Category: Turning 50

Pig aggression

by Karen, posted in fitness, local fun, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

I was walking my route other morning when I heard an animal noise from behind me. I was passing the pig sty (literal, not figurative) that is on the street adjacent to mine right at the side of the road, so of course I knew it was a pig. These pigs also routinely jump the fence so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I saw him in the road, staring at me, grunting.
Note: a pig’s grunt sounds ominously like a mountain lion. I don’t know why. It just does.

For several seconds I just stood there, unsure if I should try to pass it or go back the other way.  Should I call my husband to come and pick me up (which he would have done, after he finished laughing)?  What if it charged me? It looked like it was almost as big as I am, and may even have outweighed me. I decided to close my eyes and walk very fast past the pen while chanting to myself, “I am very safe; I am very safe.”

I told my husband about this when I got back and we had a good laugh.

The next day I went to the beach instead (in order to avoid another pig incident) to do my usual walk to the jetty. I was almost all the way back when I became aware of footsteps running up behind me, then retreating, then catching up again. I didn’t look at first, because there were so many unleashed dogs on the beach that I thought it must be that. The third time it approached, though, I did turn and look…and it was a male wearing a rubber pig face mask, which was about an inch from my face.

Need I say that I was scared to death?

This time, my husband was there. Within about a second he was running full tilt toward me to see if I was okay, then he went to, um, discuss the event with the perp. This time, I didn’t have to convince myself I was safe. This time, my husband made sure that I was safe.

One question remains: What the heck is the universe trying to tell me with these pigs?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Betrayed

by Karen, posted in fitness, health, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50, Work from Home

So, my 3 mile, 30 minute morning walking route? It’s really only 2.14 miles and takes me 34 minutes to walk it. How do I know this? I downloaded an app to my iPhone called RunKeeper (and NO, I NEVER run but it tracks lots of activities in the free version) and walked my usual route.

OMG.

I had originally tracked the route I walk on my car’s odometer, but there was an error in there somewhere, apparently.

Shoot.

So, I had to keep going past my usual ending point to get a 3 mile walk in. The thing is, I signed up for a walking challenge at work and have committed to walking 10 miles per week.  I thought it would be easy enough to manage, if i just resumed my now long abandoned morning routine of

  1. Putting child on school bus
  2. Walking

but hey, guess what?  My half hour morning walk morphed into a 51.47 minute walk.

May I just take a moment to say “UGH”.

Another first

by Karen, posted in fitness, health, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, the beach, Turning 50

When I turned 50 this year, I decided to try to do things for the first time, since this is my first year in a new decade. Today, I went swimming at the beach all by myself.

This is no small undertaking, to which anyone who wears glasses and is severely myopic will attest. The problem is this: what to do with the glasses? Leave them on, and risk losing them to the ocean, or leave them in a bag with your stuff on your chair, and risk losing yourself?

If I go swimming at the beach with others (who, you know, can see), they can guide me back to our place in the sand, no problem. When faced with the prospect of trying to find my way back without guidance, I have always balked, then caved. In other words, I’ve never done it.

Until today. I brought my red canvas bag, hoping that I would be able to detect the bright color, if nothing else, when it was time to leave the water and find my stuff. I put my chair right at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the parking lot. I walked in a straight line to the ocean, which was at medium-low (not low-low) tide, so I didn’t have to go too far to get back to square one. I hoped for the best.

My Plan B was this: to depend on the kindness of strangers. “Excuse me, but I’m lost…” wouldn’t sound very convincing coming from the mouth of a 50-year-old, so I fervently hoped I wouldn’t have to go this route.

I am happy to report that I didn’t! I swam in the ocean for 20 minutes, came out (just to prove to myself that I could find my stuff–and to get away from the teenage boy who wouldn’t stop taunting his sister with talk about the sharks getting us), then went back in for another 20 minutes.

Life was good today.

Girls of a feather

by Karen, posted in health, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, teens, Turning 50

My daughter and I got matching feathers a few months ago. Why? I don’t know. We were at a business expo and there was someone offering to feather people for $5. She said it usually costs $8 but it was a special price Today Only (certainly we’ve all heard that before).

