Internal Fireworks

Last Friday evening (the start of the Memorial Day weekend, OF COURSE), Lee and I were watching a movie on TV when suddenly I started seeing flashes of light at the edge of my left eye.  They were occasional at first, but then came faster and faster, and eventually I had about 5 minutes of an intense light show going on inside my eyeball.

Well, light flashes are one of the precursors to a detached retina, so we discussed whether to head to the ER.  We decided not to go because the light flashes stopped; the hospital would not have had an ophthalmologist on duty at night on a holiday weekend; and if they had decided to keep me overnight for observation, my health insurance would not have covered the bill.

I have now seen a retinal specialist and the verdict is no retinal detachment - yay!  Apparently as the eye ages, the inner jelly shrinks and throws off floaters, and when the floaters bump against the retina, they can cause flashes.  And yes, my left eye is definitely "floatier" now than it was before Friday night.  Just another one of those annoying "at your age..." issues that no one warns you about in advance.

My sister is planning to live to 110, but I don't want to be around that long; I don't want to find out for myself what "at your age..." infirmities are lurking for centenarians.  I'm sure they're a lot nastier than fireworks inside my eye.

"In youth we run into difficulties.  In old age difficulties run into us." ~Josh Billings

Shoulder Replacement Blues

My SO Lee is a really active guy.  He's been a tournament volleyball player for many years, and until very recently he was earning a living flipping houses, painting, and acting as a general handyman.

However, he's not the most careful human being I've ever met.  He's fallen off roofs at least twice, and had a rotator cuff repair about 15 years ago due to the general wear and tear of his life.  About a year and a half ago, he fell in a volleyball tournament, cracked a couple of ribs, and re-injured one of the tendons in his right shoulder, which has since completely retracted.  A second tendon in the same shoulder recently gave way, and now he can't lift his dominant arm above mid-rib level.  With some reluctance, he finally decided to have a reverse shoulder replacement to cope with the pain and restore as much movement to that arm as possible.

Today we visited the hospital where the operation will be done for the usual pre-op blood tests and chest x-rays, and their joint specialists ran us through the procedures to follow before the operation and the activities he'll be allowed afterward.  This is going to be trickier than I'd hoped.

Lee will be in a sling for a month after the surgery.  After that he will be encouraged to do some simple gravity-only movement exercises for about another month, with no strength-building exercises until after that.  He is not supposed to drive for 6 weeks after the operation.  Fortunately he lives only a few blocks from a rec center with a walking track where he can work off some of his pent-up energy with his feet.

The movement restriction starts before that, though.  As of today, he's not supposed to do anything that might result in cuts or scratches on his limbs, particularly his right arm - if any are present the day the surgery is scheduled, they will cancel.

This means he won't be able to do any of the final home-improvement projects he had been hoping to complete before he goes under the knife.  I'm guessing the 3-month minimum moratorium on doing anything substantial with his hands is going to drive him (and his temporary caretaker, me) nuts.  He does like to watch financial news, car shows, and old movies on TV, and read history books - we will have to record and/or borrow as much "sitting down" entertainment as possible to see him through the duration.

I'm not sure that's enough to keep him from cabin fever, especially during the days I have to go to work.  Does Uber sell gift cards?

"There is a higher risk of shoulder dislocation following rTSA than a conventional TSA....  As such, tucking in a shirt or performing bathroom / persona hygiene with the operative arm is an especially dangerous activity particularly in the immediate peri-operative phase." ~http://bostonshoulderinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Shoulder-Reverse-TSA-protocol3.pdf

This shoe trend is somebody's joke, right? RIGHT??

While fine-tuning my wardrobe the last couple of years, I've been following style bloggers and YouTubers who specialize in advice on slow fashion, capsule wardrobes, and minimalism - but I've also been inundated with email newsletters from several fashion-forward publications. Some of the latest trends espoused by these experts has baffled me. Case in point: supposedly "everyone" in New York is wearing white shoes this spring.

When I was growing up in the Midwest, my mother's friends broke out their white sandals at Easter (the daring among them) or Memorial Day (the more conservative), and put them away again after Labor Day. BUT ... these were women who basically never walked anywhere. They drove, in cars their husbands washed religiously every weekend. Their white shoes stayed white.

New York, however, is a whole different biosphere. When I lived there, I never wore a pair of open-toed shoes in public, let alone flip-flops or strappy sandals, because the streets and the subway stations were filthy, and I rarely took mass transit without being stepped on at least once by a fellow traveler. Had I ever worn white shoes, they would have remained white for roughly a nanosecond after I exited my apartment.

Who are these courageous fashion pioneers braving the big city's soot and klutzy inhabitants in their pristine footwear? Do they carry shoe polish in their purses? Do they have a shoe repair artist on retainer? Are they being sponsored by shoe companies who instantly replace damaged sandals that might mar their Instagram posts? Inquiring minds want to know.

