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Getting Older Rocks…

August 4, 2007 By 2 Comments

Remember when you were a little kid and you were so excited to get older that you corrected people who said you were five when you were really five and a half??

When did you stop counting the half years? When did it stop being cool to get older?

My son is turning 9 on Monday and is all about his new age. He likes it so much that he has been trying it out for weeks. “Yeah, I am almost 9.” “When I am 9 I am going to have my own computer.” “9 year olds don’t have to go to bed at the same time as their sisters, right Mom?” No hanging on to the last vestiges of being 8 for him.

Yet, I have so many friends who do that 29/39/49 and holding thing that I have to wonder what it is about aging that makes us want to go into such denial that we will actually pick a year and stick with it.

I get the mortality thing–that for many getting older represents that slow march toward death. I suppose if you are paying attention to the news, the constant images of age-related disease and disability could be a little disconcerting. If you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense that you would want to convince yourself that it ain’t gonna happen to you because you have no intention of moving from this spot thankyouverymuch!

Maybe it is because I love who I am at 36 and wouldn’t choose to relive any of my past. Maybe it is because I hang out with people who are older than I am and they seem to be having so much fun. Maybe it is because I have been called a baby by someone at every age I have ever been* and am looking forward to the age when that stops. Maybe I am the one in denial and don’t choose to see the correlation between birthdays and illness.

Regardless, I love getting older. I love adding days to my calendar and reams to my memories.

Ultimately, I think it has more to do with being okay with who I am right this moment while also looking forward to the next iteration of Gina. It is like a birthday every moment with the gift being the discovery of what growth and delight and deepening and love and joy I get to play with now.

So, here’s to birthdays and half birthdays and 127/365ths birthdays. Make a wish and blow out your candles. It’s your birthday and getting older rocks!

*You know how it goes: “Oh, you are (fill in age here)?? You are still a baby!!” What is it about that dismissive statement that makes me want to do violence??

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Stuck Under a Pile of Laundry…

May 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Send help!

I know everyone has to deal with laundry. Well, I suppose there are folks who toss aside their just-doffed clothing with the expectation that the Laundry Fairy (be it mom, wife, butler, or actual magical nymph) will remove it, clean it, dry it, fold it, and return it to the drawer where it belongs. Ignoring those folks (two of whom live in this house) the rest of us have this issue on an on going basis.

Gina, are you seriously going to do a blog post on laundry?

Why not??

Well, you have only posted like 4 times in the past 4 months. Couldn’t you update us on something a little more–well, exciting??

All right! Okay! Enough about the 8 loads (count ’em!) I did today. We’ll talk about something else. I was on a roll, though. Laundry happens to be a big deal around here.

Oh! The magazine with my rant about that Combating Autism Act came out. Of course, they deleted all of my exclamation points and question marks and sighs and acks and it reads like a research paper–but it is in print. (Why do editors do that??? They get all excited about a piece and beg you to let them publish it and then strip it of everything that made it yours to begin with…) You can see it here. Scroll down to pages 12-13.

We are also on the cover–along with several pics I took during our last lobbying trip to DC. They put more of my shots inside around a piece written by another family that went on the same trip. It seems I am a photo-journalist, too! Whoda thunk?

And as long as I am “outing” myself by giving you a link to the magazine–which contains pics of me and my child along with my real name–I might as well add a picture to my profile and include a link to my other* website. Sure, some might see it as shameless self-promotion. They obviously don’t know me very well.

So, there you have it. I have morphed into a laundry-doing, homeschooling, photo-journalist, author, webmistress, blogging, life coach.

Heavy on the laundry.

*Y’all have had a link to untangleautism.org on the sidebar for over a year. If you google “autism” and “iep” my little site will come up first–and I have done nothing to promote it evah… kah-cha!! Just goes to show what having a site sit there for 6 years can do. LOL

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Words Never Fail Me…

April 13, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Finding Your Own North Star by Martha BeckMy boyfriend (yes, it is official and exclusive and terrifying and very, very good) bandies about his credentials as a writer–and rightfully so–to the point where I sort of forgot that I, too, have been known to put together some sweet syllables on occasion.

I have suddenly rediscovered my penchant for prose as I have tossed off the yoke of higher education*. (Yeah, I said I put together sweet syllables on occasion. At other times, I put together clashing cliches and hide behind my anonymity.) Without volumes of Kirkpatrick to dig through (love him, but his name comes up every 3rd sentence at Joe’s Pretty Good Grad School) I have time for all sorts of writing and–gasp–pleasure reading!

There are 40 books on my nightstand. These are my “get to them soon” books. My book purchasing is an illness that I will never even attempt to overcome. I see a book that looks interesting, I buy it. I read the first 75 pages and then get distracted by another pretty cover. It goes on my nightstand. Eventually I am penniless and want something to read, so I go back to one of the toss offs and re-discover why I bought it. Eventually I finish them all. (Well, except for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell which was officially thrown across the room at page 640 and left to be walked on for a week until I finally worked up the strength to pick up the 40 pound doorstop and put it on a shelf. Ms Clarke, get thee an editor!)

