Anyone out there sorely in need of a great laugh?   Did you hear the one about the Wyoming State Patrolman who mistook a grandmother’s ashes for cocaine?   I’m not making this stuff up!

Patricia Stoltey, a colleague I met through Northern Colorado Writers, was gracious enough to feature one my essays about my writing life today.   Check out my guest blog if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to begin a career in writing.   (Especially when you’re 50!)

My friend Brett Newmyer is at it again.   Here’s the latest from his recent family reunion:

“Huh?”  by Brett Newmyer

I saw a funny birthday card recently that shows three elderly gentlemen walking on the beach. The first one says, “It’s windy.” The second one replies, “No, it’s Thursday,” to which the third responds, “Me too, let’s go get a beer.”  Trying to have any kind of conversation with my elderly parents feels exactly like that sometimes.

No, my folks aren’t completely deaf yet, but they can see it from here.  Adding to the confusion, my equally hard-of-hearing aunt is visiting this week for a family reunion.    These otherwise vibrant elders range in age from 76 to 89.  My Aunt Barb is the most senior of all.

As you might imagine, all three desperately need hearing aids.  But since they are hardy, self-reliant Depression-era babies, not one of them is willing to admit it.  This can make for some interesting conversations around my house!

For example, yesterday Mom said she needed some seafood seasoning for a recipe, but was sure she didn’t have any.  I suggested she just get a tin of Old Bay seasoning.  To which she responded, “A ton of Oh Boy?   What’s that?”  I said, “No Mom, Old Bay.”  “Obey?  What are you talking about?”

This morning, Mom was standing at the stove barely three feet away from my Dad, when she said, “Did you turn the ham yet”?  Dad, leaning forward, responded with, “Turn the pan?”   Mom looks right at him this time and repeats even louder, “Turn the ham!” Annoyed, she flips the slices in the skillet, and then turns to her sister and says, “I’m telling you Barb, it’s a real challenge living with someone who is hard of hearing.”  To which Barb responds: “What did you say, hon?”

I’ve decided not to fight it.  And, in a way, it’s almost amusing watching this titanic battle of wills.     Oh well, at least I know we have a ton of “Oh Boy” in the cupboard now.

Nancy over at Vaboomer.com has it for you today.

When I first moved to Salt Lake City for my first professional librarian position back in 1979, I had of course heard about the Mormons.   I remember wondering if I would be able to identify them immediately on sight.    Slowly I learned what it feels like to be in a tiny minority living in a total theocracy.   The good news, when you are in such a minority within a large and dominating culture, you make very fast and close friends.

We had lots of fun learning about Mormonism and making fun of their many silly traditions.   But the one saying that has stuck with me to this day,  “If ignorance is bliss, than Utah’s UTOPIA!”

Salt Lake back then was a bit like stepping back in American history, back to the 1950s when young women burst into fits of ecstatic bliss on campus when, at age 19, their boyfriends finally popped the question.   Yes, early marriage was practically required.    We used to joke about the Mormon’s approach to sex education, which seemed to be based on the theory that kids would never figure out how to “do it” if nobody told them how.

Fast forward to today and the illustrious “TEA PARTY,” whose apparent goal is take us all back to the “good old days.”   If you have any understanding of life back in the 50s, or any understanding of how the world economy and globalization works, you will quickly see that trying to recapture life in the 1950s would probably be a mistake for us.    Let’s take China for example.   When I visited there back in the early 80s, I also felt like I had traveled back in time.    There were almost no cars on the streets, all bicycles and horse drawn carts, even on the road into Beijing from the airport!

Today the Chinese economy has caught up extremely quickly.   How?   Certainly not by waxing nostalgic about the good old days.   They are making gigantic advances in technology.   My husband works on the cutting edge advancing solar technology.    These are the technologies that will change our world while also cleaning it up.

Let’s face it, the good old days were NOT SO GOOD!   Especially if you are a woman with a brain and plans to use it!    That old time religion is not what this country needs more of in this critical time of economic development.    Going backward is just that, backward. It is now critical that we get our children interested in successful careers in science and technology, not sitting around hoping the good old days will return.    If we aren’t very careful, we may end up with the good old days of minimal health care, 50% unemployment, another Great Depression, and soup lines.

Check out the latest on US!

And if all of this bad news sometimes makes you feel like a loser, check out my new e-book!

