THE POWER OF RETINOL?

I was standing close to the magnifying mirror this morning putting on my mascara when Jerry said something funny and I laughed. GOOD GRIEF, I thought, LOOK AT MY WRINKLES! The smile flew off my face and I was caught looking at a very glum face where those wrinkles had been. Sure enough, they were there, although to a lesser degree when not smiling. This was NOT a good way to start a new week.

I have always thought I was lucky to have relatively good skin. To be honest with you, I have beaten it up quite a bit in my life. I did not come from a family whose female role model creamed her face to take off make-up, creamed her face after a bath, and creamed her face before sleeping and after arising.

Now in a little aside I will tell a tale on my mother, may she rest in peace. She had a younger sister, my Aunt Marie, who was the beauty of the family. She and my mother were very close and they loved each other dearly. But my mother envied Aunt Marie’s looks, which she attributed to the fact that my aunt worked in the beauty industry and had access to amazing creams that she used diligently on her face to make it so beautiful. My Aunt Marie’s skin stayed beautiful until the day she died. She did, as a matter of fact, care for her skin, but she was truly blessed with the kind of looks that don’t depend on expensive creams. No amount of cream my mother might have used would have changed her own looks.

But neither my sister nor I were taught to care for our skin by putting cream on it. It was just our good luck that we were born with decent skin that managed to survive summers lying on the sand for hours each day at the beach. Neither of us ended up with the leathery look of some older ladies who appear to have lived on the golf course from puberty to hospice.

So to be honest with you what I saw in the mirror this morning was, in the scheme of things, not as bad as it could have been, but frankly, to me, seeing it up close and personal like that, I thought I had turned as wrinkled as a shar-pei. Now compare the wrinkles:


See? It’s close, don’t you think.

It’s been a couple of hours since I looked at my face, and I’ve been trying to decide whether I should try to stop smiling so much, which I think is what accentuates these lines, or whether I should just give in to it and let the wrinkles fall where they may. If I had any idea that one of the retinol creams would erase some of them, I might grab my wallet and hustle down to Rite-Aid. (I’m sure Aunt Marie’s creams didn’t come from a drug store, but I am just not the kind of person who can walk into the face-cream department at Bloomingdales and feel anything but out of place). Actually, I think there is little that I can do. The sun and the wind and the genes and the years have done what they have done, and I don’t think there is any going back.

So I suppose it is just a matter of letting nature take its course and making peace with that. I am not inclined to smile any less (except at that exact moment when I see the smile lines on my face in the magnifying mirror!).

And I do confess that my body is pretty much following what is happening to my face. In spite of Jerry’s urging that I let him take a picture of my backside to illustrate THIS blog, I will simply substitute the picture below – and tell you that if the face looks like a shar-pei, do you think the body would look like a greyhound?

JUST CALL US WATER-SAVERS!

Many years ago we awoke one morning to water flooding our master bathroom. This house was built on a slab, so the plumber had to come out with a leak detector to find where the problem originated. And wouldn’t you know it, it was under the bathtub. Men came out with a jackhammer and got the tub out in pieces and set about repairing the leak. Doing a complete bathroom remodel at that time wasn’t in the budget so I told them to simply replace the tub with a similar kind. They did.

The men – big, burly men used to wrestling with heavy tubs, toilets and sinks – saved us a bunch of money, but their idea of what was “similar” and my idea weren’t even close. I ended up with a cheap bathtub in which I had to sit upright like a Quaker in a church pew, and with an overflow hole so near the bottom that I was lucky to be able to keep 3 inches of water in the tub before it all ran out through that hole.

I had no one to blame but myself. I had never given bathtubs a second thought. As far as I was concerned, a tub was a tub was a tub. So I wrote off the idea of “soaking” and repaired to the shower in the bathroom off our bedroom. When we finally, ten years or so down the road, were able to really redo the master bathroom, you can be sure I looked very, very carefully at what was available. I didn’t make any mistakes the second time.

