Bacon and Blockbuster Brunch

Our granddaughter, E, spent a few hours at our house today at what I hope served as our very first Bacon and Blockbuster Brunch.   

She is a young "tween" at that awkward age between child and teenager.  I tend to get on her nerves now, so it is hard to find ways to bond with her.  Making silly faces followed by long, loud, fake burps used to enchant her.  In simpler times we made up stories together, each developing the plot for a few minutes and then passing it on to the other to continue the story line.  The goofier the plot, the better.  It was great fun.  Apparently, not anymore.  Darn!

I am struggling to find ways to relate to her tween mindset.  I need to find things to do with her that she likes to do.  Unfortunately, playing Minecraft on the PS4 makes me car sick.   

FYI, the only person who admires me unconditionally these days is my grandson, who is not yet 3.   He thinks my silly faces and fake burps are hilarious.  In fact, he told me the other day that when he grows up he wants to be a Gwamma.  I still have a few good years left before he stops wanting to hang out with me.  Then I may have to run away and join the circus.  Finally.

This morning I was missing her.  I decided to invite her over to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.  She was seriously considering coming to the old folks home, but I could tell she was wavering.   I promised to make her brunch with bacon, eggs, AND pancakes.  She was immediately in.  T went to pick her up while I cooked, and we had a lovely few hours together, the three of us.  

She left happy, filled with pancakes and smelling of bacon grease. 

My New Car

I did it. I am the proud owner of a brand new car. What kind? Does it really matter? It is just a car. The good news is I bought one, although my husband T is the real hero in this story. He researched cars and options, shared his findings, figured out what was holding me back, eliminated the millstone around my neck, and drove me to the car dealership.

I am not your average new car buyer.  I do not really want to buy a car, nor am I in love with cars in general.  I am also unpredictable, quirky as hell, and always anxious to leave because I have a short attention span. This forces the salesmen to think on their feet.  Literally.  I am continually getting up and saying I will think about it and get back to them tomorrow.  They then have to stand up and quickly think of ways to get me to sit back down and continue to listen to their salesman shtick.  Sometimes discounts ensue as a direct result of standing up. Very interesting. Car salesmen REALLY do not like to let anyone leave without buying something.  I, on the other hand, would NEVER buy something as expensive as a car without leaving first and thinking about it overnight.  We got an additional “loyal customer” discount immediately after the first time I stood up and said goodbye.  Honestly, I was totally not playing the guy for another discount.  I just wanted to go home.  I did take note of his reaction for future reference, though.  Fun stuff.

On Wednesday, we went to look at cars.  Almost as soon as we got out of the car a friendly car salesman came out of the building to greet us.  Our friendly car salesman was an ex cop from the Bronx.  Apparently he retired from the police force in his mid 50’s and moved down to Florida. He is a quick talking Italian with a loud sense of humor, and he talked about his mother a lot.  Lots of strangers now tell us about their mothers, I guess because they are trying to relate to us as retirees.  He also told us about his younger cousin who is still a NYPD cop who had just made a big arrest.  He was very proud of his “little cousin.”  We were, too.  Our friendly car salesman still walked like a cop, which made me imagine we were actually starring in a TV cop show.  I tried to play it cool, but you know… I am not really all that cool. T surreptitiously nudged me when I mindlessly started to tell the guy what was wrong with the old car we wanted to trade in.  I changed the subject without missing a beat.  Thank God for the old man!

Sometimes I develop what I can only imagine is a mild form of Tourette’s Syndrome making it impossible for me not to say everything that comes into my mind, kind of like a teenage girl.  Consequently, I simply had to tell our friendly car salesman that he still walked like a cop. It made him happy to hear that!  He searched through his cell phone for pictures of himself when he was in uniform. Ha! The older I get the more I enjoy people.

On Thursday we went back to test drive and then buy the new car.  Yeah, we forgot to test-drive it the day before.  What can I say?  I actually made T test-drive it for me when we got to the dealership.  I rode shotgun.  Our friendly car salesman thought that was odd, and he sat in the back trying hard not to notice T’s driving. He kept talking to T while T was driving, asking him questions and telling him to look at certain things in the car. Not good. T really needs to focus when he drives.  If T missed a few turns and test-drove a little too long trying to find his way back it is our friendly car salesman’s fault, not T’s.  I tried to tell T when the turns were coming up, but he was listening to our friendly car salesman instead of me.  Big sigh…

The financial guy was an African American from Maryland who did Obama and Bill Cosby imitations for us while we filled out paperwork. He was good at the impressions, too. The more we laughed the more impressions he did. He should have been on stage at Comedy Central instead of behind that desk. We heard stories about his son trying to get out of mowing the lawn. His wife called while we were there and he said “I love you” to her before he hung up. I liked that, but I also wondered if our friendly car salesman was actually the person on the other end of the phone and not his wife.  Maybe the phone call was part of a larger plan to make them all seem more human and likeable so we would give them spectacular reviews in the follow-up survey about their customer service?  Sheesh, I am so distrustful.  In fact, our friendly car salesman had joke-called the financial guy from another room just after financial guy finished showing us his Obama routine.  Our friendly car salesman asked to talk to the President.  The financial guy said (in Obama’s voice) “Sir, NEVER call the Oval Office again!” and hung up on our friendly car salesman. The financial guy also teased our friendly car salesman when he returned by accusing him of actually having been a mall security officer instead of a NYPD cop, which made our friendly car salesman search even harder for photos to prove his street cred. These two guys obviously have fun at work.  It made me wish I worked there, too.

