Clothes make the (wo)man

There are many women (& perhaps a few men) who are far more obsessed with clothes and their appearance than I am.  I've never been overly obsessed with following trends, and when my office adopted "everyday business casual" back in the late 1990s, I eagerly embraced it. 

That said, while I gleefully abandoned wearing skirts & jackets (and -- especially -- pantyhose!) every day -- I care about my appearance. I like to look good, because when I think I look good (or at the very least, presentable), I feel better about myself, more confident and capable of facing the challenges of the day. I drive dh nuts sometimes, standing in front of my closet, debating what I should wear today: What would be appropriate for the occasion (even if it's just a brief run to the store to get milk)? This outfit or that one?  Do I feel more like purple today, or black?  V-neck or crew? Should I wear a cardigan? (Check the weather.) Which earrings to go with it?  Would adding a bracelet be "too much"?  Can I get away with wearing my comfortable (albeit beat up) shoes? 

Packing for a trip of any sort is an exercise in anxiety, because I feel like I should be prepared for any eventuality -- and how do I know what I'll feel like wearing on any given day? (Yes, you make do with what you have, and six days out of seven, it's usually just fine, but there are days when I put on my grey sweater while thinking longingly of the much more appropriate red one sitting in my armoire back home.)  And for a special occasion -- our nephew's recent engagement party, for example -- I will obsess over finding the perfect outfit to wear, weeks in advance. Once I have the key pieces, I turn to jewelry & shoe choices, as well as nails & makeup.  (As I was applying my eyeshadow that day, I realized that the blue I pulled out of my collection, to match the navy blue of my top, was actually more of a violet. Horrors!! And it was getting too late to remove it all and start again with a more appropriate shade.)(Needless to say, I survived.) 

(Whereas dh happily throws on the first thing his hand touches in the closet, and will wear (& re-wear) the same thing over & over -- not to mention committing fashion faux pas such as wearing a red T-shirt with green shorts. "You can't wear that for Christmas Eve -- you wore it five years ago," I will say as I search his closet for a more appropriate outfit. "How do you remember these things??"  he says, no doubt privately thinking "and why should I care?")

That's why Heather Mallick's column in last Saturday's Toronto Star resonated with me so strongly.  "For every dress and shirt, there is a reason," the headline reads. Mallick was promoting a new book by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits and Leanne Shapton, called "Women in Clothes." The authors surveyed more than 600 women (famous & not, including Mallick) with a detailed questionnaire (which you can also fill out) about what they wear and why. Questions such as: “With whom do you talk about clothes? What is your cultural background, and how has that influenced how you dress? Do you notice women on the street? What sort do you tend to admire?... Can you recall some times when you have dressed a particular way to calm yourself or gain a sense of control over a situation that scared you?” And on and on. The responses make up the book. 

"I now realize," Mallick writes, "that I had been subjected to either a skilled police interrogation or the therapy session of a lifetime." (My own reaction, reading the list of questions -- now more than 80 (!) -- was that each one could provide fuel for an entire blog post.) 

I found and bought the book later that night. :)  I will let you know what I think when I finally get around to reading it -- although I suspect this is the kind of book you can dip in & out of at leisure. 

Does this book sound like something that might interest you? What sort of a relationship do you have with your clothes?

#MicroblogMondays: Rolling the dice

Dh thinks I spend too much time on the computer (now whatever gave him that idea??).  He recently pointed out that, now that we're both basically retired, we need to get into some good habits right from the start, and find some new ways to spend our time -- i.e., not sit on our respective sofas all day with our heads in our laptops.

I realized he was right. 

So I challenged him. To a game.

Of Yahtzee. :) 

I hadn't played Yahtzee in years, let alone just the two of us.  We spent Saturday night playing six rounds -- and in the sixth & final round, I rolled Yahtzee not once, not twice, not THRICE, but FOUR TIMES.  In all my years playing Yahtzee, going way back to my childhood, I have never seen that done before. Once or twice, maybe, but FOUR TIMES in one game??! 

Needless to say, I won. ;) 

It was fun. :) 

Sometimes you just need to roll the dice and shake things up a little. :) 

You can find this week's other #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Back to school

It started in mid-August (!!) -- back-to-school photos & posts from Stateside friends, popping up like springtime dandelions on my Facebook feed. And it's continued all through this past week.  

On Labour Day weekend, the local newspaper was full of back-to-school stories -- including a full two-page spread on the burning question of how old kids should be before they're allowed to walk to school by themselves. The general consensus seemed to be 9. (!)

