Old Man Camp

I am not planning on having children any time soon, if at all, but if I could I would like to adopt a small camp of old men as my children.  Usually when I see an older man who happens to strike me of the kind who might fit in my camp, my outward reaction goes something like this:  “Ohmygod, he is so adorable.  I want to adopt him.”  Meanwhile, my internal reaction is that my heart melts, my tummy aches a little, and the world slows to a snail’s pace.  (If you saw the old man in the movie Up, and have any kind of heart at all, you know what I’m talking about.) 

And if I didn’t have a fear of rejection and/or otherwise didn’t think the execution of it might not go quite as I envision it in my head -- this would include my camp of old men playing checkers and watching WPRK in Cincinatti reruns, entertaining me with funny stories of the good old days, and going out to breakfast at 7 a.m. (because that’s what old people do) -- I might consider making the proposal.  An added bonus – and I’m being completely picky here -- would include their insistence on helping me out with some light household chores like doing laundry and emptying the dishwasher. 

Today, during my morning workout, I spotted two perfect candidates for my old man camp.  They were decked out to the nines in camp-type attire just to walk the college track.  Five-foot-tall wooden walking stick?  Check.  Fishing hats?  On their heads.  Decorated t-shirts from some tourist attraction (location unidentified)? Keeping them warm.  Tiny, six-inch boombox (complete with handle) playing Roberta Flack’s “Where is the love?” You bet!  This last detail was what melted my heart into pure gold because of the beautiful dichotomy of two old-thyme Mainers not listening to some old-folky Conway Twitty or Shelby Lynne, as one would expect (which would’ve still been adorable and dandy, BTW), but rather taking their morning constitution jamming to some sweet old-school R&B.  These men knew how to do it right.  Let's just say it was a sight for sore eyes on a Sunday morning. Complete with smile and a friendly hello, Clifford and Lou (my invented names for them) were the men for me. 

You may ask why I don’t envision a camp for old ladies too, or even a co-ed camp, and to be honest, I’m not quite sure.  While old folks, in general, get my heart strings, I have always had a particular soft spot for the old men.  Something about their way just speaks to me, I suppose.    

So if you know of any old men who are adorable, good natured and fun, and are in need of a granddaughter-type figure, you know who to call.

Hello, Spray Tan.

I shun laying out in the sun and UV tanning beds, because, let’s be honest – I’m too effing vain for that.  Premature wrinkles and skin cancer?  That’s for the birds.  As a result, I’m forced to embrace my alabaster pallor, even if I do think a little color is a necessary accessory for bikinis and sundresses.  With summer upon us, I decided it wouldn't hurt to go Hollywood for a day and see what this spray-tan business is all about.

So I did as I always do before embarking on a new situation by doing my research.  Specifically, I Googled, “What to do before getting a spray tan.”  All signs pointed to exfoliating and not applying deodorant and greasy lotions, to which I heeded. 

At the salon, Terry the Technician walked me through the process, which included getting undressed to the point that I was comfortable and standing on the white towel on the floor.  She said people wear whatever they’re comfortable with, which is either going completely nude to wearing a bathing suit. 

See?  Tan lines are hot.  Bar thinks so too.

Terry started spraying me using an airbrush, having me turn and lift my arms in varying degrees.  Once she was finished spraying, which took about five minutes (I made sure to tell her to go light on my face so I didn’t look like “tanning mom”), she instructed me to stand for about 10 minutes while the tanner dried.  Afterward, she checked in on me, touched my skin to make sure it wasn’t still tacky, and told me to wait to shower until the next morning.  She said that when I did shower to dry myself lightly with a towel – helpful advice considering I hadn’t yet researched “What to do after getting a spray tan.”  I dressed back into my post-spray-tan uniform -- sweats and a loose t-shirt that I didn’t care about getting stained, and black flip flops. 

When I got home I admired my head-to-toe glow, which I haven’t had in years since the tanning-booth tan I got when I was a silly 17-year-old prepping for prom.  Remarkably, there was no orange hue or icky self-tan smell and it actually looked really natural and passable for a "real tan."

I understand the temptation to tan, because everyone looks better with a little glow.  The beauty of a spray tan is that it imposes the same kind of glow that a suntan does, but without the potential for accelerated wrinkles and skin cancer.  But at $30 (plus tip) a pop, though, to have it done right, it’s not something that every person’s budget can accommodate, especially on a weekly basis when the tan fades.  But who needs to be bronzed all the time? 

