Getting Creamed

Before there were Nigerian princes who needed your help via email, before there was phishing and only fishing, before there was identity theft, just the regular kind, and the dark web was a spiderweb that was in the basement in a dark corner, there was women's face cream.  The original scam. And still going strong.

Don't get me wrong, I don't eschew moisturizers.  Far from it; growing up in arid Montana, I have been moisturizing every exposed part of me since before I could spell it. But it was only in the last few years where vanity got the better of me and I started spending more on facial moisturizers than I do on sports jerseys (and, those people who have seen my closet know that's a lot) and have fallen victim to some bad decisions in search of that miracle wrinkle reducer.

I would admittedly go for the Botox route, but it's hard to arrange to leave the house to run to Target, going to a movie is a major endeavor that takes coordinated planning and some guilt for leaving my husband alone with his mom, so leaving for recurring cosmetic treatments like that and spending that kind of money and time on things seems selfish, but there are days I look at myself in the mirror and think, "This is what I'm going to look like when I'm my mother-in-law's age." only to realize that's what I look like now. Or I'll smile at someone and see the wrinkles above my mouth or on my forehead light up instead of the smile. I mean, let's face it: women get judged by their looks more so than men.  Sorry if that sounds sexist, I just believe it is true.  I've never been known to get my way based on my looks, but aging isn't exactly leveling the playing field.  You might think that I wouldn't be worried about something I never really had, but alas, you'd be wrong.

I have forgotten all the times I've been strong armed into buying some magic moisturizer or cleanser that was promised to remove fine lines. The money I've wasted probably caused some of those fine lines, but it's the things I've actually sought out and suckered myself into buying that really make me cringe.

The worst one wasn't actually a face cream but a chin cream, if you will.  Let me explain. I've always had a bit of a double chin. Starting in high school, I began doing neck exercises to tighten the area. Hard to say if it worked really - I mean, it never went away but it could have been so much worse without them. As I got a bit older I read that cocoa butter was a good skin tightener for weak chinned folks, so I have used that as a night moisturizer for the last decade or so. But during the Pandemic I was able to lose some weight (more on that in a different post), but it actually made the weak double chin more pronounced, to the point where my husband actually said, "Yeah, you probably ought to do something about that." Seriously, he did. At about that time, a local cosmetic surgery place was running ads about a laser procedure to remove double chins. I actually looked into the procedure. And had reviews and articles been positive, I would have done it.  But they weren't. However, what I tripped across was some miracle cream with excellent reviews that was supposed to melt away double chins. Sound too good to be true? Yeah, well...

I mean, I think I'm a reasonably intelligent person but I fell for it hook, line and stinker sinker. I thought because I'd read an "independent review" replete with testimonials I was on to something legit. But the site was tricky to begin with and without realizing it I immediately was enrolled in repeat delivery for a $50 jar of less than an ounce. And did it work? Nope. It was a nightmare to get out of the recurring delivery; I ended up closing my Discover Penguins card and cutting it up in anger because they wouldn't support me in denying the charge for an order that I refused to accept. I finally got past it, but that was money trashed, and I miss my Penguins card. I could probably get another one, but then again, they definitely did not put the customer first and that still makes me mad.

Yet, expensive lessons are definite lessons learned, right?

Right?

Well...

One morning, I was in my mother-in-law's room to do her morning routine and she was watching the CBS Morning Show and they were hawking these products from Wrinkles Schminkles.  I figured to myself that if a news show was promoting it, it was safe right? And I ordered through CBS, making me feel even more secure. Sigh.  Maybe I didn't give them enough of a shot, but I ordered under eye patches that are supposed to be worn overnight. They were uncomfortable, fell off a lot - I would wake up with them stuck to my pillow instead of me, once it was IN my eye, not under my eye, or stuck to my collie. The wrinkles were the only thing sticking to me actually. On the other hand, I got a face mask from them that was like heaven. Not sure it did anything, but dang, I felt great!! So, silver lining...

