Summer reading

Besides finishing off the previously reviewed "A Man Called Destruction,"  I finished off three other books while on my recent vacation. Here are some thoughts on each of them: 

While enduring yet another bout of perimenopausal symptoms recently, I spotted "The Madwoman in the Volvo:  My Year of Raging Hormones" by Sandra Tsing Loh at the local bookstore, and immediately snapped it up.  

By the time Loh was 49, her life was a mess: she was juggling two pre-teenaged daughters, an aging (and eccentric) father, a career, and a  messy divorce, following an affair with her business partner. A perpetual cloud of gloom and irritability seemed to hang over her.  She was gaining weight.  After breaking down over the death of her daughters' pet hamster, a friend pinpointed the root of her problems: menopause.  The book follows Loh over the next two years to her milestone 50th birthday party, and mixes her personal story with humour and with some great nuggets of information about women, aging and menopause. 

I am not menopausal (yet -- although I am definitely getting there). I'm not a mom (and I did roll my eyes at Loh's portrayal of her friend Judith:  "Oh, the lightness of step of the child-free!" -- seriously??), and while my parents are starting to slow down, they are nowhere near 90 yet, let alone in need of the kind of help Loh's father required. I don't even have a job to worry about anymore (who would have thought that retirement would come before menopause??)(and I'm actually kind of grateful that when Aunt Flo is paying me a particularly nasty visit, I can now just pop some ibuprofen and take refuge on my couch, instead of slogging my way through the workday).

But there was still a lot here that I could relate to -- and I suspect many of you can, too (or will).  Consider this: by 2015 -- next year -- half of all American women will be menopausal. HALF!!  Moreover, Loh points out, we are menopausal women like no others in history. Long ago, many women died before they ever reached menopause. These days, we may live longer, but we're also taking longer to reach certain life milestones. While our mothers and grandmothers had their children in their 20s and sent us off to college when they were in their 40s, many of us delayed having children until our 30s & 40s.  These days, menopause often coincides with our children's adolescence -- and our parents' aging -- at the same time we are juggling the most demanding years of our working life.  Sandwich squeeze, anyone?

I was especially intrigued by Loh's point that, with menopause, we are returning to our pre-teen, pre-fertility years. Our fertile years are actually the aberration, not menopause... and "crazy menopausal women" are actually reclaiming a part of themselves they had long put on hold.

"If, in an eighty-year lifespan, a female is fertile for about twenty-five years (let's call it ages fifteen to forty), it is not menopause that triggers the mind-altering and hormone-altering variation;  the hormonal "disturbance" is actually fertility.  Fertility is the change. It is during fertility that a female loses herself, and enters that cloud overly rich in estrogen. Due to lifespans being as long as they are, thirty years of addled fertility in the middle isn't the "norm" for a woman, that almost sixty years of the relative selfishness of prepubescence and menopause are." (p. 237) 

The book ends with Loh's tips on how to survive menopause. (She is a big fan of Dr. Christiane Northrup & her book "The Wisdom of Menopause.")  I can't say I related to everything in this book, but it did give me a few laughs and insights, and you may enjoy it too. 

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WAs someone who is forever making to-do lists (often on post-it notes) and loves my yellow highlighter, I was drawn to the cover of "Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time" by Brigid Schulte.  When I started reading the reviews, I knew this was a book I had to read. And I am very glad I did. It is a must-read for anyone who is feeling time challenged and overwhelmed by modern life -- and I suspect that's most of us, at least in North America.  

Yes, I know -- I don't have kids;  supposedly I have oodles of free time, right? I suppose some people (parents) think I have no right to feel overwhelmed (how dare I??). And while I recognize that I DO have more free time than the average parent (and certainly now that I am unemployed/retired), there have been many times when I too felt "overwhelmed" by all the demands on my time and attention, and by a to-do list that never seems to get any shorter. 

"I think of confetti," writes Schulte, a journalist with the Washington Post. "That's how my life feels. Like time confetti -- one big, chaotic burst of exploding slivers, bits, and scraps. And really, what does a pile of confetti ever amount to?"

