Rock the Silver

My mid-year style makeover

Here's a sneak preview of my new hipster look. I say sneak preview because I really need to sit in front of a real camera instead of my computer for an image that actually has crispness and clarity. This will do for now.

So.

Short bangs are obviously not to everyone's taste. I love them and am so happy I made the leap! I missed a little of the hip factor I had when my hair was short, so I thought an edgier bang would suit my personality. When I look at this image, I think, yes, that's how I feel on the inside. That's me. Totally rocking the silver!

The bangs got chopped first. I didn't go back to the place that annoyed me -- I popped into a trendy salon, and a young woman dressed in leather cut them for free. I felt no judgment or attitude. She was like, oh, fun, cool! My kind of gal.

Then I went shopping for new glasses. Bangs and glasses have been tough for me to figure out, but options opened up when I went shorter. Even older pairs look better on me now. These are by Paul Smith, and they are my favorite so far. I only regret the money I spent trying to get to this place. At least I have a few different styles of frames when I feel like changing it up.

Now that I'm in this new place, I have to say it feels pretty good. Personal style is such a journey. If I've learned anything, I've learned to trust my instincts. I looked at pictures for months, and hardly anyone has short bangs. Especially older women. I almost didn't do it because who wants to be the only one?

My gut said go for it. You only have to please yourself. And pleased I am. What I really like about this haircut is that it is obvious I didn't just wake up one day with gray hair and say, oh shit, I give up. This haircut says I made a choice, and I have confidence in my choice.

Fantasizing about tattoos

I am fascinated by tattoos as an art form and frequently fantasize about getting a huge mural inked on my arms and shoulders. No dainty little butterfly on the ankle for me. I played a prank on my co-workers several years ago -- everyone thought my fake sleeve was real.

Tattooing over scars also interests me. I have this huge vertical scar on my abdomen from my cancer surgery, and I thought it would be cool to embellish it in some way. I had no control over the scarring of my body then, and the idea of taking control and doing it on my own terms appeals to me. My scar looks sort of like a zipper, so I Zoogled zippers and tattoos and holy cow! Check this out.

The thing is, I most certainly won't do it. OK, maybe I cave in and get something small, but even then, it's probably a bridge too far for me. I've gone this long without it, and I really don't see any good reason to start. Yet ...

What has been your experience with tattoos? Tacky or cool? Is it something you would consider in mid-life? Or are you way ahead of us? What do you have, and where is it? 

The cat who saved my life

Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to the late great Spike, who went to join the Choir Invisible in 2004. He was a retired cat by the time we got him around 1997, but he reinvented himself in his later years and quite possibly saved my life.

My husband and I both loved cats, but we agreed that neither one of us wanted to be bothered with a furry friend. "No kids, no pets, we travel light," is what we used to say.

I loved cats as a child. My father, who was a troubled man, hated cats. Mom brought a kitten home one day, and my dad was pissed, but we kept the kitten anyway. I named him Cricket. I don't remember how long we had Cricket, but I do know that one day he was just gone. I vividly remember coming home from school every day for six months to check the newspaper under lost and found -- to see if Cricket had magically appeared somewhere and was ready to come home. I eventually gave up.

Several years later we had a dog. I was a teenager. While watching TV, my dad said it was time to get up and feed the dog. I said I would take care of it during the next commercial. He said, "Feed the dog now, or I'll kill it just like I did your cat." 

That's how I found out where Cricket went. Maybe that's when I decided this wouldn't happen again.

Fast forward to Charleston, South Carolina. My husband and I are living in a home by the marsh in Mount Pleasant, just across the bridge from the peninsula. We had both seen this white cat out in the marsh all winter, and we were curious. Neither one of us mentioned it until the spring, when Dale was out working in the yard. He came in and asked if I had seen the white cat. It had been kind of a cold winter by South Carolina standards, and we couldn't believe he had survived out there.

