Oh, the places you'll GO!

49 years ago today, on June 1, 1967, I graduated from high school. That doesn't sound like much, I know, but in a family of 7 kids, where only 2 of us completed high school, and I was the only daughter to do so, it was a Big Deal. I left home the next day, and moved to Chicago, to make my way in the world. Eventually I earned a B.S., summa cum laude, (yeah, I'm proud of that) and an M.S., and I ended up with a corporate job with a 401K, good benefits, and a decent salary. And yet now, as I contemplate retirement this coming fall, I realize that in terms of finances I'm not much more educated than I was at 17. In terms of daily living, I can manage. Since I was 17, I've known that I must pay my bills on time, and spend less than I earn, and save as much as possible, etc., etc., but when it comes to managing a portfolio, or even knowing whom to hire to do that, I'm clueless. We aren't born with this information in our heads (or at least I wasn't) so how on earth are we supposed to acquire this knowledge? Are there courses out there that everyone else has taken, but I haven't? I think I'm going to hire someone to help me navigate the shoals of Social Security but I'm wondering how others approaching retirement feel.

Thanksgiving...À la recherche du temps perdu...

This morning I met A for breakfast, and after eggs benedict at Deli News (not the best place for eggs benedict) I drove my Fiat across the street to Kroger, where we went shopping for Thanksgiving groceries: sweet potatoes, but also Yukon golds; also fresh cranberries and oranges; canned pumpkin; fresh celery and onions; Pepperidge Farm bread cubes for stuffing; preserved, grated horseradish; ginger preserves; sweetened, condensed milk; and of course, an 18 pound turkey. We got the 18 pound bird because we're optimists, and also because we love leftovers. So far as I know, there will be just 3 of us for Thanksgiving in Dallas this year: Katharine is the only one of our children who's said she'll be here. Alex, Chris, Silas and Callum live in Fairfax, VA, so of course they'll be there, and Mike and Tami, his sweetheart, are flying from Tucson to Hawaii to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Xander is in Austin with Brenden. Chris and Caitlin are here, but haven't said whether or not they'll join us for the meal, or whether they'll just stop by for pie and coffee afterward. Although I would love to have them here with us, I don't impose that on them. They're young, and the young always have so many invitations. I remember those days very well, when we were young and broke, but it didn't matter, because everything was ahead of us. We were bright and beautiful, although we didn't have any idea or understanding of that, but because of that, when we went out, everyone wanted to talk to us: to ask us what we thought about things, what our plans were, because we had plans, lots of them, and lots of energy to carry them out. Our lives were exciting. We (I'm referring to young people in general) might get engaged, or we might break up. We might decide to move across the country to go to school or get a job, or we might move overseas, or halfway around the world. We might decide to have a baby, or two or three! We were learning to cook, and there were always new recipes we were trying, new stores where we shopped, new restaurants where we went out to dinner. If I bought a new pair of boots I wore them to show them off and everyone admired them. If I made a pie and brought it for desert, everyone fussed about it as if that were something incredible. Those were such heady days, and we thought, or at least I thought, they would last forever. But of course they don't. Things wind down, for everyone. Now, incredibly, A and I are old; it's light years since we were young, with our lives ahead of us. How did this happen, I wonder, and then, in a moment, I think, well I know how it happened, but how did it happen so fast? When I drive over in my little Fiat to pick him up, my hands hurt sometimes when I grab the gear shift, because I have arthritis in both hands. I pull up in front of his house and take out my cell phone and call his land line. "I'm outside!" I announce cheerfully. "OK," he says, "Will you call my cellphone?" He doesn't have to say why; I know why. He's misplaced it. I do the same thing, and use my land line to call and locate it. He finds his cellphone and walks to the car. Both of us move so much more slowly than we did when we were young. He gets in the Fiat and looks at me. I'm dressed in red and black: black pants, black over the knee boots, a black long sleeved knit shirt with a J Jill loose red sweater on top of that, and silver earrings and a black and red scarf at my throat. I've let my hair go completely grey, which completes the effect. He says, "You look like you're going on a sleigh ride!" I laugh and respond "I am, with Santa, right after breakfast!" He chuckles at that, and fastens his seat belt, and I start the car and drive the Fiat to Deli News.

Denial is more than the name of a river in Egypt...

The first time I had stress incontinence, I was in my early teens. I was with my best friend, C, and we were laughing so hard I lost control of my bladder. I was shocked and embarrassed, but C kindly acted like it was no big deal. That first time it happened I thought it was simply a fluke; a sign of how funny C was, or so I told myself. Sure, I sometimes lost a bit of urine when I sneezed…but that happened to everyone, right? And when I was young, it only happened on rare occasions, so it wasn’t really a problem.

