The old gray mare she ain't what she used to be

We have had three days of very cold and windy weather, here in central Maine.  Saturday night, all day Sunday, and Sunday night it was a matter of “gale force winds,” as they say, up to 51 miles an hour in nearby Augusta.   Even today, though it has been sunny (Saturday and Sunday It was overcast, and on again off again snow) it has remained cold and windy.  A number of the windows in my house have improperly-fitting storm windows, that have rumbled mournfully; and at times the house has even shaken.  I’ve been very glad that I went out early Saturday morning and stocked up on groceries, so that I didn’t have to go out at all yesterday or today.  (It’s been a three day weekend – God’s gift to the working stiff – which is why I didn’t have to venture out to work today.)

However.  I’ve been cold.  My little house appears to have virtually no insulation; it only feels warm while the furnace is running.  And I had checked the oil tank on Saturday, and was dismayed to see that the indicator hovered just above 1/8 full.  I had oil delivered less than a month ago, and while I didn’t have it filled (no way I could afford to have it filled), I would have expected the 100 gallons that were delivered to last longer than this.  So I was trying to be frugal Saturday and Sunday, not pushing the thermostat too high, wearing my wool leggings under my jeans, and two sweaters on the top half of me, in an effort to keep warm.  I was hoping to be able to avoid calling for more oil until Thursday (the company delivers to Gardiner on Mondays and Thursdays), but by last night I knew this was unrealistic.  A Starving Librarian I might be, but it was ridiculous to be freezing in my own home, when I wasn’t living in Afghanistan, or on welfare in this country.  

So early this morning I called Augusta Fuel, and ordered 200 gallons.  And since it was delivered I haven’t hesitated to turn the thermostat up.

But here’s the thing.  It seems to me that in general I am feeling the cold more than I used to.  It’s always been an obvious chilly in this house, in the wintertime, but I don’t recall being made as uncomfortable as I’ve been this winter.  I have two sets of friends who, years ago, fled the cold and snow of the Northeast for balmy California.  But I have always felt comfortable with both cold and snow, and have had no desire whatsoever to relocate to more temperate climes. But in the last couple of years serious, heavy-duty snow-shoveling has simply gotten beyond me – thank the gods for the rather creepy young man who knocked on my door one day last year and offered to dig me out; he has continued to do so, at $10 a whack – and now I’m finding the cold harder to deal with.  The Aging Body Syndrome, asserting itself in a new and exciting way?   Malta, here I come?

Let it roll!

Well, I just got up because I couldn't sleep -- a not-infrequent occurrence these days, since I tend to consume coffee and Diet Dr. Pepper to keep me going all day, then find it keeps me awake at night -- and I turned on the T.V., just to see what there might be, not expecting much at 11:30 on a Saturday night.  And there, on Maine PBS's Front Row Center, were the vestiges of the old Canadian rock group from the '70s,  Bachman-Turner Overdrive, i.e., [Randy] Bachman and [Fred] Turner, singing and playing their aging hearts out.  It was terrific!  I stood there, bobbing up and down, while these two old guys and the rest of their re-invented band sang, full-throttle, LET IT ROLL...DOWN THE HIGHWAY...LET IT ROLL...DOWN THE HIGHWAY!  Then they sang another of their old hits, Takin' Care of Business, and the audience, all on their feet, were bouncing up and down and singing along.  Great fun.

I've gotten sort of jaded about aging rock stars continuing to tour, or trying to tour again, after a silence of many years.  We get a lot of such acts up here in Maine, unable, apparently, to attract more current acts.  For example, the Beach Boys 50th Reunion Concert (which has received scathing reviews) is coming to Bangor on June 22nd (tickets are being offered at 50 % off, I notice).  As Brian Wilson himself has said, "We're fucking 70 years old, man!" Exactly.  Time for rock stars to be (or stay) retired.

But Bachman & Turner showed me tonight that you can be at least pushing 70, and still have what it takes, in the world of rock music.  They had energy, high spirits, voice, and great guitar playing.  I've talked before about the allure of the guitar for my generation (see Note of Nov. 29, 2008), and here it was again: the guitar, in all its pulsating glory; I loved watching Randy Bachman's fingers fly up and down those frets.  As Lionel's father is always saying in As Time Goes By, "Rock on!"