I say all this because I wish our management company had asked for my advice when choosing to replace the toilets in all 1244 units of this apartment complex. However, all we got was a notice that new “green” toilets – high-efficiency, water saving toilets - were going to be installed shortly in an effort to decrease water usage on the property. (And of course you’ll remember that management’s first effort toward this end was to cap off all the outside water spigots so that we could not water any of our plants around the perimeter of our apartment, plants that previous management encouraged us to grow to make our barrack-like apartments attain a more pleasant image.)

Our old toilets were small and pretty close to the ground. This complex was built in 1965 and was built for families, not just seniors. So if the existing toilets were the original ones, they certainly would have accommodated short people and small children. They were only slightly higher than a potty chair. In the interim, as the complex became set aside for seniors 55 and older, bars were installed on the bathroom walls so that old people could grab onto them to help hoist themselves up off the toilet. Luckily we haven’t had to use them yet. (As you know, this complex isn’t the most wonderful in the world, but the rent is right so we just work around all the little irritations.)

Anyway, when the new toilet got installed, we were like kids who once inside a restaurant absolutely have to try out the toilets. So we did too, but we had two shocks: first, the toilet is so high we almost have to have a little stool in front of it to enable us to get onto the seat. And I will tell you that any woman (or man) under 5’6” tall is going to find her feet dangling as she sits. This toilet is more uncomfortable than my Quaker bathtub!

But the biggest problem is that it may call itself a high-efficiency water saving toilet, but it takes between three and seven flushes to clear out the bowl. And even at that, it requires using the toilet brush at least once a day. Aside from adding one more aggravation to our golden age years, it makes me wonder what draconian remedy to the increased toilet-water usage management is going to think up for us next.

HOLDING HANDS WITH HENRY

I'm going to call my problem "Henry" -- because I can type "Henry" faster than I can type "MSVCR71.dll"

I'm sure all of you can immediately recognize that I have a computer problem. The dreaded ".dll." Nothing is ever good about seeing a ".dll"

Jerry was up before I was this morning, and as I walked from the bedroom he announced in that peculiar voice - the sound that tells me something is wrong with the computer - that SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE COMPUTER! It is the voice that is just one notch below the voice that says there is something wrong with ME! After finishing opening my eyes, I quickly sat down at the computer and tried to open up AOL. And there, staring me in the face, was an ERROR message about Henry.

I rebooted the computer. He was still there.

I then used Internet Explorer to access AOL and get to LIVE HELP, which actually always is able to provide an answer. The disembodied JEI read my SOS and eventually told me that Henry was not an AOL problem but a Microsoft problem and I would have to go to the following website to get help: www.tomshardware.com/forum/186248-31-cant-launch-game-msvcr71-found. When I saw that "cant launch game" business I thought to myself that this website isn't going to do it for me. I then went to MS's website and learned that I would have to get down and dirty inside all the guts of my computer to get myself out of this. I clicked JEI away, clicked MS off my screen and agitatedly cogitated. What to do. What to do with Henry.

So my little brain told me wait for son Sean to come home from Albuquerque and have him help me. Everyone should have a Sean for their Henrys. It will probably be the weekend before my computer is free of Henry, but that is ok.

However, in trying to find AOL Live Help via IE, at one point I clicked on "MY ACCOUNT" and there I saw that I was delinquent in my payments and no longer could access AOL. I really didn't think that was why I got the Henry message, but after finishing with JEI I asked to be transferred to the billing department to check the delinquency message. I had the ominous feeling that in 1997 when we opened up our AOL account that we had paid with a MasterCard, not AMEX. Recently I'd had a senior moment where I thought I'd lost my Mastercard, so we cancelled the old one and got a new number. To my embarrassment, after receiving the new card I found my old one; I had simply misplaced it. Since we had not been notified by AOL that our old card wouldn't work any more, it was just a lucky accident that I saw the delinquency message and was able to rectify that problem before I ended up with two problems.

Now I'm paid up to date, AOL has the new number so I'm not likely to get a collections agency after me, but I'm still left holding hands with Henry.

