Forever Kinda Young

2012-01-26T11:46:00.000-08:00

Stem Cell News....Yeehaw?

A new report cites a study in which old mice were given injections of new stem cells, and presto! Can you say re-ju-ve-na-tion?

Mice studies at the University of Pittsburgh showed that stem cell injections slowed the aging process. Treated old mice became like young mice, and lived up to three times longer than their untreated compadres.

Well....they weren't rebuilt. Even thought the stem cells came from muscle tissue, and their muscles did get stronger, they weren't reborn as new hot mice. They had better brain blood flow and overall health, and so on and so on.

Cool. So now they're going to try to translate the research to humans. Take our own stem cells from muscle and see what happens. Possibilities:

I live 3 times longer than most people, and look like hell the whole time
I'm smart enough to know how bad I look
I have more energy so I can go look in the mirror more often
Whose idea was this anyway?

I will wait for the research that rebuilds muscle and skin. Then I will take stem cells from a 20 year old ass and inject them guess where. I will take stem cells from a 25 year old neck and make my friends envious. I will take stem cells from a weight lifter and be strong enough to pick up a cute guy and run down the road with him. (heh heh)

c u there :)

2012-01-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

A New Blog Item: Quotable Quotes and Statements of Interest

Take note: from now on I will include a weekly feature of some pertinent short statement of interest.

This week's offering:

"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches." ___Martha's Vineyard Ferry, bathroom wall, 1969

2012-01-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

You Can Knock Me Down, But I Get Up Again, You're Never Gonna Keep Me Down....

Oh Yeah. Went in for surgery last week (Hysterectomy; who needs it, and why not make more room for beer?). The surgery went flawlessly. Anesthesia, not so much. My lungs collapsed. As the young resident who couldn't stop smiling said, "Well, the lungs sometimes collapse 'a little bit' during surgery..."

As for the surgery, I burped and farted like a sailor the first day and had no need for the morphine they kept shooting me up with. "How bout some Ibuprofen?" I mumbled, as they used the magic needle to send me into some revolting narcotic haze between sleep and psychosis and send my lungs into revolt. By the second day I told them the next nurse to come near me with a syringe of anything would be
found under my bed when her body started to smell, so Ibuprofen it was. Pain? Hah! This old girl can take it.

But my poor lungs. Here's a new word for you: atelectasis. That means lung collapse. Or as one savvy nurse put it, "you know, that bubbly shit." I knew she wasn't talking about champagne. 5 oxygen tanks later, I'm home and pissed off.

I'll be fine, no worries. But what a drag. If you ever want to scare yourself, try not being able to breathe. I can dig it about water boarding. I'd tell my f*cking life story and yours too if somebody held my head underwater. Tomorrow when I'm up to it, I'll check out my medical chart. I mean, one size does not fit all when it comes to anesthesia. Here's hoping they didn't overdose me, 'cause if they did, can you say "Hello retirement?"

2012-01-11T17:37:00.000-08:00

The Life 2.0 Wardrobe

Ah….what is the savvy Life 2.0 kitten wearing these days? Check it out….

Jeans, natch. Don’t worry about the raggedy look so popular among the youngstas. You’ve worn them for fifteen years so they’re just getting good.
T-shirts, yeah. Usually tie-dyed. This is because after ten years of dropping food on the same shirt, you need to blend the colors. If you can’t afford the dye, circle the biggest spots with permanent magic marker (if you got it, flaunt it!).
Shoes and boots you got at the thrift store. They’re already broken in, and the beat up look goes with the outfit.
Fringed jackets. The fringe hides the wear spots along the hem.
Bandanas. They hide the roots you can’t afford to keep up with.
Glasses? Get the $10 readers at the supermarket. The TRUE fashion plates steal one in every color.
Underwear? What underwear?

2011-11-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

The Dream of Life 2.0

I dreamed:

That I had a decent motorhome that had an engine powered by shit. Shit is the most plentiful substance on earth, and if I ever run low, I’ll just drive to Washington.

That I had solar and wind panels on the roof that powered an extraordinary battery pack under the bus. And that the toilet was an incinerating marvel that turned shit into ash, and was perfect so long as you remembered to stand up before flushing.

That the crappy little car I towed behind the thing always started when I wanted it to.

That I had earth boxes filled with vegetables and berries in compartments under the bus that I put out everyplace I stopped and that fed me well. That I was able to trade manure removal with farmers for fresh eggs.

That I was pretty good

at stealing meat from supermarket chains(never small stores), along with health and beauty supplies.

That I had enough Medicare to fill my prescriptions. And could grow enough herbs in my window boxes to cover the rest.

That I could find lovely places to park, off the grid, off the view of law enforcement for at least five days at a time.

That I met like-minded old crazies on the road and traded friendship, wild stories, a bit of booze and supplies as needed.

And that I was free, and that I was free.

2011-10-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

The Test to Be A Republican

To be a Republican you have to be rich or stupid. So many people believe they are one or the other that the Party had to make up a qualifying test:

1. How much money do you have? If it’s less than 20 million, send it in.

2. Do you have a portfolio? (If you don’t understand this question, please go directly to the Tea Party subsection)

3. What kind of cars do you drive? Pick from the following (you’d better pick more than one!) a) Lexus b) Lamborghini c) Jaguar d) BMW with leather seats e) Cadillac (loaded only)

4. Describe your yacht.

5. How many facelifts has your wife had? a) one b) two or more c) I can’t remember, but her face is on top of her head

6. What size breast augmentation has your mistress had? a) D b) DD c) DDD e) they don’t make bras that big

7. How many
homes do you have? a) three b) four c) half a dozen d) I can’t count that high

8. How do you treat your staff? a) badly b) terribly d) I beat them at least once per week e) I don’t know, they’re all fired on a weekly basis

9. Do you believe that banking practices should be regulated? a) what are you, some kind of socialist creep? b) what are you, some kind of commie? c) you godless heathen! d) die, you filth; die and burn!!

10. Do you believe the rich and corporations should pay their fair share of taxes in America? a) !##@!!!*&^%! (there is no “b”)

TEA PARTY SUBSECTION (The rank and file)

How much do you make? Send it in.
Can you read? a) yes b) who the f*ck needs to read?
Do you believe in a strong defense? a) yes b) yes! c) bet your ass I do!
Do you believe in small government? a) yes b) yes! c) bet your ass I do!
Do you care that these two notions taken together make no sense whatsoever? a) nope b) what are you, some kind of socialist creep?
What did Jesus preach? a) kick the goddamned Jews outta the temple (outta the country) b) if you don’t follow Jesus, you’re a heathen dog c) kill Muslims d) Don’t let a n*gger become president. See what happens?
Who do you love? a) Jesus b) my wife, sorta c) America, yessirree!
Who do you hate? a) Jews b) Blacks c) Latinos d) liberals e) those intellectual assholes who think they’re better than me f) everyone
How many guns do you have? a) one b) two 3) half dozen or more d) I can’t count that high
Do you believe the rich and corporations should pay their fair share of taxes in America? a) !##@!!!*&^%! (there is no “b”)

2011-10-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Get Your Bitch On!!!

Old and broke, this ain't no joke.
Can't work much more, I'm feeling sore.
Depression II, I hate you
What to do? I'm feeling blue.
Maybe not go under, go asunder!
Live in my car, travel far,
Meet other gaff's, have a few laughs,
With a wink and a nod to the morning star
And a watering stop at a friendly bar!

2011-10-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

Poor But Happy!

Well, it’s been a week and I’m still poor. I checked to see if my house went up in value and it went down. I checked to see if my retirement account made any money and one mutual fund lost 67 cents and another made 4 cents. There’s only 9,000 in there anyhow, so honestly, what difference does it make?

But I’m happy.

· Because I don’t have to worry about keeping up with fashion. I can make a statement in my torn jeans and stained T-shirts.
· Because I don’t have to worry about keeping ammo in my gun. All the militia nuts bought it up anyhow.
· Because I don’t have to worry about eating much. I’m overweight, this will be good for me!
· Because I’m going to retire from nothing into nothing, and it’ll be a smooth transition!
· Because I won’t be able to buy beauty supplies or dye my hair or get a facelift, so I will look like a little old lady.
· And that will make shoplifting easier!

2011-10-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

Main Street to Wall Street: Kiss My A**!!

Well, now that Wall Street is running things, my future is bleak. If all 47 of my followers buy my book, I may be able to afford some hair dye.

But, facelift, goodbye. Retirement, goodbye. Solvency in old age, goodbye.

BUT LIFE 2.0, HELLO!!!

Never before has Life 2.0 been more appropriate. Never. This is the time for the gray hairs to become gray panthers. This is the time to fight back.

Fight? Am I crazy?

Yes, and no. Of course it is madness to think one can be heard. Even in the age of emails “from the president” your individual voice carries about as far as a fart in a windstorm. But your actions….that’s another matter.

Boomers, remember the sixties? We weren’t busy writing our congressional representatives. Most of us didn’t even know who they were. But we were busy. We were busy living pleasant lives. We turned our backs on the stress of competition, the burden of achievement, the conformity of social convention. We turned on, tuned in, and dropped out.

And we must do so again.

Life 2.0 proposes living on the outskirts of society. Life 2.0 is the plan for those who do not retire rich, who have lost the life savings they put into their homes, who are facing rising costs of everything with ever decreasing resources.

Two options:

· Live poor, possibly homeless, and wait to die
· Live like hippies, combine resources, move a lot, stay under the radar, have lots of parties, laugh a lot, and die when the time comes.

Sometimes I wonder if I would choose a hippie existence if I had the funds to do better. I honestly don’t know. But unless my house increases its value by 70% in the next 23 months, I have no choice. And between the choices of fold or play the hand I have been dealt, I choose the latter! The adventure continues......

2011-08-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

Want To Live Longer? Quit Eating

Let's talk about calorie restriction. Since 1935, it has been a hot topic for research. Back then Dr. Clive McCay found that giving mice 30% less food than their brethren resulted in 40% longer lifespans. Then Dr. Roy Walford, a pathologist, dedicated his life to eating less in order to live longer. Sadly, we'll never know how that one turned out since he died of Lou Gehrig's in 2004.

But there's a lot of evidence that it works. Eat less, live longer.

Why?

Some years ago I read an article about a guy practicing calorie restriction. He looked like a concentration camp victim and had to carry a pillow with him at all times because his ass was so skinny he was sitting on his bones. Of this malady, he said, "No big deal." Is he kidding? Sitting on your ass bones just to live another few years? This is what it amounts to:

when.

when you're hungry, forget about it.
when you're stressed, stay that way. No chocolate, no booze.
when they don't make clothes small enough for you, stay home and go naked. You won't have the energy to go anywhere anyhow.
when you obsess about food, think of those extra years you're gonna have...
...sitting on your ass bones.

I would rather pluck my eyes out and eat them than practice calorie restriction. As a matter of fact, if I did calorie restriction, I probably would pluck my eyes out and eat them.

start with your hair, it's harder to swallow and keeps you busy longer.
move onto your fingers. Think of how much you'll save at the nail parlor.
toes...who needs 'em? Walk on your heels.
....this could get pretty gross so I'll stop here.

Well, here's to the hunt for some other way to live longer. I'm still waiting for proof that chocolate does the trick.

2011-08-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

Tighten Up For Free!

Take some egg white and smear it on your face and neck. While it's still wet, brush/dab on your makeup. Presto! A little lift for the price of an egg.

Depending on your stress level, it lasts most of the day.

2011-08-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

This Ship Just Took a Wrong Turn

Two days ago I found out my house is worth less than what I paid for it. I was shocked. Just a year ago, it had a comfortable margin over what I owed. This is important, because I was counting on it for my retirement.

What to do, at my age? Maybe I will become Jane of the Jungle. Jane is a crafty gal who knew when she was beaten, and decided to fight her situation. In her case, she won. In mine, who knows? But to be honest, who cares?

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Thank you, Janis Joplin. Like so many middle class victims of Depression II, the Sequel, I am facing old age in poverty. I won’t have doodly squat for retirement. If the Tea Party has its way, I won’t even have social security. The law is no longer my friend, so perhaps it’s best to live, shall we say, outside the mainstream.

How ‘bout that revamped motor home that runs on manure and hides in the woods? How ‘bout shoplifting as a way of life? How ‘bout grabbing a few veggies from the farmer’s field in the dark of night?

How ‘bout going over to the dark side? Because the light over here has gone out.

Damn, I guess I won’t get my facelift after all. But today I tried a sample facelift cream that irritates the skin and makes it plump up, and it looked pretty damn good. Combine that with the zero stress of not working, the zero stress of not paying taxes, the zero stress of being outside the predatory system….and I might just wind up with greatly improved skin tone.

Yee. Haw.

2011-08-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

How to be poor and gorgeous:

1. Steal some eggs.

2. Separate the yolk from the white.

3. Eat the yolk. Never mind the cholesterol, it's good for you.

4. Whisk the egg white with some lemon juice and oil, and put it on your face.

5. Presto! a facelift!

6. But don't smile too broadly. I'm not sure if this shit cracks or not.

2011-07-10T06:09:00.000-07:00

The New Cheap Facelift:

I sewed an elastic cord onto my sun hat because it's so windy here. I have discovered if you tie it tight and pull it up, it looks like you had a neck lift. Is it okay to wear a hat everywhere? Even in the shower?

2011-06-25T15:36:00.000-07:00

Anger Feels Good, But Makes You Age...Very Quickly....

Anger feels good at the moment, but in the long run, it really sucks.

Consider the damage to your anti-aging plan:

Increased cortisol. Cortisol makes you fat and gives you a nasty hump on your back.
High blood pressure. The longer you’re mad, the shorter you’ll live.
Depressed immune system. Just after you toss spit into someone’s face, they yell back and toss it in yours. Good luck with that.
Liver and kidney damage. You may as well drink a fifth every night, it’s more fun.
Increased heart attack risk. If you think a stranger will do CPR and save you, forget it. You probably pissed him off.

If you want to stay forever young, if you want to look ageless, if you're serious about anti-aging,

give up the rage. To be sure, a little anger (more like outrage) is an engine that drives bunches of good stuff: positive social change, finally cleaning the house, letters to the editor, and so on. But many of us are perpetually pissed off and send our longevity plans straight into the commode:

The line is too long.
I feel like hell.
Look like it, too.
I’m broke.
The line still hasn’t moved.
All drivers on earth but me are assholes.
I’m still broke.
And the *&!!#! line is stuck in time!

There are many methods for controlling your anger. My favorite is: change how you think. When a bona fide asshole cuts you off in traffic, understand that it’s because he has a small penis. When you remember you’re broke, feel like finally you fit in. When the line is too long, imagine everyone in it naked.

And if you feel like hell and think you look like hell too, start planning your anti-aging campaign in your head. Browse the web and look at all the before and after pix. Understand that you can take your anger out on a treadmill, and the side effects are just plain wonderful.

2011-06-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

Just a Thought....

I have decided to do new mini-posts in between ~~rants~~ posts. My mind, which is a sore trial even to me, is constantly abuzz with passing thoughts, such as:

Mature women are considered sexy in Europe. Why do I live here?