Our friendly car salesman said he would call me the next day to follow-up on the sale. I waited all day for the call that never came.  I was a little disappointed. Then I remembered he had my cell phone number.  As I mentioned in my last post, I do not turn on my cell phone.  Sure enough – there is a missed call from him on he cell phone. Oh well.  I am not going to call him back. 

I bought the exact model and make of car as I had before. This car is just 11 years newer and a different color. That is how my wise and subtle husband finally got me to the dealership to buy a new car.  He seemed to understand my real problem was not that I was afraid to go to the dealership, it was that I was overwhelmed by the plethora of possibilities inherent in deciding which car to buy.  How can I possibly make a decision about what car to get when I do not really care about cars in the first place? What criteria do I use to make a decision?  Why do there have to be so many different kinds of cars?  Why did I buy an online subscription to Consumer Reports when it only increases the variables and fills me with anxiety?  T gently said to me “You seemed happy with your old car, why don’t you get another one?” Pure genius! I love that guy. Getting a new car just like my old car turned out to be the answer. After all, I just wanted my old car to be young again.  Luckily there was only one car there in the configuration I desired (i.e., basic with no frills), so I did not even have to suffer over a choice of color.  I took what they had.  Another decision successfully avoided.  In the future, I would like to be assigned an updated version of my current car every 10 years whether I need a new one or not.  Surprise me with the color.

The best news is I paid almost the same amount for the 2015 model as I paid for the 2004 model purchased years ago. Why? Well, it is certainly not because I am a cool negotiator. Rather, 10 years ago I was still working.  I thought nothing back then about paying extra for every option and/or feature imaginable (sunroof, leather seats, heated seats, accessories, car-top rack, trailer hitch, etc.). The one I bought yesterday is just your basic, basic, basic model. I still have air conditioning and a clock, but I do not need a sunroof, leather seats, or heated seats in Florida. As for the trailer hitch, we sold that damn boat before we moved.  Advanced technology features? The car comes standard with a back-up camera that comes on automatically when you are backing up the car. This is a very cool option and now I will not back into my neighbor’s cars or fear for small animals anymore.  However, if I had to pay extra I would have done without it. Other things? I would never use any feature that one has to refer to a manual to figure out, so why pay extra for complicated features?  I am pretty comfortable saying no. However, the car did come with magical Bluetooth “stuff” that allows me to answer and talk on my cell phone without using my hands. Our friendly car salesman set it up for me, but I am not sure I remember how to make it work. Oh well. As the saying goes, “You can’t miss what you ain’t never had.”

This is what happens when I try to buy a car

I need to buy a new car.  Mine is dead and has been sitting in the driveway for a couple of months.  T and I are sharing his car.  It is not an ideal situation, but I do not have the energy to devote to buying a new car.  In early December I tried to throw myself into a car buying situation, assuming I would sink or swim.  I sunk.  I applied for a loan and it was approved.  Then what?  Where's the car?  You mean I have to actually do some work to find one?  Do I have to interact with salespeople?  Do I have to talk to strangers?  NOOOOO.  The loan officers were worried.  They could not understand why I was not buying. They called and left urgent messages.  I would not pick up the phone.  I was filled with dread whenever the phone rang or I received an email.  Finally they offered me the services of a car concierge who works for the credit union to make things easy for buyers.  I would not answer his phone calls, either. 

In fact, I ignore most phone calls because Florida is filled with scam artists who sit around every day calling retired people trying to trick us out of our money.  We actually started getting these con-calls the same day we got our land line telephone installed, so I can only imagine the cable company providing our phone service is routinely selling new phone listings to scumbags.  Nice.  Consequently, I stopped answering the phone months ago.  Sometimes, when I am in just the right mood, I pick up and tell whoever is at the other end of the line to take my name off their list and never call me again.  I use my best cold-hearted bitch voice.  That is always kind of fun.  

This aversive reaction is a direct result of working in an office for so many years.  I OD’d on communication a long time ago.  So what if I have been retired for over a year now.  I still have not recovered.  I may never recover.  It is the principle of the thing.  The thought of having to do anything that resembles office work (including answering the damn phone) makes me want to run off screaming into the night. Every time the phone rings my stomach turns.  If I have an administrative, real-life issue I must suffer through, or a deadline I have to meet, I freak out.  I ignore it, procrastinate; all the things I could NEVER do when I had a job.  It makes me feel so good to ignore things.  By the way, if you want to reach me, call my land line phone or email me.  If I am home and I can see it is you, I will pick up the phone or call you back.  Do not even think about calling me on my cell phone.  The ringer is turned off and I rarely turn the cell phone on unless I am stuck waiting in a doctor’s office and need to play solitaire.  My cell phone is purely an ornamental status symbol.