By the way, I recently discovered that I had done a draft of my review of HBO'S version of Game of Thrones, but had failed to post it.  It is now posted, but at the date when it was originally done, April 26, 2012.  So take a look, if you're interested.

Learning a thing or two from a snob

I'm reading an interesting book right now, Past Imperfect, by Julian Fellowes, the "fellow" who wrote the screenplays for that Masterpiece Classic series everybody loves, Downton Abbey. Initially I didn't think the book was going to be so interesting, mainly because the tone of the narrator was almost insufferably stuffy. It's about a group of upper-class young people in the London Season of 1968, who were participating in a tradition that was beginning to be touched by the radical changes of the late 60s/early 70s, even as it clung to the "old ways," and certainly the old attitudes, that went back generations. The story deals with particular events during that season, in flashbacks from the present, when the narrator is a reasonably successful writer with an unsatisfying personal life, who is called upon by one of the young men he knew back then -- now filthy rich, and dying -- to try to find out which of several possible women was the mother of the child that this no-longer-young man believes he has out there somewhere.

As I said, initially i was put off by the snobbishness that seemed to ooze from the author as much as the narrator, as well as by the almost-constant habit of the author (narrator) of adding little philosophical asides to every bit of action, practically every bit of dialog.

But gradually I began to be won over by the insightfulness of many of the narrator's observations. For example, at one point, when the narrator is telling his elderly father about this task he has taken on, and how distressing he has found the lives of some of the women he has been visiting, the father is disapproving, for an intesting reason. "You've been made to go back into your own past, and compare it with your present. You've been forced to remember what you wanted from life at nineteen, forty years ago, before you knew what life was....Eventually, in old age, almost everyone with any brains must come to terms with the disappoint-ment of life, but this is very early for you to make that discovery."

And of course this is true, as I and so many of my peers have been discovering over the past few years, as we've realized our youthful dreams are never going to come true, as we have grappled with accepting that we simply have not been able to make our lives turn out the way we wanted them, that we are not now in the place we thought we would be at this time of our lives (retired for example! How many of us can retire?!)

Another example, on the subject of social survival-of-the fittest: "It is a fact that in the brutal periods of history, what changes is not the cutting edge of every new market, or the ambition that drives a new factory owner or new hostess, or a new conquest from the performing stage... All that is constant. It is the level of coasting that goes on behind the bright and harsh facade that is different. In a gentle era -- and my youth was passed in a fairly gentle era -- people could drift by...at every level of society. Jobs were found for them. Homes were arranged. Someone's uncle sorted it out. Someone's mother put in a word. But when things get tough, when, as now, the prizes are bigger but the going is rougher, the weaklings are elbowed aside until they fall back and slip over the cliff. Unskilled workers or stupid landowners alike, they are crushed by a system they cannot master..."

Certainly that is what is happening today, with so many people out of work, lacking the skills and education the jobs that are out there are demanding, in stark contrast to 1965, when an 18-year-old girl with absolutely no experience and only a high school diploma could apply for what she thought was a clerk-typist position, and find herself hired as a trainee assistant buyer at a major department store. But now...40 years on, desperate as that same girl is, has been for much of the past six years, for a different, a more satisfying, and better paying job, she has lacked, in particular, the computer experience and savvy that all libraries are demanding these days, and which all the young whipper-snappers fresh out of library school have in plenty.

To a certain extent Past Imperfect is at its best when comparing that past, "gentler" period with today. For example, on the public drunkenness that is so common in Britain today: "It's not often that I walk at night, though more from laziness than fear, but when I do I am amazed at the changes that have come about in London during my adult lifetime, the main one being...not the muggings and the general crime, not even the dirt and uncollected rubbish...It is the drunkenness that has transformed the streets, not just of London but of almost every town, into a lesser hell for lawful citizens. The kind of drunken-ness that in years gone by used to be talked of in Siberia at the height of Stalin's iron rule as a reflection of the misery of the oppressed... Why did it happen here? I used to think it was a class thing, but it isn't..."