Yes, I do own a pair of white sandals myself. In the greater Phoenix area, where I travel everywhere by car, and no one has stepped on my feet in years. The whole white-shoes-in-New-York thing is really some fashonistas' elaborate joke, right????

"They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes." ~Imelda Marcos

My Vacation in the Rain

So much for my hopes of regular postings...

More medical problems for both my parents this summer, more work from every direction - and then I agreed to another cruise with my sister.  This one started and ended in Rotterdam, and stopped along the way in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Norway.  Since Sue wanted to spend some time before and after the cruise in the Netherlands, and the flight over took (counting the time changes) nearly two days, we were gone almost a month.  We took out trip insurance and said daily prayers that our mother wouldn't break another hip and our father wouldn't suffer a heart attack in our absence.

In many respects it was an amazing trip.  However, the weather was not what we had hoped for.  The websites we consulted while packing assured us that the average high temp in the areas we would be visiting was 70 degrees Fahrenheit during that time of year; while we were there, the highs averaged in the low 50s, with pouring rain and high winds.  To make matters worse, my sister almost immediately came down with a bad cold; neither it nor her temper was improved by the weather.  Then we both managed to injure ourselves the day we left the ship.  Sigh.

Still, it was a memorable vacation, and we had plenty of opportunities to improve our "photography in the rain" skills.  Here are some of the pictures from the two days we spent in Amsterdam at the beginning of the trip.  Most of them are from our visit to the Rijksmuseum; we also toured the Van Gogh museum, which was fascinating but doesn't allow photos, and the gift shop at the Stedelijk Museum of modern art and design, which was otherwise closed for remodeling.

The feature that struck me most about Amsterdam was the number of bicycles.  I don't remember this many from my previous trip here in the late 80s.  I didn't know there were this many bicycles in the entire world.  Many of them had what looked like shower caps over the seats to fend off the rain.  An extraordinary number of the bicyclists we saw had passengers: children in carts attached to the front wheel, in child seats behind the main seat, perched on the handlebars, or some combination of the three; and adults in sidecars or seated astride or sidesaddle over the rear wheel.  Needless to say, we saw a lot of muscular calves in Amsterdam.

Oslo airport - chair has outlets for wifi users.

Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

Wedding dress exhibit in the Rijksmuseum

Musical instrument exhibit in the Rijksmuseum

Model ship exhibit in the Rijksmuseum

Sitting room in a doll house in the Rijksmuseum

The huge IAMSTERDAM sign in front of the museum is part of an ad campaign for the city; to learn more about Amsterdam, check out the website: http://www.iamsterdam.com/

Where did the ads go?

Those of you who have been reading my posts for a long time may remember when I joined the BlogHer network for women bloggers and started running their ads down the left side of my blog page.  I didn't do it because I ever expected to receive any ad revenue (which is good, because I haven't), but because I wanted to be one of their book reviewers.

The idea was that I would receive FREE books, in categories I selected, in return for posting reviews on my blog.  That seemed like a sweet deal, since the free books would enable me to feed my book addiction painlessly, and at the time I was regularly posting book reviews anyway.

Well, it was one of those good ideas that didn't pan out.  It turned out that in order to review a book, I had to respond to the call for reviewers within about 30 seconds of receiving the email.  Every single time I tried to respond, I received a message saying that they had already filled their quota of reviewers.  Then the criteria changed; in addition to posting a blog review, reviewers also had to mention the books on other social media.  In all, it was just too much work, even for free books.

During the time I belonged to BlogHer, I was the featured blogger for one week, but I saw only a very minor, statistically insignificant uptick in readers during that time, which was very disappointing.  In the meantime, the ads have gotten more animated and more annoying.

Which is why, when BlogHer recently told me that they were removing their ads because I am no longer meeting their "at least one post a week" criterion, I wasn't exactly heartbroken.  I haven't been posting regularly because all my spare time for the last six months has been sucked up by my mother's health problems and my increasingly demanding work schedule.  BlogHer did offer to reinstate the ads if I ever resume weekly posting - which I hope to do this summer - but why bother?

Instead, I'm reformatting the blog so it will look like it originally did - one wide column of text and a single sidebar on the right side of the page.  That will undoubtedly throw off the formatting of some of my previous posts - particularly the ones with photos - but that's not the end of the world, either.  On the whole, viewing my blog will now be a more restful experience.  And that's A Good Thing.

"Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it." ~Stephen Leacock

Oven Demo

I've mentioned before that the couple I bought this house from had a tendency to cut corners when they purchased things for their home.  The stove I inherited from them, for instance, has been a source of constant annoyance.