Getting back to my car buying experience, I finally emailed (note I did not use the phone) the bank, car concierge, and salespeople and let them know I changed my mind.  I said I would reapply in the New Year when “things settled down for me.”  Ha!  I guess I showed them!  Maybe if I put this off long enough T will give me his car and then he will go through the effort of buying a new car for himself.  It is so crazy it might work.

The Family Disease

There is a genetic disease in my maternal line called Adrenoleukedystrophy (also referred to as X-ALD).  It is an X-linked disorder that has killed 3 of my male first cousins, at least one of my uncles, and two of my great uncles.   The movie “Lorenzo’s Oil” is about a boy who had ALD.  Lorenzo’s Oil is an important treatment option; however, there is no cure.  Family lore instructed us that females were the carriers and males were the victims of this disease, but it turns out to be more complicated than that.

The disease presents in affected males in one of two ways:

ALD presents in early childhood and is the most severe form.  Affected children usually develop normally until they are about 7 years old.  If untreated before a certain age, the boy will rapidly degenerate to a vegetative state, before which he can go blind and deaf.  My Mom’s youngest brother died from the childhood variant in 1947 at the age of 8.  A cousin of mine died at age 13 in 1991. 

The other variant, AMN (Adrenomyeloneuropathy) usually develops in early adulthood, although it can develop later in life.  It eventually kills the victim, but not before they loose the use of their lower limbs. Another first cousin of mine died at 57 years of age in 2005. Two other male cousins died from AMN in their 20’s. 

My maternal grandparents, William and Veronica, were married in 1910.  Two of Veronica’s brothers seem to have died of ALD, but the disease was not understood back then.  Unbeknownst to her, Grandma was a carrier.  Between 1912 and 1939 my grandparents had 13 children, 5 boys and 8 girls.  The odds are that 50% of these children either had the disease or were carriers. To date, we can identify 3 of their daughters as being carriers because they had male descendants who developed one of the two variants of the disease.  My grandparents also had at least one son who died of ALD (Jerry).  It is likely that two other sons (Edward and Wilfred) had ALD, but they died in early childhood around the time of WWI, and the disease was not understood at that time.  Not every daughter became a carrier, and not every son got the disease.  It was a poorly understood crapshoot.  My grandparents had 36 grandchildren. Since we now know that the children of a carrier mother have a 50/50 chance of getting the disease, and making the very broad assumption that Edward and Wilfred had ALD, it is still possible that one more of their children carried the gene. This is why it is so important that all my living aunts, and my cousins whose mothers and fathers have died, get tested. 

The gene for ALD can act like a terrorist sleeper cell, hiding for years before revealing itself.  For example, my Aunt Rita died in 1958 not realizing she was a carrier.  She had three children, a boy who died at 4 months, and two daughters who are still living.  Both daughters had children.  K had a son and two daughters.  N had two sons.  Since none of Aunt Rita’s 3 grandsons developed ALD, no one ever suspected Aunt Rita was a carrier.  However, in 2013, 55 years after she died (!) and 3 generations out, one of her great grandsons, A, was diagnosed at 8 years old.  Rita had a daughter, K, who had a daughter, KY, who is A’s mother.  It turns out Rita, K, and KY were all carriers, but it hid in their genes until A was born.  

My mother underwent genetic testing in the 1990’s, after a nephew and 2 grandnephews died from this disease.  The results were negative.  Now there is more up-to-date information about the disease, including the fact that the genetic test available in the 1990’s was only 80% accurate. With some effort I was able to convince Mom’s doctor to get her tested again with the new (100% accurate) genetic test.   The trick was to convince the doctor to state it was “medically necessary” to conduct the genetic tests so that insurance would pay for it.  He was reluctant.  He actually said,  “if none of her sons had it then she probably doesn’t carry the gene”…  That is a genetically naive statement, considering my mother had 7 children and 4 of them could be female carriers.   "Probably" does not cut it when you are dealing with the lives of your descendants.  In addition, two of my three brothers died before they were 40 years old.  Remember that one of my cousins did not even develop AMN until he was in his 40s, and some males carry the gene but do not develop symptoms.  Plus, my mother is 88 years old and living in a nursing home suffering the advanced stages of Parkinson’s Disease – one of the diseases that can mimic ALD symptoms.  It seemed to me at least medically necessary to make sure she was not being treated for a disease she did not have.  In fact it is medically necessary to conduct this test simply to determine if any of her descendants are at risk.  I appealed to him on the phone, and sent him tons of information on ALD as well as a long genealogy showing how often it has shown up in our line.  Eventually he came around, contacted the experts at Johns Hopkins and ordered the tests.  I appreciate the fact that he listened and changed his mind when faced with the facts. 

