Year 54 Starts Off Moaning (and Mourning)

I've been dragging out the dark colors more these days. And those unfriendly sounds you hear from me in the morning? Grunting. Scowling. Bitching and moaning. And a lot of mourning. Why? My waistline is disappearing.

This is how bad it's gotten: I've traded my obsession with the scale for one with a tape measure. And I cheat. I know that cutting off my circulation is a form of self-deception; that I'm deluding myself into a size six when I'm really closer to an eight. But I look at it this way--if it keeps me from reaching for the slice of chocolate cake or downing a bag of cheedar cheese rice cakes, I'll be healthier in the long run. I just wish I would be healthier with a waistline.

This isn't a fact that caught me off guard; in fact, battling bulges has been a part of my life story since--forever. The words "baby fat" came out of my mother's mouth while I was still pre-pubescent and I clung to that explanation well into my teens. Then suddenly one summer between my sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays, the baby fat melted and, tah-dah, I had a waistline at last! You better believe I flaunted it, sister.

You wouldn't think this was such a big deal unless you saw my father's side of the family. Waistlines were not in the genetic code. They're Italian, afterall. Spaghetti, meatballs, garlic bread, stuffed rigatoni, lasagna along side the Thanksgiving turkey....this kind of diet doesn't make for hourglass figures. But, still, I craved one. And until I got pregnant in my late 20s, I somehow managed to keep a whittled waist despite blue cheese burgers, double stuffed subs, Burger King chicken sandwiches--fried not broiled--slathered with mayo. Oh, to be 25 again and have a metabolism.

By the time I hit my 30s, I lucked out. America was discovering step aerobics, Jane Fonda, and wearing sweatbands as a fashion accessory. I was merciless. Three nights a week of one-hour workouts courtesy of the school community education program. Circuit training at the health club. If I had known then that this would probably be the last time I'd ever squeeze into a size three, I would have posed for more pictures.

Then came the earthquakes. A divorce, single motherhood, a bankruptcy. Bing, Bang. Boom. Even though I was an emotional wreck, I never ballooned to outrageous proportions. Still, for the first time in my life I had to shimmy into a girdle to control the overflow of tummy flesh. I was mortified. I mean, my mother wore girdles. Even worse, I became petrified that matronhood was just around the corner. You know the look....flabby skin dangling from the upper arms, the doublechin, the saggy boobs, a hefty bag of junk in the trunk. The evidence was all around me. Literally. Around me. It's like that saying, "Denial isn't a river in Egypt." My own version is this: "Middle age spread isn't something you schmear on a bagel." Meaning: There are some things about aging we simply have to accept, deal with, or let it go. 

I'm at the "deal with it" stage. The measuring tape, as looney as it sounds, gives me a visual reminder that my days of fast food feasts and the endless pasta bowl at The Olive Garden are gone. And my frantic anti-girth regimen seems to be having some beneficial outcomes: according to my latest labs, my glucose and cholesterol levels are all below the target range.

Still, I'm hoping there will come a day when I'm ready to toss in the tape and say the hell with it. It might have been in my 60s until I caught a tabloid photo of actress Helen Mirren looking svelte and un-matronlike in a bikini. For the love of God, you post-menopausal women have to stop posing with your clothes off! It's demoralizing.

Got the Working Longer, Retiring Later Blues

Featured on MORE.com "Working" Channel:

I don't think there's a middle age person right now that isn't having a nervous breakdown over what they're going to do instead of retiring in their sixties. With new surveys showing that most Americans expect to work four more years past the age they planned to retire, the question that comes to my mind is: work at what?

Ironically, just as this cheery news was breaking, I heard from a fellow colleague in the non-profit cultural world who I'm pretty sure had been comfortably retired. The reason? She was looking for work.

Suddenly her phone call turned into a wake up call, and I was envisioning my life ten years down the road: mid-sixties, suddenly a displaced worker, decades of experience, professional qualifications up the yin yang, and I'm trolling friends for a job.

Being the anxiety-prone type, I started making lists months ago pre-apocalyptic phone call. The lists basically boiled down to four ways I could make a living while filling the gap before retirement: work I'm trained to do, work I would like to do (otherwise known as the "dream on" list), work I would be willing to do, and the "last resort" list.