It's actually a pretty good stove.  The oven works well, too, if you give it 15 more minutes to preheat after it thinks it's hit the temperature you want.  My grievance is with the self-cleaning function.

This is one of those ovens that's supposed to incinerate all extraneous material during the cleaning cycle until nothing remains but a fine gray ash.  Alas, it has a tendency instead to turn at least some of the residue into something more nearly resembling lava, which hardens after the cycle is over into little igneous rock formations.  The most annoying of these end up between the layers of the glass oven window.

I am a little OCD, and every time I've looked at the stove for the last 2 1/2 years the gunk inside the oven window has irritated the heck out of me.  I've gone so far as to consider buying a new stove, just to get rid of that dirty window.  Today, however, a minor miracle occurred.

I decided a while ago that I needed cleaning help worse than I needed cable TV, so I turned in my DVR and hired a cleaning service to come once a month.  They were here today, and one of the women offered to dismantle the oven door and clean the window.  She was ultimately unable to take it completely apart, but at least she showed me the possibility.

I guess I'd been assuming the oven door was sealed, although reason should have told me that had that been the case, the gunk from inside the oven wouldn't have ended up inside the window.  After the cleaners left, I carefully dismantled the oven door myself and cleaned both sides of all four layers of glass it contains.  This entailed using almost every cleaning compound I own, but the window is now probably cleaner than it has been since the day it was installed.

Of course, putting the thing back together again was considerably trickier than dismantling it, but I managed.  Now I'm trying to decide whether I should give up on the self-cleaning function, or just plan to take the window apart for cleaning once every year or so.

"We dream of having a clean house - but who dreams of actually doing the cleaning?" ~Marcus Buckingham

"It's Not My Fault"

Today is the last day of the winter break for the school where I teach online classes, but it hasn't been much of a break for me.  This particular group of students includes several "not-my-faulters."  I usually get one or two per class, but this session is rife with them, and they haven't left me alone during the holidays.

The course syllabus and policies clearly spell out their general responsibilities and the specifics of each assignment, but the "not-my-faulters" are always shocked and amazed that I enforce the written policies and grade according to the printed rubrics.  Submitted a blank paper or the wrong assignment?  Left out half the assigned work?  Copied code from the Internet without citing the source?  "Yes, but it wasn't my fault!"  Oh, the homework brownies did it for you?  Give me a break.  "If you just call me, I can explain."  No, you can't.  Your power/Internet connection went down, your mother/brother/hamster died, you had a heart attack/went into early labor - that's terrible and I'm sorry for you, but it doesn't mean you should get full credit for missing, incomplete, or plagiarized work.  And BTW, repeatedly whining to me will not change that.  Nor will complaining to the University; they always back me up.  PLEASE complain - I double-dog dare you.  You'll be sorry.

I wouldn't be ranting like this except I am supposed to be preparing these students for life in the workplace, and employers don't accept much short of an incapacitating stroke for missing or substandard work.  I know - as a manager, I was the one who had to write performance improvement plans or fire employees who didn't get that message.  How did these people get to college without learning to take responsibility for their own actions?  What were their parents thinking???

Stuff happens.  We all forget, procrastinate, get sick, get distracted, suffer personal tragedies, screw up.  But when we do, we owe it to ourselves as well as those around us to say, "I'm sorry.  It WAS my fault.  I'll suffer the penalties and try very hard never to do it again."

[UPDATE: Right after I posted this I received a note from one of my other students who had just suffered a devastating loss.  She told me she was withdrawing from class because she knew that she would be unable to focus for the next few weeks, but would re-enroll in the near future and finish up her degree.  No whining, pleading, or excuses - just pulling up her socks and getting on with things.  She and the others like her are the students who keep me teaching.]

"You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of." ~Jim Rohn

The Greeting Card Abyss

In our mildly dysfunctional family, birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's Day and Father's Day have always posed a problem.  We just aren't the kind of people who show up in a Hallmark movie-of-the-week, or between the covers of their greeting cards.  My dad, the parent who hugged and kissed us and occasionally played with us, loathes mawkish sentiment and is made acutely uncomfortable by any card that doesn't have a funny animal on the front.  My mother, on the other hand, would love to receive a "World's Best Mom" card, but during the time we were growing up she was a demanding perfectionist who hated to be touched, so I have never been able to bring myself to give her one.

Next month my parents will be celebrating their first anniversary since moving into assisted living, and the greeting card crisis has entered a new and uglier phase.  As my mother's dementia has increased, my father's patience and happiness have steadily eroded.  None of the commercial cards I've looked at has seemed even marginally appropriate.  Anniversary cards are few and far between, anyway, far outnumbered by the birthday, "friend," and sympathy cards; I guess we all have birthdays and die, but only a minority marry and stay married.  The anniversary cards I've seen fall into one of the following categories: "You two are perfect for each other;" "Your marriage is an example of God's love come to earth;" or "Wishing you many more happy years together."  Can I buy any of these given my parents' current situation?  I think not.

