The last of my 40′s

I turn 49 today, and my parents wrote on their card to me “enjoy the last of your 40′s”.  I hadn’t thought a lot about it.  I don’t feel like I am almost 50, and I’m told i don’t look it, either.  (Theory: it’s because the fat fills out the wrinkles.)

I do remember that when I turned 30 it hit me hard.  It was partly due to the fact that I felt I hadn’t accomplished anything in terms of a career– i really just had a job, not any kind of career.  The one thing that kept me from really feeling like a total loser was that I was pregnant with my second child.  It seems silly now that at a time when I had one young child and a baby on the way, I was concerned about my career.

But thinking about the last of my 40′s got me thinking about my other “last-of” birthdays.  When I turned nine, I was in third grade, with the wonderful Mrs. Fredericks for a teacher.  I can still hear her reading Charlotte’s Web to us.  I was a tall gangly girl with glasses and a big nose, and I loved to read and hated math.

When I turned 19, I was a freshman in college.  I’d broken up with my boyfriend from high school several months earlier,  and by then I was finally over it.  I don’t remember much else from that time, except that one of my best friends had recently back-stabbed me over something stupid.   We made up shortly after.  In retrospect, I don’t know why I wanted to be friends with her.  She was not a nice person.

Age 29, I had a one-year old son I doted on.  I remember being a bit lonely– most of my friends didn’t have kids and I hadn’t yet made friends with people who did.

At age 39, I was over all the career-angst.  I was a stay-at-home mom who was homeschooling 2 kids.  I felt pretty good, I had two great kids, a wonderful husband (I still thought that, and at that point he was pretty darn good).  We had a lovely house in the country, I had a good group of friends, I was moving along on my faith journey.  If you had told me that in three years my marriage would fall apart I would not have believed you.

And so we come to 49.  I’m divorced, and living off alimony and child support and what I earn as a waitress.  I have one kid in college and one who will head to college in the fall.  I start school in the fall, too.  I have good friends, I’m involved in a lot of things, and am pretty happy over-all.  Life, in short, is good.

I am very blessed, and although there is no question that the 40′s have been my toughest decade, I’ve weathered it well and am proud of where I am in life.

Feet

Another lovely day, warm and windy but cloudy.  The warmth and the wind have melted almost all the snow around here, leaving behind mud and dead-looking grass and the occasional bit of new growth peeking through!

It was a long, busy day at work and my feet hurt.  I have hallux rigidus, also known as turf toe.  It’s basically osteoarthritis of the big toe joint.  I had surgery on my left foot in 2004, surgery on my right foot in 2007.  Lately the left foot has been hurting a lot, so I went to my podiatrist.  I was hoping he would just need to adjust my orthotics but no such luck.  The joint is pretty bad, and the only thing he can do for me at this point is put in an artificial joint.  I’m a little younger than they like for such things– almost 49.  Apparently the artificial joint usually lasts 10-15 years, so I’d probably need to have it replaced again eventually/

Not what I wanted to hear, not at all.  The cost of surgery, being out of work for 4-6 weeks, this isn’t the best time for this.  Plus, I’m just not ready for this step.  I told him I’d think about it.  I went on vacation, then since I got back I’ve had more time off than usual, and the feet have felt better. Putting surgery off seemed doable.  Today took a toll, thought, and I’m back to wondering…

In the meantime, I’ve been massaging my feet and today I’m icing them for a bit– feels good.

Ah well.  I’ll think and pray on it a bit longer.

So Here We Go!

March 1st, day 1 of my month-’o'-blogging.

March came in gray and damp and chilly here in Southern Wisconsin.  Yesterday morning, it was clear and sunny and unseasonably warm.  A strong south wind pushed fluffy clouds through the sky and made me feel like spring was just around the corner.  My walk to work was invigorating.  By mid-afternoon it was cloudy and alternately raining, snowing and sleeting.   Still, it is March, and spring will come!

The cafe where I work has a wide range of clientele, and we get a fair number of senior citizens.  Today a woman came in with family members, and it was clear she suffered from dementia– she couldn’t even remember what she wanted long enough to order for herself.  We get a fair number of customers like this.  There is another woman, a pretty regular customer, who usually doesn’t remember what she ordered– it’s often a surprise to her!.  She sometimes forgets to pay, other times she pays but forgets that she did.  The staff is always careful to let each other know when she’s paid so she doesn’t end up paying twice.

Seeing people with dementia makes me really think.  We get the occasional customer who is clearly on his or her own, and I worry for them.  Most of the people have family or caregivers, but I think about how hard it is for the caregivers.

I seem to be noticing a lot more of this.  I don’t know if I’ve just become more aware, or if people are just starting to feel more comfortable bringing their loved one out in public (which is wonderful), or if there are just more people with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

High School Reunion

A few months ago I logged into facebook and found that a high school classmate had added me to the group for our 30th high school reunion.  Until that moment I hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was 30 years since I graduated.  I’ve never been to a reunion.  Even the time I was actually in my home town while a reunion was going on, I didn’t go. I didn’t hate high school, I had a reasonably good time there, but I never felt inclined to re-connect.

