Month: April 2018

Thinking about missiles and dinner

Just prior to my retirement, I was working on a couple of intense communications projects involving missiles and people who love them, and while I love the people who love them, mostly I was bored and thought about dinner.

Retirement freed up my brain to think about dinner without the distractions of incoming missiles. My husband and I spend a good bit of our day thinking about dinner, shopping for dinner, cooking dinner, eating dinner and then talking about it afterward. However, Dale is retired military, so I’m pretty sure he thinks about missiles, too.

Dale and I are both avid cooks, so for us, dinner is a hobby, the highlight of the day. Well, that and happy hour. When we were both working, it was an opportunity to connect after a long day at the office. Now it’s an opportunity to connect after a long day of getting in each other’s way.

Although we’re not overly materialistic, we do like our kitchen stuff, old and new. We still use the dishes we bought at the PX when we got married almost 40 years ago, and we have a handheld mixer from the early 80s. Dale has a vintage Wearever Super Shooter specifically for making cheese straws. Then there’s the yogurt maker, the juicer, the Instant Pot. We converted a downstairs bedroom into the Williams Sonoma annex.

I also like what I call side dishes. Artichoke plates, egg cups. Bar ware. Pasta bowls. My sister makes us beautiful two-sided cloth napkins, my favorite being pizza on one side and garlic on the other.

We sometimes take sides on what to have for dinner, but during the meal itself we may bicker over what we had for dinner on that rainy Saturday in June of 1998. Remember, it didn’t rain until late? No, it was pouring down when I woke up. I’m pretty sure it was a rib-eye. I remember buying it. No, he says, I bought it, I remember it was on sale at Publix. No, it was Harris Teeter. No, they had closed by then.

Eating together unlocks the memories so we can argue about whose version is correct.

I don’t understand sacrificing dinner to climb the ladder at work. I met several high-powered women executives in my career who said they usually ate a bowl of cold cereal for dinner because they worked such long hours. A former boss said she often ate a granola bar in her room during business travel, presumably to win the prize for saving the company money and free up more time for emails.

Now, I get the whole thing about holing up in the room after a day in close quarters with vice presidents and their ilk, but I had different priorities. Bath fizzies! Movies! Room service! I didn’t care if I had to pay for it myself. It was like a fiesta. I enjoyed the time alone, but the best part was coming home, when Dale would make something delicious to celebrate my return.

We make almost everything from scratch and do focus on healthy foods, but we also have lots of not-so-healthy food rituals:

  • Comfort Food Tuesday
  • Full Mexican (Mexican food Friday, Saturday and Sunday night)
  • Meat Weekend (Meat Friday, Saturday and Sunday night)
  • Pizza and Beer Friday

I know there’s plenty of serious stuff going on in the world that probably needs my attention, but as you can see, I’m kind of busy.

The man on the train

Like many adults from dysfunctional families, I was angry with my father for years over his failings as a parent. With counseling and a one-time encounter with him 35 years after he died, I found peace.

My father, Bill, drank and was emotionally and verbally abusive. Much of the time, it seemed he wanted nothing to do with his wife and kids. For as long as I can remember, he slept in a camper parked in the backyard.

As a teenager, Bill left an impoverished home in Cleveland during the Great Depression and road the rails. He bummed his way around the country and was on his own for years when he got drafted. While AWOL, he met my mother in a bar back home. Married her, and after the war, he went back to Cleveland to pick her up and take the train out to California.

The newlyweds landed in Los Angeles with a little money saved up and bought a corner store that sold candy and cigarettes. Bill ran the store, and Mom worked in a bank.

Bill was notorious for closing the store and going to the movies or hanging out in bars. My mom went to check on him during a lunch break and found a stranger behind the counter. The man said Bill gave him the store, and it turned out to be true. That is when they headed for the suburbs, where he started sleeping in the backyard.

I happened to mention the camper to my counselor.

Why do you think he slept out there?

He was a ramblin’ man.

Dad rode the rails and struggled to accept the responsibilities of family life. Sleeping in the camper made him feel unbridled.

Counseling helped me forgive my father, who died when I was in my early 20s. I saw him for the first time not as a broken child but as an adult, and I saw he had many wonderful qualities. Not that his behavior was justified, but at some point, you realize people can only do so much with what they have. Still, I wondered how my life might be different if I had felt a father’s love.

