Last chance for the survey!

Last chance to add your experiences of midlife to the survey! I'll be taking it down at some stage this coming week (the timing of which is rather dependant on me being able to work out how - which means there's a chance it'll still be there in 20 years and I'll just have to change it to a survey about seniors). The results thus far have been terrific - and informative. For instance:

• 52% of respondents think the term 'cougar' is simply a marketing ploy while 41% find the term derogatory and 20% find it sexist. Only 27% find the expression fun, while a rather interesting (?) 9% see it as being empowering and/or inspirational.


• Weight is the single most annoying thing about middle-age. Followed by gravity.


• We're about half/half regarding willingness to undergo plastic surgery, with the most popular procedures (if money were no object) being boob-lifts, face-lifts, and tummy tucks.


• A staggering 60% see the proverbial empty nest as being a new chapter, with only 12% seeing it through a lens of sadness/nostalgia and a mere 5% linking it primarily with loneliness.


• Respondents overwhelmingly demonstrated a preference towards those in the public eye for their achievements (such as Hilary Clinton, Susan Sarandon, Ellen Degeneres, Aung Sun Suu Kyi), rather than those framed by a primary focus on appearance (such as Courtney Cox, Demi Moore etc). Unless, that is, your name is Sarah Palin. With just 0.7% of respondents indicating an admiration for this particular lady, I think we can breathe just a little easier.


• In terms of contentment, middle-aged women rate their families the highest and their sex lives the lowest. Paradoxically many are very content with their partners (48%) - so it seems it's just the sex that sucks. Or doesn't.

There's lots more stuff to come and I anticipate several weeks of enjoyment putting it all together (what can I say? I like research; but then all those percentages and pie-charts, what's not to like?). So if you haven't yet, please add your two-bobs worth to the mix by visiting the survey here. The more the merrier!

Hair (and there) number three

I didn't mean to have a third entry in this hair (and there) series - apart from anything else the hair (and there) bit no longer seems quite as cutting-edge hilarious as it did two weeks ago. However circumstances conspired against it being put to rest just yet, at least not before I add the colourful events of last Thursday. And first let me give some background by mentioning the fact I have never, in my entire life, had less spare time than I do at the moment. Some reasons for this:

• in the process of moving mother - after 53 yrs in the same house - to a retirement villa (d-day is next Thursday).
• started teaching new (Holmesglen) TAFE c/writing course rather unexpectedly (requiring complete set of lesson plans).
• just discovered I made a slight error with my current (Chisholm) teaching workload and there are two extra weeks worth of lessons I hadn't accounted for.
• daughter in flux (note the clever play on words here?)
• son's birthday has just come and gone, including a three week visit by him.
• new ms due in two months (necessitating approx. 150,000 wds of which I have written approx. 10. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how many are in the title).
• plus do you realise Christmas is just around the corner? How did that happen?

With this background, and in an effort to balance out the increasingly stressed expression on my face (I think I'm beginning to look like the father in Mary Poppins - the one who resembles a Shar Pei), I managed to extract a modicum of spare time within which to visit the hairdresser (a new one, as my old one has recently shifted her focus to the propagation of the species). I was fondly imagining a stress-free couple of hours, complete with head massage, after which I would emerge looking as good as I get. Humph. I suppose I should have been warned by my new hairdresser's conversational skills. For example:

• HD: So... got a busy day today?
• Me (rattling my magazine meaningfully): Yes.
• HD: Oh, um. Cool. [brief silence]. Whatcha up to then?
• ME: Just catching up on some work.
• HD: Oh, yeah right. That housework never ends, eh?

Idiot. But worse was to come. When it soon (two hours later anyway) became apparent that my simple request for something 'honey-brown with a scattering of subtle blonde foils' had been interpreted as 'melange of orange with plentiful streaks of urine-yellow'. Yes, I can see how the two could be mixed up. For starters they both have nine words.

However I suspect strongly that even the hairdresser knew that the resultant concoction was not a good look as she ushered me straight back over to the basin to add 'just a little toner' (plus her voice went up several octaves). I don't think there was enough toner in the entire building (or suburb, or state) to fix this up. The true nature of the result did not dawn on me until she started drying it off, and then I gradually went into a sort of catatonic shock. Which is probably why I paid $150 without demur, and just nodded graciously when she urged me to return if I wasn't happy with looking like a candy shop just vomited on my head. I exited into the sunlight, which gave my hair an almost iridescent glow. My own aura. And I drove straight down to the supermarket where I picked up a packet of $14.00 (on special) hairdye. And Murphy's Law of course dictated that I run into several people I hadn't seen for a while. Including, incidentally, one actually called Murphy. True.

And I think I now have post-traumatic stress disorder. Which is not helped by the fact the hairdye was only partially successful and the orange refuses to truly die (get it?), resulting in an odd gingery-pink glow under lights. Plus, to add insult to injury, I suspect I have less hair on top than I ever had before. I'm sure my scalp was never quite this visible, or shiny. The only silver lining to all this is that I don't have enough spare time to look in a mirror anyway. Hopefully by Christmas it'll either have faded, or fallen out. And I can always ask Santa for a wig. I'm thinking honey-brown, with a few blonde foils.