(Back in the Dark Ages (cough cough), unless the weather was really rotten, I walked to school. By myself at first;  later, usually with my sister. In kindergarten, that was six blocks, by myself. Across a highway.)(Granted, this was a small rural town in the 1960s, and there wasn't much traffic -- and everyone else walked too.)(But, I digress....)

On Labour Day, a FB friend (albeit a fellow loss mom) posted her annual moan about how she did not want to send her kids back to school the following day. (Or set an alarm clock -- which may have been the true issue, lol.)  Next year, her oldest will be off to university. I can just imagine her posts then...! 

Actually, I've already had a taste of what's to come.  A (non-ALI) blogger I don't really "know" but follow just sent her oldest child off to university and has been writing about it (albeit writing beautifully).

And a non-ALI online friend just installed her oldest child in her first apartment this weekend.  The family lives less than an hour away -- a heck of a lot closer to home than I was for most of my university career -- and that was long before Internet, email, Skype, texting and cheap long distance phone calls. (I called my parents once a week, usually on Sunday nights.)  Later on moving day, the mom posted on FB that she was bawling her eyes out over a restaurant dinner.   

Even then, I was doing OK -- until one of her friends commented, "You can do hard things -- you are a MOM!"

Like moms have the market cornered on "doing hard things"??!  (I'm sure that wasn't the intended meaning -- but that was my first reaction.)

Yes, I'm sure it's hard to watch your children leave the nest.  But of course, I wouldn't know that -- would I?

But I do know something about saying goodbye to your child -- your only child -- forever.  And never seeing her grow up and go off to school at all.  And be reminded of it every single September.

That's hard.

(For the record, Katie would have started Grade 11 this fall.)(That's a junior, for those of you south of the border.)         

Microblog Mondays: Sunshine

(Why "Microblog Mondays"?  Mel explains.) 

(This actually evolved from a Facebook update.) 

I love seeing the sunshine flooding into my living room in the late afternoon/early evening... something I didn't get to see as much when I was working. It makes me happy! :)  (I believe there SAD is real)  & it makes the house look like a completely different place.

(Hmmm, wasn't this a John Denver song?)

Month One

It's been just a little over one month since I lost my job (on July 22nd) and had early retirement unexpectedly thrust upon me at age 53. 

Time has flown. As a couple of my now-retired coworkers told me, you think you're going to get all this stuff done, and...!

When I went to bed that first night after getting my walking papers, I can remember thinking, "At least I can sleep in now!! No more 4:45 alarm clock!"  Naturally, my eyes flew open at 3 a.m., and I tossed & turned for the next few hours before finally getting up at 6:30 (!). Maddeningly, on most days over the next few weeks, I would wake up just before or just after my alarm clock would have gone off at 4:45 a.m... and then toss & turn, trying to go back to sleep again for a few more hours. I might still wake up early to answer nature's call ;)  but thankfully, I'm getting better at falling back asleep again ;) and then waking up at a much more sane hour of 7:30 or 8 a.m.  

Once or twice a week, though, I've been getting up at around 6-6:30 and heading into the city.  I have use of a "transition consultant" for the next while and, although I have no desire or plans to re-enter the working world immediately (if ever -- perhaps something part time or a few freelancing jobs, eventually...?), I've decided I might as well take full advantage of their services. It's been a long, LONG time since I dusted off my resume, applied for a job or been on a job interview. And it's a completely different world out there since the last time I did any of those things. (LinkedIn? What's that?) 

Getting an updated resume together was one thing;  interview prep (which is what I'm doing right now) is quite another. I'm finding it nerve wracking and stressful, even if it is just practice. I think dh thinks I'm nuts for putting myself through this when I don't really have to. But I know it's for my own good. Maybe it's my inner bag lady talking, but I feel better knowing that, if or when I ever need or want to return to work, I will be better prepared than I was before I lost my job. 

I ran into one of my former colleagues there this week. He and some of the others who also lost their jobs that day have been taking some time off before starting their job searches. Even though he is close to me in age, he has a young daughter to support;  he needs to keep working.

I wondered if maybe I should have taken a break too. But I only have use of the consultant's services for a finite amount of time, and it's only one or two mornings a week. I don't have to do any more than I really want to -- they are working for me, not the other way around. And once I polish up my interviewing & networking skills, and set up my LinkedIn profile, I think I will feel better about slacking off more and taking things easier.  