I left California shortly after high school and only came back about five years ago when I thought it was safe. I used to ride the bus to work. Most mornings, I walked to the Caltrain station to catch the early bus, which left at 5:30 a.m. A handful of us would gather in the dark at our stop near the train tracks and wait for the bus to pull up.

One morning, a freight train zoomed by headed south, toward Los Angeles. I looked up to watch it pass. As the last car pulled into view, I saw a young man in clothes that looked to be from the 1940s, sitting on the back smiling and waving at me.

It was my father, and I suddenly felt engulfed in his love.

 

A trip to Ulta

They say millennials love them some Ulta and spend a small fortune there on makeup, but to me, it’s like the creepy funhouse at the carnival. However, I needed conditioner. As I entered, I heard a guy talking to his wife. He said, “And I don’t like these surprise Ulta trips, either.” My husband, meanwhile, was hiding safely in the car. I said 10 minutes, but it was more like 30. Things happened.

In the category of too much information, I have this itchy discolored patch of skin on my back called Notalgia Paresthetica. Dale calls it my nostalgia. I had just visited the dermatologist, who suggested I experiment with topical treatments for the itch. Lotions with Alpha Hydroxy Acids (AHAs) may help.

Seemed like a good idea to look for it at Ulta since I was already there. I went through the cheap stuff aisles and then made my way over to the fancy stuff. An older and beautifully groomed makeup enthusiast with silver hair was shopping the same zone, and she said to me, “This cream is supposed to get rid of wrinkles.”

I said, oh, wrinkles, I try not to worry about them, and she said that’s because you don’t have them. I showed her my neck, like what are you blind? And then she showed me hers.

“Look at this!” And she points to a small spot under her chin. I couldn’t see it at first, but basically it was a scar. She said it was from a facelift gone bad. She starts rattling off the doctor’s name so I would never go there, and I said got it, no problem.

She asked politely how old I was. 62. She said I had the skin of a 50-year-old. Thanks, I replied, even though I’m not sure I feel right about being grateful for misguided illusions of youth. She told me she was 78, and I gushed a bit and said she looked fantastic. She stroked her neck and said once again how badly her facelift was botched.

By this time, I did not believe it was my destiny to find the lotion I wanted. As I was looking for an escape route, she started in on her next topic, which was what to eat so you look younger. Pro tip: lots of fruits and vegetables. Then she told me about some pill you can take that also helps.

Finally, I said, good luck on your journey and slowly eased away, back to the shampoo and conditioner section, where I know my shit. Later, I dropped off the ball and chain (Dale) at home and went to Marshall’s in pursuit of golf clothes at rock bottom prices.

For a long time, I hated shopping and didn’t give much thought to what I wear, but I’m coming around again. Like a second wind. Shopping is more fun now that I have the time to search and wait for bargains. The idea of finding stylish retirement clothes on a retirement budget is a challenge that strangely appeals to me.

Anyway, who appears but my friend from Ulta. She said, “Oh, hello, we meet again!” I smiled and said hi but kept moving. She said, “Don’t worry. I won’t lecture you again.” I guess she realized she went a bit too far, and that made me like her.

I watched her walk away in her snug little jeans, and I thought, that is a good-looking woman. I would hope to look that good at 78, but it seemed to me she was still mourning the loss of 48. And it kind of breaks my heart. We are smarter and stronger and better than we’ve ever been, but are we irrelevant unless we cheat time?

On a positive note, I did score a pair of Callaway shorts for $12. And I ordered my AHA cream on Amazon.

Cannabis discounts for 420 celebration

It’s 420 week, and tomorrow is 420 day, which is a celebration of cannabis, my personal retirement medicine of choice. Small doses help me with post-mastectomy pain, anxiety, sleep and overall well being. I seriously wouldn’t want to grow old without it – and today’s cannabis offers many choices that don’t involve smoking or getting crazy high.

I thought the 420 story had something to do with the date legislation was passed, but I was wrong. The story involves a legend of high school kids who used to smoke at 4:20 p.m. every day, and it has turned into a cultural movement. You can read the whole backstory here.

