The Old Party Girl She Ain't What She Used To Be

     I was picked up in a limo an whisked off to Washington D.C. this weekend. The three week kickoff, apparently, to my 50th birthday. Sadly, I am not the girl I used to be. My heart was willing to give it a go but the old body just couldn't deliver!
     K & K (we'll keep it simple to protect all those concerned) arrived at my front door shortly at three p.m. on Friday, they popped open a bottle of champagne and we sat back and enjoyed the forty minute ride.
     Dinner, from what I was told, was fabulous. I made it through the appetizers and decided enough was enough, it was time for bed. Honestly, I don't remember falling asleep at the table. In my defense, I was running on four hours of sleep. K&K, good friends that they are, had the entrees packed and shuttled me back to the hotel.
     And let's talk about those appetizers for a minute. For three weeks I had been strictly adhering to the South Beach diet. Good little doobie that I am, I didn't cheat, not one little bit. South Beach, for those not familiar, is a modified low carb plan; lots of fresh veggies and lean proteins, no bad fats or sugar. The appetizers, of which I had very little, happened to be extremely rich. Have you ever had Cuttle Fish? Me neither. All I remember is that it came back to visit me the next morning in a very nasty manner. Both ends...disgusting.
     The good news is for the rest of the weekend there was absolutely no desire to cheat on my diet. The thought of alcohol repulsed me and I finally managed to scarf down some poached eggs and ham by this morning.
     There is an upside to intestinal distress...no weight gain!

Wasted Calories

     I've been a very good girl since the end of August. It was time to get serious about the weight I'd put on over the winter. Whether I wanted to believe it or delve into denial, the bathroom scale confirmed that I needed to lose a good thirty, maybe even forty, pounds. Five feet, seven inches can only hide so much of 190 pounds. I had gone well beyond pleasingly plump, and not only was it making me look and feel older, it was depressing.
     The good news: Staying away from refined carbs and sugar (with a wee bit of exercise thrown in) I've managed to drop eleven pounds. The bad news: My girlfriends have decided today is the kickoff of my 50th birthday celebration. The actual day is three weeks from now but due to scheduling conflicts, K & K will be "kidnapping" me later this afternoon and taking me away on a mystery adventure. This will mean good restaurants and good wine...both of which I love dearly. Nothing makes me happier than a nice glass of a buttery Chardonnay, or a tender piece of filet paired with a nice Zinfandel (my personal favorite, Sin Zin). Typically, with K& K any celebration involves wine, lots of wine. This will be my ultimate challenge this weekend. I want to have fun and I want to maintain my weight loss.
     I will dig deep and hard to unearth all of the willpower inside me to prove that I can survive with one glass of a good red, and a lean steak and green veggies. I want to enjoy all of the good things in life, because really, life is so damn short...especially with fifty breathing down your neck!
     I just don't want to be a fat old lady.

Familial

     When my daughter was born, she had the honorable distinction of being the first grandchild, at least on my side of the family. My mother was head over heels in love...she'd waited years to become a grandmother. As she told my father after he commented on her non-stop holding, fussing, feeding, and diapering of her granddaughter: "She's blood, you're not."
     It took me a long time, well into adulthood, for me to realize that while family is important, family doesn't always been blood relations. My mom and dad have both passed away, my brothers live in other cities, and in a few years, my daughter will be in college. I've had to establish my own little family; people who don't share my bloodlines, but are in many ways closer to me than some on my actual family tree.
     Let me tell you about my "sister." I met her more than twenty years ago when I started a new job, hundreds of miles from my hometown. M was the first person in the office to come in and say hello. At the time, I had no idea the impact she would make on my life.
     Petite and flashy, with a flamboyant personality, M is the woman you can't help but notice. I'm "Ethel" and she's "Lucy." She loves high-heeled, fancy pumps while I favor comfort over style. Over the course of our twenty-some year friendship, my taste in clothing has driven her a tad bit crazy. One pair of pants in particular, black corduroy with little cherries on them, were a favorite target of hers.
     "Where did you get those pants," she'd say. "You look like a homeless lady."
     "I like them, "I'd counter. "They're extremely comfy."
     "They have an elastic waistband...they're pathetic."
     I finally did give those pants to charity, and some authentic homeless lady is probably enjoying them immensely.
     But the bottom line is this: M is the one who allows me to engage in these sisterly battles, something I never had the chance to experience growing up.
     We've watched our children grow up together, we've laughed and cried together, and we've had our share of disagreements. But the bottom line, no matter what, we know we are absolutely, one hundred percent, there for each other.
     Just like family.
   

