Newscoma

I’ve been a very lucky soul lately. Things have picked up, I’m not feeling the mind-numbing doldrums that followed me for several months as I most likely went through some whacked out middle-aged crisis and the loss of my job/identity. I’m learning to accept myself again, and with that comes the willingness to see beneath the surface with other people. I’m usually pretty good about that but when you feel like you are on a lifeboat that is sinking with little bursts of air escaping every few minutes, it’s hard to do anything but get ready to swim.

Being that I’m on the upswing with some new things happening, I have started to pay attention a little bit more closely. Sometimes we know things are happening but there really aren’t words to express what our friends, loved ones and acquaintances are going through.

I have realized that some folks are just as bruised and wounded as I have felt. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m feeling much better but I see other people that aren’t and there are times that you can’t even see the signs.

My generation had it all layed out. We knew what we wanted and we, and here is the kicker, expected it to work out.  It has for some but not so much for others.  Loss and grief is a part of life and we are not our parents or our grandparents generation. Things have changed drastically. We used to have small networks that understood emotional things yet never spoke of them. Now we talk about them in larger networks.

We want more now but are only willing to give less. I have realized that time is not that hard to give and to arrogantly hold on to those moments selfishly only creates more walls for us personally that will eventually have to be torn down anyway.

Life is filled with moments.

• The homeless man at the Mapco at Cooper-Young in Memphis, who asked me if I’d had a nice day. He was older, his clothes frayed and a torn toboggan on his head. I stopped to give him a few minutes because he obviously just wanted to talk for a minute. He asked for nothing but a bit of time, which I had.
• The woman I have known for years who found herself at 50-years-old in an abusive relationship. I made the calls. She had never been through anything like this before. Her eyes were shell-shocked.
• The man who had been unemployed for three years who was on the verge of getting another job. I just listened. He was honest and said he felt like “damaged goods” and was afraid to get his hopes up.
• She is always angry. I have been the recipient of that deep fury on a couple of occasions. I realized that she has to be angry at someone. At times, I listen. At other times, when I am also bruised, I walk away. There are times that you just have to know your limitations.

There are storms. We get through them. The hardest part is to remember that as humans, we bruise. It’s even more difficult to remember that sometimes those bruises cannot be seen and that other people have them as well.

I’m constantly learning this lesson.

I am 44-years-old.
I have some amazing good times and then sometimes dark things happen that we all go through. I have been blessed this week with good fortune. On the other hand, I am still reeling from events that I’m still recovering from. Occasionally I find my voice, other times I realize the battle is not one I want to take.
I am sitting in Memphis tonight, alone without a television,, which may be the smartest thing ever. This week I haven’t seen Lost, I have had to go searching for what interests me. I found, as you know if you read this blog, is Craig Ferguson.
Last night, sans audience, he did a Tom Snyder sort of interview with Stephen Fry. It was an interview for grown-ups which is basically a state of mind, it’s not an age thing or maybe I am trying to convince myself of this. I don’t know. As an older woman, I realized occasionally I need to hear people talking about real things. About getting older, about learning new things and about being honest.
I was a kid when Tom Snyder was on the air. He smoked, he would pump his hands up and down and his tie was always askew. But he taught me a lot about pop culture. As I got older, I realized that it was Snyder (I was an nightowl as a child) that taught me not only pop culture but politics and modern society.
Ferguson is smart. He constantly talks about being middle-aged and being lucky after experiencing hard times of self-indulgence. I get that. Good Lord, I do. My age range is not of Baby Boomers or Generation X. We are in the middle. In some ways, we Inbetweeners. We never got a groovy name, dagnabbit.
I have to say, I like being talked to. Not being told what I should believe or should think. There are some smart cookies out there. Fry and Ferguson gave us that last night. Older people having conversations that delighted me.
Let me say, Stephen Fry quoted Wordsworth. They talked technology Ferguson,30 minutes, by himself most nights can be a maniac, was the subdued one and let Fry shine. He is a smart guy. He knew that Fry was chatty, smart and clever. He picked the right guest. That, my friends, is being innovative but also practicing smart business.
It’s also amusing to me that a Scotsman and an Englishman summed up the beauty of America and being an American. I kind of needed that.
I do say this which I referred to before. They talked about being older as Ferguson always does in a comic way. He didn’t have to say that last night, he showed that there was value. He showed, regardless of if it is puppets, interviewing Desmond Tutu or any night where he riffs on the days events that is one of the smartest men in television.
John Carney has posted about this today as well. Ferguson won’t do this daily and I agree with John but he’s not going to do puppets daily either. He’s mixing it up. That’s why fans watch.
Maybe what he’s doing will save my generation. Let us hope because last night proved, once again, the man is pretty fantastic on a lot of levels.

