You know you're old when you go to an antiques auction, and people bid - on YOU!
I've been thinking a lot about this birthday.
45 seems so much older than 40 ever did. It is the number of age.
45 is the number of books in the OLD testament. Every 45 seconds, someone in America has a stroke. If you're shot by a Colt 45, you probaby will die. 45 is the speed of the records that I played in my youth.
When I think about 45, I think about things that make me realize how old I really am.
When My mother was 45, I had been married 5 years. When my grandmother was 45, I was 7 years old. I have been married to my husband more than half my life.
I think about people who say that this is middle age. No one in my family has ever lived to age 90, so with each passing day, I am closer to death than the day before.
You may think that all this talk of 45 means that I am saddened by this birthday, but I'm not.
I think of those before me, who allowed 45 to be the beginning of the end, and allowed age to creep in and make them old.
I refuse to do that. The child in me has not given up.
You don't stop playing because you get old, you get old because you stop playing.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Embarassing things you may not know
OK...enough with the emotional and on with the fun.
The only crying I want around here is the laughing type.
Here are some things about me (in no particular order)
1. As a kid, I used to swim with my shorts on so my bathing suit wouldn't get wet.
2. My grandfather once let me sip his beer so much I got drunk and closed my hair in my bedroom window (I was about 12)
3. In college, I got so drunk I took the garbage out in my underwear.
4. I met my husband in a toll booth, he was a toll collector, I was a green Camaro.
5. Almost all of my ex boyfriends are dead, or have had a life threatening disease.
6. I am so far sighted that I can't see my meal when I eat if I don't wear my glasses.
7. I grow hairs on my chin and lip faster than the speed of sound. If I tweeze or wax, there are new ones before I leave the salon.
8. I am a pack rat.
9. Folk Singer Pete Seeger was my next door neighbor growing up. He saved my great grandfather from a fire in his house when I was 8.
10. The man who owns the single largest collection of Mickey Mouse memoriabilia in the world is a close friend of the family. I blame him for my addiction.
11. I've always found men with very short beards very sexy. My husband refuses to grow one.
12. I am a reality TV show addict.
13. I have a very short attention span.
14. I had arthritis as a child and was never expected to walk.
15. A rattlesnake once slithered across my foot.
16. I would starve to death before I ate a banana.
There you have it...exciting, huh.
The only crying I want around here is the laughing type.
Here are some things about me (in no particular order)
1. As a kid, I used to swim with my shorts on so my bathing suit wouldn't get wet.
2. My grandfather once let me sip his beer so much I got drunk and closed my hair in my bedroom window (I was about 12)
3. In college, I got so drunk I took the garbage out in my underwear.
4. I met my husband in a toll booth, he was a toll collector, I was a green Camaro.
5. Almost all of my ex boyfriends are dead, or have had a life threatening disease.
6. I am so far sighted that I can't see my meal when I eat if I don't wear my glasses.
7. I grow hairs on my chin and lip faster than the speed of sound. If I tweeze or wax, there are new ones before I leave the salon.
8. I am a pack rat.
9. Folk Singer Pete Seeger was my next door neighbor growing up. He saved my great grandfather from a fire in his house when I was 8.
10. The man who owns the single largest collection of Mickey Mouse memoriabilia in the world is a close friend of the family. I blame him for my addiction.
11. I've always found men with very short beards very sexy. My husband refuses to grow one.
12. I am a reality TV show addict.
13. I have a very short attention span.
14. I had arthritis as a child and was never expected to walk.
15. A rattlesnake once slithered across my foot.
16. I would starve to death before I ate a banana.
There you have it...exciting, huh.
Monday, July 10, 2006
The Psychology of Cleaning
I am not a clean freak.
Clean for me comes in levels.
As long as the floors are not sticky, there are no dust bunnies rolling along the floor like tumbleweeds, and I'm not embarassed to have a surprise visitor into my house, I am happy. I live in a world of clean, organized, clutter.
Sometimes cleaning makes me happy.
Other times it makes me sad.
When someone dies, and you do the final cleaning out, it becomes part of the process of closing the final chapter. You marvel over every little item as you hold it in your hands, and you treat everything as a gift from the beyond.
The memories that this type of cleaning invokes are powerful, gut wrenching and cathartic.
