I Win!

I don't know who started it...I have a notion it was my mother...but there's been a lot of discussion regarding "who gets what" after her death. It almost makes sense, now that she's in her late seventies, with multiple health concerns, but this talk began when she was, oh, I don't know....fifty.

(Younger than I am now. And to my kids--if you're reading this? You get NOTHING! I'm taking it all with me. j/k.)

There has been some discussion among my siblings. The protracted discussion (by protracted I mean twenty-year long) has been regarding a certain corner cupboard, which my sister and I both covet. Why? Who the heck knows--it's not an antique, nor is it particularly beautiful, but the scale is perfect and the style beautiful in its simplicity. The inside is wide board tongue-in-groove, painted sage green, and the rest is dark-stained knotty pine. And frankly? I love me some knotty pine.

This corner cupboard was the one piece (besides the bed and sofa) that my mother insisted had to come with her to the old lady apartment. I think she has been putting off making the inevitable: to whom should this corner cupboard be bequeathed?

Recently, the winner of this nice (but not old or particularly valuable) corner cupboard is *Tah-dah* me! And yes, it would look great in my living room. But you know what? In the past twenty years, there have been a lot of changes. And for my brother, sister and me, it's not really all that important who gets the corner cupboard. It's that we can all pitch in together--first during my dad's loss and the subsequent sale of my mom's house, then moving her to an apartment, and now through her health issues. We can sit down together and talk and laugh and there isn't any underlying animosity. (Of course, I am speaking for everyone because I am the big sister. I guess I could be wrong, and they both hate my guts and I just don't know it.) But in so many families, where there is so much bitterness, I figure that corner cupboard or not, I still won.

No, Kiki, do not get your hopes up. The corner cupboard is still coming home with me. ;)

Look into the crystal ball

Spending this week (please bring drugs and/or liquor) with my mother has been like getting a glimpse of the future.

And the future isn't pretty, peeps.

It's not just that your body begins to betray you and you are not young and cute and energetic anymore, as if that's not bad enough.

It's that you become an OLD PERSON.

It was funny...when I told people I was coming back here to care for my mom for a week, they invariably asked her age. And then it was, "Well, that's not old."

I am here to tell you...seventy-seven is old. Your body breaks down, your memory has glitches, and you develop old person habits like accumulating tons of junk "just in case" and that unmistakable "old person smell."

Yesterday, I mentioned that getting old was not for the faint-of-heart. But neither is staring at the person you will most likely become.

I will begin stockpiling liquor as soon as I get home.

Between a Rock and...well...

Todaay, I did something I've done before. And it doesn't get any easier.

I left my mom in the hospital.

Just for the night--she had a procedure today that involved some girl parts. Like she said, it's not as if she's going to use them any more.

And I'll pick her up tomorrow and she'll come home, where I'm supposed to force her to walk around some.

But I could tell that she was scared, and I didn't want to leave.

Taking care of elderly parents wasn't something I ever thought about, when I was in my 20s and 30s--maybe was because I was too busy taking care of my little kids.

But it's something I need to think about now.
Sometimes getting old stinks.

This is interesting...

This is an interesting article from Newsweek. Apparently, I'm not the only one thinking Fifty is the New Thirteen. Okay, so Newsweek says Sixty is the new Eighteen, but still....

Hey, Newsweek...I thought of it first!

I Want to Be in Their Club!

Well, it finally happened.
Two of my favorite authors got together and interviewed each other. It was all I could do to keep from yelling "I WANT TO BE IN YOUR CLUB!"
And I am in a writing club. (I am not in any other clubs. Clubs don't want me. I was briefly in a sorority in college, and one time somebody mentioned I might want to join a book club, but they did not offer theirs. I am in Bunco, which is kind of like a club, but it's mostly for drinking, and that I can do alone.) The writing club let me in because they had to. I paid the money, and now they send me e-mails. I get together twice a month with folks who critique my work, but most of them are either (a) memoirists, or (b) traditional fiction folks, and I am YA.