In my mid 20’s and early 30’s though, late in each pregnancy it became a regular problem that lasted for several months afterward. I hated it, but I wore the bulky pads and religiously did my Kegels and assumed everything would be fine, and for a few years maybe that was true, until one day when I was in my 50’s and I realized that it had become a real problem, because all day, every day, I was leaking a little bit of urine if I so much as walked fast.

So, like so many other boomer women, I started buying pads. I was mortified the first time I had to go looking for those in the grocery store, so it was a huge relief to see the endless variety of choices, which made me realize that although none of my friends were talking about it, this must be a rather common problem. So I stocked up on pads and Googled incontinence and read endless articles about the various treatment options that were available, none of which sounded very good.

I hated the pads for so many reasons. Among other things, they chafed. I began walking for exercise, and a couple of years ago I got pretty serious about it, and began to wear a pedometer to keep track of my steps. Most days, no matter what the weather, I’d do a brisk 3 to 5 mile walk through my neighborhood, which was great, and very enjoyable, except that all that pounding on the pavement caused me to lose urine. So of course I wore pads, but with the nonstop movement, the pads chafed me so badly that my skin was often raw by the time I got home. So in addition to the pads, I began buying tubes and tubes of Desitin Ointment, and yet, because I found the whole situation horribly embarrassing, when I saw Dr. P once a year for my pap smear and she asked about incontinence, I would smile politely and say, "Oh no, that's not a problem, not for me!”

Then I read about the InTone Device, and the next day I was calling to schedule an appointment to get it. InTone is a durable medical device that helps women regain control of their bladder function in the comfort of their own homes using a combination of muscle stimulation and biofeedback. I don't work for the company that manufactures it, and I don't own any of their stock, etc., but I do own the device, and it works. It can be purchased from various healthcare providers who are certified as InTone specialists, or it can be purchased online if you submit a medical necessity form completed by your doctor.

I’m 64 years old, and two weeks after I'd begun using it I was able to stop wearing pads, even on my 3 to 5 mile walks. I’m a born skeptic, so if someone had told me this was possible, I wouldn’t have believed it, and yet I'm definite proof that it is.

I still have room for improvement. I know this because I'm able to see that I still can’t contract my pelvic muscles to the full range of the device, and on rare occasions, if I cough hard or sneeze unexpectedly, I still sometimes lose a bit of urine, but it’s a very small amount; a few drops or perhaps a teaspoon at most; not enough to require me to wear a pad.

I’ll never go back to pads, and I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to say that.

I’m so grateful that this option exists. It’s expensive, but it's cheaper than surgery, and to paraphrase an old commercial: the ability to sneeze or cough or laugh without an involuntary loss of urine...that's priceless.

Almost Christmas, 2013

Sunday, December 22, 2013: it's a little after midnight, and I'm in my kitchen, wearing slippers, flannel pajama pants, and an ancient, comfortable, faded red cotton pullover, listening to music (Jason Isbell's excellent Southeastern), sipping a little red wine and making beef stock that I'll use later this week, when I make Julia Child's beef bourguignon for Christmas dinner. Right now, I'm browning about 6 lbs of beef bones in olive oil in an enameled cast iron pot on top of the stove; mostly neck bones, supplemented with some short ribs. When they're a nice deep brown I'll put the pot into a hot oven to finish up the browning process before I add the other ingredients, prior to beginning the long, slow simmer that's essential to producing a decent beef stock.

Looking at the bones as I did the initial browning on the cook top, I found myself thinking this will work, but it would have been better if they'd been chopped or sawed into smaller pieces. Stashed away in one of the uppermost cabinets in my kitchen, there's an awesome, ferocious meat cleaver that I got years ago, in Chicago, when I was a young and tender bride. It's from the well equipped kitchen of a friend's grandmother; I got it when I was invited to walk through the grandmother's beautiful, empty, soon to be sold house in one of the genteel, northern suburbs of Chicago with her granddaughter, who'd been invited to help herself to anything that was left. She didn't want either the meat cleaver or the old fashioned, doctor's beam scale in one of the bathrooms, and told me I was welcome to both. I happily accepted both items and took them home, all excited at both the prospect of being able to weigh myself accurately, and to chopping up bones to make stock.

A few months later that same year, on Thanksgiving night, I produced the ferocious cleaver and proudly handed it to Anthony, my husband, and asked him to use it to chop up the turkey carcass so I could make stock. Anthony picked up the ferocious cleaver, and hefted its weight in his hand, then curled his fingers around the handle and wielded two supremely confident whacks that split not only the turkey, but the not insubstantial cutting board on which it was sitting into 3 well delineated pieces. I laughed so hard I almost peed in my pants, and after that single use, I retired the awesome cleaver. But tonight I was thinking maybe it should have come out of retirement to chop up those beef bones.

