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Riding with the top down
The Evils of Hose When I was younger (caution: dating myself ahead) pantyhose were a given if you were getting Dressed Up. You know - weddings, fancy parties, job interviews. The only way you could wear a dress and no hose was if it was a summery thing with sandals, going to something casual. I hated them. Thought they were hot and wildly uncomfortable. Fast forward (mumble, mumble) years. And wearing hose now marks you as hopelessly out of date, unless it's actual tights and a fashion statement. I should be thrilled, right? Except there's a problem. For one, I live in Minnesota, and bare legs in January . . . not a good thing. But mostly, my legs are just not up to the task. They really could use a bit of veiling, mostly to disguise the veining. And the bruises, and bumps, and mosquito bits . . . Not to mention that, half the time, depending upon what I had for dinner the night before, I'm wearing Spanx, anyway, so the comfort factors not there. So what do you do? I don't tan. (It's not entirely fear of skin cancer, though that's a good excuse. Mostly, it's Fear of Boredom. And Heat.) I tried that spray can "air stocking stuff." It's kind of a pain, and it made my sheets brown. I bought the new More magazine, which had a headline on the cover about making your bare legs to look good, only to find out it was all about leg makeup. I can barely bring myself to put makeup on my face. So I'm going off to RWA, the one time I year I really must dress up routinely. I'm really not very good at living with anything. But I'm also afraid to end up, oh, orange. Or purple. If anybody could manage to do something wierd and end up purple, it would be me.
That time of year... We've spent nearly every weekend of the last month and a half at either graduations (college and high school) and weddings. It's just that time of year, and I've been listening to a lot of speeches giving wise (and, IMO, not so wise) advice to the kids. So I was thinking . . . what's the one thing I really wish my seventeen (or twenty, or twenty-three) year old self knew? (Not that I would have listened back then, but I never said I was wise.) And this is what I wish I'd known: to stop worrying so much about what anybody else thinks of you, because the truth is that 99.9% of the time NOBODY'S THINKING ABOUT YOU. Because they're all way too busy thinking about themselves and their own problems. Anybody who has time to judge you, your looks or your choices or anything else, isn't someone whose opinion you need to worry about anyway. So what about you? What would you most want to tell your eighteen year old self? Susie
Maintaning? I always prided myself on being such a low maintanence kind of girl. Things
like makeup and manicures are for special events only. My preferred outfit
is a fleece and an old pair of cargo khakis. I've always washed my hair in
the morning and spent a bit of time drying it, but that's it . . . and considering
I came of age in the late 70's/early 80's, the fact that I never succumbed
to the great Bang Erection fad should be proof of my creditionals in that
regard. But I've come to realize lately that, well, it doesn't apply any more. I take a LOT of maintaining. Worse, I'm not looking any BETTER for all that. That's what it takes just to keep from sliding back into the abyss. There's the hair highlighting, to keep the fading color at bay. The dentist three times a year (because my teeth somehow seem to manufacture plaque at a world-record pace; why I cannot manufacture something more useful, I don't know), the eye doctor twice a year, my yearly checkup/pap/etc., the yearly mammo. I'm THIS close to having to add colon inspection to the list. I pop pills daily, a vitamin, a calcium, a fish oil. It just seems the thing to do, and I imagine that number's more likely to go up than down. I've recently added once-in-a-while accupunture, for a bit of TMJ pain. (Not entirely sure how well it works for that, but for some reason laying on that table with needles poking all over me is the MOST relaxed I've ever been, and I'll keep it up for that alone.) Exercise class twice a week, because I need a kick in the pants to sweat and I'll never do it on my own. A facial now and then, because the skin needs all the help I can get. And, for a still-mostly-makeupless face, I'm no longer the least bit wash and wear - there's a cleanser and a cream for night, and a cleanser plus three various potions for the day, plus a once-a-week mask. Lots of other things look a bit tempting . . . lasers? A spray tan to even out my legs now that shorts season is here? (Where did all those veings come from, anyway? I don't think I have that much blood.) Needles of various kinds and the concotions they carry? The problem is that maintaining is taking an awful lot of my time and STILL not sure I'm even maintaining. What's your approach? You all battling 'til the end, or just giving up and enjoying all the free time that then comes your way? Anything you'll NEVER give up (I'n not at all sure I'm ready for gray hair, though right now I have very little), or anything you know you'll NEVER do, no matter what? PSSST . . . there might be a little surprise in it for one of you who reply. Susie, in her khakis and fleece
