Bite me

I read a tip on Real Beauty's web site about how to get that “almost bitten” look for your lips. Are they kidding?

I concede that maybe this sexy, wicked look may work for someone in her early 20’s, and I know the writer was not even contemplating addressing someone like me. Besides, if I had that “almost bitten” look, the only message that would send is that I’m starting to show signs of dementia and couldn’t distinguish between my lips and my breakfast. Ouch.

Fraidy cat

Have I mentioned before that I’m a fearful person? I’ve been that way for most of my life, although it’s been in remission at times. And recent studies show that some babies are born with thin skin when it comes to anxiety and fear. But I’m able to trace a few sources of my angst.

I was about 7 when I first experienced Frankenstein. My father took me to the movies to see “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” You’re probably wondering what this wacky comedy has to do with fear. Remember, I was only 7. The jokes and slapstick shtick went over my head, but at first sight of that ugly, towering monster, I put my head down in my father’s lap, taking only occasional peeks at the screen. I insisted on having the hall light on outside my bedroom that night and for many nights after. Even today, I’m uncomfortable in the dark.

In my late teens, I went to see “Psycho” with a date. I had heard that it was terrifying, and I’ll never forget the scene when you find out what Norman Bates' mother really looks like. But the scene that stayed with me was the Janet Leigh character's brutal murder in the shower. Even today, when I’m alone in the house and take a shower, I lock the bathroom door and keep a phone handy.

As a little girl—little enough to be carried by my father—I was terrified when the tree near my grandparents’ apartment began to shed large caterpillar-like, creepy things all over the sidewalk. During that period, my dad had to carry me. I refused to walk for fear of stepping on those scary “creatures.” Fortunately, this one didn’t carry over to my adulthood. As long as I know they’re not alive, I’m OK with walking around them and even stepping on tree droppings. It’s the live stuff that makes me cringe: grasshoppers, crickets, dragonflies…and the bulgy-eyed cicadas that invaded a couple of years ago.

But not all my fears have links to early trauma. Or, if they do, I’ve repressed the incidents. I can’t consciously come up with reasons I fear small, enclosed spaces like elevators or MRIs; driving on snow; deep water; tongue depressors, and a few other things I’m too afraid to admit.

Roosevelt had it right. Fear itself is my worst enemy—along with the nightly news, daily papers, and radio reports. It’s like these media are taunting me:“You think you’ve got troubles? Wait’ll you hear what happened today!”

Things I wish I could tell my mother

I now understand why, every time you were hospitalized, the first thing you said to me was “Bring me my tweezers and a magnifying mirror.” At my age now, I don’t think I’d want to be too far from those items for any length of time. Those wayward hairs seem to crop up out of nowhere.

Banded bottoms are back! I apologize for rolling my eyes while you wandered up and down the aisles of TJ Maxx or Carson’s complaining that nobody made tops with banded bottoms anymore. “That’s old,” I said. “Nobody wears those styles anymore.” Lo and behold: I can’t browse a clothing rack now without seeing those (I still think) unsightly banded bottoms. Sorry, Mom. But you must have known that everything comes around again…eventually.

I wish I’d listened more carefully to your stories of your childhood, my early childhood, and other memories. I have hundreds of questions I’d love to have answers to, and I can’t think of anyone else who would know.

I have a little more empathy now about your insisting on describing every symptom you had, even those that should remain in the bathroom… When I complained, you said “Daddy’s gone. I have no one else to tell these things to.” Now that I’m five years older since you passed away, I understand these concerns a little better (but I still wouldn’t describe them to my daughters).

I still have all the quarters you were saving for your mah jongg, poker, and Kaluki games. Someday I’ll spend them or take them to a bank, but right now they’re part of a shrine that includes many of your other collections I can’t yet part with.

You didn’t live to see the Great Recession of 2008-2009, and I’m grateful for that. Seeing your stock purchases—with which you were much more astute than I’ll ever be—nosedive would have made you crazy with anger. But now that I’ve experienced my own loss and worry over finances, I not only recognize your Depression-era frugality, as I always have, I can almost feel it. I apologize for laughing when you saved Styrofoam produce trays and every tie band that entered the house.

My anger and resentment evaporated in those last terrible days you were in intensive care, and they haven’t ever come back. Before that, I had an arsenal ready to bring out at the slightest push (yours) of any of a number of buttons (mine). My frequent internal arguments with you in anticipation of your disapproval of something I hadn’t told you yet disappeared. I’m sorry I didn’t develop the confidence to deal with you on an adult level when you were here. But I am confident you knew I loved you.