Anyway. The pile of books seems to grow faster than my children. Which has led me to discover one advantage to being the only adult in the house; no one else can tell you that you have too many of something! It also means that no one moves your stuff–and if they do they are smaller than you and you can bribe them with candy and stickers to get it back.

Keeping in mind those two things (the getting to keep what you want and it staying where you put it) imagine just how juicy it is to re-discover an entire collection of books that you are absolutely dying to read just sitting there beside your bed and actually having the time to read them!

Are you salivating?

Oh! The titles I am cracking (or re-cracking) this month! Everything from The Fabulous Friendship Festival to The Female Brain to The Field to Finding Your Own North Star. Wait. Those are all in the Fs. Just so no one gets the mistaken belief that my nightstand is organized alphabetically… to The Namesake to Why Moms are Weird (Hi, Pamie!!) to Sex, Time, and Power.

I have had a book-a-day habit since 2nd grade (Hi, Mrs. Williams!!) and just feel so blessed to have continued access to this alternate reality. I am working diligently to pass my addiction on to my kids. I suckered them in with picture books before they could hold their heads up. Then we moved on to reading chapter books out loud on car trips and while they played in the floor with their toys. Once I got them hooked, I taught them the code and now they are reading on their own.

If there is anything any sweeter than kissing my children good night, it is hearing my 8-year-old son say as I tuck him in with a biography(!!), “There’s nothin‘ like a good book.”

* Grad school is going on the back burner for the moment. The issues I mentioned last fall have never been resolved and have escalated and the school is in a huge upheaval that won’t be settled in my lifetime and I am over beating my head against that brick wall. Perhaps another program at another school will be a better fit. Perhaps I should just get off of my ass and get a job. Hey! I might just do it!!

Filed Under: Blissification, Gina's Reading, Pointing Forward Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

No seriously…

April 4, 2007 By Leave a Comment

It has not been two months since my last post!

I have thought all sorts of incredibly important and insightful thoughts. Didn’t I post about my 36th birthday party, complete with band and chocolate mousse? No? Well, how about the incredible St Valentine’s weekend at the state park covered in snow? Not that either?? Okay, surely I told y’all all about my real, live, paying client that officially kicked off my life coaching business, right? Right???

Oh, guys, I am so sorry!

It seems the more I have to say the less able I am to drop by ye ole blog and say it.

Well, I will tell you that the blog has proven to be slightly beneficial for my writing career. (I didn’t even know I had or wanted a writing career!) My rant on the language surrounding the Combating Autism Act was picked up by a magazine. It seems that at least one other person thinks it is high time we think about the language we use when discussing diagnosis and disability. I won’t re-rant here. Just wanted to send out a woot! for the record.

And because this entry is officially all over the map and is begging for some sort of cohesiveness, I will end where I began:

As of right now, it has not been two months since my last post.

See y’all in June…

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Rockin’ my world 2.0…

February 6, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Okay. I lied.

This is the coolest site ever.

Click on “Custom Radio” and put in your favorite artist or song and it will create a radio station just for you.

You can customize it.

You can create stations for your every mood.

You can ban crappy songs from ever playing in your kingdom.

You can plug your laptop into your surround sound system and wonder how you got so lucky as to live in this incredible time.

Life is about to change for you.

Go!!

I’ll wait here. It’s okay. They’re playin’ my song…

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Rockin’ my world…

January 22, 2007 By Leave a Comment

or at least my laptop is this very, very cool interactive and free (for the lo-fi version) online streaming music player.

Go! Right now! Check it out.

Then come back and tell me how amazing it is.

You’re gonna thank me.

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She’s So Cool…

November 6, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Yeah, I know. I am mystifyingly cool.

No kidding.

I can do grad school, homeschool, raise two kids, balance a checkbook, date real men, drive a car, stay at goal weight, and elliptical train for an entire hour without passing out.

Then, I start my heady yeah-I-just-ran-to-nowhere-for-an-entire-hour-without-passing-out walk back to the locker room only to get my headphone cord tangled up with my towel and my sweatshirt and manage to bang my Zen into my nose and draw blood.

And then one of those real men has to tell me that I have blood running down my face, ’cause I am too cool to notice it all on my own.

Now, you know just how impressive I really am.

Oh, and the run-just-prior-to-my-public-humiliation is in the books (126/200) along with another one (run not humiliation) this weekend (127/200) plus an amazing, leaf-crunching (I love fall!!), 5-mile hike (128/200).

I. Am. So. Cool. Don’t you wish you could be like me?

Stop laughing. It isn’t funny.

Yet.

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Life and Death…

October 4, 2006 By Leave a Comment

It is such a fine, fine line between here and there. Two of my very favorite people have been dancing on that line for the last bit. One is hanging on with every ounce of her being. One just teetered over the edge.

I’ll start with the still living. Gammy–as my kids call her–was out of my life for 21 years in spite of being one of the kindest people I have ever encountered. I got to reconnect with her this summer when I reintroduced myself to my paternal clan–and we are very early in the rebuilding stages. She went in for “routine”* surgery last week, was sent home the next day, and should have been fine. But she wasn’t. I’ll spare you the details, but she has been through 3 additional surgeries and tons of trauma (she needed some 6 pints of blood and 4 pints of plasma on Sunday alone!!) and is–amazingly–alive.

