Archive for the 'Personal' Category
July 9, 2008
Jan of Jan’s Sushi Bar has given me my first blog award, an Arte y Pico, which is Spanish for, um, something nice, I hope. Actually, she says, it’s a Spanish-language “style and substance blog” award. A nice compliment from an excellent blogger and Web designer.
Thanks! I’ll be aglow all day!
In keeping with the rules of the award, I hereby pass the honor on to:
ByJane (who probably already has one)
Granny Sue
Maison Montmartre
My Open Wallet
Ask Allison
Interesting bloggers and blogsites, all!
Update: Oops. Forgot to post the rules, which are:
1) You must choose 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community, regardless of language.
2) You must publish the name of each award-winning author as well as a link to his or her blog.
3) Each award-winner must post a picture of the award and link back to the blog that has given the award.
4) Both the giver and the recipient of the award must link to the “
Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
5) You must post these rules.
Posted in Blogging, Personal, friends | 4 Comments »
Tags: Awards, Blogging
July 2, 2008
Over 30 and not married? Adelle Waldman feels your pain. In an article in More Intelligent Life, she endorses Lori Gottleib’s controversial Atlantic piece that advocated, in the absence of Mr. Right, settling for Mr. Good Enough.
If I had read her essay five years ago, I would have been scornful [says Waldman]. Now, I’m 31 and a lot more sympathetic. I’m no longer able to write her off as one of those bitter marriage-crazed women I was sure I’d never be…
The truth about turning 30 is that the question of marriage, and by extension dating, becomes much more angst-ridden… Dating, however little fun you thought it was in your 20s, becomes even more fraught. It is not just heartbreak over a particular guy or general loneliness that keeps you up at night. Those will still be there, but on top there will be a new worry, the one about winding up alone.
Waldman is speaking wisdom beyond her years, because she sounds like my 50-something single friends. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Adventures at midlife, Blogging, Personal | 3 Comments »
Tags: Loneliness, midlife
June 30, 2008
Freakonomics has a great little article today asking the question that George Carlin probably asked in a much more “colorful” way: Why are we so attached to our stuff? And why do we value our stuff so much more than we value other peoples’ stuff? (Hint: It’s called the endowment effect.)
I have a friend who is moving half-way across the country to Mississippi, and she and her husband are currently locked in a my stuff-your stuff battle over what deserves to be thrown away or sold. The current battle zone is four big boxes of videos and DVDs. She wants to keep six DVDs, he wants to keep all the rest. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Adventures at midlife, Personal | 1 Comment »
Tags: Junk, Stuff
June 22, 2008
This past weekend, my son married into a big Midwestern Family of Women. Oh, the grandfather is still the patriarch, and the men are kindly and have their uses. But the women seriously outnumber the men, and they are the gracious glue that holds everything — and everyone — together. My daughter-in-law grew up as much in her aunts’ and grandmother’s homes as her own, and there are cousins and sisters and nieces aplenty, with an abundance of hilarious stories of their growing-up adventures.
We had a ladies lunch at an adorable tearoom-restaurant on Friday, where even the littlest girls were welcomed and drank fruit punch out of their china teacups. There was much laughter and teasing and teary testimonials of the great love these women have for my son’s lively and fun-loving new wife, who is clearly a favorite daughter, sister, cousin and aunt.
I watched all this with great joy — and some sadness. I am sisterless, the youngest child and only daughter in a family of four children, three older brothers and me. Mother had twin girls who died at birth and another stillborn daughter. I alone survived, and that pretty well sums it up. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Family, Personal, Women | 4 Comments »
Tags: Family, Sisters
June 10, 2008
To celebrate my 100th post on Ye Olde Blogge Syte — thank you, thank you, I couldn’t have done it without you — may I offer a few observations about life online?