In short, this may be the year of the homemade card.  I'm thinking of recycling the invitation I made for their last big anniversary party, or at least its cover:

Yes, that's their wedding picture.  Now I just have to think of something (besides "Happy Anniversary") to put inside.  Frankly, the things that spring immediately to mind ("It's not the years, it's the mileage," "Still crazy after all these years") are almost as inappropriate as anything Hallmark ever came up with.

Maybe just "Happy Anniversary" is fine.  With a "Love, Beth" after it.

"Sentimentality is intolerable because it is false feeling." ~Doris Lessing

Embracing the Siesta

The high temperature in Phoenix and most of the surrounding communities was 119 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday.  Once in the 30 years my sister has lived here the temperature passed 120; that day Sky Harbor airport closed because the lift charts many aircraft use don't go any farther, so it's not safe for them to fly.  The next two days are supposed to be as hot if not hotter, so we may be seeing grounded planes again this weekend.

My official work day at the church ends at noon, but on extremely hot afternoons I'm tempted to stay there and bask in the office air conditioning.  Because I'm on a time-sensitive rate plan with the electric utility, my house is pretty toasty between noon (when the rates and my thermostat go up) and 7pm (when they both come back down).  On days like today, even if I wanted the house to be cooler in the afternoons, my heat pump wouldn't be able to deliver; it worked hard all day trying (and failing) to keep the place at 82.  I have nothing but respect for those who lived in this area in the days before air conditioning.

OK, I could hang out at the mall (also much chillier than my home), but doing that without spending more than I should is pretty difficult.  My preferred alternative is a short nap under the ceiling fan.  Of course, if it turns into a long nap, I'm courting insomnia at night.

Maybe the real answer is to temporarily become nocturnal.  I could sleep from noon until 7pm and then stay up all night long, at least until the weather breaks.

Just call me "WOL."

"...Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL..." ~A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Support Your Local Bookstore, Too

Early on in this blog I wrote a rather cranky post about my reluctance to abandon paper books for the electronic versions.  It was entitled "Support Your Local Library."  After an article I read yesterday, I believe we need to support our bookstores, too.

The article, by Annie Murphy Paul and entitled "How Reading Can Be Like Falling In Love," was published on PBS's NextAvenue blog, and it discussed how reading primarily online material may dumb down our children.

It turns out that reading online doesn't train or use the brain in the same way that reading a hard copy does, and only "deep reading" (the kind you do with a real book) enables humans to engage in deep thinking.  This makes sense to me.  All the website-building classes I ever took urged us to present online material in the visual version of sound bites - that is, in short, instantly understandable chunks that fit easily on even a small screen.  The readers of this deliberately abridged information aren't absorbing enough detail to think deeply about whatever subject is being presented, even if they aren't also being distracted by embedded hyperlinks and flashing ads for "weird old" remedies for their wrinkles or stomach fat.

E-readers are probably less likely to have this effect because they are more often used to read entire books and less apt to be cluttered with distracting sidebars, but as e-readers morph into multi-purpose tablets this advantage may diminish or disappear.

Support your local (or online) bookstore today.  Buy a child a REAL book.

"Observing young people’s attachment to digital devices, some progressive educators and permissive parents talk about needing to 'meet kids where they are,' molding instruction around their onscreen habits. This is mistaken. We need, rather, to show them someplace they've never been, a place only deep reading can take them." ~ Annie Murphy Paul

Breathing Right

I've mentioned before (probably at tedious length) that I have Allergy Issues.  Everywhere I move I eventually become sensitive to the local allergens and throw out new symptoms.  One thing remains constant, though - the nasal congestion.

This and the related post-nasal drip make sleeping difficult.  I can't sleep on my back at all (I wake up in the night feeling that I'm drowning), and during the worst months of allergy season I suffer anxiety dreams all night long that are probably caused by lack of oxygen to the brain.

For a while I considered getting a CPAP machine, but when Barry got his he was told that his nasal allergies had to be under control before the CPAP would do him any good.  Clearly, then, that's not the answer.

Several years ago, when Breathe Right strips first came out, I tried them to see if they could hold my nasal passages open even a little farther during the night.  Unfortunately, I never managed to make it through until morning with the strip still attached to my nose; the adhesive apparently wasn't strong enough to stay put on my (admittedly rather large) nose when I rolled from side to side in my sleep.

However, recently I was scanning the allergy nostrums in the drug store and noticed that Breathe Right strips now come in Original and two other designs - Extra (with a stronger adhesive) and Advanced (a stiff plastic design).  I bought small packages of Extra and Advanced strips and gave them a try.  The Advanced also didn't work for me - once again, the adhesive isn't quite up to the task of keeping the strip on my nose - but the Extra model stays in place and does the job.

