Must . . . Quit . . .Exercising

I find in the past two years I don't recover from workouts as I once did, and believing I was just lazy and "exercise is energizing" I stepped it up to six workouts a week, becoming, cumulatively, so achy and exhausted I lived on Tylenols and coffee, lost any ambition and couldn't think straight. I cut workouts back to two per week, tried to sleep more. Still enough tiredness and pain to fog my brain, with even the gentlest exertions! "Eat more protein," they said, so I did. No change. All relevant tests turn up negative. There is naught to do but quit, at least until I've recovered.

This happened before; I thought it was mental stress only. It took two months of full-time lying on the carpet to recover. Then I returned to exercising. Again, depletion. Last summer was without exercise except for targeted physical therapy. I got slenderer! My energy returned -- I even felt creative! Then I began exercising again: within a few months, crippling depletion.

Is it possible that after 40 years there is an end to exercise -- for me? I've been working out and belonging to gyms since I was 24: weights, hiking, treadmill, ballet, biking (okay, only 50 miles max), raking, pruning, running (time was when the bones could take it), yoga, Pilates, aerobics, tae kwon do, spinning, the works. Didn't hate it at all! Would love to go back to ballet barre and yoga classes! Others 20 years older than myself exercise for six classes per week and feel fine.

Some People Have Faithful Dogs. . .

I test-drove some shiny new Toyotas--a new-car showroom feels like prom night--but with big ugly grilles instead of solid-metal front ends, and despite their backup cameras and  four-wheel drives I found I had to yank and redirect their transmission levers--just as hard in the Corolla as in the RAV4--like I was Speed Racer or something, and these were automatics. MPG stunk and that's just how it is with four-wheel drive: nice to have in the country, but less so if country living means driving a lot of miles.


The young salesman said he'd managed a restaurant for 10 years and it was a relief for him to sell cars. I asked him about the big ugly grilles and he called it  "more aggressive styling." Yeah, right, aggressive Toyotas. . . what were those people smoking. . .I hated to tell him no sale because I had been ready to deal. "Is pricing an issue for you?" he asked. I said if a vehicle was perfect for me I'd pay whatever, but these were nowhere near.

I drove home in my '07 Corolla with 150K miles ("she'll go double that, easy," my mechanic drawled) and was stunned and humbled by how quietly and well it handled by comparison. The first brand-new car I ever bought, I called her "The Bride," and we have been through camping, weeping, poverty and riches, driving over a boulder, skidding off the road, encased in ice, and many wonderful faraway places and carrying fascinating passengers, faithfully and reliably, and I apologized for even thinking of cheating on her. This is Divine Post #1000, by the way. I haven't changed a bit.

I Love the DMV

Going to the driver's license office is fun. Admittedly it's only every two years for car registration, and one extra time at five-year intervals to tell the state my height and weight and whether they may remove my entrails if I die (but of course!). Sometimes the employees try to make this task a little lighter, especially the picture taking. It's changed a lot.

"I look like a killer," I told the lady at the license office who'd just taken and printed a digital photo of my face that looked more stunningly like a mug shot than any I'd seen.

"Everyone says that," she said. "The state orders the same camera for every state office. So this one's the same as the police."

Ohio's DMV in the 1970s had special room with a big ol' camera on a tripod and a specialist who used it all day on bland and vacant faces, the special Ohio breed. Attached to this camera was a thin flexible stick he swung around, and from its end dangled a toy bird on a spring. "Watch the birdie," he said, and like everybody else I laughed and he clicked.

The DMV in Boston was known to be worse than death, with long lines and iron-faced clerks. "We can't use this," the clerk said about my photostat birth certificate, white print on black. "It's the only one I have," I said, and by the grace of God it got by and I cut that license up over a trash can when I got my first Missouri license.

I loved seeing the Pacific license office with license plates nailed to its walls, cafe-curtains printed with license plates (where'd they get the fabric?) and a cheerful Christmas tree. I only worry now about my one official 2016 State-of-Missouri face they'll show on TV if I ever get in trouble.

Demetrius and I used to watch the local TV news and when a scary mugshot appeared onscreen we'd both yell "Guilty!"

So Humble

There's a full moon on this my birthday, signifying an exceptionally full and rich year ahead. I already know how busy I'll be, so I'm glad I've got my home all comfortable and familiar, everything stocked and in its place, and a newly-filled propane tank--a recipe for peace of mind. It's easy to write off January as a total waste. But daylight is growing longer (it's no longer pitch-dark at 5:30 p.m.; the sun set at 5:14 p.m. today) and after November and December, I've grown to appreciate more the tricks and pleasures of light. It recently turned colder and this is our only snow of the season so far, about three-quarters of an inch. It's already begun to thaw; when it's thawed, I'll resume digging at my site. Here's a January sunset over a happy and warm Missouri home. I'm older, but only lucky people get older.

The Second Saturn Return

Astrology believes human life has "Saturn cycles." Every 29 years, slow-moving planet Saturn completes a journey around the zodiac and returns to where it was at your birth (in my case, at 11 degrees of Sagittarius). Our first Saturn Return, around age 29, typically has us rethinking what we've been doing, and many people at this time enter another stage of life or another line of work. At 29 I left the office world to go to grad school where I discovered a discipline and a career I'd never dreamed of.

Astrology says that at the second Saturn return, about age 58, one begins to detach from the worldly life and becomes -- ancient Indian astrology says --"a forest dweller" with an increasingly different set of values. I've watched friends go through this. Some are successful: They quit drinking, survive a layoff, sell a house and move, become a missionary, go back to college, parent their grandchildren, write a book. The transition isn't easy: It's two steps forward and one back. Others aren't successful. Their circumstances change, but they aren't willing to do or see anything differently. They decide the world owes them or that life's been disappointing. This leads to consuming bitterness. Maybe you know the type.