When you have to go through that process for someone who is still living, well, the emotions are quite different.
This week, it was determined that my grandmother will never be able to live alone. Because everyone still living here has to work during the day, she will have to stay in the nursing home she has been in since they found her unconscious in her apartment in April.
Although we have been paying her rent faithfully since then, we now understand that we have been fooling ourselves about her ever going back to her apartment. And now, we have determined that it is time to clean out.
We spent a few hours in there yesterday, going through things, and realizing where the pack rat nature in all of us came from.
In preparation for her death, she has been spending the time putting together scrapbooks for all of us. She has kept everything. She has the letter from the local school district giving her permission to enroll me in the school where she lived, and not the one where my mother lived. She has the card I left on her dresser the morning I got married. She has every mother's day card I ever gave her. Invitiations, pictures, report cards. All there, in a book in her closet.
She has a box for my young niece in FL, a child who should have died, and didn't. In this box are
mementos of her and my grandfather, notes attached to each one. And in this box is the stub of a holy candle that was lit every night by Alicia's picture, until one day, an ultrasound showed that the holes in her heart were closed. My grandmother believes it was a miracle.
There is an envelope that says "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL ?" (It was empty)
We have found things that will need to be carefully preserved for future generations, so that they will always know that this incredibly annoying, overbearing, insecure, crazy woman loved all of us with every ounce of her being.
If she does make a full recovery, she is going to be really pissed at us for going through her things.
But then again, if she makes a full recovery, she'll get over it.
Clean for me comes in levels.
As long as the floors are not sticky, there are no dust bunnies rolling along the floor like tumbleweeds, and I'm not embarassed to have a surprise visitor into my house, I am happy. I live in a world of clean, organized, clutter.
Sometimes cleaning makes me happy.
Other times it makes me sad.
When someone dies, and you do the final cleaning out, it becomes part of the process of closing the final chapter. You marvel over every little item as you hold it in your hands, and you treat everything as a gift from the beyond.
The memories that this type of cleaning invokes are powerful, gut wrenching and cathartic.
When you have to go through that process for someone who is still living, well, the emotions are quite different.
This week, it was determined that my grandmother will never be able to live alone. Because everyone still living here has to work during the day, she will have to stay in the nursing home she has been in since they found her unconscious in her apartment in April.
Although we have been paying her rent faithfully since then, we now understand that we have been fooling ourselves about her ever going back to her apartment. And now, we have determined that it is time to clean out.
We spent a few hours in there yesterday, going through things, and realizing where the pack rat nature in all of us came from.
In preparation for her death, she has been spending the time putting together scrapbooks for all of us. She has kept everything. She has the letter from the local school district giving her permission to enroll me in the school where she lived, and not the one where my mother lived. She has the card I left on her dresser the morning I got married. She has every mother's day card I ever gave her. Invitiations, pictures, report cards. All there, in a book in her closet.
She has a box for my young niece in FL, a child who should have died, and didn't. In this box are
mementos of her and my grandfather, notes attached to each one. And in this box is the stub of a holy candle that was lit every night by Alicia's picture, until one day, an ultrasound showed that the holes in her heart were closed. My grandmother believes it was a miracle.
There is an envelope that says "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL ?" (It was empty)
We have found things that will need to be carefully preserved for future generations, so that they will always know that this incredibly annoying, overbearing, insecure, crazy woman loved all of us with every ounce of her being.
If she does make a full recovery, she is going to be really pissed at us for going through her things.
But then again, if she makes a full recovery, she'll get over it.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Amber said I have to Update...
I haven't updated in a while, but Amber says I have to, and well, you never get on the bad side of your ticket into PC ;)
Nothing incredibly new here to report, well, maybe a little...
Since my last post, Tom and I celebrated 23 years of wedded bliss. Well, maybe 22 1/2 years of bliss, and 1/2 year of grrrr (if you add all the grrr up all together). We really don't fight, we get ticked, but usually it's over in a few hours, and very rarely, a few days.
23 years ago, we realized that in marriage, there is compromise, and sometimes there is no compromising. We each had our own interests when we met 28 YEARS AGO, and we agreed that we would keep those interests. We each had our own friends, and we agreed that we would keep those friends. I go places without him, he goes places without me. We have always been free to live our own lives, and at the end of the day, remember where we belong.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had forgotten about those friends I had before we met. If I moved on to new friends, and left the old behind. I'm glad I didn't. These ladies are the ones who know me best, and even when the big picture of life gets in the way, I know I can count on them.