Home Spring has finally, FINALLY, arrived in Minnesota and stuck. I'm not usually one to complain about the weather - I choose to live here, after all - but this winter, after three that were decidedly wimpy, was downright brutal. So I was walking my dog earlier this week, and it was perfect as it could be. All the flowering trees are blooming, and the violets are up, purple and white peeking out amongst the green. The warblers - can't identify them, but they're fun to watch - are migrating through, and all the baby geese have hatched, hustling frantically for the safety of the water when the dog and I come around the corner. There's a pond on our walk, and we startled all the turtles sunning themselves on the logs into plopping back into the water. A pure white egret stalked the far shoreline, and the swoop of pileated woodpecker made ME jump. (Those are some big birds!) There weren't even any mosquitos. THIS, I thought, is why I live here. For days like this. Until I got home and plucked three ticks off my dog (so much for the Frontline commercials) and two off of me. I guess nothing's perfect. But it occurred to me that I'd have a very difficult time living somewhere there's NOT four seasons. My dh's job is such that we could live just about anywhere, if we so chose. He'd go in a heartbeat - he misses the ocean. But I'm pretty firmly planted. I could live a lot of places for six months or a year, and I'd love to do that, but not many permanently. And priority #1 for me is proximity to the people I love - the rest is pretty flexible, though the four seasons is high, and I'd have a terrible time in someplace where it was HOT a good part of the year. I like green, and water. In the best of all possible worlds, I'd live in the mountains, but very close to a major airport. I don't think I'm going to manage that one. Beyond that, I wouldn't like traffic that's much worse than what I already deal with. But that's about it for me. How about you? If you take jobs out of the equation, what's the most important thing about choosing a place to live for you? What do you like, and not like, about where you are? Where would go if you could go anywhere? Susie
The coming of the green... For the first time this year, we signed up for a CSA. (Community supported agriculture . . . you pay a set price for the season and get a box of vegetables every year.) I've been thinking about it for ages. There are lots of good reasons, including supporting local farmers who raise their crops carefully and sustainably - good for the earth and good for us; and getting a nice box of fresh organic vegetables that had been in the ground the day before. Mostly, I realize that the big hole in our otherwise healthy diet is that none of us eat quite enough vegetables. We tried. I'd dutifully trundle off to the farmers' market, but either arrive too late for the good stuff or get overwhelmed and simply grab the things I knew what to do with - sweet corn, a random head of broccoli, and a handful of fresh lettuces. I worried about wasting the food - could we use up a whole box? But that seemed a good prod; guilt would get the vegetables in us, if nothing else. So I signed up, and the first box came last week. My husband - the true veggie lover in the family - was thrilled. Son #2, who so avoids green vegetables that once, just to spite me, spent an entire year without eating ANYTHING green, and that included green M & M's and mint ice cream, was less certain. As was son #3, who will dutifully nibble on a broccoli floret or asparagus spear but doesn't really understand why anyone would waste stomach space on such things when there's fresh bread and pasta in the world. There were lots of green things in the box. Bok choy I can handle, and lettuce and carrots and onions. Nothing strange there. Most herbs I can deal with as well, though I have to say the lovage is a new one on me. The beets - the one vegetable the DH can't stand - will go to my parents, who love them. The nettles downright frighten me . . . I'm supposed to EAT something that I'm warned could sting me? Hmm. I might have to work my way up to that. But the spinach . . . now, that huge bag of spinach is a good thing. My kids will actually eat it, if in only two ways: chopped up very fine and thrown into an adaption of lo mein that they dubbed "popeye noodles" years ago, and in the following salad, which is the otherwise green-phobic son's favorite. It's easy, and from Cooking Light magazine, so it has to be good for us, right? The dressing: whisk together 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp. maple syrup, 1 teaspoon redwine vinegar, a 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp Dijon mustard. Toss with: That's it. And it's pretty darn good. But you all have to help me get through the summer without the fam running from me every time I come at them bearing a vegetable bowl. What are you very favorite ways to fix veggies? Susie