Back to the  Group thing. The first thing I did was un-friend the classmate who had added me.  She’s the only classmate I had kept in touch with, we had been good friends for at least a decade following high school, but had really drifted apart.  It annoyed me that she had added me to the group without asking me, or even informing me that she was doing so.  So, I ended the facebook friendship, and it’s no great loss.

But I have remained in the group, so far.  It was interesting to see photos and read a bit about old classmate.  I received several friend requests and accepted a few, then un-friended most of them and have become much more selective about who I friend.  It isn’t feasible for me to go to the re-union, but for maybe a day or two I almost wished I could.  As time went on, though, I just felt less and less inclined.  It seemed that most of the people going were not people I’d been friends with particularly, and most of the people I had been friends with and would have like to catch up with weren’t going, and weren’t even members of the group.

It also became increasingly obvious that a fair number of my former classmates haven’t changed a whole lot.  After a few days of particularly bizarre and ugly comments and flaming, a former classmate and I chatted on facebook and both of us felt the same way– we just weren’t interested in going, because we were just too far removed from it.  We’d moved on.

Several days ago I saw the following comment on the group page: “I think about high school a lot still.”  I don’t.  I rarely think about high school.  High school was 4 years (3 years, actually, our school district had 10-12 as a senior high, 7-9 as junior high).  In the 30 years since, I’ve gone to college, broke up with my high-school boyfriend, dated two guys seriously, met the man I would later marry, transferred to a new college and moved halfway across the country with him, graduated, got married, worked, had kids, moved 4 times, got divorced, have gone back to school, made new friends, struggled with health issues, and grown spiritually, emotionally, intellectually.  I’m the same person I was in high school, yet I’m so much more.  Those 3 years were not a significant time in my life, when I look back over it from age 48.  They were mostly good years and I learned much during them, but in terms of making me what I am today, they played only a small part.

I think it’s sweet that so many people formed good life-long friendships, that others have been able to move beyond painful memories and reconnect.  I’ve been impressed by the way the organizers have taken care to welcome everyone who joins up posts comments, even a girl who spent only her last year of high school at our school. I am quite sure the same friendliness would be extended to me if I posted.  I feel a certain jealousy for the classmates who have stayed in the area the whole time– there is much to be said for putting down good, deep roots somewhere.  I feel a certain nostalgia for the familiar places and names from that time.  If I met up with one or several of these people in the course of a day, I’d enjoy catching up over a cup of coffee or a drink.  But to gather together with a whole big group and drink too much and wallow in the memories– no thanks.

April Showers

We’ve had plenty of them.   I don’t want to complain too much, because things could be a lot worse– Alabama is certainly getting slammed right now weather-wise.  But day after day of cold rainy weather is getting to me.

I’ve been plagued by sinus headaches this week.  It’s a combination of a cold, and allergies brought on by: pollen from the few things blooming; the incredible amount of dust in my home; and probably mold from all the rain.  Pseudoephedrine HCl helps somewhat, but today a flax-seed bag warmed in the microwave really helped the most.

I’m a headache-prone person.  I often have sinus headaches, and I suffer from migraines.  The migraines have been less frequent and less intense over the last few years– when I was a mom with two young kids and a husband who traveled a lot I often got absolutely dreadful ones that kept me in bed for a day. Probably it was the stress of coping added to the whole hormone thing– as I hit peri-menopause things have improved.  Nice to know there is an upside to it.

I am anxious to get outside and prepare our herb bed– the house had a rose-bush surrounded by peonies in the back yard, but the rose-bush was doing poorly, so son Jacob dug it up last year.  We plan to dig out the peonies– look, I know they are very pretty when they bloom, but after that what is the point to them?– and then we’ll plant some herbs and a few other things.  One of our neighbors has a black walnut tree so not everything will grow, but we’ll see what we can do.

I have 2 weeks left to my physics class, and two tests.  The test I was sure I did so badly on?  I got a 95.  How pathetic is it that I don’t know how well I do on these tests?  The class is getting tougher– the teacher is going a lot faster and expecting us to do a lot more.  But I’ve maintained my A average so far and I am determined to keep it up!  I never dreamed I would do this well in this class, but I’ve enjoyed the challenge.  I am rather proud of myself, too.

Gray

I looked in the mirror yesterday and realized I was overdue for a session with the stylist. I’ve got a good 2 inches of gray roots showing and the color is fading fast on the rest of my hair. Time to call Jennifer, I thought.

But suddenly I had an urge to– not call. Not color it. Just embrace it, let it go gray, be who I am.

I don’t know. I first began getting gray hair in my mid-twenties but it really started coming on in my early forties. I ended up coloring it because, one, I think it made me look old, and two, it made me look washed out.

I like it colored, it looks good. I’ll probably call this week and get in to see Jennifer. But I wonder– when will I stop? Will I turn into one of those old ladies who still colors their hair when they are 65?

Well, I’m 47, I have some time.