The genetic testing was administered through Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Out-of-pocket it cost a little over $500 because insurance covered most of it.  Once again, her results came back negative.  We are so lucky, and considering the randomness of genetics that is all it can be: cold, impersonal luck.   Good luck or bad luck.  

The information and understanding we had for this disease was limited prior to A’s diagnosis in 2013; however, that limited understanding was simple and easy to ignore.  We used to think that only daughters were carriers and only males got the disease.  So if none of your brothers developed the disease it was easy to make the assumption that your family was safe, until A got it. 

A’s mother, KY, wanted the facts, the figures, and the science in order to help her son.  What she found was disturbing.  Apparently, both men and women can be carriers, not just women.  If a man has the gene then there is 100% chance that he will pass the gene on to his daughters and zero chance he would pass it on to his sons.   If a woman is a carrier then all her children (male and female) have a 50% chance of inheriting the gene.  In addition, some male carriers NEVER show any symptoms but still pass the gene on to their daughters, AND some female carriers show symptoms of AMN as they age.  They can be misdiagnosed with diseases like Parkinson’s or MS.  So unless modern genetic testing is done on the oldest living relative in each of Grandma’s children’s families, we will not know if we carry the gene into future generations or not.  Most of my aunts and uncles in this genealogical line have already passed away.   Unfortunately, that means many of my first cousins still need to be genetically tested, except the sons of sons of Grandma… because although a female carrier can pass it on to both her sons and daughters, a male carrier can only pass it on to his daughters. Are your eyes crossing about now?  Maybe this will help:

     Males:

• Sons of female carriers have a 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene
• The sons of male carriers/victims are always safe.   
• The daughters of male carriers/victims will definitely inherit the gene and are always carriers
• Here is the kicker:  Some male carriers do not ever display signs of having the disease, but they still have it and they have 100% chance of passing the gene on to their daughters
  
  Females:

• The sons and daughters of female carriers have a 50% chance of carrying the gene
• Almost 50% of  female carriers develop some AMN related symptoms as they age

A female carrier would pass the gene on to 50% of her children.   Genetics is a crap shoot.  It could totally skip her sons, but still be inherited by her daughters – giving the illusion in that generation of the family being ALD free.  If the carrier daughter only has daughters, her daughters have a 50% chance and would pass it on to 50% of their children, etc.   This is exactly how A developed ALD 55 years and 3 generations after his great-grandmother died.

I can trace the genealogy of this disease back to a specific male carrier/victim, my great-great grandfather, Tony Mueller.  He would have inherited this disease from his mother.  Tony Mueller was born in 1841 and died of AMN at the age of 39 in 1870.  He was one of 6 children, so he would not have been the only child who passed this gene down.  Odds are that at least 2 more of their children were either carriers or carrier/victims.  Anton had 2 daughters and a son with his wife, Susanna.  Their son was, of course, genetically exempt.  One daughter became a nun. The third child, my Great Grandmother Catherine, married Frank.  Catherine was a carrier. Catherine and Frank had 7 children.  Two of their sons died of what the family believes to have been AMN, one at 39 years old and the other at 19.  Her daughter Veronica (my grandmother) was a carrier.  Another son died at age 15 from a skull fracture.  A second daughter died at age 2 from unknown reasons.  Catherine and Frank’s 2 remaining sons seem not to have inherited the disease.  

It is so hard to wrap one’s mind around all this, but these are the facts.  This is the uncomfortable and complex truth.  I wish it were not true.  I wish it were not so hard to understand or accept.

KY and her mother reached out to every cousin and aunt who still lived, either directly or through other cousins.  She sent a letter outlining the facts.  She urged everyone to make sure the oldest living relative gets tested through the two places in the U.S. who do this specialized genetic test.  She explained that it was more complicated than we previously thought, i.e., almost no one is safe unless the genetic testing has been done on the oldest surviving person in their direct line.

In truth, the mathematical odds are clear.  Out of 13 children, we know for sure that 4 carried the gene for ALD.  It is possible that two more sons had it, but we can never know for sure if they did.  There remains a 50% possibility at least one more child of William and Veronica inherited that gene.  Hopefully the other 50% won out and everyone else is safe, but we cannot live on hope.  The stakes are too high.  

What testing needs to be done?
The following is paraphrased from recent updates written by KY:  

In 2013, the lab tested A's ABCD1 gene to see the exact genetic change/problem that resulted in his diagnosis.  He has a deletion of this gene so testing in other family members must be done by the MLPA - a deletion testing methodology.  There are two labs in the USA that do deletion testing on this gene:  1) John Hopkins DNA Diagnostic Lab in Baltimore, Maryland and 2) Emory Genetics Lab in Atlanta, Georgia.   A's test was done at John's Hopkins; ideally further family testing should be done in the same lab so they will have A's results as a reference.