Schulte was late for her meeting with a time management expert -- who confounded her by claiming that women had an average of 30 hours of leisure a week (!). (Personally, I thought his definitions of "leisure" were really stretching it at times:  exercise is leisure?? Waiting for a tow truck is leisure?) 

But if we really have 30 hours of leisure time a week, why do we all feel so tired and stressed?? Schulte set out to find out, and the result is this well-researched and well-written book.

I particularly loved the section of the book set in Fargo, North Dakota -- an area of the country near & dear to my heart -- where Schulte found people are just as time-stressed as anywhere else. A UND researcher shared her collection and analysis of holiday family letters (of all things), which demonstrate a dramatic rise in busyness in American families in recent years -- or at least the appearance of busyness.

Because while there are any number of valid factors we can point to as to why we are so time-starved these days (and Schulte investigates all of them -- the rise of working mothers, the cult of intensive motherhood, the lack of supportive government and workplace policies...), the truth is that, in part, it is our own darned fault. We don't manage our time as well as we might, or set boundaries as well as we should. And even if we aren't that busy, we dare not admit it. "Busyness is now the social norm that people feel they must conform to... or risk being outcasts," Schulte writes. When everyone around us keeps saying they are "busy, busy, busy," do you want to be the one person to say you're not?  

Schulte looks for "bright spots" where it's easier to balance work, love and play, and travels to Denmark for an eye-opening contrast in cultures. She details her own efforts to take back her life and find time to truly play.  And she winds up with a list of suggestions on how we can do the same. 

Highly recommended. :)

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Confession:  I have never read the blogger known as "The Blogess."  But I heard enough about her through the blogging grapevine to recognize the name(s) on the cover of "Let's Pretend This Never Happened."

The Bloggess's real name is Jenny Lawson, and "Let's Pretend" is a memoir following her from her bizarre childhood in Texas to present day.

Frankly, I found the first few chapters, full of dead animals and live ones, to be slightly offputting.  Caveat emptor if you have any phobias about snakes, scorpions, stuffed dead squirrels, chupacabras (?? -- you learn something new every day...).  I was seriously considering throwing in the towel & moving on to something else.

But I soon found myself chuckling in spite of myself. And also sniffling.  Jenny is "one of us" -- she too survived infertility and pregnancy loss before finally surprising herself by giving birth to her daughter Hayley. She writes warmly about the blogging world and about the bonds she's formed with other bloggers. She also writes frankly (and humorously) about her struggles with mental illness, including anxiety.

This is a book that's probably best consumed in small doses -- I found myself exhausted at times from the frantic style. On balance, it was an enjoyable read. But as I said, caveat emptor... ;) 

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These were books numbers 8. 9 and 10 that I've read so far in 2014. (I'm currently bouncing back & forth between 11 & 12.)  ;) 

Sweet 16

Sweet 16 and never...

Miss you, baby girl. :( 

Adjusting to a new reality

Thank you all so much for your comments on my recent post about being laid off from my job. I am OK (for the most part). Dh, for his part, is thrilled to have me home with him a full 18 months sooner than we had been planning.

To be honest, it's been such a busy week, I haven't had a lot of time to dwell on what happened (except maybe when I'm awake at 3 a.m. and can't go back to sleep)(although it was certainly the main topic of conversation wherever I went). I was let go on Tuesday, had lunch with a visiting relative on Wednesday (instead of an evening or weekend visit -- because I could...!!), lunch on Thursday with a couple of former colleagues I've stayed in touch with (organized before all this happened), and cleaned house & did laundry on Friday, followed by dinner out with friends. Perhaps it's just as well that I've stayed busy.

Which is not to say I haven't been thinking about what happened, or found myself  struggling to fully comprehend the new reality I find myself thrust into. You don't realize how much of your life revolves around work, and the routines you've put in place related to that -- until suddenly, work isn't there anymore. (I remember wondering about the 9-11 survivors -- some of them had worked in those towers for years, & suddenly, their workplace, their daily routine, many of their coworkers and in some cases their jobs were just... gone... and in a very traumatic way.) 

