The Crazy Old

I am starting to grasp the concept of the ‘Crazy Old’: As there is no dignity in ageing one can just as well go bonkers instead. However much dignity we grant each other, nature is just cruel and does not comply with any ethical rule.

There is this thing about hair for example. It is getting faint in places where it is supposed to be and appears in places where it is not supposed to be. If you are an old professor, going bald on your head, with hair growing from your ears and nose, this might even give you the image of wisdom and importance. If the same happens to a business man, it is just not working in your favour as much. So for the male half of the population things very much seem to depend on standing.

This is not as true for the other half. Some of you might already know that I have spent quite a substantial sum of money supporting the laser business, in order to achieve a non-European level of grooming for good. Being German, one has to be very careful not to give room to any misunderstanding regarding the side of the Channel one feels rooted into, and finding oneself in changing rooms quite often seemed to justify the expense. Now however, the body, with help of nature, is fighting back, just when I thought I had won the battle.

Not just that unexpectedly one feels rather furry in places, the speed of growth is inversely proportional to what happens on the head. If this trend persists, my calves will soon feature a pony tail while my head will go bold. This means that another substantial sum of money will soon vacate my bank account supporting my beauty parlour rather then finding its way into the apple store to get me an iPad.

Well, nobody ever promised me that life would be fair!

Another thing is sleep. Sleep is supposed to be the activity that helps to keep you pretty; it gives your body time to regenerate, they say. Well, have you ever had a look in the mirror and counted the types of wrinkles you have?

There are the fine ones under the eyes and around the outside. They come from squinting – just wear shades more often - or laughing. People call them crows feet, but actually they can make a face quite interesting. Then there are the ones on the forehead. They show the character of a person. Although these lines all look very similar they give different signals to the onlooker, indicating whether one is a misanthrope or a funny person. But then... there are lines... lines which develop into crevices... and those are usually only on one side of the face and the neck.

Just have a look at your favourite sleeping position and find out which bits get tucked in. This funny line along the side of your nose? Sleep! The weird ring around one side of your neck? Sleep!

The one thing that nature gave us to enable success and happiness, that is supposed to make us feel alert, strong and beautiful, it gives us the most significant indicator of age as well: The sleep wrinkle!

One might try to adopt a sophisticated sleeping style with the face pointing straight to the ceiling and a specialist pillow supporting the neck. This however, stressed the hair at the back of the head even more and makes it go bald much faster.

Toldya, no dignity in ageing. Let’s just go a bit bonkers then!

That’s at least the theory!

I have a theory. It’s the theory that in order to keep life in order, items need a place. For some people this means that they are travelling light, claiming that possessions are tying down and hence are overrated, others build shelves.

I developed this theory as a teenager when I still lived with my parents, where items never had a place; they theoretically had, but nobody bothered to put them there. That was a shame, as unfortunately we were unaware of the luck we had. Imagine a 20 room house inhabited by three people. After my parents had given up the village shop and pub we had more space than some nobleman, whereas today I have to cramp everything into a house with four bedrooms – and I am fully aware of my luck of having a house of that generous size.

Back then nothing had a place. A big deal of my time went into looking for things and I still have a reputation of losing scissors... and still I am desperately claiming that it was not me, but somehow hubby picked up that line at my parent’s house... some things just won’t go away. So now I have bloody scissors evenly distributed all over the house... as soon as one is missing: It was me!

Oh well, that at least confirms my theory: Life is easier if things have a place.

But it confirms as well that just allocating a space is only one part of the solution. Items seem to have a life of their own, and a mind for that matter. They are rarely seen in the allocated space. Socks for example are pretty good in wandering around on their own, and some clothes seem to have a keen interest in exploring wardrobes which are not theirs.

After the most recent shopping trip which gave my wardrobe a substantial uplift I decided to give the newcomers a behavioural training, and saw it a good opportunity to tell off the old ones. Where I had blouses hanging with blouses and trousers with trousers before, I now started to categorise clothes. The rail now goes from ‘summery and maybe still usable next year’ via ‘too good to give away and may grow back into it’ to ‘office use’ and ‘casual love it’. It then moves on to ‘run down but too comfy to throw away and hence for house use’ and ‘sport clothes’.

Only future will tell if they will comply with those rules. For now they are hanging neatly and I am rather proud. There is still the problem of the wandering socks, however. I think I just saw one whizzing past – gotta go, will keep you posted!

Coincidences! Coincidences?

What is this thing that happens when one intends to go in holidays or has some sort of deadline that is perceived as ‘doing something nice’, and the world goes bonkers.

Under normal circumstances my statistical conscience called hubby would patiently explain to me that all those connections one makes like ‘less time equals more unexpected work’ are mere coincidences, and that only our perception changes, that we put focus on the bad things because they annoy, thus they seemingly weigh more than the good things and hence tipping the scale to the worse.

But it is not normal circumstances: My statistical conscience already has left the country and I am due joining him in something like 24 hours. The first time in eight years I will be away together with him for more than one night. Since I am looking forward to something really, really nice, I am expecting the chaos in the run-up to be horrendous, and I am absolutely sure it’s not just my perception. I am absolutely sure it is actually happening.

It already started before he left: Everything was planned, house sitter organised, briefing for her scheduled, a major migraine left behind me, joyful expectations ahead.

Then Bang!

Friday midnight after a horrible rain shower, hubby comes waking me with the news that he found our old little cat soaked in the garden too weak to move and that he won’t make it. A good hour later I had nursed him into his death. Although he didn’t have to suffer too much, it was nevertheless one of the most intense hours of my life and sleep that night only was short and restless.

And there went the carefully planned weekend training schedule because the next migraine kicked in. The weekend which was to be relaxed as Detlef was to leave on Monday night at 4 AM was now spent with me trying to sort things while behaving like a zombie and a cat burial in the garden... and after another short night on Sunday there went the rest of the carefully planned training schedule.

OK! Let’s see the good thing: Neither we nor the house sitter will have to worry about the possible death of an old cat while we are away!

Now the good times were surely upon me: One worry down, the house all for myself – don’t get me wrong, I love hubby to bits, but there is nothing nicer than not having to fit into somebody else’s schedule for a change – a holiday ahead of me, and at work only two simple tasks to do...

Well, as soon as I opened the office door on Monday these tasks seem to have created offspring. I rarely had so many people wanting some help with something time consuming. On top of it all I seem to be attached to some electric wire: As soon as I touch my hair I look like electrocuted.

So I have another 24 hours during which I still have to get one work task done, a website update to be published, shopping for the house sitter to be performed, backup keys to be delivered to friends, a leaving-do to be attended, a suitcase to be packed and a shower to be taken... oh, yes and I wanted to sleep a couple of hours as well.

And it is always like that! At least at my house it is... If there is anybody out there who manages to organise travels or pre-event phases without going bonkers: Please get in touch, I need to know your secret!

Re-view, Re-group, Re-everything

Why, why, why oh why... is life so strange?
Why do we like unhealthy things better than healthy ones? Why do we rather sleep in front of the telly then to go to bed in good time? Why do we understand how it works and still get it wrong? And finally: Why is it that all the good things I do to myself make me feel good and happy and I am still slipping into comfy behaviour for the quick fix which makes me feel unhappy in the long run?

I am in one of those phases again, and it must be boring for you to read it over and over again. Well, this time I at least seem to have caught it at an early stage; just a good month in, so the harm done is minimal. I however know:

It is time to re-group the brain cells!

It is time to become selfish even towards my sloppy self!

It is time to find a solution for once and for all!

I now decided to see this wavelike behaviour as an experiment: Let’s put this woman into her personal laboratory until all the details are known and analysed to then eradicate the cause of this disastrous behaviour.

Experiments always start with a hypothesis. See, and that already is the tricky part:

How to phrase the problem so that it can be re-searched?