I think a spray tan is a perfect once-in-a-while treat, especially when you want to wear a cute sundress or bikini, and are like me who pretty regularly dons the SPF 30 every time you step outside.   Long story short: you'll definitely find me getting my spray tan on again. 

I Love Girls!

I am a pretty big fan of the new show Girls.  About twenty-something recent college graduates trying to make it in New York, the show is no Sex and the City (SATC).  In fact, Girls is in many ways the antithesis of SATC: there’s no jazzy soundtrack, no sheen illuminating the sexiness of New York, no particular ambition whatsoever as showcased by the ladies of SATC.  Instead, the Girls of Girls are barely employed, can hardly pay their rent without the help of their parents, and are ill-matched by beta males who suffer from a similar lack of ambition.

The show represents a time when an expensive degree from Oberlin College does not a success make, when your parents pay for your Blackberry, and when boys treat you like shit even though they’re pretty shitty themselves.  In that sense, the show is both unrelatable and relatable.  When I graduated from college with my state degree, there was no question that I wasn’t going to get a full-time job with benefits.  With nearly $50,000 in loan debt, I had to get a full-time job with benefits.  And even though the job I got gave me anxiety and cold sweats every day, I stuck it out for three and a half years, while going to grad school and being miserable pretty much every day.  (That’s my walking-20-miles-to-school-in-4-feet-of-snow-story for you.)

So while I don’t understand the lack of hard work and motivation exhibited by these Girls, I do understand being in my early 20s, with so much promise ahead of me and yet being overwhelmed by it all – by the supposed promise that “the world is your oyster” -- because life is pretty hard when you’re young and no one wants to give you your big break.  It’s only when you learn that getting any kind of big break comes with hard work and sacrifice, both of which are things these Girls haven’t yet learned and which I didn’t know myself at that age.  You work that shitty job, you pay your dues, you get a little experience, and life gets easier and better. 

Where the Girls are particularly relatable, though, is in their need for love, attention, and ultimately, for their need to be understood, for better or worse.  Hannah spends her time fulfilling these needs by sleeping with Adam, an unemployed dirtbag of a guy, whose sexual demands range from asking that she pretend like she’s a prepubescent girl with a lunchbox, to smacking her around a bit, and to telling her to humiliate him while he masturbates in front of her (when she tries to take off her dress, he tells her it will ruin the fantasy and she obeys).  They have no relationship outside his apartment, aside from the occasional phone call or text, and have never set foot outside his apartment together.  We have all experienced a relationship like this in our lifetime, right? If you haven’t, well, good for you.  In your late teens and early 20s (for women in particular), it is not about being sexually satisfied on a personal level – it is about seeking sexual gratification by pleasing the other.  Once you hit your mid-20s, you hopefully learn that this is not the way any kind of romantic or sexual relationship should be.     

While I ultimately became a fan of SATC, I didn’t like it the first time I watched it.  I thought it was tacky and trashy and poked fun at the institution of romantic love.  Do you remember the pearl necklace episode?  Well, I was only 17 the first time I saw it, and the show’s target audience was clearly not 17-year-old virgins.  When I watched it a few years later, I had reached the point that sex and love are not always mutually exclusive.  Having developed that understanding, the show endeared to me the way it hadn’t the first time I had watched it.  To this day, I maintain that it’s one of the best series ever.

But what I like about Girls even more than SATC is that it does not sugarcoat the dim realities of love and sex, to want and to be wanted, and to find your way in a world that doesn’t give a shiznit about you.  When you're in your early 20s, the promise of hope and possibility looms over you like a dark cloud.  Hope and possibility are not necessarily tangible even if they exist in theory.  Moreover, wanting is much different than getting, and always requires some sort of painful sacrifice, something that this culture of young women may only be beginning to understand.  Girls is revealing these struggles in a very real, and at times, maddening, way, resulting in one of the best series out right now.  What can I say?  I'm in love with Girls.

Opie & Anthony: Just Another Pop Culture Obsession

My current pop culture obsessions as of late have been (1) John Travolta’s sex scandal; (2) the new show Girls; and (3) Opie and Anthony – all of which I can’t seem to get enough of. Somewhere sprinkled in there is an ongoing obsession with Bethenny Frankel and all her awesomness and the Real Housewives franchise, but that is nothing new. (If you’re too good for pop culture, may God bless you.)

