Life At 40

Technically, I’m only 41 days into the age of 40, but this (at least from what I hear) is the year it all starts to fall downhill. I’ve also heard that the eyes are the first to go: that usually at this age, folks start to need to wear reading glasses or have some adjustment to their eyes. I hope and pray that mine don’t get any weaker. I’m already sight-challenged as it is; my range of clear vision extends just to my arm’s length. To need reading glasses would only be to add insult to injury and would in all honesty, probably qualify me for a Seeing Eye dog. Needing reading glasses would mean that I would have to get bifocals. And I don’t care how sophisticated they have made the lenses; the result is still the same: your eyes end up looking freakishly big.

40 is also the age where I need to watch my weight more carefully, and also decide to do something to get rid of the extra little person that I have gotten used to carrying for the past five years. I am not talking about my son (who is only 2), but about those extra pounds that I once heard were the equivalent of carrying another person. Right now my person is probably about the size of a gangly 12-year-old who’s going through growing pains. This is the heaviest I have been. Ever.

The weight factor is important because I have a family history of absolutely everything. Seriously, my ancestors on both sides gave me a load of things to worry about later on in life: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, mental disorders, stroke, aneurisms, muscular dystrophy, and possibly some other life-threatening problem that just hadn’t been diagnosed when my ancestors died from it. And most of these factors are directly correlated to how much weight is packed on.

So it’s time to get serious about undoing all the damage I’ve done over the dinner table. It’s a whole lot easier to add than it is to subtract. Five years ago, I’d developed all these great fastidious habits that aided me in my weight lose journey, and I’d made such great progress. But five years is a long time, and it’s going to be an even longer road to get back to many of those positive habits. The only I can say that I have cultivated well is my commitment to drinking lots and lots and LOTS of water, as I talked about in my “Waterlogged” blog earlier this year. So now I guess it’s time to concentrate on formulating the next good habit.

Celebrating the 40 Milestone

I’ve come to the realization that I may be having a hard time with 40. As proof of this hard time, let me just say, I originally started this blog on 9/11. Then I retooled it again two weeks ago with a few updates, but still didn’t get it finished. Since three is supposedly an inherently lucky number, I’m trying again, and maybe this time, it will get posted before the end of the day. Last month, I embarked upon a major milestone--the marking of another decade. I turned 40 years old.

Initially, I was leading up to my own massive celebration that was to start 40 days prior to the big day. The idea was to give myself a series of small gifts, not only material things, but time well spent with others, before the big day hit. However, the death of my grandmother, who lived to see the grand age of 100, obliterated the celebration. She will be another blog altogether, just because she deserves that kind of tribute.

But because of her death, my celebration was toned down to just a couple of smaller events.

On the 5th of September, the hubby and I went on a karaoke cruise. Interestingly enough, I had purchased the tickets to this cruise at the beginning of August, and then totally forgot about them until 3pm that afternoon. After a mad scramble, Shanda babysat Ayden and we were off. And we had a great time; I even ran into one of my colleagues who was also celebrating early.

The next week, I stayed with my usual tradition. No birthday celebration would be complete without mentioning the Musketeers and the little brother. This year, I had to celebrate with them in turn instead of together. They were both at Jaspers, but one was on 40-Eve, with my DBBF and the other was a week later. We will rectify that next week for the next birthday.

On the actual day, I took off work. My hubby and son surprised me in the morning with roses. It was so cute when Ayden walked down the hall with a dozen white roses in his hand and said, “Here mommy!” After they left, I crawled back into the bed, woke up late, and got dressed to go meet the DBBF for round 2. The plan was to get up, and recreate the new habit of working out at the gym, possibly throw in a pedicure, spend a little time with my daddy, then have lunch with the DBBF, but that agenda changed. We ended up having a 4-hour lunch which consisted mainly of Milagro margaritas (note to self: find Milagro tequila) and appetizers. Then that evening, my hubby and I attended the open house at my son’s new daycare center. After that, my hubby and I came home, where there was a cake waiting for me. (I have no idea how these items remained in my home without my knowledge.)

Friday, I took off again. My mother-in-law dropped off a cake from my brother-in-law before I left the house. I finally managed to go the salon and get my toes done, where I read my Kindle and had a glass of wine there. Then in the evening, I enjoyed a nice quiet spaghetti dinner with my hubby and son with chocolate cake for dessert.