Mike flies in from Tucson tomorrow, so I'll have 3 of my 4 little chickadees here to spend Christmas with me. Of course, all of them are now grown, and Ali and Katharina each have children of their own. 2 days until Christmas Eve, when we open our gifts, and I still have so much to do! I haven't wrapped a single present. Each year I swear that next year it will be different; I won't do this again, and yet each year, somehow, when December 22nd rolls around I find myself in the same overcrowded boat, happily but frantically rowing to keep it from going under.

Will it be different when I retire? I'd love to think yes, but I honestly don't know. I just know that I've always loved Christmas, and for whatever reason, scrambling to get everything done in time seems to be an essential part of that.

Thoughts on Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. Saturday I went shopping for pearl onions and sweet potatoes and bought some Yukon golds for mashed potatoes, which are a recent addition to our basic menu, first compiled in 1987 and consisting of turkey (of course) with traditional stuffing and sides of French Salad (recipe from Dola, my father-in-law’s Polish housekeeper); creamed onions (Julia Child); Sweet Potato Puree with Walnuts and Ginger (Craig Claiborne); my niece Carla’s cranberries with Grand Marnier; pumpkin pie and sometimes mincemeat pie for dessert. The past couple of years I’ve also added Ali’s mashed potatoes with Wasabi, although I may try the NY Times mashed potatoes with chives this year, smothered in turkey gravy, which I’ve begun making since I discovered that Williams Sonoma makes a great gravy base, which I use without shame. Some items can be hard to find, so I purchase them ahead of time: the ginger preserves for the sweet potatoes (Keillor makes them, but not everyone stocks them); and the gravy base (W-S has been known to run out). Also, the pearl onions can be elusive, and also outrageously expensive; a lot of stores carry them in tiny10 oz bags that sell for $3.99 each, with the result that one could end up paying more for the pearl onions than for the turkey! The past couple of years, I’ve had luck at Central Marker, where I’ve been able to purchase them in bulk at a reasonable price. That’s what I did yesterday; they were $2.99 per pound, and I bought 2 pounds. It’s a huge amount of work to make that recipe, but everyone loves it, so I always try to prepare a couple of pounds, no matter how many or how few will be sitting at my table.

50 Years On...

On November 22, 1963, at a little after 1:00 PM, I was sitting in my 9^th grade civics class, in junior high in the small college town in Minnesota where I grew up, when the PA system came sputtering on and the principal cleared his throat and announced that there was a report on the radio that President Kennedy had been shot in Texas. I was 14 years old.

The principal didn’t say anything about Dallas in that first announcement, and at 14, I pictured Texas as a vast, wild, plain, interspersed with occasional men in cowboy hats riding around on horseback. The father of one of my classmates had been shot in a hunting accident, so I thought perhaps the President had gone hunting there and been injured in a hunting accident. I assumed being shot meant he was wounded, not dead. The word “assassination” never crossed my mind, because that was a word that had only historical or foreign meaning for my classmates and me. Lincoln was assassinated, and in recent memory, Patrice Lumumba had been assassinated, but that was in Africa. Modern American presidents were not assassinated; people didn’t shoot each other in 1960’s America.

In those first couple of minutes, upon hearing that the President had been shot, our social studies teacher, a woman in her 50’s, became hysterical. Immediately after the first announcement everyone had begun talking. Of course this wasn’t allowed, and it contributed to her agitation. I remember her face got very red, and she began to clap her hands in a futile attempt to get our attention, and her voice got very shrill, and she began to shriek, “HEARSAY! This is nothing but HEARSAY! Listen to me; I’m telling you this is only HEARSAY!” She shrieked that over and over and over, but no one was listening. Always a skeptic, and analytical even at 14, I remember thinking the principal wouldn’t have turned on the PA and announced that the President had been shot if he wasn't pretty sure the report was accurate. I sat at my desk and looked at her and I also looked around the classroom. Some of my classmates were laughing nervously, but most just looked shocked. Within 5 minutes, the PA came on again, and the principal cleared his throat again and announced that the President was dead. Our teacher then gave up any attempt at trying to maintain order, and just sat down at her desk and burst into tears. Most of the girls and many of the boys in my class also began to weep. I felt very nervous, but I didn’t cry, because I didn’t want to cry at school.

We were dismissed early. We didn’t own a car, and even if we had owned one, Mom and Dad were both at work, so I walked home as usual. Normally I walked fast, but that day I walked slowly, because I knew that when I got there, I’d be alone. I remember I wished there would be someone at home that I could talk to about this. I was just beginning to realize there were families where, if you were a kid, your parents would talk to you about stuff like this, but that wasn’t my family.

