Category Archives: Mid-Life Crisis Adventures/Defeats

I Don’t Want That…

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This week I’m taking care of two of my grandkids.  When I woke up the four-year-old in the morning, our conversation went like this.

I kissed her forehead and said, “Good Morning, Sweet Pea.”

She stretched and yawned,  then said.  “I don’t want that for breakfast.”

“I haven’t even told you what I’m cooking.”

“I know.  But I don’t want that.”

That’s how I’ve been feeling lately.  I don’t want that…I don’t even know what the “that” is that I don’t want.

In the morning, looking forward to some quiet time, I make my tea, pick up my journal and go to sit in an Adirondack chair surrounded by lush gardens.  But, that’s not what I want.

After breakfast, I go to my office to write.  As I’m driving, I’m working out a problem with my new novel.  I love this story but,  I can’t figure out how to describe the wings the main character is anxious to have removed so she can be like the rest of the teenagers.  Are they dragon wings?  Butterfly wings?  Bird Wings?  I don’t know and now…I don’t want to do that.

I’ve tried shopping therapy — I came home with hives from the stress.

I tried redecorating therapy — I haven’t finished, so now I have paint cans and brushes sitting around my house that have been there long enough, I actually had to dust them.

I even tried hair therapy, but you all know how that turned out..

I catch myself sighing every few minutes and now I’m afraid I’m turning into my Grandmother Nellie, who walked around expelling sighs loud enough to power half  the wind turbines in Kansas.

I heard a self-help guru recently who said if you change something in one part of your life, the part you want to change will happen, so when a friend of mine asked if I’d go with her to get training for a motorcycle license I said yes.  Unfortunately, that’s not until the fall.

Maybe the change I need right now is something that will help me lose those five extra pounds that are hanging around my middle.   I’ll stop at the store on the way home and buy something healthy to cook.

I climb in my car, and at the first red light I turn the opposite direction of the store because, sigh, even though I don’t know what I was going to cook, I know I don’t want that.

—–

Here’s my youngest grandson, dressed and ready to be admitted as the newest citizen of Crazie Town.  Care to join him?

Our new Fire Chief

I Don’t Own My Hair

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IS IT GROWING OUT YET?

My sister and I have a pact:  We don’t make major changes to our hair without calling the other one first.

A couple of weeks ago I violated this pact.  I didn’t plan to or anything.  I just went in to get a trim on a haircut that I’d actually gotten a few compliments on.  But then, at the salon I saw a picture of (insert angels singing and harps strumming)   The Haircut of My Dreams.

Straight bangs across the forehead and straight bob.  It looked simple yet funky, exactly what a woman going through a mid-life crisis needed.

Now, I’m not stupid.  I mean, I did realize that the woman in the picture was probably a teenager and that her hair was shiny and red, but it was straight and one thing my hair has always been is straight.

The first time I married, I inherited a mother-in-law who owned a beauty parlor — not a salon but an old-fashioned beauty parlor.  Where women sporting pink curlers sat under dryers and came out flourishing bouffant hairdos that challenged gravity.   She considered my baby-fine, straight hair as a personal insult and tried everything in her arsenal.  And yet, week after week, the minute I walked out her door, it all fell into a stringy mess.  The closest she came to any kind of success was the year she put in a perm, had me wait an hour and then put in a second perm.  I rocked that 70’s afro for at least a week.

Now I was sitting in a comfortable chair, in a beautifully appointed hair salon imagining myself walking out the door with the hippest haircut.  I did ask Pamela if she thought I was too old for the cut and being the kind, yet honest person that she is, she said, “You could do it, you just have to OWN it.”

I told her to go for it and closed my eyes, imagining when I opened them, I’d own my hair like this woman.

Owning your look.

It didn’t happen.  Because, evidently – I don’t own my hair.  Well…and also because I’m not twenty…and I have wrinkles…and I don’t walk around wearing bright red lipstick all the time.

In Pamela’s defense, I’d begged for this haircut and, being the professional that she is, she let me come back a week later so she could undo what I couldn’t own. (Free of charge I might add – go see her at Alquemie Salon.)

I tried whining to my sister but she reminded me that, “that’s what a pact is for.”

Will I learn from this embarrassing mistake?  I doubt it.  I was going through some of my mother’s old journals and came across this entry – “Teresa arrived with another of her crazy haircuts.  I couldn’t say anything nice so just kept quiet.”

Hmmm, now that I think about it, everyone has been very quiet around me lately.

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Thanks for coming to Crazie Town.  I appreciate all the tourists who visit and especially all the people who invested in a time share opportunity (i.e. subscribers).

Talk to you next week!