Saturday, I held class then went to a free makeover with Shanda and Michelle in Waldorf. After that, we went to the Applebees down the street and threw back a few. And as a cap to the evening, we went to a fight party, where my husband managed to produce yet another cake. I tried to leave most of it at the host’s home, but they have been so healthy that no one eats it, so we had a portion of another cake to bring home.

Overall, even though the birthday had to be toned down, I had a good time. Welcome to 40.

The Warm-Up

On her second album, Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds, Volume 2, Jill Scott has an introductory track called “Warm Up,” which is just a layering of sounds that a vocalist might use to limber up his or her vocal cords. It’s only a little over a minute long, and serves an introduction to the whole album. In a way, I guess this what this piece serves as because it’s my way of getting ready for the challenge that lies ahead. Next month, I’m starting the National Novel Writing Month (called “NaNoWriMo” for short) Challenge. The challenge is simple: construct a novel by submitting word counts every day for the month of November, culminating in at least 50,000 words by the end of the month. As such, I figured that I needed as much encouragement as I could get. So I invited a few more friends to my writing Facebook page to help in the encouragement.

There are those who’ve read my writing before and who have been hounding me to finish one book—just one. And I have to thank these people for their undying patience and faith in my ability to do so. And those of you reading this for the first time may be asking the same question I’ve received from those supporters: “What’s taking you so long?”

My first and most substantial answer (to everything really) is that life gets in the way. When I’m not writing it, I’m living it. I get caught up in the absolute busyness of life. And that makes the way I want to express the story change. In the past few years, some of my largest challenges were completing my Master’s degree, where I HAD to write daily on topics that were not my choice; marrying, moving, and having a kid, all within a two-year span; and teaching, where I get the opportunity to help others hone their craft. Most recently, the part of life that deals with loss has affected me profoundly, to where I’m just bouncing back out of the thick haze of grief. Somewhere in all that, the writer in me got lost.

The other substantial reason is fear mixed with a heavy dose of insecurity. Writing, while wonderfully cathartic most of the time, is also the process of baring one’s soul—turning a body inside out and exposing sinew and self to the world. Even though I write relatable characters based on people I’ve encountered—to the point where some of my friends see themselves as my characters—deep down, all those characters I create are facets of me: my thoughts, my aspirations, my anxieties.

On one level, I’m already feeling self-conscious. Compound that with the niggling thought that I’ve always had about my writing. There are millions of writers out there, those who are alive, and those who have left a living legacy. Who am I to add my voice to the symphony? It’s really only been in recent years that I’ve broadened my audience to beyond that of my best friend and allowed a couple more people to read my writing, even though technically anyone out there can read my blog. I feel grateful that when I do get the courage to expand my audience (usually at the pace of about one person per year), they display positive reactions to my writing, usually with the request for more. And this helps to validate my confidence a little. Ironically, as I was composing this piece, an Op-Ed piece from The New York Times popped up on the Facebook newsfeed called “The Op-Ed and You.” The line that attracted me to it provided the answer to the question I posed above: “there’s never too much good writing in the world.” To add to the answer, I saw another newsfeed from Good Morning America about The Waltons 30-year reunion, which just happened to be an inspiration for one of my favorite pieces I wrote as a freshman in college.

That’s why I write, and that’s why I teach writing. I believe in the power of words, and how they can transform an ordinary event into a powerful experience.

I hope you’ll continue to follow me as I venture out and take that leap of faith that will make me finish.

The Unseen Gray Hair

This blog is about aging. But as I was thinking about a title, I realized I wanted to shy away from using a boring or typical title like “The Signs of Aging,” or “You Know You’re Old When” (seriously, that’s the best I could come up with so far). But then I decided that I actually wanted you to read today’s blog, especially since I haven’t made a guest appearance on my own site since May.

Let me start off with this interesting anecdote so that you will know where I’m going with this (or at least follow along my rabbit-hole journey). A few weeks ago, I received a cryptic text as I was sitting in my car during lunch: “Hey! I’m depressed.” This was completed with a smiley face emoticon, so I knew it was serious, especially since this person rarely ever initiates texts with me; we now relegate our communication to friendly ribbing on Facebook.

Out of bemused concern, I replied to his text. Then impatient person that I am, when my depressed pal didn’t reply quickly enough, I called, only to repeat my text: “Hey! Whassa matter?”