2011-06-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

Take Immortality ... and Shove It

Because I make war on aging, some people accuse me of wanting to live forever. Let me be clear:

F--- THAT. I would hate to live forever. Movies where the villain is trying to live forever are stupid. Living forever is what you do in hell. Imagine:

You would endure life’s insulting jokes for eternity.
You would be married to the same person for thousands of years. Even the Catholic Church would have to think about that one.
You would have to do a search on the world’s mega computer for something new to do, and it would come up empty.
Your children would bitch at you forever. And ever.
You know that savage old fart neighbor of yours that makes you pray every time you see an ambulance on the block, “Please, God, let it be him?’ Forget it. He’s staying. Forever.
It will be your five thousandth, nine hundred and fifty third Christmas. What do you get for the shmuck who has everything?
You would clean the house until it fell down, then get a new house and start over.
You would scrub toilets for millennia.

I just want to live well. I want to be middle aged until I croak. That is entirely different. Try a Life 2.0 lifespan:

· You’re a kid, fun.

· You’re a babe. Exciting for a little while.

· You’re a mature young person. Your intelligence can actually shine through the perfect skin. Time to take life seriously, and be taken seriously.

· You find a partner. You have careers, get a home, maybe have kids. You raise a family.

· Just when your kids get to be good company, they leave home. You work for another ten or twenty years.

· You start to make some changes. You retire. Maybe you get a villa in a retirement community that has a golf course, gym, and pool. Maybe you get a motorhome and start travelling. If you’re broke, a camper. J

***And then, instead of starting to spend more time at the doctor’s office than anywhere else, you start on Life 2.0. You embark on a self-care campaign that incudes exercise, healthy food, maybe a drink now and then, maybe even some hormone balancing. If you don’t like white, you color your hair. Maybe not. Maybe you get a nip here and a tuck there. Maybe not. You look as good as you feel, and you feel good.

· You reach out to other people. You contact old friends you lost touch with in the manic years of child rearing and career. You make new friends through shared activities.

· You think about your community, and start doing some of the giving back you thought of but never had time to do before. You realize there is a HUGE use for retired people: they are the ones not only with the experience but with the time to get stuff done. In fact, you and your buddies are the new social activists.

· And you are forever young. Because you are strong, active and connected. You are beautiful, you are noticed, and you are friends with adults of any age.

And when it comes time to die, you don’t bitch too much, because you didn’t let yourself get old, frail and isolated. You didn’t spend thirty years fading out. And you don’t need to live forever, because you have lived well.

2011-05-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

Only Dead People Dress Their Age

She was maybe thirty-five, cute as a button. Trying on a pair of overalls in the dressing room of a department store and asks me, “Is this too kid-ish for me?”

It was a joke, right? That’s not anti-aging, it’s pro-aging. Is there some cutoff point when you have to start dressing according to your age? What in God’s name would that look like, after 55?

House dresses with enough kleenex in the pockets to service an entire second grade class with the flu
Bedroom slippers that flop so loud dogs bark
Plastic purses full of more stuff than the Las Vegas city dump
Weird plaids that make you disappear in most landscapes
For women, pants beneath their bellies
For men, pants beneath their armpits
Strange shades of pink that startle the dead
Floral patterns that make children cry
Shapeless clothing into which you could fit yourself, six children, fifteen car bombs or three cases of cheap whiskey.

The first person that tries to put me in a mumu will die painfully. I still

wear T-shirts and jeans. I dress about the same as my daughters, judging by the missing articles of my clothing that turn up in their closets and vice versa.

Sometimes I see white haired people dressing like they just got up or are about to lie down. How sad. They wear their dowdy clothes like a badge of age: old age, not to be confused with maturity, as seen in elders who boogie on.

They say, “clothes make the man.” If that’s true, then part of staying youthful is the way we dress. Dowdy clothes, clothes made of weird unnatural materials, clothes we could fit a second body into….these are the kinds of clothes to wear when you’re dead. For now, healthy anti-aging means wearing what is comfortable, style-less so that it passes for stylish, easy care, and lets you move freely…because if you’re forever kinda young, you’ll need some dancing room.

2011-05-26T09:44:00.000-07:00

Plastic Surgery Rocks!

I believe in plastic surgery. It’s not for everyone, I realize that. But for those who want it, it’s the best thing since flush toilets.

I hear, “You shouldn’t tamper with nature,” and “You’re so vain,” and “You’ll look thirty years younger than your husband.”

Is there some reason we shouldn’t tamper with nature? If nature gives me cancer, you’d better believe I’m gonna tamper with nature.
Yes, I’m vain. I love beauty – in nature, art, my surroundings, and people. Most of the world does too. Those who don’t are lying or hopeless depressive pricks.
My husband? Why doesn’t he get a hair transplant and a facelift too?

I am sick of wrinkly old farts claiming there’s something wrong with vanity. We live in a vain world and vanity is rewarded with positive attention. No one volunteers to be unattractive. When they become so, their answer is to “accept it.”

Now, why is that? It was okay to wrinkle and dry up when you were going to croak at 65 or 70. But if you’re going to live to 90….are you kidding me? At 90, most women:

Will have boobs that stretch to their waists
Will be bald
Will have so many wrinkles on their faces they could pass for a road atlas
Will try to get fat just to hold their skin up
Will be fog headed and fog hearted and not remember where they are or who they are because they don’t really care.

At 90, most men:

Will have such big bellies they will not have seen their feet in many years
Will be bald
Will be have heads that merge directly with their shoulders, skipping the neck entirely
Will have boobs bigger than most women
Will be fog headed and fog hearted and not remember where they are or who they are because they don’t really care.

You see, modern medicine makes us live longer, but not younger. We have a golden opportunity to look like hell for thirty years.

Or... not. If a nip or a tuck or a snip or a suck can improve one’s physical appearance and pick up the spirits, I say go for it.

2011-05-22T15:59:00.000-07:00

Love and the Modern Life Span

I may get killed for this post. But here goes:

People live a long time, getting longer every day. Our children will probably live to be 125 or so. Most of us boomers, if we take care of ourselves, will live to 90 and beyond.

So what happens to love, when you live so long? Is your true love still true after fifty years? Do you want to be married to the same person for 80 years? What if people change and grow, have more than one career, get into lifelong learning? Will they still be compatible? And should people marry in their twenties? That means being married to the same person for a hundred years.

About half of all marriages end in divorce. We can blame

our cultural narcissism, the “me” generation, lax sense of loyalty; and we would be right. But does time have something to do with it too?

In a hyper stimulating world, can two people be in love after fifty years? Should they be? And can middle aged people still want to be in love? Can they find love? Is love becoming a serial thing? Maybe marriage, too?

In Arthur C Clarke’s book, Childhood’s End, marriage was taken out in 5 or 10 year contracts, renewable if desired. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Maybe I want to try my hand at new love at 65 or 70, for the thrill, for the boost it gives to living, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe my partner does too, and separation need not be hateful. Maybe in a long life, one has many lover-friends.

Personally, I would love the rush. Most people would.

2011-03-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

If It's Flaccid, Run! Or...Maybe Not...

May December romances are usually between older men and younger women. Men want women who can breed, and young women want security (read: big...huge....wallet).

Maybe it's not such a bad idea, age difference in relationships. My daughters make me cry with their dating stories, this or that young shithead and his commitment issues, blah blah blah. I remember: dating was excruciating. If God forbid anything happened to my husband, I would have to set myself on fire so as to avoid the dating scene.

But....older guys are easy to snag for young women and....younger men....older women....hold on here.

The universe just gave me a smack in the head. I have this ringing in my ears, "Dontcha know that's disgusting....eeuuww!"

Uh, why?

If a young girl can snuggle up to man boobs, why can't a young man snuggle up to flesh a little bit softer than he's used to? Especially when he doesn't have to marry it? (Commitment issues----pfft! gone!)

This is all about social convention, you know. We are trained to overlook the age diff in older man/younger woman relationships, to freak out about it in older woman/younger man scenes. What's the holdup in the revisions, here? Because, if everyone could date everyone, that sure would widen the field. Nice.

We think the old guy gets the goods when he drapes a firm young thing over his arm. But is that it? Doesn't a younger guy ever want less tension, more fun? Don't lie...I know they do. I've had a few rock-hards cruising my waters myself...and it wasn't because of the sleekness of my thighs.

So I propose a mighty re-education project:

Focus on relationships with a 20 year age diff
Figure the payoff: Older guy gets a breeding female (even though he'll probably never breed with her) and younger guy gets a free spirited, fun-to-be-with gal who almost always goes Dutch,
Young woman gets a guy with deep pockets who never gets mad at her because he's not listening,
And older woman gets a guy who can stay awake past midnight and she never gets mad at because she's not listening.

What's not to like?

2011-03-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

Complaints!

Life has its dissatisfactions. Here are some of mine:

When I was born, I did NOT get perfect skin. It's been a struggle ever since.

On my sixtieth birthday, I got a belly roll. Even though it's fun to play with in times of stress, I don't like it.

I do not have enough money. That's because I live in a beautiful older home that needs constant repairs. This house has set up a firewall protected direct line to my savings account and the steady drip is worse than a social disease, but less curable.

I am not famous yet. Wait---I would rather be dead than famous; what I mean is, my book is not famous yet. (this is a testament to my neurosis, the damn thing isn't even published yet)

My house STILL refuses to clean itself.

I think my hair is thinning. I find almost as much in the sink as on my head.

The world is still crazy, Republicans still own everything, people are still suckers, and my dog still runs away even WITH a radio fence, the little turd.

ON THE PLUS SIDE, I am thankful that:

I'm breathing
There's a little bit left in the brandy bottle
my husband said he'd make supper tonight
my house is not on fire
my dog came home
the foot of snow we got is finally melting
so we have running water again, hallelujah
the Packers won the Super Bowl
and it's sunny outside.

I feel better now. Sometimes it just helps to get it off your chest, you know what I mean?

2011-03-07T08:32:00.000-08:00

And Here's Your Proof....

To the left: my daughter, currently in the running for Boston's Sexiest (People) 2011 in StuffBoston ezine. (By the way, please visit http://stuffboston.com/supplements/2011/sexiest/hotnot/?a=725723 and give her a vote or two or two hundred, thanks)

And here, we have one of last year's winners. She's 80.

What? Oh yes. Apparently even among the young, "sexy" is not just about making strong men drool, but also about being attractive. Attractive=funny, vibrant, lively, charismatic, into living.....in other words, sexy.

A quote from the write-up in StuffBoston: "....fun-loving spirit and boundless energy keep her party-hopping with kids young enough to be her great-grandchildren."

So....there's your proof. Sexy is forever, so long as
you stay connected to living. The ability to create excitement about something, to make people laugh, to make yourself laugh, to keep your bony ass in circulation instead of hugging the sofa; these are the things that make one attractive at any age.

So here's to the seniors of the future. They are:

embarking on the final great adventure
and living life to the fullest
which is not necessarily proper or tasteful
sometimes they party with younger people
because all adults are the same age
and they don't give a d*mn what anyone thinks

New definitions:

"middle age": the time between 30 and 80. 1st half: careers, raising families. 2nd half: whatever you want.
"mature": tough, strong, smart, and crafty, after having survived life's first stage
"senior": free at last!

2011-02-23T15:25:00.000-08:00

Seniors of the Future...(heh heh)

Chew on this: seventy-five year old woman. Or this: 75 year old man. What comes to mind?

Old bag. Old fart. Right? Well...

Here's one seventy five year old woman: I can dig it: she's o-o-o-ld, frail, wrinkled, sagged, fogged; she farts in public and you can steal her purse like taking candy from a baby. Poor thing.

Here's one 78 year old man: Yeah, he's older than dirt, his muscles are like tissue paper, if it wasn't for his walker he'd be a Cleanup on Aisle 3, he farts in public, and you could knock him over with a feather. Poor thing.

FUTURE CHANGES: Ready? ....check it out:

Here's another 75 year old woman: Oh yeah, it's true. She goes to the gym 5 days a week because she can (retirement - yes!!), maybe she had a facelift who cares, she swims like a dolphin and doesn't give a crap what anyone thinks. When she farts in public it's a silent but deadly job from the beer she drank last night and the only way you know it was her is by her wicked smile.

And here's another 75 year old man:
He goes to the gym too, just to get his ya ya's out. He hikes and climbs the mountain trail faster than his dogs, who have come to hate him. He can bench 300 and farts when he squats 400, with a wicked smile on his face. He drinks beer for breakfast and eats steak for lunch and doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks.

So, here's the question: which is the old fart or fartette of the future?

If we're all going to live a l-o-o-o-ng time...I vote for Option 2. For one thing, I can relate. I'm sixty-five, yet:

I can bench 110 and leg press 260
and run a 10 minute mile
just because I like to, and besides it feeds my head
I drink like a sailor and swear like a trooper
because I don't give a damn what anyone thinks
and as for my farts....
use your imagination.

The FUTURE: whaddaya think? Maybe some....changes...?

2011-02-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

Kudo?....Or Crud???

I got Editor's Choice at iUniverse.

Bully for me. A vanity press thinks my book is better than most of the crap they get over the transom. One guy commented on a post a while ago that self-publishing marks your work as garbage. Maybe he's right...

Or..... maybe he can kiss my ass.

Consider:

since iUniverse publishes anything for money, many of those books are crap
but some of them sell very well
and are picked up by traditional publishers
and even films (Legally Blonde)
so some of them are pretty good
and Jane of the Jungle is one of the best among the good.

So, is it a kudo, or not? Should I feel honored, or just thanked for the money I paid them? What would Jane of the Jungle do?

She would take the honor and blow it up to utter bullshit proportions.
She would tell f*cking EVERYONE.
Don't wanna listen? Too bad.
She would walk around with the confidence of someone who really DOES shit rose petals.
If some guy snickered she would shoot him.
She would bully agents with the news.
She would have a celebratory drink.
She would enter the book in contests.
And have another drink.

Here's hoping they can get it printed by April 15, which is the deadline for the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Contest. It will be close. But it would be terrific to win something, anything. I got a bunch of attention for a book excerpt that won Honorable Mention in a Writer's Digest contest, and an agent actually called me. Maybe I could get a small miracle here.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." All too often in my life, that first step has been backwards off a ladder, or sideways into a hole, or forward into a fresh dog turd....but... she takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. Here goes.

2011-02-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

What's Wrong With Me?...I Can't Slow Down....

I'm trying to figure out what it means to be old but it just escapes me....

I'm standing in the line at the pharmacy and there are people ahead of me with blue hair writing paper checks and bobbing their heads and moving at glacial speed and I realize they're only five to ten years older than I am...

I see a lady at the next table with day glo makeup and ratty hair piled so high she knocks herself out in doorways, and I know she's only my age or a little older...

I see a man hopelessly trying to catch up to his gut on toothpick legs and I know he wants to date me...thank God I can still run a 10:20 mile....

I'm trying to buy a pair of jeans without holes when I am psychically waylaid by energy beams trying to steer me into the polyester department....

I relax into a park bench to sip my mocha and on the bench next to me I hear two women discussing their bowel movements and suddenly that mocha don't taste too friggin' good...

They're dreaming of regularity and I'm dreaming of great passion....