The most recent example was I saw an article from InStyle claiming that Jane Fonda used a L'Oreal product. I ordered that from Amazon faster than you can say 80 For Brady.  Too soon to really make a judgment but at least it didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Bottom line is even if the left-side of our brain is telling us to be logical and realize that life leaves its stamp on us no matter what we do, and we really ought to be proud of our wrinkles because it means we've made it this far, the right-side of our brain is falling victim to wanting to look younger. Period. End of story. Because society has always told us that beauty is to be prized. The bank account is stuck somewhere in between.

Just some of the face treatments I have.

Can I overcome the right-brain's whispers and just treat my skin with common sense and sensibly priced moisturizers? I'd like to say yes, but if any of you comment that you've found a magic bullet for wrinkle reduction, there's little doubt I'll shoot myself with that bullet!

Vanity Fair

Allied Pictures

I love that I share a birthday with fellow Montanan Myrna Loy (well I wasn't born there, but I lived there longer, so...it counts, right?) I adore Myrna Loy, shared birthday or not. She was an amazing actress who could present as a haughty beauty or a cute-as-a-button girl next door. She can make me laugh, as she's done through all the Thin Man movies, or drive me to tears as she does consistently with each viewing of one of the best movies ever made, The Best Years of Our Lives. And if you don't know anything about her films, stop right here!  Go find one on Turner Classic Movies and get back to me. You can thank me later.

But off screen she was admirable as well, advocating for better roles and treatment of minority actors and was such an outspoken anti-Fascist that Hitler banned her films in Germany. She probably didn't change the world with her opinions, but in the context of the times, she was brave to speak up at all. And she was independent. Yes, she married several times, but she was her own career woman, and I loved that about her and my other favorites: Katherine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman. But before I really knew who she was, I simply knew she was someone famous with whom I shared a birthday. One such day, as was typical, the paper ran a list of famous people who had birthdays and I saw her name. I was maybe eight or nine and was a little young to have seen any of the hard drinking Thin Man movies quite yet, so I wasn't putting a face to the name so as Mom and I drove downtown to run errands I asked about her, specifically I wanted to know if she was beautiful. My mother's response was somewhat wistful. Usually a biting critic of anything or anyone she didn't agree with, there was a wisp of sadness in her voice instead when she assured me that, yes, she was very beautiful but was also very vain and struggled with aging gracefully. At the time of that question, Myrna Loy was about the same age I am now.

RKO Pictures

I've never forgotten that as I watched Myrna Loy films, and I thought about it a lot as I read her autobiography. Of course even if she was totally self-aware, which I don't get the impression that she was, she wasn't going to cop to being vain in her book, but there are hints that support my mother's statement. She protested a bit too much about the slim age difference between herself and co-star Teresa Wright in The Best Years of Her Lives, for example. Myrna plays the mother to Teresa's adult daughter role. 

She did play mother roles and was the aunt to Doris Day's character in Midnight Lace the same year I was born, but it is true she was reticent to accept those roles and her career slowed as she aged as a result. I have to accept that, as flawless as I find her acting, she was like all of us and flawed in other ways. And for someone who had spent her life making a name for herself with her beauty, watching that outer beauty fade must have indeed been hard. But perhaps because my fellow Leo struggled so much against a fight none of us wins, I'm determined not to be that way.  Maybe in a way Myrna Loy is why I write this blog.

Of course, never having been someone who could make a living with my face or body, it's easier for me right? Maybe, but next up, I'll tell you all the ways I'm an absolute hypocrite when I make the statement  that I'm embracing my age.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this classic scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

My gift to all of you.

A Slow Swedish Death

Obi Wan started it.

