Not So Good Things. . .

I am a positive person. It’s in my blood. It’s always half-full and things are always great and can only go downhill if I allow them to. It happens sometimes.

Sometimes, I just want to lift my middle finger high in the air for all to see, just so they know I feel, how cranky I am that my life isn’t as sunny as I’d like it to be.

But here’s the rub. Beyond the middle finger, sometimes I am so perplexed by human behaviour that it makes me want to cry – because there is nothing I can do about it.

What can I do about the high school kids that think so little of life that a gun and death to others are the only answer? What can I do or say to the parents that don’t know their kids at all – that can let their kids go so far into the dark that they would take their own lives?

What can I do when this happens again and again through history?

What can we do?

What can I do about the tornadoes that take lives? What can I do about toddlers ripped from their mother's arms only to die, cold and broken miles away?

What can I do when the whole nation mourns Whitney Houston (as I did), but doesn’t mourn the domestic violence in our world, the poverty, the war, the genocide and starvation?

How can I get through to the people that hate a president but won’t give him a chance to make the change the U.S. so desperately needs?

Monday blues, that’s what it is. I am weeping for a world I feel helpless to change, yet my corner of the planet is a wonderful, blessed life where my biggest complaint is that there is  nothing good on television.

What can we do?

 

Technorati Tags: Whitney Houston,Obama,High School Shooting,Tornadoes

Holy Wow, Aging Has Finally Caught Me!

 

Okay – so I’m going to be 45 this year. Forty-freakin’-five.

A couple of weeks ago, I was primping in front of the mirror when a noticeably lighter hair popped up and said hello. Blonde? Nope. Gray. Gray gray gray.

My first reaction? Cool! I’ve finally earned these two badges of honour. Yes, only two, but obviously they’ve talked and have decided to colonize.

I stepped back. Then I stepped closer to the mirror. I tried to separate the grays from the herd of healthy brunette strands but they are wily little creatures. I knew not to pluck them. Someone told me once that if you pluck your gray hairs, the souls of the gray hairs to come get really angry and decide to move in to your scalp earlier, and in massive replacement numbers. So, no plucking.

But how did I feel about these hairs? I mean really, how do we feel when we notice our first gray hair?

One of my namesakes, Cousin Joy, had a beautiful head of amazing silver hair – just shiny and bountiful and a really striking colour – not gray or washed out – but singing with silver, you know what I mean? Her silver hair came in when she was younger, but it arrived on her head with a red carpet and some paparazzi for all to see and pay attention to those beautiful silver locks.

Nope. Don’t think that’s me.

I didn’t cover the gray – I actually went straight to my husband and said “Look what you’ve done to me!”

He then pointed to his sexily silvered temples and said “Would you care to explain how YOU did all this, then?”

Yes, I kissed him soundly and scampered out of the room before I started confessing.

So – gray hair. That was the beginning. Now I look down and I see my mom’s hands when she was my age. I can see where my laugh lines are laying their blueprints, and suddenly there’s a sparse moustache to contend with. Sigh. My muscles hurt when I do silly things. I can actually injure my back while petting the cat.

But here’s what I think about all this aging stuff (today anyway). We all seem to get better looking as we age – up to a point when you start resembling a great big grown-up, wrinkled baby – but more importantly - WE ALL AGE!

Go ahead and spend thousands on pretending to stop your aging – you could start as early as 23 like Heidi Montag – the idiot who ruined her already pretty face and body. IDIOT!

Or, be like me – use the stuff that keeps you healthy and feeling good. Tell yourself that your concealer is really working and that your pores are still as tiny as a baby’s. Put a little more colour in your hair and a little more lotion on your hands – and tell yourself that age is just a state of mind . . .

Keep repeating until you believe it.

Then, when you step away from the mirror, don’t move to fast or you might hurt your aging back.

If that doesn’t work – start hanging out with really old people and you will feel like that young hot thing that you still are. . . it’s just that you’ve been around the wine cellar once or twice, youknowwhatImean?

Staying Young Has Nothing To Do With Miracle Creams

I think I’ve found the secret to staying young. And I don’t think it has much to do with lotions, potions, make up or plastic surgery.

Not long ago, I was near a Toys R Us. I was going in just to look, really, and possibly to pick up a gift for my nephew and niece in California. However, about thirty seconds after I walked through the door, I forgot all my dear little what’s-their-names and what child-like delight they would show at whatever gift I picked for them.

My eyes were drawn in all directions at once, which, let me tell you, causes a ridiculous eye strain. The colours were so bright, inviting you to touch, to want. The glitter and shine of the pinks and purples of the ‘girlie’ toys, the masculine blacks, reds and blues of the ‘boy’ toys all made me realize one thing.

It stinks to be a grown up.

I’d like to know who made the rules that say we’re not allowed to play with toys, not allowed to pretend after a certain age. Are you thinking “Nobody told me I couldn’t play with toys anymore…”?

Exactly. Somehow, we let an interest in the opposite sex take away our desire for the very things that made us laugh, stretched our imaginations, allowed incredible fantasies and made us forget about anything that made us sad as children.

Why don’t we do that now? For some reason, we adults change from toys to dates, to bars, to marriage, children, jobs, careers, other people…whatever. Simply said, we grow up.

Who makes the rules on when it’s time to grow up, anyway? Who says you can’t be an adult and still enjoy total reality abandonment like a child does? Like your children do?