Ah, me. I am waiting for the time that using my computer will be as simple and as sure as turning on the iron, or the radio, or the lamp. Click - it's on and working. Click - it's off. No problems, no Henrys. Do I think this will ever happen with computers? Maybe somewhere down the line, as I really do think this electronic age is in its infancy and things will improve, but it isn't going to happen in my lifetime.

So in the meantime, at least for the next few days, there will be lots of cussing from the computer room as poor Jerry and Henry tussle around while he tries to navigate IE to read his AOL e-mails. I may even add my voice to the din on occasion if my irk level is reached.

These are truly times that try men's souls.

TOO EARLY THE NEWS, MAN!

Sometimes a person picks the perfect gift. It's hard to do under most any circumstances, but when you are faced with giving a gift to an older person who has everything, well, what's a poor kid to do?

My daughter was faced with just that scenario when she set out to find something that Jerry would like/use/enjoy for a Christmas present some years ago. She wandered around Brookstone - and came up with the above, a shower radio. Wrapped and delivered under the tree, it sat amid the usual socks, boxers, handkerchiefs and golf balls that undoubtedly were there too.

Without going into great detail, I will tell you that the gift was absolutely perfect. This man has turned it on at 5 a.m. as he steps into the shower every morning for the past 10 years. No gift has proved more suitable than this one.

Now, to him it was the perfect gift. But of course in his dotage he is getting a trifle hard of hearing so he has to up the volume a bit. Then when the water is turned on, with the noise of the water hitting the shower curtain he has to up the volume a little more. At this point I have to listen to the 5 a.m. news from my bed, through two closed doors and even with my head under the covers. I do not like to hear news at 5 a.m. but it is there for me to listen to.

We have a new neighbor whose bathroom backs up against ours. Although she hasn't complained (yet), I suspect she hears the 5 a.m. news too. When I see her, even though I am curious as to the acuity of her hearing, I maintain kind of a "don't ask, don't know" attitude. I'd like to say to her, "Beverly, do you hear Jerry's shower radio blaring in your bathroom at 5 a.m. every morning?" But I do not want to be the one to tell Jerry that he might want to turn down the volume on his radio at that ungodly hour of the morning, that his neighbor can hear every word that is spoken." I know he would say it is his bathroom and his shower and his radio and etc." So I don't ask.

Although I haven't done this yet, I have considered going outside in front of our apartment at 5 a.m. to see if I can hear the 5 a.m. news blaring from the bathroom vent on our roof. If I can hear birds sing when I am in the bathroom, I don't know why it wouldn't work the other way around. But crawling out of a warm bed and into the darkness outside is worse than hearing the news from my warm bed.

I don't begrudge Jerry his early morning satisfaction. I do not believe he actually hears the news, as the overhead fan and the shower noise really makes it well nigh impossible to hear anything in toto. But I do know that Jerry likes background noise - the noise of the tv on whether he is watching it or not, the car radio always going - and while it isn't my cup of tea (I prefer stony silence, actually) I truly am happy that he has enjoyed this Christmas gift so much over the last few years.

Should it break, I would be the first to run down to the store to buy a new one for him. I believe its presence insures that he is always neat and clean, good-smelling and happy. What wife would want to ditch an appliance that has such a powerful effect on her husband?

And if you don't see Jerry's picture below, you will know as proof-reader he has corrected a major problem!

WHY WOULD I KEEP THESE?

As I have mentioned before in my various musings, I have set out to rid myself of some of the junk that I've accumulated over my adult life. Now don't get me wrong, I am not one of those people who is a compulsive collector - I have seen the rooms of someone like that. I'm not even close, but I do see that it could be easy to slip over to a really compulsive saver. I'm going to see that that doesn't happen to me as I get older.

The first job I tackled was my cup collection. I gave away a lot of my cups. I did save 4 Christmas cups, a few cups that my daughter Erin brought to me from places she's visited, and about 8 cups that will sit in our cupboard for everyday coffee-drinking. I must admit that I can never pass a good-looking cup in a store without lifting and feeling it, but so far I've managed to set each one back on the shelf and walk away. Where this is the hardest to do is at Starbucks, where I go each Friday morning to fortify myself for the grocery-shopping chore. If I have a breakdown, it will be at Starbucks. But so far, so good.

