The Poet is In.

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Where does a poet punch in?

Starbucks? The kitchen counter? The train station?

The backyard hammock, while the bees and butterflies labor in nectar?

Is it in bed, snuggled up to your

neck, dear?

These poets.

How can one punch in when the mind is wrapped in rhyme 24/7,

and it’s hell until it’s written? And then it is heaven?

The life of observation, consternation, inside jokes, so very inside.

An outsider, who writes on the inside, errr.

And wonders, how such quiet words, once written,

soundless on a screen, or a note pad, or a grocery receipt,

Mean much, much more than they say?

Inuendo, intended.

Fun with Power Surges

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No matter how hard someone tries to knock me down, I try to find the silver lining, I try to be sure there’s some fun in my day. I can get down on myself in an instant without any assistance, so I don’t really know why anyone would bother with an easy target such as me.

Rather than gaze at the pit I imagine is set to snare me, I’ve decided to stick to myself today and have a little bit of fun at my desk. I’m on my third project as of lunch time, I’m on a roll, and there are three more that require my attention by EOB Friday. Like a runner, like a swimmer, like a bicyclist, this writer is into her pace.

There’s a rhythm to everything, even our interactions with others. Some people come into focus more often than others. Some people you wish would come into focus more often, but they don’t, so you just have to be OK with that. My muse doesn’t always show up. If I clench, I’m screwed.

Plotting personal power surges.

Today I’m focusing on my own little rhythm, the spontaneous steaming that radiates from my chest, arms and face. I’ve been writing down the time each time one happens. Under the heading of “HF” (hot flash), on a little post-it, I’ve put down the times. I don’t really see much of a pattern, yet. It’s been going on for about a month now. I guess it’s rather telling that on the sticky stuck to the post-it is a note to myself to buy a small desk fan.

I don’t complain about this, and I don’t discuss it at work with more than a couple of women. It’s amusing. And when you think about how I’m determined to achieve certain goals in 2012, I see this as a rather freeing phenomenon. I might need to go off and find a happy place at times, but the rapids will subside. Let’s just have fun with this. Be the power surge.

The Irony is not Lost.

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A sunset. A day's experiences. Reflect on what you have learned.

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It’s quite possible, in fact, if all goes as planned, 2012 could be the year when I become what I’ve always wanted to be: amazingly fit, happy with myself, and easy on others, thanks to my departure from the monthly rapids of hormonal conflict. Wouldn’t it be awesome to reflect on these successes on my birthday, 12/12/12, and a few days after I finish the 2012 Honolulu Marathon, the last event on my fitness calendar? If the world were to end 12/21/12, I’d be OK, I guess. But, well, I’m not Mayan, so let’s look beyond a pointless limitation. I expect I will have to renew my drivers license.

With one month and three events down, I cannot help but feel optimistic. I do have some twinges, and I am going to see a couple of doctors about this and that. I got on the scale yesterday and I had dropped about seven pounds since the beginning of the year. I had a feeling. Sometimes I have a feeling and the scale doesn’t confirm my optimism. But yesterday it did.

Challenging myself is what this year is all about. It’s a challenge to get home from work and put on my swim suit for masters training. At some point during those sessions I push the button on my Timex Indiglo and discover that I have less than 30 minutes of swimming to go. Some of my training leaves me heaving, clinging to the side of the pool, trying to catch my breath as I watch the time clock tick off the seconds until I have to push off the wall for another sprint. I’ve never said to myself “I can’t.” I’ve always pushed off, I’ve always tried, and some evenings I’m always last. But it sure beats sitting around.

It is amazing to me that I have found some peace in the contemplation of running. I do not run fast. In fact, last week while I was training, I felt like my legs were not doing what my mind wanted, which was to pick up the pace. I was clocking in paces at 12- to 15-minutes per mile, embarrassingly sluggish! But yesterday when I finished my 5k race at Kakaako Waterfront Park, I clocked in a pace of 10:90. A race is a race after all! I came in 7th in my age group, a pool of 13 women. The top three finishers clocked in with times of 26 minutes and various seconds. I am in awe.

At one point yesterday my friend Tootsie passed me. Then we hung together, then she pulled away. I told her if we were on bikes, I’d blow her away! We had a good laugh. But I didn’t completely lose her. And when we were approaching the finish, I found something within me that wanted to beat the clock. I saw it was 34:xx and ticking and I really wanted to beat 35 minutes! So I did, and Tootsie gave me a cheer to go for it. How nice is that?

It was a little disappointing not to get to ride my bicycle this weekend, but there are family obligations that take precedence. It could be a tough month to get on the bicycle, actually. Good thing I have other ways to help me reach my goals.

