musings

Two More Weeks

~ MaryG ~ 4 Comments

Two more weeks until Election Day. I can’t believe it’s been FOUR years since Pantsuit Nation got the crushing news that America is way WAY more racist and misogynistic than we thought. (It turns out Black people were already well aware of this and were not terribly surprised that the pussy-grabbing reality TV star won, but it sure was a massive shock to the rest of us.)

So, here we are, after 7 months of COVID-19 lockdown with 220,000+ dead and no end in sight. We all want Trump to lose by a HUGE margin, so that he won’t be able to dispute the results and start a Civil War. We need the Senate too, especially now that the Supreme Court will be so conservative. (Amy Coney Barrett terrifies me even more than Brett “I like beer” Kavanaugh, because I think she’s smart and her worldview was formed in some sort of extreme Catholic sect.)

I’ve already voted, sent postcards to swing state voters, annoyed my social media friends with numerous political posts, and made sure my kids and their friends got registered to vote. I’ve taken action on local legislation that will hopefully protect my state if Roe v Wade gets overturned. I even went to Town Meeting to vote for a Climate Action Resolution. It really feels like there’s nothing left to do but wait and worry.

Sometimes I think it helps to imagine the worst, so you can let it go—like writing a letter that you’ll never send. (Picture the worst.) OK, that just can’t happen.

Postcards to Florida Democrats

Why Blog?

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

I’ve periodically kept diaries and journals over the years.  (I have a whole crate of them in the attic.)  At one point, in my 30s, I read through them all in an attempt to figure out my own personal “theology.”  (I did this for a class led by a minister at my Unitarian Universalist church.)

One embarrassing thing that I had forgotten about myself became clear as I read through those old journals: I was a cheater.  I had been caught numerous times in school passing notes or looking at other people’s papers.  Ouch!

Another thing I learned/remembered was that there was one song that had made a particularly big impression on me.  Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young,” which was released in 1978, basically became my life’s permission slip to blow-off some of the more restrictive tenants of the Catholic Church.  (Google the lyrics and imagine yourself a heretofore “nice” Catholic teenager.)

So why blog?  I mean…it’s public.  Why not just keep journaling – in private?

I guess the answer for me is permanence and connection.

All my old journals could easily get tossed out in the next move, or ruined by the next interior water mishap…or God forbid, burned in a fire.  (Our attic, home of my old box of journals, narrowly escaped a lightning strike last year!  See photo.)  If you put your thoughts on-line, they’re basically permanent.  I realize I may come to regret that, but at the moment I like the idea of having some sort of permanent record that I existed and had thoughts.

The idea that someone else might read my blog, and perhaps relate to it in some way, is also appealing.  As someone who was born and came of age in the pre-internet world, it sometimes seems sad that people are now so glued to their various screens.  Still, I’ve come to understand that meaningful human interaction and connection can and does happen on-line.  Some people seem to find great joy sharing their lives on Facebook and other social media.  I thought blogging might be like that, but with just a bit more room to expand.

Lightening strike
My son in front of a tree that was struck by lightning in our front yard in August 2015.

 

Flu Fail

~ MaryG ~ Leave a comment

For several years now, I have been getting a flu “shot” in the fall and it seems to be working. I haven’t had the flu, or even a bad winter cold, for years. I’m a believer. I love vaccines! But here’s the thing: I haven’t actually been getting a flu SHOT. I’ve been getting a flu MIST. It’s this nice, gentle, needle-free spray in each nostril. They give you a tissue afterwards. You go home. You don’t get the flu.

Last year, when I was 49, I knew it was going to be my last easy mist. You see, they only give the mist to people who are UNDER 50. I don’t know why. It seems like a silly rule. And I’ve been thinking about how to get around it for a whole year.

When flu clinic day arrived at my local library, I had a brilliant idea. I’d lie. So simple! I’d just write the wrong birth year on the form. If they asked for ID (highly unlikely), I’d say I left my license in a different purse. I can stay 49 as long as I want! My husband approved of my plan. (He said he had an aunt who had stayed 29 for years.)

Unfortunately, I never got to try my plan at the clinic because they were not giving the mist to anyone over 18 that day. They said it was in short supply. (Saving the good stuff for the kids I guess.) But I didn’t give up. I went to the pharmacy at Target and asked if they had the mist. “Plenty of mist,” they said. Yay! I filled out a form (listing my birth year as 1966, instead of 1965) and gave it to the pharmacist with my insurance card. He told me to go shop and then come back and they’d have my mist ready for me.

I felt uneasy about the lie while I was shopping. Unlike the health clinic at the library, Target has computers. Would they figure out I was over 49? I had never been to that pharmacy before. Maybe it wouldn’t come up…

When I got back to the pharmacy, the pharmacist asked me to confirm my date of birth. I lied again…verbally this time, which felt worse than accidentally-on-purpose lying on paper. Then the pharmacy technician piped in, “well, your insurance keeps coming up 1965.” I caved immediately. “Alright” I said, “I was born in 1965. I’m 50. I lied because I want the mist, not the shot.” The pharmacist was very sympathetic and even tried to think of a way around the rule for me, but there was no way around it. It was a shot or nothing.

I opted for nothing. Lame, I know. But I wanted the MIST goddammit. And I’m only 50.

It starts with the glasses.

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

8/26/23: Somehow my very first blog post (from November 2015) got “unpublished” and turned back into a draft, so I’m re-publishing it now, 8 years later. UPDATE: my eyes are worse and those millennials are 40.

I remember exactly when it happened. It was four years ago. I had just turned 46 and I was trying to figure out how to use the new digital camera I got for my birthday. I was staring at the tiny little buttons and settings for quite a while. Then I looked up, took the picture, and when I looked back down at my camera, the little settings were blurry. WTF! Just a second ago, they were perfectly clear and now I couldn’t see them at all. I ran inside and sat down. I immediately thought “brain tumor,” but I decided to have some cold water, just in case it was dehydration. Miraculously, when I picked up the camera again, the small settings were clear.

After that, I occasionally had trouble reading tiny print. Having been blessed with perfect 20/20 vision my entire life, this became the first undeniable sign of middle-agedness. Sure enough, the eye doctor confirmed that this type of thing is part of the normal aging process and comfortingly reassured me that “it only gets worse.”

In the beginning, I embraced the fashionable aspect of reading glasses. They come in so many cool colors and designer styles! I bought way more glasses than I actually needed and wore them jauntily atop my head whenever I wasn’t using them. Now, at 50, I just keep a pair in as many rooms and pocketbooks as possible, because it’s a real pain in the neck to run around looking for glasses every time you want to read something smaller than a STOP sign.

But here’s the thing…if you find yourself without a pair, say in a dimly-lit restaurant, or at church choir practice, someone almost always offers you theirs! “Here you go, borrow mine” someone will say, and takes the glasses right off their own face and hands them to you. You see, you’re never alone in the 50+ club. We might not be as skinny and sexy as those 30-year olds at the next table, but we know something that they don’t fully understand yet: Nobody escapes…time marches on for everyone. So when you take those sparkly Target-brand readers from your friend’s ever-so-slightly wrinkled hand, give her the wink that says “thanks and yeah, I know, it’s happening to us too.” I’ve got you old friend.