And at another point, as he talks about the thrill he and his friends experienced when they realized that the Spencer Davis Group -- most famous because of its lead singer, Stevie Wynwood -- were actually playing live at this particular dance: "We are a jaded people, these days. We see film stars and singers and every other permutation of fame wherever we go; indeed sometimes, judging by the magazines, it seems that more people are famous than not. But this wasn't true in 1968, and to be in the same room as a real-live band playing and singing its own hit number...was to be inside a fantasy. Even Lucy was silenced, if not for long. 'Can you believe it?' she said. I couldn't. We were sweet, really."

And yes, really, they, and we, were.

*All quotes from Fellowes, Julian. Past Imperfect. New York, St. Martin's Press, c2008.

Potpourri

Lots of things to talk about. First, it's been a gorgeous day, a perfect day, here in central Maine, the third in a row. A few weeks ago we had several days of false spring, when we all got excited because it was sunny, and the temperatures got up into the 70s, even 80 degrees one day. But we all knew that wouldn't last, and we were all right; there followed several weeks of coolish, often overcast (though rarely rainy; we are way behind on our rain quotient) weather, when we were all still wearing turtle necks, jackets and gloves. But the last three days have reassured us: yes, spring does always come 'round at last, even in Maine. I actually wore a skirt and sandals without stockings when I went out to run my errands today.

Now, as to those errands. One of them was to buy salt and pepper shakers. I can't even remember when last I had a salt & pepper set; for literally years I've just bought the little cardboard sets you can get at the supermarket. The problem with that was that the salt would always run out long before the pepper, so I'd be collecting pepper shakers in the cabinet, in order to keep myself in salt. My friend Susan did give me the cutest little salt and pepper mills a couple of Christmases ago, which I do love, but milled salt isn't always what I want; that is, I'm often looking for more finely-grained salt than you can get from a mill (besides which it always seemed to be the case that when I would grab for them they'd be empty, and I'd fume while I fumbled to get them refilled, while the whatever was cooking on the stove).

So anyway, I've been looking for weeks at places like the Goodwill Store, K-Mart, Target, Reny's (the wonderfully old-fashioned department store we have here in Maine) for a not-too-expensive set that wasn't boring. Today, as I was driving to Staples to buy ink cartridges for my printer, I passed the Bed and Bath store and the light bulb went on in my head: hey, they should certainly have salt and pepper sets. And they did, but most of them were, alas, boring; but then I found the last remaining Bear Set! A Maine black bear sitting on its rear end, holding a small shaker in each arm. Kitsch as all get out -- the sort of thing I normally do not go for at all -- but it charmed me, no doubt at least partly because of all the too-big, too-expensive, too bland shaker sets I've looked at lately.

So that was the successful part of my outing. The less successful part was connected to my constant, constant, constant inability to remember things. When I decided I would have to go buy ink cartridges I had the fleeting thought that I should take the used ones I have, to turn them in for reward coupons (although the last reward coupon I received, for $6, I forgot to use before the deadline...) However, in the event, I forgot to take them with me; thought of it as I was pulling out of the parking lot at the local drugstore, where I'd gone first, in hopes that they'd have the ink cartridges I needed, so I wouldn't have to drive all the way to Augusta. I was about five minutes from home, but simply did not feel up to adding to the driving I was about to have to do (I had also done a lot of running around yesterday), by going back for the old cartridges; would just have to turn them in another time.

And here's the big thing: I shouldn't have had to go get ink cartridges at all today, because I went to Staples yesterday, to get something for work (can't now remember what it was!), and I had the thought, oh, I should get ink for my home printer while I'm there. But I realized I wasn't sure what the number of the cartridges was. Pretty sure, but not absolutely sure; I simply could not remember, for sure. And mind you, I've had this printer a good two years, have bought ink cartridges for it innumerable times...but I couldn't remember the number.

I do despair. I know we all joke about our Senior Moments, and Nora Ephron has made lots of money making us laugh as she describes how She Remembers Nothing. I just can't seem to maintain a sense of humor about constantly not being able to remember, having to constantly look for things because I can't remember where I've laid them down (this happens on average about six times a day), constantly discovering I've missed deadlines at work, failed to do this that or the other thing that needs doing, despite the To Do Lists, and all the giant notes all over the place. I REMEMBER NOTHING!! And alas, it really isn't funny.