Someone had laid a truth bomb on me that I was struggling with. What it was isn't important other than it was the catalyst for me to do a little retail therapy. I had seen this particular Obi Wan collectible at a comic book store for a price that made me blink a few times rapidly and walk away, yet I couldn't stop thinking about him. After all, Alec Guinness was the catalyst that made me decide I'd go ahead and go to this silly Star Wars movie just out since I was a big fan of his. The rest is history, and I'm sitting here in a Star Wars shirt right now, a big and heavily-invested-in-Star Wars-collectibles-nerd. So I wanted that particular Obi Wan, and I wanted him bad. I just needed an excuse; had the truth bomb not exploded, something else would have come along to give me the excuse. My daughter suggested I could find him online for less, so I did. $70 less to be exact. And he arrived, in all his glory, a 6:1 scale, hand painted, limited edition marvel, on Saturday. To make room for him, I had to move a lamp, and figure out where to store the lamp, which meant I really needed to re-organize a little annex off my office we call the Hobby Hole, and as I was going through that process I had to ask myself over and over as I picked things up and moved things around, "Why exactly do I have this?"

In the great debate of nature vs. nurture I am an interesting case study. Not genetically linked to either parent, I carry forward so many of their personality traits, both good and bad - but, bluntly, mainly bad - that I think I sort of shut the door on any other argument. Nurture wins the day, and Mother was a full on hoarder. There was an understandable reason for it. Not unlike many young people who had their formative years during the Depression, she spent the rest of her life over-compensating for those years of want. While I bemoaned that fact from the time I was young all the way to trying to clean out her things after she died, and even though I never wanted for much, I am more like my mother than I would care to be.

My daughter watched as I struggled with the fallout from my mother's hoarding. I could tell so many stories, but for now suffice it to say, while I don't think my daughter is waiting or anxious for the time when she has to help me downsize, or worse still, when she has to clear out my things because I'm gone, it does admittedly cross her mind and she's more than well aware how much stuff I have. And she's also aware of how I'm wired.  I adore estate sales, and I'm in the prime location for them. Pittsburgh is a city with an older population. I love sports collectibles in addition to all the Star Wars stuff, and don't forget Lord of the Rings, because I certainly don't forget it while procuring things I just "have to have". Now add all the stuff I gather with all the stuff I inherited as the only child, and the things my husband was bequeathed over time. Not unlike a lot of people in our age bracket. As life goes on, we just stuff our space with all our stuff.  There's a reason I guess stuff is called stuff.

But I know my daughter worries about what a mess she'll be left with, and I know what it was like to deal with my mother, and don't want to repeat that cycle, so I was intrigued as Swedish Death Cleaning became a "thing". I decided I needed to make it my thing. As just one small example, do I really need to have a picture my mother took in 1970 of a bouquet of flowers sitting on her living room coffee table? No, I do not. Nor do I need a photo of a group of young women with that coveted flip up hairstyle singing in that same living room at a DAR luncheon she threw?  I don't know who any of them are.  No, I do not.

And why in the world did I keep this? Why did Mom for that matter? Other than she kept absolutely everything that is.

Not only keep it but haul it from place to place including across country - that package of "Quickies" has more miles on it than my car. 

I don't know about you, but some stuff that just defies logic stays for so long out of some weird guilt (e,g., "Mother loved this, so she would want me to keep it."). Some out of sentimentality. A lot of it falls into that bucket actually. Some because during the course of a life sad events happen, and looking too closely at certain things dredges that up and it's easier to just pack it up and haul it here, there and everywhere. But at some point, someone has to face it and handle it. It should be me, right?

I consider the name badge in
the trash a total win

Whatever the reason, it's hard to let go. And I have to be in a "mood", as I described it to my daughter this past weekend. I managed to convince myself to throw away a name tag of my dad's from a reunion he attended in 1989.  But I couldn't bring myself to toss his Elk's membership card. Maybe in the next "mood".

And I as I poured over old photos and stationery to try and cull out some space in the Hobby Hole, I did get emotionally tweaked.  I ran across a box full of my mother's photos, including a lot that were taken when my children were small and she lived in Washington, PA. So all these happy family photos of summer vacations where the biggest worry is when I'd get to go to Steelers training camp are caught in time smiling out at me, but now so, so many people in those photos are either gone, including unfortunately my oldest daughter, or are not well. I tell people all the time that I hope the memories of their loved ones brings them comfort, and I am sincere. But I'm here to tell you it doesn't always.  Sometimes memories are ghosts and they haunt you.