Well, let’s just start with:

‘Everybody strives for happiness and too much comfort leads to unhappiness’

The next step is to define the parts of the hypothesis. So, what is ‘happiness’ and what is ‘comfort’? Let us assume that there are three types of happiness.

There is the momentary one; the taste of an ice cream, the visit of a loved one, the success in an exam or a sports event; everything that gives this ‘high’ driven by endorphins and adrenalin. Once the chemicals are gone one is back to square one, and some might even feel it like a black hole until the next project or ‘nice’ occasion comes along.

Then there is imagined happiness. It is the idea of how life would be... ‘IF’. This type of happiness is closely related to the first one, just that it is stretched out a bit. Whenever we reach a milestone we feel a chemical induced high like in case one, but the content stays for a bit longer because previous experience gets projected into the future, the next milestone is not uncertain but possible and happiness sometimes can even stretch from milestone to milestone.

Ahhh, I just said: ‘Content!’ That is more the kind of happiness everybody is after. It is a general state of well being, one is doing things one likes doing on a daily basis, the social and living environment is in place, and little challenges are keeping it interesting but don’t threaten the balance.

Content seems to be a lesser form of happiness, I however believe that it describes best what I mean to express in my hypothesis. This seems to be the more true that somebody who is not happy definitely is not content either, so at the end it might turn out that it is even more than happiness.

So I am herewith re-phrasing and claiming that:

Everybody is striving for content,
A big hindering thing however is comfort,

and in turning it upside down that:

Content equals Effort

Whoops... how did that come about? You may realise that I am making this up as I go along... so these are real thought processes you are observing here... I am keen to see where else this will lead me and if I can bring it to something that makes remotely sense.

So: Content = Effort would mean the less effort one is putting into life, the lesser the chances are that this person will be content.

I guess it is time now to define ‘effort’. It is quite interesting actually that I rather intuitively chose effort as the opposite of comfort. Being German I quite often use a dictionary to translate back and forth in order to find the best word to describe a thought. So I did that just now for ‘comfort’ and my dictionary delivers words like ‘ease’ and convenience’. This hits the nail quite nicely on the head: Those words indicate that one gets something for almost free, there is no achievement associated with it; one may get a good mark or food or even money but basically for no good reason.

Ahhh.... again! Another good word chosen intuitively: ‘Achievement’ seems to be important for content.

Achivement usually is associated with an outburst of joy about the achieved, which goes along the lines of the chemical driven events as depicted in ‘happy-description’ number one a bit further up this article. This description however we found the least suitable for our hypothesis, so why is this argument coming back to it then?

Let’s see what the dictionary throws at us by looking at ‘effort’. It delivers words like ‘exertion’ but ‘achievement’ as well – Ha! So I intuitively got it right! – ‘accomplishment’ and ‘performance’ are other words along the same line.

Wonderful!

This is exactly what solves the riddle - but not the problem, though; human kind has given the same word for something that is a ballast as well as a source of joy, and this shows that throughout history, probably even since the beginnings of mankind, this combination has been hard wired into our brains. We love accomplishment, we love to achieve, it makes us feel good, but at the same time there is the ballast of getting there.

It now dawns on me that happiness can be categorised in a different way as well. I chose a definition that refers to the length of time the feeling lasts. The first group however, the momentary, the instant happiness, can be classed again. I already gave the clue myself in naming the ‘taste of an ice cream’ in the same list as the ‘success in an exam’.

See the difference? They both don’t last THAT long, but one comes effortless the other one not. Those are things that DO make us happy short term but while the latter holds the promise of content if driven further, the first one doesn’t.

We are trading long term content all too easily for short term happiness of the wrong kind.

• Relationships – we like to go for the fling to get the butterfly feel rather then work for it
• Fitness – we find a thousand reasons not to do it, smugly telling ourselves that a bit of housework will do the trick, trying to catch two flies with one stone rather then developing a lifestyle that actually will solve a lot of our problems
• Food – we are falling for the fast version and the immediate sugar rush, rather then learning to cook and getting in charge of what we put through out bodies
• Sleep – we fall for the simple treat of a silly movie or online chat rather than an early sleep

Every single of those miss-behaviours give us a quick kick, but they keep us from achieving. We are like the four year olds in the marshmallow experiment . They were given the decision between one marshmallow now, or waiting a bit and the promise of the second marshmallow. Most of the kids would eat the marshmallow, and well... it seems we are failing similar tests which life is throwing at us at a regular basis.

I at least don’t seem to be able to make this sort of decisions on a subconscious level. So well then: Let’s bring it to the conscious. Developing routines for the things which happen regularly already worked well for me... it is just a matter of once in a while re-minding me why the routine was established. Routines reduces effort as one only has to put in the effort at the beginning until the routine is learned. And for the rest of it: One will have to ask the conscious question over and over again 'Is this quick happy-fix worth jeopardising the prospect of long term content?'

See, we are even in the lucky position that in a lot of the cases we don’t even have to wait for others to fulfil the promise. We are in charge, we make it happen ourselves. You want to become strong, slim, smart you CAN. You want the better job, the independance, the freedom you CAN have that. You CAN do all this by putting in the respective effort. So re-minding myself of the above and asking myself the question 'Is it worth it?' might eventually help train my subconscious to take the right choices blindfolded, and re-lieving you from having to listen to this all over again.

Market Value ...

Market Value ...

Or - What comes next?...

Or - Photo Therapy Part Two

On: ‘Vanity’ and going from ‘Cute’ to ‘Hot’

OK, I admit: That sounds presumptuous!

To prove my point I again will use a method that has worked once before: The Photo Therapy! I will prove that while the first photo therapy brought me from ‘frumpy’ back to ‘cute’ the second one helped moving me further to ‘hot’, making the photo therapy a sometimes hurtful but utterly advisable and useful tool for self improvement.

Photo Therapy Part One – A Recap

I have been writing about this ‘cute’ thing occasionally already, claiming that being cute definitely makes life easier in many ways. I think it is fair to say that I was a quite cute girl when I was younger and I surely got my share of attention without having to work hard for it.

cute at age 17

Unfortunately I took a detour through the frumpy department at the beginning of my 40s and I was quite sure that ‘the cute’ was gone.

The smile all too often went stale, and the eyes had lost their spark. I know it because hubby used to call me ‘sparkly eyes’, and there was a long period during which I never heard this anymore. Self doubt was ruling life and I truly believed that ‘cute’ had left for good and with it the fun.

I was thinking a lot about which skill or attribute could give back at least some incentive for ‘liking life’. Assertiveness, helpfulness, style,... Style! Style sounds good and rather simple to achieve. So off I went to explore style in clothing, and then thanks to sport style in posture, and later via the first photo shoot style in expression. Since then my ‘Photo Therapy’ idea was always following me around, driving me, advising, pointing...

As long as the eyes of a woman are sparkling, no man will ever notice the wrinkles underneath! - unknown -

... and at age 44

Now, 5 years on those pictures are worth a fortune for me. Now that I am looking back I can see that for a while I actually got ‘the cute’ back. Another name dear hubby used to call me when I was all dressed up to go out was ‘ Hey Pretty’. All of a sudden I heard it again, and ‘sparkly eyes’ was back as well.

From the amount of pictures I have sitting on my computer now, it seems that I all of a sudden I must have chased the cameras. Before, there were hardly any pictures of me and most of them rather colourless and dull, now even the not so good ones depict ‘fun’. My newly gained vanity seemed to have done me good. This however was not a continuous state of mind. The most telling pictures are the ones taken at the first photo shoot in 2007 at the gym. They show me in great shape and confidence. From there live moved forward in waves with a little high in 2009 and then a deep dip during winter 2009/2010.

Like five years back I felt time was running out and I felt just old. And again it was Bodybuilding and pictures taking me back on track. And like five years ago Bodybuilding came first and the pictures gave me the confidence to believe what I was feeling already.