In November 2013, A underwent a bone marrow transplant at the U. of Minnesota’s Amplatz Children’s Hospital, which is at the forefront of fighting this terrible disease.  It seems to have been successful in stopping further damage.  However, his hearing is completely and permanently gone and he is learning American Sign Language.  Unfortunately, he has also suffered significant vision loss.  The current medications he takes will hopefully stop more damage from occurring, but they cannot correct any damage that occurred prior to the bone marrow transplant.  This is why it is so important to know if our children are potential victims.  Otherwise, by the time the disease presents, it is too late to stop the damage.  In addition, he will remain on hydrocortisone, a steroid, for adrenal insufficiency for the rest of his life.  He is 9 years old.  California and New York State have recently decided to include ALD testing with the routine screening done on all newborns.  Let us hope other states follow suit.

Wrapping It All Up

You should see me wrapping Christmas presents this year.  I love Christmas and I really like buying presents.  However, I am SO over the present wrapping thing.  I distinctly remember the great joy I derived from wrapping Christmas presents when I was a teenager.  I always volunteered to wrap the family presents for my Mom, to help her out at a busy time of the year.  I went to great lengths to make each present a work of art.  I made bows with wide ribbon.  I added festive decorations.  They were beautiful.  It was fun.  Unfortunately as I got older, each year I became a little less creative and a little less thrilled with the process.  Now I do not even put bows on the presents.  Seriously.  No bows.  They are just another expense and make for more trash fouling up the environment.  Bah, humbug.  Away with all bows.

I buy the cheapest wrapping paper I can find and I wrap those suckers as fast as I can.  Today I was wrapping like a fiend, trying to get every present I currently have wrapped and ready for the big day.   Because my wrapping paper is so cheap and crappy, when I pull the sides together to seal the package, the paper often rips open at the corners.  HA!  That does not bother the likes of me!  I laugh (ho, ho, ho) as I apply Scotch magic tape and patch up the corners.  I am NOT gonna re-wrap the damn present because of a little, wussy rip.  The grandkids are going to tear open the package wrapping anyway. They will not notice. And if they do, it will be a pleasant Grandma memory they can share with their own kids someday - along the lines of "Your Great Grandma was SO cheap, she wouldn't even ...{insert your own memory}.  I own it.  I enjoy myself.  I am a rebel at heart.

Hey, I think I got this from my own sweet Grandma.  She was a sweet transplanted mountain woman from the hills of Tennessee.  Do not call her a hillbilly, 'cause then I will have to hurt you.  She was, without a doubt, the best person I ever met.  When we moved away from Northern Indiana for a few years in my childhood, she would send us big Christmas packages filled with lots of presents.   None of those presents had bows.  The bows would have just gotten smooshed in the tightly packed box; however, she would not use tags, either.  She would simply write the name of the kid on the wrapping paper.  I wish I would have thought of that, because I also resent buying the stupid tags.  Sometimes you just have to follow your heart and trust your own instincts.  Do not let Hallmark run your life. 

Real Life

Have you ever heard a retired person complain about how busy they are and how they do not know how they ever managed work and homelife when they had a full time job?  Yeah, the young me was always rolling my eyes to the back of my head when I heard that.  When you ARE balancing work/family/relationship/home it is too cruel to hear a non-working person complain about being busy.  Imagine my surprise to discover when you stop working "real life" moves in to fill the void.  Still, real life beats the hell out of working for a living.  I am not gonna lie.

I sincerely do not know how I managed to conduct my personal life while working outside the home for 37 years.  In fact, I think maybe I did not have a personal life then.  Something had to go to make time for work.  Working outside the home is all consuming.  The workplace is unforgiving, demanding, and pretty much devours the majority of your daylight hours.  I remember coming home from work and plopping myself on the couch just staring into space, night after night.  "Shaken, not stirred" is how I felt.  It inspired me to start making martinis.  At least that got me up off the couch. 

The last few years of working full-time I was unable to read a book because I was too stressed to focus on a page of text.  Towards the end of my work years I rarely read an email word for word, skimming each one for the punchlines in order to get through them all in a timely fashion.  Weekends were spent cleaning, cooking, shopping, catching up with friends and family.  I guess I was lucky that we did not live near our grandkids then, because when would I have seen them?  Would I have really wanted to add babysitting to that mix?  There was never anytime for myself then.   I ached for retirement so that I could relax and do all those things one is never able to accomplish on a measly weekend.

I went through the working mother routine, too - the years when raising children was supposed to be your top priority.  And I only had one child. When do working mothers sleep? Actually, when they do lay down to sleep they are unable to relax because they are wracked with guilt for not spending enough time with their kids.  But I had my kid when I was 20.  I had an abundance of energy back then.  I felt like I could do it all. What about the mothers who just start having children at 40?  How do they keep from jumping off a cliff? 