Continued on MORE.com

Dancing Around the "G" Word

Apparently, there’s a lot of apology flinging these days over the use of a certain “G” word when referring to a multi-sex group or one that’s women-only.

I’m talking about the word guys.

Twice in the same week this came to my attention through work colleagues. One was a woman who had just wrapped up a meeting filled with us estrogen-only types and let the “G” word slip. She quickly made a U-turn saying, “I probably shouldn’t be calling you guys.”

Then there was my friend, Patrick, who was asking a business-related question in an email in which he used the all-purpose you guys. I knew he was simply using verbal shorthand, but he came back a paragraph later and posed the question, “How do women feel—especially those of a ‘certain age’—about being called guys?” I wanted to tell him he would be a lot more PC, and buying a lot fewer Appletinis for women friends he was offending, if he didn’t use the words “certain age.” As for using the “G” word, I assured him that I wouldn’t be spamming his inbox with naked photos of Rush Limbaugh because I’d been misidentified.

I’m sure there are women who will go out of their way to correct anyone using the word guys in their presence, but I’m not one of them. That’s probably because all my parental relatives hail from Pennsylvania where the phrase “yous guys” was the popular label for any group of people. (And on my Italian side of the family, there were a lot of them.) Personally, I thought this was a riot. We never heard “yous guys” in the state of New York. It still is a PA thing, as far as I can tell.

Even though I grew up in a male-dominated household, the word guys, to me, wasn’t male-specific. It was just a faster, more efficient way of calling everybody at one time without having to remember names. Our mothers did it all the time, screaming out the back door: “You guys stop throwing that ball against the side of the house!” Can you imagine Kate Gosselin trying to hustle that brood in front of the cameras if she had to call them all by name? Their fifteen seconds of fame would last until those kids were in their forties.

There was also the more intimidating query that made us all immediately stop dead in our tracks when mom’s voice would appear out of nowhere to ask: “What are guys up to?” Um, not spin the bottle in the basement. Or toking on a doobie. Whatever it was we guys were up to, it ended the minute we heard the voice of accusation. Even if we weren’t doing anything, the insinuating use of the “G” word made us conspirators. If we responded back with some smartass remark—which my brothers in their infinite immaturity had a habit of doing--we weren’t just guys, we were wise guys. In fact now that I think of it, being part of a pack of siblings meant I was lumped in with the guys on a daily basis.

The only place you rarely heard the word guys was the classroom. We were boys and girls, and later, ladies and gentlemen. Or Mr. and Miss if we were facing the principal (which I had some experience with, by the way.) If our teachers had to refer to us as a group, at all, they used the impersonal term “class.” And thanks to Cheech and Chong, no teacher since 1972 has been able to use the word without getting a rendition of Sister Mary Elephant from the crackpot in the last row.

I’m not a linguistics expert, but to me the word “guys” has reached the point of being innocuously genderless, and rolls off the tongue far easier than other possibilities like “all you people,” “the whole lot of you,” or “upright walking homo sapiens.”

There are quick little “safe” terms I find come in handy in a variety of situations. Take “everyone,” for instance. Everyone works well in those sticky business situations where you’re not quite sure what side of the sexual orientation line people fall on and don’t want to risk offending (or outing) the trans-gender CEO. For people who are on a first name basis and kicking back over beer and pizza, I like the more earthy term folks, although this can easily make you sound like you grew up on Little House on the Prairie with the wrong age group. I regret the fact that I live north of Mason-Dixon line because I think the term y’all is close to the perfect group label, whether you’re talking to corn farmers or top brass. And it just sounds so gosh darn friendly. Seriously, wouldn’t international diplomacy go a lot smoother if the Secretary of State started the conversation with, “How y’all doin, today?”

If men like my friend Patrick are worried about offending women, there are more hazardous words than guys that are going to get them skewered on the ends of our spike heels. “Girls” is definitely one of them. Men should never use the word “girls” when addressing a group of grown women unless, of course, your goal is to eat your testicles with a splash of hot sauce. “Ladies” is a borderline term that, in my opinion, has to be used with caution. Certain people like bartenders, hairdressers, and men who still hold the doors open for us—can get away with this and we think it’s charming. Men who use the word “ladies” to address, say, a women’s roller derby team, had better be wearing skates, because you’ll need to make a fast exit. And it goes without saying that only Phoebe ever got away with calling her fellow Friends, Rachel and Monica “her bitches.”