Kate is home for good (for awhile). She has decided to take her career path in another direction. She just hasn't completely figured out what direction that is. She is going to go to the local community college in the fall. I explained to her that it's ok to be 19 and not know what you want to do. And I also explained that she could go to the local school for 8 years and take a bunch of stuff for what I was paying for one year at Bentley.
She registered late, so that most of the good courses were full. Good is relative though, and I have to remember I'm looking at it from a parent's point of view. So she is taking Anatomy & Physiology 1, Chemistry 1, TV production, Stage makeup and 3 - 1/2 credit gym classes (Jazz, Ballet and Ballroom)
She also would like to do the Disney College program in the spring, so this semester is sort of like a refresher course before the presentation and audition dates come out.
She made Dean's list for her second semester at Bentley, showing me and everyone else that the first semester was just an adjustment issue. I don't think she knows how really proud of her I am.
Oh yeah, and as of today, she and the butthead have been broken up for a week and a half. They still talk every day.
Maggie is headed to almost Rhode Island next week for a week of Lacrosse goalie camp.
Now, if I were picking a summer camp, I doubt it would be one where they were hurling hard rubber balls at me in speeds exceeding 50 MPH, but well, Maggie has always been a little different.
TJ has made the 12 yo all-star team although his age is actually LL 11. He is the sub guy, meaning he will be the one that plays 3 outs and 1 at bat. He knows his job is to be there if someone gets hurt or doesn't show up. And he is ok with that. He'll be back next year.
And that is about it.
Nothing new. Nothing Exciting.
But I have done my job of keeping you informed.
Nothing incredibly new here to report, well, maybe a little...
Since my last post, Tom and I celebrated 23 years of wedded bliss. Well, maybe 22 1/2 years of bliss, and 1/2 year of grrrr (if you add all the grrr up all together). We really don't fight, we get ticked, but usually it's over in a few hours, and very rarely, a few days.
23 years ago, we realized that in marriage, there is compromise, and sometimes there is no compromising. We each had our own interests when we met 28 YEARS AGO, and we agreed that we would keep those interests. We each had our own friends, and we agreed that we would keep those friends. I go places without him, he goes places without me. We have always been free to live our own lives, and at the end of the day, remember where we belong.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had forgotten about those friends I had before we met. If I moved on to new friends, and left the old behind. I'm glad I didn't. These ladies are the ones who know me best, and even when the big picture of life gets in the way, I know I can count on them.
Kate is home for good (for awhile). She has decided to take her career path in another direction. She just hasn't completely figured out what direction that is. She is going to go to the local community college in the fall. I explained to her that it's ok to be 19 and not know what you want to do. And I also explained that she could go to the local school for 8 years and take a bunch of stuff for what I was paying for one year at Bentley.
She registered late, so that most of the good courses were full. Good is relative though, and I have to remember I'm looking at it from a parent's point of view. So she is taking Anatomy & Physiology 1, Chemistry 1, TV production, Stage makeup and 3 - 1/2 credit gym classes (Jazz, Ballet and Ballroom)
She also would like to do the Disney College program in the spring, so this semester is sort of like a refresher course before the presentation and audition dates come out.
She made Dean's list for her second semester at Bentley, showing me and everyone else that the first semester was just an adjustment issue. I don't think she knows how really proud of her I am.
Oh yeah, and as of today, she and the butthead have been broken up for a week and a half. They still talk every day.
Maggie is headed to almost Rhode Island next week for a week of Lacrosse goalie camp.
Now, if I were picking a summer camp, I doubt it would be one where they were hurling hard rubber balls at me in speeds exceeding 50 MPH, but well, Maggie has always been a little different.
TJ has made the 12 yo all-star team although his age is actually LL 11. He is the sub guy, meaning he will be the one that plays 3 outs and 1 at bat. He knows his job is to be there if someone gets hurt or doesn't show up. And he is ok with that. He'll be back next year.
And that is about it.
Nothing new. Nothing Exciting.
But I have done my job of keeping you informed.
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