Role reversal

Not really able to do much in the way of blog postings right now, because I am currently in San Antonio, helping my sister care for my mother who, at the age of 81 1/2, is making her final journey, dying of lung cancer. Many, many of us baby boomers are in this position these days. If our parents aren't actually in the process of dying from some form of cancer, they are still undergoing the relentless deteri-oration of aging, requiring special care and attention.

As in other families, our situation is complicated by the fact that we are spread out, geographically, and all of us are financially chal-lenged, so that traveling forth and back is not an easy matter. In-deed, my status as Starving Librarian has been especially frustrating for me during this past year, when my mother (and one of my brothers, who also became ill) needed so much; and I could do so little.

A few years ago I watched my father die a slow death, and it was grueling and heartbreaking. Now I am seeing my mother in the same position. To see your once strong, healthy, energetic parents reduced to frailty and incapacitation, to a state where they don't want to have to move because it will cause pain, and require more energy than they have, is of course distressing. And maintaining the necessary patience, stamina and cheerfulness when helping them is very draining.

We all jokingly say things like, Well, I guess it's payback time, and Everything that goes around comes around; and we know that in fact this is true. But one big difference between our parents dealing with smelly diapers and cranky babies and everything else that went with rearing us, is that they were living in the same house, not 1400 miles away. And the beings to whom they were dedicating so much time and energy, to whom they were giving care, were every day growing, developing, becoming more human; they were waxing, not waning. Our parents were watching, tending, something hopeful, something with the potential for giving joy, if also, at times, heartache and worry. Watching, tending a parent who is dying is, at best, a matter of sadness; at worst, of exhaustion and depression.

I am amazed by my sister, as she has been dealing with this for over two months, and there was a lot of care in the previous year, as Mother had to be shuttled to doctors and hospitals and have endless things done for her even when she was still able to live on her own. The other siblings and I have been taking turns helping, but J is always here, determinedly patient, conjoling or firm as required, performing the same relentless and unpleasant tasks day after day, no matter how she feels. There is almost always one such in every family, the one who is there, and does what must be done.

The rest of us do what we can, and think "I'm never going to get that old," or (those of us out there with the money), "I'm making arrange-ments for long-term care right now."

Exercise for the mind

Watching The Brain Fitness Program on public television (which is the only television I get, since I don’t subscribe to cable or satellite T.V., and the PBS station is the only one my rabbit ears pick up), I learn that the secret to keeping the brain, i.e., the mind, in good shape as one ages is, basically, learning. And more than learning new information, learning new skills, learning, and performing, new tasks.

Exactly what most of us resist doing, as we age. I’ve had to learn to do many new things in my current job and, I fear, have more often hated it than not. Actually, I’ve never been crazy about learning how to do things, though I have always loved learning new information. Technology, especially, has been the source of endless frustration and hissy-fits on my part, though I have done what I had to do, because one does. But according to the brain fitness experts, it is exactly this kind of attempt to master new tasks that maintains the brain’s neuroplasticity, which is needed to keep one not only mentally astute, but engaged in life, hopeful, even cheerful.

I can see this. I have watched myself becoming less and less engaged over the past few years, less and less inclined to put myself out at all, in order to do something. I found myself a cozy, comfortable little house, where all the irritants of previous domiciles had pretty much disappeared, and I didn’t want to leave it to go “do things.” Granted, the main reason I do so little these days is lack of discretionary funds, along with the lack of someone to accompany me, and a distressing lack of physical energy, both mentioned in earlier Notes. But stirred into the mix is a lack of interest.