Just like that we agreed that we would try to feed him. We discussed what it meant -- that we most certainly would end up with a cat, and we shrugged as though we'd been planning it all along. I bought some cat food and took it out to the backyard. I saw the cat on the edge of the marsh, and as soon as I even walked out there, he was gone!

I waited and watched from the kitchen window, and a couple of hours later he came back to eat the food. We moved the food closer and closer to the house over the course of a couple of weeks, and he eventually came to the screened porch, where we kept the door propped open for him and all the bugs. He didn't run away anymore, but he wouldn't let us touch him either.

We actually thought he was a pregnant female because his belly was so swollen. It was after a couple of months of feeding that we were finally able to pick him up and get him in a carrier so that we could take him to the vet. That's when we found out "she was a he" with bad worms. The vet presented us with a handsome bill and a bagful of stuff to fix him up, and the transformation was unbelievable. He was a white cat, but it wasn't until he shed practically his entire coat that we discovered how white he really was. All the dingy yellow fur fell off and this beauty emerged. We named him Spike.

The shedding annoyed me. I actually remember telling my husband that I wouldn't stand for it. He said, he's a cat, cats shed -- what are you going to do? I said we'd have to put him down or something. Dale looked at me in sudden recognition that he had married a cold-hearted bitch. I said, oh, OK, let's just see what happens.

Over the course of six months, Spike morphed into an indoor love cat or maybe it was me who did the morphing? However, he never got over his fear of other people, and if the doorbell rang or someone else entered his sanctuary, he was under the bed. People didn't believe we had a cat. But with us, it was like he surrendered to the lap. He was retired now, done with the mean streets and just wanted to snuggle or dance. Spike was like a dishrag. He'd let me to anything to him -- I'd tuck him into my denim robe for an effect I called, "Ralph Loren Kitty." Spike also loved to dance to Gloria Gaynor's, "I will Survive." He'd let me spin him at the end.

Funny we should pick that song. Our health problems emerged at about the same time. Spike was wheezing, and we ended up taking him for a series of tests. The vet said he had never seen such damaged lungs in a cat. He wondered if someone had sprayed him with chemicals. We put him on human asthma medicine, and his symptoms improved. At the same time, I was going through a battery of tests trying to figure out why I had this incredible pain in my abdomen, but the tests revealed nothing. I was tired a lot, and Spike and I used to take naps together on the couch.

We moved to Columbia and in 1999, I was finally diagnosed with advanced stage primary peritoneal cancer, which is a variation of ovarian cancer. I went through surgery and chemo, and Spike remained steadfast by my side. Right about that time, I found a spot on his eyelid, and that turned out to be melanoma. We had to take him to Charlotte, N.C. to an advanced surgical center, where they successfully removed the tumor. This boy was a survivor!

Things were good for a couple of years, but then I found a lump on his hind leg. That turned out to be vaccination-associated fibrosarcoma. The vet, Shawn, said this type of tumor typically doesn't spread to distant organs, but it would keep growing and eventually kill him. The only hope for survival was to amputate his hind leg.

We took him to a specialty clinic for evaluation. This young female vet looked him over. She said this was a bad cancer, and her recommendation was to let it takes its course. I bolted from my chair. "We do everything we can to survive cancer in our house!" I was furious and shared this with Shawn, who was a breast cancer survivor. Regarding the other vet, she said, "Oh, her. She's young and smug and life hasn't knocked her around yet. We'll use her and lose her."

It was a tough decision, but we agreed to have Spike's leg amputated. It was so awful seeing him post-surgery. I felt terrible -- did we do the right thing? Were we being selfish? But the surgery was successful, the margins were clean and he recovered and adapted very quickly. He moved about quite efficiently on three legs -- but he couldn't jump. He had never been much of a jumper anyway -- I think he had arthritis in his hips. We bought a ramp so he could easily get up and down from the bed.

The lab work for his surgery revealed weak kidneys. Shawn said he was probably a much older cat than we originally thought. As Spike adapted to three legs, he also adapted to a kidney diet, and he had a good three years of quality living.

