A TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW

At what point in life do we automatically become walking pharmaceutical reference manuals? This seems to sneak up on you. One day, someone makes a comment about their dose of Lipitor, and you actually know what they are talking about. Not only do you know what it’s for, you wonder if it’s something that should be in your morning arsenal of tablets and capsules.

I never noticed my parents doing this when they were my age, but then again, I would have been ten, and who cares at that age about what weird things your parents discuss. There are some things you just do not want to know about, and while the contents of the medicine cabinet might not be at the top of the list, it’s definitely in the top ten.

To be fair, part of our ‘knowledge’, and I use that term loosely, comes from television ads and full-page spreads in golf and travel magazines. We are inundated with people telling us all day long what pills we should be asking our doctor about. The fun thing about that here, though, is that where medications that require a prescription are concerned, the drug companies can advertise, but they cannot use the name of the product and the condition it’s for in the same ad. We get to see the man skipping down the street, and the Viagra logo at the end of the twenty-second bit, but we cannot know what it’s for. All we know is we have to ask our doctor for it because it will make our lives so much better... despite the side effects of liver disease, kidney disease, loss of vision, incontinence, confusion, high blood pressure, body parts falling off, stroke, heart attack and death. Not to worry, though – they have pills for all those things too. Soon we will be like the Jetsons, and just pop a giant pill every morning and that will give us our medical and nutritional requirements for the day.

But when does it happen to us? One day, we find ourselves sitting around the card table, sipping decaf because it’s after 11am, discussing drug names like we used to discuss rock bands or movie stars. Now we can’t remember the stars or what they did (and who watches movies anymore? They come on way too late), and the rock bands are just too damned loud, what with all that bass thumping in your ears. Yes, we’re boomers, and Viagra has become the new Rolling Stones in our world – definitely not a change for the better.

By means of protest, therefore, I propose that we toss caution to the wind. Let’s drink the good coffee, watch the movie and sing We’re Not Going To Take It as loud as we can every time one of those commercials comes on. We can do… the coffee will help.

THAT'S REVOLTING!!

I didn’t shave today. I could have. I probably should have – if I was younger, but I didn’t. I stood in the shower, considered the Alberta field stubble on my calves and said ‘No! I will not!’

I can hear you already, asking ‘But… Why??’ in that whiny ‘but why’ voice. The answer is simple. I am revolting! I am protesting first the fact that I live in what is supposed to be the warmest part of the country, but which is, in fact, experiencing AGAIN temperatures that are on the south side of -20. The joke here is that we pay a ‘Sunshine Tax’ for the privilege of living here, in the land of milk and honey, where the sun always shines. Well, where is the freaking sunshine today? I realize the sunshine tax yet your still in Canada thing is a bit delusional on our part, something that could be blamed on hypothermic hallucinations or permafrost of the brain, but come on! We do have a desert just 90 minutes from here, a little desert, the only one in Canada, but we all know what deserts are like at night. Imagine an icy desert night, then multiply it by the number of days that it does not get a chance to warm up in these frigid temperatures, and you have the makings of a new horror movie setting – sorta like my legs are right now.

The second protest is about the need for women to shave. Sorry, but as I age, warmth becomes a very precious commodity. Hair works for dogs and cats and musk ox (no, my legs are not quite that bad… yet), so why not for me? I think we should embrace the hair, wear it proudly (okay… maybe not in the armpits, because they are always the last place to get cold). I am even considering fertilizer for my legs, encouraging the hair to grow just to fight off the damned cold. Who is gonna know anyways? We hear heavy socks, high boots, long underwear, snowsuits… our legs are not gonna see the light of day for at least a couple months. If, by chance though, I find myself soaking up some rays in Maui or Malibu, I will perhaps take pity on those around me, and get out the weed whacker -- that’s what it will take by that time – but only if I know the temperatures will be warmer here when I get back home.

THE LEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL

No, I am not talking Christmas. I am not talking shoes, furniture, car seats or gloves. I am talking… skin; old skin, tired skin, skin that is definitely not like the skin I saw on the clerk at the store today. You know; the twenty-year-old goddess with the long flowing hair, perky boobs and immaculate, tight skin? Yeah, that’s her.

There is a huge industry designed to keep our skin looking like hers. I know, because I’ve tried a bottle of just about every one of them. I have used cucumber peels, apricot pit scrubs, moisturizers, creams, lotions, you name it, and yet, when I look in the mirror, it still crinkles at the eyes and wrinkles around the edges. So far, we’re just talking about the face. It doesn’t get any better as you move down.

Have you ever noticed how your skin starts to look like crepe paper? I have no idea why. You do everything the commercials tell you to do, yet you still end up with basset hound skin – skin you can pick up by the handful, let go and watch cascade back down. Your shins have ostrich skin, your ankles have that turtle-leg texture, your heels become the moisture-starved cracked clay dry-season African river bed, and don’t even mention the knees.