Body Image

Body image is a very weird thing. One might lose weight, one might put on muscles, one might transform: The mind still sees the frump, the big rear, the fat legs, the wrinkles. Pictures are able to transform the mind to the same image that the body already has reached. All those pictures had already shown a pretty, even cute 45 year old, especially when there was a smile; some of them however, already showed first glimpses of a transformation I never thought possible, and I really wanted to explore that further.

2007

2010

Cute means likable, it makes things easy because people respond more kindly on first impression. Thing just was: As much as I had been missing to be cute, I now wanted more; I needed an edge to it. Well, there are at least two levels to it, I guess. One is being able to be assertive and receiving respect.

This is a nice thing at work and in daily life situations, but there is one other thing I am sure every woman would find interesting to know: Some call it ‘shelf life’ or ‘expiry date’, I like to call it ‘market value’. The questions are: If I were not married and available on the dating market, on which price range of shelf would they put me, for how long would I have to sit there, and would I sell at all? There is one thing for sure: I don’t want to compete with the 20 year olds for whom a cute smile and a pout would seal the deal. They are a different league now and this is not my style anymore, but would I have that little bit extra that would make me attractive enough to give me a decent market value? Don’t worry; hubby is perfectly fine with me posing those questions. I think he even likes the thought that others might desire what he has, he even moved on from ‘ Hey Pretty’ to ‘Hot Chick’; that I take as a first indicator that a second transformation has taken place.

2010

And then the most recent photo shoot revealed this completely new facet of myself, but the finite clue came from two guys who hadn’t seen me for those five years. They were rather amazed about my change of shape, and the compliments already put me on cloud seven. When a bit later I met one of them again he picked up on the conversation and said: ‘My friend said that you look hot!’

Wow!

The next photo shoot is already scheduled... and I rest my case!

Turning into Mum!

It is official now: I have turned into my mum, or into almost everybody’s mum, for that matter. Weird thing about it is that I don’t even mind.

Whenever I had a problem when I was younger I used to complain about mum-type people. They never seemed to be compassionate, all they came up with was advice while I wanted to shout, scream, cry, tell the story in all the gory details, probably even exaggerate a bit. I wanted to use the full range of theatrical intonation in my voice, and then when everything was said, I wanted to hear something like: 'Oh you poor thing, I know, it’s so bad, I know exactly what you are talking about.' This inevitably would lead to a new round of re-telling the story, wringing it for the last bit of sentiment. Depending on the severity, this could go on for days, talking to different girlfriends, who then would re-tell it between them until it would come back to me. After a while eventually we would run out of steam and the emotional baggage of the issue would have been evaporated into thin air. Some of the problems might not even have deserved that term, so solutions were not actually needed, while the ones needing attention would have been resolved by people with practical thinking in the meantime. Everybody with a common sense would try to move heaven and hell to make this drama stop.

Later in life two things happened: Firstly I moved on to other places and all of a sudden the trusted girl friends had gone, and the older one gets the more difficult it is to find likeminded spirits. And secondly, the ‘cute’ had left the building. See, it helps if one is calling a certain cuteness one’s own. All those rants coming from an ugly face don’t work as well compared to big eyes and a quivering pout telling the story. Unfortunately this advantage fades over time and one realises... Sh... it’s not working the way it used to anymore.

All of a sudden I had to find the solutions myself, or poor hubby had to compensate. He had to listen, and he had to help solve. I only know now, that I mutated into my mum-ish self, how lucky I am to have him. And I got lucky in another respect: I found a mentor! He was the person who patiently listened to my rants for one last time, asked the right questions at the right moment, and made me think.

Well and now that I am done with thinking, I find myself not wanting to rant about things anymore. I want to tackle them head on! Want to get it done and over with. I now find that it is the prerogative of the youth to spend all that time on worrying, ranting and moaning. I am not willing to spend this amount of time on negativity anymore, and although I don’t want to be younger – God forbid – I sometimes would like to have some of the time back that I wasted back then. Now that I am running out of it, I would like to tell all these youngsters... don’t do this! Find a solution and get on with your lives.

Of course they don’t appreciate this advice – I wouldn’t have!

And I am not bothered, really. History, it seems, will stay forever young: It will repeat itself over and over again, and in 30 years time they might read my story and think: Darn... she was right!

Becks Blue Fan Photos

Those pictures were taken by a photographer friend during an photo shoot which was under the sign of: 'Let's push the envelope'.

Isn't it weird that as soon as we are on a beach in a bikini we don't mind having our photo taken; well, or at least we find it inappropriate to complain as we are showing off our assets voluntarily, but as soon as we take off the blouse in our home and having a photo taken, it becomes rather awkward.

Given that I am planning to enter a bodybuilding competition in summer 2011 for the first time in my life and that I then will have to perform in less than a standard bikini, on a stage, in front of people I don't know, I just had to grab the opportunity of this shoot and try myself.

During a break my friend just kept shooting (BTW: that the label is to the front happened absolutely accidentally, we were just kidding around), so those pictures are not perfect but I quite like them - and well, I like the beer anyway, so I don't mind advertising it.

It now turns out though, that having the pictures taken only was one part of the whole game. The much bigger question is: What will happen if I publish?

I have bikinis of less fabric than this bra... but it is clearly a bra... hmmm?!?

On the other hand... what is the best - or the worst to happen? People might like or not like it, my employer might ask me to take them off the internet - rather unlikely, though - somebody might really like it and give me a job as a model... dream on girl!

So it is now decided that the world might see my bra... and me in it! And drive safely! The beer is almost alcohol free (0.05%), BTW!

Glamour Pix: Guys VS. Gals

Since I stumbled across Dita Von Teese, and now am planning for photo shoots with various photographers, I all of a sudden find myself talking to them and guys in general about what turns them on. See, the photographers have certain ideas in mind, my muscles are unusual and inspiring for them, and of course they are trying to figure out how far I would go. Actually: I am trying to figure out how far I would go!

There are rather glamorous pictures which I quite like and there are other, very similar ones which I don’t. I could imagine myself shooting something similar in case one, but not in case two. What makes them so different? I decided to think this through scientifically, and I now believe that I figured it out.

I for instance got two photo ideas explained by the guys:

• Faceless Nude – a naked woman with a gas mask on
• Feline – woman in lingerie licking milk from a cat bowl

Hmm...?! The only thing that instantly pops into my mind is a thousand ‘WHY?’s
Why the mask? Alarm while having sex? Fetish thing? Lost her clothes because couldn’t see properly through that thing? Why the cat milk? Isn’t she having a cup? Eating from floor is disgusting and diminishing...

If I would put myself in the middle of a room, naked with a gas mask on, I would not expect to be taken seriously, or not to be raped for that matter.

Of course I get the appeal it may have to a guy. It has clear signals: Boobs and arse right on a tray ready to go, while kitty says: See, I am there already, may scratch a bit but won’t fight, take me now!

I always thought that under an evolutionary point of view the guys would like the hunt, but I may have misinterpreted of what hunting actually entails. Hunting for them is all about the kill at the end. It is about tuning in on a signal: the stag, the pattern of the fur, the boob, the bum; tuned in like a missile with a motion lock. Distraction would be disruptive, and when the kill can be achieved without the hunt, even better. By all means: It is a fair way of seeing things! Whatever turns you on boys!

It’s just that this is not working for me, and from what I heard when talking with my girlfriends: it is not for them either. So if I would commit to a glamour shoot I would like to have photos taken which would turn ME on, and not in a lesbian way. Sorry to blow another one of your dreams. Guys: ... it’s rarely the male form that does it for us ladies... Again, it is just not about signals. Don’t get me wrong, I like to see some eye candy once in a while, nice shoulders, ABS... but that is not what gets me going! Actually, it doesn’t even matter what the subjects in a shot are – as long as they work well together. Thus the next bit is about: What does ‘working well together’ mean?