I don't wear much blush. I don't wear much makeup at all, really, because it makes me look funny....

I dye my hair

I like to dance

I like to drink

I like coffee houses and saloons

Sometimes I like symphony and sometimes I like rock 'n roll

And my life really isn't much different than it was thirty years ago, or even much different than my kids' lives, except that I no longer care about finding the "right" guy.

So when is this great aging thing going to happen? Did I miss it? Did it miss me? Should I start displaying my cellulite, so as to be age-appropriate? Should I wear skin tight tops, to show off my belly roll?

Maybe I should just forget the whole thing and boogie on.

2011-02-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

The Edits Are Done! The Ed*&^*!its Are Dun....

So when I got my edited manuscript back for my review, I emailed back and said I'd have it done in a week. Four weeks later, I'm almost done.

It is an editor's job to correct EVERYTHING so those beautiful intentionally run on sentences I used to describe intensity were filled with commas, word changes, and chopped into sensible sentences. Have you ever tried to delete a comma in a revision manuscript? It's like finding a pimple on a fruit fly's bottom and trying to squeeze it.

Three thousand nine hundred and fifty-eight commas later, not to mention the word changes and what-the-hell-does-that-mean comments, I'm almost ready to send the manuscript back along with the author photo and plug lines, and wait for the galleys. Whew. Actually publishing may feel anticlimactic.

Where to from here? Marketing, of course. A few thoughts:

If I pluck out an eyeball, will someone else do it for me?
When will I find the time?
What if I'm successful and get a bunch of radio and print interviews - when will I find the time?
Will I go nuts?
If I pee in the shower to save time, will I get horrid little worms in my bladder?(http://morningcupodoom.blogspot.com/2010/12/if-you-pee-in-shower-you-must-read-this.html)
Maybe it really will be easier to print the book promo on the bottom of my sneakers and walk across America.
When will I find the time?

Well, it's too late to duck out now. The book is done and I'm committed. Here's to some good luck, 'cause I'm gonna need it!

2011-02-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

Collect Those Kudos, Man, and Hang On Tight

Monday I did an interview for an internet broadcast, the "Get Inspired Project." (http://getinspiredprojectboomers.com) The subject was...can you guess?...inspiration. This project is just launching its second year, this year focusing on boomers. So there I was.

I told them inspiration is the fire within. I told them grandiose thinking is good for people, negative thinking is safe but puts inspiration in a cage. I told them regrets are a waste of time. I told them all kinds of blah, blah, blah.

Then she asked me about success. I remembered the moment I got up the courage to read my first review. And I learned:

Successes are precious. They keep the bogey man Negative Thinking away.
Cherish them like fine diamonds. Bring them out and fondle them often.
Collect them. Get out there and get as many successes as you can.

How to do that? Example: a friend of mine rescued a dog on Christmas eve and I wrote a story about it. I send it to the local Albuquerque paper and they loved it, plan to publish it next Christmas in the special animal section that comes out on Fridays. A small success, yes. But when the assistant city editor of a large city newspaper says she loved the piece, that is a kudo.

I have a weird essay on religion I may just send to the Atlantic. What the hell. And maybe I'll write some pieces for the Albuquerque paper, why not? And every little success is a crown jewel that I will keep in my mind's eye forever.

2011-01-25T07:01:00.000-08:00

Is There Anything to Look

Forward To, After 65?

So I had this down moment. Sitting by myself (first mistake) on a winter evening by the fire....should have been blissful, right? Well sure....unless you're a NEUROTIC DRAMA QUEEN who can find the cloud around every silver lining.

So in a few minutes, I start wondering what the future holds (second mistake). A few minutes after that, I start wondering what I have to look forward to (third mistake). I start to think I'm too old to have a future. (Alert! Idiot walking!)

Fortunately, I had totally bored myself within 8 minutes and had returned to my more normal ground mood: enjoy the warm fire, delight in my antique recliner with the sheepskin to sink into, realize my cat is purring, and have a drink.

But truth be told, my momentary descent did yield a positive reflection:
no matter what your age, you have to have something to look forward too. It's all too easy for "mature" people such as myself to think all they have to look forward to is aging and death. Frankly, everyone has that to look forward to, so...so what? Between 65 and 100 (that's right, I'm gonna live to 100, just watch me), there are a lot of things to look forward to:

do one thing you love to do, every day
grow roses in New Mexico (hah! just you wait!)
do something useful
downsize
simplify
go Zen on yourself, baby
have a drink
with a good friend or a good dog
create something beautiful
have another drink
FINALLY visit Europe
and be at peace.

Sometimes I think we are so used to running at top speed that we don't know what to do with ourselves when we finally retire or even cut back, so it feels like there's nothing to look forward to. The other night, I realized that is damaging nonsense.

I was reminded of the Spanish proverb: "How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward."

I once had a horse that liked to drink beer out of his salt lick. Summer evenings, I would go out to the pasture and share a 40 with him; half into his salt lick, half into me, and watch the sunset. Maybe I'll get another horse....but he has to like beer.

2011-01-20T05:50:00.000-08:00

My Editor Ate Me

Ha ha ha, the joke's on me. I thought the Marketing Monster was gonna get me. Then I met the Editing Monster.

I got my edited manuscript back the other day, along with instructions designed by a Demon-In-Training on what to do with the comments. I can see why I paid 2 cents a line. There's at least one comment on every single one of the lines in one hundred and ninety eight pages.

Am I laughing yet? Trooper that I am, I started editing the edits. After three hours, I had completed twenty out of one hundred and ninety eight pages. No matter that I was watching Boston (home sweet home) get its a** kicked by New York/Jersey (barf! puke! retch!) in the playoffs, I'm sure I wasn't distracted. I'm also sure the Editing Monster was eating my soul.

I will have to:

find my soul and put one of those antibiotic bandaids on it
quit watching the playoffs
go to church and pray the Editing Monster falls on hard times (if they even let me into the church; it's been a while
pluck out an eyeball
wait...I need it to read the edits
maybe I can do them with one eye
quit bitching
and just do the damned edits.

Interesting side note: editors certainly do their job with zeal. Not only were typos and capitalizations corrected, the editor changed words here and there to conform to proper usage. I can see her point, but good grief, if I were into proper usage I would:

not be a writer
would wear hats and go to church more often
would lose my writer's voice
and would definitely pluck out an eyeball
because I wouldn't need it anymore.

2011-01-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

On Selling Ice to Eskimos, or... .....I'm Gonna Sell My Panties To Themselves

The writer's nightmare: MARKETING.

Oh yeah, baby, those marketing monsters are gonna get ya. Because you're a writer, not a sales genius, and they know it. They will invade your sleep, wrack your comatose body with snores and farts and sleep apnea; they will invade your waking thoughts, whispering, "Failure, suck-ah, failure...and it's all your fault." They will rip your poor heart, making it sing a dirge when it has better things to do.

You see, marketing is the name of the game for new writers who are not internationally known criminals. I'm just a writer with a novel...HAH!...who cares? The marketers say, "I got a guy that cut his wife's head off and ate it" or "I got a male prostitute who describes giving (X celebrity) a blow job in 94 screamingly detailed pages" or "I got a cult of smelly weirdos who build bombs and eat Republican children".....you get the point. Either a book arrives already marketed by the sensationalism that spawned it....or you're just plain scr*wed..

So, what about the writers who just write? Where would Shakespeare fit in today? Romeo and Juliet? "What kinda pansies you writing about kid?" Hamlet? ("What a pussy!") Richard III? ("Oh for Christ's sake, do whatcha have to do, ok?") The Merchant of Venice ("Well, he was just a Jew, so what?")

What would Bill have to do to sell a play nowadays? I shudder to think. But to sell my book, I will have to do everything from forcing reviewers at gunpoint to praise me, to printing the first page on the soles of my shoes and walking across America. (Wanna read more? Go to http//www.amazon.com....)

But you know what?
I'll do it. Why? Because I am so sick to death of books being written about or for people who are not writers, of monkey brain sensationalism, of success being measured by sales....that I will go out there in my marketer's disguise, dispel the demons, and sell as many books as I can. Maybe, if my efforts pay off a little bit, I will get picked up by a traditional publisher who will have the bucks to pull of a real promotion.

I don't mind marketing, really. Let's face it, it beats cleaning latrines, eating dirt sandwiches, smothering babies, and voting Republican. I can do this. You betcha.

2011-01-11T16:23:00.000-08:00

I Think I'm Jealous...or Maybe It's Just Tight Pants

I just got an email from my day job that a very distinguished physician will be giving a lecture on campus, and will also be signing copies of his book, The Emperor of All Maladies. Naturally I rushed to find out about the book. As follows:

it's a screaming success
and was just copyrighted last year
and has gotten rave reviews in the New Yorker, O the Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post among others
was named one of the "ten best books of the year" by The New York Times
and was written by a doctor
a doctor?
a d-o-c-t-o-r??
is God joking or what?

Yes, the doctor is prestigious. But this is a book about cancer, man. Try to find a more depressing subject, I dare you. Just try. So, the way the publishing world works is: a doctor, who can't even write a legible prescription, gets an other-worldly book deal from a major publisher (Scribner) and the book is featured f*cking EVERYWHERE and the rich get richer. If I pitched a book about cancer to a publisher, I would be told, "Forget it, kid, who the hell wants to read a book about cancer?"

I conclude:

it ain't fair
what else is new
I wanna be the doctor's ghost writer (hey, I'm not too proud for crumbs)
to be honest, it's probably a great book
I hear it's scholarly
which turns off everyone but me, I read medical books to relax
I'm probably going to buy this book
and like it
and that's just not fair.

Well...what the hell. At least the good doctor stuck to what he knows. When doctors start writing novels, I'm gonna start shooting. Or stab myself in the eyeball, it's the least I could do.

Maybe I could send the eyeball to the doctor, and he could fix it. And then I could write a book about it...oh, for heaven's sake.

2011-01-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

What Everyone is Thinking But No One Wants to Talk About

No, not sex. Everyone talks about that.

I was talking about aging, especially for women. Women in their fifties and sixties are torn between feeling young, looking old and thinking they should accept that situation and not bitch. Talking points:

1. If women don't bitch, they will blow up.
2. Why shouldn't we bitch about feeling young and looking old? What a bummer!

One of the online chat groups I check in with had a guilt ridden post from a soon to be middle aged woman who found herself at work suddenly paired with a young bombshell. With many apologies and gut wrenching self doubt, she complained of feeling old and unattractive. Well, folks, I have to tell you I have never seen so many responses to anything since Keith Olbermann's suspension.

Lessons learned:

aging is tough on humans
even tougher on female humans
no one likes it
and people DO care, even if they say they don't
only the very old don't care about looking old
only the very rich care about looking distinguished
and they want to look YOUNG and distinguished
the "crone" group is a bunch of weird ass old hippie chicks
that no one listened to even when they were young
and women, for the most part, want to look attractive until they die.

Okay, define attractive:

Attractive = not old.

I didn't make the world, I just live in it. And while I think it's terrible that we in America vilify old age and make oldsters invisible, we are a youth worshipping culture. Despite the fact that decent young men give their seats to old ladies on the subway, and grey panthers aside, for the most part to be old is to be powerless.

Now, I don't hold with the worship of twenty year old T&A. This is mostly because I'm not a man. But I honestly believe most men don't think twenty year old T&A is the only kind of beauty either. In Europe, mature women are considered very desirable. And even in America, where men are not as stupid as they want us to think they are, attractive mature women are considered, well, attractive.

So women at least, are into Life 2.0. They just don't know what it is, exactly, or how to get there. But they want it. They want a vibrant second stage of life, not a long haul of invisibility until they really are little old ladies. With good health, regular exercise, a bottle of hair dye, a little drink at night and an occasional visit to the spa or the plastic surgeon, women can look as good as they feel as long as they care about it.

And that's a lot longer than people are willing to talk about. Social Security is still sobbing about the fact that most of us will live to be 90. I for one, don't want to get ugly at 60 and stay there until 90. And most men, too, don't want to get fat and weak at 60 and stay there until 90.

And neither, I'll bet, do most people out there.

Here's to boogie forever.

2010-12-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

It's Been a While, Let's Catch Up....

Okay, I haven't blogged in a month. All the usual excuses.

I have been going through changes: (remember that expression? gotta love it)

Yesterday I turned 65. This means I have officially entered into Life 2.0. Time to see if I put my money where my - large - mouth is.
I shelled out another pile of money to iUniverse, this time for editing and proofreading. I had no idea these were separate costs, but when I compared average editing costs for what they were charging, I jumped at the deal.
I have not lost any weight.
But I don't care.
And here's the big one: an independent reader loved my book.

Success, me? Success, me!

The book has been nominated for a special category they call "Editor's Choice" which gets it into a

bunch of other categories, all fees waived, all of which means it will be highly promoted and might just sell. Who knew? When you write a book it's like re-digesting your food; you are a self-contained system without a single clue whether what you're doing has merit or not. When it's done you come out of your stupor and say, "Hey. What year is it?"

Well, the reader loved the book and his only criticisms were a couple of typos. I cried. I thought:

Holy crap.
Holy crap.
Holy, holy crap.

My dark side says, Oh they're just setting you up to get more money. Oh it's just self publishing. But my dark side is struggling this time. All books have to be edited and only the big houses do it for free. And in today's publishing world, the only new writers the big houses pick up are major criminals. Self publishing has become the newbies' avenue to notice.

So here goes. By the way, I'm back. I know I lie a lot, but...check it out: every Friday night, I will post. Good stuff, crap, whatever. I have made a deal with God, and you don't want to f*ck with God.

2010-11-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

How to Lose Weight in Middle Age

1. get a wasting disease
2. retire broke, and not be able to eat
3. once a week, jump into the bear enclosure at the zoo and run for your life
4. give up drinking
5. give up eating
6. are you crazy, give up drinking?
7. hello, liposuction department?
8. forget about it, it's impossible.

My sister thinks we have reached an age when it is impossible to starve to death. I almost agree. I mean, I'm sure that if I wound up on a desert island with no food or water, sooner or later my ass would fall off. Probably after my bones were bleached white. But aside from such a dire circumstance, my ass will never budge. They will have to make extra space for it in my coffin. I can run miles every day, lift a baby elephant in each arm, eat nothing but lettuce, drink nothing but water, and go to bed early because life is so boring....and my substantial friend will continue to follow me everywhere.

It has now found a new friend: the gut. Hear me:
until a couple of years ago I had a stomach so flat marbles wouldn't roll off it. But now...sometime, undoubtedly in the dark of night while I was innocently sleeping, a triple roll of fat closely related to my ass spread itself over my formerly admirable tummy. I noticed it when I took a shower and heard someone singing that wasn't me. I looked down and I'm certain it was my gut and my ass doing "Row row row your boat (lardass!)" in 3/4 time.

Sigh. I have to admit it was easier to run from pervs and jump over fences to get away from the cops before my friends became so...attached. Ah well, at my age a perv or two can be entertaining. As for the cops, I can't remember how to commit crimes, so I guess I'm okay.

I'm going to take my fat out for a walk now. Along the way, I will scan the sidewalk for dropped change. I'm saving for liposuction, that'll learn 'em!

