem to be worth my weight in sweat.

And my belly is almost, but not quite, big enough for it's own zip code.

But I guess being post menopausal means having more freedoms than I thought I had. 

I no longer have to worry about carrying "anti shark" equipment with me for fear that the now non-existent menses would show up at the most inopportune times.

I don't have to worry about getting pregnant.  Actually, I had that taken care of 25 years ago.  But now it's really engraved in stone.

But it is also a jewel in my old age crown.  A sign that there are enough years under my belt, if I actually could wear a belt, that I have some wisdom. 

Wisdom that comes from a longer time on this earth than the sweet 12 year old nurse that called me.  I know some things she doesn't.  In fact, things that can change lives. For example ~

 *  Let a roast rest after coming out of the oven for at least 20 to 30 minutes before cutting it.  Thus keeping
     the juices intact.

*  If you walk into a hospital or courtroom look as if you know what you are doing, more than likely, no one
    will bother you.  You might even get asked for information because you look like you belong there.

*  Too much sun will actually give you brown marks on your face and hands.  No matter how much you
     believe it won't.

*  And best of all,
          That if you manage to stay through the hard times of marriage with your partner, it really is worth it in
           the end.

So, after the diagnosis....which was slightly anti-climatic....I wrote down some of my thoughts and before I knew it, I had a poem of sorts. 


Post-Menopause! what crap is that?
It feels like I should pass around a hat
collecting hormones from passersby
before I absolutely lose my mind.

Sweating and bloating and lack of sleep
is making me think about taking a leap ~
not off a bridge or a third story ledge,
but back to my 20's or 30's instead.

When small children held my
attention and hand.
And when getting my period
didn't feel so grand.

But that was nothing compared
to these hellish night sweats,
and days where there's
nothing I don't seem to forget.

The child bearing days
are behind me now,
and nursing babies until I felt like a cow.

The days ahead glisten
like the sweat on my face.
And I find that I'm running life
at a much slower pace.

So with more yesterdays than tomorrows on the horizon of my life,
I'll do what I can to put away strife,
and focus on my hubby and family and me,
and remember that menopause ~
has allowed me to be free.

My view from the elliptical ~

I remember a time in my life when I actually scoffed at the people who told me I wouldn't be thin forever.  That one day I would have a metabolism that could actually slow down to the point of non-existence. 

I scoffed.

Silly me.

I am now a believer.

A sweet young friend had this quote taped to the back of her apartment door ~

"Your habits have earned you the body you have now."

Ten words that sum up the result of scoffing when you are too young to know any better. 

I have decided, once again, to attempt at ridding my body of the results of all my bad habits in the hope that it will reward me with the ability to put away the elastic waistband pants.  I want to put on my jeans and button them without fear that the pressure behind the button will cause the closure to give way and damage a fellow human being or the glass coffee mug I have in front of me.

So I, like countless others, joined a gym.  Tada!  I just know this time will be different.  I won't just be sending these folks a monthly fee to keep their doors open and their machines tuned.  I will visit this establishment and use the facilities I am paying for. 

But there is one problem.

My head.

You may wonder...your head?  It's your belly and butt that are your real problem!

Let me explain....

I have to first develop the mindset that getting out of a warm bed and into a cold car are worth the trip to a facility that is designed to make me hurt before I see results.

I have to convince myself that not everyone is looking at the middle aged woman who is trying to develop a new habit by working out on machines that are eerily similar to equipment designed to torture. 

I know I am not so breathtaking that everyone in the gym is watching my every move. 

But it feels like it.

And then I have to stop my brain from taking in all the woman around me.  In particular, the ones who are wearing gym apparel and who look like they came to work out.  But I question their sincerity when they have more make up on than I wear when I go out on a date. 

In fact, their hair isn't even frizzy from sweating for an hour. 

In fact, they are smiling.

In fact, they aren't sweating.

Did they even work out?

My whole thought process spirals downward as I stand atop the elliptical, sweating, frizzing and wondering why the bobby pins to hold my bangs back aren't working and wonder how these beautiful, thin women are allowed to register at this gym to begin with.  I want someone like them to wear a shirt that has a before picture on it so I can be encouraged.  I want proof that they have been required to work out hard.  Proof that they have sweat.  Proof that their now flat bellies once had the shape of a loaf of raisin bread with just the right amount of cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top. 

Proof....it isn't asking to much is it?