The next project I tackled, which just happened this past weekend, is my accumulated new and used file folders. They are of all sizes and colors. I can't exactly call this a "collection" because as every old secretary knows, there is nothing more aggravating than needing a file folder and not having one the right kind at your fingertips. Over the years in my pursuit of family history I have used three legal sized, four-drawer file cabinets and one letter-sized, two-drawer file cabinet. I am loathe to throw away a folder if it is in reasonably good condition -- but this weekend in checking the contents of boxes stored on my closet shelves, I discovered I had three huge boxes of file folders just waiting to be needed. To be honest with you, I was a little embarrassed at how many I had saved. Considering that I am now downsizing my genealogy files, I am going to be needing less, not more, of them. So what to do?

While Jerry was golfing yesterday and after Erin left from our regular Sunday morning coffee-time, I hauled down all three boxes and ruthlessly sorted them. I decided I would keep about 10 large and 10 small folders for myself and toss the rest in the dumpster. Without going into too much detail, I will just let you know that I did throw away into the dumpster the worst-looking of the folders, probably 75 or so. I put about 50 of the decent one into a box and will deliver them tonight to a friend who says she can use them. And the rest, I would estimate about 100, all colored and unused, went back into the box and then back up on the closet shelf. I didn't do quite as good on the folders as I did on the cups, but dropping from three to one box is a great improvement, I think. And I do feel happy at what I've kept for myself.

I'm going to start thinning out my books next. I try my best not to buy them anymore. I have turned into the library's best patron. But it is amazing how many books mysteriously creep back up on my shelves due to Abebooks.com. It's their fault for always having what I look for. But I've got to be ruthless there too. Not only is it reading books that I need to move out but it is also my collection of yearbooks. I have all mine from junior high school, high school and college. Jerry has his from high school and college. And we have them from his first wife's high school and college too. Amazingly, over the years we've also managed to find old yearbooks from our parents' years in high school. Oh, what to do with all of these! How can we part with them? What will be done with them by our kids when we die? Tossed, I fear. Dealing with books is a lot harder than dealing with cups and file folders. Much more painful. But I think there certainly must be archives somewhere that would love to receive what we choose to part with. So that's the next project: tackling the bookshelves.

Overall I feel good with the progress I'm making. Don't think for a minute that our apartment is going to start looking bare. We've a long way to go before that happens. I doubt if you would notice a difference at all, but I can sure tell! And that is definitely a good feeling!

A LUCKY LADY INDEED

A very big, fat book entitled "Architectural Excellence - 500 Iconic Buildings" appeared on the "new book" rack at the Corona Public Library last week and one peek inside was enough to cause me to lug it up to the circulation desk and take it home with me. It is fascinating, and I can already tell that two weeks isn't going to be nearly long enough to sort through it the way I want to.

The blurb on the inside cover says, "Architectural Excellence presents 500 iconic buildings from around the world that represent distinction in architectural design and significance to human history, through five millenia, in all cultures and on all continents....This comprehensive volume covers architectural styles throughout history, from Neolithic and Ancient Egyptian to High Tech and Eclectic Modern, and features works by the greatest architects - both known and lesser known - from our own times and from centuries past."

The first section concerns itself with the Ancient World to 500 CE. And what stunned me when I opened the book was that in the first section was a picture of Uchisar in Cappadoccia, Turkey, which is pictured above with Jerry and me standing in front of it. Now granted the rock itself is not architecture, but the substance of that outcropping is from "tufa," consolidated volcanic ash that over the millenia has been eroded by centuries of winds and rains. "Civilizations from the ancient to the medieval constantly wrestled for control. It was in the folds of these lunar dunes that the early Christians took refuge from a persecuting Roman war machine, and where a stand was made against the tides of Arab invaders encroaching upon Byzantine territory." They were able to carve living accomodations deep inside the tufa, where a good defense could be made.