A guy’s ‘Hustler’ is a girl’s ‘Mills & Boon’

Ladies need the story telling! ‘Context’ is the key word here. Context exists in two ways:

• Context within which a photo is displayed, and
• Context within the photo itself.

Reverting back to the ‘faceless nude’ and the ‘feline’, one could argue that in a context less set up these women are not in control, they are obedient and subject to potential abuse. Putting them into the context of a fetish photo book or a themed exhibition it makes sense. Context avoids misunderstanding.

Although I am not opposed to any kind of fetish, this is not what I am interested in. What sets my mind into gear is context within the photo:

The story telling!

A well chosen context can put subjects into charge, and the strength of a subject radiates as strength of the image, creating a strong emotion in the onlooker.

Let me elaborate:

Step one: Imagine a naked woman on a meadow.
Instant questions again: Why is she there, and where are her clothes?

Step two: Put a nice shrub on one side of her, in which her clothes are hanging and on the other side you put a lake.
Ah, of course, she is taking an early morning bath. Hmm, I already can feel the first of the sun rays tickling through the last of the mist, and the soft grass under my feet; I can imagine the cold water around the ankles and the little ‘whoops’ moment when it touches the belly button, and then the big, joyful, tingling splash!

Interesting what a bit of context can do, isn’t it? But we are not finished yet!

Step three: Put a bit of greeneries into the foreground as if somebody is watching her through a shrub.

Whoohoo, a bit of voyeurism... Nice! Getting there!

Step four: Now imagine that she knows that she is being watched.
She can feel the eyes as close as touching, her head swings that tiny bit more when the hair is released, she turns a bit more, stretches a bit further, swings the hips a bit more as she walks into the water; she shows this little bit of attitude and she knows... he is there and can’t have it, at least not right now.

And that is the final turn on:
Time delay!

Not being able to have it straight away. The tease! Which brings us back to Dita.

That is total contradiction to what guys need. To a woman, a single picture with the proper framing and a model with the right attitude can tell an entire story... and it will make her happy!

Now I find myself in a situation where I would like to find out what works for both. Scenarios are needed where the signals are strong, but the story nevertheless is being told!

If you can solve this riddle – who knows? I might even go all the way... modelling wise that is!

Food Personalities

Food really can be a nuisance for some: One can't live with it and one can't live without it either.

After many years of leaning, observing, trying, and experimenting I however think, that I am starting to get the bigger picture. I wrote an article once in which I suggested to become a graser - people who similar to cows nibble small portions throughout the day - and I am now realising that this is only one part of the puzzle.

I so far have indentified at least two significantly different personalities with different needs to maintain a healthy lifestyle: Grazers and accountants (this is in lack of an animal kingdom similarity, at least I didn't find one). No offence to the profession of accountancy, it is meant as a compliment even. While the grazers are eating when they get hungry, and have to stick with little portions because they are actually hungry all the time, the accountant personality is eating at set times.

These are the two extremes which are repeatedly suggested in literature, internet and TV, as the ones to strive for in order to maintian a healthy lifestyle. This can be utterly confusing as the accountant can't comprehend how grazing could ever work and vice versa. So keeping this information in mind the first question to answer for a food troubled mind is:

What type am I?

Or better: What would be the type of personality which I would be able to adopt?

As for me, I am definitely a grazer. Hence the previous article and hence me thinking that my ways would save the day for everbody else. So let us investigate some of the issues the respective groups are facing:

The accountant food personality
The accountant actually has it quite good. They are the 'take 1 hour of lunchbreak' personalities. Only the time and the portion size has to be determined, probably the one or other emergency strategy for travel or social events needs to be thought through, and life can proceed as usual. Since accountant types lead a rather organised life anyway, for them it is no problem to stick with the schedule and once the body gets used to it, things go like clockwork. Hunger will not occur anymore out of hours, and since they take a dedicated time to break they even will have some recovery time after food intake.

The grazer food personality
The grazer on the other hand is leading a different lifestyle. They either have jobs where they travel a lot, dynamically manage many tasks at the same time, and often they are maiden for everything hence attending to other people's needs. Thus there is no rhythm in the daily tasks around which meal times could be scheduled, and energy consumption varies within the day and between days. Given this lifestyle, hunger kicks in randomly, whenever the depots are empty. The task is to see for healthy food provisions readily availabe as there is no time for preparing a proper meal, or taking a proper break. Additionally a proper meal is too much for the grazer, as it has the capability to trigger sleepyness, a feature not appreciated.

Relationship hiccups
So now we want to imagine the once unhappy food junkie managed to find the matching personality and adopt it. All the rules are set, the adjustments are done, and success shows in a healthier and stronger body. That is when one has to address the matter of social environment: meaning friends, spouses, and family in general.

It will be a successful relationship when they are all of the same species, but they usually aren't. A grazer and an accountant in one househould wanting to stick with the social conventions of having mealtime together depicts a setup that is bound to fail. And here it shows why accountants have it that good: Social convention is accountant oriented. The hard work lies and always will lie with the grazers. They will have to determine certain slots during which they will join their counterpart - e.g. twice a week for dinner - and for the rest of it they will have to go separate ways food wise. If they fail to find an agreement the grazer inevitably will get fat by doing the grazing for hunger plus doing the set meals to please social convention.

Which brings me to another hiccup: I already mentioned that the grazer quite often is taking the role of 'maiden for everything' which more often than not includes the preparation of food provisions for the rest of the office working family. Which basically means that the person who will not take part in the meal is supposed to prepare it. And that is a real nuisance. The only solution I can see is to pre-cook, freeze, and show dad how the microwave works!

Bon Appetit!

My Choice - My Challenge!

Having done a lot of mulling and moaning during the past couple of month or so, I have now put a new focus on my sport activities. It was a matter of remembering what it was that brought me to Incredible Ladies in the first place, what it was that made me feel happy and successful and healthy. So on one hand I am doing this for myself, but on the other this brought me back to thinking about the charity side of things as well.

Oh my, I have been so grumpy and jealous, seeing all these celebrities running marathons, climbing mountains, waterskiing through the Channel. All these examples of overcoming fear and challenge taking I found more off-putting rather then inspiring. How is a normal person supposed to compete with that? How am I to measure my success against theirs? I am bound to fail miserably. These guys have a public face, they have a team helping them, they have the best of equipment, and of course they are raising huge amounts of money. Why should I work my bud of, almost killing myself in a challenge, if only about 5 people will pat my shoulder, and if I am lucky I may raise 500 quid. One celeb can cover the efforts of about a thousand of normal people. Under efficiency point of view we should let the celebs do all the fundraising.

And actually, it is not just me claiming the same praise for a similar effort; one is getting measured against these achievements. “What? You only did one marathon? Well, here is a pound, but you know - Eddie Izzard has been running 50 of them in one go – THAT is great innit?”

To be honest: I feel like a resentful arsehole now. Because it doesn’t matter how I compare to those guys... and the poor bloke really did suffer!

It is important that

• I like what I am doing,
• that I achieved something that I couldn’t do before, what gives hope that I can replicate that and become even better the next time, and
• that whatever people give me as sponsorship goes to the charity that matters most to me.

Oh, and there we are with the next rant! The choice of charity – I did Race for Life, Cancer Research; after three years it was almost impossible to get people excited about it: ‘We know that you can do it, why are you doing it again?’

Does it matter? I am collecting money for a worthy cause, for crying out loud!

And then I came across the orangutans and I just knew that is what I want to support. Well now I have to defend my choice because I am not helping humans or children. The extinction of a species... hmm, aren’t their more pressing problems in the world?

Fighting extinction – why does it matter?

I don’t have one of those official, scientific answers to that – all I have is a story.

When I was a kid at school we went to a history museum and all of a sudden I found myself face to face with a strange stuffed bird in a diorama: A Dodo. I always was into wildlife and wanted to visit all the places to see all the animals, and so I asked the teacher where they live. He pointed me to a little label that said: Extinct.

