Crushed Fantasy

I have been using anti-aging creams since I was in college. They didn't work. I still aged. Albeit with softer skin, but I still turned 50 ... um ... 52.

Getting older is the best thing because if you're not getting older you're either dead or a vampire, which I guess, technically, is dead, too, but they have better housing options.

If you look closely at my hair, you'll find a few gray ones popping out occasionally. Depends on how long it has been since my last trip to the hair color aisle at Target. I've had brief thoughts of just letting the gray come out and not fussing about it, just to see how gray I would get. Did I mention they were brief?

I'll admit that I smile whenever a high school classmate tells me how I look the same as I did when we were in high school (sans the Farrah hair). When a classmate doesn't recognize me, I usually write it off to their poor memory.

This week, I've had to give up my non-aging fantasy as the one, hard truth of aging was staring me in the face. Specifically, they were "on" my face.

I had to get my first pair of glasses with bifocals. In the spirit of full disclosure, I could have had bifocals for the last ten years, but I found ways to cheat. Regrettably, my ability to cheat finally came to an end as I determined wearing two pairs of glasses at the same time is just plain weird.

The new glasses have the progressive lenses, which isn't just one distance or the other. Different parts of the lens give you long, mid and close-up vision. It just take awhile to figure out where that part of the lens exists.

Until then, I will resemble a bobblehead as I continually adjust the position of my head to find that visionary sweetspot.

How Facebook has killed the Christmas letter

I have very clear memories of my mother spending hours and hours organizing herself to prepare  Christmas cards for mailing to family and friends. She would camp out at the dinner room or kitchen table for a couple of days and work from her list. 

Each card was selected from her stash with the particular addressee in mind. She would take the time to hand write a note telling the receiver of all the news from the Harty household in the past year. She would hand address each envelope and her one shortcut was the pre-printed return address labels she received from St. Jude's. 

Having this as my role model creates lots of pressure. I can still hear her critical comments when she would receive a Christmas card in return with no personal note. Even worse were the ones where the people would have their names pre-printed on the inside of the card. Lazy people, can't even sign their names. It might even have been an insult for her.

Fast forward to the late 1980's/early 1990's, when it started being trendy to include a Christmas letter with your card. (I think this was acceptable to mom, but at a much lower standard) 

I remember when my friends started sending Christmas letters where they would either outline the many successes of their offspring or the fabulous locations they had traveled that year. Or worse, both. Since I could talk about neither (unless I listed the ice rinks that I had visited in the past year), I would just use my creative writing skills and make them humorous, but still include various tidbits of what I had done in the past year. I did Top Ten lists, I wrote poems. Anything to distract from my semi-pitiful life.

A few years ago, I started doing a Christmas blog (Ye Olde Yule Blog) and would send everyone an email with a link to the blog post. I would claim "green," but honestly it was just so much easier and cheaper. (You don't claim "lazy.")

Now, because of Facebook, I don't even do the Yule Blog. I'm diligent in posting updates, so people can know my every move and thought (and isn't that something everyone wants to know??). And with so many people in my demographic group who are now on Facebook, I think the list of non-Facebook people to whom I would send a card is fairly small.

Regardless of that fact, right now, a bunch of boxes of Christmas cards are stacked on my kitchen island for the non-Facebook list and I'm lacking motivation. I worry if I work on these cards, my resentment might sneak through and I might write something like, "why the heck are you not on Facebook?" or give them a warning that unless they join Facebook, they risk being cut off from receiving highly-valued information about me. I mean, that's got to be a motivating factor, right? 

When will I have my heart attack?

That sounds like a silly question, but in reality it is a pretty important one. 

I was surprised to learn that a 37-year-old former co-worker had a heart attack last month. She blessedly survived, but hearing the news just set me back on my heels. Jen is a healthy, active (i.e. marathon runner) mom of two and I would never imagine that she would have a heart attack.

Me? Have a heart attack? That's just far too easy to imagine. I've been thinking about it since I was 11. 

[Flashback sequence] During an exam with a new pediatrician, he was concerned about the slow pace of my heart. I had to do a stress test right away and that freaked out my mom. He couldn't find anything wrong with my heart and I'm sure mom's heart must have stopped several times during the visit.

Immediately after the appointment, we stopped by my dad's office (which was right next door to the clinic) and, after hearing the story, he chuckled and told mom that I have the Harty heart; my heart just didn't go as fast as others. His mom had the same issue as did her mom. It's a family thing.