1. SEX SELLS. Paris Hilton. Victoria and David Beckham. Madonna. Sex and the City. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Tyra Banks. Gossip Girl. There. Just by mentioning those names, I have guaranteed that this will be a record-setting post for me. My popular culture posts have been among the most viewed, and I, for a brief, giddy moment, considered changing the whole outlook of my site. But reason prevailed. I’m not fascinated by celebrity, and blogging continually about it just for readership would certainly turn me into some sort of Blog Whore. Celebrity blogs are fine, but not for me.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogging, Personal, The Web | 6 Comments »
Tags: Blogging
June 8, 2008
ByJane, the Godmother of MidLifeBloggers, whacked tapped me gently with her magic wand, and I am called to do her bidding. Says she, of the film debut of Sex and the City: The Movie, “I keep coming across all these comments about how Carrie’s in her ’40s and Samantha’s in her ’50s — and I’m thinking, is 40 the new 20, 50 the new 30, and 60 the new 40?” From a midlife perspective, she challenged me, what’s up with this film?
Let me start out by declaring that I have not seen the entire television opus, and I have not yet seen the movie. (I’m still in London for another week or two, and I’m planning a Girls Night Out with my friends when I get home, complete with feather boas, little black dresses and ridiculous shoes.) But I’ve read enough reviews and discussions and seen enough trailers of the film that I am willing to take a stab at it.
For me, from the very beginning, SATC has been a complete fairy tale. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Adventures at midlife, Fashion, Image, Personal, The media, Women | 2 Comments »
Tags: midlife, Sex and the City, Women
June 1, 2008
Some genius has come up with a novel thesis: blogging may make you feel better. No kidding. According to Jessica Wapner, writing in Scientific American Online:
Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.
I haven’t had any surgery lately, but I do know I like putting my thoughts down on paper. I had a shrink once who called it “yellow pad therapy” in honor of the legal pads her patients used to try to pull their lives and thoughts together. I filled up a few yellow pads myself.* Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogging, Mental health, Personal, friends | 4 Comments »
Tags: Blogging
May 30, 2008
It’s true: The Spouse and I will be celebrating three decades of wedded bliss — or mutual tolerance — on June 1. Included in that number are one grandchild, two kids, three sets of washers and dryers, four homes, five refrigerators, nine surgeries, about ten cars, at least a dozen job changes between us and I’ve lost track of how many mortgages and refinances.
We’ve gone from a king-sized water bed to twin beds back to a king-sized mattress (he can’t sleep with or without me). Other than a three-year stint in Chicago, we’ve lived in the same little town we grew up in that, thanks to urban sprawl, isn’t a little town anymore.
We’ve married off one son and will leave London in two weeks to fly to Columbus to marry off the other. I spend Christmas Eve every year with his close-knit family, he goes out to dinner occasionally with my rather dysfunctional siblings. We’ve buried his father and my mother, and if he turns into his father, or if I turn out like my mother, we’ve both vowed to divorce each other. So far, so good.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Adventures at midlife, Family, Personal | 3 Comments »
Tags: Marriage
May 28, 2008
Someone asked me why I blog “undercover,” without using my real name and other details. (It’s apparently called anonoblogging.) One reason and one reason only: I’m afraid of getting dooced. The Rubber Chicken Factory, Inc. — where I am a senior beak inspector — is a large and very conservative organization, and would likely not look happily on some of the stuff I blog about, or maybe even the fact that I blog at all.
I generally like my job and my fellow beak inspectors, and at this stage in my life I’m not interested in looking for another job. I’ve seriously thought about branching out on my own and becoming a beak inspecting consultant, but I’m too, um, chicken. Buh-GAWK! (Sorry. I couldn’t resist that one.)
Posted in Adventures at midlife, Blogging, Humor, Personal, Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
Tags: Blogging, The Web
May 26, 2008
Meghan Daum, writing in the LATimes, has managed to find a bright side to the growing recession, with its flattened house market and $4/gallon gas prices: home repairmen who come immediately, and California’s empty freeways.
Sure, things are going to get ugly very soon. Layoffs will increase, the housing market will go from dismal to awful, and pretending to be in a sci-fi movie set in the future (admit it, you’ve tried it!) will no longer be an effective coping mechanism for the trauma of filling up at the pump. But for the moment, I can’t help but feel that this recession — or at least the evanescent moment before it kicks into high gear — offers a kind of coziness you rarely feel in a booming economy.
Daum, whom I’ve blogged about before, compares the current crisis to her four bucolic years when, after nearly bankrupting herself trying to live in NYC, she moved to Omaha, where she was lucky to make $12,000 a year. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Adventures at midlife, Money, Personal, Thrifting | 3 Comments »
Tags: Economy, Money, recession