My advice would be, stick with guys. If teeth are bared and slanted eyes nail you to a wall, just say, “Ooops! My bad.” And offer to buy the next round.

New on MORE.com: Reliving Puberty....Again

In the October issue of MORE magazine, editor Lesley Jane Seymour wrote about how midlife is like going back to seventh grade, which to me is the best analogy for this hormone-crazed, anxiety-inducing time of life that I have read in a long time--and so true! Think about it: zits, moodiness, aggravating relationships, hair that seems to have a mind of it's own, body changes that drive you insane.....it's just like....puberty, again!

It got to me to thinking about those things I've had to contend with a second time around that I thought were over and done with by the time I reached adolescence. The story is called "Puberty, Again? No Fair!," and features my Top 10 list of midlife's little horrors. See if you relate!

(PS...It's currently listed on MORE.com's homepage under stories not to miss!)

Midlife Birthdays: Hold the Candles, Please

Every birthday, my brothers and I try to out do each other with funny cards about getting older. But this year, the award for most on-the-money aging sentiment has to go to my sister-in-law who sent this  "Miss Menopause of 1957" card, courtesy of the creative folks at Clayboys (www.clayboys.com).

Despite the fact they seem to come sooner every year, and I anticipate them with as much enthusiasm as my annual mammogram, birthdays in our family are still whoop-dee-doo occasions that demand we stick to rituals, one of which is the "what-do-you-want-to-do-for-your -birthday?" dilemma.

Inevitably, it's my mother who plays the role of party planner and tradition keeper. It seems inherent to our jobs as moms to make sure birthdays aren't forgotten, shrugged off, ignored, locked in a closet, or, God forbid, not acknowledged in some manner we've come to treat as a ritual.

There are upsides and downsides to this whole birthday-celebration -tradition stuff. The first downer is that birthdays remind us that we are, in fact, older than we were a year ago. Really--I thought fifty-three was just fine; why do I have to turn fifty-four? Plus, since there are several family birthdays preceding mine, the conversation at all these other celebrations will get around to the inevitable question I'd rather not think about: "And what do you want to do for your birthday?"

Um--Is kidnapping Harrison Ford for a wild weekend in Paris an option? No? How about frosting all the mirrors in the house so my reflection will look perpetually fuzzy and a bit less wrinkly? Or, here's an idea: a gift certificate for Botox injections. Maybe there's a doctor out there offering a two-for-one deal.

These suggestions will fall on deaf ears. My mother will scoff and say something like: "Wait til you get to be 76!" You bet, mom. I'm going to take that advice to heart and wait. I'm going to wait and wait and wait some more.  I figure if I wait long enough, by the time I get to 76, it will be 2099.

On the upside there are things to look forward to because we do have traditions. There will be a free meal. Either dinner a la familia or out at a nice restaurant. Whatever the final outcome, I don't have to cook on my birthday celebration day. And there will dessert. This is the one time of year I allow myself to abandon my fear of fats, sugar, and empty calories, in favor of something decadent, sinfully rich, and preferably chocolate. I'm not nuts, however. I know that that slice of triple chocolate cake will mean three pounds on the scale tomorrow. Instead, I make my brother order dessert and treat myself to a bite. Or two. Okay, maybe three, but that's my limit.

There will also be presents. Sometimes a gift card; sometimes cold hard cash. Either one is fine with me, just for future reference. Usually my daughter gives me something that comes in a gift bag with tissue paper and a very mushy card that gets me all teary-eyed. I'm all about the gifts.  In fact, it's my opinion that people, in general, greatly under-estimate the glee of a gift.  I particularly love gifts bags because they're like a movie trailer: a hint of what's to come without giving away the whole story.  And it really doesn't matter significantly that the gift is something I already have, have no idea how to use, or is a complete mystery--it's the element of surprise combined with total narcissism. Everybody gives to you on your birthday; no mutual reciprocation is expected like on Christmas.

