Only Other People Turn 50

th50 I know how to count, 45… 50. I’ve been counting 50 for a few years. 50 is coming… 50 is coming… warning… 50 is closer than you think. But, in spite of that, when I see something for people who are turning 50 or 50 plus, I don’t think it’s about me. Only other people turn 50, not me.

I remember my Dad’s 50th birthday party. We gave him a home party with a bowl full of colourful Jello to smush his feet into. Dad was the grumpy sort, it really didn’t have much to do with being 50, he was mostly that way. But, I remember making all that Jello with my Mom. I remember my Mom had read about the idea somewhere, as a great way to relieve stress or tension. He finally did put his feet in the Jello, and he liked it. I don’t want Jello for my 50th birthday. I may be going crazy but I haven’t been grumpy about it.

There is the other part of turning 50… the birthday. You know people aren’t so likely to forget or ignore it. I don’t think I’d like it if they did. Quite… exactly… Other than not wanting Jello; I don’t know what I do want. Nothing… and yet, something. So am leaving that to procrastinate on later. I have until December after all.

Turning 50 has been on my mind since I turned 46, if not before. If you haven’t become a grown up, done the things you wanted to do, by the time you are 50… you only have another 10 years until you are old. I feel like I’m hanging onto a shelf, my legs dangling below me reaching for a ledge I can’t see or touch with my toes. I can let go of the ledge and trust I will land on another ledge below or I can let go of the ledge and fall a very long, long way. I tend to get that sick feeling of not having faith in the ledge below me when I think about turning 50.

Anyway, I thought I could write something about it. Likely someone else is turning 50, somewhere on the planet. Good luck and happy birthday when the time comes.

I’m a Woman with a Moustache and I Don’t Mind

disguise At the great old age of 48 now, I still have the same whiskers on my upper lip which I have lived with since I was about 13 or 14. I have never tried to hurt, maim or kill my moustache. I have left it alone, in a live and let live kind of way.

It helps that my whiskers are sparse. I do have dark hair and the hair on my lip matches the colour of the hair on my head (or most of it now that I’ve got grey mixed in with my dark brown mane).

I live with my facial hair and I don’t mind it. I even have a bit of fondness for the facial hair – It makes me feel connected to other women in my family who have far more facial hair than I ever hope (or want) to have.

I remember the very first day I actually noticed the whiskers myself.

I was in our downstairs bathroom and I had leaned in for a closer look at my face because I had a zit (also known as a pimple). I still like to get rid of those. I squish them then put stuff on them to finish the killing process and decontaminate so they can’t so easily return.

Seeing darker hairs on my upper lip was a surprise. I’m sure they weren’t there before then. I hated them on sight. They were traitors to the young, perfection of my face. That face being one of the few things I actually did like about myself – and still do. Having whiskers was a shock. Only old women were supposed to get those kind of things, women going through menopause or women from hairy families. I had neither. I was about 14 and my ancestry was pretty slanted to the Celtic side.

I called in for reinforcements, my Mother. She looked and then looked closer. She said they were hardly noticeable unless someone was really looking for them.

So I took a step back from the mirror, which wasn’t much considering my face was almost pressed against the glass to start with. It was true! Once I stepped back and wasn’t focused on that area of my face, I really couldn’t notice the whiskers. If I looked, I did see them. But, I had to be looking pretty carefully.

So I wasn’t turning into some weird sort of man-beast after all.

My Uncle has had a full beard and moustache for as long as I can remember. As children we would buy him shaving cream, packages of razors and so on. Children sometimes have such great ideas but not the common sense to see these ideas through. He laughed about our gifts and after being embarrassed once or twice we realized a man with a full beard and moustache isn’t going to need shaving cream. Later I would try after shave, thinking he could use it like cologne. I never did hear either way about that one. Maybe he thought it was a good idea.

Anyway, at that young age myself and having whiskers I did picture myself growing a beard, thick and hairy as I went through puberty and all those changes. I would check my upper lip for changes, new growth, more growth – dreading to see a whisker begin to do so much as curl.

I was lucky in the genetic lottery. I never did get more whiskers, or thicker whiskers. I did have friends who were less lucky.

