July 2019 - Page 2 of 4 - Adulting: Second- Half

Touches Your Heart

This is also a re-post from Think Smarter. We just never know what someone else could be going through. It is so brave to do something “out of the norm.” It is so brave to try to better oneself. What a beautiful thing to validate and to support!

I hope that you all have a beautiful, relaxing Sunday and that you can just soak in all of the goodness surrounding you. There is just so much good if you open your eyes to it. On Sunday, it is a good idea to follow what your eyes see until what you see, touches your heart.

Real Beauty

I took the above from my favorite Twitter feed. (Think Smarter) Is it just me or does there seem to be so much emphasis on physical looks these days? Or do I just think about it more because I am getting older? When I think about a famous beautiful person who probably aged more gracefully than just about anybody, it had to be Audrey Hepburn. In her words:

Image result for Audrey Hepburn Quotes beautiful older woman

Real beauty is timeless and breathtaking.

PYAHT-nee-tsuh Is Russian For Friday

So, it turns out that the FaceApp that I wrote about earlier in the week, the app that shows you what you will likely look like when you are old (honestly, bad idea from the start, right?!?), is probably run by the Russians in order to steal all of our data. I have to thank our son for handing us over to the Russians on a silver platter, all for a few cheap laughs. My husband says that we’ll be vacationing in Siberia next year. Needless to say, FaceApp will no longer be on my list of Friday favorites.

Happy Friday, friends and readers! On Fridays, my consumer side comes out. It is Favorite Things Friday, here at the blog. I’ll list about three of my favorite toys, books, cosmetics, jewelry, songs, etc. and I encourage you to add your favorites to the Comments section. Please see previous Friday posts for more fun to indulge in. Here are today’s favorites:

Rayland Baxter’s cover for Mac Miller’s “Come Back to Earth” – This is one of the best songs that I have downloaded in a while. I listened to it again and again yesterday. I love Rayland’s voice and I love Mac Miller’s talented, soulful song-writing. What a terrible loss he was for us! RIP Mac Miller.

The New Barker magazine – This magazine touts itself as “Florida’s Top Dog Lifestyle Magazine”, but if you love dogs like I do, you will still appreciate its beautiful artwork (the covers are frame-able), its adorable pictures of pooches, its interesting articles and its great products ideas for pet lovers, even if you are not a Floridian. You can find back issues on ebay to see if this is your bag, before you order a regular yearly subscription. This is the one magazine that I keep every issue because just looking at the covers, makes my tail wag.

Totally Taffy – One of my all-time favorite things is a vintage chimpanzee candy dish that I bought over a decade ago. It sits in our entry and I am forever trying to find pretty eye-catching candy for it, that no one really wants to eat. (I know, I know . . . I could go with the decorative glass variety but I don’t want anyone to accidentally break their teeth and/or swallow glass) So, I bought Totally Taffy at the Fresh Market for the chimp dish, because of its pretty colorful wrappers and guess what, we’re Fresh Out! Totally Taffy is Totally Yummy. It is gooey, full of flavor and impossible to eat just one, and keep in mind, I don’t even consider myself a taffy fan.

Have a great Friday! Have a great weekend, but don’t be this guy:

Ewww Gross!

What is it about pimple popping that you think fascinates and intrigues people so much?

It really pulls on emotions for people. It’s so interesting because something that is based on something gross and shocking actually makes people happy. It relaxes them, it decreases their anxiety, it’s thrilling. And when people like it, they don’t just like it ― they’re obsessed.

(the above is from an interview with Dr. Pimple Popper)

I don’t particularly love the TV show Dr. Pimple Popper, but my kids like it. And I don’t tell them to turn it off. I have a very sensitive gag reflex, so I am always sure to have a throw pillow close by, to put in front of my face, whenever the kids are indulging in some watching of some bulging cysts being excised or a weird rash being scraped.

Yesterday, I had to take my daughter to the doctor because she had a clogged ear. When they performed the cleaning and drainage on her ear, so much crud came out of it, I am convinced that our ear canals really should be called the Erie canals. The crazy thing is, we were all fascinated with the little plastic tub filled with her ear wax and gook. Different nurses came in to check it out, my daughter kept asking me to bring it over to her, and even I seemed drawn to the tub, like a moth to the flame. Later yesterday evening, my daughter was lamenting that she should have taken a picture of it. I guess that it would have made great material for her social media.

