I love this photo of Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier's swearing in.  It's so . . . lively and unconventional. And it practically cries for inventive captioning.

Judge rescues woman from attackers

Child, husband, try to stop mom

Many rush to help as woman collapses

Gang creates diversion in Tosa pickpocketing crime spree 

I'm sure you can come up with better ones. Meanwhile, I'll just congratulate Jill and wish her the best as I ponder the unintended stories in this candid tableau. One, from famous Milwaukee ex-pat politician Golda Meir, seems especially apt:

At work, you think of the children you've left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself, your heart is rent.

Here's to doing good work anyway, rent hearts and all!  

I think that last Tuesday was the only day in the past week that we've been free of a close encounter of the medical kind.

Chances are, you know where I'm coming from: from the urgent care center to the clinic waiting room to the radiology suite, every place we've gone has been crowded with people coughing and looking miserable.

Yesterday's doctor pronounced it "the February Thing," whatever these flu-ey and respiratory plagues are.

I don't even have to announce my name at the Walgreen's pharmacy on Mayfair and North anymore. They just see me coming and start pulling white paper bags with tiny bits of medicine inside and huge warning lists stapled to the outside.

Darling daughter is getting the worst of it now. First a sinus infection, now another infection that's making her eyelid swell and her face bulge. Her twin took one look and, ever the comforting male, asked "That thing gonna stay that way now?"

The best part of the adventure was an encounter with exceptional customer service. Mary at the Plank Road Clinic called all over town to find a CAT scan facility that would a) take us in the evening and b) be covered by my insurance. If you've ever done this, you know how long it can take and how frustrating it can be. She even got the necessary preauthorization for us. It's enough to restore your belief in human kindness.

A coddling weekend is coming up. Wouldn't mind a cuddling one if my kids were inclined to be coddled that way, but we're all retreat-to-our-dark-corners-and-leave-us-alone types when sick.

And I'm hoping that the "March Thing" will be . . .the harbinger of spring. Too much to hope for the real thing.

As I leave the house to make my now weekly pilgrimage to Oshkosh, I spot one of the kids’ iPods on the kitchen floor. It looks a little odd, and then I see that all that high technology is now held together with electric tape.

The surface appeal is gone, but still it manages to work somehow.

It’s a little like that with Mom. A $90,000 chunk of technology about the size of a cigarette pack is implanted under her skin, about where a breast pocket would be. It paces her heart and, when the rhythm goes all kaplooey, it shocks it back in line. Disconcerting, that.

But now, despite the nifty gizmo and all sorts of expensive pharmaceuticals, her giant heart, filling three quarters of her chest cavity, is failing in its job. As a result, her body is filling up with fluid.

In the past two weeks, she’s gained 20 pounds. It’s in her arms and legs, which the physical therapists wrap with elastic bandages, and in odd bulges around her midriff, which they can’t wrap. Because she’s had two radical mastectomies, in some of the places the fluid would normally go, there aren’t places anymore.

Aside from the discomfort (doctor word), pain (patient word), and fear it causes, congestive heart failure is hell on personal vanity.

I call my friends Sabina, a physician, and Susan, a nurse, to get a pre-trip briefing. So I am prepared for the worst.

Still, heading up Highway 41, the sky is so blue, and there are red barns in fields of oat stubble and snow: beauty all around me. I turn off the radio to make a place that’s quiet enough to let in wisdom greater than my own.

I enter the nursing home, a place of old people and middle-aged daughters. Mom is sleeping: I nudge her awake. She rises, in some pain, but manages to get going.

After she stands for a bit, a pocket of fluid forms beneath her buttock. She makes me feel it, and I am suitably horrified. All the people she has made feel her butt today, including her nurse, a man, have been horrified, she says. We laugh about that.

We walk the halls to a waiting room with nursing-home-mauve-and-blue wing-back chairs and an enormous freight elevator. Odd décor even for a nursing home, I suggest. Mom climbs on: 117 pounds.

That’s three less than yesterday. The diuretics are starting to work at last. The many bathroom trips last night begin to feel less onerous.

And today becomes an up-day on the rollercoaster. 

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh asked, “Does our looks-obsessed culture want to stare at an aging woman?” The woman in question was Hillary Clinton, of course.

“It's like almost an addiction that some people have to what I call the perfection that Hollywood presents of successful, beautiful, fun-loving people. So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

He illustrated his point with an exceptionally unflattering photo of the Democratic party presidential candidate next to an exceptionally presidential photo of Mitt Romney and concluded that the Republican is much prettier and therefore more electable. In other words, a better presidential candidate.

The same day, 24-year-old Amanda Hinsperger asked: “What is it about anti-aging?. . .Women in particular carry the anti-aging burden, since most anti-aging ads are marketed to women. Are we afraid of aging? Does the natural course of life disturb us? Nobody likes to admit their body is failing. With all the stress this worrying brings on, and with the aging impacts of stress, maybe we'd be doing ourselves a favour by embracing age.”

Offensive as Limbaugh’s screed is, his observations about our culture’s fear, even hatred, of aging, are sound.

