Something Old, Something New

I really went out on a limb the other day and bought NEW EVERYDAY SILVERWARE! I know, it was pretty extravagant, but after 40 years of silverware from the gas station giveaway, I figured it was time to upgrade.

I was inspired by my children, who are recently married, and all have pristine silverware drawers with five or six separate compartments and all the flatware neatly lined up and ready to go. Ours on the other hand is a jumble with castoffs, relics and stuff people left from various potluck suppers. Which is probably where the rest of my stuff is...scattered at other people's houses.

Now of course my kids have everyday forks from places like Crate and Barrel. For me, it's HomeGoods, but it's the same company that manufactured my sterling so there's some symmetry there. And the notion that I have eight of everything is almost enough to make you giddy with excitement.

Now the five piece "Hostess" set that accompanies this is a bit difficult to figure out. There is a serving spoon but that's just about the only thing I'm not short on, except when I'm having a dinner party and can't find any serving spoons. There is also a "cold meat fork." I don't tend to serve cold meat. And if I do, you just pick it up in your hands, like chicken. I'm not much of a cold cut person. Probably because every Thanksgiving, in a burst of holiday cheer, my father-in-law would mumble "this is too much trouble. Why don't we just have cold cuts?"

Then there's the sugar spoon. This conjures up images of a real sugar bowl with a spoon sitting in it. But if your "sugar" is various random packets of Splenda that you've pinched from the coffee place, I'm not sure what that spoon is going to end up doing either. It's too big to give to my infant granddaughters to teeth on.

But whether or not I utilize all the accoutrements, I think I'll make it a nightly ritual to count my silverware and make sure there are at least eight of all the basics. Of course, my husband has already used a couple of pieces and I was a bit annoyed because I liked just LOOKING at the stuff. If someone uses it and puts it inthe dishwasher, it destroys the balance. But I guess that's how librarians feel when you take the books off the shelf and they just finished getting them all in alphabetical order....

WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?

It's really hard to get one's priorities straight here...I mean, Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died on the same day. But I think we should concentrate on Mark Sanford.

I know that everyone is dumping on him, as they should, but we (and I use the editorial wee....inside joke)here at Turning S*x*y want to point out something...

What if someone sent you an email that said " In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul."

I mean, really, isn't that SWEET! Wouldn't you like it if your beloved sent you something like that?

Of course, the real question is "why wasn't he sending emails like that to his wife?" or "why wasn't his wife sending emails like that to him?" (we're an equal opportunity voyeur and not prejudging anything.....)

So just a heads up for all of us aging boomers. I know Mark isn't 50 yet, but he's reminding us that we don't have to throw in the towel....

GERONTOLOGY 101

It probably isn't a common occurrence to put the words "awesome" or "cool" with "gerontologist" but I recently met the world's absolutely most amazing member of the species.

Dr. Susan Wehry, M.D. is a professor at UVM Medical School and consults to the State of Vermont. She is approachable and no-nonsense and tells it like it is. I live in a place where we don't have real gerontologists so it was a privilege to hear her recently and get some basic information on what happens to our bodies when we age and what kinds of things we need to be focusing on.

The main focus of the conference was mental health, so the gist of her remarks were directed toward behaviors and practices that can enhance or undermine our aging experience. For example, did you know that as we get older, we get "fatter" and "drier." The % of our fat cells increase and the % of muscle cells decrease. That's just a fact. So when physicians prescribe medications to us "over 60" types, drugs that are "fat-loving" (her term, not mine -- the technical term is "lipophilic!") can cause adverse reactions because they mate for life with all those wonderful new fat cells and it's hard to get them to leave! (Kind of like those guests at a party when even a yawn isn't enough of a hint....)

One of the lipophilic drugs is one of my best friends, alcohol, and I don't mean the rubbing variety. So when an older person has an alcoholic beverage, it clings to the fat cells and takes longer to leave the body. And it stays even longer in women's bodies than in men's bodies.

So what's a person to do? First of all, drink a glass of water in between alcoholic drinks. Better yet, limit alcoholic drinks to one a day for women and two a day for men. (Hey, that's difficult which is why I'm pushing the water!) But trust me, we need to pay attention to this stuff. When confirmed alcoholic elders go to dry out, it can take weeks, even MONTHS, for the stuff to leave their system. That's because those fat cells are holding on to the hooch for dear life!

I think that's enough sobering news (sorry, I couldn't resist that) for one day, so we'll continue with thoughts from Dr. Susan soon!

BITE ME!!!

A recent article in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/22/AR2009062201659.html?sub=AR talks about how one of the real "pains" of aging is dental work. They talk about how the "royal pain" (aren't we clever?) is getting crowns. And how expensive it is.

THEY DON'T KNOW THE HALF OF IT! I am in the process of having $20K worth of dental work done. We're talking implants, kids. If you don't know what those are, don't ask. Or as they say, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Of course, the dental profession knows how to get you to pony up for MAJOR WORK (for some people that's a facelift; for me it's the dentist!) If you mention in passing that your daughter is getting married they say "You don't want your teeth to fall out during the wedding!" And if they're talking about the difference between getting dentures (which is what normal people do) and implants they say, "Well, if you want to put your teeth in a glass every night...." So of course you opt for the "Gee Doctor will I be beautiful if I have the implants?" "Of course!" "Great, because I was hideous before!"