For the past 28 years -- 28 years!! -- my life each fall through Christmas has revolved around -- and been restricted by -- year-end reporting and related activities. I thought I'd get a reprieve in 1998 because my long-awaited baby was due in November;  she was stillborn in August, and I had to return to work in October -- and I bitterly resented it.  I found I was usually too busy during the week and too exhausted on weekends to do so many of the things I wanted to do -- take a trip to enjoy the fall colours, mourn my little girl properly on her November due date (if that's how I was feeling), have a leisurely pre-holiday lunch with friends, attend a Christmas craft show, check out the European-style Christmas market in the downtown Distillery District. I fully intend to do all those things and more this year.

On the mornings that I'm not heading into the city, dh & I linger over our tea/coffee and morning papers, then (if the weather permits) head out for a walk.  Getting into better shape and staying healthy as we age is definitely one of my post-work goals. (I have not lost any weight -- yet!! lol -- but I feel SO much less stressed. The maddening twitch in my eye has disappeared;  my heartburn is much less frequent, and I haven't checked but I am thinking my blood pressure has probably improved.)  Dh goes to see his dad one afternoon a week and, depending on the weather, might return another day to mow his lawn. Another day is spent cleaning the house and doing laundry, and I've started tackling some of the piles of clutter that seemed to have become permanent fixtures in the spare bedrooms. Tuesdays, we trek over to the local farmers' market & come home with fresh produce to enjoy, especially berries. :)  Other days, we might head over to the local mall to shop or just to get out of the house. A former coworker who lives in the area treated me to afternoon tea, with little sandwiches and scones and other treats.  Dh & I are already planning some day trips to enjoy the fall colours, once they arrive, and maybe a slightly longer getaway, further afield.

This is what we've been working and saving for all these years. This is the goal we set for ourselves, once it became evident that we were not going to be parents. It came a little earlier than we both expected, and not quite the way either of us had imagined -- but now that it's here, we intend to enjoy it.

Life is good. :) 

"Mastering the Art of Quitting" by Peg Streep & Alan Bernstein

"Quitting" is a word I have long avoided when talking about my infertility journey. I stopped fertility treatments, I ended them, I left them, I made the decision to stop/end/leave treatment and live without children, I chose to take my life in a different direction. 

Why quibble over "quit"? It's not hard to understand why:  in our achievement & success-oriented culture, quitting has a negative connotation. Nobody wants to be thought of as a quitter -- and certainly not in the infertility & loss community, where people don't seem to want to hear any story except one with a conventionally happy ending (i.e., a living, healthy baby, no matter what the costs or what you had to do to get him/her).

Well, fellow travellers on this less-travelled road, it's time to embrace "the Q word"  ;) (as my sister calls it -- only in her case, she's talking -- or rather, avoiding talking -- about quitting smoking, lol)(as the book says, "the only kind of giving up we collectively accept and support"). And there's a new book to help us do that.

"Mastering the Art of Quitting:  Why it Matters in Life, Love and Work" doesn't mention infertility at all -- but I saw myself and other infertile women I know throughout its pages. I believe its message totally applies to those of us who are at a crossroads in our journey and trying to decide if we should continue treatment or follow another path (and if so, which one).

The book is slightly academic in tone with lots of psychological terminology and studies quoted (I'll admit this did bog me down a bit in spots).  And yet there was something on just about every page that I could relate to or that gave me food for thought. My copy is full of dog-eared pages.

"Quitting not only frees us from the hopeless pursuit of the unattainable but permits us to commit to new and more satisfying goals."  This, in a nutshell, is the message of this book. (You can probably understand why I found it so appealing...!)

So why does quitting have such a bad rap?  "We've all been taught that quitting is a sign of weakness and that quitting is for losers,"  the authors bluntly note. (p. 3)  Persistence and positive thinking, we are told from the time we are children, are the keys to success. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that human beings are hard wired to persist in pursuit of a goal -- even when the goal is unreachable or no longer satisfying.

The book not only promotes quitting as a valid option, it discusses why and how we should quit when something is not working for us. (The trick is to disengage from old goals while setting new ones.)  It includes helpful quizzes and tips to help us make better decisions and to set and pursue new goals in a more realistic way. 

If you are struggling with decisions about whether to stay on your current path or take a completely different direction in your life, this book would be an excellent resource. 

This was book #11 that I've read so far this year.

This sounds familiar... (part 2)

(Continued from yesterday's Part 1...)