I don’t know how to change that, but Gene D. Cohen, MD, PhD, Director of the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at The George Washington University, believes the negative attitudes about aging get their start in childhood. Think of the fairy tales we read to our impressionable toddlers: they’re full of wicked witches, stepmothers who are ugly inside and out, old women who live in shoes and abuse their too-large broods.

The Center has compiled a list of stories for children of all ages that show older adults as kind, active, humorous, wise, creative, brave—all the rest of the admirable qualities we aspire to at any age.

That is, if we aren't aspiring only to looking good.

Seems we need to start at the beginning. Give a child you know a good book—and some real-life experiences with women (and men) who are older, but not worse for it.

This entry also is posted at Aging Maven.

3:30 pm: A reader wanted me to make clear that the photos came first (the Drudge Report) and Limbaugh's comments came in response to them. He also objected to my use of the word "screed," claiming Limbaugh's point was about society and not Clinton. I think everything that man says is screed, and I'm sticking to it. That doesn't mean that the observation of American attitudes about aging (especially aging women) isn't accurate: it is. At the same time, it's a Hillary slam.

Fifty two years ago today, Rosa Parks stayed seated on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and the world changed.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. And it wasn’t a random act. Parks, a seamstress, was active in the voter registration movement for who were then called Negroes. She’d attended a desegregation workshop as a representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

“(There) I found out for the first time in my adult life that this could be a unified society…I gained there the strength to persevere in my work for freedom not just for blacks, but for all oppressed people."

The bus event wasn’t planned, but you might say Parks was primed. Still, it was a signal moment in a struggle for human equality that goes on today.

I remember learning in school about this tired and dignified little old lady who had “spoken” truth to power against the wrong of segregation. Somehow, that image made her arrest more worthy of indignation. Nobody likes the idea of big scary police putting their hands on tiny little old ladies.

But today, I am reminded that Rosa Parks was 42 at the time. Martin Luther King Jr. was 26.

In 1955, 42-year-olds were not old but certainly were considered mature. And that was a good thing. There was work to do: families to raise, mortgages to pay off, business to be done, freedom to be won.

Parks went on to co-found with her husband the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to help young people pursue education, register to vote and work toward racial peace.

In searching the Net for news about  women around Parks’ age at the time, I found Sarah Jessica Parker and Teri Hatcher. Google links led to “Older women having babies,” “Hottest women over 40,” “Fashion don’ts for women over 40,” “Older women and younger men.”

Pages and pages of diet, exercise, and skin care. Articles about women’s desire to be thinner, sleeker, hotter.

Nothing much about being grown up and taking responsibility for the world.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this picture.

Maybe we need more buses.

 

After working late to catch up from the four-day holiday and making a quick "hot turkey salad," I've collapsed in front of the TV. Suzy Orman is telling me YOU MUST BE IN HARMONY!!! When I am in harmony, she says, I will CLEAN UP MY SURROUNDINGS!!! This will make me rich, not to mention HAPPY!!! and a CONFIDENT WOMAN WHO KNOWS HER OWN WORTH!! in all senses of the word, which will make me BEAUTIFUL and I forget what else.

Now, Suzy Orman is a very smart woman, and she knows a great deal about money management. But I am not entirely sure that I want to "GET IN LINE, AND NEVER GET OUT OF IT AGAIN!!! And I'm quite sure I don't want to be yelled at about it.

Financially, it's a great idea. Domestically, ditto. But so much of what's good in life, including harmony, happens when you're not in line.

This year we violated almost all of our holiday rules, aka habits. We ate Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant. The food wasn't as good. There were chicken nuggets and baked cod in the buffet, and that was so wrong. But it saved a lot of stress and anxiety, and that was very good. There was harmony in the family.

Black Friday, we shopped for the first time ever on the day after Thanksgiving. We were heading home from Oshkosh, and the Blue Top outlet mall was right there, and it just seemed. . . prudent. We made a killing at the Gap and brought Geo's wardrobe into harmony.

Last night, we had our own small Thanksgiving dinner--turkey breast cooked in the slow cooker. There were lots of vegetables, none in Cream of Mushroom soup. The cranberry sauce was jellied and straight from the can, in violation of a three generation family taboo. It was good, with few dishes.

Later, driving past the dump, we saw a buck. A huge one, maybe 8 points. He was illuminated by the full moon, which made the moment magical. It also saved us from hitting him.

And that's harmonious. We are, indeed, HAPPY!!! But not rich.

 Harmonious Hot Turkey Salad

3 cups cooked turkey, diced

1/2 cup celery, chopped

1 can water chestnuts, diced

1/2 to 1 cup black olives, sliced

1 small red pepper, diced

1/2 cup frozen peas 

3 tablespoons grated onion 

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 cup leftover gravy and 1/2 cup of mayonnaise (or 1 cup mayonnaise)

Salt and pepper to taste; 1 teaspoon or more or less curry powder if you like it 

1/2 cup sliced or slivered almonds

1 cup grated cheddar cheese or more if you prefer

Mix all ingredients except cheese. Place in a 9 X 13 inch baking dish or other large gratin dish. Cover with cheese. Then cover with topping (below). Bake ~20 minutes at 400 degrees or until crumbs are golden brown and salad is heated through.