When you're working, you tend to cram in a lot of activity on the weekend, because you either don't have time or are too tired on weeknights.  For years, our Saturday routine has included cleaning & laundry, shopping for groceries for the coming week, a visit to the cemetery, dinner out, and a browse at the bookstore.  But because I was out a lot this week, we decided we'd eat at home this Saturday. As we did, dh pointed out that we didn't HAVE to do any of the usual things on Saturday anymore. We could do laundry on Monday, or go out for dinner on Tuesday, or visit Katie or the bookstore anytime we like -- because we have the time now. A novel concept!

I think about the people I'm not going to see anymore every day -- and not just the people I worked with. I think about the father & son who run the newsstand downstairs, where I buy magazines and breathmints -- the husband & wife team who run the lottery kiosk near the subway entrance -- the baristas at the coffee shops I frequent, who know my order and often have it ready to hand to me by the time I reach the cash register -- the girls at the salon where I've been getting manicures, pedicures and waxing done for almost 20 years (argh, now I have to find a new nail place closer to home...).  Will they notice my absence? Will they wonder where I've gone?  Even if/when I do go back downtown (and in fact I am going tomorrow), it will probably be awhile before I want to go back to the tower where I worked. Too many people I know that I might run into;  too many awkward explanations about what happened. (Hmmm, why does this sound familiar...??)

I flip through my datebook & see the weekly meetings I dutifully recorded there -- which I will never attend -- and, one by one, cross them out. I find myself idly thinking that I must remember to head up to the Hallmark store at the Eaton Centre on my lunch hour sometime this week to buy a birthday card for our nephew -- and then I remember that I don't have a job to go to and won't be going into the city then. (Well, I could, if I wanted to, but I can just easily find him a card somewhere around here.)  ;) 

It's not a HUGE deal (at least it hasn't been, yet), not a lot of angst -- but it's a weird feeling nevertheless.

800

Well, how about that? This is my 800th post in less than 7 years of blogging.  Perhaps not quite as significant-sounding as 1,000 posts -- but that's still a lot of blogging and worthy of note. :)   Thanks for reading!

Deja vu :p

I lost my job this week. :p  I got back from vacation on Monday & was handed my pink slip early Tuesday morning.  I do not yet know all the details of the long-rumoured reorganization, but I do know that (sadly) I was not alone. At least three other coworkers, two of them also long-term employees in their 50s, were also let go. :( 

As you can probably tell from some of my recent work-related posts, this was not entirely unexpected -- but it still sucks to have my career end this way after 28 years of loyal service & (until just recently, anyway) completely satisfactory performance. But it is also a relief that my work-related stress is at an end.  I am glad I'm not one of the ones who has to stick around and pick up the pieces. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. :p 

As I sat there in the conference room, I had this weird sense of deja vu. I hate to compare losing a job to losing a baby -- but they both do involve a certain measure of loss & grief.  Thinking "is this really happening to me??"... not entirely taking in everything that someone is trying to tell you... trying to sneak out of the building without seeing or being seen by anyone you know... then sitting on an almost-empty homebound train, staring out the window... and now finding myself unexpectedly off for the rest of the summer.... hmmmm. Almost the exact same time of year too. It will be 16 years on August 7th.

At any rate -- if I survived that terrible day 16 years ago, I can most certainly survive this.

Big Star still shines brightly

If it's spring/summer, I must be in the throes of a new musical obsession, lol. (Cases in point: Raspberries, 2012;  the Rascals, 2013.) 

The difference this time around being that while I listened to both the Raspberries & the Rascals in my 1960s/70s youth, and then rediscovered them in middle age, I don't think I had ever heard of Big Star until I started watching "That 70s Show" -- in the late 1990s, lol -- and wondering where the kick-ass theme song, "In the Street" (also known as "That 70s Song") came from.

