TiVo Lady

fever....

fever... headache... nausea...sore neck and shoulder...miserable misery full of miserableness...

the deer have retaliated, apparently.  being treated for Lyme disease...

fever ... misery... misery

Cali-Boomer Dreamin'

(write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write....blah blah) (insert image of me writing my book, here.)

I visited S. this week, one of my oldest college friends, because she lives sort of near the train station where I had to pick up RioGringa on her return trip from Boston.  (My new motto:  never drive anywhere for just one purpose.)  Anyway, she starts telling me about an old guy friend of ours, I'll call him Cowboy D.  We knew Cowboy D. as soon as he arrived at Dartmouth College, a sweet hick of the very innocent sort from the state of Montana, who still had straw in his teeth and an open jaw, from being so amazed at where he'd found himself out there on the East Coast.  He was a good ol' boy, and still a boy, and a naive, hunk of a guy with charm and a longing to return to his home state, Ivy-educated, so he could become a politician.

Okay, so fast forward some decades.  (Okay, maybe it is three-ish.)  S. tells me that this here guy, Cowboy D., had been at an investment banking firm, and left when he was worth, say, about $110 million.  Then, he opened his own business, did Cowboy D.  Now, he owns half of a $5.3 billion company.  Yes, that's a "b" and not an "m."  Also, he owns 400 acres in Montana, or maybe it's 4,000, I can't really remember.  And planes and penthouses in New York, and other stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Plus, a third wife, 31 years old, and he can't quite figure out what she sees in "an old guy like me."  (I could explain that to him if he'd like;  it starts with the "b.")

This got me to thinking, fantasizing, actually.  What would I do if I had billions?  If money really were no object??  And here's my pathetic conclusion:  what I'd want, like right now, is a masseuse, on-call, who'd drop everything and come over and massage my neck/shoulder where I've had a muscle spasm for the past five days.  Oh, and I'd buy a MacBook Pro.  Maybe two, one for me, one for RIoGringa.  And that's all I could think of doing with my new-found, imaginary billions. How sad is that??!!!

Watching Friends Get Older

 Okay, first of all, I'm not blaming RioGringa for the fact that I didn't have time to post here for two days.  I mean, it's not her fault that we had to go food shopping and shoe shopping and errand running several afternoons in a row.  I do have a book to write, I mean a book to finish, before the end of the summer, which is RAPIDLY approaching.  And I'm getting semi-terrifying calls from my editor, about completing various deadlines--other than finishing the manuscript--and also, by the way, can they completely change the title, she asks.  AACK!

Anyway, it's just that it's, well, her fault.  RioGringa's that is.  Not that I'm blaming her. . . .

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program:  Boomers.

As Boomers age, we notice what's happening to us in the mirror, and we are aware of the rites of passage that are passing us by.  But, somehow, I find it more poignant and terrifyingly obvious as I watch my friends and neighbors traverse the passages of adult life.  Decades ago, I attended their weddings and their baby showers, their baby namings and christenings.  I went to their children's first communions  and confirmations and bar mitzvahs.  Now, it seems, I'm celebrating their children's weddings...

This weekend, the first of our group of friends hosted her son's wedding, right in the neighborhood, a gala affair for 250 people.  It was held under a tent, right next to a barn on a well-preserved local tourist attraction, a pre-Colonial farm and grain mill.  The people in charge had to lock the cows in the barn for the occasion!

Meanwhile, my friend's children were getting married, and I was sitting at the table with the aging fogies, grey-haired and balding, waist-thickened and squinty, we are suddenly the ones who can't dance for more than nine minutes without getting exhausted.  And I watch the twenty-somethings on the dance floor, a few couples in an obvious sexual swoon over each other, and I want to whisper in their ears. I want to warn them to look over their shoulders, at the spirit of their fifty-year-old selves that I've fashioned.  A personal golem to haunt them and scold them and tell them to appreciate this moment right here, this presence right now, because it never comes back, and it doesn't last.  But, of course, that's easy for me to say, since I have already become the haunting spirit of my fifty-something self.  And I'm trying to scold my younger self for not appreciating being so young.  But it's not working...

(Boomer) Ladies Night Out

Last night, seven of us got together for dinner at a local Greek place.  We are ladies, eight of us, who used to run together every weekend, in all weather, all year round.  In the heat of summer;  we'd run.  On crisp, cool fall days;  we'd run.  On frigid, breath-stopping cold days;  we'd run.  Also in the rain, run;  in the snow, run.  Nothing really stopped us from our group runs.  Except when we started getting old;  that's what stopped us.  A year ago, I got a heel spur that crippled me--I could barely walk, let alone run.  A few of us had knee issues, hip issues, breathing problems.  Our original group is now down to three or four, depending on whose parts are not creaking.  Among the original eight, I'd say just two are completely injury-free.  (Insert blast of pure envy right here.)

