Old, Not Old...

Yesterday I heard a snatch of conversation that got me thinking. A couple of young voices were talking about an upcoming birthday. "I'm gonna be 25!" One of them moaned "I feel so I old..." I remember being young and feeling old. I also remember Watergate, the Beatles coming to America, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. OK, not the last one but I have been around awhile.

I'm still not old, though, but gosh, if you're 25 and don't know if you're old, you've got a long, old life ahead of you! I remember when I was a kid; anytime I asked my mom how old she was she'd just say "I'm old" and the look on her face said she really thought she was! I did some figuring and realized that she was in her 30's when I started wondering about her age. Of course that was in the 60's when the worst thing a woman could do was grow older. The horror!

I think what we need are some benchmarks. That way there will be no question about when you become old, you'll just be there. If people can't do anything about it the debate will end. Problem is, what do you use for a benchmark? What are some commonalities we can use to determine geezerdome? Grey hair? That wouldn't work. We all go grey at different times. Plus, its easy to hide...

Bill Cosby once said your first grey pube makes you feel old but that's a lousy benchmark. Who would want to check? I have a personal set of aging benchmarks that serve me well and I think we should apply them universally. They are universal and unavoidable. Here they are: you are young until you're 30, then you're middle aged til you're 60, then you're old. If you live past 90, you're really old and for every 5 years after that you add another "really". Until you reach 100, and then you add a "freakin'" I think this will simplify our discourse.

You could argue that the weak link of my system is middle age because technically "middle" means that there is the same amount on either side and a 59 year old probably won't live to 118 years old. Possibly not, but who knows, modern science could help us all live to be really, really, freakin' really, really, really, old.

Of course, then I'll have to re-calibrate my benchmarks.

August 10

Today is the 25th anniversary of the daughter unit's birth. Its also approaching the fourth anniversary of her heart's failure and it is because of this that she and I spent today at Kaiser in Santa Clara for her annual big heart checkup. She has checks every three months but those just involve blood tests. The annual big one, though, involves a catheter inserted in an artery and threaded down to take a bite out of her heart.

I know. Ew. I sit in the waiting room, humming Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart", trying not to think about what's going on in the procedure room in the back, when I notice a couple across the room looking anxious and confused. Plus the young man was wearing a respirator - the kind painters wear. I moseyed on over, introduced myself and asked if they were transplant people. They were. He'd gotten a new heart just last Thursday. His experience and my daughter's were very similar. Perfectly healthy, caught a virus that killed their hearts.

We were talking about their transplants and the little old lady sitting with a whole different group (heart attack, I think), kept exclaiming "Oh my!" "Goodness!" and "Heavens no!" at intervals through our whole conversation. She was hilarious - I almost tossed in my uterine polyps and breast lump just to give her more material...


The daughter came out after her procedure, and I was glad my new friends had gone in already because this one hurt my girl a lot. When she came out there were tears in her eyes. She popped a percocet and a short time later got very relaxed. Then she had an echocardiogram, clinic visit and an xray. After only seven hours, we were done.

We toodled along back past home and to the county offices in Hayward. The daughter had to submit some paperwork for a job she starts soon. While at the County office with most of the population of the county, I discovered several things:
1. There are lots of fat people in our county.
2. Most of these fat people wear pants that are too small.
3. Too small pants on a too large body cause the flab to ooze over the waistband.
4. This is unattractive.
5. People who work in county offices don't get paid enough.

If we thought waiting in line at Kaiser and the county offices was fun, we found true joy waiting in line to leave the parking lot with all the other people who were trying to get the hell out of there because it was 4:30 and time to go home! I sang Happy Birthday to the girl just to remind her it was her special day.

When we finally rolled up the driveway, we were overcome with exhaustion and relief. My baby headed for the door and after I finished kissing the driveway, I joined her. I was thrilled to be home but I was mostly happy to be home with her because her life is truly a miracle. Plus I'm exhausted. And my nearly perfect hub made burgers for dinner - with pepper jack cheese.

All in all, not the birthday I'd choose for anybody but we made the best if it. We laughed a lot and gave her her presents before dinner. Then she went out for ice cream with her friends. If you take away the heart biopsy - you might even call it fun! Next year, though, maybe dinner and a show...

In Praise of the F Bomb

When my kids were little, in order to not raise potty mouths, the hub and I decided we needed to clean up our language. Its not that we were constantly swearing, but we realized that the cussin' we did would eventually be regurgitated by our offspring which would be broadcast into the ether at inopportune moments. So we cleaned it up and started sounding like something between a Disney movie and Mother Theresa. We were boring. But very well spoken.

As the kids grew up and discovered that there were cool other words to express anger, frustration, disdain, etc, I explained that - yes, they are just words, but they show a lack of creativity and - no, its not OK to correct Grandma when she uses them. The first time I dropped an f-bomb in their presence I think I made them cry. I even apologized - but I really wasn't sorry - I was f*ckin' pissed!

I discovered along the way that other people didn't share my restraint. Well, maybe around kids but nowhere else. One Sunday, I attended a meeting in my former minister's office. After the meeting ended, I mentioned that something confused me and my minister said "Yeah, that's a real mind f*ck". As I was drinking coffee at the time, I did an actual spit take. The kind you see on TV where somebody drinks something and blows it across the room. Whiles I was cleaning the wall, I said I was sorry, but I really hadn't expected to hear that word in the minister's office on a Sunday morning.

Flash forward to last month. The hub and I were visiting our pseudo family in Las Vegas. They are some of my favorite people and its purely fate that brought us together. The hub's widowed mother married a divorced man after all their kids were grown and everybody just kind of clicked. The sort-of brother has a kinda wife, and they are very cool people. Both journalist types, they are smart, artistic, and well spoken. My nearly sister-in-law also has a mouth that would make a rapper blush. According to her, people aren't dead, they're "tits up in the ground" and f-bombs fly like mosquitoes at dusk when she's comfortable around you. Which, I am happy to say, she is around me and the hub.

In fact, Semi Sis has given me a new mantra by which I intend to structure my whole life. In addition to her other talents, she is a really wonderful and creative cook. All her food is delicious and beautifully presented. One day, she was making a pizza and she was having trouble getting it off the peel (Of course she has a peel - I use a cookie sheet) She ended up folding the pizza in half and turning it into a cobbled together calzone. Ticked off, she carried it to the table, plopped it down and said "F*ck it - its dinner."

This is my favorite new phrase. And its so versatile! Wash the laundry with a red sock?"F*ck it - its clean". Let weeds take over your garden? "F*ck it - its green". Eat a whole bag of chips" "F*ck it - they're gone". I've long thought I needed a personal philosophy and I think I've found it. Thanks to my sorta sister-in-law in Vegas.

I've been thinking a bit about the f-bomb lately. In fact, I've done some research on it. Its an old word of Germanic origin that probably always meant having sex. That's why there's not much information on the origin of the f-bomb; people are shy about stuff like that. Now, though, it means so much more. It adds extremity to things, emphasis...Its a f*cking brilliant word when you think about it!

While writing this, I've kept my friends of tender sensibilities in mind by masking the f-bomb. That's another thing I've discovered - you have your nice friends and your f*cking friends. Your nice friends are people you can have coffee or lunch with, talk about your kids, and shop sometimes. Your fucking friends, you can do all the same stuff with, but you loosen up with these people, and they tend to be a lot more fun. There is frequently chocolate involved with your f*cking friends.

So, I've decided that its OK to drop the occasional f-bomb. In fact, it adds color and depth to my vocabulary. Not in the way Mrs. Metz, my English teacher, would have wanted - but it works for me. And as for this blog entry, f*ck it - its done...