The Year of the ’63 Babies. BRING IT ON!!!

If I work too hard at looking forward to my 50th Birthday, I’ll probably have a crash-and-burn depression like when I turned 40. I’ll try to let what comes, come, but I am SO EXCITED! And for all of you, too, my friends spread out all over the country, the world. Let us be full of joy for our 50ths. I know some of you are having your day this very month.

I’ve been thinking about this one for a few days now. I knew it when I was 7 years old. I believed the story my friend told me about the song being about her father, whose name was, of course, Frank Mills.

What a gull-a-bull. What a nin-cow-poop. What a maroon.

By high school, my friends and I learned the lyrics, again, by heart and sang it and sang it at the top of our lungs. The Milos Forman movie came out and I saw it at least twice in the theater.

In posting this, please know you are being spared my hammy self singing it for you on my mac.

Just him

So many more good songs. I am sure they’ll show up on my blog throughout the year. It all still feels so pertinent to me, being a kid in the consciousness-raising ’60s. The hippies, the environment, TV, Viet Nam, Walter Cronkite. Oh yeah.

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Christmas, The Who

The Who’s album Tommy was one of the first rock ‘n’ roll experiences of my young life.

Growing up in Detroit, we all listened to CKLW, sure, but that was Motown and all the pop hits of the day. I doubt there was much hardcore British Invasion. I specifically remember the song Winchester Cathedral and thinking it was cool, very cool. I would stand on my bed and play my tiny suitcase like a guitar and sing that song. At least I think that really happened.

I remember being a young girl when I first saw the album Tommy and paging through its mind-blowing, well, pages. When I was about 4 years old, an English woman, named Linda, who must have been in her 20s, came to live with our family. We sort of sponsored her, as she was a nursing student at the same school in Detroit where my mother was also studying to become an LPN. Linda had a cache of albums, 2 of which I can still picture in my mind. The album I am sure about is Tommy, but I couldn’t tell you without some research what the other one was. It must have been 1969 or 1970.

Say what you will, but no one writes rock lyrics like this any more (as if anyone ever really did; by which I mean, very few bands were able. The Beatles come to mind for pure poetry though….)

waking up on Christmas morning, hours before the winter sun’s ignited

it’s sort of beautiful, you know?

Fast Forward: 2011. Daltry is 67 years old in this video, which is amazing in and of itself. He’s accompanied by Pete Townshends’s [much younger] brother Simon who does a DAMN FINE job on this song. He looks and sounds so much like Pete.

What a bod on that Simon. Where has he been all my life? Oh, right, I’m almost as old as he.

I get a little weak in my knees (and I’m sitting down) when I watch him, which I seem compelled to do over and over and over…..

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scale

When I was a little girl in the ’70s, I did not have a scale like the one pictured above.

We seemed to have had the one same bathroom scale forever. It was green, rectangular, and the numbers sort of looked like the ones above, but their little window was rectangular, not ovoid (oval?). But maybe that is wrong. The scale was made of metal. I am sure it didn’t work with any accuracy for at least the last 20 years that my mother had it.

After my father died, my mother moved from a place they had in Toledo to a condo in a suburb of Detroit. After she lived there for about 8 years, she moved again to a condo near us in Stow, Ohio. All this time, she still had that crazy green scale. The mucilaged laminate-covering was starting to peel off at the edges.

It was completely wonky, but I would still get on it every time I used the upstairs bathroom in her condo. I loved the sound it made when I got on it, metal and weights, mechanical movement. I loved the way the numbers took their time going around and finally came to center and I loved the way it was completely wrong. I don’t remember what I weighed on it, but it was not correct. I weighed between 138 and 142 my whole adult life after college and before kids. That’s what I do remember. Maybe my mom’s scale read 135. Maybe it read 155. Who knows, who remembers these things, and why?

I know I had a scale in Kent because that is where I had my pregnancies and babies and I know I weighed myself a lot at that time. I just don’t know what scale we had. Did it break? Did we move it to Massachusetts with us? Did I throw it out, donate it?