I have my hair highlighted with some pretty light streaks—almost blond in a few places. You nagged me to do this for years, but I always told you I hated that very-light-on-dark look. I am eating those words, and they don't taste so bad. I get compliments on my hair color, so I hereby state, much too late: You were right, Mom. About a lot of things.

My baggage has baggage. Or is it me?

I’m a pack rat. But not the hoarding kind that seem to be—inexplicably—popular on reality TV now. My inability to stop adding things to my stash takes over only when I go on a trip. I’m not a novice traveler. Through my job (earlier, when I was full-time), I’ve gone to conferences in Europe, Asia, and South America—even as far as Perth, Australia. I’m sure most people think I have the packing thing all wrapped up, so to speak.

I still struggle with it every time I travel anywhere.

Several days ahead, I start loading my carry-on bag, and here’s where I get a little obsessive. It’s important to note that I don’t like to fly. Therefore, I seek comfort by packing my just-in-case items (small plastic bags just in case I want to save my airline-issued pretzels, extra underwear and maybe a sweater just in case the airline loses my luggage, two books just in case take-off is delayed and I finish the first one, an extra pair of prescription glasses just in case my good ones break. I could go on but I’d embarrass myself.

There are two periods before leaving that are very stressful. One is when I’m trying to fill my travel toiletries kit with everything I’ll need. I have to make sure I pack my good eyelash curler just after using it that morning lest I foget and have to rely on the not-very-good one that’s always in my kit and risk pinching my eyelids. One might ask: Why do you keep the nasty one in the kit? The answer is that, if I forget to pack the good one, even a pinching eyelash curler is better than none. I also fill up my regulation quart bag with little bottles and tubes—not to exceed 3 ounces each—of stuff I would want with me if my luggage got lost. I have to make sure I have the right small containers for every shampoo, conditioner, foundation, serum, and, of course, Retin A cream just prescribed by my dermatologist.

The second stressful period is just before actually putting stuff into the suitcase: making that final decision about what clothing goes and what stays. I try to coordinate my wardrobe, but I always have one or two tops or bottoms I’m dying to take but that don’t go with more but one bottom or top, and that’s not practical. And I’m constantly checking the weather report for my destination city to make sure I’m packing the right jacket and shoes.
Did I mention the plastic cleaner bags I put all my clothing in? Or the extra hangers (besides the ones holding the clothing) I bring just in case the hotel room doesn’t have enough?

But no matter where I go and how much time I've spent in preparation, I'll always think of something I wish I had packed but didn’t and/or something I did take that has no hope of being worn during the trip.

It doesn’t get easier, possibly because, with age, I get more complex—in a neurotic sort of way.

Multi-task? I can’t even multi-think anymore.

Once upon a time, I could multi-task. Honest. Or at least I could do two things at once. These days I find that if I don’t pay close attention while pouring water into the coffeepot, it’s likely to dribble down the side. Then I’m not sure how much water is actually in the pot, and the number of scoops of coffee I’ll need to put in is all out of whack. And all I was doing was thinking about whether to have Cheerios or—my favorite—Honey Bunches of Oats for breakfast.

Sometimes I’ll try to be efficient by carrying several items from the kitchen table at once. For example, I’ll have, in one hand, a crumpled, used napkin and a bottle of ranch dressing. In the other I clutch a crossword puzzle I want to continue working on upstairs. If I don’t concentrate, I know the bottle of dressing will end up in the trash, the crossword puzzle in the refrigerator, and the dirty napkin accompanying me to my bedroom. So I concentrate, and I usually get it right. But I swear I didn’t have to give this kind of mundane action that much thought when I was younger.

It’s also risky for me to have more than one thought in my head at once. But who can stop multiple thoughts from popping up any time and any place? We’ve lived so long and seen so much that our internal reactions to the slightest stimuli are instantaneous. But if one of my thoughts is an important one I want to be sure to remember, heaven help it. If I don’t write it down—and recall where I put the piece of paper—it’s gone. One exception is worry. I seem to be able to have multiple “what if” thoughts in my mind at the same time, each vying to see which can cause me the highest anxiety.

I’m heartened by research that says people never could really multi-task and complete every task well. Still, I’m sure I was better at this at an earlier age. Or is my aging memory rewriting history? If that’s possible, I’d like to order these new historic memories: I was very popular in high school, I was valedictorian of my undergraduate class, I excelled at sports, and…….and what? I swear I had a fourth thing in mind—an important one—a second ago, and now it’s gone. I rest my case.