If you live where medical and/or recreational cannabis is legal, be on the lookout for amazing sales. The cannabis collective where I shop has offered fantastic discounts all week. $125 for an ounce of Dream Queen, which normally costs around $300. One of my favorite sleep aids – Granddaddy Purple – a ½ gram cartridge is normally $40, and it’s on sale for $25. A 1-gram cartridge is normally $60, and it’s on sale for $40. Yes, I am stocking up.

I urge you to shop around and find a cannabis dispensary that loves its customers. Even when it’s not 420 week, my collective offers nice perks. Place your order before noon, and you get the early bird special, which is a free pre-roll. Plus, all orders over $80 get an additional free gram of bud. My collective also has a creative marketing program, and in today’s email there was a trivia question.

During the temperance movement of the 1890s, marijuana was commonly recommended as a substitute for “________”. The reason for this was that use of marijuana did not lead to domestic violence while “_______” abuse did.

The first three correct answers won a prize – I was 3rd with the correct answer of alcohol! The lanyard advertising Hi-Fi cannabis infused chocolates was my prize. My husband said they wouldn’t go broke giving away prizes, but I liked it anyway. I believe this is my first piece of cannabis swag.

 

 

The Cellulite Wars

Note: My sister-in-law is vacationing with us. Our first post-retirement visitor! We’ve only had one truly warm day, and we spent it by the pool. I wore my new bikini and watched her float, which I found quite relaxing – like other retirees watching birds only with people. Later, we went shopping, and she steered me toward one-piece swimsuits. I was reminded of this story, which I wrote a few years ago.

We lived in Alabama in the late 1980s. My sister-in-law came down from Maine to visit us. She had never been anywhere exciting, so we hopped in the car and drove to New Orleans for a weekend. We stayed in a room with two double beds.

I didn’t know her very well then, but we were getting acquainted fast. I discovered she has no filter — she says whatever she thinks.

It had been a long day, and we were chilling, getting ready to go out for dinner. My husband was in the bathtub. He often used to hang out in the tub and read. We called him Marat, after Jean-Paul, a notable of the French Revolution who had a skin disease and frequently soaked in medicinal baths. He was ultimately murdered in his bathtub. This fact will become relevant as the story unfolds.

The door to the bathroom was propped slightly open to let out some of the steam. My sister-in-law and I were trying to get dressed before Marat got out of the tub to avoid the awkward scene with his sister and his wife partially clothed.

I was naked, looking for underwear, when my sister-in-law popped her head up and said, “You know, Donna. I am amazed with all the walking and exercise you do, you still have so much cellulite on your butt.”

Marat’s ears perked up, and he realized no good could come of this. The tub was conveniently right next to the bathroom door, and he was facing the door, faucet down by his feet. He put the book down on the bathmat outside the tub. He s-l-o-w-l-y slunk down as low into the water as he could, and then s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d his left leg until he touched doorknob.

I heard a tap and then a slam! Mission accomplished. Marat had successfully barricaded himself from whatever was about to take place in the bedroom. This could get ugly.

Here’s the thing. I was pissed, and even though I remember the scene vividly many years later, sometimes my reactions in real time are almost stunted. I tell this story occasionally and everyone wants to know … what did you say? What did you say when she said you were packing a lot of cottage cheese for a so-called athlete?

I said, “I know. Go figure.”

And The Cellulite Wars were over. Marat was not murdered in the tub, but interestingly, he doesn’t take baths anymore. My sister-in-law and I went on to become good friends. She is a delightful person but still has no filter. I still walk and exercise, and I still have cellulite.

 

Facing the aging face

My sister-in-law arrived for a visit. I had not seen her in several years, and my first reaction at the airport was, wow, she looks fabulous! I couldn’t quite figure out the difference – a little thinner? A new hair color? I didn’t have to wonder for long. She was eager to show me the before and after pics. It would seem she’s had a little work done.

She just turned 60. For as long as I have known her, she hated the way her face sagged and often complained she had no cheekbones. She used to pull the skin up on her face tight to show me the potential. We called it mirror surgery. All that is history, because now she has only subtle middle-aged wrinkles and cheekbones that could knock out Mike Tyson. Yet, it looks entirely natural.

