Dang,this really sucks! I'm awake...again at 2am and there seems like no chance of going back to sleep at this point. I could crawl back into bed and lie there for another three hours, but what's the point? So, I'm up and here, aren't you the lucky ones?
On top of that my throat is killing me. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna lose my voice b/4 the day is over...Hubby will be so thrilled and Little Guy will think it's sooo funny. I knew I shoulda gotten my tonsils out when I was a kid (I say that every year when this happens..so just shut up about it Deb and get over it, right)?

Guess I'll mosey on over to ebay and see if any of my junk has sold, and see if there's anything I might want to spend my hard-earned cash on. I'm hoping that Nyquil will kick in pretty soon and then I
might be able to saw off a few zzz's b/4 Little Guy wakes up.

I was reading a magazine and one of the regular features were short profiles on women who’ve accomplished great things after forty. This month it featured a woman who had gone on her first solo climb after her husband’s death. They had always climbed together and reached their first mountain peak in 1993; but it wasn’t until 2004, after his death, that she made her first solo trek. For that climb, she returned to the mountain they’d first climbed together, but this time it was to scatter his ashes.

I thought that was a fitting tribute to her husband, as well as a meaningful first after forty. It got me to thinking about some of my firsts after forty and although none of mine could be called life-changing, they’re still firsts, never to be repeated.

A big sense of accomplishment came for me on the day I watched my daughter receive her high school diploma. It was like seeing an eighteen year work in progress finally get completed. That was also the year my son began his upcoming years of education. To see him just beginning the adventure his sister was completing, was an instant replay for me. I worried I wasn’t going to be up for the next go-round, but I find I’m handling it with a lot more patience and wisdom than I thought I would.

The fragility of life is also more noticeable after forty; my mother’s bypass when I was forty-one made me realize that she wasn’t as indomitable as I thought she was. My mom is no pushover and to see her in a hospital bed, surrounded by tubes going in and out of her body, her face as pale as the sheets she was lying on, and seeing the tears of fear in her eyes, at how close she’d come to death, left me shaking at just how frail life really is.

As I approach the halfway mark of my forties, I’ve been giving some thought to what I’d like to do to celebrate that momentous occasion. I could learn to ride a motorcycle; those who own them can’t seem to stop obsessing about the freedom and openness they feel while powering down the highway on their two-wheeled chariots, why not give myself a taste of that freedom? I could go for a hot-air balloon ride or learn to scuba-dive. How about taking a leap out of an airplane and then floating gracefully back to earth? Bugee-jumping? Snow-boarding down a mountainside, or a simple tattoo?

Maybe I should just be thankful to have made it to forty-five with my body and mind intact. I mean, forty-five is an accomplishment all in itself. It’s a first I’ll never do again and it should be something to celebrate. The simplest way to celebrate it would be to have something I’ve never had before...an upside down pineapple cake with pistachio ice cream (yes, I’ve gone all these years without ever having either of those concoctions pass through my lips). There’s always a first time for everything.

My daughter is on my mind, I wrote this for her last Christmas. For a gift, I gave her a necklace that her father had given to me, after she was born, to celebrate her birth. I had once considered throwing the necklace away, after our divorce, but decided against it. It was just too beautiful to land in the trash. I felt she should have it b/c it was given as a momento to her. I included this poem to let her know that although her father and I had long ago parted, when we were together, she came into our lives.

****

Love is elusive.
It will not allow itself
to be captured or possessed.
It prefers kindness, respect
and a generosity of souls.
Sometimes it will linger, in one place,
for an eternity.
Sometimes days,
and sometimes, for just a breath.
But during its stay,
beautiful things can happen.
You, my daughter, is what happened
when love rested its wings
for a moment.

O.K., I’m going to write about something that I’ve tried to keep hidden most of my life and am loathe to admit. It’s a secret I try to keep under wraps because of the scorn I’ll receive from others if it became known. It’s an affliction that doesn’t discriminate against age, gender or race; it’s shameful and I would like to be rid of it, but the addiction is too powerful. Once I became hooked, even after years of being away from it, sooner or later I always seemed to return to it.

What is this awful thing that I do? Well, I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen years old. I am a devoted fan of...here it is... Guiding Light. Yep, a soap opera, that’s my shameful addiction.