So my mother and I go through the ritual of deciding what we're going to do for my birthday. We haggle over restaurants. I suggest someplace we haven't been to before and she immediately nixes the idea.

"You won't like it," she says. "It's very Italian."  (Yes, just like my father, which makes me somewhat biased towards Italian food.  If he was Japanese, I might be suggesting sushi.)

"They make everything with cheese," my mother goes on to explain. Which is the real deal-breaker because my mother is allergic to dairy and therefore large quantities of cheese.

I acquiesce to a restaraunt that everyone in the family likes and has enough menu items that don't cause wheezing, sneezing, abdominal discomfort, heartburn, or a need to break out an epi pen. This is our tradition, afterall. If it wasn't, I would be sitting alone in a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant sucking down noodles with some coconut milk spiked tea.

Given the two choices--even though I'm the honored guest at this celebration of my aging--I choose the all-American fare because it will bring us all together. Even though five of my family members reside within a few miles of each other, birthdays and holidays are generally the only time we're able to convene face-to-face.

We email; send photos; connect on Facebook. But it's only in person that I get to see my sister-in-law crack up laughing so hard it's contagious. It's the only time I get to hear how much my daughter looks more and more like me--a fact that is more thrilling to me than it is to her. I can see firsthand that my parents, in their late 70s, are looking healthy and fit, and that their recall of events is far better than mine--sometimes embarassingly so when it comes to the less than admirable habits of my younger days.

My brother will order some kind of artery-clogging dessert so I can get my sugar-fix. There will be cards to pass around the table that will have us hooting like a pack of hyennas. We will be noisy, stuffed, and the waiter will get a sizeable tip. And somewhere between the main course and coffee, my mother will say to my daughter, who's next in the birthday lineup: "What do you want to do for your birthday?" And so the birthday ritual continues. We've just decided to fore go candles. At this point, we're up to double-boxes and the potential for a three-alarm fire.

From Wimp to Hot Mama in One Weekend

The older I get, the less I want to avoid doing things simply out of fear. Even if that fear is of death by electrocution. With that in mind, I was determined not to let a little high voltage wiring keep me from having sparkling new wall outlets to go along with my stunning new tiled backsplash. I just had to--gulp!--face the fire.

There are some things that aren't going to change the world, end world hunger, or bring peace to the Middle East. For instance, my ability to replace old, yellowed electrical outlets and switches in my kitchen with bright, shiny new ones.

I'm proud to say there is little in the DIY world that scares me off. Painting. Stripping off old wallpaper. Tearing down old tiles. Replacing door knobs. I've also amassed a pretty decent tool arsenal that even includes a Craftsmen power drill, a laser level, and a rockin' pair of tile nippers. But there's one thing I've steered away from and that's electrical. My fear of getting fried has far outweighed my desire to replace ugly old receptacles in every place I've ever lived. Who notices those things anyway, I rationalized?

But I had just replaced my 1970s speckled, goldenrod tiles in my kitchen with hip, new white subway tiles and somehow the dingy ivory ones just weren't doing it for me. I do have a tool master in the family. My brother, who earns a living crawling around all kinds of creepy places installing alarm systems, is always the one I call when faced with one of these, "I'm not touching this," projects.

But all the parts were sitting there--the receptacles, switches, outlet covers--and I have the patience of a juiced up celebrity on a delayed flight to LA. But that alone wasn't going to convince me I could tackle the hot wire. What it came down to was this: Was I going to let a little fear of 120 volts of electric current turn me into a jellyfish? Hell, no. It was time to face my dragons, so to speak, and grow a pair.

Not without instructions, however. I headed over to my nearby Lowe's and grabbed a book on wiring. It didn't look all that complex and my receptacles were pretty basic: no 3-way lighting; no fancy dimmer switches. Just your garden variety equipment. What complicated matters, was that there are apparently all these variations on the wires inside the box. There might be one black wire, one white wire and a copper ground wire or there might be two of each, plus a ground wire. There might even be a red one. And where the wires connect makes a difference. I sat there in Lowe's with my little notebook that I carry everywhere sketching diagrams just in case I ended up with a variation I wasn't expecting. I certainly gained a greater appreciation for putting a man on the moon. Imagine the consequences of one misplaced wire.