One young woman I worked with had to shave her face every day. If she skipped a day she had 5 o’clock shadow. From talking to her I know she tried all kinds of methods to get rid of her whiskers. Waxing was painful but seemed to give her an extra day from having to deal with them. She tried several of those gimmicks from TV ads. Some of them burned her skin and made everything worse. Not only did she still have whiskers but her skin was burned and red or even blistered too. I was so glad for my sparse little whiskers then.

We Women Do Get Whiskers

Women in my family have a small tendency towards whiskers, when we get older. My own Mother began plucking her face (not just her eyebrows) once she was in her 40’s. My younger sisters both had whiskers on their upper lip and chin by the time they were in high school. Mine may have started sooner but they were less visible.

When my Great Aunt Alice died one of the saddest things was the full beard she had which no one was there often enough to prevent for her. She was my Grandmother’s sister (on my Mother’s side of the family).

My Grandmother also had stray whiskers on her face, but I never saw her with a lot of them until she was quite a bit older, when I was far past being a kid myself. She was a plucker too. Interesting to note that I have her same pattern of grey hair mostly in the front too. Maybe we share our whiskery ways too and I won’t have to really worry about them until I’m 60 or so too. I miss her – in that way it’s an honour to share her whiskers and grey hair. I do think about her nearly every time I look at my face in the mirror.

But… I do Like Being Contrary

Having written all that, a funny thing happened when I turned 40-something and began to get whiskers on my chin – I began plucking them, pretty mercilessly, with tweezers. I’m far from being a bearded lady. I only notice one a week and I do pluck them as soon as I feel them.

The only difference with the moustache and the chin whiskers was my age. I did not like the hair on my chin making me feel old when I actually was past the age of high school and beyond. Nature’s little digs about our age are much easier to take when we aren’t old yet.

Moustache Growing Month: Movember

Too Much Journalling

Why does any one person need or have so many blogs and journals? I don’t know, don’t even ask me.

I’m cold tonight. It’s like all my ghosts are standing behind me blowing, soft chilling breaths down the bacl of my neck. They are there, ghosts I mean. Not spooky, white sheets. All the ghosts. The people who came into my life, were reflected on my mirror and then sank back into the shadows. Never seen again, but thought of once in awhile.

Karen Pownell, where are you? Lately it’s you I’ve been thinking of. Do you remember the nose picking song? Probably not. You had so many friends and I wasn’t even one of them. If I had just been less worried about what everyone thought of me we would have been great friends. I still think of you but lately I’ve been thinking of you more often. Whatever did you do with the rest of your life? If anyone is about my age (39) and lived in The Rouge (Port Union in general) in the east end of Scarborough send me a note. It would be great to hear from other old people. 🙂 Who knew you really could get so damn old! I was a year back, everyone in my class was one year older than me. They’re all 40 now! I still have about 8 months to be in my 30’s. Just barely, but still there.

I am ldr (long distance dating) with Eric. I don’t like it. I like him I just don’t like being with him virtually. It’s not enough. I decided to try again it seems only fair that I get that chance. I think I’m going to crack up on this long distance part. It’s no one’s fault, not even mine. Dating again is hard. I’ve been dumped every time or found out something that just proved I have no dating sense what so ever. You think you’re smart until you do something really stupid. So many things spinning through my brain like lightening on the water. In the end I just come to the same conclusion, keep trying. Give it a chance. Not every guy or every situation or every decision I make has to be a bad one. Just because my track record with these things is pretty ugly… I want it to work. Yes, there are pretty huge details to figure out. Kind of overwhelming when I dare to stop and think. He once said he doesn’t want to get married again. I don’t want to be the ever ender girlfriend though. Do I want to be some kid’s evil step girlfriend? I don’t want to be disliked just cause I exist. Then, do I really want to be married again, go through that again, take that chance again? Eric isn’t messy or dirty. It won’t be like that again, but it still scares me. I never want to be there again, trapped and no one even really believing me. They thought I should have just tried harder. But I was trying my hardest. Trying hard doesn’t matter. Some days were so bad and everything was my fault cause I wasn’t doing enough, trying enough, being enough. Never enough. Just not enough of me. So empty. So nothing.