How close?? How close did I come to never seeing her again? My sisters and dad are almost speechless with fear and exhaustion and I feel like I am watching the whole thing through binoculars. It is impossible to describe the feeling of being so tightly emotionally bound to people you barely know. I want to gather them in and nurture them–but I don’t even know them well enough to have a clue what they would consider nurturing! I am just praying that I get the chance to learn. I almost didn’t.

Tracey's FlowersTracey’s mom, Noreen, was one of those women who just gave–and not the leftovers–she gave her best. When I married the wasband, Tracey and her brother were both in the wedding. Now, Tracey is an incredibly talented artist–with style in surplus–who did all sorts of wonders for my wedding. But, as a bridesmaid, isn’t that part of the job?

But her mom? Her mom didn’t get an official title in the production, but she sure should have. She made Tracey’s dress, drove a 15 passenger van full of guests across 3 states (and earned the nickname “Maria Andretti”) , assisted with the video, posed for pictures, offered sound advice, entertained the hotel staff, managed to smile the whole time, and then returned that van load safely home.

I can’t even look at the pictures right now. It reminds me that I have let some people slip away. I sort of lost some of them in the divorce. I got “too busy” to keep up with others. I missed the opportunity to reconnect with others.

Yeah, I believe in an afterlife–and all the solace that provides–but I am still very, very sad for those of us who will miss her amazing ability to be so casual about what a big deal she was. I am very, very sad that she got away without a goodbye. I had plenty of warning. She fought cancer for a very long time. I thought about calling, sending a card, sending flowers. I thought. I didn’t. I let her get away. Shame on me.

*I have always corrected anyone who called surgery “routine.” It is routine only for the medical personnel involved. I know there are folks who have lots of surgeries–but I doubt even they consider turning off their bodies, having them sliced open, having things rearranged and removed, sewing the whole package back up, and then waking up to round-the-clock vitals checks as a “routine” part of their day.

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Swimwear Shopping or How I Faced the Dragon…

September 5, 2006 By Leave a Comment

Watercolor Sun Collage -- Gina Lynette & Ned Andrew SolomonI last bought a swimsuit in February 2005. I weighed in the 190 pound range, and everything I tried on looked like what it was: a rather snug garment doing its level best to hold in all of the lumpy parts without splitting a seam. After trying on no less than three billion suits, I finally found one that I could tolerate. I have to admit that it did a pretty decent job of snugging in the bulges and holding up the flab and I wore it faithfully to pools and gym spas for over a year.

I don’t know when I noticed how large it was. Probably around the time it got warm enough to put on a swimsuit—so, June? But then life exploded and I just lived with it because, quite frankly, I would rather pluck nose hairs—even strangers’ nose hairs—than try on those latex sausage casings. That is, I used to prefer all sorts of tortures over facing the three way mirror in my almost-nakedness. But how was I to know that even this trauma could be reduced to a memory??

Labor Day is officially the best day—price wise—to purchase swimwear. Everything is 75% off and the racks still have loads of options. Any other year of my life, the following paragraph would be filled with how much I hate swimsuit shopping. Not this year. I will say that it took my very best friend practically dragging me to the mall to even get me started in the direction of replacing my trusty casing. He is a very, very patient man, (he would have to be to be my best friend after the couple of years I have had, no?) but even he was getting tired of hearing me bitch about how huge my suit was and how un-pretty I felt in it.

So we went shopping. He asked my size—in past years that would have been met with an “oh—I don’t know—um—huge??”—and I said, out loud, “Let’s start with 12s and then we can adjust.” He proceeded to pull one of every—and I do mean every—size 12 possibility off of the 20 rounders. When he had a good arm load, he handed them to me and shoved me toward the dressing room saying, “I’ll keep digging; you get started.” And so he did and I did. Out of those first 30 suits, 25 were just wrong—cut, color, fabric, or bra just didn’t do anything for me—but the other 5 were definite possibilities. When I found a suit that I was feeling pretty good about —sit down—I walked out of the dressing room and asked how it looked. Each time, I would bring an armload of non-contenders and he would replace them with his latest finds.

We finally narrowed it down to 3 that did all the stuff I wanted. (Made me look incredible, supported my post-pregnancy and weight-loss self, and covered my ass—there is nothing worse than a bulgy, saggy, up-the-butt suit.) I wanted 2 suits (75% off!!) and we decided on 2 of the three just before we noticed an adorable suit on a mannequin (I have never been the size of a suit on a mannequin!!) and said, “I might as well give it a shot.” It fit perfectly, I look fantastic in it, and long story longer I walked out of there with 2 terrific suits that I cannot wait to wear in public!

So, yes, weight-loss groupies, even the dreaded swimsuit phobia can be a thing of the past. I feel invincible!! Well, except for that little gall bladder thing that sent me rushing to the hospital last Thursday, but that is for another post.

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