2010-11-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

My Author Platform:
Life 2.0

Okay, nowadays every author is supposed to have a platform. Fiction authors, not so much, but it helps. And it just so happens, I do have a platform.

Here's my soapbox: Life 2.0.

Face it, everyone of every age, and especially baby boomers: we are going to live a lo-o-o-ong time. Good news? Uh...only if we actually live it. Baby boomers, not -so-seniors, lovers and freaks, hear me:

The world is still stuck in the notion that one retires at 65, plays a little golf, goes to a senior village, and dies. That's probably a fair estimate if it were the only option. Thank the gods of Boogie Forever, it's not.

I mean, crap! that's a helluva long time in the old folks' town, if, as social security says, we all live into our 90's. You'd better have a solid steel rocking chair, because it's gonna take some serious wear and tear. And an anti-boredom strategy. Baby boomers as a group, need lots of stimulation.

OR...you could do Life 2.0. What is Life 2.0?

Life 2.0 is Life, second stage. The first stage is youth, plus the part of middle age where we have families, careers, homes, etc.

The SECOND stage is everything that happens between the kids growing up and the end of life, the second part of middle age. At the end of this stage, we get old and croak. But not until the end, and that's the catch. In the modern world, we no longer know how old is old.

60 isn't old anymore. Neither is 70. Where to we draw the line? 80 and beyond? What about the twenty somethings now who may live to be 125? At what point with they call themselves old?

A friend and I celebrated a reunion between ourselves and our daughters, the older two of whom met just outside the delivery room. These kids grew up together. We went separate ways for a little while when the kids were teens, then got back together again when they were twenty one. She said to me, "What now?"

Good question. Some options:

lie back and dry up, like a spill on the sidewalk
go to a senior community. Live mildly with other directionless souls, and while away the hours until the end.
bust out
hit the road
hit the road and bust out
hit the road and bust out and boogie
age as disgracefully as possible
hang it up when you just can't boogie any more, feel done
hit the rocking chair because you want to
and attain wisdom, in order to confuse and irritate the young.

Life 2.0 can be anything. Jane of the Jungle steps into (and out of) a life of crime. I know people deciding to have second careers, and not just bagging groceries. Nursing school applicants in their sixties are not uncommon. People learning to fly planes and get commercial jobs...not uncommon. My sister quit the madness of public education and took up painting, and is getting pretty damned good at it. My daughter is a teacher at the age of 27. At 47, what then? Maybe law school, she says. I am a clinical social worker. I will now become - presto! change-o! - a writer. You get the picture.

Some folks do well enough to give up working for money. Blessed be, for them the sky's the limit. Some hit the road in motorhomes. Some go to Africa and build medical clinics. Others go to sea and have adventures. Some travel, sometimes on foot. Still others get deeply involved - many for the first time - in their communities, something they may have wanted to do before, but never had time for. Some go into politics. Some find new relationships.

The point is: second chances. I believe we should all have second stage lives, and they should be: Adventures. New careers. Service to others. Commitment. Freedom. Creativity. Whatever.

Boogie on, boogie on. There's a dance in the old dame (or gent) yet!

2010-11-12T18:17:00.000-08:00

I'm Ba-a-ack!

I was:

holed up in a hotel room with Brad Pitt (don't tell Angie!)
on a fabulous winning streak in Vegas, so hot I couldn't leave the casino for two weeks
on a romantic cruise to Tahiti
with Brad Pitt
holed up in bed with whooping cough.

If you guessed 1, I love that you think I'm still hot. If you guessed 2, I love your optimism. If you guessed 3, I love that you think I have money. If you guessed 4, you're really, really upbeat. If you guessed 5, you're right.

Crap!

Whooping cough. Is God kidding? It just proves to me that life is, more often that I would like to acknowledge, an insulting joke of which I am the BUTT. But no matter, thanks to God and pharmaceuticals, I'm back on my feet and still writing. My book is uploading to the publisher...tonight.

Topics for ~~attention~~ obsession:

fear.
doubt.
fear.
irrational belief that I will not have even one reader.
or that I will have one reader who stalks me because he hates the book so much.
fear.
a little more doubt.
a few bad reviews
that I paid for
and a little more fear.

But...wait. I can promote a book. Hell, I promoted a behavioral health program that had six therapists and four clients and built it up to a booming enterprise....I promoted a grant program in a school and built it up to 80% success rate....I promoted a charter school and got it through a state regulations test....I promoted a "Mental Health Day" of all damned things on Santa Fe Plaza and got amazing attendance...why can't I promote a book?

I have an idea: in between negative thinking crises, I will use some of that PR pizzaz to promote Jane of the Jungle. I will talk it up; I will try to get local reviews so as to get national reviews; I will go on radio because I'm good at it; I will do whatever it takes. I usually do.

So here goes nothing from nobody. But a spirited nobody.

There's a dance in the old dame yet!

2010-10-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

And Now, To Publish...

Oh crap. Here we go. I have decided to self publish my book, as a start. An agent I enjoy bothering told me that if I can sell some copies (read: a LOT of copies) on my own, a traditional publisher will pick it up (read: so will she).

Hello, iUniverse? You want HOW much? Hello, Retirement Account? Sorry, but I need the money. Oh well, better to spend the money now on a good try than have an extra few thousand to decorate my park bench or hovel when I finally retire.

Now I will go out there and market my book. I can start right here with my blog. At about 40 readers a day, if I sell to one percent, that means I can sell four tenths of a book. Cool. Keep on trucking.

Social networking, yeah, there we go. I can be ignored by more people on Twitter and Facebook than refugees from Hurricane Katrina. Ah, family email. Wait...they ignore me too.

I've got it: an irresistible selling package.

I will give people the book, along with a free sweater shaver. No takers? Hmmnn...okay I will give people the book, along with a sweater shaver and a little pad of paper for writing lists. No? Okay, I'll target my audience:

· for middle aged women: the book, a jar of hormone cream, an ice pack, and a set of sharp knives
· for midlife crisis guys, the book, a hot blonde, and a picture of a hot car they can't afford
· for fantasy oriented readers: the book, a cape, a sword, and flying lessons
· for the literary crowd: the book, a pipe, a pair of slippers, free reading glasses, a portable fireplace, and a sweater shaver
· for younger readers, the book, a bag to throw it away in, and a cell phone filled with texts of chapter summaries
· for schoolteachers: the book, and a large supply of sedatives to keep their classes quiet so they can read it
· for jail inmates: the book, and a list of addresses of weird females for pen pals
· everyone else gets the sweater shavers.

Wait a minute: wasn't I supposed to sell the damned thing?

Well, maybe the publisher has some ideas. Let's hope so! :)

2010-10-23T06:14:00.000-07:00

My Book is FINISHED!!

O.M.G. It's finished. I have finished my book, Jane of the Jungle.

Of course, finishing a book is a relative term. Now I will send it off to iUniverse, whose editors will pull its lively little guts out and examine them until they turn into fertilizer; prod, poke and reshape until Jane is John and John is Jane....but what the hell. Editors have to eat, too.

I finished. (IfinishedIfinishedIfinished!!!!)

It happened yesterday at about 3:30 pm mountain time, in Starbucks. Actually, I wrote most of the book in Starbucks, with occasional breaks at Borders. I wonder if there's a promotional angle there....

Ah, the creative question: where to write?

I love writing in coffee houses. As a matter of fact, if I ever build the house of my dreams in the country, I don't think I'll build an office. I will beg Starbucks to come to town, if there isn't one nearby. I will put ads in the local paper begging someone to start a coffee house so that I can write. Or put tables in the bookshop so that I can write. "Writer needs noise, coffee, elitist surroundings to create. Please help."

I have discovered I like to write in public, and I even like some background noise. (And me, the silence freak; go figure) Lately Starbucks has been blasting pop music, I'll have to speak to them about that. But some nice classical or new age, soft, with voices soft and indistinct (will somebody please move these *&!!@*! tables further apart?). Nice stuff around. Like overpriced copper and glass coffee presses you're sure to break on the first or second use. Fancy coffee with pretty pictures on the bags. Books and decent art work on the walls.

And outlets. You gotta have outlets, man. My computer battery is able to turn on, smile, make a rude noise, and drop dead; that's it. I was in a Satellite looking for outlets, which are arrayed along the bottom of the continuous seating bench, so I was crawling around under the tables. One guy kicked me in the face when I brushed his leg looking for the outlet I was sure was behind it. He said he was sorry, but I don't think he meant it. His outlet was busy anyhow.

I would write at home except for:

the view out the windows is too beautiful. I just stare
the animals always want something
the silence is too lovely. I start meditating
I have to make my own coffee
I have to wash my own cup

But, it can be argued, I can always find an outlet!

2010-10-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

Writing v. Eating

The eternal dilemma of the artist: shall I write? or shall I eat?

It's weird, but I'm reaching an age where I'd rather work. I'm too fat anyhow. I have crested that wonderful hill where you wake up one morning and your middle takes up most of the bed. All your clothes have shrunk. In dull meetings you find yourself playing with your spare tire, wondering, "Who's my new friend?" And, most of the meetings are dull. In fact, everything seems dull, except....writing.

Here's hoping my boss isn't reading this.

Don't get me wrong. I have a yankee work ethic that could shame the most devoted lard ass. I probably couldn't do a bad job if I tried. But my heart....is no longer in it.

Where the hell did my heart go?

Right now, it's in Jane of the Jungle. I'd rather be her anyhow. Jane of the Jungle is about second chances. Jane gets the chance to cast her fate to the wind and triumph. I want some of that!

So I spend almost all my free time and okay, I confess, a little of the time I'm supposed to be working, writing, rewriting, and since I'm close to publication, marketing marketing marketing. That's because I want this book to sell. Why?

So that I can quit my day job.
So that I can share what is dear to my heart with other people.
So that I can inspire hope in other people.
So that I can inspire hope in myself.

Jane of the Jungle is the first of series, and they're all about second chances and living life intensely to the very end. Since we're all going to live to be older than the Earth's crust, we have to live deeply. Who the hell wants to ride the rocking chair for 30 years?

It's not about fame or money. The truth! Okay, money would be nice, but it's not necessary. I want enough money to get by once I can collect social security, so that I don't have to be a greeter at Walmart. As for fame, I'd rather roast in hell. I value my privacy. Val Kilmer tried to eat his breakfast in a local restaurant in Santa Fe one day and so many people stared at him I think he lost his appetite.

So, good people out there, wish me luck. I am setting out on my second career, here's hoping it pays at least enough to put gas in the car. As for eating, that's a luxury. All I really need is chocolate anyway.

2010-10-07T06:40:00.000-07:00

Life Is Madness

You should see some of the people I know. I am privileged to have worked with some of the craziest sonso'bitches on the planet. It's what I do for a living.

I know a man who tried to break the chain on his handcuffs by placing it under an oncoming train… another who choked himself almost to death trying to plug up a jail toilet… a woman whose boyfriend twisted her lower leg off in a drug-induced rage and who hopped back to him for love.

I know one poor sorry soul whose meds were discontinued by a health care corporate mandate and who wound up shooting five people to death, two of them cops.

Is it any wonder that I write? Life, my life anyway, is a rich source of material.

When I worked at the jail, we used to say, "You couldn't make this shit up." Check this out:

This guy, we'll call him Eddie, was a frequent guest at the crowbar hotel. Bored and irritated at his incarceration (he never seemed to get used to it - go figure), he decided to cause a little trouble.

Now, understand that the old jail had a gravity plumbing system whereby the toilet lines were all connected and if you had the stomach for it, you could stick your hand out the back of the commode and move drugs in between floors. They called this "fishing." Understand also that when inmates felt dissatisfied (read: always), they sometimes stuffed sheets and other objects into these same lines. They called this "flooding" or "being a pain in the ass."

Eddie decided to flood at the same moment that a guy on floor one was about to receive drugs from floor three. Eddie, on floor two, started stuffing his bedsheet into the toilet.

Floor One has his hand out through the commode, waiting to feel something from above.

Eddie stuffs the sheet so expertly, it actually goes into the pipe and down to Floor One.

Floor One, elated that his drugs have arrived, starts to pull.

And here's the problem: Eddie, not having a significant endowment of brains (hey man, he's in jail, not college), has slung the sheet around his neck so as to be able to concentrate on the end he was stuffing down the toilet.

You get the picture: Floor One is pulling like hell and Eddie on Floor Two is getting pulled into the toilet. He's a big sonofagun so he pulls back mightily. This and the fact that the toilet seats in the jail were made of stainless steel probably saved his life. There ensues a tug of war between Floor One and Eddie; and each time Eddie's head is pulled downward, it slams onto the stainless steel toilet seat with a loud clang! that irritates the CO guarding the floor. "Shut the f*ck up!" he bawls, but the clanging continues. So he goes to Eddie's cell, determined to "straighten him out" as it is called, and finds Eddie being choked to death - loudly - by the drug hound downstairs.

The CO's final comment was, "Geez man, you shoulda seen him, all half choked to death, his head looked just like a cherry tomato."

So is it any wonder that I write?

2010-10-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

Tiger Tales

Here's an excerpt from Jane of the Jungle; the story is told by a telepathic tiger named Sadji. He has been wintering with Jane at a biker bar in a remote location in Washington state. The bikers, who rarely ride any more, call themselves The Balls Of Steel.

Just after Dylan’s departure, we had an arrival. A taxi pulled up to the roadhouse and screeched to a desperate halt. A grizzled older woman with amazing long white hair and an expression that could scare the peace out of Jesus stepped out, paid the driver, cursed his driving, and marched into the roadhouse bar.

“Anyone seen Marcy?” she yelled to the few daytime customers. Marcy was a relatively new member to the Balls of Steel. She had appeared one day on an antique Harley that she claimed to have stolen from her mother, and begged sanctuary from this very person. Because of her plight and the size of her breasts, the Balls of Steel were quick to agree, and she had remained in their company for the past six months.

But her mother, whom she described as having psychic powers mixed with a bloodhound’s sense of smell, had found her.

It was an ugly few days as the women celebrated their reunion with

screams that could be heard across oceans and bouts of fisticuffs that reduced the furniture in Marcy’s motel room to sticks of kindling. Marcy was disappointed that her mate, a male named Tiny, who was six feet four inches tall and smelled inexplicably of spring breezes, refused to intervene.

“Are you crazy?” he said to her. “I know certain death when I see it.”

Marcy and her mother, who was named Gert, fought to a draw over six days time when finally it was agreed that Gert would settle down if she could get what she wanted; which was not, as everyone supposed, the antique Harley. With a sage’s understanding mixed with desperation for peace, Jane pointed out that what Gert really wanted was to stay. She cleaned out another room in the abandoned motel – at a considerable distance from Marcy – and said to Gert, “Why don’t you stay a while?”

The screams ended at once. For over two weeks people saw little of Gert, but I observed her beating the softening ground behind the motel with a madman’s fervor, using a pickaxe and an old hoe she found in the shed. After ten days she had cleared a respectable garden plot, and had planted herbs, despite the lingering winter chill.

Marcy shook her head and said, “The only thing she likes better than fighting and fucking is gardening.”