I didn’t know what that meant, and so he explained that there is not a single place in this world where this animal is still alive. That they all got killed hundreds of years ago and that the stuffed ones are all that is left of them. It was the first time that something that grand hat hit my little brain. I had not been travelling at all back then, for me this world was an endless resource; how on earth could it happen that something just vanished. I felt for the first time what it means to be ‘too late’, I felt deprived of an opportunity, and later when I went to university they had a museum with a stuffed Dodo. I visited him often and imagined how nice it would be... just once to see him waddling along between trees.

Later my imagination got caught by Jane Goodall and her Chimpanzees, and of course I wanted to travel to Tanzania and live in the rainforest. And of course I didn’t. Well and many years later I bumped into the orangutans on the telly and edged my way closer to the scene of people actually doing the rescue work. I learned a lot about all the issues which make them an endangered species, and I would not be able to bare the thought, that one day a child would be standing in a museum in front of a stuffed orangutan and asking the same question I asked about the Dodo, only to find the same label attached to it.

And knowing what I know now, about evolution, habitat, gene pools, and so on – Now I know how easy it is to make something extinct. We may be next.

And that is why it matters!

Related Links:
Orangutan Land Trust (OLT)
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS)
Interview with Michelle Desilets about OLT

Taking you back to the roots

The IL roots that is! I had a few incidents recently which make me feel like stepping back in time to the beginnings of IL - actually before IL. Although I am much fitter now, nothing seemed to be working out. All my wisdom seemed to be long forgotten and even my drive for sport had been lacking for such a long time that I feel rather breathless, powerless and wimpish.

So I decided to read a few of my own articles - if they were any good they should bring me up to scratch again; it's three years after all that I started writing for the site: Time to warm a few things up!

Sometimes it helps to just be aware of how the body works, so that one knows that one is not alone in this, and then there are the little helperlines which can incredibly enhance the chemistry in the body and hence lay the ground for all the rest. And So here is my selection from the body, health and nutrition section:

Stupid Hormones Can't Cheat the Sandman Iron Ladies Omega 3 The Big Sugar Experiment

Well, and when I started writing back then I did so about my sport. See, and there is the dilemma. I was inexperienced and I wrote about what I knew and what was important to me at that time. I quickly realised that my experience is not about sport, but about being passionate - for whatever. And I realised as well that by writing about sport a lot, I already had put off quite a few people from reading the site. In the meantime none of my friends from back then is reading the site because they still think that it is a Bodybuilding site.

I was so desperate to please them and to get them back, that I entirely neglected the sport section. I haven't written about sport in about one and a half years, and the bodybuilding section is still incomplete although I have all the pictures sitting there ready to be processed. Back then I didn't understand how the internet works and how loyal behaviour in the internet is created. Not that I have become better in that, but I surely I have now decided for my lifestyle to focus on sport again, and I will do so on the site as well. Here is to catch up with a few of the articles we have already:

Sport Why Muscles? Women and Strength? What Sport to Choose Lucky Number 12 Tummy

Now I am getting to the bit which a lot of people call 'airy fairy', but which I think is the most honest of the sections. Every article was written at a time when the issue was bugging me, and writing it down in a way that it didn't sound too much like a rant, helped rather well to thinking the matter through. Apparently there have been quite a few things bugging me - the number of articles and columns is really rather big; so big even that there was a point when I gathered the first year's pamphlets, worked through them again and wanted to publish them as a book. Oh yeah, dreams! Of course no editor thought that somebody would want to pay money for the wisdom of an old cow from the provinces. So the manuscript is sitting idly on my shelf. But here I would like to point you to the one or the other article nevertheless:

Passion What's the Worst to Happen? IAPU - A Farce Challenges Three Cheers to USG!

And then there is one more little article which sort of sums it up. I wrote it almost two years ago and it was to go into said book. Well it's about time to publish it now:-

From Strength 2 Freedom

Have a wonderful Easter time and see you next week all fresh and full of USG!

Iron Ladies

There is a difference between being tired and fatigue. Everybody is getting tired at the end of the day, and once in a while we still are after a too short night of sleep. We may feel like an afternoon nap, or a lie in – that’s all rather normal.

Why so tired?
With fatigue I mean feeling constantly worn down. Being tired even when the night was long enough; the feeling that although the sleep was deep and dreamless one hasn’t slept at all. One is able to get through the daily tasks, even finds a laugh when chatting with the girls, but there is always this feeling of having to push through; there is no natural flow, one is clumsy and forgetful and creativity has left the brain.

So one is checking the calendar and is somewhat relieved to see that it is ‘the week before’. Thank God, it’s just one of those months, and there will be payback time: When this will be over the sun usually is shining a bit brighter, even. But not this time! So the search continues: Well, a lot of people have a cold: I may come down with something; it’s almost spring: This change of seasonal climate is stressful on the body and one is worn down by central heating and lack of oxygen.

I need a pill!
The re-installed power walking sessions, however and the garden work are not helping, in contrary: Instead of a rosy, fresh air complexion I look grey like an old bed sheet, the hair is lifeless, and I only have to look at food for it to appear on my thighs. The head clouds are getting bigger and the workload that lies ahead becomes ever more overwhelming: One already has to think about summer holidays and it’s only those few month to squeeze everything in – the garden, Easter, some travels to see family, preparing the BBQ place to be ready for the May Bank Holidays, sport definitely needs picking up and sh... the windows and the garden fence need painting, and all I want to do is to sit in my armchair with biscuits and tea and stare at the wall – even choosing a movie from the DVD collection is too much of a decision. It would be so great to have a pill to make it all go away. Well, maybe there is one:

Iron!
Iron is needed to build the haemoglobin in the red blood cells, and that is the stuff which is transporting the oxygen that we breathe in, into to cells of the body where it gets burnt and turned into energy, so that the cell can do its job.

How it works
The burning process is using the same principles like a fireplace. In order to heat a room or cook some food two things are needed: a fuel like gas or coal and oxygen. Trying to light the fuel in a vacuum won’t work as the oxygen is missing; there has to be oxygen to turn the fuel into energy. This can easily be observed when extinguishing a candle with a candle snuffer. As soon as it is put over the candle, the flame uses the leftovers of the oxygen and then just stops burning.

This mechanism explains where the lack of energy comes from when iron is missing in the body. Iron means oxygen and if it is missing our fire has gone out or is about to, hence the body wants to save the meagre remains for vital organs, goes into energy saving mode and tries to put us to sleep. Additionally it signals for help. Once in a while it might make the heart work hard in the hope to get more blood pumped and hence more oxygen supplied - one then can feel the beat scarily loud and clear, or it may ask for fuel, meaning food, sometimes in the shape of weird cravings. Well, and since the body won’t waste energy to keep skin and hair nice, one might become rather flaky and ‘beige’. Although the typical pale complexion of an anaemic will come at a later stage.

Oh, what a bad combination: Wanting nothing more than hanging around and eating. So why on earth do we lose iron? It’s something really rather solid, how does it leave the body?

When things go wrong
The iron lives in the red blood cells, which when everything goes right live around 3-4 months and then get recycled and rebuild, if something goes wrong the iron gets lost. There are five main mechanisms involved in the iron trade where things can go wrong:

the body is not able to build enough red blood cells to replace the dying ones – then something is usually wrong with the bone marrow,

• the body is not able to absorb the iron that it gets delivered with the food – then something is wrong with the intestines, like celiac disease,
  
  
• the body is in need for more iron, like during pregnancy,
  
  
• the body is losing a huge amount of blood, like during an accident or operation, or
  
  
• the body is losing small amounts of blood, like during menstruation.