Anyway, she wanted one so I figured it was harmless enough so we got in line. Izzy got to choose her feather from a box of multicolored styles of varying lengths. Once it was in, it looked…FABULOUS! As we walked around the expo, I was liking her new feather so much, then I had a sudden thought:

“I want one!”

So, since this is My Year of Turning 50, and I made the decision previously to follow any and all whims as they arise, I got one.

After a few weeks of living with the feathers, Izzy and I liked them so much, that we returned to Melissa at her regular place of business and got a second one.

Was that wrong?
So far, they are holding up pretty well, except that my pink feather is now completely white, which is not a problem.
🙂

 

Time: is it on my side?

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

I made a decision the week that I turned 50 and also was on vacation: I wouldn’t wear my watch. I had a couple of goals.

1. To stop being so ruled by the time of day it was (eg: “time for breakfast” or “time for bed”)

2. To make my vacation feel longer.

So for about 10 days, I didn’t wear my watch. It turned out that on the few occasions when I tried to guess the time, my guesses were usually pretty close: within 15 minutes or so of the actual time. Of course, for the first several days, I looked at my watch-less wrist to see what time it was, but then when I remembered that I wore no watch, I just said, “Okay, I don’t know what time it is,” and was okay with that.

I didn’t start wearing my watch again until today. I put it on this morning, then after i looked at it for the third time and realized that it still said 10:12AM (not to mention that it was also a day behind on the date!), the ugly truth was revealed: THE BATTERY STOPPED.

Really? Really?

Is the Universe sending me a message?

Midlife Monkey Mind

by Karen, posted in Angels, education, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50, yoga

I’ve been on overload these past few weeks, with my mind overly full of stress-inducing thoughts. Sleeping has been a challenge. Lying awake from 1:30-4:30am two nights ago, I trotted out all my tricks for putting myself back to sleep: saying my ABC’s, counting backward from 100, tensing and relaxing muscle groups, saying the So Hum meditation.

Today at yoga, the instructor coincidentally included the So Hum mediation in our class. My mind had been racing a mile a minute right up until I heard Kristen say those two words, when it screeched to a halt…for a second. I started saying the words: so hum…so hum…so hum…

Then I became aware of something interesting: although my mental voice was indeed repeating the so hums dutifully as requested, another channel in my mind was still gyrating with the monkey mindedness of my midlife brain. It never stopped. Even as my ‘good girl’ brain was desperately trying to fulfill the teacher’s request to meditate on the fact that “I am”, the ‘bad girl’ brain carried on obsessing with wild abandon.

Note to self: shut of the monkey mind when you meditate. It’s so much more effective.

Speaking your truth

by Karen, posted in Angels, family, friends, good grief, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

Over the past several months, I’ve had quite a lot to say about turning 50 this year to quite a lot of people.

That was then. Several months ago, heck, even several weeks ago, it seemed so far off in the future.

This is now. Now, it’s looming large, and for some reason, I’m finding that I have very little to say. That’s so unlike me! Usually, I’m “talking and I can’t shut up”–just ask my husband.

As part of my turning 50 and vowing to follow any and all whims that present themselves, I bought a half off Maine Deal coupon for a psychic reading by Melissa Boyd of Deep Blue Truth.

One of the things she told me (apart from that my Mom, Dad, and grandmothers were all there and said, ‘Hi!’ 🙂 ) was that my throat chakra was so backed up it was like a bottle neck. The throat chakra is #5, counting up from the bottom root chakra. This is (surprise!) the center of communication and expression.

Apparently, I am not speaking my truth. Who knew? After doing a little online research, I learned that wearing a particular bracelet–one made of Sodalite–can help. (Really? Really? If only it turns out to be that easy).

I’m willing to give it a try.

Lilac poaching

by Karen, posted in gardening, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

Lilacs are my favorite flower. They always have been, as far back as I can remember. My grandmother had a large white lilac bush in her back yard and it was one of my favorite things in the world when I was a little girl.

Over the years, we have had houses with varying numbers of lilac bushes on the property. At one point, my husband went all out and planted a lilac garden that included every color of lilac we’d ever seen or heard of. We had plenty of places to put them that got full sun and that were hospitable to lilacs and they thrived.  