To the end of making the peace long lasting, several male members of the Balls of Steel offered their services to Gert, who was hardy and shapely and whose face, when she was not set on murder, was rather pleasant. Most of them she drove off with the pickaxe, but one, who was possessed of a shy smile when he wanted to be, got her to pause. His name was Sandy, referring to the thick straight hair that he could cause to fall over his eyes when wooing females.

Sandy made a special effort and went to see her in her garden. “Let’s face it,” he said, making a lewd gesture. “You’re a bitch. Take the edge off.”

He flashed his smile and she flashed her breasts, which were surprisingly firm and shapely for her age. Then began a love affair that was to become legendary in the area, partly for the outlandish howls that emerged from the motel at all hours of the day or night and partly from its influence on the fortunes of the Balls of Steel.

Because it was Sandy who helped Gert with her gardening, and it was their need for supplies that caused the Balls of Steel members to realize they were, contrary to appearances, among the most unique and special of humans.

Winter was barely passing when Gert planted her herb garden, and despite skepticism from the Balls of Steel in general and her daughter in particular, she tortured the reluctant earth with a she-bear’s rage, as if the ground could be beaten into production. Only Sandy had faith in her. When she called for tools, he stole them; when she called for labor, he worked with her; and when she called for fertilizer, he made an amazing discovery.

Not having money and not wanting to disappoint her, Sandy raided the roadhouse septic tank for Gert’s fertilizer, fearing her wrath more than potential contagion from the fertilizer in question. To everyone’s astonishment, two days after the first application, the little garden was full of lush, green herbs. Gert, delighted, ordered Sandy to sample some of the produce, which he declined.

“Maybe they’ll taste funny,” he said with a guilty look.

“Aw bullshit,” Gert replied “They’ll taste as good as they look, which is great. Here, try the parsley, it makes your breath smell good.”

“Not this parsley,” he said, but resistance was futile and Gert shoved a handful of the stuff into his mouth.

It was delicious. It tasted like parsley, mint, meat, and chocolate cake.

When the Balls of Steel discovered the amazing herbs that often tasted like whatever you wanted them to and complimented the poorest of cuisines, Jane suggested they could make money selling them to restaurants. Gert protested that it was just a little garden and it would take forever to grow enough for sale, but Sandy said he had an idea. That night the strongest males cleared a large section of field and planted seeds in a soft, malodorous mixture of dark soil and septic tank murk. In the morning the herbs were sturdy sprouts, and by nightfall, they were solid young plants. By the next evening, they were ready for harvest.

“What the hell kind of fertilizer did you buy?” Gert demanded of Sandy.

When she discovered the truth, she flew into a rage. She had buried the tip of the pickaxe in his backside and was trying to draw it out in order to bury it in his head, when Jane intervened.

As she applied her best medical science to the nasty puncture wound in Sandy’s right buttock, Jane said, “Well all right, this fertilizer’s illegal, but what isn’t? And it works great, and if no one gets sick by next week, what the hell. It’s for sure the price is right and there’s plenty more where it came from.” The decision was made to wait and see if anyone who had eaten the herbs became ill.

No one did. In fact, most of them claimed to feel increased energy and others swore they looked better. One of the females who was famous for her matted hair, awoke one morning to find that her tresses had combed themselves and lay fetchingly about her shoulders. Meanwhile, Jane discovered a frightfully pretentious restaurant in Los Angeles that wanted the herbs and would pay absurd prices for them. It was agreed that a few of the men would pack them in coolers and drive to Los Angeles on their motorcycles.

It was a life changing event. When the men came back, they were reborn. “Man, it was good to ride,” they said as one.

Gert shook her head in wonder as she patted Sandy gently on his bruised and stitched behind. “Go figure,” she said. “God’s most perfect garden, and it grows from shit.”

The club members swore an oath to keep the source of the herbs secret and made plans to cultivate the field, whose rightful owners had abandoned the property before memory. In an effort to contribute to the well being of their cash crop, Balls of Steel members insisted Pussy and Jane cook abundant, healthy food, which they ate heartily and in good time, deposited into the septic tank.

Zip observed with great solemnity, “Our shit is magic.”

Pussy said to Jane, “You see, Sadji means that magic is real. All the magic I waited for in those early mornings when I was a child, that never came to me, has come to me now.”

2010-09-26T18:28:00.000-07:00

I Have Found Perfect Love

Okay, I made it up. Sue me. I can close my eyes, and be in paradise any time I want.

This is what fantasy is about. All people daydream. Some people (myself included) write books or films that are fantastic or magical. Here’s what’s good about fantasy: everything.

Who does not dream of perfect love? Especially in later years, although most of us keep our mouths shut about it. After a lifetime of love’s missteps, love’s disappointments, the dream often claims us more than we want to admit. Jane says:

I started taking the shots and felt certain I noticed smoother, fatter skin and increased energy within a couple of weeks. This was right about the time they kicked John out of his hospital room and established him in the house.

His room was next to mine. In fact, we were set up in a guest suite of two bedrooms with baths, sitting room, and little kitchen. It was our own private nest.

So how could what happened then, not have happened? With the anti-aging shots firing our engines, in a beautiful setting with maid service, with champagne always at the ready, with an enchanted garden for reverie, with a beautiful jungle pond to swim in naked in the moonlight, with the sound of the sea outside the bedroom window…all the elements conspired to make us fall in love.

And those foolish shots... John got stronger and stronger and frankly, so did I. My skin, I swore, was smoother and thicker, my breasts were firmer, and feelings I had ignored for the last many years could no longer be denied.

One night, walking by the pool very late, we suddenly threw off our clothes and jumped into the water. The garden was deserted and everyone was asleep. All that watched us was an insolent moon, which no doubt augmented the mystery. We were overcome. We tried to make it to the room but were unable; so we made do with the soft spot under the banyan tree.

After that love erupted in a raging torrent. They say love is madness and we were the proof. For a while there was no world, no clinic, no family back home, nor any half-truths or broken vows. There was no age, no stream of life beforehand with all its detritus. There was only touch and sensation, as if we were trying to physically get inside each other’s skins. Morning, noon, and night were all fair game and we were oblivious to the reactions of anyone else. Once when we forgot and left the bedroom window open to catch the afternoon breeze, our scandalous moans and cries brought gales of laughter and shouts of encouragement from the gardeners. We became the object of jokes throughout the compound and on one occasion, Tony said to John, “What the hell are you trying to do, fuck yourselves to death?” Angie swore they would have to cut back on the shots.

We ignored them all. The blood was up and we were alive; finally, completely, and indisputably. John stroked my hair, my breasts, and my thighs; he kissed me so hard my lip bled; I bit the skin of his shoulder and when he entered me I thought, I can’t quite tell if I’m living or dying but oh my god bring it on, bring it on.

Sigh….wouldn’t it be loverly? And what the hell, I can go there any time I want.

2010-09-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

Do You Believe in Second Chances?

I think I do...the more I work on Jane of the Jungle, the more I do. Jane of the Jungle is my ultimate second chances story.

I'm a baby boomer, an old one. After a long life of the usual ups and downs, it's easy to believe that all is said and done. It's easy to expect little or nothing from the time we have left; which, with modern medicine, may be a long time. How depressing.

Imagine: instead of retiring to the rocking chair, you retire and start a second life. The world is your oyster, as it was when you were twenty-two. You feel alive, energetic, horny, and attractive. Thanks to that facelift and gym membership, you even are attractive. In Jane's case, she had no choice about giving up her home. But even if we are not in dire straits, why not chuck the long years of intimacy with a mortgage, housekeeping and landscaping....and hit the road?

I used to think stripped down retirement was just for the financially unfortunate. But maybe not....check it out:

"I wandered for a while and had a few minor adventures. One was exceptional and showed me that my new life would be something I had never expected. I had driven into the woods on an old logging road and was eating my lunch on the soft spring ground when I became aware of a red fox staring at me. For some reason he seemed to have no fear of me, so I threw him a piece of my ham sandwich.

“That’s kind of you, but no thank you,” he said. “I just ate.”

I looked at the sandwich: it did not appear to be spoiled. I tried to recall if I had inadvertently taken some of my husband’s pills with my brandy last night, but I was certain I hadn’t.

“Never seen a talking fox, eh?” he said to me.

“Uh…no, now that you mention it,” I replied. “Never.”

The fox laughed. “Most people haven’t,” he said kindly.

Suddenly the whole world seemed to fold in on itself like a piece of soft bread. “Holy shit,” I mumbled to myself.

The fox laughed again, not unkindly. “It is a shock at first, but I think you’ll get used to it.”

“Why me?”

“You have spirit.”

“I do?” Personally I had always thought of my “spirit” as an anger problem.

“You are about to embark on a very adventurous life,” the fox said. “Don’t forget me.”

And then he was gone."

Perhaps now that baby boomers such as myself will probably live to be as old as trees, the proper thing to do at retirement age is to shed your skin like a snake, and set out anew, set out anew!

CHANGES, BIG CHANGES

2010-09-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

I am sick of writing this blog. At least of trying to use it to be a political commentator. I am a very crappy political commentator, because I'm too emotional. The far right drives me crazy, and political commentators are supposed to be objective. I have decided to leave that noble art to cooler heads.

What I really want to talk about is madness and writing. That's all I really know about in life. The first because I am a clinical social worker and I slither around inside weird peoples' heads for a living; the second because I can't help it, I have to write. Sometimes I write about my day job, although nobody believes it. (you can't make this sh*t up) Mostly I write about the people, places and adventures I dream of.

Madness and writing are kissing cousins. Fantasy writing embraces madness and finds the good parts of it. Dreams are inspiring. Magic realism and fantasy are ways to dream on a page and make sense of the mad, the bad, and the unbelievable. I have done this all my life, and I'm much better at it than political commentary.

So while I may include wry views of the plight of the common man (read: most of us) in my posts, it cannot be the focus any more, because I just don't know sh*t about it.

BOOMERS, IT'S TEA TIME

2010-09-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

A Daily Beast poll ran 75% agreement that pundits are underestimating the Tea Party. Bad idea. They underestimated Hitler, and look what happened there.

Personally, I think it's up to the media to shut them down. Every time the liberal media ridicules the far right, the donations pour in. Christine whatshername was virtually broke until Keith Olberman made her a star....now her pockets are jingling, so much so that she might just get elected, oh joy.

Or if they insist on giving these assholes free air time, at least call it like it is: fascism. Fascism has come to America, and its name is the Tea Party. Christians my ass. They're meaner than junkyard dogs and just as dangerous.

Jane of the Jungle went up against some of them in her travels with her telepathic tiger, Sadji. He gives us his impression:

“They’re dangerous,” I thought to her.

“Oh yes, Sadji. That they are. Poor Jesus.”

“Why?”

“He would be so sad, if he knew what they were doing in his name.”

I thought amusement to her. “It was funny how you got rid of them.”

Jane laughed. By now she was somewhat drunk. I wondered what that was like, so she gave me some whiskey. It burned my mouth and my nose and tasted very bad, but a little while later, I didn’t mind. I felt very mellow and sleepy.

So, although we had come to this devilish place only to take on fresh water, we had become too drunk to drive and we turned in for the night. Jane said, “Perhaps I was too mean. What would you have done with visitors like that, Sadji?”

I thought to her, “I would have eaten them."

Make no mistake: these people are dangerous. They call a man who wants to feed his family or save his home a socialist. High time we called them what they really are. Sometimes when they name call you, you gotta name call right back.

BOOMERS: LET'S EAT CAKE

2010-09-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

The rich are whining their brains out (I'd say hearts, but they don't have any) because they might be called upon to pay their fair share. Oh crap!

What a shocking concept in a democracy. Now that the middle class has been carrying the rich (it was OUR tax dollars that bailed them out, not theirs) to the point where one in seven of us now meets poverty guidelines, asking those who have too much to pay a little more is met with outrage. Baby boomers can't retire, but who cares? America used to be a democracy, but now it's home to fat rich guys. I guess the rest of us are their servants.

No wonder Jane of the Jungle told her creditors to put their bills where the sun don't shine. Personally I pay my bills, but I haven't been bankrupted by medical bills yet. If that ever happens, I'm going to pull a Jane, you can count on it.

"How it happened: my husband had died after
a long illness that sucked the life out of him with a leech's determination and shredded my heart as I watched. I was drowning in his medical bills and couldn’t pay the mortgage. So one day I just up and quit my emergency nursing job and wrote several letters: one, to the bank thanking them for the house and giving it back to them, one to the bill collectors suggesting they put the bills in their collective rectum, and one to my priest asking him to pray for my rebel soul and vote democrat in the next election. Then I hit the road in a converted tour bus."

Sometimes I get nervous, that I won't make it financially, and will have to pull a Jane. That's hard when you're married. But if someone has a better idea, let me know!

A BOOMER ADVENTURESS: WOULDN’T IT BE LOVERLY

2010-09-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

There was a bear on my porch last night, and I begged him to take me home with him. He refused. He ate my hummingbird feeders, scattered my garbage, and left me to my mortgage.

Okay, I shouldn’t have had hummingbird feeders on the porch, I know. But to tell the truth, I won’t miss them. I’m sick of hummingbirds; they’re probably the meanest little shits in the universe. All they ever do is fight.

Okay, so the bear won’t share his cave, the rich won’t share their tax cuts, and I want to be elsewhere at least 23 out of 24 hours a day. If I could have a fantasy life, it would be as an adventuress. A word that was once an insult to a "lady" is now music to my ears. Here's what I would do:

I would live in a bus that runs on veggie oil and have no mortgage. I would fill up in the back of restaurants and flip a bird to every gas pump I see. If the neighbors are crappy, I'll move. And all my unpaid medical bills will have to go to general delivery and I'll pick them up....someday.

I would try to meet other adventurous boomers and live an exciting life. You meet the wierdest people on the road, thank God.

Sometimes when I come home from my average day to my average bills and my non-existent retirement account, I think of Jane of the Jungle, the heroine of a book I'm writing. This is how she lives:

Two men pointed at me and ran toward me. People on the street parted for them and watched them pass fearfully. Whatever their identity, they appeared to be much feared in the community.

God, was I lost. Alone in a terrible neighborhood, unable to speak the language, kidnapped, almost raped, and blonde for the love of Jesus, blonde. What was I going to do? The street quickly cleared and all hope of help died in the happy anticipatory stares of the onlookers hiding in doorways and behind parked cars. The bad guys were getting closer; there was less than a block between us and they were coming fast…

So I shot them. I just didn’t know what else to do.

I want to be able to fight trouble. I don’t want to always be facing the kind of trouble no one can fight: rising costs, decreasing means. I want to retire the way Jane did: live in a bus and wherever you park, that’s home. Live on next to nothing. If you get sick, use the public services you spent a lifetime paying for. But if you’re that free and comfortable, I’m betting you won’t get sick for a long, long time.

Loving Max - Help!

2010-09-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

Dogs are among the finest of God's creatures, and there's a dog in the Albuquerque area who needs our help. His name is Max, he's a young Great Dane, and he has some rare spinal condition that needs surgery. Per the article in The Albuquerque Journal Friday, in addition to Max's illness, his human family was already facing economic problems including job loss. So they held a "dog wash" to raise money for his surgery, and The Journal ran a piece on it. I couldn't go and besides my dogs would eat me if I tried to wash them, so I sent a check. I figure if everyone who reads this sends 5 bucks, Max may walk again.