But anyway, this is all a long way to say, I've decided I'll take my Swedish Death Cleaning project a bit at a time, in other words I'll bank on the trust that there will be a tomorrow. Maybe over the next couple of decades I'll actually get it down to a dull roar. On the other hand, now I know there's a young Obi Wan from the same company...and really, don't you think I need them both?

So make me feel better about myself.  What do you have too much of, and how are you doing with the idea of getting rid of it as you get older?

(And...if you're a stranger reading this and think you might just want to help yourself to my Obi Wan, remember I collect things, including BIG DOGS.  They're happy to greet you appropriately.)

Shades of Gray

I guess this whole project started when I was looking in the mirror worrying over all the gray showing along my temples as I tried to tame my hair in preparation for a video meeting.  I was in that middle phase - weeks had passed since I dyed it but if I didn't want to completely fry my hair I had weeks to go before I could reasonably cover it again. But then what?  The cycle would repeat itself.  There's a saying about insanity that springs to mind here...

As I stood there staring at myself, undoubtedly more critical than almost anyone on the meeting would be (six men and only one other young woman who - through no fault of her own - probably sees me as old no matter what color I adopt), I thought back to what my younger self would say. She'd say "fuck it, stop the madness and just accept who you are." (Oh yeah, warning, there will be cussing in this blog.)

And since that moment, roughly two weeks ago, I've been thinking a lot about that younger me and this me, and working to reconcile the two.  We're the same, and yet we're not. I'm also trying to define for myself what aging gracefully is going to look like. Trust me, that's a big difference from the young me and the now me and what we have to say on that particular topic. Young Me thought she had everything all figured out for everyone about how they should behave as they matured. Young Me could be an insufferable little shit sometimes. Yet she did have the power of her convictions; I have to give that much to her. Older Me spends every day trying to figure it all out.

Anyway, as this little inner dialog went on in my head while I pulled out a spray bottle of temporary tint to get me through the meeting, I thought it might be interesting to write it all down and invite others to share their own journey down the yellow brick road of life.  One thing I can tell you for sure: if you're lucky enough to get to the age of senior discounts, you've seen some shit. So let's all share our wisdom and how we're dealing with the reality of never, ever being mistaken for Taylor Swift for the sake of camaraderie, maybe to pick up some tricks and tips from one another, and - what I really hope for - share some laughs at ourselves as we journey on this sometimes rocky yellow brick road. 

What did I decide you ask? Insufferable or not, I decided Young Me had it right this time. I got some color remover and stripped my hair of the dark, almost blood red color I'd adopted for the last five years, bracing for a shock of white. I was shocked, that much was true, but turns out there wasn't nearly as much gray in there as I assumed there was. What shocked me was the re-emergence of my natural color, a light strawberry brown.  I found myself staring in the mirror again. I hadn't seen that version of me in a long time, just now streaked with some "life experience".

Today I went to the salon for the first time in a long time and got it cut into a short bob.  The gray along the temple ceased to be an issue because I'm not compelled to pull it back in a ponytail any longer and the gray on top is manageable. Overall, it was less dramatic and traumatic that I was steeled for.  And now I'm free from the dye. Of course, on the flip side, the salon and the lovely stylist I met today has their hooks in me every 8 weeks to keep the hair styled, but she offers me tea and massages my head, so it's a trade off I'm okay with.

In short, score one for the old girl with a tip of the ball-cap I don't need to wear anymore to the young girl who whispered across the years to give me some good life advice.

If you're looking for a photo, yeah, I came straight home and painted the front porch. Makeup running with my sweat, it's not pretty.  I'll owe you one. In the meantime, if you're curious, this is the product I used. I noticed too late a review that mentions the smell.  Oh, that's so true - but after a salon wash, it's finally gone.

Now you're turn: are you happy with the gray or still saying no way?  There's not a right or wrong answer. Well, actually, I take that back.  There is. The right answer is the one that makes you feel good.