Topping: 1/2 to 1 cup bread crumbs, 2 to 4 tablespoons melted butter, and salt to taste. 

 

 

Have I got your attention?

The State of Wisconsin Board on Aging and Long Term Care certainly got mine in today's press release titled "What? Sex in a Nursing Home???

A press release from the state with four question marks in the title is a rarity. Normally, state officials try to project an air of gravity and utter certainty. But you'd be crazy not to have a few questions here.

If Grandma and widower Emil down the hall decide to become lovers and don't bother the other residents, why not? Is it immoral? Illegal? Or does it depend?

There will be no jokes about Depends, please.

According to author James Richardson, the briefing reports, a person who isn't able to consent to major surgery because of impaired decision-making may well be able to make other decisions--like what flavor ice cream she may want. And "the ability to consent to sexual activity could be considered  to lie closer to the decision about ice cream than to the decision about major surgery."

If memory holds, I'm much more likely to consider sex as related to ice cream than to consider sex as related to major surgery. So I'm sold on the idea that I, and not my children or the night nurse, should get to decide who visits me and how I'll entertain them.

Kudos to the Long Term Care Ombudsman Program in supporting policies that give residents the right to seek sexual expression in a safe and appropriate manner.

Still, I can't help but think of an old joke.

Otto, the only male resident of HappyVale Senior Residence, has read about some little blue pills that will return some of his youthful functions. He sends off to Canada for a supply, tries one, and is delighted by the results.

He rushes into the dining hall shouting words he'd read on the advertising circular: "Super Sex! Super Sex? Who wants super sex?"

Mable and Inga turn to each other, reflect for a moment, and turn back.

"We'll take the soup," they reply in unison.

 

The upscale hairdresser gingerly picks up a strand of hair and looks at me with a mix of contempt and pity:

“You have poofy hair!”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I counter.

When you are as old as I am, you have been through the Big Hair, Sleek Hair cycles often enough to know that this year’s curse will be next year’s blessing.

Still, I’m a little annoyed. Although I have a whole catalog of Parts that Need Improvement, my hair is “good hair.” It’s thick, straight, healthy, and has more color than it has gray (and that color my own, not Clairol’s).

“Let me teach you how to use a flat iron so it won’t be so poofy,” he says, ignoring me. "And you'll need some hairspray."

“I though I was paying you the big bucks to cut my hair so it doesn’t need much interference on my part,” I growled.

He never showed me how to use the iron thing, but it’s not Swiss watchmaking. And then there’s all that long-ago experience with lying down on the floor, spreading my hair out on the ironing board, and using the big clothes pressing iron to take out any minor bends I imagined my hair had.

So now I spend five minutes standing and unpoofing. But only the top layer: I’m too lazy to do the whole job the way my daughters might.

In the end, it’s all about the gear and the ritual. Each style shift creates a new anxiety and a new device guaranteed to alleviate it.

It won’t be long before he says “Your hair is so FLAT! Don’t you want a little more height and volume? It will make you look. . .” pause before saying the magic word: “younger.”

Then I’ll have to rush out and buy a poofer. If you play the stock market, now's the time to invest!

This morning, I checked the sump pump to make sure it was still working (it was) and walked the dog sometime between the 7 and 8 am rains. Basement’s dry and the air conditioning’s on, mainly to suck the wet out of the air.

Wild dog Idgy's not the only one with pent-up nervous energy during this monsoon season. I can almost feel the lawn-mowing brigade itching to start their engines. One neighbor managed to mow down an acre of lush grass yesterday. I wonder how often he had to stop to ungum the works.

But these are small concerns. So many people’s lives have been disrupted, and a few lost, in this temporary over-abundance of rain. Too much of a good thing at the wrong time can be devastating.

* * *
Twelve days until school starts. Yippee! Summer’s expensive, and I can’t wait to get back into a routine. With teens in the house and variable work schedules, there hasn't been a lot of nighttime sleep going on. "They" say when you get older you think about sleep the way you used to think about sex.

Hmmmm.

The rains and good class schedules are making the kids a little more eager to return to school, too.

This year, they’re taking a course called Challenge. Maybe I’ll pick a challenge to pursue alongside them. Something in addition to getting the lawn mowed, I mean.

* * *
Hips. They're among the randomly occurring thoughts I've been having while sheltering from the storms. and not just because mine seem to be expanding. Should the Underwood Creek rise high enough to flood my house, I'm well-prepared with my own floatation mechanism. Fat floats.

But I digress.

Have you noticed that young women don’t have them anymore? Doesn’t matter whether they are thin or plump, they don’t have hips. They may have bellies, maybe “muffin tops,” but no hips.

What's up with that?! Hormones in the food? Adaptation to never wearing anything with waistbands anymore?

Go figure. . .