Did you know that financially challenged people are more charitable than those with golden commodes? Truth....a recent New York Times article cited a 2001 study done by Independent Sector that found that households earning 25K gave away almost twice as much as households earning 75K. So much for trickle down economics! Some of it needs to trickle down to Max, today.

In any case, Max is one of the best of us. If you can help, please follow this link: http://lovingmax.webs.com/

OLD AND BROKE, THIS AIN'T NO JOKE 2

2010-09-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Ready yourselves for a Depressing Moment: A report from The Center for Economic and Policy Research in June, 2008, says that the real estate dive has burnt out the dream of comfortable retirement for many people close to that noble moment. “This extraordinary destruction of wealth will have tremendous implications for millions of families as they enter retirement. Coupled with a very low personal savings rate, this means that many people will only have Social Security and Medicare to rely on in their retirement.” Add to this divorces and the economy, and up to two thirds of older boomers face retirement on social security (hah!) and Medicare (double hah!).

Social Security and Medicare will buy you a case of cat food and a box of band aids. Shelter is a luxury. Some suggestions:

· Tent or refrigerator box (warm climates only)

· Abandoned oil tank. Good luck finding one.

· Cave in the woods. Make sure there’s no bear in it!

· Your car, if it’s not repossessed.

· Your spouse can have the other car, if it’s not repossessed.

· Dog house. If the dog is vicious, you will have to share.

· Dig a hole, and cover it with one of those blankets they use in forest fires. Hell, it might work.

· Dig a hole, line it with whatever you can find for warmth, and cover it with your car, if it’s not repossessed.

· Dig a hole, bury your ass in it, and pray that Big Corporations eat each other.

Or…heh heh…we could return to our past. We could become hippies, pilfer essentials from the rich, pull pranks and marches against MegaCorpoCash for media exposure, and live together in groups so we can afford actual houses with heat!

BOOMERS, CHECK YOUR VALUES

2010-09-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

Old fashioned values….gotta love ‘em. True American values, yessiree.

I have those good old family values. Sadly, nobody believes me because I’m kind of liberal. Most folks think I attend gay weddings where they eat babies, drink soldiers’ blood, dance to Muslim tunes and pay for it all with money stolen from honest corporations.

A dear friend of mine is a registered Republican and said to me, “I know I can’t afford to be, but it’s the values, you know?”

By damn, then, I’m gonna vote Republican. They believe in the family, right? To hell with those baby munching liberals.

I’m going to vote for representatives who make sure I get no health care, no mortgage assistance, no tax breaks or anything that might hold my family together! I’m gonna vote for red blooded representatives who support our troops, by God; who needs a flak vest in a bomb zone anyhow! I’m gonna vote for representatives who make sure American business is protected, so it can go build plants overseas! I’m gonna vote for representatives who bail out banks, so CEO’s can continue their luxurious lifestyles, they must deserve it, they work so hard putting all that money into lousy investments!

Yessiree, it’s the values, you know?

ONE BOOMER'S VIEW OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE...UH...DUH...

2010-08-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

The problem with America is not the politicians, or even MegaCorpoCash. It’s not the rich. It’s the American people.

We are stupid. If we work at it just a little more, we might just become not only the stupidest people in the world but the biggest idiots in history. They might even invent a new Nobel Prize for us, The Nobel Prize for Advanced Brain Death.

We are in Great Depression II, The Sequel. How did we get here?

Presidents and politicians bought and paid for by MegaCorpoCash saw to it that financial regulations put in place after Great Depression I were repealed. Surprise! Cowboy CEO’s went wild, made zillions, and CRASH! here we are.

But….shame on us. We elected a different regime, we wanted “change.” Oh no! This could jeopardize our standings in the World Dumb*ss Finals! Thankfully, the new regime could not fix the mess in a year and a half so we’re about to vote in the greedy bast*rds again. Hallelujah! Our position in the world is redeemed!

Now we can safely reassert our position as retards of account. We can sleep soundly, knowing that we have brought back the architects of our misery, who will follow the orders of their masters, MegaCorpoCash, and rip us off until there’s nothing left! And we don’t even have to worry about becoming a third world nation….the pols fronting for MegaCorpoCash passed No Child Left Behind, which is making schools so impotent they’re turning out peasants-to-be by the thousands!

WHY BABY BOOMERS SHOULD DRINK PURIFIED WATER

2010-08-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

So I heard the Aussies couldn’t make up their minds between conservative and liberal either; their election is up in the air.

I always find this indecision curious. When it happened in Britain; when it happens here. To me the choice is obvious. Conservatism has become a front for the rich, all over the world. To be “conservative” means to be “small government” which means Let The Rich and The Banks Do Whatever They Please. Of course at election time they drag out the tired old rabble rousing stuff: “we work for you,” blah blah blah. After the election, your taxes go up and your paycheck goes down.

Why are people so stupid? The conservative voters have got to be just average folks; there aren’t enough rich bastards in the world to elect themselves. My latest theory: they're putting something in the water.

Drink bottled water folks. There’s some stuff in the water that makes you an idiot. They’ve paid scientists to develop a virus, like Moron Maker or Dumbass Delight or You’re Stupid Now v 1.0. You’re guaranteed to lose one thousand brain cells per sip.

I’m not sure of this, but it may be reversible. So once you quit drinking coffee made with Retard Red you may get smart again. Smart enough to actually think for yourself. Smart enough to realize the rich are not your friends and their friends in Congress, Parliament or wherever are not your friends either.

A world full of smart people. Imagine. Baby boomers might even be able to retire!

BOOMERS: IS THERE SEX AFTER DEATH?? ok this is just an internet joke but I couldn't resist :)

2010-08-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

Marion and Bob agreed that whoever died first would come back to inform the other if there is sex after death. Their biggest fear was that there was no afterlife at all.

After a long married life together, Bob was the first to die. True to his word, he made the first contact: “Marion ... Marion "

Marion sat up in bed. “Who's there?" she whispered.

“Marion it's me, Bob."

"Bob is that really you?"

"Yes, I've come back like we agreed."

"That's wonderful! So what's it like where you are?"
"Well, I get up in the morning, I have sex. I have breakfast and then it’s off to the golf course. I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple of more times. Then I have lunch (you’d be proud - lots of greens).

Another romp the golf course, then pretty much have sex the rest of the afternoon.

After supper, it's back to golf course again. Then it's more sex until late at night. I catch some much needed sleep and then the next day it starts all over again"

"Oh, Bob that’s amazing ... so are you in Heaven?"

"No ... I'm a rabbit in Arizona!

BOOMERS WE ARE CRAZY

2010-08-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

Here’s a definition of insanity: suffering, and voting to continue it.

The rich run the world and the middle class is history. Most of us are struggling more than we ever have in our lives, at a time in our lives when we should be winding down. But we keep voting the bastards in.

Here’s the deal: too much money is held by too few people. We need to put some of that money back into circulation; not on principle, BUT TO SAVE OUR LIVES.

But when anyone suggests taxing the rich, the Republicans win by a landslide.

WHY?

What kind of hypnotic hold do the rich have over us? Are we so media conditioned that their gazillions of dollars poured into propaganda overrules hunger pangs? Are we so traumatized by struggling to hang onto whatever we have left that we raise our necks to get our throats slit by those bastards?

Boomers, wake up! The rich are not your friends!

BOOMER BODY 2.0

2010-08-14T12:23:00.000-07:00

THE BABY BOOMER BODY can live forever.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil talks about a not-so-distant future in which our bodies will be filled with “nanobots” coming and going, tiny computerized machines that do a better job of everything than our organs.

GET THIS: (YEEHAW!!!) You can eat whatever you want. You heard me. In Boomer Body 2.0, nanobots take care of digestion, nutrition, and elimination. So you can overindulge in calories OMG the chocolate man, the chocolate, and you won’t gain an ounce. The nanobots might, but who cares if they’re fat?

In fact, nanobots take care of everything. What a concept. Our hearts keep pumping, our muscles stay strong, we heal injuries quickly, we….holy crap….we live forever?

Before you get excited, think: You will be married for eternity. You will have seen everything before, at least fifty times. Your children will be older than you. Your dog will have died so long ago you don’t even remember you had a dog. Your car is so old you can’t remember what it looked like. And the Earth is covered with 25 billion people.

Which means that every time you open your eyes you see a stranger. In all fairness, they see you, too. You turn around and someone gets pissed off. You burp and 100 people are offended. You fart and…never mind, I can’t count that high.

The rich, of course, would be fine, when are they not? They would probably colonize the moon and get their nanobots to generate images of Earth in their eyes so they wouldn’t know they were living on a Brillo pad in the middle of bum f*ck nowhere.

I think…I think I pass. Not because nanobots aren’t the greatest thing since flush toilets, but because people will continue to be assholes no matter what fantastic casings you put them in. I think…I’ll peacefully croak. Thanks be to God for Boomer Body 2.0, but, frankly, unless it has a kill switch, keep it.

A SOLUTION FOR BOOMER BROKE-ITUDE!

2010-08-12T07:22:00.000-07:00

Baby boomers are often educated and often broke. I have a solution: let’s develop a new food source.

The way I see it, the world’s is in trouble because a few people have a lot, and the rest of the people have doodly squat. The haves and the have nots have been duking it out since the first cave baby said “mama” and not a whole lot has changed.

So….let’s eat them.

Baby boomers are accused of never having saved a cent, and this is often all too true. The reasons are vast, varied and have much to do with events outside our control, so I’ll go there another time. But the fact is, a lot of us boomers face retirement on zilch.

If we ate the rich, we could save oodles of money on food. We could start a new industry, and save the money from it without some rich s.o.b snatching it from us for some overpriced something or other.

We could take over a few canning businesses and package them nicely. We could do a frozen line too, maybe present them as “Swanson’s Very Best, and We’re Not Kidding.” How ‘bout Zillionaire a la Crème, or Brutish Bastard Over Rice? Or Entitled Bitch With Garlic Mashed and Gravy?

We could even process the less delectable parts like livers and noses and hearts (if you can find them) and sell them as dog food. Who knows, maybe after a few cans of the stuff, our dogs will bark in French and Latin!

A BOOMER RESPONSE TO GAS PRICES

2010-08-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

I heard a truly upsetting fact yesterday: there is no shortage of oil. Apparently the Russians have drilled through polar ice to a depth of forty thousand feet and discovered abiotic oil. That’s right, oil that is not a breakdown of organic waste, but is somehow formed out of rock or whatever, and can still power cars and hair dryers. Some say that’s what BP was trying to find in the Gulf, too bad the idiots did it in the ocean.

But the oil cartels are just like the diamond people. Hold it back and jack up the prices. Okay, you’re on. Baby boomers have always stood up to the powers that be. Here it is: I have decided the world should run on shit.

Shit, the most plentiful substance in the world, can be turned into methane gas, and methane gas can run anything. If you’re worried about the smell, don’t stick your nose in the fuel tank.

Imagine: farmers will PAY YOU to haul off their manure, which you then turn into fuel. Your septic tank, once the pariah of your homestead, now becomes a temple. When you emerge from the bathroom after a satisfying episode, everyone in the family gives you a round of applause. If the dog has an accident in the house, you give him extra treats. Shit, formerly a less than glorious substance, now becomes brown gold. When someone calls you a shithead, you thank him.

And if you happen to run out of gas, no worries, just back up to the tank and let ‘er rip!

MY BOOMER RETIREMENT

2010-08-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

I sell my house (you can tell this is a fantasy), clear about 100K. (a HUGE fantasy). I have about 100K in retirement savings (yeah, the stock market hasn’t crashed again). Now what to plan?

I go to a financial planner but he laughs so hard I have to kill him.

I search rural land for sale and can only afford a piece of land in the small town of You Can’t Get There From Here. What the hell, I buy it . We decide to build a shelter and raise some food.

We get a Quonset hut. Who cares if the floor is dirt? There are bugs in the finest houses.

We get some chickens; soon they’ll lay eggs. Oops, have to get a rooster. We get a rooster. He squawks so much my husband throws a boot at him and kills him. I make chicken soup. We say the feathers are garnish.

The Quonset hut leaks. But the roof is 18 feet high, so it’s hard to get up there to fix it. We’re hoping a giant piece of hail gets stuck in the hole. Finally we take some of what’s left of our savings and get a carpenter to build up the inside of the Quonset hut. His buddy the electrician and his other buddy the plumber help out. Now we have a home. It’s a bit ugly, but it’s warm and since the carpenter fixed the roof, it’s dry.

It’s different, but what baby boomer isn’t? The ugly house has low taxes, we eat the chickens, and my husband brought home a pregnant alpaca the other day. We get by on social security, and my husband says we can sell alpaca wool.

And somehow this gets out to other baby boomers, and they come to see, then some come to stay because they’re broke too and we have a nice life, and pretty soon You Can’t Get There From Here has a small thriving community. I hear one guy’s going to start a micro brewery and I’m happy.

A BOOMER LOVE STORY

2010-08-04T06:15:00.000-07:00

I wonder what it would be like to fall in love when you’re old…er. Mind you, I’m married, so it’s not really an issue, but imagine…

Wide angle shot: me on a hilltop, dress blowing in the breeze (but not over my head). Closeup: my face, wrinkles filtered out. Cut to:

HIM. Wide angle shot of him rushing up the hill to meet me. Closeup of his face, writhing in pain as he clutches his heart….WAIT! CUT! Let’s try this again….

The First Kiss. Wide angle shot, we turn to one another. Closeup of me, wrinkle free of course, smiling shyly. This is because I’m wondering if I have bad breath so I don’t want to open my mouth too wide.

Closeup of him, grinning, bright yellow teeth. CRAP! CUT!

Okay, we’ll try a picnic on a sunny day. Wide angle shot: him, spreading out the blanket. Move in to show me spreading out the picnic lunch, nice. At my age, I oughta know how to prepare food. He sits down. I sit down. Neither one of us can get up. CUT!!!

Oh hell, I think I’ll just stick to being married. Howa ya doin’ dear?

Belch! Fart!

Well, it may not be high romance, but it’s home, you know what I mean?

BOOMER DONATES HER ASS FOR THE COMMON GOOD

2010-08-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

I just read that scientists in Australia have found a way to make stem cells out of fat cells (in mice). OMG this is the best news since George Bush retired.

The article said that some infinitesimal amount of human fat could, theoretically, make one million stem cells. Holy crap! This means that just one of my butt cheeks could make billions of stem cells!

I will donate my ass to charity.

I will live proudly, knowing that my ass healed the sick, made the blind see, and patched up our soldiers coming home from war. I will be modest: when one of my recipients stops me on the street pointing to his eyes and says, “Your ass made this possible” I will smile and shuffle a little.

Soldiers will write me letters, saying “I don’t know how to thank you for your ass.” Maybe I’ll even get a writeup in the local paper: “NOBLE OLD WOMAN GIVES UP HER ASS FOR GOOD.”