Then he stopped eating and was wasting away before our eyes. None of the tests revealed anything bad. His kidneys were actually doing pretty well. Shawn said the only thing left was to do an exploratory surgery. She warned us that if she got in there and it was bad, her recommendation would be to let him sleep forever. We agreed.

Shawn had a special waiting room, and we both stood up when she came in a little while later to tell us Spike was gone. He had liver cancer, and it was everywhere. Dale and I held onto each other and cried.

Old Spike -- he survived a rough childhood and a bad kind of cancer. I was telling a friend how odd it was, him finding us as though he had been sent on a mission. How we were both damaged souls who got this rare kind of cancer that typically doesn't spread to distant organs but just keeps growing and usually kills anyway.

She said, "Oh, I get it now."

"What?"

"He took a bullet for you."

Maybe so. I like to think he was my kitty guardian angel, sent here to save my cold heart and show me how to love unconditionally and survive. He did his duty, and it was time to go. Thank you, buddy. What a good little teacher you were.

An open letter to Handjob Porn

Dear Handjob Porn,

Thank you for visiting my blog. While I do appreciate any and all interest in my meager little offering to the universe, I regret to inform you that I have removed your comment because you are a loathesome spammer.

I do understand you might be a single mom struggling to make ends meet or possibly a disabled immigrant with language barriers, and this is the only way you can earn money for food. If that is the case, I am sorry your path has taken this turn. I encourage you to find alternate means of employment, because you are better than this! Totally! Peddling flesh on the Internet and leaving vile links on innocent blogs is no way to go through life, friend.

Please email me, Handjob Porn, and I will help you with your resume. Really -- I'm good at this. What do you think?

High-energy porn marketing strategist transitioning to legitimate business seeks opportunity that leverages strong communication skills and social media expertise.

It's a start, isn't it?

Pulling your own strings revisited

In my last post about pulling your own strings, I described my visit to the eye doctor, where I dismissed the offer of a retinal scan because I viewed it simply as another revenue stream for the medical practice. I also dismissed dilation because I was too busy.

Check out the comments. Cameron said, "There is no way to see some serious problems at the back of the eye without dilation. I have had cataracts, an injured retina and multiple major eye surgeries. Two of my problems would have been missed if I had had a superficial exam."

Jeanette wrote, "I was diagnosed with glaucoma at age 55 and am now on a three eye drops per day regimen to save my eyesight. A routine superficial eye exam wouldn't have revealed the problem."

I was beginning to think I had this all wrong when I received this email from a long-time reader who is 53 years old. To protect her privacy, we'll call her Anne.

I’m all for pulling my own strings. My past medical history is a testament to that. I seem to annoy specialists because I won’t do what they tell me, simply because I don’t think they have all the answers or even the correct answer often. One specialist sacked me as a patient because I wouldn’t go along with his methods and I dared to challenge him on his medical knowledge. With the influence of pharmaceutical companies and each doctor peddling their preferred instrument of torture, I find it easy to walk away and feel as though I retain a sense of control of my own health at some level.

Validation. I'm thinking, whew, I'm not as wrong as I thought. But Anne continues.

I would like to share with you that I too had been offered the retinal scan over the years and rejected it. I felt it was another money maker for them. A few months ago I decided, “What the heck,” and paid the $25.
 
It showed a choroidal melanoma. Eye cancer. Five in a million chance.

P.S. I have attached a photo of my eye cancer.
 
The cancer is the large grey area between the optic nerve (large white dot) and the macular (black dot).

As you may have heard me say before, there are no good cancers. Choroidal melanoma is a bad actor with a high mortality rate. According to Medscape, about 30-50 percent of patients with choroidal melanoma will die within 10 years from diagnosis and treatment. Death is usually secondary to distant metastases such as the liver.

So much for thinking I had this business of pulling your own strings figured out. I am alive today because great medical practitioners properly treated me for advanced stage ovarian cancer. But they might have discovered it in its early stages and given me a better prospect for long life if they hadn't fucked around so long in the months years leading up to my diagnosis. If I knew then what I know now, I might have been diagnosed at stage 1 rather than stage 3c, the last stop before stage 4, which really is the last stop.