The Breakfast Club turns 25 years old today. This is the 30th year of Miracle On Ice.

After 44 years on this planet, I look at this and I guess it could give me the blues about getting older but it really doesn’t. The Breakfast Club was probably the last John Hughes film that resonated with me deeply from that era.  I’ve realized recently that we live life in chapters. Every protagonist has an antagonist and not every chapter in the book has a happy ending. If we look at the book of life, the ending is always the same.

So we live life like eating a candy bar. You don’t shove an entire Snickers bar into your mouth at once, you take bite-sized chunks off of it, you swallow it and then you take another bite. Sometimes you set it down, waiting until your ready for another bite before you gnaw off another piece. Eventually you finish the damned thing, but you know, it’s each bite that tells the story and gives you the undeniable flavor that makes you want another bite.

Maybe I’m getting used to being older. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine having the gray in my hair, but there are other times that I wonder if I could do it all over again.

I think not.

Anne Bancroft on playing Mrs. Robinson:

“Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we will reach a point in our lives, look around, and realize that all the things we said we’d do and become will never come to be. And that we’re ordinary.”

DAMN. That hurts. Right down to my very soul that statement pains me, but in essence there is a lot to be said about that comment.

Campers, I’m 44-years-old. And occasionally I get the middle-aged crazies. I want my damn flying car I was promised, my loft apartment with the little herb garden in New York that I imagined when I was 15 and the comfort of knowing that everything is going to be okay.  I wanted to be a either a journalist or a casting director (or just independently wealthy.)

I was 15, I remind you.

Being middle-aged is a strange beast. There is much good about it, quite frankly. I don’t care about stuff like I used to, unnecessary things such as trying to pander positive reinforcement, how people think about me or materialistic stuff (which is a dang good things these days) or allowing other people to define me. There is a sense that I feel more comfortable in my own skin, that I feel actually a bit sexier than I used to although I think that comes from the inside and not the outside (damn you Cosmopolitan magazine. DAMN YOU!) I’m more content in making new friends who are going to have to just accept me, or not, because I realized at about 40 that I have no control over what people think about me.

But when the wind is blowing in an awkward way that hits my face at just the right moment, I do feel especially ordinary and that wasn’t part of the ticket when I was a kid. I was extraordinary in my mind of the places that I would go and the people that I would meet. They would need my specialness in a magnificent way. The dreams of youth thwarted by the reality of … reality. That life is not always easy and I was told that so it shouldn’t have been a big surprise, so no one ever fed me false illusions when I was a child.

I just knew I was going to have that loft apartment with the wide open spaces where collections of odd and wonderful things met me each day as I opened the door from a long day at work. Or the smells of the city, that I really adore and wanted more than anything ever. But I made it to the city, and reality hit. I didn’t make it back.

It is what it is.

There is no shame in getting older. The gray in my hair is quite fancy and I love it. It makes me a bit cheeky and naughty where I feel a bit of swagger, something I didn’t have when I was 30. I have learned to listen more than I used to although sometimes I get excited and interrupt (which is something about me I am not fond of and that I’m working on.) I am sad about the discourse in this world and I know that I will be long gone before it is fixed as it’s been with every human before me.  I like my small feet and my laugh. I like that I’m a bit different just not in the way I imagined at 15.

Sometimes I run away from me, but then there are times I don’t.  And recognizing that may be a sign of wisdom. Or it could be that I’m just ordinary.

Either way, it’s all I have.

When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother used to tell me that if I said I was bored, then that meant that I was boring. I think, in retrospect, they told me that to shut me the hell up as I was a loud, rambunctious child who had an affection for getting my own way and for being the center of all of the attention allowed in the cosmos.

I’m 44 now and I realized something this afternoon.

I am bored out of my skull. Usually,  I can find things to entertain myself. Watch Hulu, google stupid phrases like zombie turkeys or Chicken Feet recipes (where there are a surprisingly large amount I must say.)

Today, I couldn’t even get into that. I’m bored. Heartwrenchingly, undeniably bored.