Right now, we don’t own a scale. We had one that I really liked, a sort of minimalist glass thing with digital numbers. According to Paul, the thing never worked. I must have bought it at Target, but was it here in Massachusetts or back in Ohio?

it wasn’t this model, but you get the idea

I had to ask the company to send some part for it because it didn’t work right. I think I did that twice. It needed a little watch battery in order to function and I replaced it often, or as often as I thought I should according to the fact that Paul said it didn’t work.

The great thing about the scale not being accurate is that it measured low. So I always thought I weighed less than I really did. What a shock to get to the doctor’s office and weigh around 5 pounds more than I did at home. I always attributed this to being clothed, but we know clothes only weigh about 2 or 3 pounds, maybe 4 in the winter, at least for someone around 5′ 5″ like me.

In each of my pregnancies, I gained 25 pounds. Textbook. I noticed that the very tiniest women gained the most weight. I knew one gal who gained 80 pounds. But that stuff comes right off on those teeny gals.

I took all of my pregnancy weight off after Violet in one week. That is because I was very dehydrated. I slowly gained 8 pounds back and eventually took it off again.

After Annie, I gained a lot of new fat. So even though I eventually weighed 142 again, I had fat on my hips and thighs that remains today. I have never liked it.

Eventually, I got my flat belly back, even after Annie. Until I became anemic in 2006. That was the end of my youthful belly.

When I was anemic and I was seeing my old acupuncturist, she told me that the Chinese say a woman should gain 10 pounds after the age of 40. Is this something I wanted to hear or not? I think about it often. She also said you should never try to lose weight after the age of 40 because you need it as you age and start to waste. This is exactly what Susun Weed says. I saw it happen to my grandmother and I have seen it happen to my mother.

My acupuncturist at that time also told me that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, you don’t weigh yourself. Your weight is none of your business.

I think the point is to use food as medicine and to live a healthy life full of natural movement, warmth, and fresh air. Oh, and sex. I don’t think I’ve ever been to an acupuncturist who didn’t ask me if I was having regular sex.

I know it’s creepy to post this image after talking about sex. My job is not to keep you comfortable.

tres moderne, n’est-ce pas?

The thing that was creepiest about other people’s bathrooms when I was growing up was if their bathroom toilet had a semi-circle of shag carpet on the floor in front of it. Then, a matching toilet seat cover and a matching scale cover. Usually, these were a very dark green. You know of what I speak.

This was the same time that Harvest Gold, Avocado, and Burnt Orange were the most popular kitchen colors.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but since pee tends to splatter to some degree in any bathroom, weren’t those shag fibers simply pee-absorbers? And why wouldn’t you do the German thing and wash your bathroom once a week on your hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water and rags instead?

I don’t know why I am being so confessional and nostalgic, but all week, I have been thinking about that green scale.

This may be the scale that comes closest to the one in my memory. I probably would have killed for a pink one.

All the scales I find at Target in the last 6 years or so are crap. Made in China of crap, by crappy companies who don’t know anything about Traditional Chinese Medicine anyway. I know I’d have to order a doctor’s scale for about a hundred and fifty bucks if I wanted an accurate scale. But even the doctor’s office nowadays has given up the beauty of metal weights for digitized numbers. You even have to plug the thing in.

I found photos of a neon pink scale on google images. And I found lots of photos of naked pregnant women and let me tell you, that is a wild ride.

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something fishy

(This Is Not My Fridge)

(this fridge costs 2700 smackaroos)

Something smells funny in my new fridge.

All of these not-made-to-last appliances are overpriced. Every one of them. Already, the handle to the freezer door won’t stay on and the freezer-light mechanism does not always properly activate.

But that smell. I have not yet put a box of baking soda in the fridge. Maybe that will help.

My friend back in Kent, Ohio said they had a bad smell in the house.

She was playing the Ouija (©) and it said something about kitchen sink or sponge and kitchen cabinet or sponge under sink (I’ve never played, so I don’t know how much it can spell out). Or maybe she asked a psychic what the smell was and the psychic told her remove the sponge that is under the kitchen sink.

Anyway, she removed a sponge (which she says was new and odorless) and the smell left the house.

Maybe my refrigerator is cursed or haunted. I had a weird haunted goat-walking-man dream last night. Maybe that is why my fridge smells.