I still remember the road kill. It was like a symbol for everything. Road kill, the fresh kind, splattered and bloody and chunky. Or, road kill, the kind that has become plastered to the road, dried up by rubber burning over top of it. Little flakes fly up as the cars drive over. Even the maggots have left it to harden and crust on the road.

I’ve never looked at road kill the same. I never will. If I had just listened on the way down to meet him the first time. When he was still just a man on paper. All the way driving down there, over 15 hours, road kill was amassed everywhere along the way. At the time I thought it was strange to see so much road kill. More than usual I thought. But, I made my own fate. I didn’t listen to the signs though I acknowledged them at the time. Later, there was always road kill. Even talk of road kill, eating road kill deer. Road kill was everywhere, like a theme. When I left I was road kill myself.

But I lived. Crawled away. Peeling myself off the tar. I’m not road kill any more. I don’t know what changed exactly, how I fixed myself. I thought I was unfixable for a long time. I’m not sure now if I gave up or not. It was a muddled time. Pure satire that I learned to drive then and became someone capable of making road kill myself. I did hit a chipmunk at some point. There is irony in life.

Anyway, that’s far more blab than I intended to get into. Actually, I was only going to post this quote:

"In every corner of my soul there is an altar to a different god." – Fernando Pessoa

The Writer from 2001

Thank you Wayback Machine. I found one saved link from an old site I had at Tripod. Worked a couple of hours to find old Blogger sites but, no luck so far. Well, I found one but not the one I was hoping for. Likely written soon after this site, 2001 some time. Blogger makes it pretty easy to find an old account but, you still need to have the email you were using at the time. They send a verification code to you there. But, my old email addresses are as old/ older than the site I hope to find. I tried to recover them but two of them are ISPs not in business for about 10 years. The other was at Excite.com, now Lycos and I could not find anything about recovering old accounts. Likely they are not kept that long. Google/ Blogger seems to be the only social network which does care about history. I won’t forget that Google took up the old newsgroups and still has them saved from the very early days of the Internet.

I may repost these old posts in order by date. Nice to see them pop up in the right place and remember how long I’ve been doing this.

The Writer

Writing and publishing online and still putting in time on my regularly scheduled life.

The current mood of Laura at www.imood.com

I was born in the Year of the Dragon, more than a few years ago. 2000 was another year of the Dragon, in December I married Todd, moved to the US and became an expatriate. I work as a freelance writer online and in print. My favourite colour is deep, dark red. When I’m having a bad day going outdoors always makes me feel better. I’m reading the same book I started 6 months ago: Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd. I’m not especially musically inclined, I can turn on the radio and be happy leaving it in the background. HOME

Archives:

Wednesday, October 03, 2001

“One who says it can not be done, should not interrupt one doing it.” Chinese proverb.

posted by Laura T. at 10/3/2001 07:55:48 AM

Found some ornament making projects on a felt makers site. I really like to make Christmas ornaments.
posted by Laura T. at 10/3/2001 07:57:47 AM

Saturday, September 08, 2001

I’m still here in Ontario, Canada. Or back here. I went to Montreal for the MosaicCulture plant sculpture show. We also saw the botannical gardens. My favourites were the Canadian exhibits, although the Chinese dragons were great to see. I took pictures, as many as I could with the disposable camera. Its such a shame I forgot mine back in Illinois.
posted by Laura T. at 9/8/2001 03:41:29 PM

Friday, August 24, 2001

The Ex was good. Not as great as when I was a kid going down there with my brother and sisters. So much is commercial now and very little free stuff for kids or adults. I bought some things for the husband back in Illinois. Its his money so he should get something from it. 🙂 I bought a couple of small things for myself and a lovely angel/ fairy for the Christmas tree.
posted by Laura T. at 8/24/2001 02:20:12 PM

Wednesday, August 22, 2001

Its been awhile since I last wrote. I’m typing from my parent’s home in Toronto, Canada now. I’m here to get the dead zone computer fixed. IBM is still finding ways to do nothing.
Anyway, tonight I read a quote I liked from Evhead’s blog”To be an artist is a personality/ attitude/ spirit – not an occupation.” Evhead.I’m writing for BackWash now, 2 or 3 journal entries a week so far. I’m going to start a second one for BackWash Kids. The ASCII Art column for WZ.com isn’t going anywhere soon. They seem to be too busy to approve new entries. Todd has been waiting a long time for his to get off the ground. I write to the editor and get things done but its a very slow proces. Makes the prospects slim for promoting it. How can you go wild promoting something that isn’t there yet. Just the opposite of HerPlanet where its only because of me that the site isn’t already up and active. I’m looking forward to having that one (HerCorner) going. There is so much I can do with it and so many web writers I can help get the confidence to start.Anyway, I think this will be it for now. I want to get to sleep for all that walking at The Ex tomorrow.
posted by Laura T. at 8/22/2001 10:22:21 PM