I decided to practice Kung Fu with my dog Mabel. I have never studied this time-honored practice but what the hell, I was going to do it anyway. Mabel looked at me as I was kicking around the great room with disgust and then I almost pulled a hammy. So Kung Fu was out.

I then tried to pretend I was a famous singer as I did this when I was roughly 9-year-old and it always brought me out of my doldrums. However, singing Galveston at the top of my lungs could not get me out of my funk.

I thought about trying to con someone into throwing a bonfire as I do love burning me some stuff. Apparently everyone on the known planet is out of town or busy today in Hoots Common. And I’m not allowed to play with matches. Ask Homer.

So, I guess there is this:

When All Else Fails, There Is Ali

I hope some folks have some plans for me tonight as I’m going nuts.

As we delve into my navel gazing world of my middle-aged crazies, I have to tell you about the degree of apathy and passion I’ve experienced lately.

The apathy comes from that there are things that I do not have any control over. And my apathy spreads to drama in others lives that I also have no control over. These are things that have made me a bit more peaceful within my busy brain. Maybe this is acceptance.

Now to the passion which I have to tell you I’ve felt quite a bit of lately. It’s quite satisfying.

As I get older, I have found that things that used to make me crazy no longer bother me. Other things give me explosive joy that I used to care nothing about.

I’ve had several friends turn 40 lately. I’m not in the advice business, but I will tell you one thing. Don’t let those gray hairs get you down but also, if they do, own it. Night sweats that keep you up at night, think of it as your own personal swimming pool (yuck, I know but still … ). When folks get under your skin, that’s your issue. What other people say or think about me is none of my business as was the motto of my mother and now that I’ve got some seasons on me, I understand what she was saying back in the day. It’s their crap, not mine even if my feelings get hurt a bit.

And, as life sometimes throw us curve balls, I had no idea in my lifetime that I would own a pit bull who showed up New Year’s Day.

Since I started writing this post, I got older. Embrace it campers, it’s not so bad.

Feeling all philosophical this morning.

I woke up this morning with a huge case of the middle-aged crazies. I’m usually more than all right with getting older but every once in a while, I have a meltdown.

I noticed the gray. I like the gray in my hair quite actually. It’s at the temples. My hair is as ash-blonde though (or was) so now there are white streaks slowly moving in. I stared at it contemplatively as what does one do. I stared into the mirror, squinting because I’m now in trifocals, and grimaced.
I realized I’m in my mid-40s and it totally knocked my cranium about.
And then I had to have a conversation with my inside voice. Shut up. You know you have these too.

Me: Arrgghhhaaaa!
Inside Voice: Get over it. So you have some gray hair. I think it’s kinda sexy.
Me: Arrrgghhhaaa!!
IV: You could be dead, you know. Lord knows I don’t how you made it this long.
Me: (calming down) I’m … I still wear Chuck Taylors. I can’t be getting old.
IV: Consider yourself seasoned.
Me: What about the sleep deficit thing? What about that? It’s like that Stephen King book “Insomnia.” Am I going to start seeing little doctors cutting the life ribbons on people? Am I?! DAMMIT!! AM I??!!
IV: Quit being so melodramatic.
Me: My staff didn’t even get my joke last summer about my car being Steve Austin! The joke doesn’t work it they don’t even know who he is.
IV: It was funny.
Me: I thought so too.
IV: You are going to be all right.
Me: I’m not dyeing my hair.
IV: Good for you.
Me: Seriously, people always are telling me to dye my hair. Hell, I’m getting a Mohawk. Where’s my Sex Pistols Album. (I started singing “Bodies” as loud as I could in the middle of the night.)
IV: Not a good look for you I’m afraid. And you will scare the dogs if you do it.
Me: And I’m not buying a flat iron. Why does everyone want me to buy a flat iron? Most people get perms for crying out loud.
IV: You’ve never had any fashion sense. These things are beyond you. Just own it.
Me: Bite me.

This conversation went on for two hours. My inner voice told me many things but the most prevalent ideas where that A.) I’m vainer than I knew and B.) I possibly need a live-in life coach.
If you haven’t hit 40 yet, this might not make any sense to you. If you have, I have a feeling you know what I’m talking about.
And I’ve lost my love for PopTarts.
What the hell is that all about?

Boys, I want you to go here and look at this picture while I and the women folk talk about some important stuff about our lives.

