middle age Archives - Page 193 of 194 - Adulting: Second- Half

Favorite Things Friday the 2nd

Happy Friday!!!! Why are Fridays so great? I think it’s all about the anticipation. Even if you don’t have weekend plans, it’s the deliciousness of not having plans, to be free to your whims is what makes weekends so much fun. For years and years and years our weekends were taken up by travel soccer, softball, basketball tournaments, robotics events, etc. etc. etc. My husband and I were often two ships passing each other on our ways to opposite ends of our city or our state, depending on the events. When we first started having free weekends, we were a little shell-shocked. It was hard to be without a schedule. Now, we embrace our freedom to explore and to adventure together. Life is magic!

On to favorite things:

Aityvert Solar Torch Lights – Oh my! This is my latest set of favorite things in the world. They make me excited for darkness! Last weekend my husband and I took a walk around a neighborhood we don’t typically walk around. (On an aside, I have read that walking in areas that are new to you is not just great for you physically, but is also wonderful for your mental health. It helps you see things/issues/problems in new perspectives. Try it!) Anyway, we saw these wonderful sidewalk lights decorating this beautiful, old Victorian home. I thought they must be gas powered because they look exactly like real fire. But they are not! They are solar powered. They don’t even require batteries! My son didn’t know that we bought them and he almost ran out to our backyard with a hose because he thought someone had kept a summer campfire going. These are just awesome. 🙂

Grey Free by Guiliano – These “mascara wand style” grey hairs coverage are my go-to helpers in between my salon appointments. Gone are the days for me, when my beauty routine was “quick and easy”. Everything is a chore and a drawn out process. My salon appointments take at least half a day, so I spread them out as long as I possibly can. I’ve tried crayons and shampoo-in type grey coverage, but I always come back to these babies. My greys tend to be in clumps in different sections of my hair, so this mascara wand style really works for me and the color stays put until it is washed out. They are inexpensive and come in many different shades. The only downside is that they don’t seem to have a long shelf life. They get an “off smell” if they are kept too long.

No. 7 Airbrush Away Pore Minimizing Primer – I found out about this wonderful product through one of those magazine articles that takes reader polls about “the best of the best” in beauty products. I find beauty product selections so overwhelming these days that I prefer to go with recommendations from friends and trusted sources. This primer is absolutely perfect when you need to “save face” – meaning that you don’t want to look like the Joker by the end of a hot and humid summer day. If you want your make-up to have staying power, than start with this product and you’ll be good to go for the whole day! The best part is that you can buy it in places like Target and Walgreens.

Three’s the magic number. Thank you for reading my blog! Have a fantastic weekend!

You’re Fired!

Earlier this year, my aunt and uncle came to visit us. We were very excited to see them as we don’t get to see them very often due to the fact that they live in England. So, I spent a lot of time preparing for their visit. On the day of their arrival, the rest of the family was at school and work, so I did the final preparations. (you know shopping, cooking, shoving things in closets) About an hour or so before their due arrival, I set the dining room table elegantly and I lit a scented candle before heading to take my shower.

About 5 minutes into my shower, I heard a voice I’ve never heard before. It was an extremely loud, urgent woman’s voice broken up intermittently by a piercing beeping sound. Her voice firmly screamed, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Now right outside of the shower entrance was Ralphie, our labrador retriever. He is a water dog, through and through, and we’ve had to train him that he cannot shower with us, so he just waits right outside the shower door hoping to catch some mist. Ralphie went into overdrive the minute the screaming woman started screaming. Lacey, our collie, who usually walks around the house herding dust bunnies (mostly her own hair), came running to meet me at the shower, too. Now, I’m kind of “hit or miss” when it comes to emergencies, so I didn’t think to grab a robe or a towel. I just ran naked out to the dining room with my hysterical canine entourage in tow. There in the center of my dining room table, the centerpiece had fallen into the candle and the middle of the table was on fire. If I had done it on purpose, it actually looked kind of cool and dramatic, but obviously, there is nothing really cool about a wooden table being on fire.