One of the questions people ask most when they get to be over 65 is why there is very little insurance for dental work, vision and hearing. My answer "If you were an insurance company and all your customers were over 65 would you sell them insurance for dental work, eyeglasses and hearing aids?" DUH! Insurance is about having a random possibility of something happening. You can be pretty sure that lots of your clients over 65 will need "help" in one of these areas.

The hardest thing is, not only am I trying to do this during a recession, when it's hard enough to come up for the scratch, but it becomes my excuse for everything else in the world. Recently two very deserving healthcare organizations asked for a donation. In one case, they may have to close their doors if they don't raise the $. I had to say that whatever I gave would be minimal because of my dental work! Is this what the future looks like? "Gee honey, let's go out to dinner!" "No, we can't....we have to save up for my hearing aids!" It ain't pretty.....

Breathing Lessons

I have just returned from one of life's most bittersweet events....a "celebration of life" for a man who was taken from us at age 62.

We live in a very small town, and as one person at the party said, "In Somerville or Cambridge people would wonder what's the big deal that a real estate broker died..." But in our community this man was the quintessential pillar. And given what he did for a living, it is hard to believe that LITERALLY no one ever had a bad thing to say about him. He was a Prince.

So for those of us who are his demographic peers (no one can be his peer in terms of kindness, love, humor or joie de vivre...) what is the lesson? To live, love, laugh and be happy. Trite, corny, overdone. Yeah, whatever. It's still true. This is a person who was always seeing the best in people and always stopped to really talk to you. Someone said that a trip around the corner took him an hour because he stopped to talk to everyone.

How many times do we have to learn the lesson that life is short, that we should tell those around us that they are important to us, that we love and cherish them. I was talking to one of this man's best friends. I told him that, having lost three friends to whom I was extremely close, I could, in fact, feel his pain. It is not pretty. But it beats never having been close enough to anyone so that you avoid that pain.

This man did good and did well. He loved his family. He cherished his friends. He gave back to his community. He remade himself at least twice. He was the quintessential Baby Boomer.

He was the best. We can only hope to be half the person he was. Here's to you, Donnie....I'll never play darts without thinking of you.

What Can You Say About Your Best Friend....

when she's just turned S*x*y....and then you didn't even get her blog post up in time.

Happy Birthday, Luana, albeit a bit late.

When we were in college, one of our mutual friends snidely suggested that Luana would be the first person to have "a station wagon, two kids and a dog...." Life being what it is, the person who made the comment beat Luana by a few years....Luana at the time was a retail executive in Washington DC. But then the kids did come, three beautiful daughters to be exact, so of course she HAD to have the station wagon and actually they had two dogs at one point (RIP Sadie...)and now she's the best college counselor in the country!

Luana is one of those people who, as Pooh would say, is a REAL FRIEND, NOT LIKE SOME...in good times and in bad (and we've had our shares of both) she has always been there for me. And now, as she turns s*x*y, she is planning the wedding of her oldest daughter, sending off the graduates of Winston Churchill HS to lives and careers filled with possibilities and still finds time to spend quality time with her 90 year old mother. A paragon of virtue? I will let you judge....HAPPY BIRTHDAY LU P!!!!!

Hi-Tech

Sorry I haven't posted in a while but I was at a conference learning how technology is going to affect our generation. OK, I can hear everyone saying "DUH...." out there, but think about this.

The reality is that Medicare and Social Security literally will not have enough people to answer the phones so that we can ask questions about how these programs affect us. And, unlike our elders, we are smartasses, and we will start to ask all kinds of "stump the chump" questions just to show the person on the other end of the phone that we are brighter than they are.

So they've done us one better. They are moving many of the functions of these two agencies (Social Security Administration and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) to a virtual online presence. You can ask for a printout of your benefits, you can pick your own drug list, you can keep track of your medical bills.

But what about those people who aren't computer savvy?

The reality is that people 50+ better get with the program and fast because pretty soon the world will feel like you have "no excuses." It will be the equivalent of someone saying "I don't have a phone."

There's another reason to start being more tech-savvy and that is that, as we age, we can become more isolated. Technology can close the gap for people who can't get out much and can't jump in a car or on a plane every time they want to interact with friends. A new article in the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/02face.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 talks about how older people can maintain friendships with the help of social networking sites.

Believe it or not, the conference I attended encouraged us to reach out to elders with things like Facebook and Twitter. And yeah, the obvious reaction was, "but THOSE people don't use Facebook and Twitter." Well I am here to tell you that the Class of '67 at Shaker Heights HS is having tons of fun reconnecting without the constraints of "who was popular" or "did we go to the same country club?" We are just having fun reconnecting and talking about jobs, grandchildren, aging parents and the like.

So obviously, if you're reading this, you're with the program. But make sure that those around you realize how important it is to be connected -- both emotionally and technologically. Hey, if my 94 year old Mother In Law can do it, anyone can!