His reply: “I found a gray hair—down there.”

I was as sensitive as I could be as I guffawed loudly in my car—at least the windows were up. But even through my laughter, I was now bemused and weirdly flattered, although I’m not entirely certain that I shouldn’t be insulted…but that’s another topic for another entry in the wonderfully distant future. It’s easy enough to guess the reason for my bemusement: who does that!? Hence, the flattery that even after all these years, this man would feel comfortable enough to relate that story to me...well, I won’t dwell on that either.

But I will say that I did promise him that he would be included in my next blog which, as you see, is a few weeks from its intended deadline. To add to his private admission, he nicely posted another sign of aging very publicly on Facebook, so I perhaps don’t have to feel flattered because this man has no real issue with full disclosure. The subject of his Facebook post: the prostate exam. To paraphrase, he lamented that he wasn’t even offered a movie and some popcorn by the doctor who…well, I hope you what goes on in prostate exams.

But our ridiculous conversations via text and Facebook spurred me to pursue a topic I’d been meaning to discuss for time anyway, and you guessed it: I mean some obscure signs that old age is creeping up.

My grandma always said that we adults once and children twice. Here’s the way I see it: I figure that the average biological age of adulthood starts at around 15 and ends somewhere around the mid-40s, give or take a few years on either end. How did I come up with this answer? The beginning of adulthood has to be somewhere around a post-puberty age, when voices change, hair starts growing in place other than the head, and when there’s a general idea about the height of a person. True, many boys tend to still be growing by this age, but this would only support my theory in terms of saying that men have a shorter span of adulthood than women (guys, please limit your disagreement posts to 100 words or less). Regardless of the actual age, in adulthood, people enjoy relative freedom: the future is just some vague distance away. We’re in control of our own destiny and for the most part, barring any over imbibing, all of over bodily functions.

But after 40, or even more accurately, approaching 40, things start to unravel. Muscles start to weaken, joints and cartilage both expand and get less pliable, and fluids start to dry up. All of this works in conjunction to turn that once virile adult body into a non-coordinated mass of skeleton and loose tissue. And depending on how much or little a person exercises, the process progresses either slowly or at a rapid clip.

The first signs are gentle. Maybe you notice that you can’t read words as closely as you once could, and you find yourself extending your arm back a little. But the sign that gets me is the change in bathroom habits. Once upon a time in adulthood, you find you could hold in your urine a little longer before you got to the destination (yes, it all comes back to the bathroom with me) and when you got there, you knew that you were in there for number 1 and number 1 only. However, what I’ve discovered is that muscles weaken around your bladder (in men it’s around the prostate and in women the Kegels) and that when you do get to your destination, you can sometimes be surprised about the bodily function that occurs. In the past year, I’ve noticed that my bathroom trips are most like Forrest Gump’s description of chocolates, or at the risk of being totally vulgar, you just never know when you’re going to get a chocolate-colored surprise. This is especially mollifying to me as a person who is skeptical at best about frequenting public bathrooms (those who’ve read my “Potty People In the House” know that I have my own particular bathroom issues and they’ve only exacerbated over the years). I’m confronting with the fact that foods that I used to be able to easily digest now send my system on a Rebel Yell roller coaster ride that results in a quick unanticipated disappearance.

It is not at all a comforting thought to know that I am once again entering my childhood state, although this time in reverse chronological order. One day, I’ll delve into a more serious adaptation of what this state is, but for now I’ll just leave you with this.

That same guy referenced at the beginning of this entry posted a pic with a two-year gap, and had on the same shoes, and possibly the same hat. Talk about a sign of getting old. Maybe he’s turning into that Texas gym teacher who wore practically the same outfit every year for picture day for forty years.

The Reinvention of Porn

Caught your attention, didn’t it? Yes, this is me making a racy entry…about the word porn. So for those of you who clicked on this entry in the hopes that I would be talking about the latest and greatest out in the valley, you have come to wrong place. This is merely a word nerd’s blog.

So, yesterday was a gorgeous day, and I don’t know what it is…well, scratch that, I do know what it is about a hot day that automatically makes me think of good food. First of all, I am a self-proclaimed foodie. If you were to look at my Pinterest page, you will see at least five or six boards dedicated to food, and one lowly board dedicated to fitness--it only has about six pins in it, as opposed to the 30+ pins I have in each of the food boards (30 being my conservative number: it’s probably double that). I even have one whole board dedicated to only desserts!