It’s funny when you look back at these things and observe your reactions. At that moment, I was honestly just annoyed as hell. The noise of the screaming woman fire alarm and the barking dogs was driving me mad. I was running naked from the kitchen to the dining room, tripping over my hysterical dogs, with pitchers of water and the whole time, in my mind, I was going over whether we would have to eat in the kitchen now and would we all fit?!? Seriously. As I was throwing water at my table, I started wondering if I would have time to buy another tablecloth. Thankfully, my mind wasn’t going to the fact that my whole house could burn down with me and the pups with it. I guess minimizing is my emergency defense mechanism?!?

In the end, I was able to put the fire out, and luckily, since I had a thick tablecloth and even thicker table pads, our dining room table (which has a lot of sentimental value – granted, dining rooms tables usually do, due all of the family meals, holidays, games, arguments and celebrations that are often shared around them) was completely spared. In fact, we even ate in the dining room that night. Despite the campfire aroma, all went very well.

So what is the point of this story? None really. I just think it’s funny and it is good to laugh every day. Especially at yourself.

Readers are Badass

There was one thing I was really looking forward to getting as I aged. Readers. I think readers are badass. I’ve had glasses since the third grade for my nearsightedness and I graduated to contact lenses as quickly as I could get my shaky little fingers still enough to poke them on my eyes (which was about 5th grade). I only wear my prescribed glasses when I’m up really early or I have pinkeye. In fact most people who know me, probably don’t know that I have faulty eyes. However, when it comes to readers I have about 20 pairs.

When I was younger and I saw a woman in readers, I stopped and paid attention. I felt respect. She meant business. She had been around the block, seen it all and was taking no prisoners. Readers represented the confidence that comes with age, wisdom and experience. And they are sexy! Readers are alluring. When a woman looks at you with readers on, she has to bow her head and look over them, like she has two sets of eyes on you. You’re not getting away with anything, when a woman looks at you over the top of her readers. I imagine most men want to rip those readers right off because they know that behind those readers is a woman who is old enough to know what she wants and she’s not settling. How attractive is that!?!

I know a lot of people don’t agree with me when it comes to readers and I admit that I hate the idea of actually NEEDING readers. For example, my son made a lucky find of a vintage Gucci watch in a consignment store the other day. I said, “Honey, it’s an obvious fake. It says: Made In China.” He said, “Mom, get your readers, it says: Made in Italy.” He was right and the watch was real. Still, at that moment when I shuffled through my purse for my “no apologies, no gullibilities” bright yellow pair of optical awesomeness, I couldn’t wait to put them on. I felt sexy, secure in myself and ready to take on whatever else the day was going to bring.

I’m Not Creative

One of the biggest fallacies people think is, “I’m not a creative person.” That is just not the truth. We are all creative. By definition, we are creation and we are co-creating to make this current world that we live in. People think creative people are just the artists or the musicians or the poets. But isn’t designing a car or coming up with a new scientific theorem or looking at a math problem at a different angle creative? On a micro-level, we are all creating our own individual lives. We don’t like to think like this because it forces a true level of self awareness. Life isn’t just “happening” to us. Yes, there are some forces outside of our control, but how we react to those forces is all on us.

I think what is good about the big “crossroads” moments in our lives, when the big changes happen, is that this self awareness of how much we do to create the lives that we live, really comes into focus. I read once that we should look at ourselves as our own life managers. How is your life manager doing? Would you give her a raise? Would you want to fire him? We create our lives from the minute we wake up to the moments we go to bed. The morning rituals that we have, whether we drink coffee or read the paper or hit the snooze button ten times are all of our own creations. What we do all day, how we react to people and situations, what we wear, how we decorate our living spaces are all of our own creations. The neighborhoods we choose to live in, the schools we send our kids to, how we interact with our kids and our spouses and our friends and our pets, again are our own daily creations. The foods we choose to cook and eat and nourish our bodies with are our choices and thus, our life creation. Finally, how many pillows we choose to sleep with, who we choose to sleep with, what temperature we set the thermostat to when we fall asleep is part of our life’s creation.