(YA, for the uninitiated, stands for "Young Adult." It comes in many forms--supernatural, James Bond-y, chick lit for teens, or angst-ridden prose. I don't write any of those. I write weird stuff about kids who are a little different.)

YA doesn't have a club here.
YA has a very cool club somewhere else, too inconvenient for me to join. Like Pheonix, where Stephanie Meyer lives, or Northern New York (Laurie Halse Anderson), or Vermont (Karen Hesse), or 'islands up and down the east coast' (Judy Blume). Hell to the yes (!) for Judy Blume! Islands up and down the east coast?? How much money did a book about a girl who wants her period MAKE you, Judy Blume?? I can write a book about a period--I had thirty-nine years of those mothereffers!

So, because I can't join a YA club (is it because I'm too snarky?), I'd like to join the "funny girls who drink too many Flirtinis and do a little facebooking under the influence" club.

Do they have one of those??

Let's torture our old people!

In the past four months, I have filled out over a dozen job applications and sent out several dozen resumes. I have not received one. single. response.

I know times are tight. I know we're in a recession. And I know that there are thousands of middle-aged folks out of work. Middle-aged middle management has taken a swift knee to the b@lls, and there's no real chance for those folks to recover. After all, we can only absorb a certain number of pompous a$$es.

But please hear me out.

*we won't get pregnant and be out for ten weeks' maternity (or paternity, for that matter) leave.
*we are pretty boring. You don't have to worry about us coming in all hungover, unless you expect us to work Saturday morning. Even then, it's unlikely.
*we are pretty responsible. There's not much chance that we'll do anything stupid; we need the job.
*we won't be wearing inappropriate clothing. Mainly because that kind of stuff no longer fits.

So, if you need to hire someone...you may want to look into hiring someone older. We don't have the sense of entitlement that younger folks do.
We know better.

Okay....apparently I am no longer an asset, but a liability.

I have never been one to believe I was anything other than average. (My parents made sure of that!) But there's one thing I always knew, whether anyone wanted me to know or not--I could write.
In kindergarten, Helen Countryman told me I was a good writer. (She might have meant my printing, but who knows? Let's pretend she believed I was Pulitzer-caliber.) In fourth grade, Mrs. Russell told me I was a good writer. This was after I'd written a story based on a magazine photo. Mine was about a birthday party. In high school, Norma Gunkler encouraged my writing, and Betty Coman (despite the fact that she initially believed I was an idiot) finally came around and admitted I was the best writer in my class. (Sorry, Stuart.) Years later, she said she was sorry for both giving me a lousy grade the first semester of my Junior year with her, making me forever ineligible for National Honor Society, and for not giving me the English prize at graduation. I figure she paid for those grievous errors by having to drag around an oxygen tank like a dachschund with no legs, but I digress.

(Those of you who know me can skip the next part, because you've heard it all.)
So when I turned forty-nine, I decided I was done caring what other people thought...I would do and say exactly as I pleased and blame it on old age. So I "cut off my hair and grew a pair." And ignoring everyone who ever said I would never write...I wrote. First I wrote "Kirb Appeal"--both the videos and the blog--and I now have 41 subscribers--six of whom read regularly! Now, it's "New Thirteen" which is basically my journey through (old) age. Then, I joined a writers group, and I learned something about myself: compared to other folks? My writing is GOOD. (Don't believe me? Take a look at the serial romance the group is writing. Some of it is--well--pitiful.) Then, I went to programs that were led by writers and asked questions. Do you know what I heard?
That I am too old.
Too old to write.
Too old to have anyone interested in publishing anything I have to say.
Publishers are looking for hot young women who can write, not old farts who can write. They want either Sex in the City or Mommy Bloggers. Better yet...Sex WITH a Mommy Blogger.
Believe me, back in the day when I was a mommy, I would have been a Mommy Blogger. But there wasn't any such thing back then, and so I wasn't.

So I am planning something new: Post-Mommy Blogging. For Moms who used to be mommys but are now way cooler. Won't you join me?
You don't have to have sex in the city or anywhere else. Old age has it's privileges.