That said, you take some time to consider the skin. It is the largest organ of the human body. It protects everything inside, holding off the wind, warming us on a sunny day, feeding us vitamin D from the sun. It sweats, gets bruised, cut and mutilated on a daily basis. We cover it, rip hair from it, rub back our goosebumps, and, when we were younger, we panicked over it, examining daily for that sadistic Friday morning zit with the massive red circle and perverted sense of humor. Throughout its lifetime, our skin deals with every possible element, all the time fighting the valiant battle against womanhood’s arch enemy, gravity.

So, there is nothing else we can do. Pour a glass of wine and toast your skin, wrinkles and all. Wear those blemishes with pride. They are a badge of honor for all of us, testament of a life lived. Besides, unless you are independently wealthy or can find a myopic sugar-daddy who will pay some surgeon to get out the can opener to crank that stuff back to where it belongs (adding a bit of starch to the cleavage at the same time), you just have to accept what Mother Nature has in store for your skin. You can definitely curse her, but I don’t think she listens.

Oh, My Bags Are Packed...

…And they’re sitting there, right under my eyeballs, sadistic black circles that make me look like I walked into the wall while holding up a pair of binoculars. In my younger days, I popped contact lenses in every morning, put on make-up and never thought about the portmanteaus under the peepers. It was devastating when I had to wear glasses on a regular basis, so not that long ago, in another of those ‘what was I thinking’ moments, I tried contacts again. I poked them into my eyeballs and stared, horrified at what stared back at me. This started my adventure.

To be fair, florescent lights are never flattering, but still, the sight was earth-shattering. Considering myself to be a logical, reasonable adult though, I did what every other logical, reasonable adult would do. Somewhere I had read what ‘the stars’ do about this. Depends must be overflowing at the thought of how, based on a stupid article, someone would go running out to buy this magical potion that instantly cures black eyes. The article’s author giggles uncontrollably at the notion of women nonchalantly purchasing tubes of hemorrhoid cream. I walked with a strong stride into the store, that alone announcing to the world that I wasn’t the one with little bunches of grapes hanging from my bottom. For insurance I added loudly ‘I have to get this home right away for my poor dear husband. He’s in such pain’ then smiled my angelic smile just to make sure everyone knew it was not for me. I got home, ran into the bathroom, and started to smear the stuff on my face, knowing within seconds the black circles would be gone. No more glasses for me!

The problem with these creams, and there is no way to be delicate here, is that they are designed to stick where gravity insists nothing should stick unless it is practically glued in place. I dabbed it under my eyes, tried to rub it into the skin, cursing as my skin wrinkled and ran away. Who could blame it? So, with my other hand up there to hold the skin tight, I tried again. Being cheated on the coordination gene, both fingers end up covered with the pasty glue. That was when the doorbell rang. No one wants to shake your hands when you have Preparation H on your fingertips, and seeing it on your face does nothing to cement social interactions, although it can, and does cement your eyelids when you get it too close to the lashes. It does, though, leave the black circles intact. Thank God for glasses. They hide the black bags.

OH SAY CAN YOU SEE....

Okay, ladies, hands up if you remember the first time you had to ‘feel’ what you were shaving, rather than see it. You know what I mean, that day in the shower when you were doing your normal toilette and were sure that you had just taken care of every hair on your leg, but then realized that without your glasses on, and in the shower, with that really poor lighting that exists in every shower, that you didn’t see the damned hairs there before you started either. Next thing you know, you are running your hand across the leg, checking for stubble, hoping that despite the calluses on your fingers, they will not lie to you about something as obnoxious as a stubborn leg hair.

Of course, this is inevitably followed by, the minute you get out of the shower, the placement of glasses on nose to inspect the work, which is followed by the required curses indicating that of course you missed that great swath of grossness across your calf. Of course, this is no reason to go back to using your Epilady, that apex of the self-mutilating torturous hair care products some asshole told us would change our lives (they did... they made us want to pin down the sucker and remove every inch of his hair with the damned thing). It still, though, is an issue that required addressing.

There is no cure for this problem. We can’t hold our legs out further, like we might a newspaper. We can’t adjust the angle they are attached to us, and we can’t just sprinkle Majik Hair Remover on them that will solve the problem for eternity. We could get electrolysis, or go for waxing, because who doesn’t look forward to hot wax being dumped on your skin for the sole purpose of ripping out all the hair by its roots? We could ask our significant other to help with the razor, which might create some fun extracurricular activities, but it certainly is not the most expeditious way to deal with the problem when you’re in a hurry. (Not to mention, his eyes could well be as crappy as your own for this sort of detail.)

All of this, though, begs one stunningly simple question that could well be the answer to the problem. If you can’t see the hair on your legs, and your significant other can’t see the hair on your legs (without adjusting his glasses and pulling out a spot light), perhaps there is no hair there to worry about? It could be easy to convince ourselves that yes, it did in fact miraculously vanish, and other than for a quick blind touch-up every couple of weeks, you’re fine. No worries! Even if you are fooling yourself, though, take heart in this one simple fact: even Magilla Gorilla gets lucky once in a while.

Bite Me!