I’m currently reading a book/workbook called Design the Life You Love by Ayse Birsel. Ms. Birsel owns a design firm and has designed/redesigned all sorts of everyday items down to a toilet seat that she claims is the most comfortable toilet seat in the world! She says that most designing is really just redesigning. In the book, Ms. Birsel talks about the fact that to redesign something you have to break it down to its smallest component parts and then build it back up to a better design that better fits your current lifestyle. You can only reconstruct when you deconstruct. So, to deconstruct your life, you have to look at each component that makes up your daily experience. Family, Work, Friends, Hobbies, Interests, Health, etc. are all smaller components of what is comprising the totality of our lives. When you break your life down to these smaller parts, you can then look at the individual parts and think to yourself, “What’s working for me in this part of my life? What are small creative changes that I could make here that would make a difference in making my whole life more fulfilling?”

There are so many distractions in today’s world. It can be very confusing to understand what is best for yourself. I recently watched a movie called Ingrid Goes West. The heroine of the movie is Ingrid and she has absolutely no self concept. She stalks “internet celebrities” and tries to become them in order to get people to like her. Obviously, this plan backfires on her, but in the end, when she is totally alone and has no choice but to be authentically herself, acknowledging all of her own pain and fear, is when people reach out to her and truly relate to her and understand her. I think most of us confuse “creative” with “authentic”. We respond to people’s art or music or websites because we feel connected to the creator of the creation. The people we call creative are just responding to the deepest part of themselves that just can’t help but come out. It has to be shared because it feels like it is that person’s primal drive or need to create it for no other reason than the pure joy of creating it. We feel utterly inspired by seeing their creative process in action because deep down we know that we are creators, too. How many times have we heard an amazing artist or musician or writer or actor or businessman say that while they appreciate the accolades and external validation, the truth is they would be doing whatever they are doing for free, by themselves, in the middle of the woods, because it is their passion, their need, their desire, their creation, their authentic life???

Variety is the spice of life. I believe that with my whole heart. Life would be so boring if we were all the same. I think life would be even spicier if we let our varieties shine not just in big endeavors, but in the ways we choose to go about our daily habits. We are all creative. We are all creators and there is no better time than now to live our own authentic, true self lives every moment of every day.

Finders Keepers

Recently, right before my son moved out to his new adult life, I lost two “good” pieces of jewelry on two separate occasions. Now these weren’t “insurable” items or family heirlooms, but they weren’t Forever 21 clearance items either. (Now on an aside, I love all of my jewelry and much like one of my favorite fashion icons, Iris Apfel, a 97 year old fashion maven, I might even like some of my faux pieces better than my real pieces.) Anyway, I was driven to distraction trying to find these items. Unfortunately, in the process of looking for the jewelry, I did not find the pieces I was looking for, but what I did find was a whole herd of dust bunnies and several items that should have been donated to Goodwill eons ago.

Now, I’m always looking for the meaning of “why things happen”. I was incredibly intent of finding the jewelry and I had such a laser focus on that intent that it certainly kept me from thinking about the idea that my son was leaving our nest, never to return to it again, as a child. It was certainly easier to vent all of my frustration on the helplessness of not knowing where the jewelry had gone to, then to face my intense feelings of loss of the only structure that our nucleus family had ever known. I was also admonishing myself for my carelessness for not appreciating my items like I should have and perhaps even taking them for granted. Did I wear them as many times as I could have or did I assume they would always be available to me whenever I wanted them to be? You see where these analogies are going.

My Catholic friends have always suggested to turn to St. Anthony to ask for his help to intercede with God when you lose items. Now, I’m not Catholic so I had to Google the appropriate way to officially ask for St. Anthony’s help. I looked up the prayer and it essentially said something to the affect of please help me to find my items, but if it is not God’s will to find the items, please give me total peace with that fact. Now, in my desperation, I was wondering if it was okay to cross out the last part of the prayer, because in my mind, the only way I was going to have peace was if I found my jewelry. Nonetheless, I prayed the whole prayer and I did not find my jewelry. And I did not find peace right away, but surprisingly, I came to peace about the losses much more quickly than I thought I would. Sometimes I Thank God for Unanswered Prayers has always been one of my favorite country songs and I think it applies here.