S-I-L has chronic health issues, so she made a vow of no cosmetic surgery. She said it would suck to live through her shit and then die getting a face lift. With two cancers behind me, I can relate. So, what was her magic? Injectables, fillers. No surgery, and she looks at least 10 years younger.

Typically, I am anti-whatever when it comes to doing anything in a feeble attempt to look younger. Until I saw her transformation, I hadn’t given wrinkles much thought. At 62, my face still looks OK to me, but upon further examination, I was shocked to discover my neck has more folds than Marie Kondo’s t-shirts.

Cosmetic intervention is tempting, but I’m probably not going to mess with it. The visible signs of aging actually don’t bother me much. And what other people think about my aging face doesn’t bother me at all. I’m happy with who I am, how I look and how I am living my life.

However, my opinion about “having a little work done” has changed. I felt proud and principled because I was going to leave my face alone no matter what. Big deal. If we’re lucky, we get to age and do what makes us happy. There’s no prize at the end for judging everyone else’s decisions.

How about you? Intervention or no intervention? There is no wrong answer.

I never learned to surf

As a kid, I loved growing up in California, but I hit escape velocity at 18 and never looked back. I had big dreams that over the years became small dreams, and one of them was to someday return.

I had pretty much given up on California when I got an interesting opportunity. I was working for a company in Texas, and there was a job that could be in Denver or in the San Francisco Bay Area. I wanted Denver, despite my dream, because I am practical and didn’t want to face the cost of living.

After the interview, they asked me if California was a deal breaker, and I said no even though it was because I knew they would never pay me enough money to live there.

The offer came for California. I cried and cried. Why me, why now? I’m too old to make this work. I turned it down, and they came back with more money. I turned it down again, and they came back with more money. It was still not enough to make it a slam dunk, but it was enough to make me think.

It was Labor Day weekend, and my husband and I were doing the math. Can we make this work? Once we accepted we would buy a house we could never pay off in our lifetime, it became possible. We said let’s do it.

We fell back in love with California and ultimately retired here. We found ourselves loving the farmer’s markets, wineries, warm days and cool nights. We brought our little teardrop trailer with us from Texas. We called it the toaster – and started to enjoy the local beauty on weekend camping trips.

Aside from the astronomical mortgage and a ridiculous commute, it felt like this was where we were supposed to be.

The summer before I retired and moved to a more affordable part of the state, we went camping at Jalama Beach in Santa Barbara County. We had a primo spot facing the ocean. We toasted at happy hour and said look at us, we have arrived! Camping on the beach in California.

The next day we sat on the beach watching the surfers, and an overwhelming sense of sadness washed over me. I’m from Southern California, not far from the beach. How come I never learned to surf? I guess because our family struggled to fulfill life’s basic needs, and we didn’t do extra things. My sister and I were encouraged to graduate from high school and not get pregnant.

As we get older, it’s easy to get caught up in what ifs and missed opportunities. We owe it to ourselves to do the hard work and move on. So, I turned my thoughts to surfing. About what it would be like to face down the ocean. To just step in there and paddle out to sea with little more than a board and courage. To bob around and then pick a wave and hope it’s the right one. To ride it until you fall and then get back up and try again.

And as the glorious California sun dropped down into the edge of the ocean, I realized I’ve been surfing all my life.

The working retiree

It appears I need a little work in my life. I was good at my job, and being good at something and getting paid for it gave me satisfaction. Now I’m doing what I love, mostly writing and playing golf, and neither one is fun if you have high expectations.

On a bright note, I also love to walk and have the whole one foot in front of the other thing mastered.

Many retirees still work. Sometimes you need the money, and sometimes you need validation beyond what you do for pleasure. Perhaps it’s up to each individual to define what retirement means to them. My definition is evolving.

I don’t want to work full-time if I can help it. I’ve saved a solid nest egg, but in addition to validation, it turns out I also like money coming in. I confess – even though I’ve written about changing my relationship with money – it is unsettling to see my checking account with no regular deposits.

As a communications professional, public relations work and writing are a good fit. After all, this was my career for 38 years, and I wasn’t quite ready to chuck it all. I just wanted a different lifestyle – not to be a slave to the job. More balance, more leisure. A chance to try different things and see what sticks.