The New Book A few other riders gave me a gentle nudge that I'd neglected to blog about the fact that I have a new book out. Okay, part of it is that I was out of the country. This works really well, by the way - very difficult to check your amazon numbers hourly if you're on the other side of the world! But a good chunk of it is I generally try pretty hard to forget I've got a new book out. This is book number fourteen, and I still get really, really nervous. If I go to a bookstore and there are lots of books there, then I panic about the fact that they're not selling. If there aren't many, I mope because there aren't any out there. If I'm expecting a review, I get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. (Though I do get over a less-than-stellar one a whole lot faster than I used to.) I've managed to grow out of a lot of nerves. I rarely get nervous meeting new people anymore; I almost never freak out about what I look like; and generally don't worry too much about what other people think about me. (Age has made me finally realize that people are too worried about themselves to really think all that much about you!) But a new book sends me back to fourteen in a heartbeat. Exciting, but not terribly pleasant. How about you? What nerves haven't you grown out of? Oh, yeah, the new book . . . THE PAPER MARRIAGE. It's about a woman who had her whole life working perfectly, until fate dealt her a really nasty blow. She'd been frozen in place for twelve years, and the book begins when her life starts up again. Susie
What I'm reading When I'm writing a lot, I can't read romance/women's fiction. Too close to what I'm doing. I save them for a binge when I'm done. So I read mysteries, mostly. And, to make my inner science geek happy, I really like those with a scientific bent. Forensic stuff, like Kathy Reichs, and books with a bit of science in them, Tess Gerritsen and the Lincoln/Child books. But I'm still a historical fan, too. And THE MISTRESS OF THE ART OF DEATH by Ariana Franklin gave me the best of both worlds. It's firmly a historical, set deeply and believably in the 1100s. The detail is rich, and Henry II is a strong character. But it's also a procedural; the heroine is an orphan, raised by two Jewish Doctors in Sicily. She's attended medical school and is, essentially, an early pathologist, a brilliant and unique character. I'm reading the second one right now. (The Serpent's Tale) And it's great, too. Fair warning though: there's one of the grossest scenes I've ever read, so if CSI freaks you out, steer clear. In compensation, though, there's one of the most romantic lines I've read in a long time, too. What are you reading? Anything particularly interesting?
Tanzania Yup, that's where we were. Two weeks, most of them in mobile tented camps. (Less anyone be too impressed with my adventurousness, they were really NICE tents, with good beds and flush toilets for all that they could be packed up and moved depending upon where the animals were.) There were lions just outside our tents, huffing away (we weren't allowed to walk too far out of camp without the company of a Maasai warrior guard, spear and all.) And the wildebeest, grunting. I knew they were there, I could hear them, but nothing prepared me for driving about a half a kilometer and being smack dab in the middle of thousands and thousands of them, in all directions, the horizon so thick with them it looked like a swarm of ants. Best guess was that in our sight there was about a quarter of a million, though the entire migration is more like a million and a half (not counting the zebras and gazelles!). I've seen photos, I've seen it on tv, I've even seen it on a 360 degree movie screen. Still, I had no idea of what it was really like. Kind of like childbirth. I loved Tanzania. I'd go back tomorrow, despite the fact that, door to door, it was nearly 40 hours to get home. (I am ALMOST coherent now.) The people were great, the country gorgeous, I have the teensiest crush on our very charming 31-year-old tour manager, and our wonderful fellow travelers were old friends in the space of a day. The hardest critter to find? Leopards - we saw three. The cutest were the baby giraffes, the funniest the warthogs. We saw lions mating. Completely unimpressive stamina - like five seconds - but very impressive recovery time. (They mate something like on the average of every twenty minutes for four days straight!) And plane phobic me got on a 1-propeller plane on a bumpy airstrip that they have to buzz before they land, to scare off the zebras, and flew over an active volcano on my way back to Kilimanjaro airport. But what I'm really interested in is how many of us having been having adventures lately. Has that streak always been there, and we're only now, with our kids a bit older, able to indulge it? I'm not sure I ever thought of myself as particularly adventurous, however. For me, it's more that the unpredictability of life has been brought home to me in some very forceful ways the past few years, and I feel driven to get out there and LIVE, not knowing what the future will bring. Unlike Lois, I don't think I'll be climbing any mountains any time soon. But the next trip is booked (my son and I, this time) and I can't wait. And you certainly don't have to travel to expand your life; my husband is chattering about flying lessons, and I'm thinking learning a second language (a huge fat gap in my education) will be soon on the list for me. So who else is feeling this need to get out there and try something new? What have you all got planned? Susie
Guess where we were?
Let's see who can guess first . . . if you're guessing in the US, I need a state. Outside the US, a country will do. I'll blog about it when somebody gets it right . . . Susie
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