But that would require a shirt that is big enough to have a picture on it....of a chubby, middle aged lady. 
Because you can't fit that picture on a sport bra.

Maybe one day I will be a smiling, flat bellied, non frizzy headed woman who can stride through the gym like all the weights know her touch and all the treadmills wait for her to take a run on them.

Until then, I will pin my hair back with bobby pins....put on my least revealing workout clothes....and remember to pee before I step into the workout arena.

Because their is nothing more embarrassing than a middle aged woman in the middle of an intense workout on the elliptical to attempt to get off and run for the ladies room. 

I know....trust me.

~Balance~

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large.  When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.
                        -Albert F. Geoffry

Have you ever felt like you are in the driver's seat of your vehicle but that someone else was driving?  To borrow a line of thought from the movie The Holiday....I should be playing the leading the lady of my own life and not the role of the best friend.  In essence, others have been directing my path.  Not of late.  But for some time.  They didn't come in demanding that I give them that kind of power, but I handed it over one piece at a time.
I hand it over in time.  I hand it over with money.  I hand it over mentally.  And each action causes me to lose more of myself and cripples their ability to stand on their own.  It is a fine line I walk between being a compassionate caring woman and being a shadow in my own life.

Last year I came across a blog about not making resolutions, but about choosing a word that could be used as a foundation for the year. This year's word came to me a couple of weeks ago.  The word is Balance.  Oddly enough, as I see the word in my mind's eye, the letters are on a curvy line and not linear at all.  As if I wrote them down while driving on a bumpy road.  I'm not sure I want them completely even by this year's end.  That might suggest a lack of flexibility.  I looked up the meaning of the word because that's the type of person I am. *Equal distribution of weight.  *Mental Steadiness or emotional stability. *Habit of calm behavior or judgement. ~~~ In wine making : ) ~~~ The degree to which all the attributes of a wine are in harmony.  With nothing too prominent or deficient.* I may be using a word as my north star, but the definitions I found can be the buffers to measure myself against.

My dear friend, Lacey, has a beautiful granddaughter who loves to watch an old video that was taken about two years ago.  Lacey and her husband, along with my sweet man and myself are jumping around and clowning around trying to get a particular pose down for a picture.  When the video is done, her granddaughter looks around and asks, "More Debbie"?  So that will be my theme....more Debbie.  That balance can help push away the fog that clouds my mind and the emotions that others use to take over the stability I need for me.

Technology takes another bite

In a few hours, the photography world will lose a significant part of its history.  Many will not even know it has happened.  Not even photographers....well the amateur ones.  Technology has pushed a giant player down and it will never recover.  Don't get me wrong.  I love technology.  I am the queen of it in my household.  I have an iPod, and iPad, and iPhone, and laptop and a desktop.  After finishing The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins last night, I wanted to read the sequel right away.  With a few clicks of a button and in less than five minutes time, I had the sequel and never had to leave my house.  So I'm not opposed to technology, but it's hard to let go of  the past.

Kodachrome has had a 75 year run as the go to film for photographers.  It's complex processing gives dimension and color to images that digital cannot.  Kodachrome was the single most influential film and it changed the way the printed image was viewed.

Paul Simon dedicated a whole song to the film....with lyrics that say....
 
"Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away"

One professional photographer, Steve McCurry, shot an image that was featured on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic.  He shot the image with Kodachrome film.  When he returned years later and found her again, this time as a grown woman, he shot that image with Kodachrome as well.  Steve McCurry received a special privilege.  He was allowed to buy the last roll of Kodachrome film ever manufactured by Kodak.  The very last image shot on this roll of film was taken in Parsons, Kansas.  It was a picture taken of a civil war cemetery there.  A fitting setting for the last roll.  This roll was processed at Dwayne's Photo in July 2010 and took up residence at the George Eastman House.

You may ask why Parsons, Kansas.  The answer is that the last processing center in the world able to develop Kodachrome film is Dwayne's Photo, in Parsons Kansas. Since Eastman Kodak made the announcement on June 22, 2009 that it would no longer produce the Kodachrome film, Dwayne's Photo has been developing 700+ rolls a day from all over the world.  And tonight, at midnight, it will cease for good.  Even if you have an old roll, biding its time in the coolness of your fridge, after midnight tonight, no one in the world will have the capability of processing your film.  The process is so complex, that it cannot be done at home in your own darkroom.  The chemicals themselves will be extinct as well.