Regarding the first two, one would not just feel a bit off whack but rather sick. The underlying condition would cause further symptoms and doctors will take care of the situation. Additionally the symptom would probably appear rather quickly. The same is true for pregnancy during which iron levels should be monitored and balance out.

Balanced Diet
Well, when losing a large amount of blood the iron levels are usually the least of ones problems; this period thing however is very, very sneaky! Every month one is losing just a tad bit of iron, and although a lot of information sources are claiming that with a balanced diet one should have replaced the missing bits by the end of the cycle, I personally cannot confirm that. ‘Balanced’ for health people usually means ‘utterly healthy’.

In my book ‘balanced’ reads as ‘mostly being a good girl, but liking my coffees and teas and dairies’ – and those are all things that inhibit iron to be consumed by the body. Meaning that one can eat as much as one likes, but the body can’t use it because a lot of Chemistry goes on between the iron and the foods and hence it is passed straight through the intestines and does not get digested as it should be. Additionally iron from food sources comes in all sorts if chemical compounds and the body is rather specific about which ones it wants. Just nibbling a rusty nail as suggested by some urban myths won’t do the trick.

A warning!
Well, and then of course one has to give a warning that too much iron can be harmful, and even if some additional intake is indicated it may upset the stomach or cause indigestion. Hence I am taking this little pill before I go to sleep when my stomach is not entirely empty, but there is enough time between food and iron intake to not have the two interfere with each other.

My experience
I stumbled across iron a good two decades ago. I was young, I was healthy and I was tired down to depression. At that time I was researching vitamins to find out if they could have a positive impact on my allergies (which some of them have), and when I read the list of symptoms for iron deficiency I thought I had a mirror held to my face.

So I gave it a shot, didn’t have any side effects except of a bit of indigestion for a couple of days until the body got used to it, and felt an improvement instantly. After two days my energy came back and within a week I was my old self again.

I took a six week course as advised on the pack and then a couple of years later I ran into the same trap. It happens so slowly that one doesn’t realise it. Other conditions like sleep deprivation due too much partying, work or a cold can have a similar effect and hide the real cause. Again I took the pills with the same outcome: Instant relief!

I then checked with my GP, got off the drug for a month, had the blood levels measured which were in the lower third of the range – so nothing bothersome or unusual – but I already felt the lack again. He then confirmed that should I feel like needing it, I could take this low dose continuously without causing any harm. He as well told me that some people react to lower levels earlier than others, something that I found confirmed in the book ‘Well-being for Women’ by Helen Lawrence (Geddes & Grosset, 2004, p.18)

Regarding the duration of the course it seems that my body is telling me when enough is enough. I tend to all of a sudden forget taking them, so I am stopping intake altogether until the next time when I am wondering why I am so tired and if I might have caught a cold...

Will I ever learn?
This time round I was so proud to have survived Christmas well and thought that this would give me a brilliant head start into summer. Ha, I’d wished! Mid January I started feeling a bit drained, beginning February I had my holidays when I usually slip horribly food wise – what is ok as I am preparing for it – and after that I crushed. I didn’t realise what was going on until mid March when the downhill trend became more and more obvious. Within these six weeks my weight went up about 3 kg adding an additional 21,000 calories to my diet which I now have to get rid of again. If somebody however would have dared saying a word about my biscuit consumption, I would have gathered the last of my strength and would have gone for a kill. There was no control whatsoever. Now three days in I am back to my normal diet without any problems, liking my salt less bread, the eggs and bananas.

Well apparently I am an iron lady in many ways!

Keeping the Romance

What on earth IS romance?

We had a dinner party the other day and one of our bachelor guests asked how we keep the romance going. As you know me – my answer wasn’t a straight one, but elaborated around the fact that at the beginning there might be a volcano-like experience of fire sparking and people not being able to keep the fingers of each other. Well I guess that’s what everybody is hoping for and some volcanoes might spark a bit hotter than others.

We all know however: The hotter the fire the more easily and severely one might get burnt!

See, I had a very bright volcano sparking once – no, not with hubby – and that might have been helped by the fact that the guy was Brazilian, and hence exotic enough to be more interesting than others, and hence me being more flattered to be considered a possible mate...

He wanted to have loads of kids and was very catholic – well, I didn’t mind kinds and were merely protestant; and a bit of a free spirit, really! But volcanoes have the weirdest effects: All of a sudden I was reading the bible and was prepared to pop at least five babies – well, I was promised a maid!

And then my steadily burning fireplace named Detlef came along the volcano burnt out with a puff. Apparently size doesn’t matter in fires either.

The next thing to consider is the foundation of the relationship which needs to be established by the time the fire loses its energy. That is the part where a lot of misconceptions are arising from: Everybody is hoping for the fire to stay at its hottest all by itself, and if this is not happening disappointment kicks in.

Some use a ‘fight and make-up’ strategy to fuel the relationship, but one has to be able to take the heat as well as the cold as this will never be a steady flame. Disappointment will be even bigger should the make-up sex all of a sudden taking place in the arms of a third party fire place.

The steady flame solution it to find a common ground, possibly with a house built on it, some kids playing in front, and a picket fence – or like in our case: a decent hedge.

Common ground and similar goals means, that one has to compromise at times and that one has to find the individual spaces. This is a bit like a very long school project: Hard work. And in the meantime one has to work around the nitty-gritty bits of life with unscrewed toothpaste, socks lying around, and garbage that needs bringing out.

While the make-up sex approach surely never gets boring it appears as less sustainable in the long run, while the picket fence people have to be a bit careful not to take the achieved for too granted and once in a while should see to find the fire tongs to stir things up a bit.

Whichever approach works for you: Romance means keeping this fireplace going the way you like it!

So, what are the things that fuel this little oven?

Well, if you are after the volcano version then you might cause a nice fight by forgetting the birthday or anniversary, leaving the toothpaste open and your socks on the floor. Then the jewellery or the flowers after might work to bring you onto the make-up sex road.

But for the steady fire person it’s not just about remembering dates either, it’s what one does with it. To have the secretary send over a bunch and an SMS apologising for being delayed for the dinner won’t work – although some would be glad to at least get that. As I said before: building a relationship is to find the best compromise and a truly romantic gestures would be to arrange a gift around one of these compromises; giving something back the other half gave up in order to make the relationship work.

The most romantic things however can be very tiny and spontaneous and sometimes the giver might not even notice it: It is when the better half is slipping into the others mind, and is just there when needed without being asked.

Imagine me cooking for 10 people short notice, hubby helping with the drinks, and the salad and when we needed something big to put the salad in I blanked... cooking and dishes are my resort and hobby, I buy that stuff, I know where everything is... with food bubbling on the hob and guests arriving soon, I lost the plot. And then hubby left the kitchen mumbling something like: ‘I know....’, and came back with a huge bowl from the bottom shelf that we rarely use. The perfect romantic gesture!

Rituals, Faith and Happiness

I like rituals! It was very lovely to be invited for Haldi KumKum to a friend’s house recently. As a child I liked the tradition at our house when on 24th December the Christmas tree was lit for the first time of the season. I would not have seen it by then, mum would open a window and ring a little bell, and I, charged with the energy of a whole day’s build-up of expectation, would dash in only to find that the Holy Child was again faster than me, already had unloaded the presents and left by the open window.

It is a bit different when the whole thing shifts into the clerical area. Churches easily touch me emotionally – oh, these guys knew how to build in order to create atmosphere. But all the humbug that is performed in these buildings is just not for me. While my childhood Christmas ritual was to create a fairytale moment before reality of life would hit hard, church rituals feel like indoctrination to me. I hated the singing and mumbling, the guided concourse through the subject of the week, performed in an old language nobody properly understands. One might say: ‘Well, you go to conferences where a speaker covers a subject in a similar way and might be wasting an hour of your valuable time.’ Correct! But there I am allowed to leave, to question, to discuss, to even dismiss.