Do I enjoy scrubbing my nose and sticking an ugly misshapen Band-Aid-like item on it every night (not to mention the fun of peeling it off in the morning)?  Not really, but the pleasure of sleeping the night through in peaceful oblivion more than makes up for any temporary annoyance.

"The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to."  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Resisting the Rush

In my post about needing to relax in order to sing, I mentioned that I had spent most of my adult life in a constant state of tension.  That's because I was an adrenaline junkie.

Many people who say that mean they're attracted to danger and spend their spare time hang-gliding, shark-baiting, or jumping their motorcycles over school buses without wearing a helmet.  Not me.  My adrenal glands were always at the mercy of my career.  Insurance may sound dull to most of you, but I was generally managing a department full of rugged individuals, handling complaints from at least one state's Department of Insurance, trying to calm unhappy agents (did I mention some of them were married to the mob?), traveling under harrowing conditions to work-related public speaking gigs, and trying to balance an impossible budget, all within extremely tight time-frames.  For several years I worked 70 hours a week - 9am to 9pm on weekdays, often without a lunch break; at home on Saturday afternoons and evenings; and back to the office on Sunday afternoons.  Fortunately in those days I could afford a cleaning person, laundry service, and eating out.  Not having children turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  At least work was my main bad habit - I didn't have time for substance abuse or power shopping.

Even the years I didn't work 70 hours a week were full.  I may have set some kind of record for how long it takes to earn a master's degree.  My BA is in English and history, so of course I took no undergraduate business classes when I was in college the first time around.  When I decided to earn an MBA I had to go to night school to pick up basic courses in accounting, finance, statistics, economics, IT, etc. before I could even apply to grad school.  By the time I moved to New York I had two years of graduate work under my belt, only to learn that the new grad school I was applying to wouldn't accept transfer credits from ANYWHERE.  Back to the drawing board, and another five years of night school.  With group work sucking up my weekends.

I thought I would finally be able to relax when I retired from insurance, but then came crisis-a-day (or sometimes crisis-every-five-minutes) Barry.  When we were together I sometimes felt like a sprinter at the starting line, waiting for the gun.  Readiness was all.  Coping would be required; the only question was WHEN.

So, for the last two years I have been letting go.  I've had occasional minor financial stress and of course the hassle of getting my parents moved, but nothing approaching the constant demands of my previous life.  Sometimes I have even been able to kick back and do NOTHING without feeling guilty.  Until...

I started working full time for my friend the realtor this winter.  She was busier than any two human beings should be, so shifting part of the load to me wasn't as helpful as we'd both hoped.  Every Monday morning when I turn on my computer and start reading the emails that piled up over the weekend, I can actually feel my heart rate and my breathing speed up.

In my former life, I would have tried to stay on top of everything by working longer hours.  I could easily go back to spending my life on red alert, riding the adrenaline wave until I drop from exhaustion.  This time, though, I'm trying to work smarter, not harder.  I work late only when it's absolutely necessary.  I organize little pockets of chaos so we can find what we need without frantic, time-wasting searches.  I'm evaluating Client Relationship Management software so we won't have to consult a gazillion separate spreadsheets to see if we've done everything we need to do for all our clients.

It's not really enough.  I need to do more to bleed off the tension at night.  I still need to get back into the gym and cut back on my stress eating.  The good news, though, is that at least now I relax enough on the weekends so that I DO feel that adrenaline kick-start on Mondays; I'm not living with it 24/7.

Deep breath...thinking OM...

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it." ~Lily Tomlin

"What were you thinking, man?"

One of my guilty pleasures is Castle, a TV series about a crime novelist.  In one of my favorite episodes, Castle's 70-ish mother Martha sets up a "My Face" page and posts a 30-year-old photo of herself on it.  Her high school sweetheart, Chet Palaburn, sees it and sends her a "friend" request, which totally panics her - what happens if he wants to meet and thinks she looks like (in her words) "Dorian Gray in reverse?"  She finally accepts his request and flips to his page, only to see a photo there that's even older - possibly dating back to his high school days.  Her final words are, "Chet Palaburn.  What were you thinking, man?"

Between my pre-Barry online dating experiences and the ones I've had lately, this (or its female equivalent) could well be THE question for members of the electronic lonely hearts clubs.  Don't people who post photos from 10 years and 50 pounds ago want potential partners to recognize them when they finally meet in the flesh?  One of my male friends showed up for a date with someone allegedly his own age and faded right back out the door again when he saw a woman old enough to be his mother waiting for him.