 

When Life Hands You Other Plans

     If you want to hear the most heartbreaking sound in the world, listen to your father cry. Fathers aren't supposed to cry, at least not when you're an adolescent and they're the rock that keeps the family in a solid place. When your mom is chronically ill, and in and out of the hospital, all you have is your dad. To hear him sobbing behind his locked bedroom door is, to say the least, bewildering.
     My mother isn't even forty and the doctors say her kidneys will fail within years and she'll eventually need a transplant if she wants to live. Three days a week she depends on dialysis and her hope is that a suitable donor will be found. Still, she refuses to even consider her doctor's insistence that one of her three children be tested to see if they can donate. My father's healthy kidneys are not a suitable match.

     Fourth of July, 1974, my mom is in the hospital yet again. I don't even know why this time. It's become so common place to not have her in the house, I don't even ask. I'm afraid to ask. My grandmother is over, giving my dad a hand. We've finished dinner and all I want is for the sun to go down so I can go outside and light firecrackers and sparklers with my friends. I want to have fun. I want life to be normal, but normal in our family ended several years ago.
     I go upstairs to ask dad if it's okay to venture across the street but mere inches from his door, I hear him on the other side, even though his sobs are low and muffled. His face must be buried in a pillow, maybe two. I press my ear to the door, yet I cannot knock, scared to disturb him. He would be so embarrassed, deny that he is crying.
     Is he envisioning my mother's possible early death like I have so many times in my worst nightmares, seeing himself as the young widower with three children to raise on his own?
     I can't think about it anymore, have already spent too many hours worrying about my life as a girl without a mother. I run down the stairs, pretend that all is well.
     My grandmother is in the family room watching television. Bob Barker is helping contestants with Truth or Consequences.
     "Where are you going?" she asks.
     "Across the street."
     "Did you tell your father?"
     "Yeah, he said it was fine," I lie.
     "Don't stay out too late," she says.

     As I run to join the other neighborhood kids, I notice dad's bedroom light has been turned off. Perhaps he's waiting for my mother to join him in his dreams.


(In loving memory of Alex G. Keurejian on this day, 9/22, his birthday. You should have been eighty-one years old, dad...but life had other plans)

    

I Need A Gameplan

Many of my friends and co-workers have blogs. It seems like the thing to do. I started mine on a whim and really had no clear plan on why I was doing it, or the topic of my blog. As with most things I've attempted in life, winging it seemed like the best idea.
     I know lots of writers, real writers, people who actually make a living and pay their bills with the money they earn putting words to paper. I admire them a great deal for their dedication and love of the craft. Some people who know me would call me a writer, albeit a mostly unpublished writer. The sum of money I've made as a writer totals a grand forty dollars. Apparently, I'm a mostly unmotivated writer.
     So the gameplan right now is to sit down at my laptop every day, be it morning or night, and get something down on this blog. It doesn't even matter if nobody reads it. This is for me, my very own personal, daily writing exercise. Maybe something brilliant will come out of this, maybe not.
     Maybe it will simply make me happy.
    

What Is It We Really Want?