And as for me, of course my liposuction will be covered under insurance or research grants or whatever. And I can finally fit into my old jeans! Now that’s a win/win situation if I ever saw one!

THE BANE OF THE BABY BOOMER: SKIN

2010-07-31T09:40:00.000-07:00

I discovered the absolute truth of aging: it is skin. Not your brain, you can keep that sharp by using it. Not your muscle tone, you can keep that up with exercise. Not your endurance, if you made it this far you are tougher than a witch’s brass bra.

It’s your skin. Sixty four years and uncounted sums spent on skin creams later, I have discovered the truth: of all the body systems, skin is independent.

The circulatory system, the brain and nervous system, digestion and skeletal systems….these guys all work together. But skin must have cut a deal with God that it would work with the team for a certain number of years, then it could head out on its own. Somewhere in the fifties, it does so. Although it is still attached to muscle, it finds a way to stretch beyond imagining and then….DROP.

Skin does this quietly, while you sleep, so that you don’t hear the plop! when it hits the ground. But one morning you wake up and find your jowls on your shoulders, your knees underneath themselves, and your thighs…well, we won’t go there, it’s too scary. You stand up and your skin doesn’t. You turn around and your skin catches up a moment later.

Enter the savior: the plastic surgeon with his merry grin and handy scalpel. But wait…he wants to be paid…quite a lot actually. Insurance doesn’t cover his services. Imagine! My skin wandered off on its own and that is not considered a health problem!

I have been saving for plastic surgery for fifteen years now. I realize now I should have started saving when I was born. With inflation, my savings account can barely stand to look at itself. Every time I get close to having the dough something expensive happens. By the time I have the money, my only hope will be for a surgeon to cut a hole in the top of my head and just pull my entire body up.

Maybe the answer is to put a good PR team on the problem and make sagging skin beautiful in the minds of all. Waist level boobs will rule, dimpled thighs will be decorated with spangles, and baggy eyes will be the bomb.

Uh…barf!

IF YOUR BOOMER ASS WERE ON FIRE, WHAT WOULD YOU GRAB?

2010-07-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

(Besides your ass, of course) Suppose the great grandmother of all forest fires sets your house on fire. What would you do?

I would grab the animals, some dog and cat food, my computer, my little “important papers” safe, my toothbrush, and my purse. (The computer is the equivalent of grabbing the family photo album.)

So what I’m asking is, what’s important?

When we were young baby boomers, we thought tuning in was important. Then we settled down, raised families and got caught up in the complexities of material life, as we should have. Now our families are grown. So what’s important?

Maybe I’m senile; aging is weird, for sure. But I’m leaning toward the same things as a boomer old fart, as I did when I was a young baby boomer. I want to tune in; maybe see what I missed all those years when I wasn’t paying attention.

What makes retirement a challenge and sometimes a tragedy is that we don’t respect how awesome it is. When one retires, one is facing life the EXACT same way one did at eighteen, with one exception: not much room for mistakes.

So I ask myself, and other boomers: are we SURE we want that expensive retirement community? The “roomy” house? The two sets of dishes?

Are we SURE?

HA HA HA THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

2010-07-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

I am so happy my mouth has two sides. Like most baby boomers, I have expertise in talking out of both. Now after my rant about looking young, I will mention two of the best looking people I have ever seen:

· The man: 81. Truth! He had just come back from hiking up Sandia Crest in Albuquerque, and his dog looked way more tired than he did. He was tall and broad, solid as a brick wall, had thick white hair, and looked at you with a keen eye. Ruff!
· The woman: in her late seventies, sitting down after a long swim in a lake in northern Vermont, barely winded. I remember praying to God that I could look like her when I was her age. She had an hourglass figure and was still firm and solid, and her face was beautiful even with wrinkles. Somehow on her they looked good.

Let’s face it, we’ll all be eighty-five someday. And maybe when we are, beauty changes from sex appeal to strength. Both the people mentioned above looked healthy and strong. They looked like people to be taken seriously. So maybe the thing I’m scared of in aging is not so much looking ugly, as looking (being) weak.

Truth be told, that’s what “old” is supposed to mean: a “little” old lady = weak, bent, feeble. “Geezer”= bent, wasted, feeble. Uh…I think the key word here is feeble.

Well, boomers redefine aging. Why do we ever have to get feeble? Personally, I plan to look like the two seniors above. If I can’t stand up on the subway I won’t ride it; I’ll take a cab. But I bet I’ll be able to stand until the final Fall Down. And when some crazy kid tries to still my purse, I just might pull my 9 millimeter out of it and ask him if this is the path he really wants to

follow.

Folks, I think aging baby boomers might be a whole new breed of oldstas.

When I was young, I was a mighty bitch. And I still am, hallelujah!

EAT DRINK AND BE MERRY, FOR TOMORROW WE DYE

2010-07-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

My hair was black. Now it is over half gray. The entire front of my head is gray and the back is almost all black but with a few silver threads.

If I went natural I could probably start a new trend.

But I refuse to look like a two tone Chevy from the fifties.

Ah…to dye or not to dye, there’s the rub. And a mighty rub it is, when you get that crap on your skin. With any luck you’ll get the Vaseline or the vegetable oil in all the right places so that your hairline does not extend forward to your mid cheek, giving you that distinct Planet of the Apes look.

I have been dyeing my hair so long I barely remember what color it was before additives. For almost five years I was blonde, even. I blame my cousin Carol for this. Despite the fact that deep in my heart I thought brown eyed blondes were kinda…you know…WEIRD, I followed her advice that dark hair is too harsh as we get, um, older. Did I have more fun? Honestly, I don’t think so. But my poor hair got so dry I had to stay at least a hundred paces away from an open flame, lest I be bald.

These days my hair is a dark purplish brown. Sorry, I have never gotten over the fascination with purple hair. And if it makes my wrinkles more prominent, well, you know what they say:….Hello? Plastic Surgery Department?

PS. My cousin Carol says she would never have a facelift because she would look thirty years younger than her husband. I say, bully for him! The jolly dog got himself a babe!

THIS BOOMER IS BOMBED

2010-07-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

…in the sense that she is flattened. That’s what living in this cockeyed world does to you, man; more days than not.

I don’t know if the world is harsher or I’m just wiser. Crap! Getting older is a pain in the a**. I know there’s a recession (hah!~--it’s Depression II, the Sequel) but when it comes home and is standing right on my big toe, I feel the pinch. I mean, most baby boomers have lived long enough to have seen a few downturns; but this one seems to bring out the STUPID gene in people, especially my public servant bosses.

My genius boss just decided to shut down open jobs. This means that the revenue producing openings, which could bring more money over the transom, are kaput. He did this when he heard the state was going to cut back a portion of our funding that accounts for a little over a sliver of our revenues and can easily be sidestepped with another source. I want to slap the moron, but I need a job.

Ah, there’s the rub. Breathing down my neck with NASTY smelling breath are two other agencies doing the same work I do, competing for the same clients, and hiring all the clever folks I was about to hire. Now I know what Jonah felt like when he was sliding down the whale’s tongue and there was nothing to hold onto but slime.

This is how management morons think: There are two candy shops across the street from each other, and both are in the red. One says ‘holy crap, shorten the hours, we’ll save a few bucks on electricity’ and the other one says, ‘holy crap we gotta sell more candy.’ Numero Uno shop goes under, slowly. Numero Dos shop takes all their business and….you get the picture.

But this lowly social worker, the infantry, the grunt on the front lines, happens to be owned by Numero Uno shop. The bosses don’t have to be smart because they’re state employees. And all I can say is, that park bench retirement spot of mine seems to be looming a lot closer.

SIGH....IT'S MY THIGHS....

2010-07-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

I feel bad about my thighs.

I watched The Closer and saw Keira Knightly, who is fifty-something, dancing around on her bed in her underwear, and man does she have great thighs. If I danced around on my bed, my thighs’ dimples would make little rainbow reflections on the walls.

And my knees are wrinkled. I remember the days when we wore skirts so short our underpants were embarrassed, and my knees carried themselves with pride. Not a wrinkle, not a lump, those glamorous gams took to the street with style. I was a flower child extraordinaire, hair and skirt met somewhere around my ass and I was hot, baby, I was smokin’. Now my game…is lame.

I hate summer: when it’s too hot to wear stockings and cover up the…uh…imperfections. I have to go barelegged like the twenty something’s and the Keira Knightlys. Crap! I slather my legs with fake bake and pray to hide the scar I got from chopping wood last winter in gym shorts (don’t ask!). But the thighs….let’s just say the skirt is long enough to hide the offenders.

But…there comes the problem of shorts. The dilemma: to wear shorts and be infinitely more comfortable on the searing hot days of the southwest, or to wear jeans and suffer the embarrassment of sweating from every pore publicly?

I work those thighs like a couple of draft horses at haying time. Run walk jump squat 220 pounds no crap lunge skip dance you dogs, dance. I have to admit the muscles underneath are pretty well toned. But the skin – ah, there’s the rub. Skin, I have discovered, has a mind of it’s own once you hit fifty. As I am sixty four, my skin has emancipated itself and is now living a separate life, romancing gravity right under my nose.

I have read about the various procedures they have nowadays to give nature a helping hand, using lasers, rollers, vacuums and surgery. They all sound wonderful, except for the price. I suppose I could raid my puny retirement fund, but then I would have the smoothest thighs in the soup kitchen and who would notice?

Alas, I wonder if Keira Knightly could look as good on my budget as I could on hers?

NEWSNEWSNEWS BOOMER B*TCHES ABOUT GETTING OLD

2010-07-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Time marches on….and on, and on. We baby boomers, the shapers of the sixties, the movers of a nation, are evolving into old farts, just like the parents we swore we would never be like. (Hah!)

I am a sixty four year old woman. What comes to mind? Sags, bags, bulges, wrinkles, gray hair, age spots, varicose veins. So what am I doing with a good figure, dark brown hair, freckles that haven’t blended yet into age spots, and almost no wrinkles? What am I doing with joie de vivre, energy, desire for sex, and a raunchy sense of humor? What am I doing, period?

I still work. I plan to work until I’m seventy, because I have to. I have squat for retirement and zilch for investments so there you are. But I don’t feel so bad. Everyone I know is working to seventy. Even those who retired, are finding theyhave to go back to work. May as well, since we’ll all probably live to be ninety. Not a snowball’s chance in hell Social Security will take us there. I was planning to sell my house to finance my retirement, but…..we all know what happened there.

I still see friends, tell dirty jokes, and look at handsome men. I still squeeze my husband. I still run on my treadmill; I still do the hard type of yoga. I still shoot my 9 millimeter and still hit the target. I still drink Guinness and love pubs. I made one concession: I gave up smoking thirty years ago because it cost too much. I am supposed to be over the hill. (Huh?)

Dig this: I refuse to get old. When it starts to sag, I will get it lifted. (The cost of a facelift won’t make a bit of difference to my measly retirement fund, but theupdo will make all the difference to my well being!) When the freckles become spots, I will acid or laser them off. The hair, already half gray, is nicely dyed. Keep the gray for cars and gun barrels, not for me.

And when I can’t run anymore, and I start to stoop, and I dream about dinner at breakfast, and I start obsessing about bowel movements and joint pain, I will die. I have this planned: I will go to the porch, sit my butt down in a rocking chair, and give up. I will be dead within days. This will make me happy. My children will not have to care for me while I rot away. The insurance companies will get no benefits for keeping my almost-corpse alive. The medical industry won’t get a dime, the bank can keep the house, and if I have any outstanding debt, may the creditors put the bills in their collective rectum and whistle a happy tune.

Fighting words, yes; but I mean every one of them. There is no such thing as “the golden years.” The only gold in your final years goes to the doctors and insurance companies. Why live well for seventy or eighty years, then horribly for another five or ten? Why not just pack it in when it’s over? Why become frail, elderly, and invisible? Where’s the benefit?

Old women are supposed to become frail, elderly, and invisible.

And I refuse to do what I am supposed to.

PART OF AGING IS SAYING GOODBYE...

2010-07-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

I define my family a bit differently from many people. The animals who live with me are as much a part of my family as the people. I do not invite them in or send them off lightly. My sister’s dog died today, and it is a blow to the whole family.

He was a member of my family for fifteen years. His name was Ethan Allen. For fifteen years, this wonderful mutt was there for my sister, as well as the extended family. He stayed with me on her vacations, as my dogs stayed with her. They were as thrilled as children to see each other, knowing they were in for an afternoon of play, treats, and driving the humans crazy coming in and out. Until recent years, when age took his hearing, he was a world class howler. My daughter, who is a world class singer, used to sing along with him when she was a teenager and taught him to change keys so that he could howl in tune. Wherever he went he left a little love glitter and a hairball.

I have reached an age where I have a real good beef going with Death. I have lost so many members of my family; my sister and I are all that are left from the original group of humans.The older generation is all gone but for one.

The animals….it is a parade of death. They were some of the best of my family, but they live for such a short time! I happen to believe that animals are without sin; so maybe that is why they can only be with us for a little while.
They are treasures, and we are blessed and bettered by them. Their simplicity of mind and heart is a call from God to be more like them and to appreciate life at its most basic level. All the rest is froth.

They say all dogs go to heaven. Of this I have no doubt whatsoever. Why would a thing of perfection not return to its source? I'm sure Ethan will be greeted by all our other animal family members, now passed, and will have a fine and playful journey home.

Ethan’s passing is a stab to the heart. He leaves a not-hereness that can never be filled, not if my sister gets a hundred new dogs. Each dog is an individual and Ethan was one of the most individual of the lot. He will be loved forever, remembered forever and a day.

Those were the days my friend,

We thought they’d never end,

We’d sing and dance, forever and a day…

We’d fight and never lose,

We’d live the life we choose,

Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days!

ALTERNATIVES: BOOMERS GOTTA HAVE 'EM

2010-07-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

FROM: “The Maturity Manifesto: A Hard Look at the Golden Years” (The Maturity Manifesto)

“Getting old is not for sissies” ----- Bette Davis

“Sixty is the new forty.” ----- Lauren Bacall

“Act your age.” ---- common wisdom

“Why?” ----- Zen insight

Question: How can one drown in good advice on retirement, and still not be able to retire?
Answer: One is broke.

If one picked the wrong job, married the wrong person, made some financial mistakes, worked for small companies that offered zilch for retirement, had a medical disaster, was divorced or widowed and now finds oneself facing “the golden years” alone…one might read the retirement advice with the angst of the outsider.
This is one who is guilty of not having kept up with the rising cost of everything enough to put aside a nest egg for retirement. This one feels ashamed. Anxious, too.
And this one….is many.

Opening words (fighting words?) from "The Maturity Manifesto.” Okay, not everyone is poor. But not every one of us is rich, either.

Even if you were sensible and fortunate and put away a nest egg, you may be amazed at how paltry that little treasure seems today. I remember back when we thought 250K was a lot of money: twenty years ago, a friend claimed she would have “a quarter of a million” upon retirement and the rest of us were slobbering with envy. Today that friend is pushing seventy, still working, and broke after an old house and three children from a deceased ex-spouse and his last wife ate up the 250K with barely a burp.