I remember what I was wearing. It was an outfit that I'd sewn for myself in August: a long sleeved, cotton blouse, in a small, dark green paisley print, with a lime green, narrow wale corduroy straight skirt. I wanted to cut a swatch out of the blouse and the skirt,  and put them in an envelope to keep, but I thought Mom might not like it if I did, so I didn't do it, but I wish I had. We had a television set, so when I got home, I watched the TV coverage until Mom got home.

I wanted to go to Washington to see the President’s body lying in state. There was a special fare on the train; I think it was $25.00 round trip, Minnesota to DC. I asked Mom if we could go, but she said no. At 64, I understand all the reasons why she had to say no, but at 14 I didn’t.

On Sunday morning, I was watching TV when Lee Harvey Oswald got shot. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, that I had just watched someone get shot. It was as if everyone was going insane. And in a way, that was accurate, because America changed, in so many ways not for the better, on November 22, 1963.

I really really really hate T-W cable and here's why...

I asked Boris outright if he was a BOT, and he swore he wasn't, but you read the transcript and see what you think. My observations, which I did NOT make to Boris, are in blue.

Boris>
Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable. At the end of our chat you will be given the option of taking a brief survey. My name is Boris. Please give me a moment while I access your account.
 
Boris>

Thank you for waiting.

Boris>

Hello!

Judi>
OK, thanks Boris. I've chatted and requested this before.

Boris>

You are welcome.

Boris>

I will be glad to help you. (He's not using contractions; I'm thinking BOT).

Judi>

It's January, and the last Account Alert I received via email from TW Cable was in October.

Boris>

Okay.

Judi>

I'm not receiving paper statements, so this means I have to just remember when my bill is due. I don't think that's really reasonable, do you?

Boris>

Do you want paper statements at your mailing address? [Duh! No!]

Boris>

I don't think. [RIGHT! Is that a BOT statement or what?]

Judi>

No, Boris, I don't want paper statements, because aside from the waste, then every time I sign in, I'll be urged to sign up for a paperless account.

Judi>

Why am I no longer receiving Account Alerts in my email? My email address is on file and correct.

Boris>

Are you registered with MyServices?

Judi>

Yes, but My Services has done nothing but mess up my account insofar as I can tell.

Boris>

Please login to MyServices.

Judi>

I'm logged in right now! [Sheesh!]

Boris>

Okay.

Boris>

Now I will help you to register for paperless.

Judi>

Good luck. I tried that and it says I'm already paperless, which is correct.

Judi>

I did this last month too.

Boris>

Okay.

Boris>

May I have your email address please.

Judi>

I know it's not your fault, Boris, but someone's head should roll for this nonsense.

Boris>
Thank you. [?????]

Boris>

Let me check that for you.

Judi>

No problem.

Judi>

Thanks.

Boris>

You are welcome. [As opposed to "you're welcome" - definitely a frigging BOT!]

Judi>

The guy who checked it last month said everything in my account looked fine.

Judi>

But once again, I was left to pay my bill via vibe.

Boris>

Thank you for waiting. I appreciate your patience.

Boris>

My apologies for the delay.

Boris>

I have checked your account details can see that your email ID is not registered, hence you are not receiving email notification.

Judi>

What do I need to do to register it?

Boris>

Please do not worry.

Boris>

I will update it on system.[As opposed to updating it on THE system - no articles, either - BOT alert!]

Judi>

I'm not worried, I'm irritated.

Judi>

Thanks, Boris.

Boris>

May I have the PIN on the account? The PIN is a 4-digit number that was selected by you and it allows me to authenticate that you are an authorized account user.  The PIN is required before we can share any account information. 

Boris>

I understand your concern.

Boris>

You are welcome.

Boris>

Thank you for positive verification.

Boris>

Please give me a couple of minutes.

Judi>

Sure

Boris>

While I update your email ID.

Boris>

Thank you.

Boris>

Thank you for your patience.

Boris>

I am glad to inform you that I have successfully updated your email address as (my correct email addy)

Judi>

Uh, Boris, that's not an update; that's always been my email address for this account.

Boris>

You will receive email notification from the next month onwards.

Judi>

I hope so. I don't see the point in having a website where the customer can't do this themselves. Am I just missing it?

Judi>

I haven't had problems on any of my other account websites.

Boris>

Be rest assured you will receive email notification from next month onwards on your email address.["Be rest assured", I'm not assured..]

Judi>

OK, thanks for your help.

Now it's February and guess what? Tonight, I suddenly remembered that my Time Warner bill is due soon...and it's a good thing I remembered, because it's due Thursday, and ONCE AGAIN, despite Boris's assurances, I haven't received an Account Alert. Tonight I chatted with another BOT calling himself Analyst Henry, who told me he may have to take this "to the next level". 

Uh-huh. 

I'm not holding my breath.

Bottom of Form