+ I hate songs that have police sirens featured in them. They always catch me off guard. A song came on the radio the other day with a police siren, and I desperately looked for a place to pull off of the road, convinced that a high speed chase was happening, despite the fact I was waiting in line at a bank’s ATM.
+I love the Fresh Market’s almond pillow cookies. The almond filling in the cookies tastes exactly like the way sweet almond oil smells. That’s a rare feat. Very few things smell and taste exactly the same. I can’t find the words to describe it, but it is amazing. I think sweet almond oil is one of the most alluring and beautiful smells ever created. I have purchased almond scented shampoos before, only for one reason, the shampoo’s lovely scent. Still, when you think of eating almond shampoo, that sounds absolutely gross, but yet these cookies taste divine, and their taste is totally idiosyncratic with the smell of sweet almond oil. Try them, and tell me that I am not right about this.
+We have been picking up a lot of take-out food lately. I have started taking pictures of the crazy long car lines which I have waited in, in order to get our food. My husband says that waiting in long car lines for take-out at restaurants, has become the new waiting in line for an available table.
And a couple of good quotes by other people:
“People who don’t enjoy food, it’s like I don’t want to work with them or be friends with them.” – John Turturro
“I usually play characters who smoke and drink box wines.” – Allison Janney
“Whenever I need to decompress now, I take my dogs for a walk. They are truly the ultimate therapy.” – Tory Burch
That’s all for a Monday. Keep looking up, better days are coming!!!
We women so easily forget how hard the women older than us, and in the generations before us, had to work to get women the deserved respect, equalities, and opportunities that should have always been rightfully ours.
“Dissents speak to a future age. It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” – Abigail Adams, in a letter to her father John Adams, in 1776
Isn’t that a beautiful thing, to stand up for something that will make a better tomorrow for people like you, even knowing that you may never see the fruits of your own labor? What if we looked at every single one of our own individual actions as our own personal gifts to the people of the future? What would we do differently? What would we do more?
Every once in a while, old blog posts of mine trend on my view stats, seemingly out of nowhere. This blog post from February 13, 2019, has been viewed often in the last couple of weeks, so I suppose it has words that bear repeating. Please find that blog post entitled Fragile Like a Bomb, here:
Friends, I’ve admittedly been a little fragile this past week. It has been a tough week for a lot of reasons. But don’t you ever worry about me. I am fragile like a bomb.
Happy Friday!! I am so happy that today is Friday. So, so happy and relieved, I am. New readers, on Fridays, I stay at the shallow end of the pool. I don’t go deep on most Fridays. Fridays are “Favorite Things Friday” here at Adulting – Second Half. On Fridays, I list three favorite things, songs, websites, beauty products, etc. that make my material life fun. I strongly encourage you to share your favorites in my Comments section and please check out previous Friday posts for more of my favorites. Here are my favorites for today:
MDLIVE – I have a great general physician, but last Sunday, I was at the end of my rope with a lingering cough (don’t worry, I have tested negative for Covid), which has lasted for over a month. So, I got an appointment with a doctor, spoke to a doctor, got a prescription for antibiotics sent to my pharmacy, picked up my prescription and started taking my medicine, on a SUNDAY, all in a time span less than two hours. The doctor was very kind, empathetic and professional and MDLIVE accepts some insurance coverage. I would use this service again in a heartbeat, but I hope that I don’t have to for a while. I hope that you don’t need to utilize MDLIVE either, but keep it in your back pocket, just in case.
StriVectin Powerlift Instant Tightening Mask – I love StriVectin products. I have used their neck cream for a while now. However, this “Tighten and Lift” mask is my new favorite product from their line. The stress of all of this 2020 mess has been showing on my face, and this is the first product that I have ever used that I saw an immediate difference. If you need a lift, literally, try this product. Of course, there are no miracle anti-aging products that mimic a real facelift, but this product definitely helps fill in the lines, a little bit. It’s a picker upper in a tube and worth the price!