The fact is, retirement is a dismal prospect for a bigger portion of boomers than want to admit it. Many have houses to sell….oh dear. Some would like to do a reverse mortgage on their homes….oh dear, the market is down and they don’t have the equity. Investments aren’t what they were before the market took a dive. Real estate isn’t what it was. Costs of living aren’t what they were.

In sum: you need a lot of money to get by these days.
This article, and the many to follow, is dedicated to those boomers who are pondering retirement with…wonderment.
Please tune in. And please share your comments; they are more valuable than you may think.

Vol.1 Page 1: CONSIDERING OPTIONS
Scenario: you will get social security, about 1400 per month. You have about 100K in a retirement account. Transformed into an annuity, that gives you about $600 a month. So you have about 2K income. Let’s look on the bright side and say you have a piece of real estate to sell that will yield a profit of 100K. And, you own your car.

You can move into a mobile home park for seniors, buying your trailer and able to make the space rent.

You can try to get a reverse mortgage on your home. Got the equity? If so, you can live rent free except for taxes, insurance, and repairs. If your home is big enough, you can take in a boarder or two and maybe pay those expenses.

You can liquidate. Yield: social security plus about 180K – 200K in cash. With this cash you can buy a good used motor home or a “Tiny House” and try to live on social security plus the interest on the cash. If you grow some of your own food, this may be possible. Don’t plan on doing much touring in the motor home, though; you can’t afford the gas.

You can combine any of the foregoing with working part time. More and more boomers are doing this. We would like to say this is by choice, but let’s not kid ourselves. Volunteer work is by choice. Being a greeter at Walmart or working in a supermarket is by necessity.

Of course, the foregoing is based upon facing the last stage of life alone. A disturbing statistic is that 97 million people over 45 are single, but that's still not all of us. For those of us partnered up, multiply everything by 2. And guess what?....two can live more cheaply than one.

There are more options, no doubt. Can you think of some? I’d love to hear from readers with retirement ideas for the above scenario. Let’s say this is you: a house with a mortgage, 1400 in Social Security, 600 in annuity or 100K in cash, and a car that runs. What would you do?

COMING UP:
Solo or Partnered: how many of us will be retiring alone?
Alternative Lifestyles for Boomers
Beliefs About Aging: helpful or harmful?
Housing Options: tiny homes and co-housing
Income Options: pleasant, mindless jobs and working from home
Health Options: maximizing your staying power
Looking Good: plastic surgery
Looking Good: to dye or not to dye?

Please comment and share your ideas!! The more we share, the better we fare!

BOOMERS, I SEE THE LIGHT, I SEE THE LIGHT!

2010-07-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

CHECK IT OUT: Several facts have emerged in the course of Kauffman Foundation research that indicate the United States might be on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom—not in spite of an aging population but because of it. This study shows that as the economic recession plagues the job market, more and more "baby-boomers" are becoming entrepreneurs. The decline of lifetime employment, the experience and knowledge of the age group, longer lifespan, and the effect of the current recession are all factors contributing to the increase in entrepreneurial activity in the baby boom generation. The study was conducted by Dane Stangler, senior analyst at the Kauffman Foundation. ---The Kaufman Foundation, “The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom” http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/the-coming-entrepreneurial-boom.aspx

Holy Hannah! This is it! The way out of the how-the-f*** am I gonna retire with one week’s pay in my pocket blues” oh yeah!

Baby boomers: remember when our kids were born? Some of us were married to guys who could support families…but not very many. By the time we were breeding our brains out, inflation had roared onto the scene and trickle down economics got stuck in the drain pipe. Remember trying to afford formula?

Remember those days? Work v. family; it was war, man. Some of us…quite a lot of us…stayed home and started little businesses. Some of those businesses became successful; some not. But the basic idea was sound: if the economy sucks and you’re outta options….well that’s why God invented cottage industry, now, isn’t it?

Find a need a fill it….well, there are lots of needs out there, from food to fun to pantry to porn…there’s gotta be something we can do! And since baby boomers practically invented alternative ways to make a living, some of them even legal, we should be golden, man! I feel better already!

LOOKING FORWARD: DISASTER OR DELIGHT?

2010-07-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Bette Davis said, “getting old is not for sissies.” Truer words, man.
Getting old is debilitating and wisdom takes the surprise out of living. But…there’s no escape. Baby boomers are cresting the hill.
Aside from finding a Fountain of Youth, marrying a plastic surgeon, or experiencing the rejuvenating thrill of seeing some raging demagogue burst a blood vessel and die on camera, we are stuck with advancing decrepitude. Bullsh*t aside, what should we do?

   Opinion: Get a rocking chair, climb in it, and wait to die.
   Opinion: Get a motorhome, drive till you can’t, and wait to die.
   Opinion: Stay in your home, hire help, and wait to die. (Good luck, rich bitch!)
   Opinion: Find a way to boogie, boogie till you can’t, and wait to die.

I vote for Option 4. Of course, there is that undeniable theme running through it all, you know, that bit about dying. Even baby boomers die.

I have a personal opinion about that: why worry about dying?---you’re gonna. It’s as certain as gravity. So see? there’s nothing to worry about.

The problem is all those years between retirement and death---because there are going to be quite a few of them. Even for someone like me, who intends to work until seventy (thanks, recession!), there will still be around fifteen to twenty years between retirement and the big Lights Out. What to do?

Well, I haven’t got all the answers, but I have another opinion. I think decrepitude is largely a state of mind. With modern knowledge about medicine, diet and exercise, it’s possible to stay fit and vital right up to the end. I know from personal experience: I can still walk farther, lift more weight, run faster, and outlast people half my age (I am 64). When I retire, I will have more time to exercise so watch out, I will look and feel like a million bucks.
So that rocking chair is going to feel like a pair of tight shoes. I may stay home or I may motorhome it (the gypsy life is appealing to ever larger numbers of boomers) but whatever happens, I will boogie till the end. See you out there!

THE GREAT ISSUES OF THE MODERN WORLD

2010-07-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

This is what I think of when I lie awake nights:

1. Why isn’t plastic surgery free?

2. Why don’t we power the world with sh*t? Talk about renewable…

3. Why do men look better as they age?

1. If it is a given that half the world gets ugly, why do we not have a means to deal with it? Personally I think people look their best in their mid thirties to mid forties. In a just world, we would all get there and stop. Of course we would die at the appointed time, but we would look and feel good until the moment came. So good doctors out there, get busy! To hell with biological immortality, who in the name of all that is sensible would want to live forever? I’m only sixty four and it’s already boring! You medical researchers need to put your energy into a pill that will arrest aging at 35 and hold it there until 100 or so, when we can all peacefully fall apart. And until that happens, I have a message for all you lowlife insurance companies out there....plastic surgery should be FREE!

2. If there is one thing this world will never run out of, it is sh*t. It is the most plentiful substance in the world. Why settle for just stepping in it? Why not use it to power the planet? Everyone knows the technology is there to produce methane gas from manure. In the 70’s, an engineer in England developed a unit he called, “The Digester.” I want one. I want one in my septic tank and in my car, too Then I can say !@$!!*%! to my favorite folks in the oil industry.

3. Men aging more attractively is one of the great injustices of the universe. They look pretty good right up through their fifties. This is because a mature man looks powerful. Young men are too pretty. By contrast, young women look breedable, and old women look...well, old. All I can say is, thank God men eventually turn sixty. Then they look like the rest of us.

HALLMARKS OF OLD FARTITUTDE 102: One response to brokitude...

2010-07-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

1. Baby we’re broke. My retirement account went bust in the market.

Damn.

We can sell the house.

We can give it back to the bank with a thank you note.

We’ll get Social Security.

As long as it’s there, let's dig it!

2. It’s cold here in the woods.

The campfire’s nice.

The supper you cooked on it was the best ever.

I’m cold.

It’s warm in the truck.

I’ll set up the bed.

I took Viagra.

Cold? What cold?

1. 3. My hair is greasy. We don’t bathe enough.

There’s a truck stop with showers!

We can’t go from truck stop to truck stop. It’s boring.

Too much like back when we were working.

Let’s shave our heads.

Uh….I don’t really need to.

Hand me your razor.

2. 4. What color do you want your head?

I told you, that paisley print I picked out.

Okay tattoo guy, go for it.

You guys ‘ll never get jobs again, if you go ahead with this.

Hahahahahahaha!

3. 5. I really would like to bathe more often.

Me too. There has to be a solution.

Why don’t we winter near southern lakes?

Good idea. And we’ll summer near northern lakes.

Now that we don’t have hair, bathing is a lot easier.

Just pour the soapy water into the plants, it’s good for them.

4. 6. I like that tattoo on top of your head. Since I’m taller, I can always see it.

And I like the one you had done on your butt. Since your pants slide down your skinny ass, I can always see it.

It says, “I love you.”

I AM YOUNGSTA

2010-07-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

It’s not that my self esteem is low (I am sometimes accused of the opposite), but I do seem to be a square peg in a round hole a lot of the time. Maybe this is the boomer curse.

I mean, most people my age look a lot older than I do. Most people my age work out gently; I work out the same as I did when I was thirty five (Wait---when I was thirty five I was too cool and cute to work out---okay say forty five). Most people my age are sedate. I still want to howl, at least now and then.

When I was in my forties and got divorced, more people than I could count were suggesting that I should date someone younger. The term “cougar” hadn’t even been invented yet, and I was being encouraged to scout the youngstas.

Maybe they realized that I was young for my age, and even looked young for my age. People today tell me I look young for my age and I haven’t even had the big LIFT yet (they key word being “yet”). Once I got carded when I was 48.

I still dress in jeans and T-shirts and always will. Why can’t I fit in?

A FEW COMMENTS ON AGEISM

2010-07-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, so check out this link: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=aging_hippies but make sure you have a barf bag at the ready.
This kid thinks old is ugly. He thinks that aging hippies should not go to school or live life publicly.

I think he should be cursed by the universe to never get laid again until he is 65, and then only with women older than himself.
This is for you, bestpageintheuniverse: You suck. I mean, you suck really, really badly. You shallow little turd, you can only tolerate sleek and beautiful, here is what I wish for you:

You get progeria, only you don’t die from it. You just look old for your entire life.
Your grandmother invites you to a cookout and she is wearing shorts.
Your grandfather decides to take classes at a university to keep his mind sharp, and he gets smarter than you.
Girls your own age will not date you, unless they are obese or deformed.
You get propositioned daily by wrinkly older women.

With love but without a shred of respect, Janey B, who is 64.

HEY THIS DREAM IS WIERD, MAN

2010-07-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

Recently I wrote about my daughter’s (okay, the truth is out) experience in an oldster’s bar. (See: a pre-life crisis) It made me think, and I’m still thinking.
Magical Mystery Tour: IMAGINE:
There is a yellow brick road that leads to a saloon. It is a very special saloon. It is built of stone, so that it looks charming and no one can shoot through the walls. Lush vines grow over the stones and flowers bloom on the sacred pathway to the front door. Beside the entrance are troughs for the very drunk to puke in before they stumble home. The troughs are labeled, “Shame on you, you out of control jackass.”

Inside, there are lots of wooden tables and chairs. They are made of wood so that 1. They aretoo heavy to throw or 2. If you do manage to heave them, they will do some damage. I mean, why waste the effort? There is sawdust on the floor. The lighting is warm. The bartender has ten arms. A rock and roll band plays its heart out.
Some people are drinking, some are talking, some are dancing. And get this:
Some are young, some are middle aged, and some are old. They’re all dancing together.
WHAT THE F—???
You read it right: this saloon is multi-age. There are goons of every variety, race, creed, and AGE. In a special corner baby boomers have fist fights over whether they are liberal or conservative. On the dance floor oldsters gyrate nastily to the music. The twenty something’s think this is hilarious and egg them on. A fifty something year old woman takes off her shirt. Her boobs are low, full, and luscious. A twenty something, not to be outdone, takes off her shirt. Her boobs are high, full, and luscious.
An old man lights his fourteenth cigar and holds a youngster’s head while he throws up. Poor kid didn’t make it through the first cigar. He’ll learn.
A seventy four year old biker roars into the middle of the dance floor and passes out. The dancers help him and his bike to a quiet corner where they can both sleep it off.
The music alternates between Motown, Stones, sixties wierdness, alternative, hip hop, and rap. It’s all cool. Everyone dances. All different, but all nice. People here like to move. And let’s face it, if you dance, you work off the booze,
There are cougars and silver foxes. Sometimes they hit on the youngsters. But, they are so saucy, the youngsters don’t really mind.There are some mixed age couples. Nobody cares.
Eventually the saloon closes down for the night. Everyone leaves laughing. They don’t even make fun of the jerks with their heads in the troughs.
Now THAT’s a cool joint.

ARE WE UGLY?

2010-07-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

I just read a post from a youngster, see Pre-Life Crisis, in which two young women visiting a bar populated by "old" folks (50+) were repelled by the notion of older people fooling around in bars. I'm not sure why. I can only figure that young people, for some reason, don't look as stupid when they fall off sofas drunk or nuzzle up to one another.
It's about beauty, plain and simple. It's about what we think is beautiful. Youth is beautiful, and shenanigans are cute. Age is beautiful only if it is sedate. Here's what I think about that:

!@#!!^&%(***!!!

Don't get me wrong; being sedate is fine, if you're tired, bored, or in church. But what about when you want to have some fun? Are we too ugly to be foolish and have some shenanigans?

Visualize: a twenty something says,

"Man, what a hangover."(funny. silly. cute. the kid can sow his wild oats!)
A sixty year old says, "Man what a hangover." (dreadful! act your age!)

Let me say for the record, the day I meet a twenty something that can out-drink me, I will become sedate. Lotsa luck, peewee!

The twenty something gyrates to music, is drunk, falls down. (Ha ha! Look at Billy! What an ass! wink!)
The sixty something gyrates to music is drunk, falls down. (Holy crap, grandpa! You should stick to your rocking chair!)

First of all, we boomers were the best dancers in history. We danced to Motown, man (what's that?) We danced to the best rhythm there ever was. And if we get drunk enough to fall down, give us a grin and help us up, snot nose!

the twenty something nuzzles up to a female. (snicker!)
the sixty something nuzzles up to a female. (Hog! Perv! Dirty old man!)

The sixty something's nuts still work, is there something wrong with that? And if he does take Viagra, watch out, he ain't gonna slam bam and pass out on you!
Listen to me: "old" is a state of mind that is rampant throughout the culture. Every one of us, young and old, has terrible, mean, life-killing stereotypes of what it means. So when "old" people act like young people, it is shocking, disgusting, ugly. But the truth is that inside every "old" person is a young person. Our bodies change and our skin sags, but our minds are the same, often better. We want the same things young people want. We want to get buzzed, we want to have fun in company, we want to flirt. It's time to drop the stereotype because it's just not true. Personally, when I go to a saloon and see my elders behaving badly, I think it's hilarious too, but in a good way. Bless their hearts. The ones I feel bad for are the sorry bastards in their rocking chairs.

a twenty something pukes in the parking lot. What a jerk.
a sixty something pukes in the parking lot. What a jerk.

Kids, we're way more similar than we are different. Give it up. As for capri pants, they look just as stupid on twenty somethings.