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!

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!

Wrongly Wired!

Where and When did our Wiring go Wrong?

Due to my recent flu I was a bit in grumpy mode, and feeling a bit braindead and hence not being able to write made me even grumpier.

However, due to the fact that I didn’t have an appetite either I quickly lost the pounds that I had piled on during the holidays and not only that: The intake of only small amounts of healthy food made me actually feel really good.

I guess the body knows – and shows – what’s good for it when you are sick!

I have to admit: Although I enjoyed the cakes and sweets and the voluptuous dinners during the holidays – I felt worse by the day. And every night when I didn’t sleep well I told myself to stop it, and every morning the smell of Nutella cream, fresh bread and cakes was killing me.

And that’s why I’m asking myself: When did it happen that my brain wiring went so wrong?

Scientists do these experiments with little children to find out at what time in live they can comprehend certain things. Like up to the certain age little children don’t feel disgust and would have a drink despite some poo (it was fake, thank God) swimming in it. In another test a child is put in front of a small plate of sweets and asked to wait for 5 minutes to then get a huge pile of sweets. But if it would eat from the small plate it wouldn’t get the big one.

The kids up to a certain age just can’t comprehend the meaning of ‘later’ despite the visible reward right in front of them.

And we grown ups seem to have lost that concept as well – just a bit the other way round. We surely would be able to wait the 5 minutes to greedily stuff our heads with the reward portion. What I mean is, that we KNOW that we will feel bad afterwards, we KNOW that alcohol and coffee is not good for us, we KNOW that not moving our body gives us the back pain – and nevertheless: We DO it!

We know that later in the closer future we will feel bad; in body and mind - and we know that later in a further ahead future we will have brought ourselves into an early grave. Actually, I wouldn’t even mind that. Once it’s over, it’s over – what I do mind is that it will hurt so much until I will get there. All the diseases creeping up, all these old age symptoms… I’m not worried about death, I’m worried about being chronically ill before.

The other day I’ve seen a ‘Horizon’ series at the telly and it was about certain areas in the world where people get overproportional often more than hundred years old. One island of Japan has loads of old, healthy people. And they don’t even think about what they are doing. They live on a healthy diet, they move about a lot - 100 something years and playing croquet like a youngster. They don’t fall for temptations firstly, because there are none and secondly, because it doesn’t occur to them that they could. Temptations is not a concept that seem to exist for them.

They seem to be eating at a given time of the day, and are so used to it that for the rest of the day they just don’t think about food. As opposed to me thinking about food at every waking second.

However, they researched people of that culture who had moved to some other part of the world – and they have all the civilisatory symptoms as we all know them. And what struck me most were the faces:

These stone age old people had lovely, marvellously unwrinkly, happy faces. They were giggling and laughing with their eyes and one could tell that these people are not just happy in the moment, but truly content. While all the others looked dull and unhappy – like the face I know so well from my bathroom mirror.

And again: Where on earth did my wiring go wrong? And can I re-wire, please?

There are so many remedies on the market, from probiotic food to hypnosis. If it were that easy, given the number of products and procedures, we already should have made it to a better life.

It sort of dawns on me that the solution only can lie within ourselves. We have to become so fed up with what we are doing to ourselves, that WE want to change it.

I have come quite a long way already, but this food addiction drives me nuts. Why on earth is fun and rewards always intertwined with food and drink? Well it’s quick for starters, it’s something you can give to yourself instantly. A nice bath might be a treat, but it cost you an hour and a good bathroom cleaning session afterwards – naaa, not working. Neither does shopping, or only to an extent and then it becomes unhealthy as well.

So I will have to put up with the fact that there are no easy rewards and that the trick might be in leading a life that doesn’t need rewards. Probably a good life IS the reward!

Love

Creams and Ointments

Sometimes I think that one day not too far in the future I won’t be able to fit in my bathroom anymore because it’s already filled with all sorts of pots and bottles.When we moved to England in 1999 and then visited back my mother in law shortly after, we stayed with her – and shared her bathroom. I looked at all the creams and special oils and thought: 'Ghosh, how many bottles does one women need?'

At that time it was the good old Nivea pot for me and sometimes a body lotion. Now, only 7 years later MY bathroom is filling up.

The standard face cream became a day and a night cream. Still the the same brand, but I already worked my way up from the moisturising creams to the 'anti wrinkle' ones. There are different body lotions of different consistency and fragrance, 'all natural' ones and other ones to be used in dependence of my mood (swings). And then there is a foot cream and a hand cream and an eye cream, although I’m not using that one anymore since I saw an interview with a cosmetic surgeon saying that it actually overfeeds the skin under the eye and makes it sag – what keeps him in business. Yikes!

Ah yes, and the ointments. Tea Tree Oil for little wounds and blemishes and foot care and for the gums, and Aloe Vera juice for basically the same and ‘Pirom’ a natural but very potent cream for hurting muscles, blunt force trauma injuries and aching joints. Hirudoid twice a day against spider veins and varicose veins, … Sometimes I’m not sure in which order to put them on.

And we haven’t talked yet about deodorants and perfumes, to keep the hope up that nobody will notice that we are in this odd phase of the cycle - and make-up which number of items is on an increase as well since the skin is changing all the time and countermeasures are needed.All that makes me raise the question: Is the number of creams directly related to age?

Funnily enough – I don’t care! When I was young I just didn’t want to afford the time needed for skin care. And actually - I should have! It’s not the price for a product. Legal regulations only allow a certain number of stuff in creams anyway. So they basically all contain pretty much the same. No, one has to feel good with it. And even for young skin a bit of support, especially when you live in a city and don’t get a lot of fresh air doesn’t hurt.

But now, that I’m older and duties are lurking all day and there is not a lot of time anymore to spend on my own, the bathroom is my spa. I'm checking on my old bones to find that most of them are still in good working order. And the other ones get a bit of a treat here and there, and I'm happy to find that I still can reach my feet without breaking my back.

Recently I got some new additions: Bath soaps!

I am a shower girl. I haven’t had a bath in 25 years. I found it boring and then I had to clean up the whole mess. But all of a sudden I felt the urge for a bath – and no bubbly, good smelling soap in the house. In the shop I couldn’t decide and, oh heaven – they had special offers 2 for 1. Now I have 4 more bottles in my bathroom. My bath score has risen by several hundred percent and my skin is thanking me with a silky shine – oh well, at least I can see it!

Enjoy your spa time!

Love