As I get older, I find myself going through the same thing my mother did about 20 years ago. It’s called, da da dummmm, menopause. First of all, it exists. I’m not going to be one of those women that says “Menopause was never a problem for me.”

I cry foul on that one.

Our bodies are changing, we see that we have lived more than half our lives and while we are not old, neither are we young. We are. It’s a transition.

And, my friends, we are fabulous but it’s part of the process of life.

By the time women, and I guess I’m just speaking for myself here, hit my 40s I started pondering the meaning of life a bit more. I could honestly only think about what I had not done in my life not the accomplishments I have fought tooth and nail to get done. I got a bit tired, I wasn’t feeling as well as I did even five years ago. I found myself somewhat detached from who I was really was.

Who was I? Who am I now?

And, as I’ve said before, I’m too tired for an affair and too broke for a red sports car. Yes, I had, and still do sometimes, hit the middle-aged crazies. Of course the middle-aged crazies hits men as well. It’s pretty much a non-gender thing.

We talk about here on the tubes about different waves of feminism, of how women and men’s lives differ as they grow older and the fact that our bodies completely, or at least it feels like it, betray us. It’s a bond women have. Men have bonds too but I’m not a guy so I can’t comment about that.

It’s like our bodies say “Hey make a baby” when we are in puberty and we learn to deal with that part of being a girl and then when you hit 40 it turns right around and says to us “I changed my mind” and on top of that I’m going to make you feel all nutso for awhile. KThxbai.

I have talked extensively to a couple of woman who are going through the same conundrum of juggling emotions, our professional lives, our sexual identities and feeling like poo all at the same time. It’s good to have conversations about real things instead of ignoring them. The reality is that it’s a messed-up thing, that emotions are different and that it’s almost like we find ourselves wondering what we are going through much the same way we did during puberty. And we don’t have the lives of our mothers and our grandmothers which were so different than what we go through now. We have to take care of ourselves financially. There is no white knight on a steed coming into save the day.

And, women need to take care of each other even if it’s just listening to the grim fact that we ain’t getting any younger.

And it’s not all bad.

The uterus is a weird thing campers. I don’t have mine anymore as she was a bit bitchy but we’ve talked about that before.

Now with all of that said, for anyone who hasn’t experienced all this stuff, it’s not fun.

I don’t think people can understand how daunting it is to wake up in the middle of the night sweating like a goat until you’ve been through it. I can’t explain how I was sitting at my desk doing some work earlier this week and felt like my body was being microwaved from the inside out. It’s hard to convey in words to people who haven’t gone through it.

Why do I bring this up? It’s on my mind, that’s all.

I have to tell myself although I’m aging and there is gray in my hair, I’m pretty groovy. I may not look like Cindy Crawford, but I never did anyway.

I am just me.

There’s only one of me so that’s of the good.

And I’m not dead yet.

H/T of the photo to the lovely Aunt B.

I am compelled. I’ve never really been a fan of Madonna and there is a lot of good visuals in this video but then again, I found myself with a furrowed brow and a need for bourbon. I don’t drink bourbon. I might start. On one side, I think it’s cool that Madonna is older than me and looks really good. I also love gay bar music. I’ve told you this before. Gay Bar music is the bomb.

Drag shows are even better, but I digress.

So, Madonna and Justin Timberlake are jumping around on cars and there is apparently only four minutes to do something.

I told you I was confused.

Anyway, here it is before they yank it.

I hope I look that good at her age. Who am I kidding? I don’t look that good at my age.

I need life coaches and Jay Manuel. STAT.

[youtube=[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqOBvFhikME&hl=en]

All I have to say is da-yum. I realize I’m a boomer and all, so it’s nice to see Dennis Quaid representing nicely in the latest issue of the Italian version of Vanity Fair.

I honestly need exercise and to get out of the house more often.

I also am a slave to pop culture.

I own it.

Miss Graveley: How old do you think I am young man?
Sam Marlowe: Hmm… fifty. How old do you think you are?
Miss Graveley: Forty-two! I can show you my birth certificate.
Sam Marlowe: I’m afraid you’re going to have to show more than your birth certificate to convince a man of that.

And this is what I’m watching. The Trouble With Harry, where the spinster is Miss Graveley, who is freaking out because she’s … 42. Alfred. But then again, this was filmed 53 years ago when this was done.

Umm, I’m 42.

Yeah, I know.