SWAD Coriander Chutney – I have been on a ramen soup kick these days. I start with the ramen and then I get creative by doctoring it up with leftovers, and salad about to wilt, and random single helpings of meat from the back of the freezer, and topping the hot, steamy soup with some crunchy cheese toast. Anyway, to give the soup some flavor and kick, I add a teaspoon of this delicacy to my concoctions and it makes all of the difference. If you are one that likes spice and tang, you must purchase a jar of this chutney. It is one of my go-to ingredients for a lot of my cooking. I purchase my jars of this wonderful flavor, on Amazon.
Enjoy the weekend, friends! Thank you, always, for coming by!!!
I sent this meme recently to some of my family and friends. My middle son and I found it to be hilarious. My middle son said that eating candy corn is like eating candle wax. I’d honestly eat the candle wax first. Most of the responses to the meme that I got back were along the lines of, “Ha! Yes! Nobody likes candy corn.”
Well, it turns out that my daughter and a few of my friends DO like candy corn . . . quite a bit. They took offense. It seems to me that candy corn falls into the “you either LOVE it or HATE it” category. There is no in-between. You either love or hate broccoli, brussels sprouts, cilantro, sardines, mushrooms and . . . . candy corn.
On a food note, while moping in my bed yesterday, I received a phone call from a sweet young lady from Nordstrom Department Store. She wanted to know when I was going to pick up my package.
“What package?” I asked.
“It’s soup, under your son’s name,” she replied sweetly and patiently.
“Soup?!?” I exclaimed. Right away my mind was going into, “Why in the hell did my son order soup from Nordstrom?!? That’s got to be some expensive soup. I didn’t even know that Nordstrom sold soup, but then again I haven’t been to the mall in forever.”
“It’s a SUIT, ma’am,” she said, giggling.
My son and my husband had recently purchased my son a suit for his medical school interviews. The customer service person and I got a good laugh out of our exchange. It feels good to laugh. Laughter is good medicine.
We had another setback yesterday, with my youngest son’s epilepsy. My son is okay, thankfully, so that is what really matters the most. Lately, when I offer a gargantuan pile of advice, or pepper this particular son with questions (like I have a tendency to do with all of my children and loved ones – thank you for still loving me), he likes to sing his answers back to me. It is sort of like a warning sign, like a dog growling. And it’s hilarious. The very off-key, fervent singing usually breaks the tension, and while it annoys me and amuses me in equal parts, it also reminds me how much I love my children and each of their unique personalities and their ways of being, in my world and in the whole world, in general. That is why days like yesterday are so stomach pitting-ly tough. There is nothing stronger, yet at the same time more vulnerable, than a mother’s heart. When you have days that force you to confront the idea that your strong, vital heart could be instantly shattered, at any moment or at any time, the fear that you feel is overwhelmingly ferocious. I read something recently, which suggested that we women have a lot of our parts and our essence made out of silk. Like silk, we look feminine and delicate and fragile, but here are the real facts:
“Quantitatively, spider silk is five times stronger than steel of the same diameter. It has been suggested that a Boeing 747 could be stopped in flight by a single pencil-width strand and spider silk is almost as strong as Kevlar, the toughest man-made polymer.” (www.chm.bris.ac.uk)
It turns out that we women are really made of gorgeous, silky steel. Don’t we know it! Charlotte, the teeny, tiny “fragile” spider, really was the strongest character in all of our childhood tales. A tiny, knowing, beautiful, wise, feminine spider, spun her messages in silk. Her love and her gift to the world was her silken word, and her safe, silken nest, where her babies grew and came to life.
Hello friends. I hope that this Sunday finds you in a state of peace. Sundays are reserved for the songs of the Soul, here at Adulting – Second Half. Sundays are devoted to poetry. Please share your poems in my Comments section. This is a “no judgment” zone. This is a safe place for release in the form of the written word. Here is my poem for today:
I Hear You
I’m listening, Body.
You are the one who always gets ignored.
The Middle Child, mediator of the Mind and the Soul.
You don’t have the voice, or the emotion of your siblings,
But you house the heart.
You make possible the breath.
You work overtime, trying to keep everyone and everything in balance.
You subtly ask for care, but your subtly is so easy to ignore,
Until your whispers turn to cries.
Don’t let my cries, turn to screams, you say.
I’m listening, Body.
Today, I care for you.
