It Could Happen To You

Filed Under All Posts, Health, Prudence Baird | 15 Comments

Falling by Tom Bagshaw

Like a sign post that screams Watch Out!, Prudence zooms in on one of midlife’s challenges.

Falling. It happens to the best of us. One minute you are putting one foot in front of the other, and the next you’re on your ass. Or your face—with absolutely no idea how you got there so fast.

When young, falling is funny; slapstick even. Occasionally falling is painful, but having friends sign your cast or getting out of P.E. makes it all worthwhile. In fact, there’s a notorious t-shirt that mocks falling:

“I don’t have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem.”

Ha-ha. Try that at age 54.

This brings me to the other morning when I heard a crashing and thrashing sound coming from the bathroom. Read more

Breast Cancer Bonanza: Stop the Greed

Filed Under All Posts, Cathy Fischer, Health, Politics | 22 Comments

Cathy Fischer is wondering how a month dedicated to something so important, could have become so irritating.

I don’t know what irks me more, being accosted by Christmas ads before Halloween, or being hit by the big pink tsunami that is…BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH.

Dancing reindeer or pink teddy bears? I’ll take the caribou, thank you.

The brilliant Barbara Ehrenreich, also a breast cancer survivor, is passionate about pink. In her new book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, she writes about how she’d rather get “hacked to death by a madman,” then suffocated by the “pink sticky sentiment” embodied by ribbon-wearing teddy bears.

I’ve noticed that I don’t’ wear pink very much. Not that pink doesn’t look good on me, it’s that I’ve had an aversion to the color ever since my diagnosis. A year ago, I voiced my not-so-rosy point of view in “My Big Pink Protest,” where I shared my dismay about October’s pinkness, and how threads of hypocrisy are woven throughout the fabric of many a “pink” product. These so-called charitable campaigns are about as authentic as a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake. Read more

The Dreaded Word: Race

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Health, Politics | 11 Comments

The latest news about healthcare and race has Carine Fabius pulling out her passport.

Coming up with something devastatingly original and fun to write about would have made me feel edgy and special but it turns out I am not so outré. Alas I am just like many who write about the issues of our times—I can’t stop thinking about the pervasive issue of RACE. Ever since the healthcare debate began I have felt like one giant sigh. A sigh grown so outsized that it now drives my most desperate desire: to leave the United States for other shores.

On one hand, I am in the very attractive position of having dual citizenship—American and European Union—so it would be easier for me than most. But the bigger, more annoying question is always: What country doesn’t have gaping issues? None, I suppose; it’s just that I always expect more from America, foolish, foolish woman that I am.

Tales abound about how during the Civil Rights Era, officials in towns across the South chose to fill municipal pools with cement rather than share them with blacks, thus denying all their citizens the refreshing merriment provided by the pools on hot summer days. With Obama in the House, we thought we’d come a long way, but no, baby, things are so the same it makes me want to sigh some more. Read more

My Exploding Head

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Health, Politics, Rants | 17 Comments

Carine Fabius is experiencing strange symptoms—her blood is boiling and her poor head…

Last month a photo in the Los Angeles Times showed a bunch of North Carolina protesters lying in wait for Obama as he headed to a town hall meeting on healthcare. Their handwritten signs shouted the following inanities:

“Free Market not Free Loaders”
“Obama-Care is Not For Us”
“No to Socialism”
“Government is Not the Solution to our Problems”

No wonder my head wants to explode. Read more

Soup is Good Food

Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Health | 8 Comments

The unseasonably cool weather has Connie Stetson cookin’ up good thoughts on good food.

Up here where I live in the Sierra foothills, or the tullies, the sticks, the weeds, the outback—it is not unusual for the temps in mid-June to be tickling the soft underbelly of the low 90s. A harbinger of the dreaded dog days of summer—July, August, September, when temps reaching the high 90s to 100 are typical and loathed, and locals just sigh and say, “Well, at least we don’t live in Phoenix!”

But this June it has been downright and blissfully cool, so tonight I’m slipping into my softest, warmest jammies and I’m making a homemade soup, a split pea soup with ham to be precise. As comforting a comfort food, aside from mac and cheese, as you can get. (And by the way, if there is a heaven, I’ll expect to be able to eat all the mac and cheese I can stomach without gaining weight, so there.) I can smell it now as I type: the onions, garlic, carrots, peas, celery, the ham hocks, all bubbling together, the fragrance wafting through the house, feeling like a warm hug. If I had a cold I’d feel better already. Read more

The Dawn of Neurodiversity

Filed Under All Posts, Health, Prudence Baird | 11 Comments

April is World Autism Awareness Month. In the United States today, one of every 150 children born will be diagnosed with autism, an incurable neuro-developmental disease that impacts an individual’s ability to interact socially, to communicate and to manage his or her own behavior around transitions, new routines, people and new information.

Prudence Baird is getting a master’s certificate degree in Autism Spectrum Disorders and has a personal interest in brain development, as her youngest son suffered anoxia at birth and has a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. She shares her views on a different kind of diversity.

One of my dreams is time travel to the time when humans numbered in the millions instead of the billions. Doesn’t that seem exciting—raising a glass of ale with Wm. Shakespeare, hanging with Jesus on the Mount, seeing firsthand the Great Pyramid at Giza being built?

But let’s not fool ourselves. If we should suddenly drop out of the ether into an earlier time, it wouldn’t be that easy for us to blend in with the natives. Our words (even if they were understood) would be misconstrued and misinterpreted. What we take for granted—having our own teeth at age 50 or just being able to walk in public as a single woman—would be considered weird and somewhat threatening. Chances are we’d be burned at the stake or beaten with sticks within moments of touchdown.

Our brains, our reasoning abilities and our collective unconscious have evolved over the millennia, much more so than our bodies. Read more

Come Back Little Mojo

Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Health, Relationships | 11 Comments

What is it about the libido and midlife? Connie Stetson tells it like it is.

Okay ladies—as Joan Rivers would say, “Can we talk?” I’m going to go there—middle-aged SEX.

When I was young and juicy and single, I was really hot. I was a devotee. When I was in a relationship, I was a faithful and an enthusiastic lover. When I wasn’t committed, I was…let’s see…how did we say it back in the day? Hmmmm… oh yeah, “a good sport.” I couldn’t wait for that breathless, heart pounding, heightened moment of letting go and falling into a hot, steamy embrace.

I loved going out and meeting a new guy. I was a believer in the third date. Delaying, anticipating, teasing and finally releasing myself into that exquisite moment, well, I just looked forward to it so much. It never even occurred to me then, that I would ever feel differently. Yet, here I am at 57, in pretty good shape for an old broad, menopausal to be sure, and yet I almost never even think of SEX. I can’t believe it.

Not all of the older couples I know feel this way. Read more

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