So, the last photograph on the last roll of Kodachrome film is a cemetery. Dramatic?  Perhaps.  But this is the end of an age.  Pushed out by the digital world.  Technology's latest victim.  Gone are the days of taking a roll of film and carefully feeding it over the teeth of the manual camera rollers. Looking through viewfinder and lining up a photograph worthy of an image on that celluloid, will no longer be the patient art it actually was.  You took the picture, hoped it was good one.  Trusted what you shot was good and then you waited for the images to be developed.  An act of faith really. 

As a very amateur photographer, I now take many photographs.  I have my older, manual, film taking camera tucked carefully away and use my digital camera all the time.  My grandchildren will never know the act of taking a photograph and having to wait to see the image.  They can see the image in the second or two after it's taken.  I don't know if they can truly appreciate the uniqueness of photographs the way I do. But it will be my job to teach them about the past so that can have a whole view of their future.

Of Christmas' past

While on a visit to my brother's recently, (see last post), he posed a question to both me and our youngest brother.  He asked if we had any memories about Christmas' from our past.  Considering the fact that we had all grown up in a constantly moving, alcohol bathed, emotionally dysfunctional military family, I thought it was a fair question.  I did ask, though, that we not drag up stuff that was going to be dark and damaging to any of us and start us on a depressing diatribe of how screwed up things were.  I mean, we were all there and don't need to be all "survivor-ish" about it.  So I opened the door to the past and journeyed through the cobwebs of my mind to survey the holiday pictures I may have mentally taken along the way.  At first glance, I couldn't say any stood out to me at all.  I asked my brother's what they remembered and they said the same thing...nothing came to them at all.

And then I remembered.  The first Christmas I remembered with fondness was the year I turned 12 and got a Four Tops album.  I have a picture somewhere to prove it.  I'm in a robe with a short pixie cut and I am holding the album.  I was excited to have it.....I also have a memory about a silver (aluminum) tree with a color wheel that rotated and made it pink, red, green and some other color that escapes me.  Apparently, my brother's hated that tree.  I thought it was different, but not too bad as trees go.  But my most favorite memory is from my adulthood.  So maybe I stepped outside of the question that was asked, but it is a memory about Christmas so I shared.

My mother lived in North Carolina and my husband and four kids lived in Virginia.  We rarely traveled on Christmas, but decided to go down for Christmas that particular year.  Carting presents all the way down.  I didn't bring my kids up believing in Santa Claus, which I regret to this day, but that's another story for another time.  So we drove to North Carolina and got there well after dark.  At this point in my mother's life she was sober and had been for sometime.  With a firm foothold in AA, she had reshaped her life and in turn reshaped me as well.  We got into town and drove directly to her trailor.  Yup, mom lived in a trailor, in a trailor park.  She wasn't always the best house keeper, but this night was one for the books ~ or this blog as it turns out.  We fell out of the car and stumbled towards the door.  I walked into a Christmas wonderland.  Mom had Christmas music playing softly, candles were lit on this Christmas decoration that spun from the heat of the candles, all of the Christmas houses mom had hand painted were lit and displayed beautifully and the air smelled of cinnamon and cookies.  Her trailer was beautiful and clean and, well......home.  I mean, really home.  Her tree was decorated meticulously and she greeted us with a big smile.  I felt like I walked into a scene I had hoped for my whole life.  I do not remember what I bought my children, my husband, my mom or anyone else that year.  But I do remember that she made a memory for me.  One that I cherish even more, now that she is gone.

I have made it a point to make those memory sights, sounds and smells for my children and now grandchildren.  Having the opportunity to relive that wonderful moment made me ask my own daughter about the Christmas' she rememebers.  I asked my clients as well and almost all of them have said, it's not always the gifts (although sometimes special ones stick out), but it's the memories.  It's the time with family and far away relatives who come for the holidays that stick out. 

So for me, this season, I am doing my best to make happy memories. I am going to try and make it joyful and not exhausting.  It doesn't mean it won't be, but I know that I'm in charge of what happens so I will try and create an aroma of love when my family comes to visit.

Life is not a number....right?

I know my last post was...

A.  A while ago. Thanks for the reminder Lacey.    and...
B.  Led to the belief that someone out there might want to know how to can tomatoes.

Well I changed my mind about what my next post would be and decided to write about the mind boggling event that takes place today.