You are the precious vehicle for my travels in life,
There are a couple of young, famous mommy blog writers who recently announced that they are divorcing their husbands, this summer. This has caused an outrage and a disillusionment with some of their many, many followers. One of the bloggers has actually turned her brand into sort of a “here is the secret formula for creating a perfect marriage/perfect kids/perfect life” if you come to this speaking event, or buy this series of podcasts, or if you pay for this expensive marriage retreat, so I can understand the shock and disappointment among her fans.
We all want the secret formula for life, don’t we? We all hold out hopes that if we just stumble on the exact right steps to take, we will be guaranteed happiness and joy and a problem free life, forever and ever. But at our middle-aged time in life, we are humbled. We get it. There are no guarantees. Life has a way of throwing a lot of curve balls our way – many that we didn’t see coming.
For my marriage, I know that we will be soon be embarking on “the empty nest” stage. I see it in the fast nearing horizon. Our fourth and youngest child, our daughter, is a junior in high school. For most of our married life, we have been a traditional sort of family. My husband has always been the main breadwinner, and I did most of the every day child raising. Lately, I’ve been floundering a little bit. I am headed towards early retirement, where my husband is still following his same, steady career path. I notice that I often feel defensive about how I spend my time (which there is now a whole lot more of, with the kids being more self sufficient than ever) and I also feel nervous, not having as clear a purpose that I felt when I was shaping my children’s lives, on an everyday basis. I don’t feel as assured of my direction these days, and sometimes that makes me feel a little insecure and shaky and floundering. But at the same time, it makes me feel excited, too. My husband’s every day life isn’t filled with as many changes as I am going through, so he just gets to experience the bewilderment/aggravation of having a life partner, who is going through a lot of changes (in her daily routines and in her hormones), and all during a worldwide pandemic. It’s not easy. And there are no books or seminars or weekend retreats, that have a perfect formula for navigating this stage in life, either, because the answers to navigating life stages, are different and unique and complicated, for everybody and every couple. We all have different personalities, and circumstances, and values, and mixes of all of it. Not to dash anyone’s hopes, but singular formulas for perfect lives, do not exist for anyone, at any stage of life. Singular, slick, flashy life formulas are often created by great marketers (even if they do start out with pure, well-meaning intentions), for the ultimate destination of a big pile of money.
That being said, I have started to read Phil Donahue’s/Marlo Thomas’ (who, by the way, have been married themselves to each other for about 40 years) latest book, What Makes a Marriage Last. For the book, they have interviewed forty long term, famous couples in order to find out what makes their marriages work. (Some of these couples include Jimmy and Roslynn Carter, James Carville and Mary Matlin, Elton John and David Furnish, LL Cool J and Simone Smith . . . . believe me, you will recognize all of the names) I’ve just started to read the book. I’m in the first third of the book. It’s so charming. It’s a really fun read. This book reminds me of that last part of When Harry Met Sally, when the sweet couples are sitting on the couches, discussing their own love stories, with twinkles in their eyes. I have noticed many common themes among these couples who Marlo and Phil interviewed. There is a lot of obvious compatibility, mutual respect for each other, a shared love for the families and the lives that they have co-created, etc. Sting and Trudie Styler talk about the importance of good communication and “a pretty intense sexual charge” between the two of them.
My husband and I were sitting on the couch last night. He was watching hockey and I was reading the book, sometimes out loud to him. We laughed knowingly, at some of the things which the couples playfully teased each other about. We talked about some of the aspects that have made our own partnership last so long. We couldn’t articulate everything. We can’t really write it out in a simple, easy formulaic style. We had another enjoyable night together, last night. I think Brooke Adams had a really good answer, when talking about what makes her long marriage to Tony Shalhoub work:
“I think the answer to your question is pretty simple,” she said. “We like each other.”
As you age, you come to realize that there are certain traumatic moments, and surreal time periods in life, that you will never, ever be able to completely forget. These sensations and memories are particularly amplified when everyone you know has been affected to at least some degree, and is hurting along with you. We are living through one of these types of time periods right now. We were devastatingly scorched by one of those time periods back in September of 2001.