At yesterday’s running event was a woman who competed in the 45-49 age range and was dressed in tiny shorts that went up her butt crack and a tight little top. She was as tall as me but as spry as a pixie. And, forgive me, but I felt like she was inappropriately dressed and trying a little too hard to be what she will never be again. I know what that’s like, but I do hope I have enough sense to keep my cute ass from hanging out of my shorts.

The irony is that although we are training and getting fit and are really amazing, the pull of gravity has been at work on us much longer than it has on those 10 to 20  years younger. It really has. But so has life’s lessons. We’ve all been handed our humble pie, we’ve all been taken aside and gotten the constructive criticism we need to succeed. You can look at a crowd of women and see who’s putting the valued wisdom to work and who isn’t. I see the young, carefree, and reckless and wonder what they’ll be like when they’re my age. I was young and reckless and carefree. I survived. I learned. Some women don’t. Experience is a great teacher, if you choose to incorporate its lessons into your maturing modus operandi.

Now I know why I’ve always liked to talk to people who have been around a little longer than me. Especially the smart ones. After a while you realize that cats are easier to be around than kittens and dogs are more laid back than puppies. You really do.

A Universal Dip.

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I am in a funk. Ask my husband. I am so in a funk. The weather in Hawaii is a bit tinged around the edges. The trade winds have ceased, allowing the vog to float in from the south upon gentle kona breezes. It will give people runny noses and sneezing fits and headaches.

Not sure what my personal funk is about. It could be the weather. It could be the way I seem to be brushed off every time I reach out to someone. Maybe it’s wondering too much. I know my little aches and pains are big enough to scare me.

On days like this I am happy to be at work where the climate is controlled. That’s about all though. The work load is dynamic and the managers are talking into two phones at once, answering texts and emails, shoving crunchy snacks into their faces because they don’t have time to eat a real meal. We do love our deadlines, and we do love our pressure, but we also love it when the juices flow in our brains well and our efforts trigger the chorus of angels across the hall.

A wall of Island Scene covers behind me and my colleagues, HMSA writers, editors, and my manager, a PR pro. Tagged on Facebook!

We don’t always, so we go back to the drawing board.

At work today we said good bye to a fellow writer, Andrea, and her husband Mel, who worked on our web team. Same department, different units. They got married last summer. When they announced their engagement, many of us who worked among them didn’t even know they had dated. At department meetings they never sat together. Each of them is really quiet compared to people like me! And Andrea’s even from South Jersey where everybody is loud all the time! When did they even have a conversation, let alone date, let alone get engaged, and then get married? 

You never know when a colleague will bust out the ukulele and serenade the office. This is farewell, Hawaiian Style. Aloha Andrea & Mel!

As another colleague serenaded the couple with his ukulele, singing two songs including “Over the Rainbow,” ala Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoole, I took a photo and then ran over to the other side of the wall to my cube where I just dabbed my eyes until he was done. THEN I got to blow my nose. What the heck? I think my hormones might be part of this emotional symphony as well. Sometimes listening to Iz helps:

OFFICIAL Somewhere over the Rainbow – Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole.

I do like kona weather for weekend bicycle rides and it might mean I’ll get in a stand-up paddle board session on the beach. My girls would love that. It’s time for the weekend. I’m going to find a way to scrub out the negatives, the doubt, and the insecurities that sprout up when I feel alone. Does merlot go with guacamole? Time to turn this funk into fun!

A Meyer lemon on an avocado pile. Looking at tonight's guacamole!

There Was Always a Backdoor.

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It wasn’t that the Susan G. Komen Foundation had caved, but that it had reinvented itself. This time I’m not so sure we’re going to see a public apology in response to the outcry on social media and chronicled by traditional media and on blogs such as this. This is what they want to be. So let them be that.

SGK knew what it was doing when it appointed former Georgia GOP gubernatorial pro-life candidate Karen Handel (backed by Sarah Palin) as its vice president for public policy. What an interesting tack, to sweepingly decide that funds will not be granted to those organizations being investigated by the feds for financial improprieties. For an organization such as Planned Parenthood, that’s de rigueur, it’s part of the daily landscape, it’s routine.

When people think Planned Parenthood, they think abortion clinic. It is true that abortion services are provided. But they also provide breast cancer screening and related services to women in economically challenged areas. In fact, according to Planned Parenthood, the SGK funds were only used for that purpose.

But wedge in that kernel of doubt and what do you get?

I see this as the Republican’s party strategy to diminish reproductive rights for women. The funding for breast cancer screening is the unfortunate loss as a result. C’est la vie, and tough luck for poor women in the United States. I wonder if there is a pro-life factory worker behind yesterday’s recall of defective birth control pills? Wouldn’t that be crazy?