The other thing I decided was a necessity was a voltage tester. I'd seen my brother use one to test if the lines were hot and figured I wasn't taking any chances. Turned out they had a little pen shaped device for less than $10 that you stick in the socket or touch near the wires, and it both beeps and lights up if any of the wires have current running through them. This turned out to be one of the top 10 best investments I've ever made, next to a flat iron and Estee Launder Undereye Coverup. I discovered that just turning the breaker off to the specific outlet I was replacing didn't necessarily equal loss of electric power in the box. So just to be safe, I shut of all the breakers. There. No juice; no shocking myself into a coma.

Like anything that scares the pants off you, the first one is always the one you dread the most. I lined up all my tools--my screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers, my new switch and my new voltage tester. I shut off the breakers. Stuck the tip inside the box until absolutely nothing beeped or lit up. Piece of cake, I figured. Well, not so much. The wires weren't wrapped around the screws; they were stuck in little holes in the back. Getting the stiff copper wires into the right "J" shape to hook around the screws was no less a fete than trying to whip egg whites to just the right "stiff peak" consistency. And then shoving all these wires back into the box was a bit like trying to stuff the entrails back into a gutted fish. Having zilch experience in either of these "manly" tasks, it occured to me that we really should have Eagle Scout training for girls. You never know when you might need this stuff.

Finally, after I'd fastened the new switch in place, I stepped back and smiled. I'd done it. I threw the breakers back on and, with a little trepidation, plugged in the can opener and pressed the lever. There was the satisfying buzz. At that moment I felt like I should be doing some kind of endzone dance. I tasted the triumph that the first upright walking human must have felt when he discoverd how to make something combustible and thought: "I can control fire! I'm a god!" Remember Tom Hanks in the movie "Cast Away" when his stick rubbing finally resulted in a blaze of banana leaves? It was like that. Anxiety, frustration, and relentless perseverance all paid off in one moment of glory.

By the end of the weekend, I'd replaced two switches and three receptacles. They look gorgeous on my new white tiles. The only problem with conquering a fear of doing something is that you no longer have a handy excuse for not doing it. There are all old, outdated electric outlets all over my condo. This is where the thrill of facing fear head-on and the realization that you've just added a new chore to your "to do" list have a pow wow. Yes, I will probably get around to replacing these outlets, but the desperate desire to do them all in one maniacal spree of electric rewiring is, for now, appeased.

Like a first date that you spend all day primping for, the thrill of taking a never-attempted risk fizzles rather quickly once you meet with success. If you're a regular risk-taker who thrives on adrenaline rushes, you turn such fetes into new hobbies. You climb Everest. Race marathons in the desert. Drive race cars at insanely high speeds. That won't be me. I won't be toting around my voltage tester asking people if there's an outlet that needs replacing just to recapture the high of thwarting death by eletrocution. A weekend of bliss is plenty for me.

What Fifty Looks Like

Hey readers: My newest story on how our faces tell the true story of our age is being featured on, of all things, the "Beauty: Skin" page of MORE.com (tee-hee!) Here's the intro....please follow the link to read the whole story, and if you can become a MORE.com member, please "Like it" or add a comment. Or, you can even leave a comment here on my page. Enjoy!

"I know there are people out there who go around proclaiming that "Fifty is the new thirty." I hate to be the one who puts the pin to the “Midlife Fantasy” balloon, but it's hogwash. Fifty is as much thirty as Pamela Anderson is a "B" cup.

But let's not even push the envelope all the way back two decades--fifty isn't the new forty, either. If anything, fifty is just a new fifty. I was under the mistaken belief, myself, that fifty was something you could choose to be rather than become, and I was wrong. We can fill it, lift it, freeze it with Botox, dye it, spray tan it, and work it out while some ex-Marine orders us to "Hit the floor and give me twenty, probbie!," but it won't make us one day younger than the date on our driver's license.

Since I'm turning 54 this year, I've had some time to come to grips with the fact that fifty isn't simply forty with really, really long credits tacked on to the end. Fifty is different, and this is why: It’s the face........ (Go to MORE.com to read the rest of the story)