9/11 was a horrible, horrible, horrible day and experience, but we survived it. We will always remember it, but we overcame it. We got temporarily knocked down, but we rose back up. Beside all of the disbelief and horror and pain and shock and loss and soul scorching anger, there was a pure beauty that came out of that day. I never felt more unified with my neighbors and my fellow American citizens, than in the rest of that year, and into the new year of 2002. I never felt prouder of being an American than on those surreal days after 9/11, when we healed our trauma, together. We held our heads up high, in sharp defiance of evil. I remember for days that turned into weeks and then into months, the feeling of unification was everywhere. People were kind to each other. People focused on how akin they felt to each other. People did whatever they could, in order to heal and to memorialize this awfulness, in a most graceful, dignified, sacred, all encompassing way. People from other countries spoke only of our country’s greatness, of our unmatched generosity, of our beacon of hope which we give to everyone all over the world. We put aside our differences, during that painful time, because we knew that to become whole again, for the raw vulnerability to be cleansed and to be healed, that we needed the support of the whole body of our great country.
Today, we will get set back into our grief a little bit again, but let us also remember the utterly amazing, awe-striking unified Phoenix that rose from those lowly ashes. Let that defiant Phoenix of destiny, which rose and soared above all that which was meant to destroy us, be an example and a reminder to all of us, of what we are capable of doing with our current fires and traumas and fears. We owe this to the people who gave up their lives on 9/11, and to the families who still grieve their appalling sudden losses. We owe this to future generations, to give them an example of core strength and hope and the proof that love and respect for each other, is really what conquers all. Our future generations will need a positive example to fall back on, a wisdom to thrive from, when dark days happen again in their lives, and in the history of America. We need each other. Today, as Americans, we all embrace each other in comfort and compassion. Let’s find more strength and power and energy and onus, in today’s embrace. Let’s all look outwards, together, from this embrace into a unified vision of the beautiful country that everyone who has fought for, and who has lost their lives for, believes in. We aren’t where we need to be yet as a country, but we can get there. It won’t be from fighting each other, though. We need each other.
We healed over the acute pain of 9/11. There will always be a sharp ragged scar, which will always hurt to the touch, but we survived it, and then we thrived. We know that we are a country that is capable of great, great things. We’ve proven that to ourselves, and to everybody else, again and again. We rise from the ashes, and we continue to do so, every time that we are called to do it. Let’s try now to give our collective healing from our current pains, some wings of unity, dignity, love, respect, kindness, empathy and hope, and let the rest of it all – the divisiveness, the inequalities, the failure to work together, the closed minds, the focusing on all of the negative without putting major energy towards the solutions – let’s let all of this negativity that is no longer useful to our country’s greater good, just smolder away in the ashes of what does not serve us. We are the people of a great democracy. We decide what matters. We need each other.
(I apologize for not sticking with my traditional Friday format, but honestly, not really. Thank you for understanding.)
“The world needs this right now, we have received thousands of comments from people who say this has come at such a perfect time,” said Klein about the treasure hunt.
Did you read about the founder of Jelly Belly brand jelly beans, giving away one of his Candyman Kitchens, with a golden ticket/Willy Wonka style? How fun! How intriguing and inspiring and heartwarming and charmingly evocative!
Most of us would agree with David Klein, the inventor of Jelly Belly candies, in his statement, “The world needs this right now.” But what is “this” that he is referring to? What is the golden ticket that the world needs right now?
Is it fun? Is it a focus on the light-hearted, happy stuff? Is it excitement? Is it smiling, bright-eyed anticipation? Is it curiosity? Is it wonderment? Is it sweetness? Is it frivolity? Is it sugar-coated happiness? Is it innocence? Is it faith, hope and love?
Whatever “this” is which we all seem to agree that the world needs more of right now, we can try to be a little bit of “this“, today, right now, in our own spaces and our own places. If the world needs more of “this” and we have the ability to give the world more of “this“, why not try? Why not be a golden ticket in our own corners of the world? At the very least, we can be our own little flavorful jelly bellies. (I’ve been working on my jelly belly since quarantine started. It’s coming along nicely.) What flavor are you today? I think that I will be “this” flavor, just for today.
