Who I Am and Why I Blog

A 57 year old woman learning to live life as fully as I can. A mom, a grandmother, a wife, a sister. A traveller, a homemaker, a small business owner. Owned by a cockatiel and the world's most unsatisfactory cat. Coffee addict. Chocolate addict. Keeper of old friends, maker of new ones. Voracious reader with no memory, capable of taking the same book out of the library within months of returning it. Athiest. Fiscally conservative Democrat. Feminist.

At 50 I decided I was going to do stuff differently. And I was going to do a lot of it. Although travel is one of my passions, I was afraid of flying, so I did two things: I went up in a helicopter (cuz I'd never done that), and I underwent hypnosis for my fear. Surprisingly, I loved the helicopter, and cured my fear of flying in airplanes with the hypnosis. Now, getting on a plane is like getting on a bus -- no more white knuckles! ( http://www.mysmokefree.org/faq.htm). And I started working on being a little less inhibited -- not crazy stuff, just kinda corny stuff. Like being at a luau in Maui, getting up to learn to dance the hula. In front of everybody. Or, when the comedian on a cruise ship asks for volunteers, being the first to jump up. I am not gonna just SIT there anymore. This all started on a Duck Boat in Boston in 1999, when the driver turned right into the Charles River and then asked his passengers if anyone wanted to steer. I really really wanted to steer, but I didn't. No more stupid little regrets like that!! Since then? I steer, dammit!

So I'm blogging now to record the stuff I have done since turning 50, in the hopes that other women my age will read it and say hey, maybe I can do that. None of the stuff I have done is earth-shattering, mind-blowing, or cure-the-common-cold important in the grand scheme of things, but for me, they are life-changing. Oh ok, maybe not even life-changing, but maybe just a little get-out-of-rut-free kind of stuff. Like rowing.

Rowing

My 9 foot, thirty pound kayak stuck out of the trunk of my little red four door sedan. I used to take it to the Gravel Pond, just south of Chatfield Reservoir in Littleton, Colorado. The pond is about 800 meters long, and I would paddle lazily around the perimeter for a while, then beach the kayak and sit in the sun eating lunch and reading.

In September 2006 as I sat reading, out of the water like Neptune himself came a tall, thin, handsome man maybe in his late 50s, carrying the most beautiful single shell I have ever seen (of course, I'd never seen ANY up close). “I've always wanted to do that!” I exclaimed, and to my wonder he replied, “well, this shell's for sale!” “It's mine!” I answered. Who knew this was a crazy thing to do? That afternoon my husband and I drove to the man's home, handed him a bunch of cash, and he drove my new boat back to the pond, where he crouched on the beach for two hours holding her stern as I tried desperately to balance in this crazy skinny boat! What a patient man! I sat there thinking who can I possibly sell this thing to without this nice man ever finding out??? I was 54 years old, 30 pounds overweight, with so many negative voices in my head that it is a wonder I could ever do anything new at all.