Aging is the issue.  I simply do not have the energy I once had.  My mind is going 100 miles per hour, but my body is meandering along at 20 mph. When I was young it was all a game, and I reveled in the challenge.  Now the thought of being challenged makes me want to throw up.  I want time. Lots of time. All to myself.  

Now I Hate Birthdays

I have lost 10 pounds since I started counting calories, 7 weeks ago.  I downloaded the MyPlate app from livestrong.com.  Why yes, I AM tired of entering all my food and exercise every day, thanks for asking.  But hey – it works so I am forcing myself to continue.  I must confess there have been a couple of days where I overate and refused to go in and finish posting for the day because I did not want to face the music (or in this case, the numbers).   I always started up again the next day, though.  So far, so good. However, today is Thanksgiving and I am terrified.  I think I will take the day off from counting.  There is no way I am going to behave today.  Especially now that my friend JE sent me her sweet potato recipe and I have discovered how much butter is in it.  No wonder it tastes so good.

As long as I exercise I stay motivated.  A couple days this week it rained like crazy, so I could not go for my beloved bike ride.  I was in a panic.  I have exercised every day so far on this diet and not just because I love to ride my bike, even though I do.  I ride to eat!!!  There is no *%#@! way I can stay within their assigned calorie count without earning extra calories by exercising.  Usually when it rains in Florida it is only for part of a day.  It is very rare that you get a whole day of bad weather with steady rain.  The other day it poured all day.  We got so much rain (6 inches) that we had to drain the pool by a couple of inches so it did not overflow.  It was torrential.  It was bleak.  I was very afraid for my diet.  I do not know about you, but when I am stuck in the house for an entire overcast, cold, and rainy day all I think about it food.  I ended up dancing like a crazy woman, alone in the living room, for as long as I could and then did some hand weights. That is how weird I have become.  T shut himself up in his office and did not come out until I turned the music off and he figured it was safe to emerge.  I appreciated the privacy.  It is hard to get privacy when you and your spouse retire at the same time.  Luckily we have 3 bedrooms and we both took rooms for an office.  I am so thankful to whoever invented doors.

I experienced a real blow on my recent birthday.  The damn app automatically reduced my daily calorie total by about 50 calories based on going from age 62 to 63.  Sheesh, as if it wasn’t bad enough aging and dieting, now I am being punished for it.  Cruel and unusual punishment!  I may go in and lie about my age.  Or keep changing the date of my birthday further and further into the future.  Whatever it takes.  It is not that I mind getting older, it is the calories that count.

Take My Wife, Please!

As I hinted in a previous post, I feel kind of sorry for men who marry young women.  They do not realize at the time, but they actually have no idea who they are going to end up with.  With some notable exceptions, most women do not come in to their own until middle age, when all hell breaks lose.  Sometimes the sweet, passive young thing you married becomes a mouthy, strongly opinionated woman in her 40's.  It happens!

I am uncomfortably aware this is a gross stereotype.  Still, I am going to follow this thought and see where it takes me.  I am not afraid to make a boneheaded argument and later discover I was all wrong.  It's kinda fun and it gives me something to do.

How many marriages end because the man no longer recognizes the woman he married, or the woman feels she has outgrown the man?  The contract has been broken, the promises have not been kept.  The husband may feel cheated and deceived when he finds out his wife has her own opinions and they do not jive with his own.  Imagine how heartbreaking it must be for a man to discover his wife cannot stand the things about him at 50 that she loved at 20?   That has got to be harsh!  You have my sympathy, gentlemen.

Most boys are allowed, encouraged even, to be “themselves.”  Boys are admired for having strong personalities.  Hey, they admire THEMSELVES for having strong personalities and they are not shy about revealing who they are.  I like that about young men.  Young woman let it all hang out with their girlfriends, but some do not reveal their "selves" when a young man is around.  Is it because a young woman does not want to "rock the boat" or alienate a boyfriend?  Don't you just love running into a young woman who does not care about things like that?  In fact, the world is not overly accepting of young women developing strong personalities.  I suspect most young men do not want a Bella Abzug for a wife, they want a Barbie Doll.  If you do not know who Bella Abzug was, then you were not politically active in the late 1960s and you really need to google her.  She was an amazingly accomplished and admirable political powerhouse who some tried to turn into a joke so as to diminish her power and influence.  Seems like some things never change.

We all change as we grow older.  I could be wrong, but I think women change over time more than men do. This is true for my generation, anyway.  I hope things have changed dramatically and the young whippersnappers of today are different.  It would make me very happy to be wrong, but I think Katniss Everdeen is still the exception to the rule. 

What do I mean by that?  Hopefully men will grow and change over time, but you often still recognize the essential 20 year old in a man even in old age.  The girl they married may have hung on their every word, blissfully allowing the husband to make all the major decisions when she was young.  The woman they grow old with may not be recognizable in that context.  Hopefully the husband has grown and changed along with her and has fallen in love with her all over again as she transformed into a woman.  Stranger things have happened.  But God help the old fart who marries a young woman.  By the time she becomes a grown up woman he no longer approves of, he might be too old and gnarly to find another malleable young girl.  Unless he has a lot of money, of course, then he might attract someone like Anna Nicole Smith.