I often lecture my family about the dangers of getting too attached to “things.” “We are not even going to leave this world with our bodies!” is a statement I’ve been known to say more than a few times. For the record, that goes over like a lead balloon. Thanks, Debbie Downer, any other uplifting anecdotes you’d like to pass on while we eat our dessert??? The truth is, I haven’t found a better way to say it, but the “things” in life are temporary and fleeting. Change is always happening and the suffering occurs when we can’t make peace with this fact. A lot of spiritual teachers (and marketing experts, for that matter) like to say that when we want something or someone, it’s not really the item that we want, it is the feeling that we believe we will get if we possess that thing. I believed that I would feel extreme “relief” if I found my jewelry and obviously, I was looking for “relief” from a lot of the tumult that was swirling around in my heart. And a lot of that tumult had nothing to do with my jewelry.

Native Americans were very thankful to the buffalo that they consumed. They used every part of the buffalo and thanked it profusely for it’s blessing and it’s sacrifice. Marie Kondo, the Japanese organization guru says that when you know that it is time to give up an item, you thank it for what it has brought to you and ask it to bless someone else. I am thankful for my jewelry, for the times I felt lovely wearing the pieces, but I think I may even be more thankful for the loss of the items, because the lessons I gleaned from the losses will stay with me forever. I hope that wherever they are now, they are blessing someone else in all of the best ways possible.

What Level Are You?

I love to read inspirational signs that make you think. The other day I saw one that suggested that instead of saying “age” we should call people different “levels.” So instead of age 80, someone now becomes “Level 80”. It does sound a lot better. It suggests all of the time and wisdom and experience that comes from being “high level.” So at least for today, I’m proud to be a “Level 47”. And also for today, I am going to head out on some fun summer adventuring before I “level up.” No matter what level you are currently on, may your summer adventures and experiences be all that you want them to be. Game on!

Thank You for Your Patience

It is a very strange feeling questioning yourself when you write a text to your adult child. There has been this shift in the relationship where “bossy mommy” probably isn’t going to fly anymore. There is a certain unsaid understanding that when a parent is paying the bills, the scales are tipped to the parents having a certain level of control. My son is paying his own bills now. He no longer relies on me for anything. I’m not supposed to spout my advice unless he asks me for it. I understand that on a logical level and I want to have a great adult relationship with him and my other children, so a lot of times I have to just sit on my hands and wisely choose not to write a text. When I do write a text to him, I find myself editing it, contemplating it, getting feedback on it, almost as if we were two people in a new relationship.

A college friend once told me that I apologize too much. She said that instead of saying, “I’m sorry.” I should say, “Thank you for your patience with my . . . .” So, yesterday, I just couldn’t help myself. Bossy Mommy took over the reigns and she felt it was necessary to text her adult son that he should probably get his dry cleaning done for a big business trip that he has coming up. Ugh. Now I think there was actually a struggle going on between Bossy Mommy and Mature Detached Mother, so the text came out garbled and ridiculous. Autocorrect was having a field day. I almost felt the need to tell him to please not send the text to that segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live where Jimmy reads outrageous texts from parents to their young adult kids. And everyone laughs hysterically. All that I can say is that the final text to my son from me was, “Thank you for your patience with my need to still parent you.”

And he answered, “I love you, Mom.”

The Grind

I’m going to the dentist today. Obviously, I’m not excited about that fact. I didn’t put an exclamation point on that sentence. Yay! I’m going to the dentist today! I have to get a crown because my back molar chipped. My dentist insists that this is because I refuse to buy an expensive, bulky mouth guard to sleep with every night to protect my pearlies as I grind away at my teeth at night. I insist that those high priced hunks of rubber are only going to add to my dust collector collection, as I won’t be able to sleep with wax lips in my mouth.