I am the oldest girl of two boys in my family.  Yes, I still refer to myself as a girl and my brothers are still "the boys".  Complete with y's on the end of each of their names.  The world may call them Mark and Bill, but they will always be Marky and Billy to me.  I know them.  Well, I kind of know them.  I knew them when we were kids.  I fought them and I fought for them.  The ole' adage that I can fight them, but you can't stood true.  I would have fought the world to protect them....and there were times in my young childhood when it felt like I did.  I was the oldest, so it felt right.  But I digress....

So today is one of my "baby" brother's birth day.  And he turned 50 today.  I don't know how this is possible.  Wasn't I just walking alongside of him holding his hand?  Didn't I just explain to him how deodorant might help his chances with the general population?  Not just women, but people in general?  Didn't my husband just let him borrow his Z28 Rally Sport Camero to take his date to the Cotillion?  Didn't he just get married?  Well, no, I guess none of these just happened.  But this is a real bump in my road.  It was one thing for me to turn 50.  Another when my oldest turned 30.  Big things for sure.  But this is my "baby" brother and I feel like I just got put into my place.  Like the universe just commanded me to sit up and take notice and realize that life was moving by me fast.  And that I don't really have forever to live.  Nothing morbid, just a check.  So I respond.  I notice....and I will live differently.  I have alot to get in before I go, so I got a whole lot more living to do.  I have grown complacent in this living in my fifties thing and I need to remember how to do it!  So here I go, starting again at your birthday party! 

  Happy 50th birthday Billy.  I know we each have alot more years to live outloud!

Red is a Spring and Fall Color

For some, the signs of winter's passing and spring's arrival may be the sounds of lawn mowers revving up for the seasons war on less than manicured lawns or the first crack of a baseball bat as spring leagues take to the field.  For me it is the glimpse of ripened tomatoes, grown locally in fields I have seen as I travel around the area.  It is the sign that announces that my local farmer's market is open and I can enter and partake. 

I enter the different vendors booths with a sense of anticipation. I am not someone who successfully eats the produce of the seasons...I know, I know Lauren (my healthy, earth friendly daughter) I should, but sometimes I need a BLT and the only tomatoes available are a winter shadow of the real thing.  Pithy. Pinkish and not red.  And no real smell to offer my acute sensibilities.  So when I can handle the real thing, and I mean handle, I am like the proverbial kid in the candy shop.  I go into the booths and run my hand over the vegetables as if I were a lover caressing the body of my one and only.  Don't worry I disinfect before I go.  I am aware of my actions.
I have tried for years to grown my own garden.  I have planted tomatoes, bell peppers, patty pan squash and herbs.  I rarely get the tomatoes to cooperate.  This year the underside of every tomatoe was black and rotten.  I was told this was bottom rot and that I could pick up something to help with this plant affliction. So I went to Roxbury Mills farm and Garden center, http://www.roxburyfarmgarden.com/.  A place that smells of all things growing...soil, fertilizer, bulbs, plants.....you get the idea.  I walked in and a man approached me and asked if he could be of help.  Because I rarely think before I speak,  I told him that I had bottom rot and could he help me.  At first I couldn't figure out his quizzical expression, and then I realized my error and quickly did what I could to stop the flow of red to my face and tell him that my tomatoe plants were producing fruit with bottom rot...not me... and could he help. Even though he was most helpful and provided me with a spray that should have helped, I can never grow edible tomatoes that I would proudly serve at my dinner table.  I had luck with my patty pan squash...well I should say it took over the whole dang garden area and provided a little vegetable sustenance. So, I decided that herbs are my specialty and I will now trust the growing of all things vegetable to the pros.

Patty pan squash is my favorite and I buy it by the truckload every week.  I slice it, throw some EVOO on it with some salt and pepper and grill it.  It has a different taste than regular squash...a little sweeter.  A little more tender. 



Patty Pan Squash

I wondered for years what this odd shaped vegetable was until my friend, Lacey introduced us.  And I am thankful that she did.  These little pac man shaped veggies have been a treasure through the summer and whether grilled or roasted I can never have enough.



The summer has left and autumn is approaching.  The color of the vegetables have transferred to the trees.  The farmer's market stands are no longer full of the vibrant color of spring, but have begun to tone it down.  Apples, acorn squash and butternut squash have calmed down the splash of vibrancy, but are not any less tasteworthy.  However all is not lost.  Like many women before me, I decided to try and capture summer in the bottle and try and can the last of this seasons tomatoes.  Next post!! I will share how it all went.