Month: February 2012

Beauty is in the Eye of the Optician

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 8 Comments

I picked up my new pair of glasses today. The fitting is where I find out that the friendly team at the optician’s office has convinced me that I look fabulous….wearing what now appear to be Groucho Marx glasses. I can see that my white fortysomething friends are all wearing the same style. They must have a special collection for middle-aged white ladies called Delusional. We’re old, we’re pale, we’re overweight, but glasses that give us a Frida Kahlo unibrow might just help.

I’ve worn glasses since the 1st grade and they’re critical to my existence. I suffered through tortoise shell framed circles of submarine glass, 1980’s plate glass that covered half my face, wire frames, plastic frames, blue, red and green frames, not to mention flip down and clip on sunglasses (almost too cool to mention). When I select frames, it’s a crap shoot. I see a big, blurry face with the vague outline of glasses. I  have to rely on the optician and wandering office staff to tell me what looks good. This year, looking like a 1950’s accountant is apparently hip.

The idea that the things we wear and own are an expression of self always strikes me as being very strange. The comedian, Jim Gaffigan, talks about glasses in his standup routine. When the optician asks him what he wants his glasses to say about him, he says “How bout I got a big one?” It’s an amazing marketing ploy, convincing us that our choices can completely relay to others our sense of style and self and um…virility. If true, my glasses and clothes speak the truth: I can’t really tell what’s attractive on me and I don’t care enough to try beyond an initial effort. Sales people and hair cutters and opticians designed my look. And they weren’t working as a team.

What I find attractive and appealing has changed so much over the years. I don’t know if it’s the magic of rationalization or the wisdom of age. My standards of beauty now sound like standards for the Westminster dog show – bright eyes, a lustrous coat, good teeth, a bounce in the step. It’s not sexy, flash-in-the-pan beauty – it’s thoughtful, longlasting beauty. It’s the kind of beauty that radiates from being engaged, from laughing a lot, from introspection and being comfortable with choices made. Eyebrow pluckers and chronic dieters everywhere might suggest that I’ve given up. There’s a ring of truth to that. It’s exhausting trying to meet someone else’s definition of beauty. Even when they pick out your glasses, style your hair and choose your clothes.

The Road to Hell

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 1 Comment

Mondays used to be a good day to start a new plan. I’d be more organized. I’d be kinder to my child. I’d pack wonderful lunches for my family. I’d buzz through my emails and work tasks. I’d get in a 3 mile run and some weight training right off the bat.

By Tuesday, I’m slumped at my desk, stuffing my face with blue chips and spicy cheese and watching Daily Show reruns. I’m screening my calls, piling dishes in the kitchen and trying desperately to find some real sense of purpose, besides doing the things I “should” be doing.

I’m nothing if not a firm believer in every day being a beginning. I used to fall off the perfectionist wagon and stay off for weeks on end. Now, like eating healthy and exercising, I only let myself go a day or two before I drag my sorry ass back into the life I think I should be living. This is a hard road to travel, this constant battle between good intentions and my baser instincts of sloth and neglectfulness.

I know women, women I admire greatly, for whom this battle seems nonexistent. Their baser instincts involve home cooking and a bustling career and genuine kindness and warmth. I also have friends who seem to have lost the battle and have come to terms with their own limitations – also admirable, as long as you don’t want to sit anywhere when you visit them or meet at a specific time.

By Wednesday, I begin to rally the troops again. I write out the “to do” list, knock out the big tasks that will get me noticed if they’re not done. I do a halfhearted workout at the Y, easily distracted by the grunting weight lifter next to me. I’m afraid he’s going to go into cardiac arrest and I’ll have to remember lifesaving skills from Girl Scouts. I leave the weight room and my workout behind. On Thursday, I rinse and repeat.

I don’t thank any deities when it’s Friday. The highlight of the day is meeting with my trainer and I always get a boost of positivity from our conversation/exercise hour. When I return home, I must reconcile my week. I bend it and rationalize it until it just looks like a much needed slow down. I write my list for the next week. I plan a hard workout over the weekend. I chastise myself for all the things I didn’t do. And by Monday, I have a new plan.

This has been my mode of operation for the last 20 years, a weird ebb and flow of high productivity and complete and utter disinterest in being busy.  Maybe it’s reaching middle age that has caused this cycle to become unbearable. It’s demoralizing and exhausting – these quickly abandoned goals and shifting finish lines. I have decided to make some changes that will limit the “shoulds” in my life so that I can choose how I spend my time and energy. Oh yeah – mama’s got a brand new plan.

Blogging Upstream

/ Michelle at The Green Study / 2 Comments

I started this blog approximately a week ago. To wrap up my week of writing about fitness activities, I was planning on an entry about swimming. It’s my day for a swim lesson at the Y. The immediacy of the experience makes it easier to write about, but there is a drawback to being scheduled after the kid lessons. If someone has an “accident”, the pool gets cleared for two hours and my lesson gets cancelled. This, of course, happens after I’ve wrestled myself into a swimsuit, showered and stood shivering poolside waiting for my lesson to begin. So to the kid who made boom boom in the pool today, you owe me a lesson or a noodle or maybe both.

When it comes to writing, I’m inexperienced and with blogging, a tad naive. After visiting other blogs, I really began to feel that I’m in too deep, in over my head, swimming upstream…..drowning in cliches. I have a friend, an experienced writer, who immediately replied that all my feelings about writing were typical beginner thoughts. Well, they’re my thoughts and I’m a beginner at this, so let’s avoid stating the obvious. And what does she mean, saying that beginning writers are always so oversensitive?

The lovely thing about writing a blog is that there are so many blogs, any bilge you might put out gets washed away pretty quickly. Especially when you haven’t developed a readership. One of my technophobe friends said nervously, “Won’t it be out there forever?” Uh. If I’m lucky. There’s a life preserver I cling to frequently called The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes. It’s a bible of writing neuroses and how to work beyond your fears and just dive in. I’ve had it on my desk all week and flip it open randomly to learn what some famous, crazy writer has done to make themselves write. It’s very reassuring.

Learning how to swim is a pretty decent metaphor for this whole writing process.  I kind of know how to swim and I can keep myself afloat, but I’m not going to be a triathlete any time soon. I’m taking classes to learn the different strokes, get comfortable in a suit, build up stamina so that being a triathlete just might be an option someday. That sums up any activity I’ve embarked upon in the last few years – I want options. I want to make sure that as I age, as I watch my child grow into an adult, as I ponder retirement from paid work, I have choices and have learned more about potential than limitations. If I fall off a boat, I want more than my doggy paddle skills to rely on.