Hair (and there) - number two

Chin hairs. WTF? Enough said.

Hair (and there)

My father had a poem, or a ditty, or a saying for most occasions. There was 'I scream, you scream, we all scream for icecream' (to be recited as if brand-new each time we had the aforementioned icecream, which got a tad repetitive in summer), and 'a wigwam for a goose's bridle' (?!), and 'I eat my peas with honey, I've done it all my life, it makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on the knife (which just infuriated me as we weren't allowed to do the same), and then something about 'bread and duck under the table' (also full of false promise as we were always forced to sit at the table. On chairs). But there was one that I felt was just for me, and it went like this:

There was a little girl,

who had a little curl,

right in the middle of her forehead,

when she was good,

she was very very good,

but when she was bad she was horrid

This poem (actually penned by Longfellow) seemed to sum up everything about me. Curly hair along with a slither of good and a generous, just-beneath-the-surface slice of horridness. Uncanny. But, actually, of all the things that I possessed as a child - smooth skin, beautifully-shaped eyebrows (until I butchered them in my teens), 20/20 vision - one thing I've never regretted losing over time was my head of fluffy, fly-away blonde curls. Especially not later in my young-adulthood when I discovered spiral perms. So attractive. And those nifty foldable afro combs? So effective.

But something odd has happened in the last few months. quite unexpected in fact. I have regressed. However rather than any of the bits that I'd like to regain (see above and add incidentals like effortless fitness and an all-you-can-eat mentality that's matched by zero weight gain), I have managed - bizarrely - to develop a singular curl, smack dab in the centre of my forehead. A kiss-curl, my father used to call them, last seen on yours truly when I was about five or six years of age. Pretty damn cute then, pretty damn ridiculous now. Because there are some things that just don't lend themselves to midlife, like frilly socks and polka-dot skirts and pig-tails. And kiss-bloody-curls. I just look like I devoured Shirley Temple and she's trying to call for help.

I first noticed the damn thing about nine months ago, shortly after turning fifty (and as gifts go, this one's a fizzer), but initially just spent a little extra time nuke-ing it with the hairdryer. The problem is that it's growing in strength and is now it's able to resist even the hottest setting (unlike me, who regularly has third-degree burns on the forehead). A straightener and hair-gel does the trick, but then I look like I'm channeling Cameron Diaz, from There's Something About Mary, except that my bit of hair is sticking straight out, rather than straight up. More directional, like I'm pointing out the way. Or needing some shade.

So my question is - why? I mean, I expected the weight gain and the flat(ter) feet and the generous chin(s) and the blah-coloured hair, but a kiss-curl? Really? Is that some sort of joke? Here I am, a well-balanced (well, at least I don't topple over - often) fifty-year old with short, neat, wavy hair - which I now must cunningly part to disguise the singular spiral in the centre. Otherwise it really is so bad it's bloody horrid.

Well and truly sandwiched

I am feeling well and truly sandwiched this week, hemmed in by children on one side and my mother on the other, with me as some sort of middle-aged spread in-between. Probably a vegemite-flavoured, peanut-buttery jam, with lots of lumps and bumps and other annoying wobbly bits. All rapidly approaching their use-by date. Ho hum.

What's making it a little more sandwichy than usual is that my mother has just sold her house, aka our family home, and bought a villa (not a unit, a villa) in a retirement village nearby. Which means that fifty-three years worth of life-in-the-one-place must now be sorted through. With each possession leeching nostalgia, and memories, and anecdotes. Then there's the house itself, where our family wrote life not just within the walls, but on them as well. From some scribbled writing across the bricks, which reads I. EVANS 1976 (see left), to the doorframe that charts the height of each of the grandchildren, this house - this home - quite literally framed our lives.

As for offspring, well one is planning a move from Canberra to Wollongong, while still trying to organise the collection of his car from Hobart, while another needs to have all her worldly goods collected from student accommodation by the end of today and stored until she sorts out new living arrangements. Oh, and she doesn't have a car. The third, currently enojoying a much-needed (her words, not mine) sleep-in (she started work last week - 2 x 3 hour shifts at McDonalds - must be exhausting), is about to head off to camp tomorrow so needs to be packed and organised at some stage. And did I mention that I'm taking my mother to the airport today as she's heading off to Europe for a month? Returning just two weeks before settlement? Who doesn't organise an overseas jaunt at the same time as putting their house on the market?

So yep, I'm well and truly sandwiched. And being spread fairly thinly at that (unfortunately the use of the word 'thin' is purely rhetorical). Mind you, I did find time to draw the little cartoon to the right (and also the one up above), which perfectly sums up how I feel. But now I'd better get moving, otherwise I'll be toast...

Menopause the Musical!

Menopause the musical! What a wonderfully rollicking, raucous piece of entertainment! A smoothly crafted celebration and commiseration all rolled into one and then framed by songs that take you back to a time when you knew, absolutely, that menopause was something that only happened to other people. Like your mother.