We’ll talk more about Pinterest at a later date. What I have is a typical case of what psychologists call association. Association is a learned behavior, and at a young age, growing up down the country with a large extended family that liked to gather at major holidays, one of my main associations is that on warm days that started to signify the start of summer, my grandfather would fire up his hand-made pit barbecue (it was a small brick structure). So to me warm weather has always been synonymous with a good grilled burger, or as I’ve grown up, a great steak.

Usually at work, I’m stuck back here in my windowless hovel, blissfully or painfully unaware of what the weather is outside. But yesterday, I made it out of doors (only because I had to go get an incomplete form filled out for final grading (BTW classes are over so I can dedicate my life to more mundane busyness, the topic of the next blog entry). But I made it out into the sunshine and it was a gorgeous day—the ones that only appear at the beginning and end of summer. The trees are freshly green, the sun was shining with nary a cloud to mar its imperfection, the humidity was low and there was a slight breeze wafting gently and making the trees whisper: It was the poetry of nature.

Amazingly, I am able to recall all this beauty retrospectively because at the time, I was merely bustling between buildings trying to get that paperwork completed in the 11th hour. The warmth of the weather seeped into my consciousness though, because when I returned back to my office, I found myself thinking about a nice juicy steak or burger.

And here’s where the original topic of this blog comes in. In my thoughts of that nice juicy steak or burger led me to the internet, where I just started typing in the URLs to various local restaurants and checking out their menus, drooling over the succulent pictures. Soon I had engaged in conversations with a few of my co-workers and realized I was watching food porn!

And today, as I look back at my activity yesterday, I contemplated how the word porn has been co-opted from its seedy, taboo, negative connotation into a whole new category that describes anything done to an extreme. I’m constantly telling my students about the mutability of the English language, and this word is a prime example of what I mean.

So as a word nerd, I looked the word up. The actual definition now, according to dictionary.com, is any type of media (“television shows, articles, photographs, etc.,”) “thought to create or satisfy an excessive desire for something, especially something luxurious.” And the sample definition was, “the irresistible appeal of food porn.” Look at how this word has morphed into something totally different than its original intent. Everyone pretty much knows that the word “porn” is the shortened version of “porno,” which in and of itself is a shortened version of “pornography.” The word and the practice of pornography are both pretty old, the word being coined around 1840, somewhere around the Renaissance era. Most people are familiar with the suffix –graphy which just refers to something that is recorded, either with words or pictures (think of other words like biography [literally the recorded account of a life] or photography). Porno- comes from the Greek word for harlot. Amazingly enough though, the shortened version of the word didn’t gain real recognition until the 1960s. No surprise there: in the era of free love, why not co-opt and expand those taboo definitions. The words “nigger” and “queer” underwent similar metamorphoses. The dictionary points out two very distinct characteristics, the first of which is perhaps a bit archaic and the second which has been transmuted (sort of). The first characteristic is the phrase “especially those having little or no artistic merit.” Not only would those in the porn industry object to this definition, but those who now have those expanded the definition beyond the second characteristic, “designed to stimulate sexual excitement,” and translate it into any stimulated excitement (ie. drooling over a web picture of a burger) could also say that what they experience isn’t looking at something vulgar and grotesque, but lavishing upon the beauty of something they love.

And even though that love of beauty is acknowledged, tacking the word porn onto anything gives it a pseudo-negative connotation. While we most of the time are rather open about our obsession, we also carry a small corner of secret shame or even guilt that maybe we shouldn’t like this thing quite so much. Words like obsession or addiction are peppered into our porn language. Even the word foodie was morphed from the drug addicted equivalent, “junkie.”

None of this truer than in the food porn industry that has popped up. Media have taken over the idea that food is a passion for many people. It’s not just Julia Child anymore, but food competition shows and entire networks dedicated to food, with shows ranging from meals to economize time or money to hedonistic Dionysian treks across the globe for “The best, biggest, or unique [insert food here].” I daresay the food porn industry has grown larger than its sexual counterpart, bringing new meaning to the colloquialism “do fries go with that shake?”

To coin a lyric of George Michael, “What do you call pornography?”