Thursday, August 02, 2001

Found a weblog I like today, Poundy. She even lives somewhere in the midwest. I’m sticking the URL here so I won’t forget where I found the site. Doesn’t look like anyone is actually reading this blog. It doesn’t matter a lot. But it would be nice to have my moment of fame. lol
Talked to my Mom this morning. Graham, my brother, is on his way down here from Toronto. He is going to stay awhile, be here for Todd’s birthday this weekend and then I will go back with him and get my money back for the dead computer. I think that is the best way to do things, still not sure entirely. But if I get the money back there will hopefully be enough to buy another new computer here on the US side of the border this time. I went to look at a couple of sites. Gateway seems the best way to go, too bad the closest store is about a hundred miles away in St Louis. Maybe Todd would consider making a trip of it. Though it might mean waiting as long as my birthday, Christmas and wedding anniversary in December. Still, if I can access the net and my HerPlanet site using Todd’s computer that won’t be too bad. Of course its a pain not having my own computer. I fee like an online transient.Suite 101 is having a really great event now. I think they could have done better in picking links but that they did it at all is pretty impressive. Oddly enough, its the same idea I had for a column. Full-Figured Women: Healthy Mind & Body
posted by Laura T. at 8/2/2001 12:32:21 PM

The Coffee Ring is a blog from a Canadian woman planning her wedding. Nice to read about someone else going through all that, especially when its not me!!
Another site I’ve ben keeping an eye on is BackWash, the internet organized by personality. I’d enjoy doing a column there but I just don’t think I can handle the time commitment. You have to write a fairly good sized article and then add links (not related to your column or each other). Thats quite a chunk of time for something you don’t get paid for. I don’t begrudge them not paying I just think I should put that kind of time into something that pays or has prospects of paying.
posted by Laura T. at 8/2/2001 01:00:25 PM

SheBazzle: Julie’s Motherhood Journal. This is a good blog, anyone with a scanner or digital camera does have an edge in blogging. Todd hinted that he is getting me a scanner for my birthday/ Christmas. I’ll have to get all those pictures developed finally! I’d love to have a scanner.
posted by Laura T. at 8/2/2001 01:08:43 PM

I like the name Darla for a girl. Maybe its too girly but I still like it. I hope Todd and I have at least one kid. Two or three would be a lot better, at least two anyway. I don’t think Todd wants to, he certainly isn’t co-operating sperm wise. I don’t know what my life will be like if I never have a kid. It just seems to be the meaning of life, something I can contribute to my ancestors and life, the future and everything. Its important to me personally, I want to raise a child, a person. I want to pass on my thoughts, genes and good and bad times. I want to be part of the world and show another new person all that the world is. There is so much amazing stuff in the world. Not everyone can see it, sometimes they forget to look or forget how to look.
posted by Laura T. at 8/2/2001 01:14:28 PM

Friday, July 27, 2001

I’m having a creative day. I made two new ascii pictures and wrote book reviews for HerCorner. Still waiting for the ezine to be approved for the WZard site. The URL has my byline up already. The editor is just busy with a lot of other new WZards/ writers. Looking forward to seeing my site up and functioning.
The Zeal directory is a mess. I can’t see myself putting in any more time there. Its not listed by topics but by country. Which just makes no sense and is bordering on annoying since everything is listed under United States really. Just a little too US centric for this Canadian.
posted by Laura T. at 7/27/2001 04:31:55 PM