The other day, my friend "M" and I were sitting on the deck, enjoying a beautiful afternoon. The weather was perfect, not too hot or humid. We were enjoying our diet Cokes in wine glasses (seems a bit more sophisticated for some reason) and basically taking it easy before we had to part company and start thinking about what to make for dinner or how many loads of laundry we'd finish before falling, exhausted, into bed.
"What do you need to be happy?" M asked me. "I've been racking my brain about this for days and I can't think of one thing that would make me happy."
"I think having more time to travel would make me happy," I said. "Or at least a little happier."
We've had many conversations the past several months about this topic. What does it really take to make a person happy? Make us happy, that is. We've both come to the conclusion that it certainly isn't material things, although we like material things. We're happy that our children are happy and seem to have their lives in order. We're excited for their futures and hope they make wiser choices than we did. We realize it's pointless to lament about the past but we're still trying to figure out how we should tackle our futures. We both know what we'd like to do but have not yet worked up the courage to do it.
Right now, right at this moment, I am happy. My Ravens beat San Diego tonight. My laundry is done, for the most part. My house is quiet and peaceful.
Perhaps that is enough for right now.

The Downward Dog is Not My Friend...Yet!

I have a gym membership and like thousands of other people out there, I rarely get my fat ass to the gym. Sure, around Christmas time it seems like a great idea, a good investment for health and well being and all that other crap I keep reading about on the scores of health web sites I can't stay away from. I was actually pretty good the first few months, went every single day for at least an hour. Even tried a Zumba class. For those of you not familiar with Zumba, it 's apparently the hot new Latin Dance exercise craze. It will always be taught by a size two hottie, young enough to be the daughter of most of the women taking the class. She will move like a gazelle while the rest of us simply try to keep up with the pulsating beat, lumbering at best like hippos with four left feet.
Somewhere around mid-summer I took a sabbatical from the gym. It started innocently enough, first with the excuse that it was more important for me to catch up on my sleep with afternoon naps, and then moved into the "but there's so many other things I need to do around the house first" excuses. I stopped going and never looked back. I knew hard-earned money was being wasted, automatically withdrawn from my bank and into the gym's account, but I didn't care, I was sick of working out. It went on for so long that the staff at the gym even started calling me to see if I was okay. Talk about guilt.
And here's a shocker: after four months of being a sloth and cramming any and all refined carbs down my throat, I gained ten pounds. I was surprised to see it was only ten. Time to get back on the wagon, I decided.
Today, My daughter and I tried Yoga, deciding to ease ourselves back onto the exercise bandwagon. We grabbed our mats and picked spots in the back, away from those who looked like they probably knew what they were doing. We inhaled and exhaled, and we fell over quite a bit. But little by little we managed to keep most of our balance and tried to suppress a chuckle when the instructor went into new age, spiritual overdrive.
I can't say I loved it, not yet. But as the class ended and we went to place our mats back on the shelf, I did notice that the little pains and cricks in my lower back felt much more relaxed, my knees less stiff, my neck nice and limber.
Sign me up for the next class. Who knows, maybe power yoga not too far down the road!

The Countdown Begins...

In less than a month I will turn fifty years old. It's still hard for me to physically form that particular F word and urge it to leave my mouth. Writing it down seems much easier, maybe because it will seem more like a story...like it's happening to someone else.
The nice thing about turning fifty is that if you're suddenly afflicted with amnesia and can't remember your age, there are so many nice people who will be more than happy to remind you. AARP has more than likely killed one adult tree simply with the amount of invitations they have sent me, asking me to please become a member. They've even thrown in the offer of a free travel bag. I'm touched.
My doctor loves to remind me that my body is falling apart. My daughter finds a certain joy in pointing out sags, lumps, veins, and wrinkles. I like to remind her that the twenty-five hours I spent pushing her out of my body and into the world were pretty much the death knell on my size six figure. Oh well. Some people said I was too skinny back then, anyway.
So what am I doing, you ask? Who the heck cares if I'm turning fifty, or nineteen, or eighty-nine? It all seems a bit self-absorbed, doesn't it? Just trying to get my house in order, so to speak. I've been busy the past several weeks trying to get my home, my literal home, organized; throwing out old paperwork, packing up and giving old clothes and books to charity, scrubbing floors and washing windows.
Perhaps it's also time to get my physical and emotional house in order.