So far, I’ve done a bit of consulting for a PR firm, and I like it. Writing this blog keeps me in the game, and what I’ve learned about social media platforms such as Instagram makes my brain hurt. As a wannabe cannabis advocate, I find this new world so interesting and am eager to learn more.

Engaging with the world on different terms is fun and exciting. But no lie, it’s hard to put yourself out there and risk personal failure or public indifference. It’s safer to retreat. But if we don’t try new things, the results are obvious. Nada. Trying at least opens the window of opportunity.

A bit of challenging work coupled with a relaxed lifestyle feels sort of perfect. I’ve thought about playing golf four or five times a week and calling it a day. But there are few psychological rewards for those of us who are addicted to the game but pretty much suck at it. Also, what if I became disabled? As we age, I think it’s important to mix the intellectual with the physical so no matter what happens, we can still have meaningful and relevant interests.

I’m planning to expand my consulting business, perhaps adding a client or two. Not enough work to ruin the bliss of retirement, but I just can’t stand the thought of going away quietly. I’ve always lived my life thinking about infinite possibilities for both work and pleasure, and I love thinking the best thing yet might be just around the corner.

A message of faith and hope

On April 1, 2015, I was in the hospital having my breasts amputated. Mastectomy is such a nice word, but the only thing nice about this procedure is its potential to cure or prevent cancer. I’m happy to be celebrating my three-year anniversary. For those of you who are celebrating Easter today, perhaps my message of faith and hope will resonate.

My first cancer came out of nowhere. I was 43 years old and having vague abdominal pain. I already had a hysterectomy due to painful periods and wanted to be done with all that. My ovaries were removed during that operation. No ovaries but weird stuff going on. I had an exploratory surgery where they go in with a scope through the naval, and that’s when they found cancer.

The doctor said it was ovarian, which kind of blew me away, but it turns out a small percentage of women will get a kind of cancer almost identical to ovarian even without ovaries. That would be me. It’s officially called Primary Peritoneal Cancer (PPC). Most days I just say ovarian, although they are distinct.

It was advanced. Stage 3, Grade 3. The five-year survival rate is about 25-30 percent. The treatment was surgery to remove the tumors and other miscellaneous parts and then six months of chemotherapy. Following the chemo, I had another surgery to see if microscopic cancer remained. I was clear, and here I am, 18 years later with no recurrences.

I never thought about breast cancer, assuming my earlier cancer was a fluke. But I did go every year for a mammogram, and in 2015, it came back with a suspicious mass. After additional tests, I was diagnosed with Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), which means the cells that line the milk ducts of the breast have become cancer, but they have not spread into surrounding breast tissue. DCIS is considered non-invasive or pre-invasive breast cancer.

If you’re going to get breast cancer, this is the one you want. Standard treatment is lumpectomy and radiation. However, I had that nasty history, so after all these years, it occurred to the doctors I should be genetically tested. It came back positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation. As the genetic counselor explained it to me, this mutation caused both my cancers and puts me at higher risk of cancer maybe forever.

The doctor advised me to have a bilateral mastectomy, and I agreed. It’s about reducing risk. I also decided not to get reconstruction or wear a prosthesis. I choose to be flat. You can read about that decision here.

In the early years after my first cancer, I had boatloads of check-ups because of the high recurrence rate. Now I go for check-ups twice a year, where they poke around and draw some blood to test for a cancer antigen that could indicate a recurrence.

That’s my cancer story in a nutshell. There are stories within the story, and I will probably write about them at some point. I was unlucky to get cancer but very lucky to survive it. As for the BRCA mutation, no one else in the family had ovarian or breast cancer. My relatives were tested after my diagnosis, and no one came back positive. The best we can figure is that I inherited it from my father, who had prostate cancer in his 50s but died many years ago from something else.

No cancer is good. And there are plenty of other terrible ailments that plague people and have nothing to do with cancer. If you are suffering, I know it’s a struggle to stay positive, but I always had faith as long as I was still alive, I would grow and learn and love and find happiness no matter what. You just keep going.

As for hope, I believe somebody, somewhere beats the odds and from day one, I said, “Why can’t it be me?”