I went along to the musical on Saturday, along with a couple of friends, and it was great fun from beginning to end. Deep and meaningful? No, not particularly. But fun? Hell, yes. We started by getting into the spirit (literally) with a Hot Flash cocktail, which came in a gorgeously vulgar plastic cocktail glass that had a multi-coloured flashing stem. This was quickly followed by the obligatory lining-up-for-the-loo, a traditional custom for females everywhere. And when a significant amount of said females are of a certain age... well, enough said. I'd paid a visit when I first arrived and been vastly amused by the tumbling, pyramid-pile of free sample incontinence pads on the vanity. My initial 'what the hell' was reiterated three-quarters of an hour later when all that remained was a flat scattering of samples. Giving rise to conversations such as the one in front of me:

Lady in her sixties: Hey look, Joyce. D'you want one?

Joyce: Sure! Shall we grab one for Jan too?

Lady: Good idea! (she grabs a handful and then puts on her glasses to read the instructions, nodding sagely every so often). D'you know, I think we should get some for Ally too. Don't you?

Joyce (with an immediate enthusiasm that speaks volumes about Ally's urinary control): Oh, yes. Absolutely.

Personally it would never occur to me to collect free incontinence pads for friends, and I'm not sure what this says about me. Inconsiderate friend? Selfish? Good pelvic floor muscles? Regardless, I pushed incontinence pads to the back of my mind (there's an image), and sallied forth to enjoy myself. And enjoy myself I did. I only wish I could remember all the songs, each of which sent the audience into fits of laughter. One of my favourites was the scene with Only You, where the singer held the microphone like a... well, let's just say that Good Vibrations set the tone.

I didn't identify with all the issues raised but then I didn't expect to. After all menopause, like all things female, varies dramatically from person to person. Plus I would have liked it to end with a really huge, over-the-top empowering song like I am Woman, which really sucks in the camaraderie of the crowd and then sends it back within an embrace (plus I know all the words). Or perhaps something which reflects the fact that so many women say mid-life is a wonderful time, a time of release, of freedom. But then again the musical is about menopause itself, not mid-life, and I'm probably being petty. Because everywhere I looked women were having a wonderful time, laughing uproariously at even the most silly jokes and then, at the end, getting up on stage to dance joyously along with the closing number. Who cares if it's frivolous and simplistic and oh-my-god, men would never consider laughing about their urinary issues. More fool them. Because you would have been hard-pressed to find a woman without a smile on her face as she left the theatre. And that alone makes it a success.

Things I have learnt...

I'm sure I'm not alone in that I hate the supercilious edge offspring get vocally when they show you something on the computer. In fact there's often more edge than... well, non-edge. Each word dripping with so much condescension you could bathe in the damn stuff. All thick and glutinous and highfalutingly how-can-you-not-know-and/or-grasp-this annoying. Which is one of the reasons why I've so enjoyed all the research I've done over the past week, about how the middle-aged brain is actually a thing of awe. Slightly forgetful perhaps, but nevertheless an ever-bubbling concoction of experience and knowledge and skill and competence, all overlaid with the almost-effortless ability to multi-task. In short, our bodies might be slightly slower, and thicker, and saggier - but our damn minds are amazing.

So to honour this, and also as a type of affirmation moving forward (see? topical and political and a little bit witty - that's verbal multi-tasking at work), I thought I'd share a sample of things that I've learnt during the past half-century. So here goes:

• When those fuddy-duddy types said there was always a price to pay - they were right.
• Pushy people get further - which makes me a little bitter.
• Computer keyboards are not as fond of wine as I.
• Never eat a large bag of liquorice the evening before an important speech (or forum, or workshop - or any event which requires leaving the house the next day).
• Children don't need to be spanked. Seriously.
• What goes around doesn't always come around. Worse luck.
• In 100 years time people are going to look back in disbelief (and/or fury) that we couldn't organise a concerted effort against climate change.
• Always wash your hands thoroughly after using a muscle relaxant such as Deep Heat - especially where subsequent use of said hands involves sanitary products.
• 'Traditional' values are often (not always but often) anti-women.
• Nothing lasts forever.
• Middle-aged women are not supposed to have the same size waist as they had as a girl. It's unfortunate, but it's life.
• Gravity's a bitch.
• Not everybody is reasonable. Unfortunately.
• Always put the toilet lid down before throwing fresh toilet rolls into the basket beside it.
• Beware the overly jealous guy - it's not romantic.
• Gay marriage is a no-brainer, just like equality for all.
• And euthanasia. Bloody hell.
• Anybody who tries to point-score politically off the misery of humanity (i.e. we'll stop the boats) doesn't deserve to have it pay electoral dividends. We're better than that.
• Life really does change irrevocably once you have children. No matter what you said.
• Always look on the bright side - assuming that there is one. And if there's not, move away from the shadows. As soon as possible.

Of course there's masses where those come from - after all I've had fifty years to collect them - but I'll show my compassionate side by not boring you with more. And naturally you may not agree with some of them, just like I may not agree with yours. But if there's one thing I've learnt above all else, it's that we'd all be a lot better off if we could, sometimes, just agree to disagree. And keep an open mind so that we never stop learning new things. Even if it involves the computer.