Phew, It’s Friday

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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!!!

HAIR'S WHAT I THINK Or Monday, Monday… Can't Trust That Day…

Candy Corn and Soup

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.

Charlotte

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.

Monday Mood

I am not fond of Mondays and this is a particularly bad one. I will be back in better form tomorrow. Thank you for understanding.

Soul Sunday

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,

And for the acuity of my Mind,

And for the sensories of my Soul.

Today, I honor you and I respect you,

For everything that you give, to the whole of me.

We Like Each Other

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.”

Sacred Friday

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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.)

Flavorful

“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.

Mt. 2020

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Happy Labor Day. This is the right way to do a Monday, isn’t it? My family just woke up, fully rested and restored. The morning is bright and still and quiet and calm. I saw this meme the other day and I thought to myself, that is exactly what we are doing here in 2020. We have been assigned a whole range of seemingly insurmountable mountain tops. We have reached peaks of anger and frustration, and pinnacles of rage, in so many facets of our society. But on this day that reminds us about just how much we can achieve when we labor together, we realize that we are the chosen people, to move these mountains of fear, and pain, and shame, and anger, and inequalities, and sickness, to the side, in order to clear a path for all of us, to walk into a brighter tomorrow. We are the chosen people of 2020. We know this, because we are here. We are being trusted to move the mountains. Someone knows that we are strong enough, yet have malleable hearts and open, bright minds, in order to see beyond the terrifying heights, to the beautiful valleys that stretch beyond the rocky mountain ranges. As long as we all remember to see it as our sacred task and duty, for all of us to labor against the problems, instead of “us against each other”, we will make it. We will move mountains in 2020. We are the chosen people. It is time we start acting like it.

Soul Sunday

Hi! Sending love to all of my readers and friends. For new readers, Sundays are devoted to poetry. On Sunday, I shared a poem which I have written, or a poem written by a poet that has moved me, often to my core. I ask you to share your poems in my Comments section. Poetry is the bared soul. Poetry is about as real as it gets, and that is why it typically pulls at our strings, even the strings we didn’t know that we have which are daintily and hungrily, hanging from our hearts.

Today’s poem is a rough one. It doesn’t necessarily go with my typical peaceful, glowy, hopeful-toned poems, which I typically post. This poem was not written by me. It was written by Charles Bukowski, who was known to write about the darker and edgier sides of life, in a “nothing left out”, raw, “say it like it is” style. Still, this poem deeply, and completely spoke to me. It took me most of my life to get to this point, which the speaker of the poem is talking about. It took me almost all of my life to lose all of the pretensions, and the suppositions, and the fears and the shames, and “the rules”, and “the shoulds” to just put it all out there. “I had to lose it all, to gain myself,” as the saying the goes.

Friends, whatever your passions are, whatever your craft is, whatever burns the way to the same found path in your life, no matter how much you try to veer from it, that is your purpose. It doesn’t have to mean anything, it doesn’t have to give you fame or attention or money, or even have to be understood by anybody else. That passion, that fire that just won’t be put out, was put inside of you for a reason, so honor it, follow it, and just do it. We don’t have the views that God has, but it is God/Universe/Spirit who is weaving and has already woven what is, and what will always be. The big picture of Love and Life is the beautiful woven tapestry which is already made and perfected, in all of its glory. The sparks which we have inside of each of us, which incline us to do and to be, are our own individual parts, in the shimmering, perfect creation. Don’t live a formula. Live that which bursts forth from you. Live for what resonates within you. Don’t question it. Don’t judge it. Just know it. That which bubbles inside of you, that which is just dying to get out into living motion, is your true essence. That is your real beauty. That is your gift, your spark, the much needed, and co-created addition to the perfect, eternal tapestry of Life. Do what you can do, to take off all of the covers and shades and boxes, and just let that light inside of you, shine, in all of its glory. You, and the world, will be blessed for your actions. And the true tapestry will be closer to being revealed. Remember, You Shine. (and that is an order)

so you want to be a writer?

Charles Bukowski – 1920-1994

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.