As any 11-year-old will do, I shrugged it off and moved on.

I think I was in junior high (1970's) when the cardiologists at Mayo Clinic found a blockage in my dad's aorta. They didn't operate because they felt the surgical mortality rate was too high. From that point on, our family started waiting for something to happen.

In 1988, my dad had emergency quintuple bypass surgery at Saint Marys Hospital and for the next six years, we had many trips to Rochester.

In April 1994, my dad suffered congestive heart failure and passed away. In the weeks leading up to his death, his diabetes was out-of-control and that also contributed to the heart failure.

In doing my family genealogy, I was able to view the death certificates of many of my ancestors. Both my Grandma Harty's (my dad's mother) and my great-grandmother's (her mom) death certificates listed the same cause of death: congestive heart failure with complications from diabetes.

So that's what Dad meant about having the Harty heart. Oh, joy.

So what have I done about avoiding my family's legacy? Actually very little because who has heart attacks in their 40's? I figured I would start worrying about it in my late 50's. 

I guess I have been lying to myself. It's time for me to be pro-active and learn about heart disease, get off my duff to start exercising, and start eating right to avoid diabetes.

All things considered, I just might be over-due and running on luck.

P.S. My former co-worker has started a blog about her experiences and recovery, you might want to check it out. She's a fabulous writer.

It's the Holiday Season

It will be a strange holiday for me. New job, new town and a temporary living arrangement.  So, I'll have a Christmas tree, but it won't be my Christmas tree since I'm living at my sister's. Who, by the way, really gets into decorating the house for the holiday, as I witnessed when she pulled tub after tub of holiday decor out from storage. This ADD kid got a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Christmas is really very distracting for those with ADD as it is truly the holiday of bright shiny objects! Lights, tinsel and ornaments. 

I'll be honest and say that there were many years when I didn't even put up holiday decorations if I was too busy or not in the mood. Besides, the last thing I would need is something to further distract me. Plus I think single people have to be really motivated to decorate for the holidays.

If your home is small (like my condo), trees can take up a lot of space. I own two "wall trees" that I would hang on my ever-gawdy mirrored wall. These are half trees, so on the wall, they sort of looked fuller - or at least I thought so.

The two trees have different themes. One is my angel tree and the other - no big surprise to anyone who knows me - is a skating tree. (Suddenly I get a visual of tree skating, but I digress.) 

I am SO NOT an angel person, but WAY back in 1988, my mom - who is also a holiday fanatic and should have owned stock in Hallmark - started giving me a Hallmark ornament series - Mary's Angels. As those you who are good with numbers have figured out, I have 21 of these ornaments, with #22 under the tree (hopefully). They are named for flowers and the first one was Daffodil. At least that's my memory of it. I can't be sure because all of my holiday decorations are packed away in a storage unit about 100 miles away from where I am right now. (The photos here are from a website called "Hooked on Hallmark")

I remember opening the gift and looking closely at the ornament and getting a weirded out feeling when I saw the artist's signature on the bottom of the ornament - Mary -was dead-on to my signature when I sign my full name Mary Elizabeth. If you look closely at the ornaments, they also have a very tiny, ridiculously small triangle with a number in it that tells you what number it is in the series.  Even when my eyes were younger, I couldn't read it.

My other tree is the Skating tree that has so many ornaments that I may have to get a bigger tree to hold all of them.  Many of the ornaments were gifts (hmmm, what do you give a skating judge at Christmas???) and sadly, I might not be able to tell you from who or when I got them - except for one. It was the first one and it was also from my mom. It was Christmas 1978 - my senior year in high school. Mom and I were at the Hallmark store at the Mall and I spotted the ornament and begged her to buy it. I really wanted something special to remember my senior year and an ornament with a skating theme seemed perfect. It hung on the family tree for many years. I don't remember precisely when she gave it to me for my own tree, but I've had on my tree for at least the last 10 years.  

It, too, is packed away in storage, in its original box with an old rubber band wrapped around it (that was how my mom would secure all the ornament boxes).  Mom wrote on the back of the box the date it was purchased and "This is Mary's." And it is.

My Mother the Journalist

My mom was a stay-at-home mom because in the 1960's almost everyone's mom was a stay-at-home mom. She didn't work outside of our home until I was in high school in the late 1970's.  If my mom had been a career woman, she would have been a journalist or a historian.