Some of the other comments on the last post mirror my own exasperation with doctors. And those comments are just as valid -- thank you for sharing them. We have all had close encounters of the worst medical kind, and your perspective is welcome!

None of this is easy. While we do need to be sharp consumers, it's so hard to know which end is up. The dentist has now slipped in an extra fee for an "oral cancer" exam. Insurance doesn't pay for it -- it's instant cash for the dentist. But somebody's life may be saved because they had the exam. Same with the retinal scanning. Look at what happened to Anne.

Still, as much as I care about my health and want to be smart about my choices, I don't want to live my life in fear. I'm not signing up for the full-body CT scans I see advertised in the newspaper. There is such a thing as medical gluttony. Somehow we need to find the balance between being proactive and being paranoid.

Thank you, readers, for the enlightenment. I'm sorry I didn't think about people whose lives have been altered or saved by competent medical professionals -- including eye doctors. I should know better. That said, this has been an illuminating discussion, and in a way, I'm glad I was wrong. Sometimes being wrong and being willing to talk about it takes you to new places, and maybe we all walk away with a more balanced perspective.

And thank you, Anne, for sharing your cancer story. Welcome to the club nobody wants to join. In case you haven't already read this, be sure to check out Stephen Jay Gould's, The Median Isn't the Message.

Here's to you, Anne, and to defying the odds!

The power of pulling your own strings

I had my eyes checked yesterday, and I think I figured out why young people can find us so damned annoying.

Before I actually saw the doctor, a young female assistant named Tiffany or perhaps Amber took me into a prep room to do the puff test and some other pre-screening activities. She popped me in front of the OptoMap Retinal Exam machine, and I said, "Oh, this is the Opto thing. I don't want this test."

I view it as just another revenue stream for the vision care place not a medical necessity.

She said, oh! We do it anyway, and if you choose not to have the doctor read it, then you don't have to pay for it.

I said, oh! Since I am not going to have the doctor read it, let's move on, please.

Tiff was not amused.

Then we get into the actual examination room, and she calls up my records on the computer. She said, "We'd like to dilate your eyes today."

I said I'd rather not if I can help it. I've got to get to work. She huffed and puffed and said, well, the doctor might ask that you make another appointment, because the OptoMap and dilation are the only ways to measure the health of the eye.

To this I replied ever so politely, "Thank you. I'll be sure to ask the doctor about that."

He comes in, and I said I'd rather not have my eyes dilated because I had to get to work, but if he thought I needed to, I would listen to his reasoning. He didn't seem wigged out by that at all. He said, well, let's take a look. He did the eye exam and blasted a bright light here, there and everywhere and finally said my eyes looked great. See you next year.

Not to disrespect any professional, but really? I'm just supposed to do whatever you say? I understand there are risks associated with my choices, and I accept those risks. I'm not mean or nasty. I simply ask questions and state my preferences. My husband asked his dentist and his dental hygienist how much radiation exposure was in his dental x-rays, and I think they are both still in the fetal position.

We are smarter and stronger and less fearless than we once were. We have the skills and the courage to ask questions and speak up. To pull our own strings. These are qualities young people are still developing, and sometimes they get annoyed that we already have it. Yay for us.

It's OK to love food

Pizza is my favorite food, period. Pizza will be my last meal on Death Row, and it will be the first thing I go for when the zombie apocalypse comes. Hear me now zombies -- I will not go down without it.

It's funny, because I don't think I even tasted pizza until I was 13 or 14, when our family discovered Shakey's. I always liked pizza just fine, but I didn't become a fanatic until my husband, Dale, started making it at home. We call him El Rey de Pizza. He makes pizza from scratch nearly every Friday night. He makes the dough for the crust the day before, and it rises in the refrigerator overnight. That's how the pros do it.