Why do shows like Dr. Pimple Popper even exist? Why do we find our selves interested in gross stuff? This is taken from an article entitled There’s a Reason Why We Like to Click on Gross Stuff on the Internet:

“The evolutionary idea is, what’s functional about disgust? It keeps us safe,” Skolnick continues. “Rotten food has a sour, bitter flavor, and that’s a cue to us. We spit it out.” The weird taste and nasty smell protect you from eating bacteria that might make you sick. Photos or videos of wounds serve a similar purpose. Skolnick often kicks off one of his psychology classes by encouraging students not to Google image search “recluse spider bite”-though, of course, they do, and you might right now. “Sometimes we’re disgusted when we see someone with red rashes or welts. We don’t want to stand next to them. That disgust keeps us safe from contagious elements.”

So if that explains why we need disgust, why do we like disgust (you know you’ve clicked play on at least one cringe-inducing video that’s popped up on your Facebook feed)? Clark McCauley, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Bryn Mawr College, has some ideas. “It’s similar to why people go on roller coasters. You feel fear, even though you know you’re safe,” he says. “You get a big arousal value out of them.” . . . . . Skolnick also compares Googling gross stuff to watching a scary movie. The whole point is to freak yourself out in a completely controlled, secure environment-you’re never really in danger.

I’ve decided that no matter how controlled the environment, I don’t need too much of this kind of excitement in my life. Uncontrolled gagging is not a pleasant experience. Still, my curiosity sometimes gets to the best of me, I must admit.

“Revel in grossness. Leave food in your teeth. Proudly display feminine hygiene products.”
― Jennifer Ziegler, How Not to Be Popular

Front Row Seats

On an aside, before I get to what’s really on my mind today, last night, I went to bed belly laughing with my husband. My second eldest son used a “Face App” to age himself and his siblings to an age, older than even his parents, and he sent the pictures to the family chat. It is kind of disturbing to see pictures of your kids at ages, even older than yourselves. I got a glimpse of who will be coming to visit me in the nursing home. Their responses were even more hilarious. “Scary.” “Terrifying.” “Brutal.” I said to my husband, “I wonder back when we were their ages (currently spanning ages 15-23), if we had that app and saw pictures of what we looked like today, would we find the startling pictures to be scary, terrifying and brutal?” Thankfully, aging is a slower process than an instant application, so our response to aging is not quite as harsh as that, except on really bad days.

Another concept that I kept pondering a lot yesterday was self-care/self-love. Yesterday, was kind of a “bad” day in some ways, but like all bad days, it had a silver lining. The people whom I love most – my husband, my kids, some extended family and some really good friends and even my dogs, bolstered me, nurtured me, cared for me, validated me and made me feel quite loved and understood. I’m lucky to have such good, solid people in my life. I hope that I am as good at nurturing them in return, for all that they do for me. I think we all, especially we women, spend a lot of time nurturing and caring for others. Sometimes we even get a lot of our own “self-worth” from what we do for others. But the question that kept popping into my head yesterday, is the wondering to myself, if I would put my own self into the category of the best carers/nurturers, in my own life.

At this stage of the game, in this second half of our adult lives, most of us have experienced the painful process of having to extricate toxic people from our lives. Even if we still love the damaging person(s), we realize that for our own sanity, the toxicity and the drama and the upsets that these people’s actions create, no longer deserve a place, in the front row of our lives. Even if we don’t do the extrication process in order to protect ourselves, we often finally do it, for our families’ best interests and health and sanity. So, the question kept popping up in my mind, what category would I put myself into, in my own life? Would I be in the loving/caring/nurturing category or would I often be in the toxic person category? When I talk to myself, am I kind, considerate, understanding and patient with myself, or am I judging, condescending and harsh? When I care for myself, do I encourage good nutrition, extra sleep and healthy exercise or do I look for the “quick fix” from unhealthy options? When I give myself advice do I do it in a positive light or is it spiraled in negativity? Do I give myself the sound advice that I would give to the people I love the most, and want for them, only the best? In short, do I treat myself how the best nurturers in my life treat me, or am I in the toxic person category? Do I treat myself as a loved, valued and respected member of the group of people who I care for the most? Do I nurture myself in the ways that I hope to nurture my spouse, my children, my family, my pets and my best friends? I came to the conclusion yesterday, that self-care is not just an occasional splurge on a massage or allowing myself to spend some hours just reading a good book. Self-care is making sure that I am in the circle of people who I trust the most, the people who I know have my best interests at heart – the people who are rooting for me. Self-care is making sure that I, myself, am not in that circle of people who have proven to be too negative and hurtful to be a big part of my life any longer. Like it is often said, we can’t do our best job loving and caring for others, if we don’t do it for ourselves first. For some reason that statement became more clear to me yesterday. Do you treat yourself like a person who deserves a front row seat in your life? I think that it is a good thing to ponder, from time to time.