From today’s New York Times:

Dawn Laguens, an executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said that Komen’s money had over the years underwritten breast cancer screenings for 170,000 women, some of whose lives were saved as a result. She said she had no sympathy for Komen’s attempt to mollify donors by ending its relationship with a controversial provider of women’s health services. Only a small percentage of Planned Parenthood’s expenditures go toward abortion services.

In my early years I lived in a poor neighborhood, but my parents paid the tuition to send us to Catholic school, including a regional high school that served students from all over the county. You can bet there were rich kids and poor kids at that school. High school is high school. Cliques, nerds, jocks, performers, and loners like me on the outskirts of this group or that. I made friends, but I floated from group to group. My relationships with many of these people have solidified more on Facebook. In fact, some have decided not to be my friend because I’m still that liberal hippy chick they knew in the ’70s. C’est la vie.

We knew then and we know now and we’ve known forever that premarital sex crosses economic barriers. Married people have affairs. Goodness gracious, even clergy are known to copulate. Services offered by Planned Parenthood aren’t limited to women who live in economically depressed areas. When it comes to inconvenient pregnancy, the doors of Planned Parenthood are open to all. There is no questionnaire that asks about their politics. This decision isn’t going to just hurt inner city poor women. No way. Come on. Back-door abortions for the well heeled? Take that to the polls.

Groovin’ With Life’s Transitions.

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Vibram Five Fingers, VFFs, are strictly for stand-up paddle boarding and not in my daily fashion realm.

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I have a few items in my closet that will get worn less and less. Now that we seem to be over the animal print hump, some of those items will be donated, others will be worn less frequently. I’m going to keep the three skirts I have: one gray slashed with black stripes, one a beige-brown-black cheetah print, and another sweepingly long skirt that seems to embrace the skins of reptiles and jungle beasts. They make me feel groovy. I love it. One of my managers does not. She’s my fashion adviser, and I take her gentle suggestions seriously. So while I’m going to stick to mostly animal print under garments, which I would like to assert probably will never go out of style, I will probably never wear the leopard oxford shirt again. I had already decided that when I noticed my hair blended too well with it, and it wasn’t very flattering.

My Sidis are for bicycle riding, and they get stuffed with newspapers if I get caught in the rain. Not a daily fashion do.

Routinely, I choose what I’m wearing for work the night before. Routinely, I make a point of not changing my mind in the morning. My theory is that if the clothes fit and they match, then they’ll look fine and it doesn’t matter what my own attitude is.

However, this morning I put on an olive-green gypsy skirt and French filmy top, took off the top, tried two other tops, took off the skirt, put on a pair of gray pants, changed the top, took off the gray pants and put on brown pants, changed the top, finished my makeup and came out and changed the top.

My new Saucony Mirage running shoes. A man's shoe, but I've got big feet. I wore them for the first time the other evening and did OK. A little long in the toe. I think these are very fashionable with running gear and maybe jeans on Casual Fridays.

I had planned on leaving early so I could punch in at work at 6 because I have to take the girls to the dentist. I got to work on time.

My body is changing. Aside from the peri-meno-hot-flash occurrences, I’m worried about my thickening middle, butt and thighs. Worried. Like I feel as though my bicycle riding and running has made my thighs and butt big. I have added swimming to my routine because it always had a full-body slimming effect on my frame.

I’m trying to be patient. I know muscle weighs more than fat. I know that the more muscle we have the better our metabolism behaves. I know that my body shape is tweaking itself, accommodating the exercise routines while at the same time enduring the climatic change of hormonal surges.

I’m no cougar. I’m a flirt, I crush on guys, I like to dance in my cube and at home while cooking dinner, I have fun with my husband. I’m not going to fade into the wallpaper. I’m going to be intriguing and wear funky clothes when the spirit moves me. As long as they match my hair.

Stalled by Faded Photographs

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Me, my brother, and my sister. Small-kid time. Summer suntans, my favorite dress with the bell sleeves. Circa '66. Yes, I have had this hair my entire life.

I found myself lingering over old photographs while sifting through life’s artifacts this past weekend. Photographs are relatively small and flat, but they convey the big feelings you might have experienced when they were taken. You remember the circumstances, the temperature, the smells. In this particular shot, I remember suntan lotion, chlorine, and Mr. Bubble bubble bath.

A lot of small-kid time pix bring back great memories of being on swim team, down the shore, in parades. There are sunburned cousins in group shots, high school band trips, young parents smiling from the 1960s. I have photos from when I was in the USAF in Texas, California, and Hawaii; from learning to surf, going hiking, and from the early days with John.

On the dunes in Surf City, Long Beach Island, N.J.; circa '70.

Now that there is digital photography, the only pictures we get in the house any more are annual class pictures. I suspect eventually they’ll give way to virtual images and there will be no dusty photographs to distract one from purging life’s artifacts.