When Jerry and I stood in front of Uchisar to have our picture taken, we knew its history, but it wasn't until I opened this book and saw its features as the very earliest structure of note that I got the full impact of what we had seen. (Now I have to tell you right here that we also got to stand on top of it, but I hasten to acknowledge that we did it from the back side, which is a plateau that enabled us to take merely a few steps up a walkway to appear at the top!)

As I turned to the second page, I saw Stonehenge, which we had visited in a month-long trip to England in 1985. Page Three was the Sphinx and Page Four was the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Page Five was the Temple at Karnak. The latter three we had seen when we were in Egypt in 1980.

As I went through the book page by page, I kept finding places where we had been. And I was really surprised. We are not world travelers. We have not been to Canada or China or Germany or Italy or Scotland or Australia, Samoa or Japan or so many other places. But we did take a tour to Egypt and Israel in 1980, a trip to England in 1985, and then we lived in Turkey (and never left the country) for two years in the early 1990s. By the time I thumbed through the book and got to the Medieval section, I already had come upon 15 structures or buildings that we had seen in the few travels we made. And of course I am not even mentioning all the things we saw in England during that month we were there - Westminster Abbey, Winchester Cathedral, Wren's Royal Crescent, the Roman baths at Bath and so forth that are pictured in this book.

All this reminds me of what a lucky person I have been. There is a church in Germany pictured in this book that I would dearly love to see before I die but I have truly seen enough to last me a lifetime. This book seemed to lay out before my eyes and my brain the magnitude of what I have been able to see in the last 30 years. Having this book at my fingertips truly brings it all back.

IT'S TRUE. I LOVE CEMETERIES.

Long before I ever began doing genealogical research I was fascinated by cemeteries - not only the look and feel of the cemetery but also the individual tombstones. Except for the flat-as-pancakes "Memorial Parks" that are in favor today and which have no ambience whatsoever, there is nothing I like more than a cemetery with character.

When I was five and my sister three, my dad used to take us for walks in the old pioneer cemetery in Whittier, California. My mother always threw a fit about us going; she felt walking on the graves was desecrating them. My dad held tightly to our hands as we crossed Beverly Boulevard to get to the cemetery, and I'm sure it was that closeness to him, as well as his interest in the tombstone inscriptions and his helping us to identify the letters of the alphabet on them, that gave both sis and me a similar feeling about cemeteries. We loved 'em.

Thank goodness cemeteries are not alike. My cousin photographs tombstones in rural North Carolina for Find-A-Grave, and those cemeteries do not look like California's cemeteries.

Nor does this Alabama cemetery, with a house built over some tombstones, look like anything I've seen before.


On the internet I found this charming picture of some grave markers found in a Guatemala cemetery. Oh, I could go for this kind of headstone, were I to be buried and not cremated.


And in a Moscow cemetery I found this really lovely artwork. I wonder about the life that it represents....something I will never know.


I was surprised to see the full-to-overflowing Jewish cemtery in Manchester, England where Jerry's mom's relatives are all buried. There's not a blade of grass to be found.

And the Internet provided this most dramatic marker! Again, what is the story behind this beautiful piece of art? I wonder.



But my most favorite cemetery is the one I did my research in when I lived in Istanbul. It was the Protestant Cemetery, and in it was an American section where burials of American Citizens who died in Istanbul as early as 1832 were held.


In the book I prepared for this work, I described the cemetery like this: If one likes old cemeteries and is not obsessively fussy, one will like this one. It is neither gloomy nor morbid, and its feel changes with the seasons. In winter it is muted and still, with perhaps a dusting of powdery snow. In spring the sunlight dapples its way through new growth and onto the wet tombstones, drying winter from their faces. The bustle of summer spills over into the cemetery from the street outside the cemetery walls, linking its stillness with the sounds of a living people who know best how to enjoy the hot sultry summer months. And with fall comes the glorious silk leaves of amber, crimson, copper and gold, weaving their way towards the ground, draping themselves like shawls over and around the hand-carved stones. I've been in the cemetery during each of these seasons, and I believe it is as fine a place of rest as one could want.