One Year Anniversary

Today is a very special day at Adulting – Second Half. Today is the one year anniversary of this blog. One year ago, I started this blog on a whim (and honestly, probably my way to process some grief). My husband and I had just dropped our eldest son at his first adult apartment, about to embark on his first, real adult job. He was officially off of our payroll, and officially at the beginning of a whole new path for himself, a path in which we would now be mostly bystanders and adoring fans, waving from the sidelines. I realized, particularly in that moment, that I was nearing the end of a major path in my own life. My Adulting – First Half had been on this wide path of child rearing, focused on raising our four children to independence, for a long while now. The path has sometimes been smooth, sometimes rocky, and up and down hills and mountains. The path has been sometimes clear with breath-taking views of gorgeous horizons. The path has sometimes been foggy and the path has even run into some big storms, here and there. Even still, my Adulting – First Half road has been a beautiful, miraculous journey, a path that I have never regretted taking.

My eldest son had reached our united path’s finish line and our three other children, dutifully always following their eldest brother, like “ducks in a row” (as I have always insisted), are nearing that finish line at a clip pace, as well. And therefore, so am I.

I want you to know how grateful I am, to all of you, for your support, your kindness and your validation, as I have dared to take steps into my new path, my Adulting – Second Half path. In some ways, I suspect that this path is a path that will help me to find ways back to parts of myself that I had long forgotten even existed. And that is scary and exciting, all at the same time. The best part of writing this blog, is the realization that as I embark on a new path in life, and probably at lot of little side paths and stop offs along the way, I am not alone. None of us are alone. Thank you for being such a beautiful, comforting reminder of that fact.

With heads held high, and hearts wide open, forward march . . . . . .

Adulting – First Half

I recently purchased a book for the two reasons that we are told never to buy or decide to read a certain book. The reason why I chose this book to read, is that I found the title intriguing and I liked the cover. (I’ve decided that I will focus A LOT on the cover and the title, if I should ever write a book.) I had no idea what the book was about.

The book is called Guac is Extra, But So Am I – The Reluctant Adult’s Handbook by Sarah Solomon. The funny thing is this book is all about Adulting – First Half. I’m feeling very voyeuristic reading it, because it is like peering into the young twenty-somethings lives of today’s world without having to ask for details from my 23 year-old son, who might be tempted to sugarcoat things that he would think that his “fragile mommy” wouldn’t understand – ha! I dare you to ask your kids what a “thot” is? (or just look it up on the Urban Dictionary website)

The book is hilarious, offering all sorts of advice, in every aspect of a young person’s starting out adult life, from practical issues, such as investments and house buying (according to the book, a new trend is for people to purchase their “vacation homes” before their real homes, because those homes are more affordable and can offer investment income later – hmmm, the economy is humming, I guess.) It offers advice on crypto-currencies, how to make mixed drinks with the complimentary drinks offered on airplanes, and why certain engagement ring trends may be too trendy.

Apparently, I missed the boat on the blog trend. Bloggers who started blogs in 2006-2010 hit the market at the right time, before the market got saturated, according to the book. Here is an actual quote from the book, highlighted in red:

“Another one bites the dust,” she muttered, seeing another longwinded FB post about someone quitting their jobs to focus on their, blog, seven years too late.”

There are a lot of the things in the book that are quite different than when I was starting out my adult life, in the early 1990s. Certainly, our trendy “early adulting advice books” would never have had whole chapters devoted to social media, and the etiquette and career ramifications surrounding social media. Hell, I didn’t spend much time at all, on a computer, until around 1998, when I was about 27. Of course, most of that time was spent waiting forever and ever, for an internet website to download, listening to the noisy dial-up connection doing its thing, as I changed a fussy baby’s diaper.

That baby, whose diaper I was changing, is now a twenty-three year old IT professional. Yesterday, he texted his Dad and I, a picture of his lobster roll that he is eating in San Diego, where he is attending a business conference. He has always loved to eat. I figure that when I am done perusing this fun, interesting read, I’ll pass it on to him. While reading the book, it struck me that while a lot of the advice offered in the book would never have applied to me when I was in my young twenties (there is a whole chapter entitled Personal Brand and a whole sub-chapter on Ghosting), the tone and the feelings imbued in the book, are the same feelings that I think that I felt, at that stage of the game – excited, scared, a little cocky (which most likely was a cover for a lot of insecurity), a little defensive and yet optimistic and hopeful about the wide canvas ahead of me. Interestingly, these feelings are not too different than the feelings that I feel now, as I am embarking on the new empty nest stage of my Adulting – Second Half. And what’s even better about this situation, is that all of the advice for 20-somethings, is written and contained in a beautiful, hardbound book (with a lovely cover, I might add). I take this to mean that books are classic and timeless and likely to be around, for at least a little while longer. Books are something that still connect us, no matter what generation we are from. And if that universal connection, that knowing connection that I am feeling right now, is the only thing that I get from purchasing this book (chosen mostly for its title and its cover) than it was worth every single penny that I spent on it.