(After writing that, I Googled the show to refresh my memory exactly when "That 70s Show" began. Interestingly, the first episode aired August 23, 1998 -- about two weeks after Katie's stillbirth. I always got a kick out of the show & the memories it evoked of my own mid/late 1970s teenaged years -- Eric, Donna, Kelso, Jackie, Hyde & Fez would have been exactly my age -- and every character reminded me of someone I really had known in high school, lol -- but beyond the nostalgia factor, the show no doubt provided a welcome distraction at a time when I really, really needed one.)  

Anyway, I noticed the name "Alex Chilton" as the song's author in the credits & that sounded vaguely familiar. (The theme was originally sung by someone named Todd Griffin, but in later seasons by Cheap Trick, which definitely IS a band I remember well from my teenaged years. I found this fun video of them doing the theme song on YouTube.... for comparison, here is Big Star's original version... and a clip of a later incarnation of Big Star, featuring Chilton and original drummer Jody Stephens, doing the song on the Leno show in 1994 -- a couple of years before "That 70s Show" began.) 

When I rediscovered the Raspberries a few years back & started exploring links online, the name Big Star kept coming up -- both bands cited as prime examples of the "power pop" genre at its finest. So I started Googling Big Star and listened to some clips of their songs via YouTube. 

If you've never heard of Big Star or Alex Chilton, you're not alone (and welcome to the cult, lol).  Obscure as they may be, Big Star has a bigger following today than they did when they first recorded and toured in the 1970s.  It seems that most people who hear their music love it (then & now) -- but for a variety of reasons (including record company distribution problems beyond their control), they just never found an audience -- at least, not at the time their records were originally released.  Maybe they jinxed themselves -- after all, they had the audacity to call themselves "Big Star" (although they did lift the name & logo from a local supermarket chain) and their first album "#1 Record."

Before Big Star, Alex Chilton had been a member of the Box Tops, whose song "The Letter" -- recorded when he was just 16 -- was one of the biggest hits of 1967.  ("The Letter" is one of those songs I clearly remember from my childhood. In fact, I can remember being at my grandmother's & watching "American Bandstand" the day Dick Clark revealed at the #1 song of the week.) Saleswise, the Box Tops proved to be the apex of Chilton's career. After Big Star's first three albums flopped, he spent some time in New York, dabbling in the punk and indie music scenes (he was a regular at CBGB in its heyday), playing cover tunes in hotel bars and at one point washing dishes for a living in New Orleans, where he eventually settled. He was always more influential than commercially successful, but eventually did earn a comfortable living from royalties (including from "That 70s Show") and reunion tours with Big Star and the Box Tops.

Over the years, Big Star's music continued to find new audiences and be re-recorded by other bands and musicians. The Bangles, for example (another band I love(d)), recorded the Big Star song "September Gurls" in the 1980s.  I've read that when the Bangles met Chilton & learned he had never received a penny in royalties from their version, they promptly wrote him a cheque in gratitude. 

Chilton died of a heart attack in 2010 at the far too young age of 59, just before a reconstituted version of Big Star was supposed to play at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.  (Apparently he had been feeling ill for some time but had not sought treatment, in part because he lacked health insurance.) Not long afterward, original bass player Andy Hummel also passed away (from cancer), and I remember reading both obituaries in the newspapers at the time.

Then last year, a documentary about Big Star, "Nothing Can Hurt Me," was released to critical acclaim. (I have yet to see it, but the promo clips on You Tube are intriguing.) 

More recently, my interest in Big Star and Chilton was piqued anew when I found a new book, "A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton" by Holly George-Warren. There was also a book, "Big Star: The Story of Rock's Forgotten Band" by Rob Jovanovic, already in the music section -- recently updated to capitalize on the documentary -- and so I picked up both books and then read them, one after the other (with YouTube music clips as soundtracks).

There's aren't many books out there on the band -- so if you are into Big Star &/or Chilton big time, or want to learn more about them, both would be essential reading.  Both are well researched.  If you are more interested in the band as a whole, "Big Star" by Jovanovic is a good primer -- although I must confess I found the writing slightly flat. I did enjoy learning more in its pages about group founder Chris Bell, who tragically joined the "27 Club" in 1978 when he crashed his car into a lamppost, and whose huge contribution to the group has been overshadowed by Chilton's.  (Drummer Jody Stephens is the lone remaining member of the original lineup.)