For years, my dentist and I have had a love/hate relationship. He thinks I’m stubborn and foolish but he loves me because I’m the one who has made sure that all six members of the family have seen him regularly for seven years. I say, “Here I am, your favorite, know-it-all patient!” and he says, “Great to see you, my retirement savings have just gone up.” He has taken the impacted wisdom teeth out of the jaws of our two older boys, and created the beautiful smiles, with years of pricey orthodontics, for our two younger children. He has filled fillings, created crowns and lectured all of us to do a better job with flossing. (As much as I have tried to “walk the talk” and be a good example to our children, this is an area where I may have fallen a wee bit short.) My dentist knows my family and due to the fact that dentists mostly can only “talk at” you, I feel like I know his family and their adventures, too.

Which brings me to the sad part because today I am going to see a dentist I have never seen before. Our dentist has retired from this practice. While I understand that change is the only constant in life, it’s hard when the foundation people of your community start leaving and moving on. We have had to move our family for better job opportunities a couple of times over the years and I always enjoyed the excitement and novelty of exploring a new town. However, to make sure that the family feels secure and safe, there are some staple professional people you pick out when you first move and you make them “your own.” I remember being truly surprised when my eldest son got his “college shots” at the pediatrician and we were told that he would need to find an “adult doctor” now. What?!? Why?!? There is nothing disturbing about seeing a 6’2″ man with a beard waiting in the waiting room, watching Dora the Explorer with the other kids. Where are his Teddy Grahams for being a good boy?!? There have been a couple of occasions where three or maybe even four of our kids have even had the same teacher. My daughter recently told me that one of these teachers said that she was his favorite out of all of our family’s kids. I am pretty sure that he said that to all of our kids, but I kept that to myself.

Why is it that we accept that changes in our own lives are inevitable but feel angry and confused and bewildered when others go on with their changes in their lives? Why does it feel insulting when one of our long time neighbors move? Why do we understand that our kids are growing up but feel utterly bewildered when we get Christmas cards portraying previous members of our kids’ play groups in graduation robes and wedding gowns?? It’s like we want to explore and grow and learn, but we need everything else around us to remain the same, to be our “rocks of stability.” I think it’s like when my kids first started to crawl and to then walk and then to run. They always crawled, walked and ran back to me to make sure that I was still there, holding their security blankets to melt back into when they got tired.

I’m sure that the new dentist will be a nice, competent person and I sure that I will continue to be lectured on mouth guards and gum disease. I’m sure that we will all be okay and adjust accordingly. We’ll keep smiling. Life goes on, even though one of our “rocks of stability” has become a rolling stone.

Awkward Stage

A couple of weeks ago, I took my eldest son and my daughter who is my youngest child to lunch (I call them my Alpha and my Omega). We went to a restaurant I had never been to before that is known for its nightly shows and bands. When I asked our waiter what show he would recommend, he looked at me and without a stutter he said, “Oh, definitely Throwback Thursday. My mom loves that show.” Ouch.

Now, he was right. I am definitely old enough to be his mom. And I love 80s/90s music, because that’s the music I was brought up on, but ugh, I didn’t want him to notice that fact. I didn’t want him to look at me and think “Throwback.”

I think that I’m at that awkward stage of my Second Half of Adulting. It’s similar to the one I went through in my First Half of Adulting, when I was just a preteen. That first awkward stage involved being stuck between being a kid and being a young adult. The big dilemma at that stage was, “Do I still want to play with my toys or do I want to kiss boys?” The second awkward stage is coming to the acceptance that the stuff that I like is starting to be considered a little “outdated”, but not old enough to be considered “retro and cool.” The second awkward stage is the awakening to the fact that I’m not necessarily part of the mover/shaker crowd anymore. The marketers and the trend watchers are more interested in what my kids are buying and doing than in me anymore. And there’s a conflict because I’m not sure I want to move out of the First Half of Adulting. I still have two kids at home and unfortunately, retirement seems quite far away, but I’m starting to not fit in with the First Halfers anymore either.