Aside from Girls, which deserves its own post that I’ve been writing in my head since I started watching the show, I am a newcomer to the strange perverse goodness that is Opie & Anthony. Having recently bought a new car, for an entire four months I'm the recipient of a free temporary subscription to SiriusXM Radio. Only having had it for 7 days, though, I’m already addicted to it, a problem, since at the end of my free subscription I may be inclined to renew for a paid subscription just as I've done with HBO solely for Girls, and, oh yeah, "the documentaries."  Initially, I was ecstatic that XM had a station devoted entirely to “Old Skool R&B” (i.e., The Groove) and figured that would be the station to consume much of my radio time, until discovering that there are enough channels to turn any relatively focused human being into someone with prescription-grade Attention Deficit Disorder.  Well, THEN I discovered the Opie & Anthony Channel, of course. 

Okay, so it kind of makes me feel a little like a 17-year-old boy, and not at all a better human being for it, but I can’t help it myself – I’m completely entranced by it, good or bad. Just the other day they had an entire show dedicated to local foods, in a non-trendy or annoying food snobby kind of way -- about how great the bread is in Long Island (I had no idea! Now I want to try the bread in a Long Island!) and why they can’t make cheese steaks as good in NYC as they can in Philadelphia and yada yada yada. And then, somehow, they transitioned over into, well, completely crass and brash chitchat about unmentionable topics. And it was all funny and entertaining and freaking awesome.

The only problem is, now I’m having a very mild identity crisis that I may be a 17-year-old- manboy masked as a 20-something-year-old woman. (I really shouldn’t joke about that, but you get what I mean, right?)  This is what guilty pleasures do to us.  They make us feel like super shallow, base, perverse semi-complete versions of ourselves, and yet, there's pretty much no escaping them, unless you have a ton of religious self-control, which I don't have.  My self control has limits, people.  Some days not eating an entire sleeve of Oreos is a big accomplishment.   And while living life as a 17 year old boy is probably not the worst thing in the world, in practice it actually sounds pretty miserable.  Being a 17-year-old girl was bad enough.

Doing Your Personal Best with a Little R&R

The truth of the matter is that it’s that time of the month, which means four things: all I want to do is eat, I'm extra tired, I have cramps, and I just want to be alone.  Women, you know what I'm talking about, and men, you probably do too. 

I have personally never minded the arrival of Aunt Flow and all her crazy quirks. Usually, I embrace them, try to find the time to get enough sleep (even if that means skipping a workout or two), and pull on the sweats as soon as I get the chance. Not typically a complainer, I’m grateful that I do get a period – a signal that my body is functioning properly – but this month I’m feeling particularly tired, edgy, and like I just want to swaddle myself in a big blanket, pop some M+Ms, and watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians all day long. Does that make you hate me? (Because it kind of makes me hate myself.)  Basically, this period thing is kind of an extra pain in the A this month.

Because what I want to want to be doing is curl up with a book on Buddhist philosophy that my friend recommended to me, wash my windows and floors, make a rhubarb crumble, and take a hike in the woods. I want to have the energy to do all of these things, but I have a feeling that none of them are likely to happen between now and Monday, and you know what? I’m telling myself that’s okay, and I'm surprisingly not even feeling guilty about it.

I remember reading last year in The Four Agreements that you should “Always do your best.” In the book, Don Miguel Ruiz explained that doing your personal best is different at different times – sometimes you’ll have greater capacity, sometimes you’ll have less, but always do your personal best at that given moment.

I’m not sure if popping candy and watching the Kardashians is anyone’s personal best at any given time, but perhaps not feeling guilty about getting some extra R&R this weekend is practicing my personal best at the present time. That’s what I’m going to tell myself anyway.

Cooking Healthy without Sacrificing Taste.

Though I love cooking, I regret that I don't have or make the time to do it as often as I'd like.  Most of the time the meals I make are rather utilitarian - quick, healthy, light, and most of the time pretty boring.  (Read: egg whites and steamed broccoli; poached chicken breast and sweet potato; or steamed fish and salad.)  Most of my meals serve the purpose of being filling and providing fuel, without being too deliciously tempting. 

While this kind of cooking is not necessarily fun, it gets the job done and it keeps me healthy.  When I do cook for fun I like making indulgent meals: cheesy lasagna, meat pies, sole menieure, chicken and dumplings -- you know, comfort food with a gourmet flair.  After all, who doesn't love comfort food?  But the problem with cooking comfort food, even if I'm a big proponent in "everything in moderation" it's much harder for the cook to practice that, especially since she's the one who has to taste-test and serve and then eat the food she makes. 