"A Man Called Destruction" is primarily focused on Alex Chilton, and I personally found it to be the better written and more engaging of the two books. Chilton was a fascinating character -- gifted and talented, but also (like many geniuses, I suppose) conflicted and troubled -- an abuser of both drugs and alcohol (as well as, sometimes, women -- although he did eventually find marital happiness later in life) -- prone to undermining his own success,  and sometimes, yes, a bit of a jerk. 

While he & Big Star may both be gone, their legacy continues to grow as new generations (and those of us who missed out the first time around) continue to (re)discover their music. 

These were books numbers 6 & 7 that I've read so far this year (finished while I was on vacation).

Lazy hazy days of summer

(Actually not that hazy, thankfully. But I couldn't think of another title, lol.)

We are -- at long last -- on vacation. In the middle of a two-week stay with my parents. This wasn't exactly the vacation I wanted, but it's the vacation I got, and I am trying to make the most of it. It's slightly earlier in the summer than we usually come... but it was hard to get two weeks that suited everyone's busy schedules (not just our own), and this was the best we could do. Even so, my sister could not get time off work while I was here;  the Princess is (sadly) on her own family vacation, although we will see her before we leave.  So it's just me & dh and my parents.

And it is quiet. Almost a little too quiet, perhaps -- but I think it's mostly what I needed (for the first while, anyway), after some stress-filled days/weeks/months at work.  Reading -- books and blogs (I've finished two books since we got here and am now on a third, so expect some reviews in the near future) -- sleeping in late, staying up later to play cards & dominos, taking walks around this little town, popping in at the bakery for coffee & doughnuts (much to the curiosity of the regular locals), and stuffing myself silly with my parents' wonderful cooking. :) 

I realized, before we left, that I had taken only one vacation day & one personal day (for a lengthy medical appointment) since Christmas. Clearly, I needed a vacation. I am trying not to think about work and what awaits when I get back. I try to remember that it's just a little over 18 months until my 55th birthday & early retirement, if I want it.

My mother doesn't seem to want to hear me talk about early retirement, though. I've noticed whenever I mention it, she will make some comment about how "oh, someone better keep working" and about how dh & I will drive each other crazy being in the same house all days long.  (My father, at 75, still goes into the office most days, albeit his workload and pace is much slower than it was even just a few years ago.) 

Her comments irk me for reasons I can't entirely explain. While I tend to think of her as being a stay-at-home mom, she did almost always work herself, when I was growing up and continuing after I left home -- but with the exception of a few years of full-time work while I was in grade school, it was only ever part time, and she retired at 65.  She & my dad have always lived in small towns where the commute has never been longer than a short walk or even shorter drive. They've always lived close enough to the workplace to come home to eat lunch.  (My dad even takes a nap & watches "The Young & The Restless" before returning to work!!) While she has certainly worked hard all her life and faced her own challenges (including raising two kids, which I will admit I've never done, and cared for aging parents), she has never gotten up at 5 a.m. & commuted to & from a full-time, high-stress job, 10 hours a day, five days a week, for 24 years (I've actually been working for 28, but we've been living in our house & commuting for 24). 

Maybe she's genuinely concerned that we will need the additional income that working longer would bring -- although she also makes occasional cracks to the contrary about the supposed size of our bank account (I've gotten snide remarks from people in the past about how rich we must be since we don't have kids... but from my own mother...??!!). 

Maybe she's concerned that once I retire, I'll be home more often to check up on her. ;) 

Maybe she just doesn't want to be reminded that she has a daughter who is almost old enough to retire (because that would mean she is HOW old??).  ;) 

At any rate, if there's one lesson I've learned over the years, it's that, even when its doesn't turn out exactly as we've planned, life (and vacation) is too short not to be enjoyed.