Put down your cell phone, PDA, laptop, wallet, glass, newspaper and dinner preparations. Put them all down. Go to your child’s room, the attic or a toy store. Find a toy you used to love when you were a child. Smile at it and remember.

Remember what it was like to pick up your Barbies and immediately fall into their world. Find Ken and make it happen, ladies. Men, go find a Hot Wheels track, or build a fort under the dining room table. Make a tent out of your bed sheets and play doctor with your wife. Grab the pots and pans from the bottom drawers. Raise that wooden spoon and bring back the Racket Band that you used to love when you were in diapers.

Life is meant to be fun, to be enjoyed. Sure, there are responsibilities to be handled on a daily basis. But if we handle them, and then forget them for awhile while we play with the Easy Bake Oven or the Erector Sets….what’s the harm? Find a refrigerator box and climb in. It’s your world. Have fun with it.

Watch children for examples. They’ve got it down to an effortless

science. And, me – I’m working really hard on this and should be an expert in no time.

LiveJournal Tags: humour,life,children,toys,playing,growing old,childish,family,adult,stress busting,laughter,young at heart,jkm asylum,joyce menyasz

February is Already Half Over!

And I'm sitting here thinking, it's 2009.

2-0-0-9.

How did that happen?

I have a very vivid memory of my very first marriage proposal. I was 8. Christopher was also 8. We had a mutual crush that transcended the playground boundaries of elementary school.

We played together even though other children taunted us about marriage.

You know that familiar taunt - "two little lovers, sittin' in a tree . . ." When they got to the part about marriage, I raised my hand and stopped them with a declaration of such wisdom, they closed their mouths immediately.

"I will not get married until the year 2000."

The only reason they were all quiet is because they were trying to figure out how old we'd all be at that time. Christopher didn't care. "Then will you marry me?" He asked.

Alas, 2000 came and went with no Christopher (thank goodness, since I met Peter in 2001).

Being on the playground, I remember thinking that the year 2000 was so far away that I probably wouldn't even be alive to see it. The year then was 1973. Funny how to an 8-year-old, 27 years is a whole millennium (not that I knew that word at 8).

And now it's February 2009. I was so sure we'd be flying like the Jetsons. I couldn't wait to have Rosie do the dishes, to have my dinner appear as if from nowhere.

Let's face it. The Jetsons gave me unrealistic expectations about the future, just like Disney gave me unrealistic expectations about princess hair.

I wonder if the 8-year-olds of today are saying crazy things like they won't get married until the year 2050? That being said, I'm sure mothers everywhere are going to train their 8 year olds to say just that.

So I guess I am a little disappointed that we aren’t quite as technologically advanced as I’d hoped when I was 8. But with the invention of the Roomba and microwaves, I guess it’s just a matter of time.

However, I would like to formally request my flying car first.

Facebook – The Ultimate Connector

I’ve written about Facebook before. How it’s a great way to decipher every degree of separation from Kevin Bacon.

And now? I am just about stupefied silent (right) by the people that are reappearing in my life through Facebook. I feel I must tell everyone that Facebook is more than a teenager’s what-are-you-doing-right-now kind of site.

With Facebook, you can reconnect with family, friends and your school mates. Good Lord, you could probably find Jimmy Hoffa on Facebook!

I graduated from high school in 1983. There are a few people that I still communicate with regularly, but let’s face it. That was 25 years ago. Gulp.

People that were important to me back in those days haven’t been on my mind for many years. Except for the three or four that I still talk to – high school has been a very distant memory.

Then one day I log on to Facebook. And there it is, staring me in the face. A friend suggestion from someone in California. Gilbert Daudistel. Eighth grade. Whoa.

I added Gilbert as my friend. Haven’t talked to him, thought of him or anything since we threw our caps in the air at graduation in 1983. I remember his Davy Jones haircut and his mouth full of metal.

With a quick catch-up email through Facebook (exactly how do you catch up on 25 years in a ‘quick’ email?), I learn he is now the father of three or four dozen boys, has a gorgeous wife and has done some serious military service. He is also apparently fluent in Russian.

What happened to the awkward Gilbert that blushed all the time?

And that’s how it began. Now, more than 20 of us from our drama club in high school have reconnected. Even our beloved drama teacher, Kathy Juarez, has reconnected with all of us. It’s plain crazy, people!

Their pictures all look the same. Nobody seems to have changed much. Some have come out of the closet, some have married and divorced more than once, some are still chasing big dreams, and some have made their dreams come true. It also seems that every darn one of us is still involved in creative arts in one way or another. Dance studio owners, screenplay writers, column writers, novelists, actors, teachers. . . it’s just been a really cool experience.

I feel just a little bit younger, and the world feels a little bit smaller.

Until I see pictures of all those children that my school mates have spawned. Many are in high school, some even in university now. The littlest children belong to those friends that seemed to take their time to continue their DNA line. I feel my youngest when I see those toddler aged children standing against the legs of my school chums. Then I feel like the clock is ticking properly, that time isn’t spinning too fast.

I wonder if, 25 years from now, we’ll all be too old to type our status changes on Facebook? Will we go from a status of ‘Joyce is getting ready to party the weekend away’ to ‘Joyce is currently napping away her golden years’?

Will I be Facebook friends with the great-grandchildren of my high-school mates? Will Facebook take place of actual reunions now that we’ve virtually connected?

Really, even if I were never able to ‘see’ these friends again, it might be okay. Without Facebook, who knows when I would have connected with these people again?