Lately when I have been making non-utilitarian meals I've been experimenting making fun meals that are also healthy and lean.  Who knew that the two could be combined?  While having friends over for dinner on Saturday night, one of whom is a vegetarian, I faced the challenge by making a dish I've never made before (always a risk when company's coming over), but it turned out to be a hit.  For dinner I made shrimp and tomatoes over soft polenta and steamed green beans (a recipe from Martha Stewart).

And for dessert I made a rendition of a warm mocha pudding (I substituted extra chocolate for the espresso) I found in this month's issue of Cooking Light.  Also a hit.  Only problem was that I should've doubled the batch.

The meal was vegetarian, nutritious and protein-packed, and tasty, and with the exception of a little stress associated with the potential of it not having turned out the way that I had hoped, not too complicated.

So, while it's always fun to cook for friends especially on the weekend, trying out new recipes that have the side benefit of being nutritious and lean are a good reminder that healthy does not always have to be trite and routine, which is something I need to remind myself during the week.

The Beauty of a Bath

Doing nothing has always felt like sheer laziness to me.  And though I definitely enjoy doing nothing on occasion, I usually feel a little guilty about it.  Even if I have no plans, a scant to-do list, nothing to clean or cook, I usually try to find something to do.  But lately, I've had an ephipany -- that sometimes "doing nothing" allows you to replenish dwindling energy stores so that you can do the things you need to do, with care, focus, and enjoyment, even. 

Enter The Bath.  For as long as I don't know when -- months at least, I did not have a single planned nighttime commitment this week.  During one of the nights I ran a couple errands (for the record, they were legitimate ones) but during the other nights I just came home after work, made myself a light dinner, and relaxed by either doing yoga, toning, reading, or TAKING A BATH.
 
The Bath happened on Wednesday night.  I had it on my list; I declared it to my husband.  In other words, it was written in stone.  There was no escaping it, no last-minute excuses.  I came home from work, sifted through the mail, made myself a simple dinner of steamed vegetables and eggwhites (yes, I enjoy boring dinners like this most nights of the week), and prepared my bath. 

Do bathe as Jo Ann Kemmerling does, but lose the book.

There are a few steps that I've found to be most important when taking a grown-up bath by yourself:

1. Use epsom salts (at least a cupful, but ideally two).  They are the dream product for easing tension and loosening tight muscles.  If you're any kind of normal person with a job and life stressors, you're going to need this.  It's one of those things that makes taking a bath feel a little bit like a necessity, a trick that works for people who need to do something that has a benefit.
2. Do not allow yourself to listen to music.  This surprised me for I usually have music playing all the time -- when I workout, in my office, in the car, when I'm cooking or doing chores, etc.  Taking a bath forces your world to slow down and come to a hault, which is an incredibly beautiful experience; listening to your mind come to a hault is important, and music might dampen that from happening.
3. Do not exfoliate, shave, or wash during your bath. That's what showers are for, child!  Plus, who wants to be soaking around in your filth anyhow.  If you're dirty and need to get clean, shower first and bathe second. 
4. Do not read, write, or do anything other than float around and just be.  I don't know why, but every single time I take a bath (which is literally three times in the last six months -- that's a lot considering prior to that I had taken maybe 2 baths in a decade), with all good intentions I bring a book in with me.  I NEVER READ IT.  Beside the point that it's completely impractical with your hands drenched and pruny, all I wind up wanting to do is nothing, floating around, giddy to be in the moment, enjoying my body being completely submerged in 87+-degree water. 

A bath need not take hours or even an hour.  To get maximum relaxation benefit, I say you only need a half hour.  That's all it takes.  And if you're a non-bather, I will say -- THERE IS NOTHING MORE RELAXING THAN TAKING A BATH.  It is one of, if not, the most, underrated rituals in my world, and I assume yours as well.  Another bonus?  The benefits do not end when you step outside the bath, dripping wet and steaming hot.  You'll feel warm and languid, relaxed like you've had a couple drinks, and happy-happy.  Anything annoying that happened during the day will no longer matter and will not be a consideration in your current state.  You'll be in the present -- aware, but at complete ease with yourself and your world. 

Trust me -- I was a skeptic too, but now I'm a convert.  It might save your sanity, if your sanity needs to be saved.  And even if it doesn't, it will still work wonders.  Do yourself a favor, and add a bath to your weekly to-do list.