Rituals might create an atmosphere of belonging, as a drawback they create group pressure, though. Proper rituals involve more than one person, meaning that if one is skipping the game the other ones usually get upset. This is no different whether you skip your poker round, the Sunday lunch or your faith. Or is it?

For the poker round one usually is replaceable, and if the people one is playing with are real friends, then one still can have a drink with them. Sunday lunch involves family and one is not replaceable, at least not easily. One might only find out the truth of it when the will is revealed and the fortunes will benefit the cat. It however becomes really tricky when faith is involved. Religion always plays with ‘What If?’. I might be in doubt, I might not feel free in my decisions, I might even know that some of the doctrine is wrong – but What If that all doesn’t matter and me leaving the congregation would have the worst of all effects on me, my loved ones, my life and my afterlife – like purgatory, or so?

I could just make my peace with purgatory. I like it warm anyway. And if I would decide for myself that there is no afterlife and eternity, then the problem goes away in a jiffy. But oh no! People who found religious groups and sects know what they are doing. They usually try to get hold of the whole family structure... and all of a sudden the table is turning. Knowing that a mum couldn’t bear the thought of her only child burning in hell for eternity, and knowing that she would deeply feel that thought burn in her heart... Who would be able to do that to her? Luckily my parents were on my side, and even grandma was rather open to criticism of faith. But I got lucky not to have children of my own. Baptism would have been out of the question for me, for granny it would have been hard to come round to the thought of her grandchild not being baptised - What If...

And there we are looking at another eccentricity of those rituals. They help create social status. In the old days a child had to have as many godfathers, best with high status, as possible. Firstly then the child would be cared for and accepted into a network of opportunities the godfathers would provide, and secondly the parents would show to the public that they are closely involved with so many important people. In the catholic South of Germany you can see this phenomenon in the number of forenames a child had. Every godfather would add his and for some reason boys usually have more than girls. I am wondering why that is?

So now imagine me eventually having produced the long expected son, the family would have lined up a decent row of godfathers and I would say: ‘I give a sh...!’

That is just not what you do! The consequences would be that your – and the boy’s – inheritance would go to the cat, all the future opportunities for the kid would be blown out of the window, and your parents including the rest of the family would be dishonoured.

It is one thing to choose social isolation for oneself, but in this case one has responsibilities for another person...

... and this way the church has caught another soul to be dragged through the rituals for further indoctrination.

These days a lot of societies in the world already have changed, or are about to change. It is much easier now to take choices in the Western world, even countries with strong traditions like India see change, and the younger generation is rebelling – and more and more often winning.

Thing just is: One might think that people who these days join religions believe that they were developed to provide safety and protection in their society, and would hence make them happier - or at least that is what they are hoping for. Looking around me it however seems that the advantages and the constraints weigh each other off. I see really happy and really unhappy people at both ends of the faith spectrum. So what is the whole fuss then about?

Not old, yet!

I thought I am getting old, and this morning I figured out that I don’t. I mean: I do, but not to the extent that I thought I did... Do I make any sense at all?

See, recently I thought I couldn’t keep up with life anymore. For so many years I have only been arranging myself around hubby and the occasional night out with IL, or dinner with friends, and things were fine. Now some younger people – and with this I mean a quarter of a century younger people – have entered my life and I feel like falling apart.

Don’t get me wrong: I love being around them. It is inspiring and fresh and they are lovely. We cook together and go to the movies and watch movies at our house – it’s just that I am exhausted, my head is buzzing and I am feeling like having aged a decade within a couple of month. This being a development which I am not appreciative about, I decided to question the 'age' conclusion.

At first I thought I might have been too settled, with spontaneous activity being kept to a minimum. I once wrote that one needs routine for the nitty-gritty bits of life to free up time for spontaneity. Had I introduced too much routine? All too often conversations go like this these days:

Question/suggestion: 'Let's go to the movies!' Me: 'Well, what is on? We could go next Thursday.' Response: 'Oh no, I meant tonight!' Me: 'TONIGHT!?... tonight... - ahemm'... gaining time... 'hmm... What is on?' Response: 'Oh, doesn’t matter! Let's just go!' Me: ...still gaining time with harrumphing, and quickly thinking about when I have to get up next morning, what I wanted to do that night, how much sleep I had last and will have next night, and if I will survive... 'What time, did you say?...'

Those negotiations usually go on for a while, my cool is gone at that stage, and while everybody is getting impatient, I feel the need to explain myself, what makes the whole matter worse.

When my goddaughter came to visit I knew she would stay for a week and I would dedicate this period of time. That seems to be an important thing to me: Being able to dedicate time. There it was again! The planning ahead thing. Why do I have to plan ahead so much?

Feedback was needed and I interviewed hubby. He tried to be kind in reminding me, that movies never really where my thing. He had a point there, and movies quite often were on the agenda, I however realised that I wouldn’t be up for anything else either. This was a dead end: Was it old age after all?

Now the subject started to follow me. Even Nury wrote a column on '22 signs you have grown up' meaning that you 'got old'. Oh my goodness... don’t get me started.

This at least triggered another thought: What if the theory that children are keeping you young, is wrong? What if they only hold a mirror into your face? What if the solution lies in the choice of social environment? During my holidays I felt perfectly young, sipping my cocktails with 60+ year olds. Blissful moments!

The final clue however came during my morning gym session with my dear friend Imola who is 10 years younger than me. I felt like a spring chicken and hence down the drain went the theory above. And then, while concentrating on my exercise ahead, the mind floated for a split second, and I knew! All of a sudden the burden fell off me and I was one with the world again: It was not my age; it was my lifestyle!

It IS the social environment, but it doesn't have anything to do with age. I am a morning person, and I am surrounded by evening people. With Imola, who is an early bird as well, I felt entirely at ease.

In order to fit into the night owl’s lifestyle I am eating my food at the wrong time of the day, and although I love going to the gym in the mornings I go in the evenings. I like to get up early to do the main housework and pet care, because it gives a clean start into the day – it feels accomplished! I like to sit at the computer early because this is the time of the day when my brain is working well. In the meantime the night people are either in bed or nurturing their morning grump.

I like lunches instead of dinners, but by that time owls only have arrived at breakfast. When they are eventually running up to full speed at night, all I am able to do is to hang in my arm chair keeping hubby company at the telly – something which so far was recognised as a valid and appreciated activity, even if I nodded off.

Now that had changed. All of a sudden I am supposed to be really active at night, meaning that now there is a rather big likelihood of not only performing badly in the gym, but at my morning activities as well. And on top of it all nobody seems to understand why I am such a killjoy when all they wanted to do, is to introduce all this fun into my life. Well, I didn’t understand it myself...

This newly introduced spontaneity is throwing my carefully balanced life completely out of whack. Going to the gym at the wrong time of the day for the benefit of doing something together with hubby is a compromise I am happy to handle, but I cannot compromise on my writing. I can handle spontaneous actions once every fortnight or so, but not several times a week. For everything that needs a shower and hair-wash I’d like to have two days notice, please!

See, and because I am actively voicing my constraints and visibly leaving the scene when everybody else is at their prime, I am a killjoy and weirdo. Owls just passively and invisibly don't show up when I am at my best. Everythging that is not there cannot be weird, and hence they are the 'normal' people.

I am herewith proposing a swap-over scheme. One month I will adjust my lifestyle to the night people and going out with them, and the other month they will have adjust to my ways. Getting up at 5:30, helping with the housework and the pets; when having the morning coffee, I could do an hour of writing, while they do their facebook and internet stuff, and then we could be at the gym by 7AM; coming home by 9 AM to have a shower and a quick breakfast, to then set out for work at 10 – their usual time. On non-gym days we would either do the groceries shopping, or would start work at 8. This way enabled to leave by 4PM we could do some outdoor sport, run errands, or meet friends.

Let’s see who’s up for movies at night, then!

Travelling Skills

Madrid Airport...