Young women notoriously stop excelling at school around puberty and start researching beauty tips and clothing styles instead of math and science.  This is slowly changing, I am almost sure of it.  However, I fear a significant number of American Girls are still not being raised by parents encouraging them to be brilliant, quirky, or feisty characters.  It is sad to see a bright girl dumb herself down in hopes of attracting attention for how she looks instead of who she is, and even more sad when a grown woman does it.  I cannot help but wonder if Kim Kardashian has a personality or any deep thoughts.   If she does, she certainly hides them well.  Pink, on the other hand, is a celebrity I would be proud to know.  In fact, if you are not familiar with Pink's song "Stupid Girls" you really should listen to it.  Great stuff.

Once upon a time there was a psychologist named Carl Rogers.  According to the web site you will come to if you click on his name, he thought:

“…for a person to "grow", they need an environment that provides them with genuineness (openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being listened to and understood).

Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will not develop as they should, much like a tree will not grow without sunlight and water.”

Some girls in traditional families do not get those things from their parents.  Hell, many wives do not get these things from their husbands.  Even in this enlightened day and age (?), many girls are not liked, accepted or understood, even in their own families.  Too many young girls are still being tolerated rather than celebrated.

I know a lot of exceptional women with strong and unique personalities who live normal lives and even vote Republican!  (I would insert a smiley face emoticon here if I could figure out how to use this blog site software.)  After many years of struggle and hardscrabble existence, these woman are living feminism, whether they want to own up to it or not.  They might have been meek and mild when they married their husbands at 19; however, they are no longer meek nor mild at 40, 50, 60 and beyond.  They are gloriously fully formed personalities full of piss and vinegar.  Deal with it!

It is true that I married T young.  However, I have always been a mouthy dame and I was lucky enough as a young woman to find a young man who appreciated women like me.  Or at least that is what I have always thought.   Just to make sure I am not deluding myself, I just went and asked T if I was meek and mild when he married me.   He answered with a resounding "YOU?" Then some laughter and maybe snorting.  "No, you were never meek and mild."  I am one of the lucky ones.  Or maybe he is?  

Old Friends

We had friends visiting from NYS this week; old friends.  Not that THEY are old, but two of the three have been my friends for a very long time, since the late 1970's and early 1980's.  The third has been a good friend since about 1990.  Well, perhaps we are old by some standards, but we certainly do not feel old. We all feel young.  I still feel like I am about 12 years old. 

They are work-related friends, people I met either working alongside them or in some other work-related capacity back in the day.  These friendships created deep ties.  We have been through so much together, with friendships waxing and waning over the years but always retaining a connection.  We were young together once, we all worked hard to build, establish, and excel in our careers, and now we are all retired.  Time marches on.  It is heartwarming to see that we still connect and can pick up where we left off regardless of how much time has passed.  It is fun to catch up on their lives and remember other friends (and enemies) from the same time period.   OK, OK, especially the enemies. 

A couple of days of girl talk is just what a doctor should have ordered for me.  It cheered me right up.  I love these women.  They are hardcore, no lightweights here.  They are women who lived their lives honestly, with great feeling, and on their own terms.  They are all comfortable in their own skins and revel in their individual personalities. We each married young, but they are older than me by 8-20 years.  So the men they married were pre-feminism husbands.  Rest assured these women have either retrained their men or divorced them by now.  It cracks me up to hear them talk about retraining tactics.  They are a joyous bunch.

Yesterday, sitting by the pool, we toasted a fallen comrade, Maggie, who died in 2006.  Oh how I wish she could have joined us.  She was what one might refer to as a ton of bricks.  I have never met a stronger personality.  She was older than us and alternately intimidated us and encouraged us to be our best selves.  She challenged our politics and our relationship choices at every turn.  This is a woman who refused to wear glasses because she thought they were a sign of weakness.  That is a direct quote, by the way.  She was single her whole life, and her listing in the telephone book was under the name Brandy Alexander.  If you were stupid enough to betray her  I am quite sure she could tear your heart out with her teeth.  We were all more than a little afraid of her. 

For many years this group of women (including myself) would meet Maggie at a yearly bazaar held at an elegant Victorian mansion turned restaurant over the long Thanksgiving weekend.  Let us call it a "Maggie mandated event."  The event was meant to kick off the holiday buying season and was called the Twelve Shops of Christmas.  We would eat a buffet lunch in the old carriage house on the property, staying long and talking loud.  She directed the flow of conversation and we all hung on her every word.  Then we would go into the mansion and shop in the twelve rooms where various upscale businesses set up shop.  It was fun. This annual event was often the only time I saw her.