‘Well, there I was yesterday in the grocery store. Now, because I am such a hip and with-it senior, I usually pay with my credit card with it's magic chip. However, I was not getting much and decided to use cash. I instantly became the dreaded senior that used to be in front of me (that we all experienced and all hated and all rolled our eyes at) counting out the exact change. It never even dawned on me that I had graduated to the ranks of the penny pincher until hours later.’

I found this in my email, sent to me by Ethel. The image it created in my mind made me both shudder and laugh hysterically. It also, however, made me realize something else; something not freaking funny at all. Think about it… who else fiddles with coins at the tills?

I remember watching the grubs walk into the store with their piggy banks, hoping to cash in their coins for paper money. After much eye-rolling, the clerk finally agreed and dumped the change into a machine that sorted and counted it. I was more than a bit annoyed, because I assumed she was going to have to sort and count the stuff, and it was the time commitment she was a bit pissy about. Nevertheless, the kids had their money, and knew the beauty of digging change out of a pocket to pay. For something important, handfuls of coins would be dropped into the clerk’s hand – for that, she did have to count and help them find the right amount, the line of shoppers behind clearly not impressed.

(Don’t you just love when you have a huffer behind you in those circumstances? You know, the one who shifts feet like she is standing on hot coals, and huffs a huge sigh every twenty seconds just to make sure you know she is waiting, and her time is precious. I used to linger when there was a known huffer behind me. Now, though, they scare me. They can run faster than I can, and god only knows what damage I would do… to myself… if I tried to kick someone’s ass.

Lately it feels like, as we grow older, we become more childlike. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I still am not convinced it is. We start to need help more often, relying on our kids to reach what we can’t, or carry what’s now too heavy. I think it starts with the ‘oh, can you remind me...’ thing then slowly washes over our entire life, until our children are cutting our meat for us, helping us to the bathroom and tucking us in at night. I’m not really so sure I want to be having the grubs cutting my food for me; they might try to slip something in there, like spinach or broccoli, payback for the things we tried to sneak past them. When we did it, we simply wanted to keep them healthy. When they do it, it will be because it makes them laugh to see our dentures get stuck in something crunchy and not boiled into mush. This is not something I am looking forward to.

Yes, I suppose I could step up the care I take of my body now. In some regards, it might just be a tad too late. But either way, that day is coming. For now, though, I think the next time I have a huffer behind me, I might just take out my dentures, hand them to her, and say 'Bite Me'.  

BOOOOOOORRIIIIIING

Yup, I am, and to be honest, I’m fine with that.

Someone mentioned the other day about going for a drink after work on Friday. I tried to think of how many years it’s been since I did that. I ran out of fingers and toes for counting. You see, now to go out on Friday, I have to check the bank account, check the television schedule, factor in time for the news, think about what I would wear, and how we would get there and how we would get home and if I could have a glass of wine. I don't want to drive impaired, but more to the point, I have to guard against that damned heartburn as well. The thing is, I am not so sure I even want to go for that drink after work on Fridays.

Back then, the drinks started about 4pm, when work would wind down. Sometimes it meant beer brought into the office, other times it meant we went to the beer. Either way, it resulted one table being pulled over, then another, then another as more of us arrived. It required jugs of beer then some appies at the peanut bar, and about four hours later we would decide we need to get something to eat so we would stumble down the street to one of the four restaurants in town. From there, we would jump in our cars and head across the tracks to the Sundance, the only place in town with a dance floor and music (and no, it was not disco music, but they did have the crazy color-changing psychedelic lights all over the place). It was always a late night, always a costly night, but it was fun, and I never regretted doing it… okay, Saturday mornings sort of sucked, but what the hell. Some aspirin and the hair of the dog, and you were set.

Then kids arrived. Kids meant paying for babysitters, and kids meant you did not want to wake up with a hangover. You had to make sure they were fed dinner too, so no more running amok, at least not every Friday night. You couldn’t drive everyone from one place to the next without taking out car seats and inevitably when you were just sitting down to eat on those rare nights you did go out, the waitress would say there was a call; one of the kids is puking or bleeding or something that required an early end to the day… but we still tried, and we persevered. It just meant that those nights out were more special when they happened.

Now the kids aren’t an issue. Grandkids aren’t an issue either – yet. Drinking and driving is an issue, cost is an issue, roads in winter are an issue… but mostly, we like being home. Here comes the boring part: the days are comfortable with the coffee maker brewing good morning, and Jon Stewart saying good night. The news is required, and watching the newest episode of Decoded or Harry’s Law takes precedence over drinks with the guys. It’s a treat to order in pizza, and I don’t have to put on good clothes or touch up my face to do it. Touching up one’s face at this age is not something that you just run in and do in a minute anymore, so now the factors and the effort has to be weighed against the quality of the meal and how late in the evening it is.

My parents, when they did this, were fuddy-duddies and bores, a real yawn-fest. It’s not that anymore though; now it’s just comfortable, and I don’t apologize for it one bit. In fact, I treasure it.