Why? Because this woman wrote about the day-to-day activities of her kids decades before there were Mommy Bloggers. I had a wonderful evening last night learning about the first five years of my life through my Mom's notes. It's important to remember that I'm the fourth of four kids, so the fact that I had any baby pictures at all is amazing, never mind that I can tell you that I cut my first tooth November 28, 1960, that I stood up alone for the first time on January 24, 1961 or that my first visit to Como Zoo was August 6, 1961. And I wouldn't go on any rides.

Dennis, Christine, Susan & ME (guess we didn't have booster chairs)

June 12, 1961 my mom was thinking I had the three day measles; the next day she realized it was just a mosquito bite. I don't think she would have been a good doctor because besides thinking a mosquito bite was the measles, there was the time she brought me along when she took my sister to see Dr. Demo and he put ME in the hospital - that pesky cough she noted that I had for two days prior to the visit was the croup. So I got to spend Halloween 1963 in the hospital. Don't feel bad for me because my siblings went trick-or-treating on my behalf - "This extra bag is for our little sister who is in the hospital tonight..." I got more candy than all of them combined!

But it was February of 1964 that showed my true individualism and refusal to follow the crowd:

1/2/1964 - Christine has the mumps

1/12/1964 - Rick VerHey has the mumps

1/20/1964 - Sue has the mumps

1/26/1964 - Peggy VerHey has the mumps

2/2/1964 - Dennis has the mumps

2/25/1964 - Mary has the shingles

Yes, the entire neighborhood has the mumps and I get something completely exotic and extremely rare for kids. I wouldn't get mumps until 1976.

I was a talented child - September 17, 1964 - "Mary knows how to whistle" (my uncles - her brothers - taught me).

And I was an annoying child - May 16, 1965 - "I took Mary to church and she whistled in church."  Yes, but was I at least in key? I'm sure that it was from this point on only my dad would take me to church. And we'd sit up in the balcony.

Thanks Mom for giving me my childhood history!  You could have left out the editorial that I was "not very nice in church" for cousin Catherine Ann's baptism.

One of My Favorite Days of the Year

Today is one of my favorite days of the year. And judging by posts on Facebook this morning, it is a favorite day for parents of school age kids.

School officially starts the day after Labor Day here in Minnesota, but I like to think of this day as Fall's New Year's Day. It's a new school year and all your notebooks are clean and un-doodled-upon. You get a clean slate!

I may not have the cool new three-ring binder (I'm just guessing it's the one with that Bieber kid on it), but as it turns out this year, my first day of my New Year will be next Monday when I start my new job at Mayo Clinic.

Here's the "Official First Day of School" photo from my first day of kindergarten before I headed up the hill to Abbott. Now, mom wasn't the type to take first day of school photos, so you got your photo taken on the first day of kindergarten and from that point, it was up to the school photographer.

(What kind of posture did I have in kindergarten?)

I'll have my official first day photo at Mayo Clinic - it's called the ID photo. Unlike school, where if the photo isn't flattering, you just somehow lose it; the Mayo ID photo is with me forever and I'll have to wear it every day. 

The outfit you wore for the first day of school was always important and the pre-first day of school shopping trips meant that you usually got some new clothes along with that three-ring binder. I love shopping now, but back then, not so much. Taking an ADD child shopping isn't easy or very fun for a parent.  Mom would take sister Sue shopping (we're 15 months apart in age) for clothes and just buy two of the same outfit in different colors. 

During my junior high school years, my obsessive-compulsive tendencies came out a bit when I wore the same first-day-ensemble all three years - powder blue knit pants, white turtle neck and a baby pink blazer. Why I ever imagined that was cool is beyond me! I used to call my best friend Labor Day evening to discuss our ensembles. Why didn't she clue me in?

I am envious of my educator friends since they get to experience the annual excitement of the kids.  Yes, it's their job, but you have to imagine the kids' joy at the opportunity for a new year and a new chance must rub off a bit.

I know some people will say that you could have that frame of thought each and every day, but it's not the same if you're the only person feeling it. The "First Day of School" experience is the flip side/positive version of mob mentality.

The rest of the year may or may not be "all joy, all the time," but for that one moment, each and every year, there's a chance. 

www.nataliedee.com

A Trip to the Dentist

I have a dental appointment this morning to have the prep work done for my very first crown.  I had a root canal done in late March and I'm finally getting around to getting this part of the work done. I blame the delay on my ADD. Most of the day, my teeth are out of sight, out of mind. It's only in the very early morning and at bedtime as I'm brushing (and flossing!) that I remember.