Old and Photoshopped photos are not the only way in which online daters mislead others.  I've met people who lied about their height, hobbies, hair, and religious convictions.  Perhaps the worst example of bait-and-switch I ever encountered was the man who claimed to be a non-smoking social drinker but turned out to be a chain-smoking recovering alcoholic.  OK, in most of these cases I probably would have refused to meet the guy at all had he been honest - but wouldn't that be better than a personal rejection after the truth comes out?  And no, buying me a drink or even dinner isn't going to overcome the fact that in person he strongly reminds me of one of Santa's less attractive elves. It's all I can do to keep from blurting out, "What were you thinking, man?"

I thought (silly me) that we were all looking for the best possible fit with another person.  I was initially heartened by the number of men who list honesty as one of the key traits they hope to find in a woman - but some of the very guys who insist on an honest woman see nothing wrong with fudging the facts on their own resumes.  WWYT, M?

Maybe it's time to go back to flirting with guys in the produce section of the grocery store.

"For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth." ~Bo Bennett

Shopping for Beefcake

I've never believed in astrology, or Fate with a capital F, or even God as an entity with a close-up and personal interest in me, but sometimes the stars do align and events arrange themselves to herd me inexorably in one seemingly inevitable direction.

Take my move to New York.  The very day I was turned down for a major promotion at my last job in the Midwest, I came home to find the National Underwriter in my mailbox with an ad for a New York job I was qualified for on the back cover.  Less than a month later, I was working just off Wall Street.  Had I received that promotion, I'd probably still be living in South Dakota.  Had the ad appeared a week earlier, I wouldn't have given it a second glance.  Had it been a few weeks later, I might have been reconciled to my passed-over state.  But no, it showed up when my sense of injustice was at its white-hot peak, and the rest is history.  Kismet?  Well, maybe.

Something similar has been at work this last month.  First I took advantage of some awesome after-Christmas clothing sales to augment my work wardrobe with sharp new stuff.  Next the staff at the church whose website I maintain hounded me into getting my picture professionally taken for the church directory, and it was way better than I expected.  Then I tired of trying to figure out how to squeeze the gym into my schedule and bought a folding exercise bike I can use at home, which lets me exercise in two ways - by pedaling while watching TV, and by muscling it in and out of the closet and setting it up and taking it down.  And after all that, Barry (with whom I technically broke up almost 2 years ago) finally realized that I was never coming back and found a new sweetie.  I am - O joy! - forever off the hook with regard to his computer and personal problems; he said he wants to make "a clean break."  Free at last, free at last...  So I signed up temporarily (for free) with OurTime, the dating website for people 50 years old and up.  Just to window shop, you understand.

As I've mentioned, Barry and I met through Match.com, so I've done the online meet and greet thing before, but it's different this time.  Then I was trying to be as open-minded as possible.  The guy was three inches shorter than me?  Fine, I'd wear flats forever.  He lived on the other side of the greater Phoenix area?  No problem, I was commuting most of the way there already.  He was supporting a deadbeat child and a houseful of grandchildren?  How nice that he was a family man.

PB (post Barry), this is no longer the case.  Life with him seems to have permanently depleted my supply of tolerance.  I am surveying the offerings emailed to me as if they are plastic-wrapped trays of hamburger labeled "Manager's Special."  Why are they there?  Are they too close to expiration?  Like a fussy shopper I sort them into the "Yes," "No," and "Maybe" buckets on the site.  I throw smokers, short guys, sports fanatics, East Valley residents, and guys who can't spell or hate to read into "No" faster than I would discard a package of ground beef with an off smell.  Call me shallow, but I don't want to settle; I want someone who is a good fit in as many ways as possible.

The one area where I'm still being lenient is looks.  Many people don't photograph well, and I'm more interested in what's inside the guy's head than outside it.  Mind you, I wouldn't be UPSET if the right guy turns out to be beefcake too...

"I've been dating since I was fifteen. I'm exhausted. Where is he?" ~Kristin Davis

Going, Going...NOT Gone

So where have I been for the last month?

Working on my parent's house.  Blowing the yard, replacing light switch plates, cleaning the last few pockets of grime, and...PAINTING.

The house was built at the tail end of the 1970's and the kitchen countertops are then-trendy mauve laminate.  The previous owners embraced the color and installed cabinet pulls with rose (the flower) painted ceramic insets; Mom and Dad replaced the hardware with plain brass, but they painted the kitchen blue, which made the counters look even pinker in contrast.  I said from the start of the selling process that we might end up painting the kitchen beige to make the counters look browner and less dated, but the rest of the family poo-pooed that idea.

Then the stager saw the kitchen.

Three coats of paint and two weekends of my time and my sister's later, the kitchen still looked faintly blue in some lights, but we declared it as good as it was going to get and my parents finally listed the house with the realtor I've been working for.

They received an offer almost immediately (within 24 hours!) and we have spent the last couple of weeks trying to keep the place clean and the plants alive during a record cold snap until the closing.