That was the pinnacle.

Since then, our success with lilacs has been less exciting. My husband always tries to plant as many as possible, and then they either do well or they don’t.  In our present house, he made a huge effort and planted two pink lilac bushes on either side of the front door as a Mothers Day/Birthday Present for me one year. That was amazing and I love them.

And yet.

This time of year, I am overcome with a longing for many, many lilacs in many, many col0rs and want them in vases in every room in my house.

Currently, I have none.

Now I find myself trolling the streets of southern Maine, looking for lilacs in abandonned lots to poach. I have been known to go out at dawn to travel the back streets to cut lilacs from bushes that are in areas that could be construed as ‘public property’.

My husband has told me he will not bail me out when I get caught.

The big lie

by Karen, posted in family, friends, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

“Effective multitasking is a myth. Would you want a tooth filled by a dentist who was talking on a cell phone? “~ Downeast Magazine, April 2012, p. 25, “Time for a Driver Cellphone Ban”.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote since I read it. And when I dropped (and broke) several of the vintage Pyrex bowls I had for years. And whenI burned my finger taking a cookie sheet out of the oven with one oven mitt on instead of 2. And when I pulled the vacuum over while vacuuming  lamp shade, resulting in a 6 inch bruise on my leg.

Of course, any midlife woman has heard the “Having it all” myth too, right? Is there a bigger lie out there? Well, apart from the multitasking one?

My husband keeps telling me that I have too much on my plate. Much of what is taking up so much of my time right now is beyond my control, but I am the one who has to deal with it.  Many of you are almost certainly dealing with some administrative thing(s) that you wish you didn’t have to deal with (like completing tax returns?). Add to that eating and sleeping and keeping yourself cleaned up, all of which consumes even more portions of your day. If you are lucky enough to have a job, that might take up the majority of our waking hours most days. Add taking care of children to that list…and your day is now about 24 hours in the red, right?

I was talking to my friend Susan about how to fit everything we want to do into any given day when our brainstorming led to a breakthrough: Maybe we should be asking a different question. Not, “How do we fit everything in?”  but “How do we choose what to leave out?”

 What do you think?

Party!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends, local fun, Midlife Crisis, relationships, Turning 50

I have never had friends over to my house since I moved here in 2006 that wasn’t associated with a holiday or a kid’s birthday. So, when I decided to have a Creative Memories Scrapbooking Party it was sort of a big deal.
Who to invite was the first thing to figure out. I decided to put the question on Facebook and in a few emails first to see if anyone would even be interested in such a thing. Turned out, quite a few people were interested.

Next, I decided to invite only people who said they were interested (either directly to me or indirectly, through others). I was pleasantly surprised when several of them accepted.  Then came the fun part: what to feed everyone.

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll probably tell you that I’m all about the food. Ask my husband and he’ll probably tell you that I’m all about overdoing the food. I decided to consult my sister-in-law, Andrea, who is great at such things. I took her advice to “Keep it Simple” as well as her advice about quantities to buy.

I spent the morning cleaning the house, and with the help of my son Anthony and my daughter Izzy, we got everything ready early. Then I confidently headed out to shop with my daughter. As the day went on, the cancellations rolled in. I tried not to worry. My husband kept me laughing with text messages and phone calls…”Hello, this is the Wells Police. We have a report of a wild scrapbooking party at your house….” and so forth (thank you, Bill!).

In the end, the Tupperware Party rule prevailed: half of the people who way they are coming ultimately will not.

It was great though. We had plenty of room to work on the projects. Susan, the Creative Memories Consultant (and my friend!) had done all the prep work in advance to make it easy for even a novice scrapbooker.  The lovely women at my party ranged in age from 13 to somewhere just barely into her fifties (you know who you are!). And because it is true that I am all about the food, we had the most delicious cupcakes for dessert from Somethin’ Sweet in Sanford (check out her Facebook page for daily flavors and specials). My guests even let me bore them with my talk about my Book of Fifty (the scrapbook I am working on for my 5oth birthday year).

I had the best time ever. Thank you, everybody.