I was wondering if there are people who are just not suitable for travelling, and if I may be one of them. The other day I was at the movies watching 'Up In The Air' and I quite liked it, and not just because of handsome womanizer George Clooney. Traveling comprises of two parts: Firstly 'being somewhere else than home', which is fine; secondly 'getting there', which is not. Watching the movie I thought that it would be so cool if one could thoroughly enjoy the moving about part of travelling as well. I could picture myself, stylish, assertive, and well organized; jetting around the world, oozing sophistication. Well, today I was thrown back into my real world of travelling. When I was on the first leg of my flight to Fuerteventura with a pit stop at Madrid I was dreaming myself into George Clooney world – did I pack efficiently? Well, it was alright given that I am planning to have some sport and fun and not just business; my suitcase is perfect, good size and swivel wheels.

Handbag a good size, practical with pockets for everything I need including iPhone and netbook, and shoes easy enough to take off and put on again to be quick and efficient at security. Only hiccup is that I am not a frequent traveler and hence not used to my luggage. At about 4:32 AM this morning I had the shock of a lifetime. I think I have never broken into sweat like this before. I wanted to SMS dear hubby that I made it to the airport and couldn’t find the bloody iPhone which had slipped into the wrong pocket when the taxi picked me up at the hotel - so much for slimline devices!

Realising that the precious device is representing a lifetime of contacts which have no place in my brain anymore I jotted down the most essential numbers on a sheet of paper, which I hopefully will find if needed. Thus relieved I scrutinized the departure board for my check-in information only to find this particular bit missing. Some 15 minutes later it eventually disclosed the information and joyfully equipped with the letter ‘F’ I made my way to the location. Given that I had seen the info flashing up on the board just there and then and that I was close to the point already, I should be one of the first in the queue – so I thought in joining about a mile of people zigzagging their way to the counter. I have no idea how all these people got the news so early. True travelers seem to have the gift of divination.

However, check-in and security went well, and I was soon sitting at the airplane dreaming myself into Clooney-world again. So first rule of travel coolness is to avoid check-ins. Queuing is utterly un-cool. Self check-in is cool! However, due to every numbnut being able to print boarding passes at home, there is a queue at the baggage drop off point as well. Hence no check-in luggage at all is paradigm for efficient travelling.

Now I am sitting at Madrid Airport – which I really loathe – well, at least I am sitting. See, the 'Up In The Air' flair only comes to full shine if you are travelling business class… I am bench; hard wooden bench, and that is where display boards come to play their role in harassing travelers. Their main purpose is to guide people to the correct destination. These days however they have become mean devices which make people wait right in front of them, far away from any coffee place or shop. Only in the last minute they reveal the destination to make people hectically rush to reach their gate. I am pretty sure that there are people sitting behind the security cameras and placing bets.

If one just wouldn’t have different hopes: The boarding pass is already in place since check-in, no passport control since it’s a transfer, plenty of time – one is German after all and always is working a lot of safety transfer time into stop-overs – so what can possibly go wrong?

The expectation is a 2 1/2 hour break during which first thing a visit to the loo is to be executed – brilliant, Madrid has plenty of such facilities – and then a sophisticated cappuccino with possibly a nice little piece of cake is to be consumed, while looking very important using the computer or the iPhone, followed by a stroll through the oh so expensive shops, looking as if one can afford them.

Now, Madrid Airport terminal 4 is about a mile long. It needs something like 20 minutes to get from one end to the other. The board of course only is telling me that I am in the correct terminal, but gives no information whatsoever about WHERE TO within the bloody thing I have to go. So off to the loo, and then a bee line to the next coffee shop. Bloody hell, only coffee late; I hate late. The guy is a decent chap, though and telling me that half way down the hall is a cappuccino joint. On arrival the first half hour is gone, and I am not really feeling at ease. It would be just lovely to know how far I have to go to get to the right gate, the board around the corner however tells me nothing new. It is small so I can’t read it from the coffee shop and me the un-cool traveler is quickly gulping down a hot Cappuccino – eventually a hot one – and a cake, burning my tongue while the rest of sophistication goes down the drain. Repeated board consultation doesn’t bring any news and so goes the first hour of my break.

Maybe I should find an information stand. Later it would turn out that there are two, but of course I am choosing the one furthest away.

There I am told that only an hour before the flight – not the boarding, which is half an hour before – they will know the gate, that it is confirmed now, and this time my letter is ‘J’ the place where I just came from. On reaching the spot I feel nicely worked through, the coat is keeping me warmer than expected and the so reasonably packed bag is starting to feel like a suitcase – while the board still refuses to confirm. Hoping that the guy who told me the gate knows his job I am settling into a chair to write it all down, not without getting up every 5 minutes or so, taking bag, coat and computer with me to check the darn board. Eventually! Confirmation! And a number to go with the ‘J’ which tells me that I am in the right spot. Now I can relax – for 25 minutes of the total 150. This whole thing sort of spoils the cool look.

... and from the other end!

I walked this bloody hall twice, got rather hot in the meantime and now am looking so disheveled that nobody would ever consider me an example for a cool traveler. That teaches me another lesson: Sophistication needs money. To pull off the Clooney travel style one needs to have access to VIP lounges where everything is taken care of.

Now I am on my second leg and a few thousand feet high up in the air. I am sweating with a vigorously coughing baby right behind me, so be prepared that in a couple of weeks time or so I will be moaning about a cold. See, babies don’t travel business class - only babes do, and handsome guys like George Clooney. I really need to publish this book that I am writing – and you, for crying out loud: Go and buy it! I need to get rich!

Men, Women, Humand kind and the Gods

- or: How to cheat properly! -

Who on earth thought it a good idea to use female and male humans as the different genders of the same species. It is as if project management failed horribly when the Gods created the living things. That happens in the best of companies, right? The right hand is not entirely sure what the left is doing and Bob’s your uncle… the production line is messed up!

In the end they must have found that they were left with two species which didn’t quite match and they must have thought: Well, it did cost a lot of money to get them made, let’s just throw them together and see what happens.

After I had already commented on an article about the gender differences in nest building and seasonal decoration habits I now stumbled across another one about cheating. I always thought cheating is, well… cheating. But apparently not.

According to this article women are catching up in regard to frequency – not sure if that is a good or a bad thing – but how the aftermath is handled, that is evolving on a very different level.

Apparently the first thing a woman asks is: ‘Do you love her?’ What already implies one of the problems should she be cheating… love is her measure for the gravity of the cheat. Since a fling is not something that would tear her world apart, attention is something very nice to attract and the ravages of time are not getting any kinder on us, she even might allow herself a little slip and thus stepping onto the slippery slope that leads to love with the initial fling.

Should he be the culprit, she needs a bit of time to get reassured that he only had a fling – of course she needs to see 'the other woman' to figure out her position in this picking order and to establish the appropriate actions to stay on top for the future. That done, she might well be willing to take him back… and a guilty man is a good man!

Now, this article is suggesting that men see it very much differently when women cheat. His first question would be: Did you have sex? In the male world performance seems to be the measure for the gravity of a cheat. The very fact that apparently quality and/or quantity was not sufficiently provided from his side as otherwise the wife would not have strayed, seems to be hitting right into the core.

So now imagine her trying to explain her fling by proclaiming: But it was just sex! Oh oh, that would be pouring oil into the fire.

How on earth is woman supposed to get out of this when the starting point of the quarrel is on such different positions. See, again the Gods didn't get it right. Even the remedy for the intricate situation lies on the different ends of the spectrum and is best depicted with the proverb: ‘A woman needs to feel good to have sex and a guy needs to have sex to feel good’.

A lot of make-up sex might put him at ease, but given that she just broke up with her lover that seems to be an unlikely option for her.

So there are only two things that come to mind to avoid the hassle.

Either: Don’t do it!

Or: Do it right and don’t get caught, for crying out loud!