After hearing a little Kubler-Ross and discussing the SCARF model, our facilitator offered some tips for dealing with transitions -- in this case, moving forward after job loss, but also applicable in many cases (I thought) to surviving pregnancy loss, infertility and the decision to remain childless/free: 

1)  Accept that bad things can happen. Develop resilience.  Become an expert on your situation.    (For most of us who have lost a pregnancy, dealt with infertility or childlessness, this has probably meant devouring books, blogs and other information to help us deal with our new reality.)  Wallowing in our grief may have a certain appeal at first, but after a while, we need to start focusing on what our next steps could be. We may not have chosen what happened to us, but we can choose how we respond.

2)  "Preventative medicine."  Avoid negative individuals who might push you to play the role of victim ("poor you"). Some people need to confirm to themselves "so glad it's you and not me" and don't really bring anything of value to the relationship.  Also avoid situations you don't like and that you know will make you feel unhappy (e.g., baby showers!). 

3)  "Healthy schizophrenia."  Try to detach or distance yourself from the situation. (This is admittedly hard to do when you've just lost a baby.)  In the case of job loss, try to avoid thinking of your former company as "we" and "us."  Become a reporter and try to view the situation objectively.  What should a person in this situation do? What would you advise a friend in a similar situation to do?

4)  Change the meaning of what is happening;  try to look on the bright side. (Again, perhaps not really applicable when you've just lost a baby.)  This is not always easy to do.  Your brain needs time to think and process what's happened. We can't work full tilt 24 hours a day;  we'll burn out. We need rest, we need sleep, we need to take vacations, we need to take breaks and do something different. That's often when the best ideas pop into our heads. Now is the time (we, who had lost our jobs, were told) to do some of the things you wanted to do when you were working -- and that you won't have time to do when you start working again).

In the same vein, taking a break from fertility treatment can bring a fresh perspective and new energy to whatever you decide to do next.  If you decide to continue to live without children, look at it as an opportunity to do some of the things you didn't have time or money to pursue when you were in treatment -- and wouldn't be able (or might find harder) to do if you had children.

5)  Focus on your strengths.  What are you good at doing? What do you enjoy doing?  Write them down. (In handwriting, not on the computer -- handwriting helps us absorb messages better than typing them into a computer.) 

6)  Create an identity map.  In the centre of a bulletin board or a big sheet of poster board, place your favourite photo of yourself.  Around it, place photos or magazine pictures or other visual reminders (e.g., restaurant menus, theatre tickets) of the people and things you love and enjoy:  family, friends, hobbies, celebrations, travel, music, art, sports, achievements. Jobs. 

This reminded me of a collage exercise we used to do in our perinatal bereavement support group:  we'd bring in stacks of old magazines & give everyone half an hour to go through them and rip out any images & words that reminded them of their baby(s), of what had happened, and how they were feeling now. Then we'd hand out sheets of poster paper and glue sticks, and after another half hour or so, we'd all share what we had created and talk about what the words & images meant to us.

This was always a powerful exercise and it was amazing to see what people would come up with.  Along with photos of babies, pregnant women and moms with kids, I remember one mother had the image of a knotted in a length of rope at the centre of her collage, another had a picture of a big bolt of lightning cutting across a dark, threatening sky.  I did the collage exercise along with the group every time it came up in the topic rotation, and I still have every one I made. It was interesting to see how my collages evolved and changed as time went on.

7)  Energy balance exercise.  What people, places and activities in your life are sources of energy for you? Which ones are energy suckers? (Try to avoid those.)  Which are a mixture?

8)  Apply the Stockdale Paradox.  We heard the story of James Stockdale, who spent eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in the 1960s, where he was brutally mistreated. Said Stockdale later of the experience:  "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." 

In the context of infertility & childlessness, to me, "faith that you will prevail in the end" doesn't necessarily mean that "you will have a baby, somehow, some way." This is where "the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality" comes in. I suppose dh & I could have scraped together more money and more energy to continue with infertility treatment, or try donor eggs or adopt, etc. But the reality, our reality at the time, was that we were completely burned out. The reality was, we were in our 40s, with medical issues that made the likelihood of a successful pregnancy highly unlikely. The odds were not in our favour.  

It was hard to face the brutal truth that we were not going to be parents (to a living child). But we had faith that we could still have a good life anyway as a family of two.  And I think we've been able to do that.

It's not a perfect life, it's certainly not the life we imagined when we got married, almost 30 years ago. But it's the life we have, and on balance, it's not a bad one.  And we're doing our best to make the most of it.