This goat-man is scary, but also a bit debonair. My goat man was very evil and was trying to walk upright and not doing a very good job of it. He was wearing blue jeans. He really couldn’t pull off the human walk. He didn’t fool me, but the little goat he was abusing who followed obsequiously behind was under his evil power.

Why does fridge have a d but refrigerator doesn’t? Learning to spell in English is so trying!

I think I better get my facts straight on that smelly house story. It was told to me only once and at least 20 years ago. I’ve undoubtedly embellished.

If I had a pink 1950s fridge, I don’t think I’d have this problem. Then again, remember those ice cube trays that were such a pain-in-the-ass (these lasted up into the ’60s, maybe early ’70s even)? What a mess, all the ice shattered all over the counter and it tasted like metal. No wonder women wanted to stick their heads into their pink ovens with the gas on.

Still, one has nostalgia for these kinds of things.

It never occurred to me that Ouija is OUI and JA: YES YES. Not only that, but it seems to imply that the French and the Germans are very agreeable.

I thought the Ouija is always answering yes and no. A OUINON board would probably be too close to the French for onion (l’oignon). Or NEINJA would be too much like Ninja.

If anyone out there has any suggestions about my fridge smell, please leave a comment. I need all the help I can get. I don’t even have a job.

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Thankful Thursday–Old Fan, New Fan

I’m feeling a little off today and thought I might need to bitch, rant, and curse. This is why I need forced gratitude.

Something happened recently–I think I missed the last time I’ll ever have my period, IN MY LIFE! This has been part of me for 34 years, and POOF, it’s gone. I think it’s been over 3 months. But if you know anything about menopause, you know that at least it’s unpredictable. A woman could never know it would be her last period. There’s no goodbye to plan for, just waiting to see if any blood will come again.

Look, I know it’s not popular to talk about menstrual blood, but fuck it. Those stupid ads where a pad is shown absorbing water. It’s like it’s a fucking diaper or something. But as Paul says, what do you want them to do, show real blood? Maybe, I think.

I told my acupuncturist that I was sad because maybe I didn’t get to say goodbye to my period and she said maybe my body will hear this and I’ll get my period again with a vengeance. Funny.

The other thing is that at 48, I’m jealous of my friends who are 54 and 55 who still bleed. This makes me older than they are on some level, you know. Fuck it.

The washing machine blips at me

I am in the kitchen, you in your “new” office in the basement

Annie in her own bed (for once)

I need to be grateful, making my lists

So what do I love today?

Fans, old metal fans

If I could understand physics at all, I would know why this design never goes out of style

curved metal petals in a ring around the center to push the air along

I think of fronds and woven grasses on the ceilings of huts in hot places

I had this huge old metal fan that probably my own family got used (that’s how my dad was) and I used it for a long time.

In our old circa 1920 house, you could stick the thing right in the window and it was beautiful. In this house, the windows are too narrow with no sill and short (about 18″ high, if that) and they only open to 45 degrees.  But I used to prop the monster right on the floor to move the air through our stupid long ranch-house anyway. Clearly, the thing needed some attention–the cord and motor were pretty rickety–and because it weighed a ton, it would clank and bang against my legs when I carried it up from the basement. So I found this older guy in Northampton who still knew a thing or two about metal, motors, and repairable small electrics. He fixed it, for all of about 15 bucks. Ed. His shop is so cluttered, dark, and dusty, I don’t know how he breathes or moves around the lamps and hand-mixers and toasters without knocking everything over or how he knows what he’s fixed or not. He wears a big button-down shirt, full open to his large tanned belly, and he has piercing blue eyes in his large face.

Anyway, I brought the hulking beast (the fan, not Ed) home, set it up on the floor. That motor was so damn powerful, it’d knock over a lamp. But I walked away for about a minute and the damn thing started sparking and set the [45-year old] carpet on fire. That was it. I had to let it go.

I still have a large metal box fan that I bought at a tag sale in Stow, Ohio for ten bucks. It works pretty well and Ed fixed the cord on it, too. Just a little afraid to use it…

Those were the days, hunh?

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