Unfortunately, due to that record cold, the buyer's inspector was unable to test the air conditioning system, so the buyer wants an A/C service company to test it.  Since we are still in the middle of the cold wave, calling a service company out to look at the system would be an exercise in futility, and Dad refused.  So, the sale has fallen out of escrow and we're starting all over again.

I just hope the place sells before it burns down or the citrus trees are seriously damaged by the frost.  I'm also hoping that the next buyer doesn't look the place over and say, "Could you paint the kitchen blue?"

"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.” ~Edgar Degas

The Happiness of Hats

Did you see the photo of my sister Sue in front of the Hotel Villa San Pio in Rome?  If so, you probably noticed that she was wearing a hat.

I've mentioned before that we grew up in the era prior to the invention of SPF, when the little Coppertone Girl was dark brown and lifeguards had white stripes down their noses.  Both of our parents and various other relatives have had to have multiple skin cancers removed, and Sue and I would rather not go down that road.  For our late summer cruise to the eastern Mediterranean, therefore, we packed our SPF 45 sunscreen, lightweight but long-sleeved shirts and jackets, and hats.

Finding the right hats to take was more difficult than you might think.  We both have smallish heads and Sue's hair is extremely short, so "one size fits all" hats don't fit us.  At times Sue has even had to resort to "youth" hats, which tend to come in one style: the bucket.  Fortunately, through the magic of the Internet, we were able to locate the Wallaroo Hat Company, which sells ADJUSTABLE hats with an Ultraviolet Protection Factor of 50+.

On the first couple of shore excursions we took, we were almost the only people wearing hats.  Everywhere we went on the cruise, however, hat vendors abounded, and they all did a brisk business as the sun beat down on us day after day.  By the last shore excursion, over half of those along were wearing hats purchased en route.  Did they fit as well as ours?  Did THEY have UPF 50+?  I think not.

"Wallaroo Hat Company is committed to the elimination of skin cancer. The Wallaroo Sun Protection is a promise that each year, we will donate 1% of our profits to skin cancer research, education and prevention in the United States." ~http://www.wallaroohats.com/

The LONG Vacation

For those of you who've been wondering where I've been:

• First my sister and I went on our long-awaited cruise to the Greek islands.  Fabulous time, but the onboard Internet charges were pretty fabulous, too; I only used the minutes I absolutely had to for checking my email.  Pictures to follow...many, many pictures.
• The minute we got home we discovered that our parents had moved up the date of their relocation to assisted living and put me in charge of arrangements for the sale of their possessions and their house.  We moved the furniture, clothing, etc. that my parents designated the next week and I have spent most of the time since (aided on weekends by Sue and sporadically by Dad) going through all of the stuff they've accumulated in 80+ years of living.  When I tell you we found Dad's grade school report cards and two large-ish boxes of photos of people no one could identify, you'll get some idea of what we were up against.  Fortunately the estate sale people start pricing things on Monday and the sale itself is next weekend.  After that we can have the carpets cleaned, finish patching the nail holes in the walls, etc., and actually list the house.  (BTW, I already cleaned the carpets once myself because the neighbor wanted to show the house to a friend from California who was in town last weekend.)
• I mentioned last spring that I would have to give up singing in the church choir due to the contract job I was taking, but the director asked me to keep showing up on Sundays even if I couldn't attend the weekly practice sessions - revealing a touching but misplaced confidence in my ability to sight-sing.  Now she's asked me to sing a solo (this Sunday) and repeat the performance at a reception for clergy at one of the local hospitals next week.  I agreed, but I have NEVER sung alone in public before, so I am terrified.  Over the last three weeks I have practiced the first verse of "You Raise Me Up" so many times that I'm probably singing it in my sleep.  I trust this means my vocal chords will channel my inner Josh Groban on automatic pilot even if the rest of me freezes.
• The contract job that was supposed to only last for three months was renewed and just finished in mid-September.  Almost immediately a friend of mine offered me a full-time marketing job, which I started as soon as the home-excavation project was more or less under control.  So far, so good.  But busy.
• Still teaching online classes - in Week 3 of the current session - and handling website maintenance projects for all my regular clients.
• In what little spare time has remained to me I've been catching up on several long-overdue projects in the yard and the house, including finishing a needlepoint pillow I started 20 years ago.  Now I just have to finish the bedroom curtains...

Excelsior!

"Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings." ~Jane Austen

Preview of Coming Disasters

No, faithful readers, I have not dropped off the edge of the earth, but it's been a very busy month.  My mother's memory problems have escalated to the point where Dad finally admitted she can't be left alone if anything happens to him.  They've put down a deposit on an apartment in a facility with assisted living and memory care options and are scheduled to move there at the end of September.  My sister and I are touring the facility today so we can help them decide what to keep and what to eliminate, and then we're going to their house to start the sorting and weeding.  My mother in particular is overwhelmed by the logistics of moving, but we keep telling her that we'll do all the work and she can just sit back and direct traffic.