We even celebrate with a pizza song we wrote ourselves:

Pizza, pizza, ya, ya, ya

Pizza, pizza, ha, ha, ha

The version above is named Punishment Pizza. Toppings are olive oil, mozzarella cheese, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, kalamata olives, shrimp, fresh garlic, goat cheese and habanero peppers. I love the habs, but they are lethally ass-on-fire hot. At first it wasn't my favorite pizza, and I wondered why he kept making it when he knew I had a hard time with the peppers. Ever heard of jaloproctosis?

I asked him if he was mad at me and was retaliating by making pizza so hot that I suffered. This was advanced and complex thinking for his male brain. He was like, huh? As it turns out, he's just a simple guy who likes hot stuff. But he thought my inquiry was funny, so he started calling it Punishment Pizza.

While I have grown to love it, I pick most of the peppers off. The flavor of the habs comes through but not the killer scorch. Dale's pizza is cheesy creamy goodness bursting with bold fresh bites on top of a crust with complex texture -- chewy in the middle and crisp on the outside.

So, why am I writing about pizza? It's about loving and respecting food. It seems like everyone is quitting something these days -- gluten, dairy, meat, sugar. I went the denial route in my youth in an attempt to lose weight, but it didn't work for me. What did work is accepting that it's OK to love food.

Super-restrictive diets seem to be about a search for control. Control hasn't really worked out for me as a life strategy, so I adopted a different approach that emphasizes flying by the seat of your pants. I eat about everything within reason. Certainly not mass quantities, though. I avoid processed foods and fake stuff and diet anything. If I'm going to eat pizza, I want it to be the best pizza on the planet.

Eating is one of life's great joys, and I find that loving food with a passion makes it easier to bypass the mediocre junk that makes us fat and unhealthy.

Satisfaction revisited

I don't know what has come over me, but I feel strangely satisfied. It's funny how satisfaction feels odd. Growing up, there was never enough money, and I always wanted to be rich. I realize now that middle-class comfort feels good. I don't need or want whatever I imagine wealth brings.

Maybe life is a journey about getting down to essentials, and I'm getting closer to the core. My husband and I agree that even if we had a million dollars, we probably wouldn't do a whole lot different. We like our life and are not in a constant state of wanting. We've worked hard and lived within our means, but no matter how you look at it, we are grateful.

Because I live in the corporate world, I'll lay out some of the highlights in terms of a STOP-START-KEEP list:

Stopped buying clothes made in China just to have more clothes. As a result, I've stopped shopping as a sport and only go in search of a specific item that I need.

Stopped buying jewelry. I have a pair of really good turquoise earrings, and they are like my diamonds. I was able to resist the amazing earrings in Santa Fe because I already have the perfect pair. More is not better (this also applies to food).

Stopped worrying about decorating the house. If it mattered that much to me, I would have done it by now. We have a few pictures and knick-knacks here and there, but it turns out I like walls and surfaces better without anything on them.

Started keeping my windows and blinds clean. I'd rather look through clean windows than buy stuff to fill up space.

Started getting rid of stuff that has accumulated for no good reason.

Started laying out a little extra cash for professional cleaners to come quarterly and scrub in the places we miss. A clean well-maintained home is more important to me than designer perfection.

Started using organic products on my face, skin and hair, operating on the principle of fewer toxins in ought to be good.

Keep stuff forever, if possible. Our patio furniture is 30 years old. It's not the current style, but it's in excellent condition and should go another 30 years. We recently bought new cushions, and it's like having new furniture.

Keep driving my Ford Fusion Hybrid. It's a great car. We averaged just over 40 miles per hour on our trip to New Mexico. It feels like a luxury car to me, especially since I just made the last payment!

Keep eating at home most of the time. Restaurant food is over-rated and usually bad for you. We have serious indulgences -- like homemade pizza every Friday night -- but at least we know what's in it.

Keep exercising. I enjoy it, and I'd rather hang a few pieces of well-made clothing on a fit body than buy a closet full of clothes designed to hide it.

I could keep going, but I'd much rather hear from you. I'll bet you are way ahead of me. What's on your list?