Where the #@!%* am I? Ask my GPS.

Like many others these days, I have a GPS. It’s helped me find some sites, but for the most part, it’s failed me miserably. Today I was headed from work to my dermatologist’s office, which is located in an area familiar to me. I know how to get to the street where her office is, but the last time I was there was a year ago, and I’m not sure which of the look-alike buildings she’s in. So I decided to set up the GPS so that, when I get near the office, it would tell me where to turn in. I typed in the address and pressed “Go.”

Right off the bat I was in trouble with The Voice—that “lady” who tells you when and where to turn. She didn’t like the way I was heading. My route is the one I take home each working day, and it’s the most convenient, least stressful way to go. But The Voice kept trying to steer me down other streets. I must have heard “Recalculating” six or seven times.

At one point, I was told to turn left on Milwaukee Avenue. “Milwaukee?” I told The Voice. “There’s construction that makes that road a nightmare. Why would I take Milwaukee?” She said nothing, but spat out “Recalculating” after I refused to follow her directions.

Confidently continuing to the street I knew was the correct one, I heard The Voice tell me to turn right at the next intersection. Right? I was going someplace north of the road I was on. Turning right would take me south and nowhere near where I needed to be. Even circling back would be difficult because a lot of those side streets are dead ends. After I heard the testy “Recalculating” again for not turning right, she tried to make me turn right at the next intersection too.

I realized then that the problem might be outdated navigation maps—even though we bought the GPS in the past year. The area I was going to was developed within this decade, and the doctor’s office was in a fairly new building on a fairly new street. So where was my Garmin taking me? I turned it off, followed the street signs, and found the building with no problem.

My biggest gripe about any GPS is that it can’t adjust to my favorite routes. I can save a route that it gave me, but it will be saved as the system originally configured it, using the same streets I want to avoid. If there’s a system out there that can ask us how we want to go (like Google Maps, which lets you click on the route with your cursor and drag it to the streets you prefer), I don’t know who sells it. Instead, I’ll just keep the old-fashioned folding road maps handy, along with a printout from Google Maps. Or maybe I’ll win the lottery and hire a driver. That’s about as likely as hearing The Voice apologize for causing me emotional distress.

Beware the Evil Eye (pooh pooh)

Here’s something new I’ve discovered about my sixty-something self: I’ve become superstitious. I don’t mean that I refuse to leave the house on the 13th—especially when it falls on a Friday—or that I avoid walking under ladders (although this doesn’t come up very often). Most of my superstition revolves around illness, even death, or its possibility.

For example, like everyone else in America, we received our Census 2010 form in mid-March. The note that came with it says in ultra-bold letters: “Please complete and mail back the enclosed census form today.” Then, the first question asks how many people are living in my home as of April 1, 2010. It’s only March now. What if I say “2” and then, God forbid, something happens to one of us before April 1? If I mailed in the form before the deciding date, am I jinxing my life or my husband’s? Silly, I know. Yet…

I also tend to knock on wood a lot, and not just when something is spoken, like “I haven’t had a cold in six months!” I also do it, or at least want to, when I think something like that. Intellectually, I don’t really believe that tapping on the dresser is going to prevent me or my loved ones from getting sick, but somehow it makes me feel in control. This leads me to think I may have a touch of OCD, which, if I let it, will set me off on a whole new path of worry.

Where did I get this behavior? I think back to when my first daughter was born in the mid-60s. My mother was peering into her crib, remarking over how beautiful she was, alternating with utterances of “pooh pooh”—but thankfully not spitting—which is supposed to ward off the Evil Eye that retaliates at such declarations of beauty, health, and well-being. She also tied a red ribbon around one slat of the crib to reinforce the pooh poohs.

But in those days, and decades after, I wasn’t nearly as superstitious as she was. I was optimistic and, although realistic, did not think disaster was going to strike at any time. To be fair to my mother, she lost her mother tragically when my grandmother was fatally struck by a car. My mother was 14 and the youngest of six children. So I always understood why she was determined to do everything to ward off that Evil Eye. I was just as determined to not be that way.

And here I am now, fraught with my own brand of superstition, just short of pooh poohing. I still haven’t mailed the Census 2010 form, but I did fill it out with a bold declaration of two [healthy] people living in our household. Pooh pooh.