And, indeed, I have been doing some of the work already - notifying family members, hooking Dad up with a realtor, reassuring Mom, discussing with Dad which of his possessions (like his van, his golf clubs, and many of his tools) are welcome to live in the empty half of my garage.  Before this situation blew up, my sister and I had paid for a cruise - not the one in November we had originally looked at, but one for the last week of this month and the first week of next month - so I'm having dinner this week with one of my cousins and his wife to give them a copy of my parents' keys so they can be the go-to folks if anything goes wrong while Sue and I are gone.  I also have a date with my lawyer this week to take my parents off my living will, medical power of attorney, etc., and replace them with the same cousin.

Fortunately the contract job I've been working in downtown Phoenix will be over on September 14 and my next online class doesn't start until October, so I'll have a couple of weeks to help my parents pretty much full time with the final flurry of moving.  My cousin's wife went through a similar process a few years ago and I think I'm going to adopt her "day of the move" strategy: she sent her parents off for a nice lunch while she supervised the movers, unpacked all their stuff and put most of it away, and got rid of all the packing materials so they could just walk in and feel at home.  As someone who moved a year ago myself, I understand how depressing a huge heap of boxes in the middle of the living room can be.

Well, time to go pick up my sister and visit "The Home."

Getting old really isn't for sissies.

“Keeping up the appearance of having all your marbles is hard work, but important.”
~ Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

Kissing and Telling - or Not

The members of our book club are busy people, so we generally limit the size of the books we choose to be sure that as many of us as possible can finish them before the discussion.  This month, however, we picked a longer work than usual (about 500 words in paperback), and only about half of us finished it.  I really had to push myself to get it all read, not because of the length, but because by 2/3 of the way through I was so disgusted with the characters that I really didn’t care what happened to any of them.

The book was The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, and it’s actually two books in one.  The protagonist is Irina McGovern, an American graphic artist living in London with her long-time lover, a think-tank wonk specializing in terrorism.  Early in the book Irina is tempted to kiss a British friend on his birthday; the rest of the novel follows Irina through two alternate futures, one in which she gives way to temptation and one in which she does not.

This is one of those books that none of us actually enjoyed reading, but that generated a very lively discussion.  Sometimes directly and sometimes obliquely, the author examines what attracts us to members of the opposite sex; what constitutes true intimacy; how tradeoffs between talent, money, and power can enhance or destroy a relationship; and whether trying to change one’s real self for someone else can ever be successful.  In the end, although Irina is beautiful, talented, and desperate to please the man she’s with, both of her possible futures end bleakly, at least in her eyes.  That wasn’t particularly surprising, since no matter how well things went for Irina during the course of the story(s), she never cheered up.

My main quibble with this book, in fact, is that the tone throughout is one of grim irony.  The bitter discussions between the main characters would have been easier to slog through with an occasional leavening of fun. (That's FUN, Lionel, not just sex - got it?)  After all, these characters were reasonably well and well-off members of the middle class who supposedly loved one another; surely they would have had a few laughs during the years covered by the novel.  One would think that a female author capable of changing her name from Mary Ann to Lionel must have a sense of humor tucked away somewhere, but perhaps that choice was also informed by irony instead.

An interesting book, but not one that I’ll be reading again.

"...the author is more interested in raising questions about love and fidelity than in pat moralizing." ~Kirkus Review on The Post-Birthday World (quoted on the dust jacket)

In the Market for a Tank

OK, so I've been a Very Bad Blogger for the last couple of weeks.  I landed the contract job I applied for and have been working 40-hour weeks at the client's site with an hour-long commute in each direction.  The job is actually a lot of fun but I've gotten used to playing hooky in the middle of the day, and working straight through is pretty tiring, not to mention the hideous drive home up Grand Avenue, aka US 60.

Advantages of this job: enjoyable work; friendly co-workers; no more cabin fever; the chance of long-term employment; funny work-related stories (remind me to tell you about the non-fire non-drill we had on Monday); and as much income in a week as my former largest client paid me in a month.  At least temporarily I can afford to eat out occasionally and maybe hire a professional cleaning service to muck out my poor neglected home.

Disadvantages: the commute, the commute, the commute.

If I survive the 3-month contract period, there's a chance that I could be hired as a permanent employee with the possibility of flex-time, telecommuting, and (as a government employee) free use of public transit - yay!  Because after two weeks of driving into and out of downtown Phoenix during rush hour, I'm thinking I should stop wishing for fictional force shields and photon torpedoes and invest in a used tank.

"A commuter tie-up consists of you - and people who for some reason won't use public transit."  ~Robert Brault