It’s subtle changes you notice when you are moving out of your First Half of Adulting. It’s like when you see the Barbie you played with as a kid, now in the window of an antiques store, or you start realizing that you don’t really know who 85% of the people on the cover of the gossip magazines are anymore. The frequency of being called “Ma’am” goes up a notch. Last year I had a part-time job where I shared a cubicle area with a couple of millennial women. We were talking about weekend plans and I said that my husband and I were going to Hall and Oates. My coworker said, “Oh cool, is that an island?”

The Second Half of Adulting is still new to me. So, it’s hard to “own it” with confidence. I know that my husband and I could not pull off Hipster with any kind of grace. Tattoos, nose piercings, pink streaked hair, woolly beards and beanies aren’t part of our middle aged comfort zone. But at the same token, I’m not ready to shop for retirement communities yet, either. It’s funny how life cycles around. I never dreamed I’d have to go through another “awkward stage” but I guess these are the stages in life that you must go through to figure out what you really want next. You get so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, that you finally accept your new role, your new place in society with confidence. You’re the “record player” now because you’re cool again. And you never stopped being a record player, it’s just that you’ve stopped apologizing for being a record player and you’ve stopped trying to turn into Spotify. With your new self confidence and self worth, people remember that you’ve always been pretty amazing and that that you still have an important role to play, it’s just shifted a little. And maybe that’s not so bad.

Just. This.

We went to the beach yesterday. We are fortunate enough to live near to the beach and it was the perfect beach day. It was the kind of day where there was enough cloud cover to keep the sun from pelting down on you and enough wind to keep you cool but not enough to stir up any storms.

We didn’t always live near to the beach. We moved here seven years ago and when we first moved here, we truly understood how lucky we were to live near to the beach and we took advantage of it every chance that we got. Then after a couple of years in, living near to the beach lost its novelty and it became familiar. It was something that was always there for us in the background, like an aged dog or like that shiny, new basketball headboard or swimming pool or fancy jungle gym in the backyard that loses its luster as the kids get older. Of course, on occasion I would panic that we had lost our appreciation for living near to the beach and I would spout out guilt-wrenching edicts at the dinner table. “We used to spend thousands of dollars to go to beaches like the ones we have practically in our own backyard! We are going to the beach tomorrow and we are going to like it and we are going to appreciate it!” There is nothing like “forced fun” to bring a family closer. Ha!

I am particularly sensitive about taking things for granted right now, with my son freshly out of the nest. So when my husband suggested a long stroll on the beach, I jumped on it. We went to our local beach which is actually a beautiful island. It is a state park so there are no condos, surf shops or blow-up water slides. We took a 2.5 mile hike out to the secluded top tip of the island and we rounded the corner to the little cove where people anchor their boats and everyone just floats.

There is a big movement right now about staying in the “now”, in the present moment. When I can do it, when I can stay in the “now”, it makes so much sense. The now is peaceful, it is a gift, it is the only thing that we truly have, but of course, staying in the now takes practice and concentration and more often than not I am haranguing myself for past mistakes or worrying about future ones. So when we first arrived at the beach and started our walk, I was beating myself up for not coming to the beach more often, especially with summer more than half over. But then something magical started happening and I think the beach is a particularly good setting for magic. Walking on the warm, giving sand, listening to the gulls and the tide coming in and out, watching a kite in the distance stay happily floating in the air, like the people in the water, floating easily on the top of the buoyant salt water, I fell into a meditation taught to me many years ago. It’s a simple meditation. Breathe in deeply. Just. Breathe out all worries and concerns and grief. This. Breathe in. Just. Breathe out. This. Just. This. Just this.

I try to put so much thought and meaning and purpose into everything that I think I often miss the whole point. It is becoming more and more obvious, the older that I get that the point is probably just to experience it all, experience all the magic, beauty and perfection, even when it doesn’t feel like perfection. Just this. It’s a beautiful, simple meditation and it may be all that we need.