The only way to defend myself is to totally blame my mother. Sorry mom, but you know it‘s true. When I was a teen, Mom worked at home hand-sewing shoes, and everyday when I came home from school, GL would be on. I would toss my books on the kitchen table, turn around to look at the television, and be immediately sucked into the drama unfolding between Roger and Holly or Mike and Ed Bauer and the woman torn between them. It was a relief to forget my problems for an hour and get wrapped up in television-land. And mom never made any attempts to dissuade me from soap opera viewing. In fact, I think she enjoyed that at least one of her six kids would sit and watch with her. We’d even discuss and analyze which direction tomorrow’s episode would go in.

I think, though, I should take a minute here to address the attitudes of anti-soapers. Our biggest critics, of course, are men. They are so quick to dismiss our choices as ‘pure garbage’ and ‘unrealistic’, but have they ever taken the time to think about their choices? If they did they might realize that they‘re even bigger soapers than we are.

The biggest soap opera of all time is one men brag about having seen dozens of times…Star Wars. No way, you men say? Oh, I beg to differ. The entire jist of this movie is a simple story revolving around a central family...which is exactly what the main theme of any great soap opera is...the central family of this movie being, Luke, Leia and Darth Vader. A brother and sister separated at birth, who were fathered by a once good man turned evil. There was even an, ick, factor involving Luke and Leia having a miniscule moment of attraction to one another before anti-hero Han Solo came along to steal Leia’s heart. Dang, if this doesn’t sound exactly like a soap opera to me.

Then there’s football, baseball and basketball. What? I’m crazy you say? Let’s tear it apart. Soap operas keep their viewers tuned in by teasing them along with; What-ifs? Which way will things go? And edge of their seats drama. Sports do the exact same thing. They get us hooked on a team and its players; we stay tuned each week to see if our team can make it through the next game, then the next one after that and so on and so on, until the dramatic climax known as; The Super Bowl, The World Series or The Playoffs, comes along. Sounds like a soap to me.

So, it’s time for all soapers to come out of the closet, to shout out our devotion, to be proud of who we are. Someday our time will come; a time when we’ll be accepted for who we are. And when that time comes, there’ll be no more watching our daytime soaps with the curtains closed.

I sometimes wonder if a support group should be formed for soapers...we could call it; Devoted, Intelligent, Soapers Come Out or DISCO for short. Umm…on second thought maybe not; DISCO conjures up thoughts of another shameful affliction that nobody wants to admit to liking.

When people ask me, "so what'd you do over the summer?" My reply will sound something like this, "keeping my kid entertained, moving into a new house, working, yard work and mowing...mowing...mowing. And if there was a moment to breathe I relaxed by flipping through the women's magazines."

Now, let me tell you, reading those rag mags were quite an eye opener. Being a woman, I thought I had the whole woman thing figured out; come to find out, I know squat about being a real woman. I discovered I was so far out of the loop that I almost wasn't a woman.

Here's a list of some of the finer points that educated me while I waded through the lighter fare of literature.

- It's possible to have a relationship with a man without nagging, crabbing or yelling...but then he'd wonder who the strange woman in his house was.

- You really can wear a bathing suit after you've had kids ... just make sure it has yards of spandex to flatten things out, underwire to lift things up and a cutsey skirt to cover everything else up.

- Women over forty ARE SEXY! Who knew? And all this time I'd been thinking my eye crinkles, saggage, baggage and stubbornness were turn-offs, but come to find out, most men are excited by a woman that has some life experience, and isn't afraid to show her true self, despite the fact that our true selves are usually walking around in baggy sweats and sloppy shirts.

- Alpha women (meaning women who have taken complete and total charge of their lives) secretly yearn for an alpha male to take care of them so they won't always have to be in charge; even though those strong women have willing chosen a beta male...a beta male meaning a lay about man who thinks being strong is lifting a beer can with one hand and the remote with the other.

- Divorce can make you richer ... yeh, that way all the money you've been shelling out to keep your beta male in beer and cigarettes can go into your own savings account.

- Sibling rivalry is good, it makes for a healthy relationship between sisters; it seems our differing opinions offset one another and make us a great team...just make sure you tell my sisters that it's O.K. for us to get pissed and rip one another's hair out (hey, we can always go wig shopping together).

- Cooking can be fun ... with the right recipes and the right person in the kitchen (if only I could get her to cook more than one meal).

- And finally we can have it all ... we just have to remember to read our post-its to figure out where we left it all.

I've decided that reading too many women's magazines can cause an identity crisis and from now on I'm going to read only Consumer Report, Popular Science and National Geographic.


Have a great day, all!