What Block Provokes

I woke up with some writer’s block this morning, so I decided to look up “thought provoking thoughts.” I found these to be interesting:

“I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn’t. It’s a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you’re deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person’s entire life story—their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that’s better not done.”
― Alyson Noel, Shadowland

“Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the
world. It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,

Pringle Boy

Yesterday I ran into our local Walgreens drug store, for some chips that my daughter needed, for a party that she was attending, at the summer camp where she volunteers. In front of me in line, was a young father and his adorable two, maybe three-year-old son. The father, it seemed, had just run into the store, quickly, for some batteries. The son lagged behind the father as they headed to the cashier to pay. The little boy saw a can of pizza flavored Pringles right at his level, and he grabbed the can very decidedly. As his dad was paying for the batteries, the little guy assertively put the can of Pringles on the counter (well, actually, the part of the counter that is a little lower, where they keep the plastic bags) with a firm, confident bang. “BAM! We’ll be taking these Pringles, too,” are what his very clear actions seemed to say.

“Do you want to buy those, too?” the cashier hesitantly asked the young father. The little boy smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

“Uh, uh, well, uh, um, sure, why not?” said the Dad and he looked at me, a little sheepishly. I just smiled, knowingly. I had been through that drill many times throughout the years. The little boy confidently grabbed the Pringles can and kissed the top of the lid, as they headed out of the store.

The cashier and I had a fun conversation about what we had just witnessed.

“It usually doesn’t go that way for the kids,” said the cashier. “I’ve honestly never seen a little guy so sure of himself. Usually, the kids are more sneaky and whiny about the whole thing.”

“I’m guessing that if he had been with Mom, that it may have gone the other way,” I giggled and the cashier agreed. When I relayed the event to my husband last night, he said, “The Dad was probably figuring that he’d get to eat at least half the can.”

There really wasn’t anything particularly unusual about this happening. I am not even sure why I am writing about it. Still, the experience sticks with me. I guess that I found it to be cute and nostalgic. I also liked the little boy’s happy, self-assured confidence. In some way, a three-year-old little boy inspired me, a 48-year-old woman, to have a little more swagger. When you go for things that you want with happy pluck and assurance, I think that you get a little more favor towards the outcome that you are wanting. I know that I was secretly rooting for the boy to get his Pringles. And I relished in his triumphant joy, as he kissed the top of the can.

Feeling Friday

Hi Friends!! Happy Friendly Friday!! Yay, Friday is finally here!! On Fridays, at Adulting – Second Half, we keep it Frivolous! Frivolous Friday!! On Fridays, I list three favorite products, services, websites, songs, etc. and I encourage readers to add some favorites to my Comments section, so that we all can have some Friday fun! Please see previous Friday postings for more ideas. Here are this Friday’s Favorites:

Secret Box New York Constellation Earrings – I love these earrings! They take your zodiac sign’s star constellation and make them into a pair of intriguing, mismatched earrings. One side is just the major star (one CZ) and the other side is the rest of the constellation. These are fun and definitely conversation starters. They have constellation necklaces to match, as well. Unique, and can be dressed up or down!

Chanchitos – “In the small village of Pomaire, Chile, it is believed that “chanchitos,” little pigs, bring good luck. Three legged chanchitos are especially fortunate and are traditionally given to friends as a token of goodwill and love.” I found these sweet trinkets at a little souvenier shop recently and I brought one back for me and my kids. My little chanchito is smiling at me right now, as I write my blog. They are inexpensive, cute reminders of just how lucky we all are, just to be breathing and soaking in this miraculous experience called Life. You can find similar ones to what I bought, at Many Hands Gallery, on-line.

Emu Oil – I recently bought some emu oil cream because I was in a climate much more dry and less humid than me and my skin are used to being in. I have used it before, but I forgot just how emollient, and saturating and healing, emu oil really is for our skin, the largest organ of our bodies. One person told me that emu oil healed her sister’s scars after a sledding accident. It is particularly good for sensitive skin. If you have spent a little too much time in the sun lately, you need emu – emu 4 u.