And I shouldn't use ADD as the full excuse because, just like maybe 99% of non-dentists, non-dental hygienists and non-orthodontists, going to the dentist is not something I really look forward to.javascript:void(0)

or maybe I should blame it on painful childhood memories.

www.nataliedee.com

My childhood dentist was a gentleman named Dr. VonBerg. He was always old and I think his nurse was his wife. Up until the time I was about 12, I rarely had cavities (I credited it to the apple tree in our backyard - why? I have no idea). At age 13, I had to get braces put on and I had to have four teeth pulled prior to the installation. That was when my view of Dr VonBerg went from old, gentle guy to very scary guy with long needles. On the day of my first extraction and about 15 minutes after I got my first shot of novacaine, he realized that he had numbed the wrong side.

I was also the worst patient for my orthodontist. I got the braces on when I was 13 and didn't get them off until I was 18. I would always forget to wear my headgear! My monthly appointment was always the same - Dr. Sletten would ask me about the head gear and I would lie and say, "I wear it every night."

I think he tried reverse psychology on me the final year by telling me that I was so close and if I wore my headgear faithfully for the next month, he would take them off the next month.  Sorry, Dr. Sletten, reverse psychology doesn't work on ADD girl.

I finally got my braces off and was amazed at the feeling of my lips sliding down my teeth without get caught in the barb wire. My teeth were nice and straight (my parents were about $1200 poorer) and I've liked my smile ever since.

So, when I started having pain in one of my teeth, my current dentist said that there were two possible options - they could do a root canal and then I would get a crown OR they would have to pull the tooth and I would have to get a bridge.

Absolute mortification! The idea of losing a tooth and looking like a hillbilly with missing teeth was giving me nightmares. And it didn't help that my mom has bridges and when she's tired of having them in her mouth, she'll just pull them out and put them on the end table in her living room. (We always call in advance of bringing guests to visit her and tell her to make sure her teeth are in)

www.nataliedee.com

So, off I go to the dentist and hope it will be somewhat pain-free. I'm thinking the most painful part is paying the bill "at the time of service." 

I'm finally a Mommy Blogger!

There seems to be only two types of bloggers - Mommy bloggers and everyone else.  I'm in the "everyone else" group due to my severe lack of biological children. But with today's post, I get to move into the Mommy blogger category because today, my blog post is about my Mom. (Work with me, here....)

This Friday, my 83-year old mother will be joining the digital age when she gets internet access in her independent living apartment. OMG, my mom could potentially be on Facebook soon.

I doubt she'll be friending anyone in immediate future as this is the same women who required me to visit two weekends each year: the beginning of daylight savings time and the end of daylight savings time. It seems that I was the only one of her children who had the technical training for resetting all the digital clocks in her house. (oh, and don't lecture, I visit my mom more than twice a year.)

I know this will be an educational opportunity for me because I talk techie all the time and make assumptions that if I know it, everyone else must know it, too. I've already learned how much I take for granted in just trying to explain some Web 2.0 basics to my mom.

Recently, I was explaining how I left a note of sympathy on my home town newspaper's (Albert Lea Tribune) obituary page.  I explained, "I wrote a note to the family about my memories of their mom."

To anyone reading this blog, that would be simply enough. But how could someone who has never used the internet for communications, only to view things, understand writing on a website that doesn't belong to you? It took a bit of time to either explain it or get her flustered enough to stop asking questions - I'm not sure what the real outcome was.

Mom called me last night to discuss the selection of her email address. Could she really use whatever she wanted? More or less, yes. You tell them what you want for your user name (oops).

Explaining the "@" part and how she only chooses the part before the @, was a bit more tricky. "It's called an ampersand and it means 'at."

She wanted to know, "How did you get to have 'family' in your email address?"

"Mom, I didn't choose that part of my email address, I have 'usfamily' because that's the name of my ISP...um....service provider." (drats!) 

-silence-

So, ask yourself - ten or fifteen years ago, would you have understood this? 

This will definitely be a learning experience for me. And perhaps a very drawn-out learning experience. I'll just consider it fodder for having more Mommy blogger posts. (So I can be more like the other kids...) 

www.nataliedee.com