Anyway, because we don't run together any more, we decided to eat together.  Over three bottles of wine and every Greek appetizer on the menu (Greek salad, felafal, kebbe, spanikopita, grilled octopus, loukanika, tsadziki, humus, olives, taramasalata, skordalia, and tons of pita.  We are all Boomers, fifty-somethings now, so here is what we talked about:  our (mostly-grown) children, giving a sanitized version of their accomplishments and love lives and what they are doing to torture us out of our minds;  our work, what we're doing;  our tenuous health situation;  and our non-Boomer friend's impending divorce.  The youngest of us, just forty-three, she's the only one of us who had to arrange child care to get out of the house.  Her marriage is ending, but now she's got a new boyfriend.  She brought a picture of him, too.  We joked about sex and the not-so-funny lack of it.

Meanwhile, we noticed an odd thing, an unusual phenomenon, at the next table.  It was a group of ten men, MEN, having dinner together.  Just like us, only men.  I don't remember ever seeing a table of men eating dinner together for the sake of it, unless they had baseball-playing sons with them, or they were watching a Big Game, of whatever sport.  Nope, these guys were just eating.  Like us.  Turns out, they belong to a local Ethical Culture Society, which is a "humanist religious community," apparently.  For nerdy-looking men of a certain Boomer age, apparently.  If I were still a New York Times reporter, I'd go on a local, dinnertime trek, to see if I could find men-only tables at local restaurants (no bars allowed), and find out why they are eating together.  It would be hard work, a tough assignment, and would probably take months.  Nah, never mind.  I'm nearly finished Chapter Four, about husbands' view of marriage.  Here's the title:  "What, Me Oblivious?"  As one of my friends commented last night, that's a chapter obviously written by the wife side of the marital equation.

Sleep Deprivation/Dog Training

Whoever said that you need less sleep as you age was, quite simply, crazy.  I still need my sleep, as do almost all of the Boomers I know.  Thus it is that I am suffering severely from the consequences of sleep deprivation:  it reminds me of when my children were newborns and never slept for more than two hours at a time.  I would wake up at 2:12 a.m., deal with the baby, and then calculate how many more minutes of sleep I'd be able to get before I'd have to wake up again...

No babies this time around.  Oh no;  this time around, it's this.  Not a baby, but a dog.  A bad dog.  A dog who can take a nap during the day whenever she feels like it.  That's why she can bark outside our bedroom door at 1:02 a.m., trying to get in so she can hop on our bed to sleep.  And it's why she decides to try again, at 3:23 a.m.  Hope springs eternal when you are dog wanting to get into the good bed.  And when that doesn't work, it's why she tries again, at 5:54 a.m.  Husband has been responding to this loud and insistent barking by opening the door and letting her in.  Thus, she has successfully trained him to respond to her barks in the exact way she had hoped.  And, as I've explained to Husband over and over and over and over, it's why she will never stop barking at night. Because it works.

So, last night, I instituted a new training regime.  She barks, I yell:  "Go to bed!  No!!"

No door opens.  And again, two hours later:  she barks, I yell:  "NO!"  And so on.  (Repeat X 4.)  On fifth time, at 5:00 a.m.-ish, I open the door and push her barking head down with my hand.  I yell, firmly:  "No.  Barking.  No."

Time will tell who is training whom.

My Mucus, Your Mucus

There are few things more boring--or more disgusting--than other people's mucus problems.  Mine, though, are completely fascinating.  To me.  I never think of mucus, ever, until I have too much of it--like right now--in my head and in my nose and in my chest and in what feels like every cell of my body.  I have some kind of rampant Mucoid Plague.  Or terrible flu.  Or maybe a cold.  But whatever it is, I was fine until College Boy came home;  he brought all of his nasty fraternity germs home, and my poor immune system couldn't cope.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Boomeritis: No More Running

I began running for exercise when I was in college, three-plus decades ago.  At first, I didn't run very far, a mile or two at a time, nor did I try to go very fast.  I just went.  Living in New York City later on, I began to run longer distances, sometimes in Central Park, but more often around and around Washington Square, near my apartment.  Once, a tourist stopped me, and inquired with a very Southern twang, "Are y'all in some kinda race?" as she watched a bunch of us run loops around the Square.  I stared at her in confusion, and said, "Uh, no."  She walked away, commenting, "How nice, y'all running together!"  Which, of course, we were not.  A few dozen of us were simply running laps around the park, at the same point in time, but certainly not together.  We did, eventually, socialize together, sometimes having 'runner's parties' in a nearby apartment, or entering races together.