Saturn Returns mean change, and change means "out of the comfort zone," but 29 years is enough time in any comfort zone. It wasn't exactly peaches and cream, at 29, to cut my income by 75 percent and move hundreds of miles to a place I'd never been and where I knew no one -- but I ended up here, and how great is that? My second Saturn return is coming up. I feel its challenge already and intend to meet it. Happy and healthy 2015!

Almost a Ripoff

You would have been prouda me. At the Blank Blank in Eureka there was a sign, and here it is, plain as day, oil change for $24.99. I needed one, asked that it be added to my tire invoice, and when I gave the invoice the necessary once-over I see the price is $32.99. I piped up and said, in effect, Excuse me, wtf, and they said "surcharges" and "environmental something or other" and I asserted my Bunbun self and said, "But your sign outside says..." and they gave in, had "forgot" they'd put the sign out, so they said, and then they tapped a few keys and discounted the oil change at the "senior" rate. I did not say, "I am not a senior," because I'd figured out by then that they lived entirely in a fantasy world in which oil-change signs magically appear and disappear and a 53-year-old is a senior. Then they tried to sell me an alignment. I said you have my service record right there, it shows that you aligned me in May. They said, oh, so we did.

In these days it is so crucial to be on guard and assertive at car places; ladies, they think you have the brain of a dodo bird. This isn't the only place I had to make an effort to hold people to their advertised prices. I plan on getting a ring that looks like a wedding band so these guys in their fantasy world can fantasize that I have a husband who will come and beat them senseless.

Set a Spell

May is one of my favorite months and what better way to celebrate its first day than after cutting brush and whatnot, to "set a spell" -- beneath the twin oak trees and behind what's left of my biggest cold frame, the one too big and well-made for me to dismantle with a claw hammer like I did the three other cold frames. As I get older I understand and am fond of the need to sit down and rest during days of hard work. Chair from Walmart purchased in 1998, steel and tough thick 1/2-inch plastic, still good although left outside in all weathers. I should've bought several; then yall could sit with me and gaze at the greenery that still feels so new after that awful dark winter. I'll also sit here to have a cup of tea or coffee and just be amazed at this wonderful Missouri.

The Old Swimmin' Hole

Yes, there's a swimmin' hole, in La Barque Creek, on this property, and y'all can jump in barenaked if you like, come July and August. Everyone says they want to do this, but when it comes down to it, T-shirt and underpants is as far as they'll strip -- if they jump in at all. Of course my summer guests are almost all between ages 40 and 72, and one can't expect them to go hog-wild and rip off their clothes. Nah, they'd rather sit on the porch, drink wine, and discuss how to avoid probate. Visited the swimmin' hole just to look at it and think of good times to come.

People in Their 50s Trying to Have A Conversation

-"Now what was the name of that movie you told me about the other night?"
-"I don't remember telling you about any movie."
(Long bursts of laughter.)

Vitamin D

Doc said, “You’re low on Vitamin D.” Me??! Just combine sunscreen, long pants and sleeves, a solidly rainy October, shorter daylight, aging, drinking rice milk not dairy milk, being too busy, and days too dark or too wet to hike or chop weeds. He prescribed 5000-unit capsules, one weekly for 6 weeks. Also I’d better quit runnin’ ‘round and get more sun and rest. So I sat outside in the sun to drink coffee this morning and saw my bluebird pair. Maybe the box looks like a nice place to spend winter. Recent migrants: white-throated sparrow (I heard it) and yellow-rumped warbler (I saw it). And juncos have arrived. Don't be like me; take time out to sun yourself and live life.

Old and Talented is In!

Old, talented women may be in. Wouldn't that be fine.

As an over-50 (appearing to be over 40, which is the same thing) I am experiencing younger people looking right through me. It isn't that I'm frumpy; I try to look good in public. It's my age. Being young they aren't real good at seeing beyond the surface. God made 'em that way. I was that way too. I recall living in the city in my 20s and seeing an old woman sizing me up. "She would give whatever she has to be young like me again," I thought. Well, maybe not.

That British lady Susan Boyle isn't a cutie pie, but she has talent and now she has fans. I hazard that we are seeing a cultural shift here. Probably the Obama administration and its different values has something to do with it. Young and pretty or handsome is nice, but if we believe someone HAS to be that, we are dismissing a lot of warmth and talent. I resolve make an effort to look squarely and fairly at people.

The Magic of Aging

Getting older is both strange and fun. As in adolescence, you get these funny FEELINGS. Your legal age increases, but you feel no different than you did at 28. You see people, stop in your tracks and want to shout: "Dad!" or "Marie!" But Dad is long dead, and it's only somebody who's shaped like him, has his hairline and gait -- and the girl so much like Marie resembles Marie as she was 30 years ago.

Aging is a club you can join if you can answer "What were you doing the day Kennedy died?" You get light shocks that make you laugh, such as realizing that the TV show ("Green Acres") you have just mentioned to a co-worker went off the air 11 years before he was born -- or that you remember the lyrics to the novelty record "My Ding-a-Ling."

Weird to be invited to a 30-year college reunion. Weird to be tough and healthy all your life and then suddenly you get plantar fasciitis, or rip a muscle like I did. Weird to see family photos and realize that every adult in those pictures died years ago and you are the only person still living who can identify each one. Weirdest of all is to understand that young people see you as old, washed up. Nothing of the sort! 50-somethings are the royalty of the world! We know who we are and have mastered what we do! And "Fifty is the new 30!"

Fun and strange to find out that there is magic in aging, that it's wild country, stranger than fiction. To age is to become a time-traveler.