I have just experienced the difficult process of witnessing my husband Mike go through major surgery and recovery in the past week or so.   He had all sorts of hardware placed in the base of his spine.   You can imagine how painful it is to wake up after THAT operation!   He also had carpal tunnel surgery at the same time.

It did not help that the surgeon was a complete ass afterward.   Imagine this, Mike is lying in the hospital less than 24 hours after his surgery, in tears from severe pain, when the doc pops in to shame him properly for not getting up and giving himself a shower.   The guy really knows how to win friends and influence people!

Thanks goodness we were able to leave that hospital one day later, just to escape the harassment!   Now Mike is up and walking a couple times a day.    Mike is NOT a lazy slob!   Just treated that way by his surgeon.   We now both enjoy the image of that shame-filled man experiencing all the pain that he has ever caused in his lifetime, all at once in an extreme but special case of instant karma!

Do any of you know the experience of watching someone you love suffer so much?   Than you know how stressful it can be.   It sometimes seems that aging is truly the experience of watching yourself fall apart bit by bit.

For me, Mike’s stay in the neuro unit at the hospital and his extreme pain brought up my own experience with a traumatic brain injury with fractured ribs over two years ago.    I guess it was a bit of a PTSD experience.    Unless you have ever experienced unrelenting pain which cannot be alleviated by drugs, and the inability to change position without creating ever more confusion and pain, you  probably cannot relate.

However, most can relate to the simple difficulties of aging.   I woke up so frustrated last night at the fact that my brain no longer works like it used to.   Why can’t I remember simple things until they pop into my mind in the middle of the night?    I hate this feeling of disability!    I am afraid to even think about what’s next.

“I thought that love could wait.   Too late.   Too late.“

I keep running into some amazing foreign films lately.   First there was Departures, a 2008 Academy Award winner, and now there’s Kinamand from Denmark.

“Kinamand” (Danish for Chinaman) starts out with a classic midlife crisis situation.    Keld, a hapless plumber (Bjarne Henriksen), finds his world crumbling when his wife of 25 years (Charlotte Fich) walks out on him.   Depressed and dejected, Keld starts hanging out at a local Chinese grill, where he becomes friends with the owner.    Eventually Keld is offered a sizable sum to wed the Chinese owner’s sister (Vivian Wu) to keep her in the country.

Quiet, quirky and understated, this film captures well the confusion of divorce, but also the strange, eye-opening opportunities that can arise out of major life changes.   I found it to be quite touching.

I wonder why most of us only see the pearl of wisdom in a life experience long after the actual experience has passed.   During the struggle, the very tough time that requires all of our internal resources, we usually only feel challenged and discouraged.    It is only later, if ever, that we see the lesson or reward from our suffering.

This morning I was thinking about the bad times back in 2004 when I felt entirely overwhelmed with my situation.    Alone and unemployed for months, I saw no even dim prospects of anything good ever happening to me again.    I remember going to talk to my Unitarian pastor for some sort of counseling, only because she was free and I was desperate!    I remember saying to her, “I just need one thing to go right!”   I was looking for ANY sign that my life could eventually change for the better.

It was only a year or two later, after I met Mike and felt loved, safe and secure again, that I could look back and see my own process.   This was the reward or learning part of my transformation from hopelessness to acceptance, where I confronted the fact that life is and will continue to be unpredictable and ever changing, what I now call the learning cycle of life.    From this I learned to try and always give myself love and compassion when I feel challenged, while also trying to share that gift with others.

We are all so very human, not the supernatural action figures we wish we were.    We actually control so very little of what happens to us, and yet we tend to blame ourselves for all of it.   If we think about it for even a moment, we see how impermanent it all is, our time here, our relationships, our thoughts and feelings.    If we are lucky, aging gives us this added perspective which can be scary, but also somehow reassuring.

Each morning we are born again.

What we do today is what matters most.

It wasn’t easy, but I finally found a film that completely deserves a rating of one out of five (or perhaps a zero!)   I had been looking forward to watching Greenberg with Ben Stiller for a while, because I had heard it was “the quintessential midlife crisis movie.” ACK!!!!    Now I see how “midlife crisis” got such a BAD NAME!

I have rarely hated a film so completely, or a main character.    If he were in the room I would have to slap some sense into him!   If you still think you might like to see it, first go read Mr. Cranky’s honest assessment!

A far better choice for a current midlife crisis film is:   The kids are all right.

BTW, I was sad to learn that the movie review TV show, At The Movies ended a 35 year run yesterday.   It started out as Siskel and Ebert in 1975. I guess everyone gets their movie reviews online now.