Later, when I moved to the suburbs, I ran in a nearby park, with miles and miles of trails, and it seemed like heaven compared to those endless urban concrete laps.  This is how the trail looks, in the fall.  Actually, it is heaven, no matter what you compare it to.

In time, I was running with a group of other moms, and we'd meet every Saturday and Sunday for a five- or six-mile run.  Some of the others trained for marathons, though I never did.  My knees bothered me after I'd run seven or eight miles, so I never tried to push myself.

I ran for about thirty years, taking time off only during late pregnancy and when I was really really sick.  I grew to love/hate running--sometimes I'd dread having to do it (and after a while, it really felt like an imperative), but I'd love how I felt when I was done.  Then, a few years ago, I got planter's fascitis, or heel spurs.  I was completely crippled, and I could barely walk, because of a cramped muscle in my heel.  I had to give up running for about six months.  After I had kind of recovered, I tried to work my way back, but then my knees started to hurt, and then my hips, and then I realized, with horror, that I was done running.  I had become too old, and too creaky, to run anymore.

So, now, I walk.  I no longer run.  And I wish I would have known, on that very last run I took, whenever it was, that that would be my last run ever.  I would have appreciated it more.

My Computer: R.I.P.

As I've said, boring to everybody but me, my computer has abandoned all reason.  It's in a coma, on life support, and only a matter of time... before I am unable to even save my g - @$)@(#&%( -ed files and photos and settings.  I curse you old computer!  And the hot-shot high school kid I paid Big Bucks to build you!!  (I am posting from another computer, because the Cursed One, Unblessed Be She, reboots .. every . . . two. . .  minutes.

Meanwhile, HBO's new show, In Treatment, began this week, to great hype.  It stars Boomer Gabriel Byrne, born in 1950, as the therapist who treats a series of four patients--four nights in a row!--then sees his own therapist on the fifth night.  No rest for the shrinkers, apparently.

HBO alleges that this show is based on an Israeli show that was a blockbuster hit there.  But my friend Harriet, who produces films with her husband, pitched this idea to HBO ten years ago.  Back then, nobody was interested.  Or that's what they said, anyway.

I've only seen one show, but it drew me in, somewhat.  I'm not sure I felt for the pretty young girl, the first patient, with commitment issues and a Major, Inappropriate Crush on her therapist.  Though the fact that he didn't notice her passion makes him a not very good therapist, no?

New computer, allegedly, arriving soon.  If not, I will have no hair left, since it will all be PULLED OUT!

Counting My Blessings: One....

At least I'm not in this kayak.  Though it doesn't look like winter here...

Coughing, Sneezing, Ballet

I was supposed to go to see Alvin Ailey, American Dance Theatre this weekend with my daughter, who could not come home from Rio.  So, instead, I went with a friend.  I was coughing and sneezing and exhausted, but determined to see the modern dance performance I'd been eagerly awaiting since early September.  (Also, the tickets cost $126.  Each.) 

Between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Manhattan is always packed, but this year, as a friend told me, "you need a machete to cut through the crowds."  It took us 38 minutes to drive to West 55th Street, and another 40 minutes to drive about six blocks, where we could finally ditch the car.  (For slightly more than three hours, it cost $30 to park!)  We saw "Love Stories," a work choreographed by Judith Jamison that featured great music by Stevie Wonder, and lots of throbbing, vibrant dancing that was nearly as much fun to watch as to perform.  Next, was "Urban Folk Dance," a piece for two men and two women, danced at desks and office chairs in front of two chalkboards.  I have absolutely and utterly no idea what it meant, and trying to figure it out made my head feel heavy.

"The Groove to Nobody's Business" was a brand new piece set in a subway station, featuring a bunch of dancers waiting for a train, and then, I think, actually on a train.  I guarantee that it's the most entertaining bit of art, ever, that focuses on subways.  If RioGringa had been with me, she could have explained the movement here, and the way in which the dancers mimicked, so uncannily, the swaying movements invoked while sitting on a train.  But she wasn't, so my fuzzy brain just had to deal.

The last piece, "Revelations," I've seen about ten times, and it thrills and elates me every single time.  Except last night.  We were just so tired, that the thrill was gone.  I can't figure out, though, if the performers were not as great, or if I've seen it so many times I'm no longer surprised.  By the time we hit "Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham," which always has the entire audience on their feet and cheering, we'd sneaked out into the lobby and were on our way back to our expensively parked car.

TiVo Lady needs to recover from her cold.  Fast.