It would seem that what is happening is my brain is getting stiff, along with the rest of my body. Loosening it up – or maintaining its plasticity, as the experts on the T.V. program kept saying – would presumably help to loosen up the rest of me, would help me regain some of my youthful enthusiasm and adventurous spirit. I should add that if somebody said come on, let’s go to Italy, or Nepal, or Finland (even with the America-inspired school shootings they’ve had lately), or western Canada, or Montana, or you-name-it, I would be ready in a shot. There is still nothing I would rather do than travel. But...just to give you one small example...I had registered to attend a meeting sponsored by the Maine Democratic Party in Lewiston last night. Angus King, a former governor of Maine, was going to talk about Barak Obama’s energy policy (one of the women I work with said ‘Barak Obama doesn’t have an energy policy,’ but that’s what I wanted to find out). Wednesday is the day of the week I am able to leave work earlier. I could have come home, taken a little nap, gotten up and had a bite to eat, made the 40-minute drive to downtown Lewiston for the meeting at 7, gotten home 9-ish. But it didn’t happen. Once I was home I just couldn’t make myself go out again, couldn’t face those two 40-minute drives, one after dark (when I don’t see well). I took a three-hour nap instead. This is not being engaged.

This is despite all that wrestling with technology I've been doing for the past couple of years. So maybe you have to be interested in the tasks you're learning, for it to be really beneficial? Maybe I need to take up...step dancing? Skeet-shooting? Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance?

To color or not to color

All right, enough of this heavy-duty philosophizing; let’s talk about something trivial. Like coloring ones hair. Although as a matter of fact, I take that subject fairly seriously, mainly because it represents that ol’ double standard that has always driven me crazy. Women in our society feel compelled to color their hair in order to continue looking young, which is equated with being attractive, while most men (these days there are exceptions) feel no such compulsion; and indeed, would be appalled at the thought of coloring their hair. Wouldn’t be manly.

It is women who spend so much time and money hiding the reality of the physical changes taking place as they age. (This includes other things besides hair, but right now we’re talking about hair.) Because if they don’t...well, I think of poor Barbara Bush, and all the “She looks like his mother!” comments that, I believe, sprang from her head of silvery-white hair, in contrast to her husband’s youthful brown locks, with just that bit of grey at the temples that made him look “distinguished.” After all, she was an attractive woman, with a pleasant face. I’m sure, had she colored her hair, no one would have thought she looked older than her husband.

Or...can you imagine an actress being able to continue playing romantic leads – playing anything other than mothers in aprons – if she allowed her naturally grey hair to show, the way Steve Martin and Richard Gere did? An actress with grey hair can’t play anything that suggests sex. I think it’s all part of the deeply ingrained cultural taboo against sleeping with ones mother. A lady with grey hair smacks too much of Mother!

I myself have been a “bottle blond” for about twenty years now, and before that I was a bottle brunette for three or four years, when the grey began to appear in my Basic Brown hair, and I decided it was way too early for that. So for many years, every couple of months or so I have engaged in the tedious, time-consuming business of applying some smelly gunk to my hair, then walking around looking a fright for 45 minutes while it “set.”

A few months ago I reached “a certain age,” and made the decision to stop coloring my hair. See what happened. See what it looked like au naturel. I already knew the entire front was a pretty white, and thought it wouldn’t be too bad if it all looked that way, though I suspected that it wouldn’t (and it doesn’t look like it’s going to). I mainly did this because I thought, “Who am I kidding?” For many years I looked younger than my age, then I began to look approximately my age, but for the last few years, thanks to degradations in the neck/chin/jowls regions, I’ve looked exactly my age (despite my mother’s insistence to the contrary). And just how appropriate was it for a 61-year-old woman to have blond hair? One might say, it doesn’t matter how old you get to be, you have the right to make your hair whatever color you want. And of course I do, but why would I want it to be any color other than the color it naturally is? Why would I want to continue going to that trouble and expense? The reason up to now has been: in order not to look old, in order to be as attractive as possible. Which actually meant, in order to be attractive to the opposite sex. But given the aforementioned physical degradation...

So does all this mean I’ve just given up on the idea of being attractive to the opposite sex? Well, I don’t think it’s just a matter of that (and, you know, hope does spring eternal). There’s also the fact that I don’t want to seem pathetic. Look at her, trying to look young. Who does she think she’s kidding? I recall seeing a picture of Ginger Rogers some years before she died, and there she was with her fat, heavily made-up, late-middle-aged face, and all that flowing blond hair. Pathetic was definitely the word that came to mind.

I don’t want to look pathetic, so I guess I’ll settle for looking like someone’s mother. Or...maybe not.