My computer died on June 27th. I just realized its been a month to the day. We finally found out that its the motherboard that needs to be replaced. I will have to take the computer back home with me when I go to Toronto for Sarah’s wedding. It will be great to have my computer back and working again. I miss all my files! Its been terrific of Todd to let me use his computer for checking email and the odd bit of stuff I can still do without my harddrive and its contents. Sarah came up with the idea of transplanting my hard drive into Todd’s computer but I can see that Todd is reluctant to allow this brain surgery. So it looks like I will have to hope my hard drive survives another trip back and forth to Toronto. Its about 17 hours on the bus, with a 4-5 hour wait in Chicago. Not a lot of fun. Also, for going there I will need to go to the INS building and get the advanced parole. I will be so glad when I’m finally free, or at least a bit free. The only time anyone is really free is when they are a baby. At the time don’t really know it and would likely laugh at anyone who said it. They likely wouldn’t consider themselves free, can’t do anything they see everyone doing. Must be boring being a baby. Time to get ready to go out tonight. I’m really hungry, skipped lunch. We planned to go to the Chinese buffet tonight so I won’t be hungry for long. 🙂
posted by Laura T. at 7/27/2001 04:56:18 PM

Friday, July 20, 2001

Still no computer for me. Todd doesn’t want to put my hard drive into his computer. He hasn’t said that but he hasn’t done anything about doing it. I would do it but its his computer and if he doesn’t want to do it, thats up to him.
Sarah put up pictures from her birthday bbq, online. Great to see everyone, wish I was there.
posted by Laura T. at 7/20/2001 08:22:26 AM

Here is something I wrote last night. Todd and I had a bad night. Not that he knows about it.
I feel like I’m in too deep and the little light at the end of the tunnel is just my imagination. If I try to get to it, it just won’t be there.I can’t feel motivated. I used to think it was because I was afraid of putting a foot wrong. But now I think its more than that. I think I’d rather do nothing than try anything. Its easier to put nothing, to invest as small a part of myself, my knowledge, talents, personality, etc into whatever the end result will be. Knowing its far more likely that I will hear I’ve done something the wrong way, not enough, etc.
posted by Laura T. at 7/20/2001 08:29:59 AM

I wish I could find my old backscratcher. My shoulderblades are almost always itchy. I’ve read that itchy skin is caused by dead skin cells needing to be scraped off. I’m not sure thats right. Why am I always itchy in the same spots then and not in others. Just another of those little things. I’m about to go make coffee and get dressed. Hopefully I will hear from someone with good news about my computer. The only thing we’ve made progress with is to find out that its the motherboard that needs to be replaced.
posted by Laura T. at 7/20/2001 08:33:19 AM

Today is the big day at Zeal. They launch the new site, merged with LookSmart. Once I have my coffee on the go I’m going to have a look and see if my login still works.
posted by Laura T. at 7/20/2001 08:35:14 AM

From Live Beta March 25th, 2001

The following is the introduction I had written for my website on Geocities, posted March 25th, 2001.

I’m a Sagittarius, year of the Dragon kind of woman. I like being outdoors, having a great coffee in the city mall, spending too much time in bookstores, traveling around on a shoestring budget, comfortable shoes, Civilization 2, Carmageddon 2 and Caesar3, cats (predatory animals in general), writing, reading, sewing, quilting and embroidery, yellow smiley faces, being on the Internet, publishing online, Wicca, nature, tulips and wildflowers, ascii art, Raggedy Ann, taking pictures but not so much being in them, history, my family, Christmas and Halloween.

My favourite colour is deep dark red. My favourite food is chocolate ice cream with nuts and sauce. Though I have found a really great vanilla flavour called Vanilla Storm but its not always available. My favourite smells are vanilla and lemon, not together. My favourite place to travel to is British Columbia, Canada. My favourite time of day is very early in the morning. My favourite time of year is a tie between Spring and Winter. I don’t like people who are fussy nit-pickers, they usually look for ways to stab you in the back. I like people who enjoy life but aren’t agressively perky about it.

I used to write to penpals around the world and trade postcards and coins with them. I met my husband when we were both 14 and began writing as penpals. I still like to collect postcards and old Canadian coins. I enjoy learning new things about computers and the Internet, history and nature. I can’t ever see myself being one of those tidy, organized people. I live in chaos yet I know where everything is, until someone moves it. I always have projects on the go, half done or not quite started yet. No doubt that tells you a lot about the kind of person I am. But, if you’re the sort of person to sit there feeling superior we’ll never get along anyway. 🙂