In late August 2006, I received a call from another former co-worker and Maggie protégé, CA.  CA breathlessly and apologetically informed me that Maggie had been sick, was now comatose, was in the hospital on a respirator, and her family had made the decision to "pull the plug" that very afternoon.  CA has always been the one to inform us about former co-workers from that time period because she was the only one left at that particular workplace.  Her kindness is legion.  Unfortunately, she had only just realized she forgot to tell me when Maggie got sick.  For a while Maggie had been conscious and many of the old gang had gone to the hospital to see her and say goodbye.  Now she was not and the end was near.  This would be my last chance to see her before she was gone.  I was grateful to CA for taking the time to let me know. 

Leaving work immediately, I drove up to the hospital.  I walked into the Intensive Care Unit without anyone questioning why I was there and wandered from bed to bed until I found her.  Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell mechanically.  From what I could tell, she was already gone.  It did not seem like a spirit inhabited that body.  I selfishly wondered why they had not turned off life support sooner.  What a cruel joke to pretend she was still alive.  She would have been angry for me to see her like that.  It was WAY beyond glasses.  In my mind I went on and on with my self-righteous indignation, as if I knew anything about anything.  In fact, I do realize how hard these decisions are for family; nobody wants to make a life or death decision for a loved one.  It takes great courage to do so, and such a decision requires a fearless nature and a clear conscience.  Not everyone can summon those qualities in the face of death.  It is just too hard.  Maggie could have made that decision for any one of us, though.  She was strong that way.

Maggie 1984

Picking and Choosing

Some people like change and others avoid it at all costs. I am not writing this because I have an agenda to push.  I do not subscribe to a one-size-fits-all life model.  It really comes down to who you are and what you need to be happy.  I am absolutely not comfortable with change, but I seem to need it periodically. I get antsy when things remain the same for too long.  I get bored easily.  I court change knowing full well the process of changing will likely be unsettling for awhile, and may even turn out to be a mistake; but I still want the change to happen.  I cannot help myself.  I come from pioneer stock.  Every so often I feel the urge to move on and reinvent myself.  It is called “throwing caution to the wind.”   It is my forte.

Retiring was a piece of cake, except for that unfortunate reduction in discretionary income.  It has been almost a year (I retired last Halloween) and I have never regretted the decision to retire.  Not working has been a pure joy.  We have always lived a fairly simple life, and we have adjusted to a limited income.  Still, I have not ruled out getting a part time job at some point for extra money.   I do not want to, but it would be nice to have some extra money to replace the sliding glass door to the pool area.  The door sticks.  I huff and puff and swear when I struggle to open it.  Plus, I would REALLY like to get my neck done…  I am almost serious about the neck thing.  Plastic surgery is definitely not in our retirement budget, but the neck is not pretty and it is getting worse.  I am not sure I can go through the rest of my life with my current neck. 

Moving, on the other hand, has been the real kicker.   Six months into it I can report that although I am surprisingly happy to live in Florida, I am not yet on the other side of the “process” of changing.  Changing residences interstate kicked our asses and we are both exhausted.  Part of that exhaustion was caused by bad luck, specifically the long delay in buying our house once we got down here last March.  The travel trailer era was a bit mindboggling to live through; however, in retrospect I am glad to have experienced it.  We rose to the occasion, and that is always satisfying.  Still...it sucked all the joy out of our initial move.  It would have been nice to feel excited about moving into a house instead of just feeling relief.  In addition, we moved from a 4-season, often cold and overcast, but devastatingly beautiful Northern blue state to a relentlessly hot, sunny, overdeveloped, and flat Southern red state.  In NYS we lived in the country amidst rolling hills and endless forest.  In Florida we live in a subdivision.  This all requires some adjusting.  I am not really complaining.  I was looking for change and these challenges certainly keep the old brain cells/sparkplugs igniting.  And I get to see my wonderful grandkids almost every day.  I cannot tell you how much I love that.  However, just selling, sorting, packing, moving from, and buying houses is a stressful process.  That was a LOT of work, for a long time.  I am tired.  I would really rather not move again until my daughter has to put me in the home, and then she can do all the heavy lifting.  I am not above faking dementia in order to get out of hard work.

There are significant cultural differences I notice whether I want to or not.  Some of the cultural norms in Florida are unfamiliar to me.  There are days when the differences are interesting and fun, and there are days when they are overwhelming and threatening.  This morning, for instance, I woke up at 5 am and got up in the dark house to look out the front window.  As you might remember from my last post looking out the window is one of my new pastimes, apparently even in the dark.  Today is garbage day. Everyone puts the garbage cans and recycling cans out on the street the night before.  Imagine my surprise to see a scruffy looking older man flying by on a bicycle down our darkened street.  He went from garbage can to garbage can, opening the lids and using a flashlight to see what he could see.   He held a big trash bag in one hand as he piloted the bike.  I saw him stuff something into his bag at the house down the street and then he drove away.  Yes, I saw a real live garbage-picker.  Things like that never happened in the hamlet we lived in up North.  The only person who came to our NYS house that early in the morning was delivering the paper.